LC contest winner: Bobby Alter's 'A cardiovasc' + Interview

I have posted the winner of the This is not not a Contest, Bobby Alter's 'A cardiovasc' live now at laminationcolony.com

Chosen from more than 200 entries, I think this piece is at once new, innovative, fun, smart, funny, and at its heart, made of sentences that I am pleased to know exist.

I hope you enjoy it as much as I do. Thoughts and words as comments please are welcome here, as is any spreading of the word. Thankses.



AUTHOR BIO: Bobby Alter is a nineteen-year-old undergraduate in Portland, OR, where he primarily studies linguistics and French literature. He has newly founded a blog, the Hungerjournal where he will keep updates on his writing and further adventures in blissful poverty.





After you read that, here is a brief interview about the creation of the text, the author's thoughts on writing, etc.







INTERVIEW WITH BOBBY ALTER on 'A cardiovasc'

How long did it take you to create this text?

BA: That's actually an interesting question in regards to this piece... I tend to be incredibly meticulous when it comes to writing, spending as much as two or three hours on a single paragraph, only to scrap it and try again... but this one I hammered out very quickly in comparison, I think I pumped out the entire first draft in three hours. But, that was greatly helped by the fact that the character of Roland was pretty much already created, sort of a personal archetype for me I think, and I had randomly written an early version of the middle bit with the mother a few months ago. Also, the situation of the last scene with Roland and the liver baby is an idea I've put into writing I think a million times, this being the newest (and shortest) incarnation of the idea. I don't know, point being, it didn't take me very long as far as I'm concerned, but the truth is due to all those factors it was really the first time I've worked on a text that "wrote itself," which I guess is a thing that writers say.


Tell me please about the photo insertions and how they came to be part of and / or influence the text before or after its creation.

BA: Adding photos is new to me, I've never done that before, but when I saw you mentioned it was alright I thought I'd try something new. The first is of course a wedding. I think that the idea of family and marriage and all that was an important theme to the text, you'll notice that it involves husband and wife in two generations, also mother and daughter and mother and son and mother and son in law father and daughter and also sort of anti-family types like prostitutes and drug addicts and whatever. The point wasn't to designate the photo as faces to any of the names in the story but I suppose it's fine if anyone decides that. I guess more important is that nobody is happy in that photo. I like the idea of putting pictures and text together because sometimes text is maybe too interpretable to give a specific feel (not that that's a bad thing) so by putting a photo of a photo of unhappy people at a marriage I feel like I was giving at most a feeling and at least a color palette for the text. Second photo is similar. That last section begins in the middle of the sentence and so maybe the image is the first half of that sentence. I love the color and most of all the compression of the image, I actually have a niceish camera and went out of my way to make that a crappy picture. I don't know, maybe the backstory of all that process was just for me, just for directing me as I wrote and felt and did all the things I tried to do. I might ask, what was your reaction to the photos?


Insertion of other media into text can often be a quick, Hmm, what is this trying to hide, so I guess maybe up front I'm always at least a little leery of them at first. In this case, though, they really seemed to have an aura, and weren't just something stuck there but opened the piece in other angles that broke off from the text and enhanced it, which made me feel happy. Also, when I went back and read your note that the photos were of objects that had been given to you by your grandmother when she thought the Communists were poisoning the water I thought was interesting and cool.

I'm wondering, then, about the way the shape of the text came together as you were writing it, as it seems there are many strands here, some very languagey, like the opening, and some more narrative sounding, but still magical, and sometimes it even breaks into (and eventually ends in) lineated phrases. Were the shifting forms something you were conscious of during the writing or did they just happen? Would you say the ideas affected the sentences here or the sentences affected the ideas?

BA: Ah, see? I should have just left it to the professional to articulate for me in the first place.

Okay, these are hard questions, I don't think I've actually thought about anything like this before, but after some serious forehead-wrinkling introspection, here's what I have to say. I like that you used the word magical, I think that's the single most important aspect to my writing to me. Here's a quick disclaimer: if anything I'm about to say sounds in any way pretentious, my deepest apologies; though I like T.S. Eliot as much as the next guy (okay, with the exception of Nabokov who was the first to realize that the anagram of his name is "toilets"), the idea that writing should be associated with some sort of smoking-jacket-wearing, intellectually-driven hogwash is pretty shitty to me. That said, I'm going to list a few ideas I have about language. My understanding of how language basically works in terms of speech is this: the mind creates concepts, puts them into a grammar, and then assigns the grammar to a set of phonetic units which are then interpreted by a third party semantically. While this is the working model for speech that you'll learn in syntax 101 or whathaveyou, I do think it applies to the way that many "description-based" writers do their thing, like Hemingway, Camus, etc. I write very differently. First I have the idea of what I want to say, but in a very broad sense, not sentence-by-sentence as in speech. Then, I attempt to articulate everything at the same time; syntax, phonetics, and semantic meaning must be created simultaneously for me because they all relate. Syntax is rules like Subject Verb Object etc. but those are completely meaningless without a carefully picked series of words, which are equally useless without a cohesive order, all of which are serving to create a semantic meaning. I think the trick that I try to pull off is, when I create them all simultaneously, I can break as many "rules" as I want, use any sounds I want, and get closest to the exact meaning I want to convey. When we speak, we are in a way narrowing down our notions, which is terrible, i.e., here is a big feeling I have, with some of it chipped off so as to be contained within a grammar, then regulated by phonetic conventions, etc. To anyone with the theory that man will create robots that will then take over the world by expanding their own artificial intelligence: as far as I'm concerned, that's already happened in terms of language. Man created language, which then became its own "organic" matter, and now we are trapped by the conventions it creates. My writing seeks to break apart those conventions, not because I am a Joyce-type writer (who, after writing both Ulysses and Finnegans Wake declared the amount of time it would take to fully understand the texts in terms of hundreds of years) but simply because I, like every writer and every person even, what to express exactly what I feel the need to express.


