Bartender's Tale and Old-Fashioned Storytelling

Sunrise was at 6:09 this morning, and sunset will be at 8:17.  It is just after 8 am and it is 71 degrees outside.  It's beautiful and there is a very slight breeze.  All the windows and doors are open to cool the air down before we hit the mid 90's.  The air over the Sound has that kind of gritty look that just looks hot.

Well, I love Ivan Doig's books. I love to read them, I love to sell them, they're pretty on a shelf, and I loved talking with him.

I am putting a link to the interview that Thom Chambliss and I did with Ivan here.

What the interview doesn't have, and this is the part I don't have the writing skills to show, was how much Ivan laughs while he talks!  He leans forward, he sits back, his voice bubbles with laughter and he nods when letting you in on something important.  He takes long pauses when searching for the right word or phrase, looking out of the windows off over the sound, until he finds it.

tools

He sits at a desk that has a silver manual typewriter on it.  I don't know if you can see that it has a left handed cartridge return and a bald, shiny spot where his hand rests.  He's got pads of paper, a cup of tea, pens.  There's a phone, but not at hand, there is a HUGE, old computer behind him where he eventually prints and reads his manuscripts.  The walls that aren't windows are filled with books, art, filing cabinets, and paper ephemera collected for projects.  There is a signed painting that, I'm assuming was the original, was the dust jacket for This House of Sky.

Carol, Ivan's wife, sits slightly out of the way and he includes her constantly in the interview, double checking his facts, making sure the timing of the stories are right, telling us about their lives together.  It's obvious that she has a great role in making sure that things get done and done the way they should be.  There is no I in this team.

Anyway, it was a joy and an honor to have been asked to take the photos and then to rescue the interview after a machine meltdown. I've included some of the photos that didn't make it into the interview in this blog post.