The interview takes place in a back room of a dive bar on the outskirts of Austin. The walls are stained yellow from decades of cigarette smoke, and the ceiling fan creaks with each labored rotation. Two folding chairs face each other under the harsh glare of a bare bulb. Our interviewer, Scum E. Editor, sits nervously between Willie Nelson and a man who claims to be—and for all purposes appears to be—William Shakespeare.
LOWLIFE LIT PRESS: Gentlemen, this is a hell of a thing, getting you two together. Let's cut to it. Both of you have changed the landscape of writing in your times. What's the secret to crafting words that stick in people's guts long after they've heard them?
SHAKESPEARE: The secret lies not in some arcane mystery, but in the observation of mankind's naked truths. A writer must be as the filthy beggar who sees the king disrobe. He notices that beneath fine raiment, royalty shits and bleeds as any common man. 'Tis not the grandeur of language but the recognition of our shared wounds that makes words cleave to memory like flesh to bone.
WILLIE: Well, shit, that's a tough act to follow. For me, it's always been about honesty. I've spent nights sleeping in ditches beside highways, watching the undercarriages of cars pass overhead, wondering if I'd ever make it. When I write, I dig into those places—the broken parts, the hungry parts. People recognize truth when they hear it. It ain't pretty, but neither is most of life.
LOWLIFE LIT PRESS: Willie, you wrote "Crazy" in the back of a van while touring. Shakespeare, you wrote during plague outbreaks. How does desperation shape your creative process?
SHAKESPEARE: When Death stands grinning at thy neighbor's door, it lends urgency to one's quill. I have watched the plague carts roll through London's muddy streets, heaped with bodies like cordwood. The taverns remained full despite—nay, because of—such horror. In desperation, we see man's true face. The desperate man hath cast aside his mask, and there lies raw material for any who would write truth.
WILLIE: The empty stomach is a hell of a motivator. I remember writing songs when I couldn't afford to put gas in my car, when my kids needed shoes. You don't waste words when every minute spent writing could've been spent earning. I think that's why country music cuts so deep—it's born from people who can't afford to bullshit. When your electricity's getting cut off next Tuesday, you get real clear about what matters.
LOWLIFE LIT PRESS: Both of you have been criticized for your unconventional approaches. Willie, your phrasing breaks all the rules. Shakespeare, you invented words when existing ones wouldn't do. How important is breaking convention?
SHAKESPEARE: Rules are but the previous generation's experiments calcified into doctrine. I took our rough-hewn English tongue—a bastard language born in taverns and battlefields—and stretched it to encompass the heights and depths of human experience. When no word existed to name the hollow ache of lost love mingled with remembrance, I created one. The heart's truths demand new vessels.
WILLIE: The suits in Nashville told me nobody would ever buy my albums because I sing behind the beat. Said my voice was too nasty, too strange. But that's just how the songs come out when they crawl through me. Breaking rules wasn't some artistic statement—it was just me being too damn stubborn or too damn limited to do it their way.
Willie Nelson reaches into his jacket pocket and pulls out a hand-rolled joint. He lights it without ceremony, takes a deep drag, and offers it to Shakespeare, who accepts with surprising eagerness. The room fills with sweet smoke as Willie exhales.
LOWLIFE LIT PRESS: Let's talk about your relationship with audiences. How do you know when you've connected?
Willie takes another long drag and suddenly his eyes go distant. When he speaks again, his voice has changed.
WILLIE: Methinks the audience doth reveal itself in stillness. When breath is held and eye meets eye across the chasm 'twixt performer and observer, there lies communion most divine. I have stood before the unwashed masses, their faces upturned like flowers toward the sun, and felt the current that doth bind us all in shared humanity. 'Tis a most sacred trust.
The interviewer blinks rapidly, looking between Willie and Shakespeare.
SHAKESPEARE: [nodding appreciatively] The rogue speaks truth. There is a moment when the groundlings cease their chatter, when even the drunkards quiet their loose tongues. That silence holds more meaning than thunderous applause. I have seen men weep openly at the death of fictional kings, though their own lives be filled with greater sorrows. This alchemy—turning ink to tears—'tis the writer's highest calling.
LOWLIFE LIT PRESS: Uh... Willie? Are you feeling alright?
WILLIE: Pray, good sir, trouble not thyself with concerns for my condition. This humble herb, this green physician, doth merely loose my tongue from modern constraints. Perchance my words flow now more like my bearded companion's, but 'tis the same river of thought, merely channeled through different stones. The vessel changes, yet the wine remains.
SHAKESPEARE: [laughing heartily] The man speaks in mine own tongue! This magical smoke recalls the pipes of my friend Raleigh, who brought strange plants from the New World. See how it bridges centuries! This proves my longest-held belief—that underneath our differing garb and speech, man's essence remains unchanged from age to age.
LOWLIFE LIT PRESS: This is getting weird, but I'll roll with it. Both of you have written about outlaws, rebels, and misfits. What draws you to these characters?
WILLIE: What mortal soul hath not felt himself estranged from the common herd? I sing of rogues and wayward hearts because in their rebellion lies a truth most keen. The outlaw stands outside society's walls and thus may see its full shape, its cracks and crumbling foundations. When I penned verses about the highwayman or the red-headed stranger, I sought to hold a mirror to those parts of ourselves that society bids us chain and silence.
SHAKESPEARE: The outcast illuminates the center! My Falstaff, my Caliban, my sweet Puck—these creatures dance at the edge of proper society, showing us both its follies and its virtues. I have long believed that one must stand apart to see clearly. The jester speaks truth to kings because he has nothing left to lose. His words cut deeper than any courtier's blade. In penning such characters, I sought to be both jester and king.
LOWLIFE LIT PRESS: Final question, and it's the big one. What's the point of writing in a world that seems determined to break your heart?
SHAKESPEARE: Because it breaks thy heart. The writer bears witness to pain and transcribes it faithfully, like a scribe recording the dying words of civilization. When plague emptied London's streets, when children's bodies were stacked like lumber, I wrote comedies to remind us that laughter persists even in darkness. I wrote tragedies to give shape to our formless suffering. The pen cannot stop death's approach, but it can make meaning of the footprints death leaves behind.
WILLIE: [the Shakespearean effect still strong] Verily, we write because the alternative is surrender to the void. Each song, each sonnet is a small fire kindled against the cold night of oblivion. I have buried friends, lovers, children—yet still I strum and sing because each chord defies the silence that awaits us all. What is writing but a beggar's immortality? We who cannot buy eternal monuments carve our names in air instead, hoping some fragment echoes after our bones have turned to dust.
The interview ends as the bartender announces last call. Shakespeare and Willie Nelson exit together into the Texas night, sharing another joint and discussing rhyme schemes under a canopy of indifferent stars.
Comments