1998
Amazon.com: Where are you from? How - if at all - has your sense of place colored
your writing?
M.H.: I'm "from" a lot of places - I was born in Oregon and
spent my childhood in Washington DC; I've lived in Arizona, Idaho, Florida, Massachusetts
and San Diego. I'm an urban-driven person - love the energy and rhythm you pick up from
the city, any city. There's this intense curiosity I have about other places and people,
an appreciation for all the variations and differences you see - maybe you're forced to do
that when you move around a lot and have to fend for yourself. But it gives me the ability
to put myself in another's place, to see with someone else's eyes.
Certainly living in San Diego has been an example of "chance meets opportunity equals
luck" because it led directly to being able to work on THE ART OF MAKING OPERA. It started as a photography
project, but when it came time to write captions, I was dissatisfied with just a
straightforward description of the images. As I expanded the captions, I found that I was
using words more and more in partnership with the images, telling the story - my story.
How the pieces all fit together to make a bigger picture. Then the book really started to
come alive for me.
It's interesting to me that you ask about "coloring" my work - as a photographer
working in black and white, I quite consciously use that limitation to reveal more
"color" in the images than is seen with colors themselves. But black and white
is how I see - I dream in black and white, too - always have. I thought it was normal,
that everyone did it, but I just found out a few years ago that most people actually dream
in color. What a great word.
Amazon.com: When and why did you
begin writing? When did you first consider yourself a writer?
M.H.: I knew I wanted to write pretty early on. I knew - but I didn't do
it. In school I was always kind of sheltered - coloring inside the lines, if you will.
("Color" - there it is again!) When I went away to college, I was like Miranda
in a brave new world, and I started thinking and opening my eyes. Actually, I wasn't ready
for the structure of college - I was too busy learning about life. So I'm 17 years old and
for the first time ever, reading things other than literature - philosophy and all the
feminist writings: Germaine Greer, Betty Friedan, Mary Wollstonecraft, a wonderful book
called "The First Sex" by Elizabeth Davis. It was a time of big changes
- Ms Magazine was emerging and Billie Jean King beat Bobby Riggs at tennis. Well, I felt
excited and outraged and alive, and I knew that I needed to be a part of all this connecting
that was going on, this reaching out to people. A door had opened for me, and I knew, way
deep down, that writing was the way. It was my way. It was like a brilliant light going
on. And I guess you could say that it blinded me. I was afraid of the power I found behind
that door I'd opened. Terrified. Absolutely terrified. And I closed it.
It took a long, long time for it to be okay, for me to learn how to live with the kind of
power - and the responsibility - that goes along with it. Because writing is a powerful
force. You can't really control it, you go along with it. Like a river or a tide. When I
was in my late teens, early twenties, I thought I had to do everything perfectly,
brilliantly - you know, paint the Sistine Chapel Ceiling the first time I picked up a
brush.
Amazon.com: Who or what has influenced
your writing, and in what way? What books have most influenced your life?
M.H.: Oh wow, probably everything I've ever read! From way back, I remember
absolutely inhaling storybooks as a child - poetry, classics, novels - I escaped into
them, didn't matter what the subject was. I remember my 5th grade teacher, Miss Kurtz,
would read to our class for half an hour every day - we were too old to have naps, I
suppose, so she'd read to us after lunch. I love to create worlds and people in my mind as
I read, imagine I'm living their adventure, and cry and feel for them. I read lots of
different stuff, from history to science fiction to Dickens and all the 19th century
Americans, essays, plays and poems. Dictionaries - I read dictionaries! I love words!
What books. Well, the women's writings, as I said. A Tale of Two Cities. Rebecca.
Homer. Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Milan Kundera.
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead. Robertson Davies. Stephen Jay Gould. A
Wrinkle in Time. The Duchess of Malfi is one of my favorite plays - read it and
understand the John Webster joke in "Shakespeare in Love!" Shakespeare,
of course. Dorothy L. Sayers. Paradise Lost - this work is filled with light and
darkness - so brilliant, it's almost impossible to take it all in. Henry James. Under
Milkwood by Dylan Thomas made a huge impression on me in high school, and I often go
back to it; the words are so tangible and sensual. How many more do I get??
I love passion and conviction in writing - essays by Harlan Ellison, James Burke, Robert
Hughes. Passion in any kind of art, too - singers who tell a story have always appealed to
me: the Weavers, Harry Chapin, Gordon Bok. Opera - of course! And painters, like
Caravaggio or Goya. It's the same kind of communicating, just in different media.
You know something I just realized - this is intriguing - nearly everything I've said here
is fiction. Well. There's the impact of "telling the story" for me. A great
story, intriguing characters, writers who command and control words and reinvent ways to
reach out to you.
Amazon.com: What is the most romantic
book you've ever read? The scariest? The funniest?
