Space Exploration: Dustin Pearson
Astronauts perform some strange superstitions before they shoot off into orbit to explore the vast expanses of space. NASA commanders play cards with the tech crew the night before a launch, continuing until the commander loses a hand. Russian cosmonauts pee on the right rear tire of their transfer bus on the way to a launch. These are strange quirks, but they are crucial for these space-explorers to feel comfortable before and during a mission.
Writers also have rituals that must be performed in order to shake off bad vibes and get into a zone where they feel comfortable putting words on a page. When we read a great book, we only see the final product, and not the obsessive care put into the work environment that allowed for its creation. In SPACE EXPLORATION, our goal is to demystify writers’ environments and explore the ways in which they’ve been created and curated, and how they affect the mental spaces of the authors who inhabit them.
We asked writers to tell us about their necessary spaces; the physical spaces as well as the desired headspace to write. We asked about their rituals— special meals that have to be eaten pre-writing sesh, only writing in purple ink, lucky pieces of clothing that may have once inspired a particularly powerful passage. We asked them to engage our senses and tell us which aspects of process must be deliberate and what is arbitrary. These are the spaces they shared with us.
Our second feature was written by Dustin Pearson a current McKnight Doctoral Fellow in Creative Writing at Florida State University. His most recent book A Family Is a House was published in 2019 by C&R Press.
The truth is, I’ve never put much thought into my writing space. I’ve spent the past seven years in graduate school (and I’m not even done). Those seven years have been split between three universities and even more living arrangements.
Generally, though, once I’ve furnished my living space, I work my way into whatever nook feels most productive for writing. The first time I bought a piece of furniture that even resembled a desk, I told myself I’d finally become an adult writer. I didn’t use it. It seems true that most of what I’ve written was written on top of my bed, which has always been my most private and intimate space.
Ever since starting my PhD program, I’ve moved away from bedroom writing. I live alone, in a fourplex. I like symmetry. My apartment has two bedrooms and two bathrooms, yet I most consistently write at a round marble top table in my living room. It doubles as a dining room, and even though there are four chairs around the table, I only ever use up to three when I don’t have company over. I sit down in one, and I put my feet in the other two, let them rest on the seat cushions when I start to notice I’m kneading the carpet with my toes. Carpet is important. I grew up in a household in which the floors were nearly entirely carpet, even if there’s a mixture of hardwood floors, marble tiles, and carpet now.
When I sit down to write, it’s most important that I amass conditions that revert me to my childhood mind, a mind that hasn’t succumbed to the consensus of what reality is or should be, a mind that fully commits to its own perceptions. As an adult, I often feel that I’ve retained a lot more of my childlike wonder than most of my peers. Some of my most upsetting experiences have happened in childhood and in small and confined spaces. I think that combination can help to crystallize aspects of one’s childlike wonder indefinitely, even if it’s a morbid and less than aspirational way of achieving such a thing. I often write with the shades drawn. I have nothing against windows or natural lighting. I just don’t crave or need them to be fruitful. My mind produces all kinds of absurd imagery when I’m subjected to a bland environment, but I can also make good use of a window and natural light.
I’ve said this elsewhere, but I’m most consistently a wholeheartedly ambivalent person. I experience contradictory extreme emotions simultaneously, which give me a curious resolve. I enjoy tipping that balance in my writing. I think it’s the safest place to do that kind of thing, but that’s not to say that writing doesn’t feel dangerous. It always feels at least a little bit that way. Moody writing is often the most compelling writing with a bit of nuance. I also think it’s true that people have the most tolerance for moodiness in writing.
I always start a session with a cup of cold brew or regular hot coffee. It elevates my mood and swirls my imagination. I keep a candle on my table, a candle with spicy, wooden, or mineral scents. As the fragrance swells a fully embodied presentation in the room, I find myself working through an entanglement of memories and emotions, and that helps me to make associative and surprising leaps. As the chemical elevation the coffee provides starts to change or even break down, I find myself documenting my changing energy in the piece of writing I’m working on, in what my characters think or say, or in the weather. The combination of scents and energy usually create a series of compelling turns or avenues I can choose between when working on a piece. Having the empty chairs around my table feels great because I imagine I’m privy to a counsel of different aspects of myself I don’t typically engage in any other context.
I interrogate my feelings the most when I’m writing. In the privacy of my home, I don’t have to fear the consequences of that. I don’t have to devote so much energy to a public performance, and every inquiry I make into the energy I create or channel is one that leads me to learn more about myself and the world.
Dustin Pearson is the author of Millennial Roost (C&R Press, 2018) and A Family Is a House (C&R Press, 2019). He is a McKnight Doctoral Fellow in Creative Writing at Florida State University. The recipient of fellowships from Cave Canem, the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, and the Virginia G. Piper Center for Creative Writing, Pearson has served as the editor of Hayden’s Ferry Review and a Director of the Clemson Literary Festival. He won the Academy of American Poets Katharine C. Turner Prize and John Mackay Graduate Award and holds an MFA from Arizona State University. His work appears in Blackbird, Vinyl Poetry, Bennington Review, TriQuarterly, [PANK], Fjords Review, and elsewhere.