Could you tell me more about your background as a reader and or maker of words? What got you into it, how often you write, your routines, what authors really bang you, etc? You can be as veiled or as open as you like in response to this.

BA: Well, I mentioned Hemingway, Camus, Nabokov and Joyce above and they are probably my biggest influences. I think the first writer to ever make my mind explode was Hemingway. I was young when I first read him, so I likely didn't "get" a lot, but what mattered to me was how he relayed sentiment to his audience in a way I couldn't imagine before. Nabokov and Joyce are important to me in the way that the narration inhabits the psychoses of the characters. Camus is one of many absurdist writers, includingbutnotlimitedto Kafka, Kharms, Artaud, Beckett etc., all of whom I adore in terms of their ideology, which I feel is very close to mine, in the sense that life is a necessary series of revolts against an unidentifiable absurd, against which our greatest tools are beautiful things and childlike things and other things and also of course language. I'll also add Cummings and Rimbaud, two poets who have had probably the greatest influence on the actual stylistic aspect of my writing, both in poetry and prose.
Those are my influences. For reasons as to why, how, etc., I have absolutely no answer. I'll mention though that one prize for winning this contest was publication on Writer's Bloc, where you'll find a prose-poem attempting to answer those questions.

Ahhhh shit I'm trying to keep these answers as short as possible but they're just such grand questions!


Doubled q meant for crudding: What are you working on these days and what was the last thing that you read online that burped your brain?

BA: I don't know, I'm sort of not working on anything these days, it's hard for me to get motivated. But now that I have this story out there with so many people looking at it and everything I figure I should brave out into the world of online journals and try to get stuff published and all that. Ideally though I also want to work on a longer work, because writing short stories is painful for me I think and also because I hate ending things. I have an idea for a sort of novella I want to work on, for which I'm pretty sure 'A cardiovasc' was sort of a preliminary exercise... something about a world where all mothers are catholics and all daughters are either beautiful angelic beings or drug-addicts and whores or both and all men are semi-well-dressed sexually-driven chainsmoking proletariat semi-poets and all children are sacred and all of the characters have goals but at the same time have no control over their actions is extremely appealing to me, I don't know. Like I say the act of sitting down to write, and furthermore liking what I turn out with, is terribly excruciating for me on all levels, so it's hard to predict anything specific, even though when I do write it is the most wonderful feeling.

This poem [http://www.geoffreygatza.com/arkv/bvox04/stt.htm] caused some considerable brain burpage. The poem is called 'Skips' and the poem skips and I somehow feel like it's perfect or some silly adjective like that. I'm really bad at explaining what it is I like about things I read, but what I loved primarily was the way my mind reacted to this, it was to me a sort of battle of expression, like the poet was trying to say something, and the language was trying to say something, and both were being subverted, or maybe it was that the poet was restricting the poem, which actually I would like even better, it would go back to what I was talking about earlier on the subject of language's autonomous power and the need to break that. The important part is that while the narrative part of the piece is disjointed there is a very clear feeling expressed by it, a good one, one to think about.

Blue Nap

Usually I double-brew coffee. I think today I've triple-brewed it. It tastes like a tire. With wheels. I will eat it with my lungs.

Reading Genet and Hannah at the same time is like eating that protein shit that muscle dudes eat. I feel raucous and randy.

I have been slowly upping my run distance over the past week or two, from a 2.4 mile cap to now last night I ran 3.56, all at steady pace. With the state of the real estate, you have to go on a long Spinal Tap-esque trek through corridor after corridor because the fucks who are working on the place and have been for a year now decided to put up a fence around the normal to the walkway to the gym. So they can work on it? No. It just sits there. Though last week they restricted our parking so they could have room to park their BBQ truck and have a 'we've been working on this bitch for a year and still aren't done, hurrah for us' party. Eating BBQ in front of the residents whose homes you've been dicking around on for forever, listening to music and bullshitting rather than working = wish I owned a BB gun.






Elizabeth Glixman did a long interview with me about EVER for Eclectica Magazine. This one was interesting because Elizabeth had a lot of questions about what the book means, which tends to be a common question among my local friends and etc.

The look on my friend Anna's face last night as she told me she'd read the book on a plane was a prize winner, and worth the time it took the write the book.

So this discussion I hope is helpful for those who may have read and didn't understand, and for those who did. The questions are fun, and resulted in an answer I can print up and give to people when they ask me about what the book is about next time:

I am happy with the categorization in your mind in relation to light, houses, structures, blood, and mud. I feel strongly for all of those things and will probably continue writing about them for the rest of my life. I also like shit, babies, mold, layers, rash, titties, hair, teeth, junk, and crud.

We also talk about Beckett, Bobby Beausoleil, blood, the literal, genre, and others. The read is here. Thanks Elizabeth!





Um, MF Doom is good and stuff.







Many many stylez.

I can't listen to 'rock music' anymore, I think. I always get bored in 10-18 minutes and have to go back to rap or noise mess or nothin. When will the $$$ die?






Final month for entering the Scorch Atlas remix contest, let's see them DJ skillz!






Today I am not going to let anyone have any inch of my time but me and this electronic paper, starting now...

^^ ^ ^ ^^ ^ ^ ^^ ^^ ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

i am still too tired as fuck to think about thinking about writing about the world of please & thank you that occurred at the chicago: though notes of some sort will be forthcoming. met and resaw and hung with way too many amazing people, each of whom it seemed like i only got to see for seconds, but the best seconds. brain is hiding now, let's talk later

in the meantime, there's been a lot of internet occurrence, here is some:

1. Michael Kimball interviewed me about EVER for elimae

2. I did the Book Notes feature for Largehearted Boy, which is a slightly different version of the soundtrack that came on the CD i sent with EVER (which I may post soon as a download link or something): EVER book notes

3. Didi Menendez interviewed me for Best American Poetry blog







Also, more reviews surfacing of EVER (which I sold out of at AWP on like the 2nd day, fucking awesome, thank you to all who did the touch):

pr's husband @ HTMLGiant: 'In a hole, filling a hole with holes. Sylvia Plath starving in a crawlspace, stoned on anti-psychotics.'

