I have a lot of respect for advertising. If I didn't teach and could go back in time, I might try and become a copywriter. I especially like print ads that combine a photo with a short caption or tag line.
Elaine EquiI never liked the philosophy that you can have everything and be everything and that something is wrong if you don't want that. I'm terrible at multitasking and find it hard to believe that no one protests this general trend of using the rhetoric of self actualization to sell you faster and faster phones and computers, BlackBerrys, etc.
Elaine EquiThe inner and outer, the visible and invisible, the abstract and concrete - you've got to get the balance right (not that I do, but it's something to aim for).
Elaine EquiIn Chicago, if you tell someone you're a writer, they look at you suspiciously - as if to say "yeah, right." In New York, people don't question the idea. If you say you're a writer, that's what you are.
Elaine EquiIn the past things were either in your head (subjective, imaginary, fantasy) or else they were part of the outside world - cold, hard, concrete materialistic reality. If you want to look at it in terms of poetry, there was surrealism and objectivism. Now there's the veil of the virtual in between. The old opposition between inner and outer doesn't quite capture it, especially as it contains elements of both. It's real but not concrete.
Elaine Equi