One summer I was staying with friends in Austin, TX. We were discussing "repetition compulsion", a theory of the psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud--how people hope to resolve traumas by unconsciously reliving them in each new relationship.

I was bent out of shape about a girl, and I was sure I was repeating the same old obsessive habits. My friend handed me the novel "Ida" by Gertrude Stein. It's about a girl who drifts through life, marrying and remarrying, told in an oddly flat, unemotional tone. I walked into my bedroom and this same came out--like a warning to myself, or a good joke.

For me, Ida is about the difficulty discerning between fantasy and reality, and the seductive emotions that may merely reflect projections of our desires.