Adam Coates @ Internettle: 'ever is atmospheric'

Evelyn Hampton @ Lisp Service: 'What really comes out are sentences, perfectly formed and capable of nesting in your syntax for however long.'







The new issue of Action Yes is fucking transcendent.


Too much more to say right now, I'm going to have to come back later, I can still feel the liquor in my teethhhhhh.

I have heard there are lots of pictures floating around, including some from the absolutely transcendent el train reading which my throat is still sore from, but for now here is me looking hungover on my way to redrunk with two of the realest wonders you could ever meet:



as well, here quizzical with Christy Call (most smiles ever, and also a wonder) and Gene Morgan (AKA the 1 man funparty and megabrother for life):

there is too much light in this damn room

I interviewed Dave Housley for Bookslut



Thanks to JA Tyler for nominating IN THE RAPE YEAR OF THE GHETTO TODDLER THE HOUSES WILL AWAKEN for a Pushcart, I am sure the Pushcart ma'ams will just kiss their fingers when they think about the idea of including a tale of hyperbolic toddler rape in their edition, $$$$$$$. Regardless, the nod is most appreciated.



If you are from the government and are reading this, I can't help it that my blog shows up in google as the top result for so many keyword variations of boy scout porn, it bothers me too.




I have been spending all day every day pretty much editing SCORCH ATLAS, it is almost due. I vastly reorganized the stories into a much better fit and arc with the outside eye of Ryan Call, which helped a lot. After so many times reading the stories I am finally beginning to feel they are done done. Nitpicking though is making me slightly insane. I feel paranoid or that someone is touching the back of my head without me being able to feel it. I feel more excited about the book now than at any other point.





To take breaks from editing SCORCH I have been writing chapters of a 'more normal' book which will eventually turn in on itself most likely and also become fucked' and also editing RICKY'S ANUS, which seems like no kind of relaxation, but it's all I can think to do. Some parts of the book are frightening me but I have been really surprised how little editing has been required beyond the first 20 pp or so when I was still getting revved into the idea. Other than formatting and some things I'm doing with structural punctuation, the sentences are almost exactly as I've wanted. I have sent little pieces here and there to magazines we'll see who vomits on what.

The scene where Ricky finds his grandmother inside his mattress wrapped in hair and proceeds to try to cut her out is particularly vibratory, here is a graph:

The head of Ricky’s cock was eating a plate of spaghetti Ricky had hid from his mother under a false bottom in the nightstand where Ricky had also hidden pictures of the sun, pictures that would unlock the secret room lodged in the Epcot Center if presented at the right hour with the right disease. The years altogether future-coming in one long black nod in Ricky’s blood.

There are maybe 2 current editors in the world who would publish this book, if that maybe, yadda, I may print it on rice paper and open a restaurant where it will be served for all meals. Maybe it should be called RICKY'S BLOOD instead of RICKY'S ANUS.




no fuck that





Hey, that's neat Blake. We think that's really swell Blake. No, Blake, really, totally sweet. You have a doorknob on your flub.



I don't know why my imagination has tended toward such violent sexual imagery this year. Maybe 09 will be about fish and lanyards.




I can't tell you the # of people who have msg'd me recently saying some variation of: I hate everyone.

HTML Giant is a pea's carrot.






If this blog were on TV, I would have a guy walk out from the side of the screen now in a red/white plaid suit coat and a straw hat and do a hand-slappy dance with a campy grin to announce: YOU CAN STILL PREORDER EVER, MY LOVEYS!!!

'Yo mammy and yo pops, man, they bout to find yo body'

Rauan Klassnik, author of the really brutal and beautiful HOLY LAND, just posted a long process-oriented interview with me about EVER, including 'Physics, The Universe, Charles Simic, Cormac McCarthy, Tea or Coffee' and shit. Ron also interspersed some critical thinking on the book's text as well as some quoted sections and etc. His questions were really on point.

I think Ron is the first person besides Derek and those who blurbed who has read the book, excluding Peter and 2 or 3 who saw a really early draft. Thanks to Ron for the really nice words, and for the interview. Please have a peek.

And then (inhale), you can still buy EVER for $12 plus a buck and a half for shipping, which will come with free new life and maybe a cheat code for Arkanoid and some other things.




If anyone else is interested in doing an early review or other, I can probably get you a pdf version to checkout. Other press people please drop me a line for paper version when it arrives.

Thanks again to everyone who has checked it out so far, the response has been really nice for just a few days on the block.









If you feel like getting one of the best deals I've ever seen on amazing books Dalkey is doing a huge amazing sale. I already spent $60. If I didn't already own a huge portion of their catalog I would probably have done the 20 books for $110 twice. Amazing.

For $60 including shipping I got:

Geometric Regional Novel by Gert Jonke
Homage to Czerny: Studies in Virtuoso Technique by Gert Jonke
Pigeon Post by Dumitru Tsepeneag
The Bathroom by Toussaint
The Complete Butcher’s Tales by Rikki Ducornet
Temple of Texts by Gass
The Conversions by Harry Mathews
Romancer Erector by Diane Williams
The Obstacles by Eloy Urroz
The Mirror in the Well by Marcom

They have also released some of my favorite books ever, including The Tunnel, Magnetic Field(s), several of Markson's, Ben Marcus, the new Stanley Crawford rereleases, Nightwork, Coover, Barthelme, Elkin (oh god I should fill in my Elkin gap: THE MAGIC KINGDOM is one of the all time greats). Just too much.








