Who’s Afraid Of The Big Bad Art World?

An interview with Woo Woo author Ella Baxter.

In Woo Woo, Sabine is a woman on the brink.

Her buzzy solo show Fuck You, Help Me is around the corner; the ghost of visual artist Carolee Schneemann is a frequent visitor at her home; the tension in her marriage is so thick, she could slice it with one of the many knives lying around her studio; she has an unfortunate habit of going live on TikTok. Oh, and she has a stalker leaving her increasingly violent letters.

While Ella Baxter’s novel is a surreal and cutting satire of the art world and casual surveillance, it’s also a case of art reflecting life: The genesis of the book began as a 30,000 word letter to her former stalker. As the plot took form, Baxter envisioned trapping the person in the book; the covers would snap shut and the torment would finally end. “It was a very vengeful process of writing it, but I also don't feel like I could have dealt with that part of my life unless I had kind of proactively moved towards something,” she tells Language Arts. “I mean, peace would've been a great alternative, but vengeance was available.”

Ahead, Baxter discusses smoothing out harrowing experiences into sound bites, the relationship between fury and creativity, and the beauty in being possessed by an idea.

Did you feel like Sabine leading up to the release of the book?

Yeah, a bit. It's hard not to. It's such a feral time and doing all the press and PR is so unnatural. I did feel a bit like Sabine — not quite as loose in the head, but definitely just feeling really neurotic and having lots of rituals to prepare me for things, which I'm not actually sure did anything. I think the belief in rituals helped.

Are these rituals of the woo woo nature?

It's a series of stretches and a meditation where I try to empty out and then fill back in with the universe. It feels like that happens, and that if I don't do that, it's like everything is a disaster. I would prefer writing books a lot more if I didn't have to do the marketing of them. I find it really a complete antithesis to actually being creatively-minded.

Having to interface with people's interpretations of your work is really hard. In a way, once something is out in the world, it's none of your business anymore. It’s like, “Wait, why are we still talking about this?”

A hundred percent. With books especially, you've written them years before they come out, so I'm talking about having a stalker, which happened six years ago, and it was very traumatic then, but it wasn't moved on so much from that particular kind of mental space. Of course, it's weird to go back to it with so much rigor.

Especially with something as harrowing as that. To have to talk about it over and over again feels like it could be very intense.

Well, it becomes its own story because of the telling. Every time you tell it, it kind of smooths out until it becomes this sound bite, but it's devoid of all the actual horror that it entailed. It becomes this sort of anecdote I can just roll out and say.

The darkest time in your life is now a pull quote.

I literally had PTSD.

Do you feel like you exorcised the stalker through Woo Woo?

Yeah, I did, but that was my intention. No, my intention was to trap them in the book. It was like I laid a trap. I wanted them to read it, and then the covers just snap in around them. It was a very vengeful process of writing it, but I also don't feel like I could have dealt with that part of my life unless I had kind of proactively moved towards something. I mean, peace would've been a great alternative, but vengeance was available.

Beautiful. And that's the pull quote. I'm just kidding. I'm curious what early versions of the book were since this was inspired by a very traumatic real life experience.

It was really short, so it was 30,000 words. The manuscript that I signed, it was honestly a long letter, and it was addressing the person: You have done this, you have done that, but it had a real energy to it. It was a very raw, angry thing. It felt quite possessed, and then I think when it got picked up, there was a need for the story to develop. There was a need for the marriage to take up more space and the characters to sing more. It was quite a long editorial process. It was 18 months. The thing I handed in, I look back now and I'm a bit horrified. They all read it because it was so punchy.

How do you feel about rage and fury as emotions now?

I love rage and fury. I think the art of life is to learn how to direct it into something. I push all my rage and fury into art-making. I think it's a huge motivator. I think it gets work done. I feel like I complete projects fueled by rage and fury, whereas love or satisfaction or peace, I can start projects fueled by that, but I often don't finish them. There's no kind of energy behind it because I'm content. Whereas when I'm discontent, I feel this huge urge to finish things and to be really conscious about what I'm doing.

“I think that creation and destruction is the cycle of art making. I definitely feel haunted. I felt possessed by Woo Woo. I felt like that book was a leech on my back, just getting bigger and bigger, and I was getting smaller and smaller until finally it was done.”

One of my favorite parts of the book was when the ghost of Carolee Schneemann tells Sabine about anglerfish. That really was really evocative for me. I'm kind of curious how it came into existing in the book.

Life. As I was writing Woo Woo, my marriage was falling apart, especially towards the end, and I think I wasn't actually looking up anything for the book. I think I literally Googled “monogamy in the animal kingdom” or something like that, and through a series of clicks, got to anglerfish. I was like, “Oh, fuck, that's marriage.” It was the perfect analogy for what I was going through, where we had kind of become this Frankenstein-ish thing that neither of us was happy with, and that we were draining each other completely through our very existence. It felt so perfect and so heartbreaking. Our intentions were there. We wanted to love and mate and do all this natural biological kind of stuff. We were two fish swimming in the dark, and we found each other, and then we just murdered each other slowly. It was a bit of that.

It is so heartbreaking. The fact that if the male detaches, they both die…

Even the way the male fish kind of fuses and essentially gives up all organs and all energy to this majestic female, but he loses his eyes, he loses his ability to swallow. It felt really right at the time. Now I look at it, I'm like, “Oh, that's pretty fucking dark…”

It is also beautiful, in a way. We really go in hoping for the best. You're always going to be drawn to the light, hoping for maybe a different result, but time will tell.

I think as a creative person, it's really hard to ever make that domestic relationship work. I really don't know many people who do it easily. I know people who do it successfully, but not with ease. I'm fascinated by how my creative friends who are artists and writers and dancers maintain these domestic existences with their partners. I'm like, how? Just tell me!

You've spoken about this in different interviews, but obviously, Sabine is addicted to being online and debasing herself in a way. It’s to the point where people don't even realize when something tragic is happening to her because she's so performative. What is your relationship to being online and why did you want to write a character who was so unhealthily immersed in it?

It's become our third space. It's this really weird landscape where I feel like when I'm online, I'm being social. It kind of tickles this part of myself where I feel like I've done something social. When I scroll TikTok, I'm like, “Oh, my friends!” And they're all creators. They don't know me. I don't know them, but it gives me this false reward. It's like gambling in these dopamine hits. I'm scrolling for something funny, and then I get it. I get the dopamine, and then it's more dopamine. I'm hooked up to this drip.

I find that really fascinating, that relationship with your device and with this online world. It's a requirement as an artist to have lots of space to think, and I used to have a lot more space to think. I used to feel all the feelings and think all the thoughts, and that would fold into my art practice. Now I find the time is bookended by TikTok or the internet in all its horror and glory. I think it's this development that's happened slowly and completely changed how I function.

In the novel, Ruth says that every artist is haunted. Do you agree with that? Do you feel haunted?

Yeah. Do you?

Oh, yeah. I feel doomed every day.

I stand by that. I think different things haunt you. I don't think it's one thing for the entire time, but I think it's because we're porous. We kind of get attached to ideas and they sort of ruin us until we make something about it. I think that that's part of it. I don't think it's a bad thing, even though I'm using words like ruin. I think that kind of creation and destruction is the cycle of art making. I definitely feel haunted. I felt possessed by Woo Woo. I felt like that book was a leech on my back, just getting bigger and bigger, and I was getting smaller and smaller until finally it was done.

It was the anglerfish.

I think all creative projects become that. We kind of give that much of ourselves to them. When I'm not being haunted by an idea, I am a fucking loose thread. I'm doing nothing. Honestly, I prefer being haunted. It's a fresh hell not having an idea to cling to.

To be possessed is intoxicating.

I love it. It's like falling in love.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.