David Malouf, quoted by Salman Rushdie, who adds:
“He warns, particularly, of the dangers of speaking about work in progress. When writing, one is best advised to keep one’s mouth shut, so that words flow out, instead, through one’s fingers.”
This is not true only for literature. I recently read an interview with Stephen Merritt, of The Magnetic Fields, in which he seemed incredibly taciturn, answering questions as concisely as possible and without elaboration. Excited to read interviews with this or that author, I discover that their interviews are almost rudely to-the-point.
I think the above quote explains it: artists, and indeed people inclined to action, know that talk drains us of motivational energy, weakens our will. Talk of ideas makes us feel as though the ideas have been implemented; talk of musical composition processes substitutes for composition; talk of writing uses up the words we need for the writing, diminishing the inspiration we need.
If language is, in some ways, a simulation of reality, then the construction in language of our intentions makes redundant the construction of our intentions in reality. Hence songwriters and painters and writers not wanting to prattle on about their work, their methods, and so on.
(There is also this: any excellent work needs little, if any, explanation; if a painting is meaningless without its curatorial essay on the wall beside it, I consider it a failure: it should have been text).
Notes from others: