Jeanne Darst
Where were you raised? Has the landscape of that place influenced your work in any way?
My family is from St. Louis but we moved to Amagansett, New York when I was 7. We lived in a converted barn on Stony Hill Farm while my Dad was finishing a novel and then we moved to Bronxville, New York when I was 10. The landscape of Long Island at that time has influenced my work a lot. There were open fields, one with a bull, one where a helicopter landed in 1957 carrying Marilyn Monroe and Arthur Miller who spent their honeymoon summer in the house next to ours. My imagination as a writer was ignited by the parties, artists, alcoholism, hurricanes, potato fields, tennis, marital storms, financial problems.
How do you recharge your creative battery?
I think travel is the most effective (and pleasurable) thing you can do to get a new perspective which makes me want to be creative again. But when you can’t travel because of financial constraints or a pandemic, I find I must actively pursue new ways of doing things. Go on a different hike, seek out new music (this is a big one and I recommend the new Fiona Apple and the recently deceased marvel Little Richard) Buy different food. I have loved getting the CSA boxes because it’s like getting the elements of a story handed to you and you have to put it together. There’s a time limit (always great for creativity) involved in fresh produce and so you also have to consider what’s going to go bad first. A little while back I had some leftover oatmeal and I shaped it into patties and sautéed it in butter and put chopped up strawberries and yogurt on top. My friend came over for coffee and I was like do you want this weird thing I just made and she loved it and called it an Oatmeal Burger and now I make them a lot and they make me laugh, they’re weird and loveable. My son made a tofu and yellow peppers dish and another dish of sautéed hot dogs and potato chips. He called the meal ‘Heaven and Hell.’ We like to name things we invent in the kitchen.
What book are you reading?
I read like five things at once. Just started British writer Rachel Cusk’s book of essays, Coventry. She’s brilliant. Also reading a book called My Sister, The Serial Killer by Nigerian-UK writer Oyinkan Braithwaite.
I just finished Pakistani novelist Mosin Hamid’s Exit West, a book I absolutely loved. A young couple in an unnamed country in the middle of a civil war fall in love and then become refugees. Beautiful, emotional writing.
What was the last thing that you fell in love with?
My tennis therapist. His name is Zach and he’s about 66 maybe, drives an old wood-paneled Kia Soul that looks like it just came thru a mudslide. He wears a white sort of sculptural tennis hat, like if Frank Gehry made old man tennis hats and he wrote the preface to The Inner Game of Tennis, a book which was on my parent’s toilet tank my entire childhood. He changed my serve in the first five minutes.
He asked me, “Have you noticed you only make noises/comments/apologies when you hit the ball out? Never when you hit a good shot?” I had not known that I only give voice to failure, not success. I ran out of money to see him but we’ve called each other a few times in the pandemic to check on each other. I think he’s the greatest. He’s not a licensed therapist by the way.
What do you love most about yourself?
I am willing to be wrong, willing to look stupid and willing to fail in everything I do. I like to make things to see if I can do them. There’s so much dumb stuff I do just because I want to do it. No one’s asking me to do this funny naked photo series that I have done for a few years with photographer Claudia Lucia but it’s a concept that I had about developing a relationship with a new city, showing yourself to a city, and it felt interesting and I wanted to chase that idea so I did it.
What do you think is the most important quality in a human?
I just can’t survive without giggling with other people. Humor is a way of cheating defeat and misery. And I think being festive is incredibly important. If you have a festive spirit you know how to make life more interesting, more generous, more connected. Being festive is a kind of soulful creativity. You bring other people up even if you don’t know how you’re going to pay your bills, deal with the death of someone you love or the end of a relationship or just the drear of life that can seep in. A quote I like a lot from Colum McCann: “I’m not interested in blind optimism, but I’m very interested in optimism that is hard-won, that takes on darkness and then says, ‘This is not enough.’ This is my life in one sentence.
Do you have a spiritual practice?
My spiritual community is the recovery community and without getting into too much detail it is the service component, helping others, that has elevated my life to something which I believe has real value and meaning.
Who are your role models?
Elaine Stritch, my grandmother Katharine Darst who was a journalist in the 1940s, a former professor and writer I had in college Bell Chevigny, actress/writer/ LGBTQ activist Mae West, my sister Liz who treats every single person with dignity and compassion and knows the funniest words.
If you could change one thing about the world what would it be?
Gun violence. And violence against women. And they’re completely intertwined.
Women Against Gun Violence. For 25 years, these people have been doing very, very practical work like getting LA schools on board with talking about gun safety at home and passing legislation. Wonderful LA-based organization. WAGV.org.
Before I die I want to…
I want to do another play with my family in this barn in Vermont where I’ve been doing theater for 22 years. Two summers ago I adapted JAWS into a play and my family came up from New York, I snuck away from this writer’s room I was in, my friends Ben and Sohui came from Brooklyn. It was honestly so much work and I would be under the shark operating it with my friend Tracy and my niece or onstage with my sister and her husband (Richard Dreyfus character) and my son and my nieces and friends who came from Northern California and everyone’s kids and I would think this is honestly one of the best creative experiences of my life. And only one minor head injury.
All photos courtesy of Jeanne Darst
