In Conversation…An Excerpt from an Interview about Wales
AGA: Why are you so taken with Wales?
HS: That’s a bit like asking, “Why you are so taken with your husband or wife or child?”
There really isn’t any sufficient explanation. I could say any number of things and other writers of other countries could say, “But Romania is like that” or “I experienced exactly the same in Japan!” And that might very well be true. But our definitions and our needs differ. One person might say, “My husband is so thoughtful — he always leaves me alone when I am down” and another would say, “My husband is so thoughtful — he never leaves me alone when I am down”.
I am taken with Wales because it isn’t always there and I don’t know where it goes. I am taken with it because the Welsh word for “never” is the same as the word for “always” [erioed]. I am taken with it because it is taken with me, and that’s pretty much irresistible.
I’m taken with it because, as I have written elsewhere, it is “Wales, where the leaves on the ground lift in response to a wind that isn’t there and uncover for a millisecond, small vibrant worlds.” Those worlds are there. Those worlds are real. Wordsworth saw them. Welsh poets and writers see them. But you have to have the eyes for them. You have to have the ability to see, not just to look.
AGA: That’s very intriguing: that “you have to have the eyes to see them.”
HS: We talk about seeing things in 3-D but Wales is about 50-D with no end in sight and there is no greater journey for me as I see it — not even into space, which has been a passion of mine since childhood — than the journey into the heart of Wales. I don’t know why. I don’t have strong affinities to other places. But I have the ability to see Wales and to write it…
“All I know is that in Wales, I have been standing right next to someone or other, when something in the culture leapt into fire and beauty, blown into sight by the lifting of such a wind, and it remained out of sight to them. I found my friends in Wales — or they found me, in these moments of wind and revelation, when, in a classroom or a crowd of a hundred, someone else’s eyes widened or he suddenly jumped or she smiled with delight or there was a sharp intake of breath somewhere in the group.
These are the kindred spirits (and I mean spirits) who, not “became” my friends, but were revealed as friends. Suddenly ancient lineages came into view, old connections, previously unknown. It was in those moments that I met those who saw and inhabited the same small worlds as I.”
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The full interview is here:
http://www.amygigialexander.com/conversations/2015/2/1/in-conversation-with-harrison-solow
