Eileen Myles Talks Family, Money, and the Poem at KGB Bar Lit

For KGB Bar Lit, Eileen Myles met up with Sallie Fullerton at Café Mogador to talk about family: "The most expensive thing in my life right now is therapy, I have a really good therapist, but it’s about getting this right, this existence, not so my kids won’t be fucked up or that I’ll have a good relationship. It’s actually so that I’ll know what I’m doing and where I am." More from this interview:

SF: I’m reminded in what you’re saying about the concept of “chosen families” which I think can become difficult to differentiate from “networking” - now, especially in New York.

EM: Well, that sort of excludes some people and pulls in other people. I know communities are temporary but it [the term “chosen family”] still has this gated humanity feel. It can exclude the accidental and the temporary. I don’t want to say New York is my “chosen family,” but New York is the supplier of something we’re talking about in a way. Sometimes I feel like I’m purposely spending time here to get a lot of it so that I can go be alone.

SF: Like Vitamin D.

EM: Yeah, like right now it’s Gala season. Every institution that needs money is having a big party and then I’m a “somebody” now so I’ve gotta be at the party and we’re all hugging and it’s like a like a big grope, like an orgy of friendship.

SF: And did it always feel this way in New York?

EM: No! Everything felt that way earlier but now it’s something that is more staged. Even the phenomena of meeting someone for coffee seemed to start about ten or twenty years into my life in New York. It used to be that you’d just go and everybody was there.

Read the full conversation right here.