I read the first half of Jesse Ball's THE WAY THROUGH DOORS last night. It is utterly insane. Sort of like IF ON A WINTER'S NIGHT A TRAVELER if it had been written on even less sleep. Be excited for it.







twitter is actually kind of calming

Sean Kilpatrick is lipstick beverages

Sean Kilpatrick interviewed me for his Anorexic Chlorine Sex Toy Museum. We talk about rape and Wigs n Beepers and editing and film and William Gass, et al.

His interview blog has so much reading material on it, including interviews with Daniel Borzutsky, Gene Morgan, Letitia Trent, Mike Young, Tao Lin, Kevin Doran, etc. He asks real questions.

I'm pissed at Sean right now because he apparently did not tell me he has a new book coming out from Six Gallery Press and has work forthcoming in Fence also. He is the new truth, I promise.

If you have not yet read his story HUBBY, you are missing probably my favorite short story of the year.

Sean Kilpatrick's first full length book of poems is free to read online from BlazeVox, and is fucking awesome: THE MAN WHO FOLLOWED ME HOME.

The book we are writing is the best thing I have ever touched. This week the father in it had a latte with David Berkowitz, built a chocolate replica of Auschwitz in the attic, a turtle was set on fire, and a woman got a portal into the universe rubbed into her flesh by a tutu.

It is real.





The Guardian did a piece on Michael Kimball's postcard project featuring 4 samples, including mine. The scope of this project just keeps getting bigger. Michael is a force.







EVER just went to the printers. It is more than I could have imagined. Sneak peeks and bonus shits coming.









The last 20 seconds of this video is almost an excerpt from RICKY'S ANUS. The rest makes me happy as well:











Time to get fat.
Please have a day of caloric rest.

Massengil throat singing

* Jason Moore interviewed me for Bust Down the Door & Eat All the Chickens, about all kinds of shit including dreams, William Gass, editing, Oprah, lists




* Jimmy Chen reviewed my chapbook IN THE RAPE YEAR OF THE GHETTO TODDLER THE HOUSES WILL AWAKEN in a wonderful way, and also reviewed Nick and Brandi's chapbooks concurrently released. Thank you Jimmy.





* Pistachio pudding is fucking amazing, I had no idea





* U.S. Maple's TALKER or ACRE THRILLS is all I can listen to, antimusic, I had no idea Michael Gira produced TALKER until just now, I asked Michael Gira to blurb EVER and he said nicely that he had absolutely no time, at least he took the time to respond, if he was a language poet he probably would not have, I feel aggressive with no release valve, if anyone can get me a physical copy of his THE CONSUMER I would like to buy it but not for $50 like it always is on amazon used





* Yannick Murphy's STORIES IN ANOTHER LANGUAGE has me interested in writing short shit again: this is a magical book.



God Knopf made beautiful books, I wish there was Knopf in Lish ways now still, maybe some are close





* Last night in my dream I got attacked by several children, they forced my pants off and were biting me, a helicopter arrived outside the small room which had one large observation window, I was arrested, I was given a chance for freedom by escaping through a large labyrinth, there was a thin bald man in a red latex suit with a handlebar mustache looking for me, if I beat him to a checkpoint I would go free, I succeeded in throwing off my chaser by hiding in a large netted tub of styrofoam confetti while a group of honkies shit-talked me through a walkie-talkie, when arriving at the checkpoint I was told I'd come too late, I was ascended through a glass tunnel out of the ground into a point high above desert earth, my whole dad's side of the family was there, including my cousin whose children were the ones who'd raped me, the whole family's faces were flat, the men's hairs were combed weird, you could see along around them forever, there were a few oil derricks and growth patches but mostly just sand around the glass tower, they watched me get executed, I can't remember the method of execution, I woke up as I was killed





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Tornado Update + Links

Randomly got called by my HOA tonight. It's been about a month out of my home now. I thought I'd be back by the end of this month. Now they estimate it will be another 2-3 months. They are going to rip out the drywall and cabinetry in 10 out of 12 units in my building. The cabinetry has to be imported from Canada for some unknown reason. There's nothing wrong with cabinetry. They say they afraid of water having sunk into it. They want me to sign a contract tomorrow releasing some company they hired to move my shit for me. I'm not 'allowed' to go in and move my shit by myself. I had to sneak onto the property (with some help from unnamed sources in security) to get some of the shit I didn't want stored. A lot more water damage has occurred in the past few weeks. A lot of water from my neighbor with the missing roof has spread through the wall into my place. It ruined more books than I realized. I got most of my stuff stuff out, though all my furniture and the rest of my stuff stuff is in the apartment and I guess these fuckers are going to move it. I don't know what will happen if I do not sign. They keep saying 'good as new.' People keep saying 'at least no one was hurt.' At least no one was hurt. At least no one was hurt. It's becoming like the Pledge of Allegiance, hearing that. I'm glad no one was hurt.

Thank you to everyone who keeps writing me about my status. It is appreciated.

- - -

Justin Dobbs interviewed me a while ago and now it's on Dogmatika.

