No doubt a lot of it is simple professionalism. Do a job long enough and reacclimation to one’s own work and voice is second nature. For those still honing those skills, it might be a bit more time-consuming, so I could understand new and budding authors cutting down on their reading for a time.

To be fair though, these very dilemmas (real or not) are valuable tools in mastering your own trade and shouldn’t necessarily be avoided, so long as the writer has his or her priorities straight when it’s time to get back to the keyboard.

i got enough troubles reading my e mails and my fave blogs without adding facebook to things to look at….arrggghhh, not enough time!

are you seeing steve kilbey and the boys in concert somewhere along the line while they’re touring america?

peace and love……

OW: There is no “film culture,” Peter–just an awful lot of films. We must “keep up with things,” of course, but with the whole, wide world–not just the movies. We must find out what we can about this place we’re living in–this place in time–but we’ve got to be awfully careful, it seems to me, never to make ourselves too perfectly, a part of it. Modishness is the sure sign of the second-rate. We’re finally to be judged not by the degree of our involvement in the mainstream, but by our individual response to it.

I try to believe somehow that everything is for the first time. That’s what I mean by innocence–like Adam in the first garden of the world making up names for all the beasts and flowers. Like my story about the opening of ‘Journey into Fear’–I really thought it was new.

PB: That’s why you see so few films?

OW: Good ones, in particular. I stay away, from most of them out of sheer self-protection, to cherish what’s left of my own innocence . . . . You smile. I’m being serious. Innocence is really quite a serious concern. The better another man’s film may be, the more I stand to lose by seeing it. No, when I look through the camera I need to look with my own innocent eye–to stand alone with every new scene, not in the company of other directors, however august. They keep crowding in, you know, unless you’re very careful. Please–let Mr. Mizoguchi keep his distance.

PB: You think that should be true for all of us?

OW: Of course not. Nothing’s true for everybody. It’s just that at my age virginity is rather fragile.

My own special case is that, to function happily, I like to feel a little like Columbus: in every new scene I want to discover America. And I don’t want to hear about those goddamn Vikings. Each time I set foot on a movie set, I like to plant a flag. The more I know about the intrepid discoverers who’ve come before me, the more my little flag begins to look like the one on the golf course which you take out of a hole so you can sink a putt. I don’t pretend at all that my own delicate feelings in this matter should be taken as dogma, but I will say this: let filmmakers beware of films. They really are bad, you know, for the eyes. Filmmakers spend too much of their lives in projection rooms. They should come out more often into the sunshine. Other men’s films are a poor source of vitamins . . . . You follow me?

PB: I think I agree.

OW: Other men’s films are full of good things which really ought to be invented all over again. Again and again. Invented–not repeated. The good things should be found–*found*–in that precious spirit of the first time out, and images discovered–not *referred* to.

PB: Well, it’s a big problem for anybody starting now–

OW: Everything’s been done, you mean? No, that’s not the problem. The trouble is that everything’s been *seen*. Directors see too many movies. Sure, everything’s been done, but it’s much healthier not to know about it. Hell, everything had all been done when *I* started ….