Charlie Haden: Then we went on the road and scared everybody to death in the towns we played—Boston, Chicago, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia.
Karl Ove Knausgård: But then, of course, I couldn't, because everybody was experiencing exactly the same everywhere.
Haden: But I didn’t. I went to the phone, put a nickel in and dialed the number.
Knausgård: [Sighs] But that’s what I’m doing.
Haden: The ego goes away.
•••
Knausgård: Landscapes with yellow fields of wheat and blue sky, nothing was going on in them at all, no soul, no character, no personality, nothing.
Haden: All those songs we used to sing were very beautiful, and they've stayed with me.
Knausgård: And all of the essays are written there, in that country.
Haden: Oh, man, they were fantastic.
Knausgård: I was kind of backstage and on the stage at the same time.
•••
Haden: Let me move the tape ahead.
Knausgård: Before that happens, you have to make the space where it later will unfold, and the space, it seems when you are writing, is nothing in itself.
Haden: The doctor said I was lucky—it hit the nerve to my face and throat and vocal cords, and it usually hits the legs and lungs.
Knausgård: We come from there, and it is still with us, and we are still surrounded by that kind of existence.
Haden: Sparkalite Cereal. Cocoa-Wheats with vitamin G. Green Mountain Cough Syrup. We had crates of the stuff.
—Raymond Cummings has written for Splice Today since 2010.