Nelson Lowhim
ORP: What inspired you to begin writing or creating? Has that source of inspiration changed throughout your life?
Nelson Lowhim: It was to tell stories that I didn't see out in the world. The inspiration has changed from more biographical tales at the start to a more imaginative way to make sense of the world at large.
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?
NL: Usually, it's with the muse or whatever has inspired that story. Not sure about an exact audience in mind. If I ever do think in those terms it can serve to inhibit me.
ORP: What does success as a writer or artist mean to you?
NL: The first, most important one is to get the story that I wanted to write (or as close to it) down on the paper. To reread it and feel something like that initial spark that created it. Then everything else I'll throw hopium on. More readers, more people who will engage with the work and possibly engage with it? I hope so.
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?
NL: Hard to say who exactly influences it. Borges, certainly, played a role. Old folk tales and myths too. For contemporary works, it can be a delight to find someone, like Bora Chung, and read stories that inspire my imagination to go in some unexpected direction.
ORP: How does writing/art influence your worldview, and how does your worldview shape your writing/art?
NL: The best writing will have me writing notes about ideas that just bloom from reading the story. And how does my worldview affect my writing? In every way? My worldview, with all its biases and simplistic rules affects most everything that I write. Mainly it's how different my view is from what appears to be much of the world's view (the louder parts of it, at least) that pushes me to write. A call for help to see who else is as mad as me, I suppose.
