Writing books is kinda like raising children, but you gotta be careful: you should take pride in the work but it’s bad to want that glory to reflect back on you.
LIPSKY:
You worry about having children?
David seems far away; this is difficult for him. After a beat, he speaks, sounding vulnerable, which doesn’t go unnoticed by Lipsky.
DAVID:
I don’t know that I want to say anything more about it - okay?
LIPSKY:
(prepared to back off) That’s fine.
DAVID:
I mean, we can joke about getting laid on tour and stuff, but...
LIPSKY:
I just thought, it’d be nice to have someone to be sharing all this wonderful stuff with.
DAVID:
Yeah. I really have wished I was married, the last couple of weeks.
LIPSKY:
You have?
DAVID:
Yeah, because nobody quite gets it.
Your friends who aren’t in the writing biz are all just awed by your picture in Time, and your agent and editor are good people, but they have their own agendas. It’s fun talking to you about it, but you've got an agenda, too, and a set of interests that diverges from mine.
LIPSKY:
That’s true... 27.
DAVID:
There’s something nice about having somebody who kinda shared your life, and that you could allow yourself just to be happy and confused with.
LIPSKY:
Somebody you can call when you get back to the hotel.
DAVID:
Uh huh. (A beat.) So, why aren’t you married at thirty?
LIPSKY:
Why aren't you married at thirty-four?
DAVID:
You first.
LIPSKY:
Okay. Um... I think it's hard to cast that role … to fill it when you know it's for thirty or forty years … someone who, whatever mental landscape you're in, they're going to be in it too, you need someone who'll fit any landscape you can imagine.
DAVID:
Well, I can't put it as well as you did about the “mental landscapes,” I just know I'm hard to be around.
Because when I want to be by myself, like to work, I really want to be by myself. I think if you dedicate yourself to anything, one facet of that is that it makes you very very self-conscious. You end up using people. Wanting them around when you want them around, but then sending them away.
LIPSKY:
Comes with the territory, though, doesn’t it? Self-consciousness?
28.
DAVID:
There’s good self-consciousness. And then there’s this toxic, paralyzing, raped-by-psychic-Bedouins self- consciousness.
