Disappearing

Foremost in my mind right now is how telling interviewees the topic before the interview can ruin the journey. I intend these interviews to be journeys. When I simply picked up the phone, called unsuspecting friends and said, "Hey, can I talk to you about something," we went on a journey. They didn't have time to think about how to answer, what to say, or how far to go. No time to finesse. With one exception--a poet--everyone has agreed to participate in this project. No one's balked.

Every "artist" type has given me stylized versions of their stories--except one generous guy who shared still-jagged stories about his father and sexual practices that emanate from those childhood memories; he also taught be about chainmail. Today, I interviewed a poet. His stories were compelling but I felt he was holding back a lot, delivering his stories a little too pat, formed, precise. Perhaps it's because he's a poet and has had years to find and hone the right language and cadences to sound so assured. What kinds of poems can I write given such assurances? What inspires me is uncertainty. 

A qualitative research class I took in graduate school serves me some in all this. I learned strategies to, more or less, remove or diminish the researcher's presence in the field. While I don't want to do that with this project completely because I NEED to be in conversation with these men, the less space I take, the more their stories fill the frame.