McGough’s musings are occasioned by the release of his memoir, “I’ve Seen the Future and I’m Not Going: The Art Scene and Downtown New York in the 1980s,” due out from Pantheon Books on Sept. 17. The book begins, in medias res, in 1998 and takes the form of a near-deathbed confession: A year after learning he has AIDS, McGough has dropped to 100 pounds and expects to die. The narrative then pivots back to his boyhood in a Syracuse suburb, tracing his journey to New York City and his introduction to the eccentric downtown personality whose theories of parallel timelines and passion for the past would change his life. From there, McGough offers an intimate inside look at the New York art world, his tumultuous relationship with McDermott, the AIDS crisis and his own illness and treatment.

In person, McGough speaks with the same chatty candor that characterizes his book. This morning, he’s been working in colored pencil, on reproductions of McDermott & McGough paintings “the Europeans bought and didn’t show” so that, as drawings, they might enjoy a second act. In the next room stands a row of small bright blue canvases, embellished with spider webs and flowers, that feature cheeky phrases (many of them obscene) in a delicate Gothic script in which all the letters have been painted to resemble twigs. Two in-progress works from the series rest on easels opposite each other: One displays the title of McGough’s memoir — a saying of McDermott’s that also served as the title of the pair’s 2017 retrospective at Dallas Contemporary and has appeared in past paintings — while the other bears the title of their 2006 exhibition at Cheim & Read gallery, “A True Story Based on Lies.” Surrounded by images illustrating McDermott & McGough’s prolific career together, and with the occasional interjection from his longhaired Chihuahua, Queenie, McGough answered T’s Artist’s Questionnaire.

What is your day like? How much do you sleep, and what’s your work schedule?

I keep the curtains open in my bedroom, so that I wake up early. I go to bed before 11. And my days, I come here. I’m lucky: I experience joy every working day. And the joy I experience is incredible. I think that’s what a day is supposed to feel like.

How many hours of creative work do you think you do in a day?

All of them. Being an artist, one lives a creative life. You’re looking at something — you go see a museum, you see a film, you see the world, you look out, you see the tree — that’s creative action.