I want to actually write the book I was talking about here:

"My book is about abortion practices in middle Taiwan, where young mothers are made to squat in public fruit stands with their pants down and yip like my neighbor's dog until they are rendered infertile by their own sound. It is a very brutal and disturbing practice. I saw it once while I was on a ski trip with me mims and pips. We were sold shoddy ski tickets by a charlatan in a bunny suit. My dad will buy anything if you smile. Anyway, the main character in the book is a nurse practitioner whose main job is to stand holding the middle finger of this one young lady subscribed to abort. His name is Chuck and he has never seen himself in a mirror and he hates his father for leaving him at the Taiwan Zoo when he was young, which, if you've never been to the Taiwan Zoo, believe me, you'd understand. The book rotates between exhaustive stream of consciousness excerpts from Chuck during the nine day stand it requires to help Akisha (that's the girl's name) abort. Chuck, perhaps surprisingly, does not think in words that include the letter 'B', which is a trick I stole from a rather famous Taiwanese tome I most admire, titled Dahm-Vana-Ana Wee-Womp. The other passages in the book are told from the perspective of the child inside Akisha as he/she is being aborted. It's all very difficult, obviously, and I expect to win several awards. The book is titled Dahm-Vana-Ana Bee-Bomp: A Sequel, and will follow the release of my other recently completed book, Scorch Atlas. I went through a long period of not being able to walk without my hands over my face after I wrote this book. I was not able to call my mother and I was not able to cry. It was very hard, this writing. Very hard. Please give me the award."

Justin Dobbs and I are writing some kind of thing together, sending short chapters back and forth. It is mostly written sporadically, high on coffee. I don't know what it is, but it is starting to scare me a little. I don't know what we'll do with it. I like it. I think about it while I'm driving.

- - -

Download the Lamination Colony Audio Suppository. I made it quickly but it's a good listen, I think. It sounds good with fat headphones.

Long Interview With Brandon Scott Gorrell

A couple days before ALIENATED AFRAID OF FURNITURE IN BEDROOM went up online, Brandon and I had a long "interview" style discussion about it on Gmail chat. It is very long, though it stays mostly on topic. We talked for about 90 minutes. I think Gmail chat is a good way to interview someone because it's like a conversation but you can take long pauses to think and write what you want to say the way you want to say it but you also don't sit and "compose" an answer. It is an honest and efficient form of interview. In this interview we talk about masturbating. Even if you did not read Brandon's book you are probably interested in masturbating. If you read the whole thing you probably win. Okay good.

BRANDON AND BLAKE GMAIL INTERVIEW FOR FEBRUARY 2008:

4:26 PM me: ok this is the beginning of the interview
Brandon: okay
me: when did you write this book
4:27 PM Brandon: i think i wrote the book like two months ago. at the end of november. but it took a long time to finish because i edited alot. i finished it right before i sent it to you, that was in the middle of january i think.
me: how long do you think you worked on it
hour wise
or how long each day
4:29 PM Brandon: i would say it took me no more than 12 focused hours. the document was usually always open, but i only 'picked at it' for a very long time. i hardly ever sat down and focused on the whole thing. at the end i did. so it was maybe like an hour or two of extreme focus a couple times a week but only on like one sentence or one section, and with distractions, and dispersed over my entire internet day.
4:30 PM me: i like to write like that too. it seems like you get a lot of little bursts of energy
like you keep writing and get up a lot
and so your energy doesn't deplete
Brandon: yeah
me: and you can drink coffee
Brandon: i agree with this
me: and little things happen that influence sentences
4:31 PM Brandon: i think thats how i write all of my things. for the ebook i shitted the bulk of it out in one session but after wards i was just picking at it. if i go to piss or walk to the store i will become influenced and get and idea, like you said. i agree
4:32 PM me: 'i am on the bed and everything feels wrong' is the first sentence in the ebook
Brandon: you are correct
me: how did this sentence occur to you? was it just in your head? did you just think it and start writing?
4:34 PM Brandon: i think it was 'the first thing in my head'. i sat down to write the thing with the image of me 'bludgeoning the king size bed with my claws and reeling fists' and that was the only idea that i had for the thing, and i felt shitty on my bed (i write everything on my bed because i don't have a desk), so i wrote that. it was true i was being honest
4:35 PM me: you sit on the edge of your bed when writing?
Brandon: thats a good idea
4:36 PM me: do you lay down?
Brandon: i never thought of doing that. i sit either cross-legged on my bed and hunched over my computer with horrible posture, against the wall with pillows and the laptop on my lap, or laying on my stomach with my torso supported by my elbows
4:37 PM i also lay on my side but that makes it really hard to type
i lay on my side when i watch youtube videos
me: i think it would be hard for me to write like that
Brandon: now i am at the library because i worry about my posture
me: i tried it once, laying down while writing
and everything turned babbling.
4:38 PM but the sentences here are very clear and precise
if strange
Brandon: hm
i always write on my bed
because i dont want to move
4:39 PM its the only place that i have in my room to sit. my couch is full of clothes and there are blankets on my bed and pillows and everything is comfortable there. i consider myself a 'diverse' writer though, in that i can write in many different positions and locales
body-positions
me: diverse is good
i am the opposite
4:40 PM i wish i could do that
Brandon: i try to switch my body position alot becuase i am afraid of the posture thing
me: but now there is only one room i ever get anything done
Brandon: really?
which room?
me: a room in my parents house, where i lived from age 16-19
i drive 30 minutes to their house to use the room
i wish i could write somewhere else
but i cant
Brandon: that is interesting
4:41 PM what do they say
what do you say to them
me: they are used to my routine now
they talk to me when i come out to get water
Brandon: that seems like a healthy habit
me: it helps to be away from the place i live
it makes me think of it with more rigor
Brandon: yes
me: but it also constricts me
because i have to be there to feel productive
you are lucky to have your bed be your place or work
4:42 PM of work
Brandon: i would like to sit on a sidewalk in the middle of downtown and write
i think i would make something good
i would be afraid of people attacking me though, stealing my laptop or something
me: new positions are worth trying probably
what do you feel looking at the front page of your ebook
4:45 PM Brandon: i really like how it looks. i feel a sense of 'pride' because it looks professional and organized and 'deep' to me. i like seeing my name there and my little picture. i feel a sense of expectation that more people will like my writing. i also feel a sense of, something. i cant articulate it. a feeling of wanting to tell someone, 'we worked on this, and here it is, and i want you to like this.' i also feel a little afraid. i feel interested too. i look at the faces, especially the middle one, and feel a disquiet.
4:46 PM me: we have agreed there is something evil about the book, especially the way it fits together and the photos i inserted
i think the front feels like the start of evil
Brandon: the front is the start of something horrible
4:47 PM i feel like the front is horrible too. i forgot that.
its really, really horrible
me: i agree
i cant place why
Brandon: yes
me: but i feel an evil that begins here and grows as i read through the book
Brandon: i keep thinking 'black hole' and 'enter the fun house'
me: black hole
4:48 PM black lodge
Brandon: also, i kind of keep thinking something about wierd porn, and this old playstation 2 game where you went around and made footage for snuff films
me: those are good thoughts. like moving into a fucked video game
4:49 PM Brandon: where you play out strange and base emotions
me: i like how it is pointed out on page one that the shampoo and conditioner do not move
'not an inch for anything'
that is ominous seeming
Brandon: yes
i put that in at the 'last second'
me: you seem to mix the everyday with the ominous
which is why it's even more scary
because it is real
it is real everyday evil
evil in any house
Brandon: yes i think thats a good point to make about the book
4:50 PM i think it is because it is true, in a way
me: houses and rooms scare me in general
i like to think about houses
and rooms
4:51 PM like placeholders
4:52 PM Brandon: i dont know. i've been umemployed for awhile and i moved up to seattle with no friends almost a year ago, and i still don't have that many friends, so i spend a lot of time in my room, and some things start to feel very bad and bleak and desperate, like the idea of your room, or the image of your bed when you are getting coffee. like you are getting coffee and then all the sudden the image of your bed pops into your head and you feel horrible because you are there so much and there feels like nothing else. maybe that is something that explains the book a little.
me: that's very good
good
4:53 PM everyday things are more scary than monsters
that is why most horror movies fail
they fail to be scary because they can't exist
but rooms and houses are everywhere
Brandon: yeah
4:54 PM me: you wrote this on your bed. that scares me.
fuck
Brandon: i become afraid sometimes, when i am on a plane and descending on a city and can only see suburbs. that frightens me because i think of the people inside sitting on their couches and watching TV and doing this endlessly until they die, with TV dinners, and computers, and trampolines and shit. i dont like that.
yes that idea kind of scares me too now, that you say it
i can understand your fear
4:55 PM it is another component of 'the horror' that is the ebook
me: yes
we talked already about the yellow crap on the chin of the face on the second page
Brandon: yes
the skid mark
me: i dont know why it is there
you have to look very closely at the right angle
4:56 PM Brandon: it was created in a toilet stall in a truckstop in rural kentucky or something
thats how i feel about that
me: i also really like the line about wanting to masturbate but being too tired to move your arms
i feel like that often
why do people want to masturbate when they are too tired
4:57 PM Brandon: yes, i think someone else gave me that idea
4:58 PM im not sure, i have that feeling. wanting to masturbate when too tired. like 90% of the time i will wake myself up enough to do it. i don't really know why. it's a feeling like there is nothing else to do and it will help me get to sleep and it feels really good, which are all good things, and can be done easily, so. it should be done. it is like 5 or 10 free minutes. like you get a prize every day that is 5 or 10 minutes of being relatively not bored.
