{"id":366,"date":"2023-07-30T01:16:00","date_gmt":"2023-07-30T01:16:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/on.patronhunt.com\/orionsbeltmag\/?p=366"},"modified":"2024-02-22T02:34:07","modified_gmt":"2024-02-22T02:34:07","slug":"exclusive-interview-with-lia-swope-mitchell-prometheus-at-the-end","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/on.patronhunt.com\/orionsbeltmag\/exclusive-interview-with-lia-swope-mitchell-prometheus-at-the-end\/","title":{"rendered":"Exclusive Interview with Lia Swope Mitchell: “Prometheus, At the End”"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Noah Codega: I’m always interested in the very first beginnings of a story in the writer’s mind\u2014can you talk a little about what inspired this piece?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lia Swope Mitchell: This piece is very loosely inspired by James Baldwin\u2019s Old Greek Stories<\/em>, which includes the story of Prometheus. I first ran across this version of the myth as one of the \u201csleep stories\u201d on the Calm app, which is funny because I don\u2019t find it sleep-inducing at all. In Baldwin\u2019s telling, Jupiter and the rest of the Olympians are clearly a bunch of power-drunk tyrants who ruin everything out of carelessness and arrogance, just because they are \u201cso very, very mighty\u201d (I suspect there is a biting cultural critique here), and Prometheus has bravely rebelled against them. One night around three in the morning, when I frequently wake up and consider all the ways I may have failed in life, I decided to think about Baldwin\u2019s Prometheus instead. What was it like on that mountain? Lonely, with nobody to talk to. Nobody but the eagle. What if the eagle talked back? And the next morning I decided to explore their conversation further.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tell us a little about your writing process. Outlines? Write it straight through and edit it later? Jump around and jot down whatever comes to mind?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

My writing process varies depending on the story, though I\u2019m more of \u201cpantser,\u201d so to speak (in case the term is new to anyone, this means I fly by the seat of my pants. Which is a strange phrase, come to think of it). I prefer to work based on random inspiration, or maybe free association, taking whatever words and ideas and images pop into my head and seeing where the story goes, without a lot of advance planning. So I tend to start with a very vague idea, sometimes only a phrase or two, and work from there until I either get to the end or run out of words.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When I write a short piece like this one, I might complete it in one or two sittings. Longer pieces require more thought, an idea for the ending and sometimes even an outline, which I usually make when I get stuck mid-project. If you\u2019re not sure how to get where you\u2019re going, sometimes it helps to make a map, right? I also edit as I write, because sometimes there\u2019s a problem that needs to be resolved before I can move on, or an odd little detail that points the way forward.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Eventually, hopefully, the story is completed. I try to set it aside a while before revisiting it, editing it again and sending it out. Because I edit as I go, my first drafts (which are really more like fifth drafts) tend to be fairly clean, though I can fiddle with punctuation and word choices pretty much endlessly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As writing processes go, it\u2019s not very consistent or dependable, but it\u2019s what I\u2019ve got.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Myth is perhaps the oldest form of literature. Do you find that it holds a strong place in your writerly consciousness? Are there mythologies of cultures in addition to the Greek that you’re particularly interested in?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

When I was a kid, I loved the d\u2019Aulaire Book of Greek Myths<\/em>, which is a simplified and G-rated version with wonderful illustrations. I got to know those stories pretty well, though of course I was a bit startled when I finally read Ovid and Homer and discovered versions that were definitely not G-rated. So I do think Greek mythology has a somewhat foundational place in my \u201cwriterly consciousness,\u201d to use your phrase, and for me it\u2019s still a really rich source of images, and metaphors. I\u2019ve read myths from some other cultures, especially Nordic ones, but for the most part, I don\u2019t think I\u2019ve engaged with them to the same extent. With the possible exception of Bible stories, which are so ubiquitous in Western European art and culture prior to 1900 that they\u2019ve been almost impossible, for me as a French major, to avoid.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In your story, Prometheus and the eagle share a curious relationship: one based on cyclical violence and divine decrees, but almost affectionate, well-worn like any relationship of hundreds or thousands of years must be. And, of course, we’re witnessing the end of a story that was never “supposed” to have one. Can you talk a little about how you view their relationship in metaphorical as well as literal terms?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

For me, what\u2019s happening in this story is a shift in their relationship. They have been bound in this sort of symbiotic relationship by an outside force\u2014a curse, a divine decree, whatever you want to call it\u2014and they\u2019re both changed and isolated by their time together. The bird has gained intelligence through its liver diet, but it\u2019s no longer like other birds; Prometheus doesn\u2019t even know what humans are like these days, much less whether he has anything to teach them. But now that they realize the outside force is gone, they\u2019re going to have a relationship based on freedom. They will meet again, but because they choose to do so, and within the context of richer, more complicated and less constrained lives.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What other projects do you have in the works right now?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Right now, because of time constraints and life obligations, I\u2019m mostly focused on my translation work\u2014I translate from French to English, mostly literary or scholarly texts. My current long-term project is the novel Kree<\/em> by Manuela Draeger, which is about characters existing in a kind of post-apocalyptic, post-humanity, post-death world (to be published by the University of Minnesota Press), and I am intermittently helping with a book on post-World War II tourism in Yugoslavia. Do these influence my own writing? Probably in some way. If nothing else, I\u2019d love to visit the Adriatic coast.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Do you write to music? If so, what kind?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Music is important to me, and in the past I\u2019ve made playlists to help me get in the right mood or mindset for the story in progress, generally for longer stories. Sometimes the playlists have been more successful than the stories, or at least more complete! But more generally, when I\u2019m writing I often put on something moody but not dramatic, with no vocals. I love C. Diab\u2019s music, I love a lot of Tim Hecker\u2019s early albums. The goal is to blur out the everyday world and get a little lost in a mood, without too many concrete distractions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Noah Codega: I’m always interested in the very first beginnings of a story in the writer’s mind\u2014can you talk a little about what inspired this piece? Lia Swope Mitchell: This piece is very loosely inspired by James Baldwin\u2019s Old Greek Stories, which includes the story of Prometheus. I first ran across this version of the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":34,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_eb_attr":"","_coblocks_attr":"","_coblocks_dimensions":"","_coblocks_responsive_height":"","_coblocks_accordion_ie_support":"","ph_site_tiers_settings":[[{"Price":"1.00","Tier_name":"Voyager","Tier_id":"prod_PbejBstAbzGx6D","Selected":true,"Tier_status":"publish"},{"Price":"2.00","Tier_name":"Pioneer","Tier_id":"prod_Pbekxd4dT46vIU","Selected":true,"Tier_status":"publish"},{"Price":"5.00","Tier_name":"Cosmonaut","Tier_id":"prod_PbenhwsNUd6XSB","Selected":true,"Tier_status":"publish"}]],"_ph_post_tiers":["prod_PbejBstAbzGx6D","prod_Pbekxd4dT46vIU","prod_PbenhwsNUd6XSB"],"activitypub_content_warning":"","activitypub_content_visibility":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-366","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/on.patronhunt.com\/orionsbeltmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/366","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/on.patronhunt.com\/orionsbeltmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/on.patronhunt.com\/orionsbeltmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/on.patronhunt.com\/orionsbeltmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/34"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/on.patronhunt.com\/orionsbeltmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=366"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/on.patronhunt.com\/orionsbeltmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/366\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":367,"href":"https:\/\/on.patronhunt.com\/orionsbeltmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/366\/revisions\/367"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/on.patronhunt.com\/orionsbeltmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=366"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/on.patronhunt.com\/orionsbeltmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=366"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/on.patronhunt.com\/orionsbeltmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=366"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}