Richard Hell

- Date of Birth: October 2, 1949

- Location: Lexington, Kentucky.

- Profession: Writer, Musician

- What are you most excited about right now?  ’ve started writing a new book, but I guess that’s too personal (especially considering that it’s a kind of memoir). So, what’s exciting that other people could relate to maybe? The Mets? It’s strange to feel warmly towards Pedro Martinez -- who seemed so obnoxious in Boston even though you wanted him to take out the Yankees -- and to like Tom Glavin after all his years on the evil Braves. Team support is a weird psychological phenomenon. I’m not actually a fanatic anyway. Let’s see. Exciting. I don’t know. I still find life in New York exciting, as bland as that sounds. I’m looking forward to checking out the new Morgan Library, yesterday I saw Melville’s Army of Shadows at the Film Forum, I want to go get a steak at Peter Luger’s again (did it for the first time last winter). I just got a new laptop. I LOVE computers. For a bitter old guy I have to admit I’m disgustingly exciteable. Everything’s fucking exciting.

- Who or what has influenced you the most?  I have the impulse to say “birds” or “ some old car” or something. I don’t really quite believe in “influence.” I think that by the time you’re aware of yourself and your preferences and leanings, your “character” is already pretty much in place. What seems like “influences” are really affinities. The important thing is to expose yourself to as much as possible in order to have the chance of getting as many of those erotic little resonances between the inner and outer as possible, so you get to keep “flowering” and things stay interesting.
  
- What is your biggest road block when it comes to working?  Choosing from among the various things I’m working on. The tendency is to take the path of least resisitance and reply to emails or fill out interview forms or accept some journalism commission rather than to focus first on the most important project which is the current book in progress.

- What do you hope to do in the future?  Three main priorities: get a cottage in the country somewhere; travel to new places (also find a way to live in Paris for a year or so); and in writing, maybe a long series of poems after this memory book is done. I’ve never written very many poems and I’d like to see what I could do.

- Does your work fufill you? Yes.

- What antagonizes you the most? Ignorance and aggressive stupidity and the ordinary conventional accepted lies that are everywhere.

- What is your working space like? It’s an extremely cluttered small room in my apartment on the Lower East Side in New York. There’s a desk with my computer on it and everywhere else is piled with files and papers and books and disks and clothes. The walls are covered with pictures and there’s a loft bed over my head (which used to be my daughter’s) filled with boxes. One bright window.

- What makes you do what you do? It took me a long time to find my rhythm and the necessary assurance level (some kind of confidence that I knew what I could do that was my own legitimate province -- everybody has their equivalent), but it does seem like “work” and “love” are the major motivators, the major sources of satisfaction in life, and I feel lucky to have gotten to where the work I do for a living is the work I most am inclined to do. I’ve always loved books. To write books myself, to write them well, seems like the happiest possibility imagineable, and I now think that before I die I will have succeeded at that two or three times, and I want to do everything I can to make that happen.

- Explain a formative moment or idea for you. I’ve had so many. Maybe the root one is the thrill of changing everything, of leaving everything behind to start something new. I love that feeling.  [Close Interview]