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The Spark is a monthly interview program, hosted by Tift Merritt, which will debut online and air on KRTS 93.5fm soon. The Spark's first three episodes will feature author Nick Hornby, poet CK Williams and painter Wolf Kahn.
Tift Merritt is a Grammy nominated song
writer whose third album will be released
in early 2008. Both of her previous albums
landed on the New Yorker's top ten list
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How do you light a spark? How do you make something true? How does art happen?
It is a funny thing to fall in love with a work of art and wonder about the person behind
it. If I had to put my finger on the first spark of The Spark, it was the spring of last year
when I was taking some time off to write in France. I turned a corner in an art museum
and landed in front of a painting that made me cry. I had been on the road for a long time,
which is sometimes lonely, and the painting spoke to me like a deep friend. The artist's
name was Cy Twombly, and from that afternoon, I sought his work and I wondered about
the man behind them. What did he mumble on the way to his studio? How did his wife
get the paint out of his shirts? What were his dreams? I wanted so much to take him for
coffee, cull his wisdom, know his heart. And then a funny thing happened. A friend
asked me why not do it? It probably gets lonely in a studio all day, anyway, he said.
And so, as one spark leads to another, I realized that I didn't just want to have coffee. I wanted to plant a microphone, ask lots of personal questions, and keep the answers on hand for future reference. And then, another spark. What if I sought out LOTS of artists I admired and asked them how they did it? I'm not sure anyone can tell you how to be an artist but everyone needs road signs. So why not find them? Why not make them? Why not record them and give them to other artists too?
The next chapter of The Spark is this. I was in Austin, Texas drinking red wine at the Hotel San Jose and talking about my plot to take artists out for highly-recorded coffee. My friend Liz Lambert said, heck yeah, and why don't we drive to Marfa tomorrow and talk to KRTS, the new NPR station? So we did. When we got to far west Texas's modern art Mecca, we asked station manager Tom Michael what he thought about an artist to artist interview program, with me traveling around on the road all the time anyway, and he thought it was a good idea too.
Isn't it funny how many interesting people we all cross paths with, and wouldn't it be great, rather than just making small talk, if you could simply cut to the chase and ask for the good stuff. Well, that's what The Spark is to me. It's my chance to meet the real people behind great works of art and ask them how they've lived and worked, how they've stayed true to themselves and how they've become great artists. Of course, we all have to answer our questions for ourselves, but wouldn't it be great to have some help from the best along the way? Welcome to The Spark. 
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