delighted to read this. it so encapsulates my own approach to art and film.
…
Michael Ondaatje: The great writer Donald Richie who lives in Japan talks about the distinction between East and West: the Western novel is very organized, it’s very logical, there’s a logical progression, there’s a chronological progression, and there’s a safety in that. Whereas if you look at Japanese film, it is made up of collage or bricolage, it is made up of lists, and suddenly when you stand back from the lists you begin to see the pattern of a life. I’m someone who left Sri Lanka when I was eleven years old, but I think, in some ways, it was great to read this essay because I suddenly recognized that what I was doing is not so weird after all. That there is an element of…a more profound element of truth coming out of the discovered pattern in a collage or the list, by discovering the story as you go along, or as the Japanese say, by “following the brush.” And I think that’s what makes me want to write, I don’t want to sit down and write a novel knowing everything about it before I begin it. The element of discovery, the accidental discovery of the girl in the tent, or something else that is discovered in the process of writing the novel. More here.