STAR INTERVIEW
Go with the flow
Literary author Will Eaves, whose new book is called The Point of Distraction, tells Tina Jackson about the sense of liberation to be found in pursuing different areas of creativity
Much as we’d like them to, our creative lives don’t always behave themselves. They can be unruly, obstinate, wilful and mercurial.
‘You want to write your novel,’ they might say. ‘Not happening.
Wonder whether clowns have got really long toes to go in their slap shoes?’
And instead of going with the flow, we run away from it and bang our heads against the brick wall that our main project has become.
But, says multi-faceted literary author Will Eaves, our whole creative lives can be enriched if we allow our minds to wander, and settle on something else. His new book, The Point of Distraction, is wonderful, humane, erudite memoir about the creative joy to be found in immersing oneself in a secondary artistic pursuit.
Author and poet Will, whose novel Murmur won both the 2019 Wellcome Prize (for writing on health and medicine) and the Republic of Consciousness Prize (for literary fiction published by small presses), found himself drawn to creating music during lockdown, and composing eight new piano pieces. WM doesn’t play the piano, or read music, but nonetheless was completely captivated by Will’s rich tapestry of beautifully expressed ideas on art, writing, neuroscience, the relationships between different kinds of creativity, and more.
‘It’s very hard to say how things come about,’ says Will, who is charming to talk to: modest, clever and funny. ‘In retrospect you invent story, but it’s much more happenstance – but the practical point of entry was in lockdown and being thrown back on myself, and finding I didn’t mind that. The solitude, I found, enabled me to listen to a certain voice, and that voice was musical. It’s always been a habit and I began to pay attention to the habit.’