KALTBLUT-HONK! 03 The Divas

162
Eli Leven is an up and coming young writer from stockholm whose life is governed
by drama and love. In his award wining book, that is being translated into
english, he is writing about things only a few would dare do -very successfully
so- and at the same time he sees his words being turned into a movie being
shot in the swedish capital right now, while he is busy writing and acting out his
inner diva in New York City.
In which sense could u possibly be a diva?
I’m going to tell you a story of how I met my present
lover. I was ridiculously bored and drunk off my ass at
a rave goth club in December in Chinatown when a
man approached me and said he heard by his friend
that I could vogue. I put on a little show for him. When
I turned around he tried to finger me and I slapped his
face and he kissed me.
We went back to mine and had some mushrooms
while watching youtube clips of the Mexican movie
icon Maria Felix, we fell asleep and I remember
dreaming I was Maria Felix, and me and that guy I
brought home went horseback riding in a green valley.
If you could be any past diva male or female, which one
would you pick and why?
Maria Felix was once asked about how Paris was compared
to Mexico and she said “Mexico is my first love,
I’m their whore but I’m also their mother”. I want to be
able to say the same thing .
Is there an event that has shaped you in life?
Taking antidepressants was really trippy and opened
up my mind making me less self critical. I don’t think I
would’ve written the novel without them. I’m off now
though, but they really changed my life.
Tell me a little about your novel, what is it dealing with?
I wanted to write about a dying boy, going from being
passive and sort of a victim to becoming something new,
his imaginary friend, a girl. It’s essentially a love story
about transformation between a femme boy becoming a
girl and this butch sexually confused straight guy. A tour
de force. It’s partly some kind of fantasies that I started
having after watching Wild at Heart when I was 13. I
wanted it to be a conversation with other works of art that
have inspired me, like Dennis Cooper’s Closer, Our lady
of the flowers by Jean Genet and maybe Confessions
of a Mask by Yukio Mishima. I was very naive when I
started out writing it. I think I wanted it to be a sort of loving
father murder. I wrote a lot being angry and disgusted
about how the self destructive “twink” is a sex object.
Is it in a wider sense autobiographical somehow?
In a wider sense maybe. It’s very close to me and I often
think it’s hard to know what I’ve written and what I
really experienced in real life.
Did you expect your novel to be so successful?
I got a lot of good feedback as soon as I showed my
texts to other people and hoped it would be successful
but not like this!
I know at the time, you have left Stockholm for New
York. What more does it offer you?
Excitement. I’m excited almost every day to be here. I
like being more anonymous. There are so many possibilities
in this city, it’s overwhelming.
Are you working on something right now?
For a year I have been working on a screenplay based
on my novel. I am working together with Ester Martin