Excerpts From The Moonlight Chronicles
Interview by Rosecrans Baldwin
How long have you produced Moonlight Chronicles? As the journals are so personal, do you find yourself writing for yourself or audience, or a point in between?
I started the M.C. in 1992. I have just completed issue #40. Without an audience I just sort of lose my interest.
I remember buying a pair of Simple sneakers many, many years ago and finding a copy of Moonlight Chronicles inside the box. Do you still work with Simple? How difficult was it combining your journal with a semi-corporate catalog?
I had an artist’s dream job with the Simple Shoe Co., between 1994 and 1998. They paid me over $40,000 a year to roam about and create my illustrated journals! Then they printed thousands and mailed them out to their customers. I was able to travel at will. The only downside was that they only wanted two or three issues/year and I created about 10-12.
You, and Danny Gregory as well, seem to emphasize the importance of drawing as a way of seeing life around you—using it to refresh your perspective of small and large things in your view. How did drawing become so important to you?
After working as a photojournalist for 10 years I sold all my cameras and began documenting my own little life instead of everyone else’s. Using a pen and paper I was able to document what I was seeing without a machine between me and the subject. If you draw lots you can become very addicted to that peaceful state of being. It’s definitely my drug of choice!
Have you ever found something you couldn’t draw, or, have you ever reached a point when drawing no longer offered the solace it once had?
The only times I find drawing difficult is when I’m trying to talk to someone and draw them at the same time. The act of drawing has NEVER let me down. It is the one thing in the whole world that I can always count on to take me to that other place. That very special place I remember inhabiting as a child.
Have you found an artist in another medium (writer, filmmaker, etc.) and thought, hey, this guy/gal’s got a similar take on life as I do, or a similar approach to their craft?
No. I’m a bit of a cultural misfit as I have chosen a life of utter simplicity and live in a rather remote area. Some folks I currently know influence me greatly. Dan Gregory for instance, and all beginners.
Describe the hobbit hole to us—how did it come about?
My current residence is an eight-foot underground circular room with one skylight. After living for 13 years in tipis, huts, a tiny shack, and mountain tents, I built the eight-foot room and think it is the best yet. It has no running water, electricity, or furniture. I lease the two-acre piece [it’s built on] for $100/year. For a full story see
www.shelterpub.com, for the new book
Home Work.
Iris Murdoch said, ‘Great art is connected with courage and truthfulness. There is a conception of truth, a lack of illusion, an ability to overcome selfish obsessions, which goes with good art, and the artist has got to have that particular sort of moral stamina.’ Do you see it that way? Is it difficult, in drawing, to maintain that sort of honesty with your subject, to be hard enough to resist fudging a little?
I do agree with Murdoch’s statement. But I take an oath of honesty into every aspect of my life. I’ve been trying for years to ‘zero out,’ as in ’cut all the crap out of my life.’ To be able to wake up in the morning and have absolutely nowhere I’m supposed to be. To figure out how to be a humble human without polluting, without greed. Just living a totally authentic life, like some ancient Indian monk. Just food, clothing and shelter…and a few pens! As to the drawings, I fudge all the time. Fudge is one of my favorite foods!
Your kids often have drawings in the journals… have they taken to it on a regular basis? Do you ever want to discourage them from it, thinking it’s enough to have one draw-er in the family? Or, have they ever drawn something that made you think, ‘Damn, wish I’d done that…’
I can thank both my children for teaching me how to write and draw. I used to get them to draw every morning. My daughter keeps an extensive written journal these days. (I used to record her talking at age six and her funny speech still reverberates in my head.) My son is an expert draughtsman at 18. (He taught me how to draw when he was five.)
Rosecrans Baldwin is a founding editor of
The Morning News. His first novel,
You Lost Me There, is coming out soon from Riverhead Books. He most recently wrote the
Letters from Paris column for TMN. His work has elsewhere appeared in
The New York Times,
New York,
The Nation, and on NPR’s All Things Considered. Someday his ashes will be tossed off Mount Desert Island. For more information, check out his
personal site or .
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