Interview with Bill Hayes

Abstract

ABSTRACTJohn Gosling interviews Bill Hayes, author of the memoir Insomniac City: New York, Oliver, and Me. This interview explores Bill’s experience of his creative process in writing this moving memoir. His six-year relationship (and subsequent loss to death) with renowned neurologist and author Oliver Sacks served as a source of inspiration for him. Bill reveals how his remarkable creative process, which was different from anything he had previously experienced, unfolded over a six-week period while on a scholarship in Rome. He describes how the many losses and deaths he has experienced have informed his creativity and capacity to be more present in his life. He is also a photographer, and he interspersed several of his New York photographs in the book while describing quite movingly his love affair with New York and the people he encounters on its streets. He ascribes his interest in photography to a template in his unconscious from his childhood experiences of being surrounded by books and magazines of photojournalism. Our creativity—what inspires us, where it originates, and how it manifests in us as humans—remains a mystery. This interview offers a window through which we can glimpse the unique creative process of one person who is an author and a photographer.