Tim:
I've heard you and other writers speak about the writer's eye. How did you come to be able to see the world with an eye which observes and watches for possible writing ideas or material?

D.B. Pacini:
I'm convinced my writer's eye began to develop when I was a young child seeing my mother and her father when she was in her thirties and he was in his fifties. They were remarkably creative.

Tim:
How old were you when this began?

DB:
It was winter and I was five. I think I was five. At what age can a child understand and acurately remember things, four-years-old, five? I was younger than first grade because I wasn't attending school yet.

Tim:
It was winter; you remember that it was winter?

DB:
(Laughs) Yeah. I remember it was winter. A thunder storm was raging outside, but I wasn't scared because my grandfather wasn't. He sat beside me, his long skinny legs bent in half by boney knees. I noticed the bones of his knees, and I remember loving his thick dark gray hair. I also remember thinking about how beautiful his eyes were. When I grew up, I learned he had more beautiful eyes than ninety-five people out of a hundred. That day he smelled like Old Spice cologne and Mule chewing tobacco. He was wearing a blue and green plaid flannel shirt with a wheat-colored background. I gave that shirt to Skyler in the novel symbolically because the day my grandfather sat next to me I was oblivious, blind, and could not yet see art as he could.

Tim:
So, are Skyler's eyes your grandfather's eyes?

DB:
No. Skyler's eyes are Skyler's, but his shirt was my grandpapá's.

Tim:
What happened?

DB:
He took a crayon and asked to color with me. We abandoned the sofa for the kitchen table; my box of 64 crayons poured into a glass pie dish, multi-colored broken waxed shavings curling around the built-in box sharpener. He tore our pages free from the book, not out. He told me to realize that there is a difference between those two words. He said the word concept and then explained its definition carefully. I had never heard the word before. He told me to use my eyes, my mind, and my heart to see, think and feel with attention to detail. He then adamantly insisted that a torn free page really is different from a torn out page, for creative purposes, if the artist thinks it is.

Tim:
Then did he show you how to color creatively, how to be more artistic?

DB:
Nope. I colored my skies light blue, my trees dark green, my suns yellow, and my dogs brown. He, as always, didn't color anything the same way twice. What made that ordinary day extraordinary was I was finally old enough to notice. It was a life-changing experience. I felt like Hellen Keller with a hand full of water. What he poured through my young fingers was insight into art I never knew existed, insight he had shown before that I had never noticed.

His trees were alive, their leaves blending greens, yellows, oranges, tans. Weathered trunks and branches combined numerous shades of browns, blacks with clumps of dusty-green mosses growing on bark glowing with sunlight. And, this man, who had never seen a van Gogh painting, splashed morning suns with pale yellows pouring from the skies like lemonade, swirled mid-day suns with burning balls of red-orange fire, lit evening suns with dying flickering candles of deep burgundy roses, and streaked royal purples and drowning dark pinks that set into the sea. He did this with crayons. My skies were just a light-blue color; his were daybreak, morning, high noon, afternoon, dusk, twilight, night. He could make a thousand colors out of a box of 64.

His pastures giggled with drawn-in daisies, fuzzy-backed bumble-bees, and graceful butterflies. His nights sparkled with flighty fireflies and twinkling silver-gold stars. Some shades required hard pressure, leaving the paper thickened with a slick, smooth coat of colored wax. Some shades required a delicate application. He feather-touched the crayon to the page gently, stroking the paper, leaving a faint hint of color. These hints made Santa Claus have rosy cheeks, made the backs of turtles look wet as they pulled themselves from a pond onto a sandy bank, made rain on a windowpane trickle down as a sad-eyed boy with a striped ball stared out the window. The lonely boy got no rosy cheeks; his ball was colored in dull muted primary shades with no sunshine reflecting off its surface, and I suddenly liked my grandpapá's pictures a hell-of-a-lot better than mine.

Tim:
Wow! That sounds like an incredible day.

DB:
It was. It is still one of the favorite days of my life.

Tim:
You also credit your mother for many of your creative insights. Tell us about your mom.

DB:
First of all, my mother was a southern bell, so she was Momma not Mom. My momma, her voice and musical abilities were autographic and amazing. She could hear a song once and know it. Forever-years-later she could hear it again and still know 90% of it. It was uncanny. I'd write a song at age ten, hum one line of it at age thirty, and she'd begin singing it with the correct melody, remembering most of the verses and all of the chorus. She did the same thing with songs on the radio and songs on records.

