featured young adult writer: Patrick Barry

By: Patrick Barry

what inspires you?
I like the phrasing of “musings” as opposed to “inspirations” because I feel that it gives me a bit more room for artistic license as
to what has helped shape my art or what has guided me as I take a stab at creativity. I can honestly say a lot of things, but I can
dishonestly say even more but I’ll let you be the judge as this goes. Music has been and always shall be a major part of my life
and I make no secret of the fact that I am an audiophile. My father is a record collector and so I was literally raised on music
and it has always been my life. The Who were one of the biggest influences on my early childhood and I have lived on this
eclectic range of styles that span from punk to the Italian opera. Storytelling was a cornerstone of my childhood; it was sort of
this thing I got from my father’s side of the family. Visual arts came from my mother’s side; my grandmother was an artist. A lot
of the musings have been almost inherited but there are some that were really absorbed, the primary of which would be theatre. I
don’t really know how that all started. I know it was really early on but I’ve always enjoyed performing. When all of this comes
together you get the primordial ooze that I crawled out of and I’ve been evolving as I go.

what are your favorite books?
My favorite books include: On the Road by Jack Kerouac, A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess, Huck Finn by Mark
Twain, and there are many others but I’ll only give you three to keep this short.

what are your favorite films?
My favorite films: There are almost too many to begin. I’ll give you the names of directors that I like. Martin Scorsese, Sergio
Leone, Stanley Kubric, Michael Cimino, Francis Ford Coppola, Elia Kazan . . .

tell us something about the current teenager...
The current teenage generation tends not to shake hands amongst one another as often as the generation before it; it is not that one
is less friendly or ruder, but that the practice of this behavior as being the expected greeting is being lost over time. Slight
changes in the morals of social conduct are to be expected as times change. Speech has become less formal due to the prevalence of
the instant message; this is not a change that should be feared, however when things can change without anyone understanding
why...