What Will We Do Now?

A Conversation With Sara Davidson

By Richard Martin, 3-22-07

	Write about what you're going through

Several years ago Sara Davidson, the author of one of the archetypal novels of the 1960s, Loose Change, along with four other books plus a full shelf of journalism and essays, found herself staring into the chasm that had been her life. Her lover had departed abruptly, her once-charmed writing career in Los Angeles had seemingly dried up, and her adult children were living overseas. So, like many of us, she fetched up in Boulder. Unlike most of us, she wrote a book about the experience of recreating her life at near-retirement-age. The book is called Leap! What Will We Do With the Rest of Our Lives?, and it has struck a chord with the boomer set. NewWest/Boulder editor Richard Martin talked by phone this week with Davidson, who is in Manhattan doing promotional appearances for the book.

NewWest: Tell me how you chose Boulder.

Sara Davidson: I tell this story in Leap!: My life in L.A. had come to an end, I couldn’t get work and no one would return my calls. There are very few times when you’re able to just pick up and move, it’s very hard to move from one state to another. This was one of those times, and I decided to take advantage of it. I knew I didn’t want to go back to one of the places I’d lived already, I’d always lived on the coasts and in big cities.

I really had no reason to go anywhere in particular, and so I was waiting for something to clarify, to get some kind of work or a message about where I should go. I was sitting one night with a group in a yoga center in Los Angeles, and the word “Boulder” came to me. I’d been working with a spiritual guide for many years, and he’d encouraged me to listen to my inner guidance. “But,” I’d ask him, “how do you know it’s not just some random thought?”

He said, “If you start to follow it and you run into brick walls, it’s probably a random thought. If everything opens up and you feel like it’s a river and it just takes you, it’s probably some kind of guidance.”

So I went on the Internet, and I found out that Boulder gets 300 days of sun. It also has the University, and access to nature—I wanted both natural beauty and good food and bookstores and music and all that.

So I came for a week visit, went over to CU and walked into the journalism department. At first it did not seem at all flowing , nobody knew who I was, they said, “You want to come teach here? Take a number, so does everyone else.”

I was literally walking out when I ran into Jan Whitt, one of the professors, and she saw me carrying some of my books and said, “Omigod are you that Sara Davidson?” It turned out she’d read all my books, she used them in her classes. She said, “We have to figure out a way to get you here.”

She made it her mission to find something for me, and I ended up getting the Hearst Professsional in Residence position. It gave me a date and a reason to come here. You know, if you tell people you’re coming here because you have a “knowing” they just think you’re wacky.

Jan drove me around showed me the city, and I saw West Mapleton and said “Oh I’d love to live up here.” She said, “So would everyone else, that’s why it’s so expensive.”

So I went online and found a furnished house that was for temporary rent on Mapleton – it was owned by a sculptor who’d moved to a retirement community and she couldn’t bear to sell the house. It had a studio on the top floor with views of the mountains and trees, and I thought “This is perfect.”

So suddenly I had job, I a beautiful place to live, and everything just kind of happened.

NW: So had you started the book before you arrived?

SD: Oh no. I’ve been here four and a half years. When I arrived I thought I needed a new vocation, I was on a mission to find something else to do with my life for the next 30 years. I couldn’t sell anything I wanted to write – I tried for three or four years.

Then I thought, “Duh, why don’t you ?”

I ended up writing a 60 page proposal. It was not easy to sell this book. They said, “Boomers only buy two books a year, and this won’t be one of them.”

Then finally two publishers bid on it and I got a reasonable bid, though not anything like what I’d gotten in the past. But it gave me an endorsement, and it allowed me to do this extraordinary research. I realized it was the gift of a lifetime: I interviewed almost 200 people, and I learned something from everyone I talked to. It was as if everyone had one piece of the puzzle, and by the time I finished I was in a completely different place from where I started.

NW: How do you find Boulder as a place to write?

SD: It’s a wonderful place to write, the quality of life is so good and so easy. I realized here in New York how lucky I am: I go out to run one errand here and I’m exhausted, from always pressing against the crowds, and waiting in line, and so on. In Boulder you can be anywhere in 10 minutes, you’ve got access to the outdoors, and you walk into McGuckin’s and there’s three people in green vests waiting to serve you.

NW: My sense is that there are lots of writers who’d like to live in Boulder, and there’s lots of people who live in Boulder who’d like to write, but I’m not sure how much actual writing goes on.

SD: Yes. Although it’s a wonderful place to write, I miss having what I’d call an intellectual community, with working writers, and people reading the same books you’re reading. It’s not the same as living in New York or L.A., where everybody I know is in the business, either journalism or screenwriting. There may be a lot of creative people, but I haven’t been able to find enough of them.

Let me tell you a story. I’ve known Joan Didion since the 1970s, she’s become a close friend and mentor. She takes the craft very seriously—every comma is there for a reason. She always does meticulous research, and she’s very inspiring. I had an assignment from O, the Oprah magazine, to do a long interview with her about her latest book [The Year of Magical Thinking, about the death of Didion’s husband John Gregory Dunne], and spend several days with her. It was wonderful because it was a reason to spend real time with her, usually I just get one meal with her.

Anyway I was teaching a seminar at CU, with a dozen handpicked grad students, and not one person had ever heard of her.

NW: How’s Leap! doing?

SD: I think the book is doing very well. The publisher never saw it as a book with a large audience so it’s not in wide distribution – it’s not in the stacks at the front of the store or any of that. But the word of mouth is terrific, I’ve gotten hundreds of emails from people who read it and say, “Thank God someone finally identified what I’m going through.” It seems to be hitting a nerve. So it’s spreading by word-of-mouth, and hopefully it will be around for a long time.

My intent is, I would like to galvanize and inspire this enormous group of people who are finding themselves marginalized by the culture because getting older, and yet we have these entire new life stages. In the last century we’ve gained about 30 years of healthy life, it’s a potential period of life when we could accomplish amazing things both individually and as a group. But there’s no model for it. I’m hoping I can contribute to this wave that’s building of new models of what this period of life could be.

NW: So you’ve made your leap. What’s next for you personally?

SD: I have no clue. There are a lot of possibilities that are opening up, but frankly I’m exhausted, and I’m ready to spend a few months recuperating. I’m about to take a trip with my daughter, who’s living in Spain. She has invited me to come travel with her there. We’ve never spent more than an hour together since she was 13, so I’m very excited. After that I have no idea.

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