Karen McElmurray - The Motel of the Stars

Interview

The Harmonic Convergence of 1987—what sparked your interest in the Mayan calendar and why did you choose these “celestial events” as the cornerstone of the novel’s plot?

In August, 1987, I was just coming back to this country after long, around-the-world travel time with a former lover, the last six months of which were in India and Nepal. I landed in Seattle and was there for a few weeks, and in a kind of muted culture shock in reaction to the abundance of grocery stores, the ordered cleanliness of buses and malls and city parks. Everywhere, even in “crowds,” I was aware of quiet and stillness, after the constant motion of Indian cities. That time was the perfect one for a grand celebration of The Harmonic Convergence, which took place in numerous spots in Seattle. I was so aware of my time in a very non-Western world and how that collided with this new time in lovely, rainy, and yuppified Seattle. And my imagination was sparked by a moonlit night in a park as hundreds of New Agers and ex-hippies waited for something to happen with the alignment of planets and stars and world peace. I held onto that time for years, and after years of looking for a personal home, it found its place in this novel. I’m interested in the convergence of time, not just on the implied spiritual level, but on the personal level of the pasts and presents of my characters––a persistent theme in my own life.

Much of The Motel of the Stars is told through the perspective of Jason Sanderson: a man who holds things in. Did you find it difficult, as a woman, to reveal his emotions to the reader in such a believable way?

It would be too easy (and also true) to say that I’ve experienced the different communication styles of men and women in a variety of relationships over the years. The truth is probably that I, myself, have been prone to holding in feelings and at a loss for ways to translate some of those feelings. I’m a birth mother, for one thing. I surrendered a child to a state-supported adoption when I was sixteen years old, and I told that story to no one for many years. Seeking a language for experience, particularly the experience of loss and reclamation of self, of forgiveness, has been a constant in my work for much of my life as an artist.

Religions of all colors play a huge role in this novel. Why did you choose this “international” consideration of spirituality and enlightenment?

I grew up Southern Baptist and, from about age nine until age fourteen, lived a very middle-class, contribute-to-Lottie-Moon, church-youth-trip kind of experience. But before that time, back when I was very small, I remember going to more charismatic churches with my grandparents. There was something about those services that left nothing concealed, with voices raised to god and tongues and dancing, that still appeals to me—not on the social-mores level, not on the doctrinal level, but on the level of something much more primal. An essence of spirit that was honest, and from the heart. I’m interested, not so much in the international aspect of faith, but in the essential nature of spiritual experience, the Creator of us all. Where do all faiths intersect? Where do the names for religions fall away and hearts prevail?

The novel seems consumed with contradictions, dark and light, safety and danger––what were you hoping your readers would experience by considering such conflicted characters and ideas?

I have long been fascinated with contradiction itself, with Janus, the god of two faces; with Yin and Yang (I have that tattooed on my shoulder); with Heraclitus and the nature of waves; and with Shiva, Creator and Destroyer. Symbols aside, contradictions like loss and love, grief and rebirth have simply been the nature of my experience as a human being. I’m interested in what it means to exist on the cusp, which is where I think we do exist, with deeply examined lives.

You have lived and written about life in Appalachia; what is it about this geography that makes for such a compelling setting for your fiction and nonfiction?

The mountains made me and, quite simply, they are in my blood in a way I never want to lose. As James Still wrote in his poem, “Heritage”:

I shall not leave these prisoning hills
Though they topple their barren heads to level earth. . . .
I cannot leave. I cannot go away.

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