Joan Schweighardt
Joan Schweighardt writes both fiction and nonfiction. Her most recent work is a trilogy that moves back and forth from the New York metro area to the South American rainforests between the years 1908 and 1929. In addition to her own projects, she has worked as an editor/ghostwriter for more than 25 years.
Twitter: @JoanSchwei
What’s the oddest thing a reader has ever asked you?
Someone once asked what character from a film I most identify with. My answer was “Elisa,” the character Sally Hawkins plays in The Shape of Water. Elisa is a mute cleaning woman who falls in love with a creature captured from the Amazon River and being held at the high-security lab where she works. She is someone who seems incidental, whose life is based on routine. But she has another side to her, and the creature helps her to reveal it. I relate to her because I thrive on routine, I often feel inconsequential, and I love myths about half-human/half-monster river creatures and have had occasion to write about a few of them myself.
Have you ever experienced Imposter Syndrome?
I could be a poster child for the Imposter Syndrome. The first time I heard the phrase, I was on the phone with the head of the SUNY (State University of New York) New Paltz English Department. I got my BA in English Lit there and then applied for a teaching assistant position for the next semester, which would not only pay for graduate classes but would offer a stipend too. I had to fill out various forms and get letters of recommendations, etc. I did all that, and then nearly the entire summer went by and I didn’t hear a peep from the department, so I figured I hadn’t made the cut. Days before the semester was to begin, I got the call from the department head saying that yes, they wanted me, and she had no idea why I hadn’t received my acceptance notice in the mail. I am a person who prepares ahead. I told her there was no way I could walk into a classroom without extensive lesson plans. I would have to read books, consult with others… We talked for about two hours. I confessed all my insecurities to her, and she revealed some of hers to me. We both suffered from Imposter Syndrome, she said. That meant we didn’t always feel capable, not that we weren’t capable. She talked me into teaching that semester and the next, but it didn’t do much to cure me of the syndrome.
Is there a work of art that you love. Why? Have you ever visited it in person?
I love Klimt’s The Kiss. I’ve never visited it in person (it’s in Vienna), though I’ve seen many paintings in galleries that seem to have borrowed from the idea. Art lovers have ascribed Klimt’s inspiration to various myths, one of them being the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice. Eurydice dies and Orpheus goes to Hades begging to have her back. Hades agrees, with the stipulation that Orpheus never look back as leads her through the caves of the underworld and back into the light. Once she reaches the light, she will have become a full woman again, but until then she will remain a shade. Perhaps because she is ghostlike, Orpheus can’t be sure she is actually right behind him. He can’t hear her footsteps. Just before they reach the light, and thinking the gods might have fooled him, he looks back. She is so pale in the painting. It could be because she is fading even as Orpheus is realizing his mistake and taking her in his arms for the last time.
Do you have another artistic outlet in addition to your writing? Do you sew? Paint? Draw? Knit? Dance?
I paint, in oils, usually animals, people or still life. I’m pretty mediocre. I would love to paint impressionistically, and I have tried, but for the most part I wind up painting what I see, whether it is a piece of fruit I’ve set up against a background or a photograph of a person or animal. My skill level aside, I love the process. It’s all consuming to be dragging color across a canvas. I don’t think about anything else.
If you could create a museum exhibition, what would be the theme?
I’d like to have a large space for a mysteries exhibit. On one wall I’d have photos of orbs. My husband is a photographer and many of his photos over the years have shown themselves to be full of orbs. Once he took a picture of a very old woman in India, someone who is known for her wisdom and intuitive sense. The picture showed a large white orb right in the middle of her forehead, though you couldn’t see that through the lens. I’d have another wall full of photos of crop circles. In Victorian England, sometimes when a family member died, a photographer would be called in to take a photo of the family, along with their propped-up and newly deceased member. That’s kind of morbid but it’s also kind of beautiful. Although the eyelids of the deceased would be closed, on some occasions an artist would be asked to paint eyes onto the lids after the photo was developed. I saw a photo on a BBC site of babies, a dead twin beside her surviving sibling. So many kids who lose siblings feel the loss like a severed limb all through their lives. I think it might be comforting to have such photos around—to see the loss, to own it rather than have it become something everybody tiptoes around. Anyway, I’d like a wall of such photos in my exhibit too.
