HOWZAT

BERGER: It seems to me that at a certain moment — when one’s writing a work that is taking months or years — but at a certain moment, when perhaps you’re very tired, life begins . . . well, normally life is absolutely opposed to the activity of painting or to the activity of writing or to all, all creative activity. I mean life has a total continual conspiracy against creativity. We know that and we have to fight for it all the time, but there are certain moments when life, just everyday life, comes and helps. And you never know when it’s going to happen and then it’s amazing, because you just do the same things that you do every day, you go out to do some shopping or you look at somebody on a train or whatever, and it speaks and it contributes an actual idea, an actual image, a colour or something, or a whole sequence of things, to the story. Does this happen to you?

ONDAATJE: Yeah, I think that happens a lot. I think that conspiracy against writing or painting does exist but for me it’s to find that kind of accidental occurrence in the real world that can enter the story in a way and kind of double its value.

BERGER: Yes. An accident is very important, isn’t it?

ONDAATJE: All my writing is hopefully based in an accident . . .But the art of drawing, the pleasure of drawing, which you do all the time, the pleasure of painting and all the different structures you find in painting that you don’t find in fiction, I would think would be important to you. I tend not to learn from fiction. Perhaps I do, but not consciously.

BERGER: But now, because you asked me what drawing was to me . . . when you are drawing, anyway when you are drawing something which is alive, you are drawing the traces of what has happened to it until that moment at which you are looking at it. I mean, the traces of how it has physically become itself.

For example, if it’s a face, how it has, by its experience or the soul behind it, become the face it is. So the drawing is, it seems to me, an observation of how the thing that you’re looking at has become itself. And that of course does have a lot to do with what we’re talking about — and storytelling.

ONDAATJE: I would never have thought about that in terms of drawing. That’s fascinating what you’re saying, and perhaps it’s well-known . . .

BERGER: Well, I’m saying that’s what drawing is for me. It seems to me it’s perfectly possible that Hockney, whose drawings I love, might say something very different, for instance.

Now, if you could with a magic wand — whether devil or fairy — if you could swap the talents you have for another of any kind, do you know what you’d choose?

ONDAATJE: Oh yeah, I would want to be a piano player. What would you do?

BERGER: I would want to be a singer.

ONDAATJE: What kind?

BERGER: It doesn’t matter. The devil or the fairy can decide that.

ONDAATJE: Well, we’ll meet in the next life and join up.

• John Berger: Here is Where we meet, a London-wide celebration of his work and creative collaborations, runs from April 11 to May 18. For details, visit www.johnberger.org. John Berger, Michael Ondaatje and friends will be reading at the Queen Elizabeth Hall, SE1 (0870 4018181), on April 11