M.H.: The most romantic? Okay, you asked! A multiple tie for first, here - "The
Scarlet Pimpernel" by Baroness Orczy - probably because of the danger, the high
stakes, and because Marguerite is such a strong character. No, no - it's because she and
Percy are equally strong and so passionate. Then there's a play called "The Lady's Not For Burning" by
Christopher Fry - it's written in blank verse, a 20th century work - and another intense
pair of smart, strong, equal characters; for years, I identified very closely with Jennet.
Oh... "The Crystal Cave" by Mary Stewart. "Cyrano de Bergerac"
by Rostand. The sonnets of Pablo Neruda, too, from way back. If you saw the film "Truly
Madly Deeply," it's one of Neruda's poems that Alan Rickman quotes in really bad
Spanish to Juliet Stephenson's character. The part in the film is taken out of context,
but that one part by itself is devastatingly romantic, in a big-picture definition of
"romantic." And I have to mention Dorothy Dunnett's Lymond
Chronicles, six fat books, because of the impact - massive and seductive, huge epic
story - it'll blow you away.
Scariest is "The Shining" by Stephen King - far better than the films;
also Edgar Allen Poe, the master.
Funniest - "The Transitive Vampire" by Karen Elizabeth Gordon. Did I
say I love words!?
Amazon.com: What music, if any, most
inspires you to write? What do you like to listen to while writing?
M.H.: If I put music on while I'm concentrating, it's non-vocal; otherwise I get
distracted too much. And then it's usually Mahler or Willie and Lobo. Sometimes I just
need to it to be quiet, to listen to the rhythm of the words in my head.
And that's really important to me. Rhythm. Cadence. Sound. The way words sound when you
say them. The way they sound and feel inside you when you read them, doesn't have to be
out loud. Music is such an emotional connection here, and music is everywhere. Wind.
Waves. Traffic. The voice - my favorite instrument, the first instrument - is even
stronger, like a direct line to my heart. I'm always wanting to create that same kind of
response, that pulse, that heartbeat in my writing.
Amazon.com: What are you reading now?
What CD is currently in your stereo?
M.H.: I never read just one book at a time. So, two biographies - one of Arthur
Conan Doyle by Stashower, and one of Paul Robeson, the one by Duberman. Also, "Who
Killed Classical Music?" by Norman Lebrecht.
In my stereo? Could be almost anything... But at this moment it's "Mario Lanza - Live
at the Hollywood Bowl."
Amazon.com: What are you working on?
M.H.: I'm writing a book about
tenors - about the impact of the voice on the audience, really. It's not a how-to-sing
book, and it's not gossip about personal lives. It's a celebration of the art form, what's
special about the tenor voice, how it moves an audience - mixed in with an understanding
of all the hard work it takes to get there, to just do it. If you think about how rare a
really good tenor is, never mind a great one, that's a pretty unique phenomenon. And these
men are extraordinary - hard-working artists, whether they're household names with a dozen
recordings or whether they're known only to their families or within the business. More
than half of the research and interviews are completed. I'll be doing a lot of the writing
in the next few months - and I'm itching to get to it, to see where it takes me.
So this will be photographs and in-depth interviews with seven of today's tenors in the
opera world - somewhat more text than images in this book, where THE ART OF MAKING OPERA
was more images. I'm also interviewing more than 100 different people in the opera
business, from lots of other tenors to singers of all voice types who are their
colleagues, to their teachers, directors, conductors, composers... You name a legend in
the business and I've probably already talked to them or soon will be. Those comments are
all providing threads of color in this very rich, sexy, complex tapestry that's emerging.
And you wouldn't believe how this project has a life and a drive of its own! Very pushy,
very demanding of my time and energy, and it all wants to be happening right now - which
is not so inappropriate, given my subject!
As both a photographer and a writer, I'm always discovering. Always. Every day. With the
cameras, I'm a portraitist - I find it boring to shoot sunsets or buildings or flowers. I
shoot people because I need to interact with them, discover something about the part of
them that's underneath the surface. When I was working on THE
ART OF MAKING OPERA, casually chatting with people, I found I was using words the same
way that I use the camera - trying to find out what makes them tick. I'm doing more formal
interviews now for the new book, and the more I do, the more turned on I get, the more
ideas I have - this is what it's all about, for me!
Writing is such an incredible journey - it can take you anywhere, everywhere, if you'll
let it. I think the same can be said about life, if we will only give ourselves permission
to live as fully as possible. Take the risk of being intensely personal in your work!
Break the rules! Get rid of all this carefully planned and plotted stuff! Who knows then
what we're capable of experiencing and discovering and creating, for ourselves and for our
audience? I did it when I walked away from a paycheck-and-benefits job, from that whole
lifestyle. People told me they admired my "courage." It felt more like
"desperation" to me, but you know what? I did it.
I've never worked harder in my life than I am now. I've never been happier and I have no
regrets. I wake up in the morning and I just can't wait to find out what will happen in my
day. And I learn so much when I'm writing. Arthur Miller said it best: "He who
understands everything about his subject cannot write it. I write as much to discover as
to explain." Isn't that great? I have that next to my computer - love it! |
