This sounded like stuttering rhyme or the start of a conjugation example, a masculine noun with a definite article: The Author on the Author... But the idea seems to be that I explain why I write. And as always, I immediately feel that I need to apologize. To answer in court. Defend myself. Point out mitigating circumstances, ideally involving something unspeakably deep and unique and grand. This is often the case when it comes to work of artistic nature: A calling, an inner need, a unique vision, conviction, expression and suffering, I was bursting at the seams with something that no one else had to offer...
It is probably best if I pick one of those things to elaborate on...

At this moment Jóhannes Kjarval, of all men, appears like a liberating angel: Out of the radio sounds an old interview. Vilhjálmur Þ. Gíslason is trying out a brand new recording gramophone, talking to Kjarval on his fiftieth birthday, and asks him in a very serious tone why he paints. And Kjarval replies in a deep voice that reaches out from the past through the buzz and the crackle:
- Painting carries a great deal of responsibility, BUT, WHEN IT COMES TO IT, YOU PAINT BECAUSE YOU ARE A PAINTER.
Then after a moment's thought he adds:
- But perhaps I ought to have become something else...

I may not be a Kjarval, but I am past fifty and therefore I feel fully entitled to put it like he does: I write because I am a writer. It is as simple as that. Perhaps I also ought to have been something else. But the decisive element in this line of work as in any other is most likely always some combination of interest, coincidence, nature, ability, inclination, luck, bad luck, vanity, ambition.  Chance, glance, bending, safe landing …
 
To name a few things.

Can I also mention a love of creating and compulsion?

Þórarinn Eldjárn, 2001.

Translated by Vera Júlíusdóttir.