I often think about a guide to puberty (one of many) I read as a teenager. There was a chapter that aimed to utterly destroy any fantasy that your celebrity crush would ever return your feelings.
The case study was a young girl with a raging crush on Andre Agassi. "Even though Alice has feelings for Andre Agassi, she must accept that he will never know of her existence," I remember reading. "And even if she does meet Andre Agassi, the probability of him falling in love with Alice is very small, probably zero." There was a photo of Agassi, beady-eyed on the court, his hair like a tornado inhaling a bandana; and a photo of Alice – blind fool! – swooning alone in her bedroom.
I think of Andre Agassi whenever I need to regain some perspective on a situation. And I think of the devastatingly cool poet Eileen Myles, who, when asked, "Do you think your books will be read in the distant future?" said, "What do I care? I'll be dead."
I'm thinking of these things because I have written a new book, and I'm not sure that it was the right thing to do, because now I am having hopes and fears for the book. The poet James Brown advised me, "You need to have the book there in your flat like a new pet or flatmate – someone you have to learn to live with."
So I've had the book just lying around the place and each time I see it there – doing the exact same thing it's been doing its whole short life, which is nothing – I feel a small thrill and a deep unease. The thrill is simply the thrill of finishing something, although realistically I would have continued to write the book forever, literally stopping only for death, if my publisher hadn't given me a date of publication.