5:00 PM me: sometimes when i am falling asleep i will be on the edge of sleep, which is hard for me because i have a lot of sleeping trouble, and i will somehow think of masturbating and i will get stuck on the edge of sleep and i will hang there for a while and i cant go forward until i come back out and try to masturbate
but i almost always masturbate in front of my computer
so then i have to get up
and it wakes me up
Brandon: another benefit of computer on bed
me: and i lose interest in masturbating halfway through
and then i am awake and not horny
Brandon: really?
me: and not fulfilled
5:01 PM i'd say about 20% of the time i lose interest while masturbating, if i've woken myself up to do it
i dont know why
Brandon: i have lost interest in masturbating in the middle of the process like .75% of all times i have masturbated
me: i think because i am mad i woke myself up for it
haha
in normal masturbation, yes, i rarely lose interest
5:02 PM but mid-sleep masturbation, i dont know why, it moves up to 20%
Brandon: this is funny
im trying not to laugh because there are people around me
me: laugh
Brandon: sitting like 3 feet away from me
i can't
i did
a little
me: and when they look at you, stop laughing and say 'i was laughing about masturbation'
5:03 PM and then turn away
ok
back to ebook
what do you think of the mask picture on page 3
why do you think it is there
5:06 PM Brandon: i thought you put it there because of what i said later on, about putting the chinese war mask on my wall to quell the green emoticons. but i dont know. i have a lot of thoughts about all the pictures and the corresponding text. i think every picture you put in the ebook corresponds with it's text in an unspeakable way. in a way that i understand emotionally but not 'verbally'. with the mask on page three i always feel very connected to the mask when i read 'and i know my face will stretch into something fantastic' and also when i read the word 'chandelier' and think about looking into a mirror and it reflecting the room at an angle. the mask makes a certain 'sense'
5:07 PM to me
me: it makes sense
rooms
the mask looks sort of like a chandelier
it also looks like it might speak
5:08 PM Brandon: it looks frightening to me
it reminds me of the mask from the film 'the mask' with jim carey
the mask that he found in the water
not the one that his face turns into
me: jim carrey
5:09 PM they showed jimc arrey at the super bowl last night
he looked shrunken
Brandon: really
me: hold on i have to piss
Brandon: i want to see that
ok
a shrunken jim carrey
5:10 PM me: tell me about alienated afraid with no comma
while i am gone
5 minutes
5:15 PM Brandon: okay, the title. it's like that because i thought it like that and i originally titled the word document that. i like typing things in caps because it seems belligerent and idiotic and sometimes a little 'ominous' and kind of loud and also i feel it adds sarcasm. there is no comma because i feel like yelling the title. that's all. if i would have thought of a word that meant both alienated and afraid i might have used that. maybe the title is sort of idiotic and feels anxious which makes it go along well with what's actually in the book. it 'fits the theme'. "alienated and afraid of furniture in my bedroom" is too nice and calm. taking some of the words out, making it like it is i think added a feeling of being 'frantic' or 'anxious' or 'miserable' or 'miserably frantic' or 'panic' or 'chainsawed'
5:16 PM 'horribly chainsawed'
me: yes it does have that effect
a lot of the effect of this book is muted like that
and builds slow
which is good
or feels good
5:17 PM a package appears on page 4
and is thrown out the window
Brandon: yes
me: and i dont think it appears again
what is in the package
5:19 PM Brandon: it appears again on the page with the chair picture (one of the 8's). i was afraid of what was in the package. i didn't know what was in the package. i knew kind of what was in it but i knew if i opened, then i would have an obligation. i felt horrible about it. i didn't want that package to exist because it only imposed anxiety on me.
me: it does have anxiety.
5:20 PM you try to destroy the package
Brandon: i wanted to get rid of it
it was a real package in my room, i just barely opened it
it was unopened for like 4 months
me: a real package
where did it come from
5:23 PM Brandon: yes, i mean the package was like a 'real character', it was based on a real character in my life. which was the package that was in my room for awhile. the package had a microphone and two cd's in it. my friend sent it to me because he wanted me to record my voice for him for some of his songs. i said i would and that he could send me the mic, but i misunderstood him a little because i thought he was only going to take one of his old mics and send it to me. later, he sent me an email, saying 'hey, me and my girlfriend paid for it, all you have to do to pay me back is use it,' and i didnt want that, because i was completely anxious about recording for him in the first place, so when i got the package i just avoided it and put it on my couch and it sat there for a very long time
me: avoidance
Brandon: yes
me: couch
5:24 PM Brandon: complete avoidance
me: covering up your furniture
ok good
then there is a woman with cleavage and a lion
in the picture next to the text
Brandon: ;yes you did a very good job
the connection seems very clear
me: take a look at her cleavage
Brandon: it is like a picture-word metaphor
not a word-word metaphor
i looked at the cleavage
5:25 PM me: you can see that she doesn't tan uniformly
Brandon: i enjoy it
yes she has pale boobs
me: she has tan marks on her cleavage
that end high on the breast
as if she doesn't usually expose that much tit
Brandon: i dont know if i can see that
im not sure
me: she is looking at the lion
Brandon: i see a sort of vertical line on the high boob
me: and kind of kissing it and sort of talking to it maybe
Brandon: is that the tan line
yes
me: i think its a tan line
5:26 PM it might be something else
Brandon: the picture is calm
but afraid
me: yeah
conflicting mixture
ok fuck
Brandon: what
is everything ok
5:27 PM me: im just looking at the evil of this book
Brandon: yes
you know
me: the next page is evil
Brandon: i almost typed 'this book is making me feel horrible insane'
me: the sound of the ashtray
Brandon: when you typed that
me: when we were chatting while i put it together i felt really afraid
we did it from about 2 am to about 530 am
5:28 PM we were both frightened
Brandon: yes, i was frightened
can i ask you a question
can we just make this a dual interview
me: ok
yeah
we should
ask
Brandon: this is already long i dont know if people will want to read all of both
me: you're right
long
Brandon: but its good and i am very interested
okay
me: i feel interested so far
5:29 PM Brandon: sometimes when i scroll through the book my internet connection takes a little while for the pictures to load and before the pictures load i see funny things written in the boxes where the pictures are about to appear. i can't remember any of them right now. do you know what i am talking about? can you say what those things are and recall all of them or some of them?
5:30 PM keep typing im going to piss
5:32 PM me: those are the comments that you can input into the html coder so that if for some reason the images dont load there will be text there instead. in some browsers you can see the text by scrolling over the image. in other browsers you can right click on them and it will tell you in the properties box. the reasons for why i put whatever text is there would change. sometimes it had to do with how i found the image.
for instance,
5:33 PM i put in hole
for the image on page 5
5:34 PM but mostly they are just syllables that appeared in my head when i found the image
some of the images i found by writing long sentences into the google image search
i would write long sentence, the first thing i thought of
5:35 PM i think one was 'I DO NOT KNOW WHERE I AM'
and another might have been 'SOMETHING ELSE IS GOING TO HAPPEN SOON'
or sometimes more gibberish related
