Caleb Michael Sarvis
ORP: What inspired you to begin writing or creating? Has that source of inspiration changed throughout your life?
Caleb Michael Sarvis: When I was kid, I used to write/draw Johnny Bravo comics for my dad and his bowling buddies, and I've been doing some variation of that since. As an adult, I'm endlessly inspired by what I read. Lately that's been work by Adam Levin, Karen Russell, Camille Bordas, and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.
ORP: Do you write or create with an audience in mind? If so, how do you consider the relationship between that audience and your work throughout your creative process?
CMS: First and foremost my audience is me. I write the things I'd like to read but yet to exist. I write so that the end product is something only I could have conceivably written. As for others, I probably write for those writers whose work I admire. I'd like to think they'll come across my nonsense and find some kind of literary kinship with it.
ORP: What does success as a writer or artist mean to you?
CMS: That changes. Right now, if a stranger reads my work, that's a win in my book.
ORP: Who do you consider to be your creative ancestors and contemporaries for your art and/or writing? How does your creative work converse with theirs?
CMS: I pray to the altar of Andre Breton and the twentieth-century surrealists, though I might be falling a bit out of their orbit. Denis Johnson is a literary saint. The knuckleheads have nibbled on me. Padgett Powell winked at me with a line a couple weeks ago. Fucker. But I do find a lot of common ground with Karen Russell, I'd say.
ORP: Does writing or creating energize or exhaust you? What aspects of your artistic process would you consider the most challenging or rewarding?
CMS: It energizes me as I do it, and exhausts me when I can't. The most challenging is drinking too much. The most rewarding is drinking that perfect amount the lends itself to a funky bit of key-tapping.
