Brian Allen Carr Interview
[GS-INT-006]
I understand your father was a preacher (same, btw). Have you ever considered if stories from the Bible being interpreted for you trained your brain to cling to metaphors, and perhaps turned you into a storyteller?
I’m sure it had an impact.
I guess most stories have fable and myth at their core—which are generally metaphorical or symbolic. Allegorical even.
I think the larger impact from my having a preacher for a father is watching my father write sermons and watching my father planning services.
Preachers are the OG content creators, OG comparative literary theorists—literary theorist period really: watching everything through a prescribed lens—and OG experiential presenters.
They look at life, find intriguing stories in modernity, compare those to texts from the Bible, explain how those stories reveal the message of god, and present their findings in a multi-media format on Sunday mornings.
I am enamored with the Presbyterian order of worship, which is too long to convey here, but there is an order to their services.
Songs, chants, scriptures, and stories are all interspersed—each having a common theme—and they coalesce to present a thesis.
I believe the larger impact on my writing, from having a preacher for a father, is appreciating the combination of genres and forms.
Do you involve any kind of spiritual practice with writing? Do you have a religion?
I'd say that writing is my religion.
Or. . .it's definitely my most religious endeavor.
I think that most of what I do as a writer is akin to what my father did as a preacher.
I am constantly asking myself about stories and arguments, philosophies and aesthetics, and trying to strain the world around me through the filters of my interests. I don't pass many things through the lens of the Bible, but I do pass a lot of things through the lens of other books.
Could you elaborate on what you mean by passing things through the lens of other books?
Absolutely. More or less, I just compare life to stories and philosophies.
Like, Christians like a certain type of story. They like redemption stories. They like when a piece of shit fixes their stuff. A stupid person becomes smart. An alcoholic gets sober. A rich man realizes his greed and ambition have corrupted his life so he gives Tiny Tim’s daddy a raise.
They see life by looking for those stories. Not always, but often.
I think the most perfect book is The Little Prince.
In that book, an aviator goes on an adventure and, in the end, he learns there are things he will never get to know—is there a rose out there? And he sort of gets to decide.
I think, because I like that book so much, I see life looking for some kind of adventure and hoping to come away with new mysteries to consider forever.
So, I guess I consider life through that lens, at least sometimes.
I don’t think about it actively. It’s just a kind of operating system.
When you say "operating system" it makes me think about someone who asked me, hypothetically, what I would do if I couldn't write. Initially, I thought of not having pen and paper, maybe I could just use blood and a somewhat dry surface. But eventually, it came down to the act itself happening in the mind. And the physical act is just a transcription, which could be said of all creative endeavors. But of all the art forms available, what made you choose writing as your primary outlet for your creativity that you would become so dedicated to it? And is dedication important?
I don’t know if dedication is necessary.
I think maybe it’s a lifestyle or a predisposition.
Different people come to it differently though.
I think the main reason I write is because you can do it totally alone and because I have a lot of mind chatter and because the risk reward on it is pretty solid.
Right, it’s pretty cheap to write.
You said you hope to come away with new mysteries to consider forever, but the human mind likes solving problems. Do you mean at the end of writing something, or your life?
and
How do you become comfortable in the space of not knowing?
The puzzles human beings cannot solve — what is consciousness, what is the meaning of life, why is there pain and suffering — these mysteries remain illusive.
I like stories that remind me of that.
I find it comforting to be reminded that these kinds of questions have haunted people for thousands of years. It’s the most comforting thing imaginable. It means it doesn’t matter. The answers don’t matter at all.
That's such a good answer. I think we should wrap on that.
Brian Allen Carr is the author of Bad Foundations, Motherfucking Sharks, and Opioid, Indiana. He is an Aspen Words Finalist, Wonderland Book Award Winner, and recipient of the Texas Observer Story Prize. He lives in Indiana.