5:38 PM Brandon: haha, thats funny you write syllables that appeared in your head. that syllable poem thing you did was really funny, that you posted on your blog the other day. i really liked it. you said 'cod eye' and like 'bop beep bip beep' or something. that made me feel 'giddy'. i think we can both ask eachother questions. that it should be mixed from now on. when i was pissing i thought 'blake chose me, blake chose my e-book, that is good, he worked on it a long time, it is not really only me that did the e-book, it is in a sense very collaborative'
5:39 PM me: i liked what you sent me. i felt like i could 'respond' to it. i didnt realize i could influence the feel of it as much as i did until i started working on laying it out
but then i did feel like i was interacting with the text
and it was an electric feeling
Brandon: did you feel frightened when you were reading it in the email i sent you? as just plain text?
or did you start to understand 'the horror' once it was put into the ebook format
me: i didnt quite feel frightened. i did feel a bit displaced
5:40 PM Brandon: displaced
?
me: yes, like removed from myself
i dont know how else to explain it
Brandon: hm.
me: alienated
but in line with the alienation
because the title tells you that
5:41 PM so i felt displaced from my normal self but in line with somethign else
if that makes any sense
5:42 PM Brandon: i think it makes a kind of sense. i want to ask you another question now. i used a weird tense in the book. it is like past perfect continuous or present perfect continuous or something. during editing i changed the tense of the entire things like 5 times and one time it was more of a narrative. what do you think of the tense?
5:44 PM me: yes the tense is strange. in a way it is absorbing because it brings you into the action like first person normally does but then it puts you even more so into the text by switching from saying 'i am sitting' and then 'i have opened.' it's like someone is dictating their actions to you from a remote location in the immediate present rather than telling you a story
5:45 PM which definitely enables the evil
Brandon: yes, i just thought that. it is an 'evil enabler'
me: why did you switch the tense so much
what made you want to
5:48 PM Brandon: i originally had it in the tense that it is, right now, in the book. but sometimes for me it sounded very awkward. i felt conflicted. i also changed the format a lot. first every page was a paragraph with no line breaks. then i was thinking about submitting it to 3AM because chris killen edits fiction for them and i think he would have accepted it, but i felt that for 3:AM it should be a little more 'traditional' or something (there is no value judgment on 3:AM in that sentence) so i changed it to some other tense, maybe just past tense, and put it in paragraphs with some dialogue and indented beginning of paragraphs and shit. i sent you a 'preview' that was like that. then i felt bad about that and broke it up into different lines and changed the tense again and it felt alot better
5:49 PM me: the sections are important
why did you number the sections the way you did
1,2,3,4,5,8,8,4000 and so on
5:50 PM i mean 1,2,3,4,5,8,4000,8
5:51 PM Brandon: because i felt very sarcastic about numbering sections. i have read things that were numbered and didn't really understand why they were numbered. but i like numbering. it is easy. it's like a more important 'blank space' in your writing. so after a couple sections i just started typing the same number and 'this sucks' becuase i felt stupid about numbering but also wanted to number. i didn't mean for it to confuse the person reading. i only realized it might when i first saw it in the ebook. what did you think about the numbering when you first saw it in the email? were you amused? i was amused by it but also a little afraid it was stupid
5:53 PM me: yeah i was a little amused and a little like 'this is silly' but more amused and then when i began setting up the book i started to really like it because it was confusing, but in a way that went along with the text. i imagine it will confused people reading through it online. it confused me a lot when i was trying to set up one page after another
it also adds to the disorientation of the story somehow
there are lots of minor things about the book that add to it without direct reasons why
particularly in the formatting
5:54 PM Brandon: yes i think the numbering feels very good, it goes along with the text. yeah, that is a good thing to say. i want to ask you another question.
5:55 PM on your blog you solicited people to submit for lamination colony for author parodies and maybe, 'bad writing' and i think, the sense i got, was that you wanted to see different formats. how does this e-book coincide with what you were soliciting for? i was afraid it didn't, after i read your post. why not another issue of LC?
6:00 PM me: i wanted to make an issue that had a whole ton of stuff that other places would not do. i like the idea of the ebook being another part of the issue, but i also like the issue to stand alone. i am now beginning to lay out the issue and at first i had the ebook in the 'table of contents' area at the top of everything else, but now i have moved it to be separate but still on the same page. i think too many magazine have defined their borders as in 'we can print fiction and we can print poetry and we can get crazy and print nonfiction'. i want to provide something different. this issue will have your ebook and the parodies and a gmail chat and a letter someone found written from their cousin to their mom and a thing i think was meant as spam but reads as writing and an essay with a bibliography and a very violent except from a text that is not finished.
i want the issues to continue to get more fucked
i want people to send me naked pictures
i want people to send me things i cant figure out how to format
i want people to send me stuff written by their 5 year old brother
or pictures they drew in their sleep
etc etc etc
Brandon: haha
6:01 PM i laughed a little and no one noticed me
hm
i like your idea for lamination colony
it feels more 'artistic' in a way
but also like a circus
me: yes a circus
Brandon: i think the idea goes along with how you like david lynch so much
6:02 PM me: yes. your book reminds me of lynch a lot also
it has a lot of the same resonances as twin peaks or inland empire
lynch combines camp with bizarre with mystery with nudity with commonplace with surreal
6:03 PM a little taste of everything, and in a way that doesn't quite resolve
Brandon: i really like him
do you know what day the new issue of LC will come out?
me: i just laid out the 'table of contents' area today.
6:04 PM it is full and has a ton of stuff
i want to put more but it would be crowded
so as soon as i can lay it out, it will go up
hopefully in the next 2 weeks
but your book will go up first, on ash wednesday
which also seems evil
Brandon: ash wednesday
yes
me: fuck
Brandon: i am glad that ash wednesday is the day it will be published, i like that
me: i just saw the line about the package sitting on the floor
the package reappears
that is fucked
6:05 PM you are fucked
good

Interview with Elizabeth Ellen

I interviewed Elizabeth Ellen for miPOesias.

There are also several other interviews in their new interview issue.

Justin Dobbs interviewed me

Justin Dobbs interviewed me on his blog. We talked about David Lynch and Atlanta and ghosts and Tao Lin and my next novel and abortion and sitting on people's faces and Taiwan. It was fun. There is also a sexy photograph of my chest. I like being interviewed I think. I think I like doing that. I am sure I like Justin Dobbs. He asks good questions. Thanks to him and his blog.

interview at impersonal electronic communication

I was interviewed for a new blog: this is an impersonal electronic communication.

It also has other texts.

Read while wearing your goat slacks.

Below is a thing I made five years ago that I found while cleaning out my closet at my parents' house.

Robert Lopez interview

A couple weeks ago I interviewed Robert Lopez about his novel PART OF THE WORLD. You can read it now at Word Riot.

If you haven't yet picked up a copy of his book, you really should. It has short nice sentences and is funny and strange and you pretty much have no choice but to read straight through it. My full review will be coming soon in Rain Taxi.

You can find out more about the novel from at its publisher's page: Calamari Press, who I think is by far publishing more great work than any other small press around right now.