She died at the much-too-young age of sixty-three. She committed suicide or was murdered (whichever way you want to look at it) with the combined leathal weapons of cigarettes and alcohol. She infused my intellect, my heart, and my spirit with humanitarian empathy and with creativity. She was a multi-talented artist; the list of her various mediums, of her wide-ranged abilities is truly too long to list. She was an androgynous person trapped in a woman's body; she was a child forced to pretend that she was an adult. She was always growing, but she never grew up.

Her name was Genell. She took me to southern honky tonks, white ones and black ones; wherever the good music was that night was where she went. Music is colorblind, and when you have a singing voice as incredible as hers, you are usually safe crossing color lines, at least she always was. Remember, we were in southern states and it was a close-minded time. She knew every old boy picker (guitar, banjo, fiddle), every mouth man (horns, harmonica), and every music jam going on.

I spent many weekend nights sitting in booths in honky tonk joints, eating cheeseburgers, fries, and drinking cherry cokes with good old girl waitresses being big-hearted babysitters. Everyone gave my mother their microphone. I don't think she ever owned one herself. She jitterbugged and sang until I was almost eleven. When my brother was born she stopped singing publicly almost completely. My childhood was rarely secure, horrifically painful, and often profound, which is a typical childhood for many children of alcoholics.

Tim:
You seem affected by talking about this. Are you okay?

DB:
She was my mother. She was beautiful and amazing. I watched her destroy herself with alcohol and smoking.

Tim:
Tell us about your mother's mother. Was she artistic?

DB:
My mother's mother was one of the most gentle creatures ever born. She couldn't carry a tune if her life depended on it, but she could crochet and embroider. That woman, with her Singer sewing machine could have made an exquisite wedding dress out of a flour sack if she wanted to.

Tim:
Tell us about your father and his parents. Did any creative genes come from your father's side of the family?

DB:
My father, he and I never made it to the end of any chapter in our lives at the same time. The few times we checked, we were always on different pages. Until I was twenty-eight years old, I had enough burning anger toward him to set him on fire without a match. When my son was born I was able to comprehend how precious I should have been, and the anger fell away. My father is a poet. He can hold words like live warm eggs in the nest of his hands; he can carefully crack them open when they begin to peep. He lets them fly in winged poems.

Tim:
You're getting affected again.

DB:
Ya think? (Laughs)

Tim:
Okay, tell us about your father's parents.

DB:
I didn't know his mother. His father, my papá, he loved me unconditionally. Apparently he had been a total bastard when he was a younger man, but old age mellowed him. Perhaps, he tried to make up for some of his earlier neglectfulness through his gentleness toward me. I hope readers won't think I'm harsh saying he was a bastard; he assured me that he was.

I wish everyone could be loved unconditionally, especially during their teenage years. It is such an incredible gift. I am convinced that the world has only two kinds of people. People who have never been loved unconditionally, and people who have been.

My papá and I used to sit together behind his house in Half Moon Bay beside his little stream eating homemade biscotti and fruit he cut with a pocket knife. He told me what he loved about America, his mistress, and what he missed about Italy, his mamá. He knew grapes and olives the way some old people know their childhood friends. I was a teenager, in love with love with a gypsy heart beating too fast inside my chest. With a heavy Italian accent he enthralled me with made-up stories, true stories, tender stories, sad stories, stories that made me laugh until I had hiccups, stories that made me sob. The time we shared was much too short, but it enriched me forever, not a bad accomplishment for a man who believed that he was a bastard most of his life. I loved him very much.

Also, he was the first person who told me my dreams weren't too big. "Do not ever fit your dreams inside someone else's imagination box," he would warn. "They may have pea-sized boxes."

Tim:
Of everyone you've known who do you feel inspired your creativity the most?

DB:
I believe the deepest root that grew within my relatives was the root of story telling, the ability to give imagination flight. Of all my family members I feel my mother's father was the most gifted. He could take a child (any child) and snuggle them under his arm, then point to a corner in the room, up near the ceiling, and begin to tell a story. He was one of those people who could project, who could softly whisper in a loud voice.

He would hug you under his arm and exclaim, "Look quick! There's a little fairy up there; she must have flown in when the screen door was open. Look, she's no bigger than your thumbnail!"

You must look at the size of a child's thumbnail to see how tiny the fairy was.

Before long, the child, me or any child so fortunate to be the object of his attention, would see her. Her dress was always dew-kissed and cut from a piece of rose petal. Her teeth were microscopic seed pearls. Her shoes were tiny beaded moccasins. Her fingernails were berry-colored rubies. Her eyes were sparkling sapphires. Her hair was long strands of flowing Indian-liquid silver. Her skin was pale-green, glittering with fairy gold dust.

I learned years later that he made her green so all children could relate to her. Her skin color was different from theirs, but it was different from everyone else's too. He wanted her to be a universal fairy.

