Miranda July Asks: What’s On Your Mind?

She makes movies, she writes fiction, and now, she tells fortunes. Miranda July‘s second feature film The Future comes out at the end of the month and it’s about a couple in their mid-thirties trying to figure out their life paths. To gear up for the film, she created an online oracle that offers words of wisdom via e-mail.

When we found out she’d be coming into the studio, we decided to put her fortune-telling skills to the test. We asked you to write in with your questions about the future — she’ll answer a few on an upcoming show. In the meantime, we thought the results were a fascinating survey of what’s going on in the hearts and minds of America’s creative people — or Miranda July fans, anyway.

The top three concerns according to our not-so-scientific tally weren’t entirely surprising: career concerns, philosophical dilemmas, and relationship issues.

“I am going to die a cat lady!” a lovelorn listener wrote. “The fact that I don’t even have cats (yet) should really be a sign of just how deep my singledom runs.”

Another revealed, “my wife wants to sleep in separate little beds instead of one big bed, sort of like on the Dick Van Dyke Show.”

Several people were concerned about having children. “I want to have a baby,” one woman wrote, “but it seems like there are too many practical considerations, such as space and money and time off from work when I’m the main income earner. So should I wait to have a baby or just do it?” Another explained, “as someone who is currently riding on a beautiful wave of young love, I am also quietly anxious about the future, given nature’s tendency to be reckless with people’s loved ones.”

As for the gal with car troubles, she may have answered her own question. “I can only trust my feet.”

For folks who are stuck in a creative rut, may we humbly suggest our own treatise on the topic: Spark: How Creativity Works. And Miranda July will tell you herself soon: listen for her interview — and fortune telling session — on next week’s show.