Christa Bell

Hugo House: In a couple of months you will debut a brand-new piece at Hugo House; have you started working on it yet?

Christa Bell: Funny you should ask. I practice a Buddhist meditation called Vipassana, and every year I go away for a 10-day retreat that is conducted in “Noble Silence.” This means no talking, texting, whispering, writing, singing, beatboxing, mixing or scratching for 10 whole days! Instead, we're supposed to be breathing and working towards inner peace. Day three, 4:45 a.m., I'm sitting in the meditation hall studiously observing my breath when it slams into the stillness of my soul: I have to write a piece for Hugo House and it's due in 84 days! My meditation is ruined and I begin to write mental notes on the theme. Furiously. The Buddah teaches that thoughts always precede action, and so, of course, the mental notes turned into material ones scribbled clandestinely in bathroom stalls and inside my sleeping bag by the glow of a flashlight. Writing materials are contraband. I am breaking the code of morality for the course. I feel like a sneak. Thank you for that, Hugo House.

HH: What were your first thoughts on receiving an invitation to write on an assigned theme? Any regrets on having said yes?

CB: First thought: WTF is an avatar? You mean, like, a video game persona? Like, a “Dungeons & Dragons” role? A spiritual alter ego?  And then I Googled it for clarity. Google is good for clarity.

I hate assigned themes so at first I was freaking out. Then I remembered I was being paid for this, so I gave myself a metaphorical slap across both cheeks and pulled it together. Yeah, I can definitely tame the beast of creativity for a few dollars. No regrets.
 
HH:  Could you tell us a little bit about your process—how you approach writing something new?

CB: New writing has pretty much always approached me, although that's changing lately. Usually, I'll have a general idea about something that I want to talk about, which for the last two years has had to do with intersections of politics, spirituality and coochie. I'll take a few notes to get clear about the idea, and then, in the middle of whatever, dinner, performing, having sex, a movie, whatever—the first line will come, and then it's ON and I am obsessed and I can't think about anything but coochie, or god, or food or whatever. The trick is in the waiting, which is getting a little boring. I'm starting to find value in writing sans inspiration.
 
HH: If you could create an avatar for your work as a writer, what would it look like?

CB: What does a procrastination avatar look like? A dred, smoking a joint and wearing a T-shirt that says “tomorrow, mon.” No. Just kidding. My writing avatar would look like however you imagine Jesus would've looked. Except black. And a woman. Because Buddhist-Hindu-goddess-worshipping-philosopher-witch that I am, I still love me some Jesus way down in my Pentecostal soul. And he was a master of the spoken word, first.
 
HH: In “Snow Crash,” Neal Stephenson writes of the “metaverse,” a user-defined world that was the inspiration for “Second Life.” Describe your metaverse for us.

CB: My metaverse would be modeled after my list poem, “1001 Holy Names For Coochie (And All Names For Coochie Are Holy).” It would look different for everyone who entered it, and one's experience would all depend on one's relationship to coochie and women. For Freud, it would be a house of terror with snarling fanged na-nas crawling the streets and attacking men. Definitely unsafe. For “The Girls Next Door,” it might be a world of empty, pink, plastic boxes, owned by wizened men, who sell women for the price of a magazine. Alice Walker's world would be so politically correct that nobody could come. In. Ha Ha. Whatever baggage you brought would be what you got. Is that answer Buddhist or just lazy?