He was a brilliant storyteller. I could see her curling eyelashes, her delicate collarbone, the velvet of her rose petal dress, her long braids crowned with a tiny headband of miniature wildflowers. I can still see her exquisite wings. He spent hours describing her wings, what they looked like and where they could fly.

These people and a few others, collectively influenced my thinking during my formative years and during my young adult years. I learned how to color pictures before I learned how to add and subtract. I learned how to write a real sonnet, a song with verses and choruses, a story with a plot, before I was nine. My mother taught me. I joyfully embraced music, poetry readings, performing arts, and drama in my teen years and my young adult years.

My son was born in 1981. For the first time I loved someone unconditionally. Nobody has taught me more than that little boy taught me with his rootbeer-colored eyes.

Tim:
Is Candy in the novel your son?

DB:
(Laughs) No. Candy is a composite of several young troubled teens (male and female) I've met. I did give Candy my son's eye color. Writers do little private things like that.

Tim:
(Puts prepared question list down.) I see, well, we know about your grandfather's shirt for Skyler and now about your son's eye color for Candy. Share a few more examples which are in Emma's Love Letters. A few more private little things you included.

DB:
Don't ask me to give away the mystery! The mystery is the best part.

Tim:
Come on, just rattle off a few things.

DB:
Rattle off a few things?

Tim:
(Laughs) Yeah, twenty off the top of your head, if you can!

DB:
I can.

Tim:
The tape recorder is running.

DB:
(Laughs) You are incorrigible. Okay, but I won't count, you count. Tell me when I reach twenty. In high school a friend of mine owned an Australian Shepherd, I loved that dog. I greatly admire Vincent van Gogh. As a teenager the parents of some of my friends loved me the way Emma and Alexander love Candy. Those parents encouraged me to explore my dreams and several of them introduced me to art. I really loved Van Morrison's music when I was a teenager. His song, Tupelo Honey, was a song I performed for several years. I like peanut butter cookies, Pescadero, gardenias, Pacabel's Cannon in D, rivers, trees, horses, and Odwalla juice. I think Johnny Prine is amazing. He is a great songwriter. I've made several book shelves out of old TV cabinets because of Johnny. I love porch gliders and although I passionately love most colors, I don't like the color red.

Tim:
Damn, I didn't do it.

DB:
What?

Tim:
Didn't count.

DB:
(Laughs)

Tim:
Where are you today? What is your creative direction after Emma's Love Letters?

DB:
I'm entering a new creative period. My son is grown, and I'm returning to writing with stronger muscles and with more free time. I'm flexing those muscles in a wider variety of mediums. For example, this is my first novel. Drama and acting were always my first love, but now I am more interested in writing. I'm even more interested in writing songs than in singing them.

I'm also returning to my interest in yester-year masters. I want to share them with young creative artists. Like van Gogh, I wish to create a colony of creative artists, a community of artists who help one another and who will mentor young artists. For example, a young woman is a member of our core group. Scarlett Rose joined us when she was only fourteen-years-old. Watch her, she is talented.

Tim:
I agree about Scarlett. She has an incredible voice. Okay, pretend I don't know anything about the novel, Emma's Love Letters. Tell me what it is about.

DB:
Emma's Love Letters is a love story, not one love story, several. It is a tribute to Vincent van Gogh. It is a multi-media work. It has a humanitarian message, a humanitarian foundation. It shines a bright spotlight on the Guitars Not Guns program.

It is a big piece of my heart. I give it to readers with my heart overflowing with gratitude. It was a wonderful experience, writing this story.

Tim:
You have done something I've never seen before. You have combined fictional and factual people and places in a very creative way. You have woven the music CD songs into the novel's text. What gave you the idea to do that?

DB:
My muse gave me the idea. The novel contains lyrics of songs in narrative and in dialogue. The book stands on its own. A reader could never hear the music CD, and the book would be complete. But, the CD adds an incredible dimension. If a reader reads the novel, then listens to the CD, they will meet the characters in the songs; they will experience the heart and the emotion of the story in the songs. The characters have a voice in the songs.

Tim:
You say you have a humanitarian message in this novel. What message are you trying to share?

DB:
I hope to speak directly to specific members of society. Beyond my desire to share a wonderful story and a great music CD, I hope to inspire music store owners to promote Guitars Not Guns (GNG). I hope music store owners and radio stations will provide information about GNG services to more people and I hope they will urge more musicians to become GNG instructors and/or to become performers who donate funds from benefit concerts to GNG. I hope to inspire people to donate guitars to GNG. I hope more people will contact GNG and work to bring GNG to their own communities.

