I Am So Popular: Flipping (Over) the Bird [Spike Interviews Sarah Bird]

A year ago, to help me heal from a traumatic divorce, I decided to put on a one-night show, The Dick Monologues, at the Hyde Park Theatre. I reached out to lots of writers asking who might like to participate. Sarah was on that list, but I didn’t expect her to say yes. Not because it was beneath her. But I had created a story in my head in which she was so busy writing and being successful that she probably just couldn’t fit my little show on her schedule.

When she said yes, I almost fell over. That show was something. Things clicked for all of us and we decided to do it again. And again. We’re still doing it and Sarah is still with us, a year later, and she has brought down the house with pieces about being a romance writer with a dirty mind, screwing Scientologists, and fantasies of having a gay son.

Earlier this year, I read her book, The Flamenco Academy, and was stunned. I still have no earthly idea how anyone could write a book like that in less that fifty years. Packed with historical information about flamenco set to a modern day narrative that perfectly captures the love-hate relationship of best friend/worst enemy teenage girls, it is a miracle of literature.

So now I’m about to pee my pants with joy. Sarah’s new book, her seventh, How Perfect is That, comes out next Tuesday. I’ve been slobbering to get my hands on a copy ever since I heard the news. She’s got a book reading at BookPeople on Tuesday, June 10th at 7 p.m. and another on Thurs, June 19th at the B&N at 1000 Research Blvd. I pity the fool who misses a chance to hear her read.

Sarah was kind enough to succumb to one of my interviews. Here’s what she had to say.

How long have you been writing?

Since the early Cretaceous. The last actual job I had was over 25 years ago. I produced what was then called an in-house organ, (and, God!, did I love talking about the size of my in-house organ), for the Texas Department of Mental Health/Mental Retardation. Or, simply, Tedium. Endless, endless tedium. Very motivating, very inspiring job. It taught me that there are worse things in life than starving to death.

Tell me about the new book.

How Perfect Is That answers the question: What do you do when you finally get your country back and it’s broken? My answer, after eight years of futile rage, is: laugh. (It also addresses the question: What would it be like to have Babs Bush as your mother-in-law?)

The book is a morality tale that follows a wannabe Texas princess who plummets from high to low Austin society after her marriage to a W-esque rich boy implodes. I wrote most of How Perfect in 2003 when I was in despair over what was happening in our country. I needed a way to think about the war; about the stolen election; about toxic, Gilded Age levels of opulence and obliviousness. And I needed to do it without wanting to drink Drano. As always, humor seemed to be the way out.

During a conversation with a friend who couldn’t afford to get a Pap smear, my need to understand collided with a need to laugh. She was the fifth highly-educated friend I’d spoken with in as many weeks who had either just lost a job or had a job with such crappy insurance that basic health care was out of the question. Tired of simply wringing my hands, I suggested that she should move back into Seneca House on Nueces, the co-op boarding house where we both had lived when we were students at the University of Texas. Why, with the money she saved she’d have enough for that elusive Pap smear in no time!

The absurdity of that prospect—moving back into your old college boarding house—tickled us both and, suddenly, laughing seemed like a lot more fun than hand-wringing and railing and wailing. So, rather than futilely obsess about the fate of America, I created a character who was every bit as oblivious, greedy, and short-sighted as those who had delivered us to our current fate. In an attempt to keep hope alive, I also made this scoundrel redeemable. We’ll see if the same holds true for America.

But mostly, I just wanted to imagine what it would be like to have Babs Bush as your mother-in-law.

I read the Flamenco Academy this year and was just totally blown away by it, totally. Tell me about that book -- how much research went into it, what the publisher said, etc.

I went so far down the research rabbit hole working on Flamenco Academy that I almost didn’t emerge. In that novel, I wanted to capture the experience of an overwhelming obsessive love affair. I worked on the novel, off and on, for fifteen years and wrote five almost completely different versions. It wasn’t set in the flamenco community of New Mexico until the fourth version and that is when the book came alive.

Flamenco was the perfect vehicle for the intense, operatic, emotionally florid story that was my own experience with obsessive love. When I chose that setting, however, I had no idea how diabolically complicated flamenco is. How it is the synthesis of three art forms: dance, guitar, and song, and how deeply embedded in and saturated with Gypsy and Spanish history and culture it is. So I had to do a ton of research.

I started out reading every book on flamenco I could find, then discovered that most useful information about flamenco is not written down. So I took flamenco dance classes, (I was hopeless), went to tons of performances, and talked to lots and lots of dancers, guitarists, and singers. In short, I became obsessed while writing a novel about obsession.

You did some work in Hollywood -- how was that?

It was like watching my son play videogames. There’s no manual, someone is always offering you magic powders, you don’t know what’s really going on until it’s too late, and you never know who’s going to kill you. But I did make my living writing TV movies and rewriting features and doing adaptations for indie producers for nine years and got to buy a house and have a child, so, thank you, HWood for that!

Overasked question here: where do you get your ideas?

Spike, I am so happy you asked that question because I actually, finally, have an answer. In the past I’ve always spewed some bullshit about drawing from life, my own deeply ingrained writing ethos yada-yada. But then the other day I realized—and this will sound facetious, but it’s absolutely true—I get my ideas from the shower head, the pillow, and the steering wheel. I can execute ideas sitting in front of a computer with my fingers on the keyboard, but I don’t get ideas from the keyboard. Seriously, if I went and took a shower right now, I’d come back with a much better answer to this question.

At what point did you get to a place where your writing sustained you financially?

I’ve pretty much sustained myself my entire career because I can be incredibly frugal and Austin was incredibly cheap when I started out. I always considered range to be my saving grace. I’ve written everything from pesticide brochures, true confession magazine stories, and Weight Watchers jingles to literary novels.

Spike Gillespie is not as popular as Sarah Bird but she’s still damn popular. She blogs regularly for LaunchPad Coworking and at www.spikeg.com. She is the head mistress of The Dick Monologues, which also stars Sarah Bird. The next show is July 2nd and tickets can be reserved by emailing spike@spikeg.com