Moreover, language accumulates cultural-semantic baggage over time, yet writers often use language as a tool to express ideas and feelings of the present. Gao builds the auditory aspect of language into his creations. Sometimes I find tonation, melody, to be more important than meaning. Gao listens to music while he writes and often dictates first drafts into a tape recorder. A painter as well as a writer, Gao has supported himself in Paris largely through sales of his abstract ink paintings.
Painting is purely visual.
When I'm painting I try to dismiss all language. I just listen to music, I avoid all verbal associations. But since he won the Nobel, Gao hasn't had much opportunity to write or paint. He seems weary, a little beleaguered by the endless traveling and speaking that has followed the announcement. The day he learned he won the prize, he couldn't get to bed until 4 in the morning.