Tim:
That's great. Regarding your novel, several people who have read Emma's Love Letters compare it to The Bridges of Madison County by Robert James Waller. If you remember, after reading your novel, I was the first person to encourage you to read Bridges, and compare its similarity to Emma's Love Letters. I've heard people advise you to get Emma's Love Letters into the hands of Clint Eastwood and even to send it to Oprah Winfrey. What do you think about that?

DB:
You asked me to read The Bridges of Madison County, and I did. I loved the novel; Waller did an excellent job. I will now make it a point to read everything he writes. I can understand why people feel Emma's Love Letters has similarities to The Bridges of Madison County's love story. There are similarties, but many differences too. Emma's Love Letters contains other elements. I wish the movie had used Waller's ending. I don't know Clint Eastwood or Oprah Winfrey. I'd give both of them this book if I could. There are a number of people I wish I could share Emma's Love Letters with, people like Eastwood, Winfrey, and movie producer Paul Davids who produced the Vincent van Gogh movie Starry Night. I have no doubt that this novel could be made into an incredible movie. I've been told to give this book to Clint Eastwood by so many people that it's become an inside joke. Unfortunately, none of these people have Eastwood's address. (Laughs)

Tim:
Well, are you going to try to contact people like Eastwood, Winfrey, Davids?

DB:
I think the best way I can get Emma's Love Letters into the hands of people who could help get it published, or made into a movie, will be through readers. I don't have famous contacts and connections. I am trying to contact Paul Davids. His interest in Vincent van Gogh makes me really want to reach him if I can. (Laughs)

Tim:
Dream outloud. Who would you have play the characters if you could have anyone play them in a movie?

DB:
Oh, that's hard, many actors come to mind. Candy could be a younger Johnny Depp. I can see someone like George Clooney in the role of Alexander. Skyler and Emma; I have specific ideas, certain actors in my mind's eye, but they could be played by several different actors, So could the other characters. My favorite character to meet would be Vinny.

Oh, let me tell you something. One evening we were practicing for the music CD and joking around about what role we each would want to play in "the movie" if we were allowed to be in it. The guys said they'd like to be Skyler with Emma in the Jacuzzi, and then later in Ecuador. Then Robert Peterson said something interesting. He said he would like to be the stage hand adjusting the microphone for Robert Peterson right before the Raspberry Love song. I thought that was cool for Robert to want that part.

Tim:
If you could have a part in "the movie," what part would you select?

DB:
There is a scene in Chicago where Emma draws back the curtain in her hotel room to watch some young black guys play basketball. To her they are a brilliant sight, dancing on the hot cracked cement court, making one smooth easy shot after another. I would like to be a woman walking by them; the basketball would bounce away from them and roll toward me. I'd pick it up and toss it back, then walk on down the street. If you could be in "the movie," what part would you want?

Tim:
(Laughs) Hey, I wanna be Skyler with Emma in the Jacuzzi, and then with her in Ecuador. If we're dreaming, I'm dreaming that!

DB:
(Laughs)

Tim:
What do you have to say to the kids who will receive free guitars and lessons because of your efforts?

DB:
I want to tell them that they matter. I want to tell them that their guitar can be their best friend, and a good one. I want to tell them they are precious. I urge them to grow up to be adults who care about kids.

Tim:
I have been your friend for nine years, and I thank you for doing this interview. I believe readers will enjoy it. I'm proud to be the web designer and photographer for this project. On behalf of the core group I thank you for so generously sharing this project with us. You've always called it ours; you've never called it yours. You've allowed us to express our creativity.

DB:
The pleasure has been mine. I've had so much fun writing Emma's Love Letters and I had a blast working on the CD. We've all been an incredible team.

Tim:
I have one more question. A very unusual thing about this novel is your unbelievably long and extensive End Notes. Why did you devote so much effort to provide such extensive research data? I've watched you, you've spend hours compiling those End Notes.

DB:
I read a lot. I've often read something and want to know more about it, but the author has mentioned it without providing much information. Many authors do extensive research for their books, but a lot of them do not share their research as often as I'd like. When I did research for Emma's Love Letters I kept thinking about readers who are like me. Not every reader will care about the End Notes. Some will. I provide the End Notes to those who want them. Having this website makes it easy; in many cases we are able to "hot link" web addresses, which instantly provide readers with further information.

Tim:
We have completed my question list. Do you have anything else you wish to add?

DB:
Yes. I wish to thank the families of our core group. They have been part of this too. I am very grateful to them.

Note: This interview was recorded 02-20-04. D.B. Pacini and Tim Christensen were married in October, 2004.