Kurt Schmidt

Oyster River Pages: How is your art or writing informed by current social and/or political issues?

Kurt Schmidt: The current political climate has caused me to write stuff that resembles immature ranting. For example: “Whenever I see President Trump on TV, I think he is my father reincarnated. Living one life with a raging narcissist was bad enough. But why do I have to suffer again? Even when I change channels, there he is—spouting off. I try using the mute button, but the image is still there—an angry man, compelled to inflate himself and blame his troubles on those fuck-ups who are screwing up the world and failing to accept his truth. In M. Scott Peck’s book, The Road Less Traveled, he writes: ‘It is said that neurotics make themselves miserable; those with character disorders make everyone else miserable…When those with character disorders are in conflict with the world, they automatically assume that the world is at fault.’” I probably need to calm down.

ORP: We often think of ourselves as writing or making art, but the process often changes or makes us as well. How do you feel like your writing or art makes you?

KS: Four years ago chemotherapy drugs were dripping into me every few weeks. Halfway through my treatments, a hospital chaplain stopped by my seat in the chemotherapy room and began talking to my wife and me. Learning I was a writer, he said he wrote a column for a local newspaper and emailed me his article “Writing is Healing.” He wrote, “I had a strange and disturbing thought. It originated from reading a compelling book, Writing as a Way of Healing, by Louise DeSalvo. She shares many wonderful perspectives on how writing heals. It’s not only the act of writing that heals, it’s the memories. Not as in remembering someone’s name, but in recalling events. Medical staffs term it narrative medicine.” Writing about this journey has helped me heal. I often glance out my studio window at a bright yellow goldfinch at the bird feeder and think how grateful I am to be seeing the world in new colors.

ORP: If you could add a prelude, an epilogue, or an addendum to your piece, what would it say?

KS: Looking at life as a series of vehicles that triggered my subconscious, I saw that each vehicle contained a unique story, often resembling that of a twisted tale. Episodes with people in cramped quarters seemed like microcosms of the larger, unpredictable existence. Once my young son had voiced his impatience too often on family trips, causing my wife and me emotional distress. As the boy grew older and could share the driving with my wife, I saw an opportunity to change my attitude about time on the road. I became the one who often sat in back on family trips, preferring to leave the driving to those who better handled the chaos among road warriors. I enjoyed being in charge of the snack bag. Occasionally, I said, “When are we gonna be there?”

ORP: What do you hope readers or viewers of your piece take from it?

KS: I hope readers see that the acquisitions of a person’s life (cars, in this case) can bring back memories that had seemed long forgotten. Often even the smallest thing, like a phone, can bring back stories of love or terror.

ORP: How has the COVID-19 pandemic changed your relationship to art and writing, either in the creation of it or the consumption of it?

KS: With so much time in isolation as a result of COVID-19, the resulting anxiety and depression have inhibited the creation of new writing. But I have found solace and energy in rewriting previous work to make it better. I’ve also been revisiting favorite old books from my bookcase. In M. Scott Peck’s Further Along the Road Less Traveled, I came across the following paragraphs under the heading “The Blaming Game.” It said so much about the country’s current state of leadership, I became more depressed.

“It is no accident that people who commit the most evil in this world see no power higher than themselves. The evil are very strong-willed men and women. And because they are narcissistic, self-absorbed, and their will is supreme, they are the ones who are most into inappropriate and destructive blaming. They are the people who cannot—who will not—take the beam out of their own eye.”

ORP: If you could choose one writer or artist, living or dead, as a best friend or mentor, who would it be? Why?

KS: Frank McCourt (1930-2009), because he had wonderful stories and a voice so engaging that it made me want to become a memoirist instead of a novelist, even though I had published one novel by the time I read his first memoir, Angela’s Ashes (1996). Recently, I read it again along with his subsequent memoirs, ‘Tis and Teacher Man. He was self-deprecating and a keen observer of human frailty. One of his more famous quotes: “You might be poor, your shoes might be broken, but your mind is a palace.”

ORP: What do you think is the most essential advice that most writers and artists ignore?

KS: Who, What, Where, and Why. These are the ingredients I look for in the first few sentences of any essay or memoir. If I’m not captured immediately by the voice and the problem, I don’t read the piece. Too often writers begin with a description of a place, using their best metaphor. For me, simplicity, action, and dialogue are more interesting. It was Mark Twain who said, “Don't use a five-dollar word when a fifty-cent word will do.”

Kurt Schmidt published the autobiographical novel Annapolis Misfit when he was twenty-seven and then spent many years as a technical writer while raising his family and writing a memoir about becoming a dad at forty-seven. After retirement, he wrote memoirs about his vagabond relationships in Europe and another about a dysfunctional childhood. Excerpts appearing in various journals can be viewed at www.kurtgschmidt.com. His essay, “Living a Life in Cars,” appears in Issue 4.1.