A TOY, A TOOL, A LEVER: Rebecca Gransden interviews Kathe Koja

A TOY, A TOOL, A LEVER: Rebecca Gransden interviews Kathe Koja

May 10, 2022  ·  Interviews & Reviews
If anyone can be considered a psychonaut of literature it is Kathe Koja, a writer who utilizes prose to explore every altered state the page has to offer. With her latest project, Dark Factory, Koja enters the club scene, a place where mind-bending as old as licking a frog meets speed freak technology, and pagan archetypes dance with virtual avatars. I spoke with Koja about the sweet delirium of the project.

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What attracted you to club culture for the world of Dark Factory?Everything I write starts with a character, and for Dark Factory, it’s Ari Regon—smiling, hyper-alive, throwing sparks—and Ari brought the whole party along with him, including the club. And a club is very fertile ground for human behavior, good and bad, it’s a safe space and a potentially dangerous one. It’s where we go when we want to just let ourselves go.Your writing is highly sensory and accelerated, a perfect fit for the themes of Dark Factory. Do you consider stylistic approach when preparing for each project, or is this more an instinctive process?Completely instinctive. A project’s format—a piece of writing, a live event—might make different uses of it, but my work’s voice is consistent. The world of Dark Factory is rich and highly textured. How did you approach research for the project?There are so many moving parts—club culture, immersive makers, VR-adjacent tech, various religious mythologies, the business of art—and each one is its own rabbithole, so I had to dive in and keep going, keep following the branching turns, keep up.The whole project was like that: it knew what it wanted to be from the jump, and once I stopped trying to cram all that research and material into a traditional, linear “novel”, everything got a lot easier—though it took awhile, more than a year, to get to that point, to understand what the material was actually about, and what it needed to be.A main character in the book is the Dark Factory club itself. How did you go about creating it, and what are your own feelings towards it?Thank you for saying that! Definitely the club is a character. And definitely a club can have a character, all the best ones do (think Berghain, for example, or your favorite spot, the one you walked into and said, this is for me). When a club’s really hitting all the marks, it becomes a truly liminal space, and you become limitless inside the music, the created atmosphere, the feeling that this is where you most want to be. Someone in Dark Factory says, It’s like the world if the world was perfect. That’s the goal.The characters of Dark Factory are frequently decorated with masks. Could you talk about the significance of masks to the narrative?Masks are signifiers of intent or philosophy, they’re borrowed personality, wearing one is hiding in plain sight: people feel freed with a mask on, liberated by anonymity, or absorbed into a tribe. The dancefloor avatars of Dark Factory are very much in that mode. And the horned mask kicks it all up another notch: Ari accepts the mask from a woman he tried to help in her creative endeavor, then it’s worn by Felix the DJ to totally blow up the party, and his own creativity, too; it’s seen as a symbol of sex for some people, a satanic symbol by others, it’s emulated and appropriated and made into art. It asks, What if a mask is its own energized space, is sacred space, in the sense of a mythos operating in real time?A recurring theme is that of connectivity, iterations of which include: the connective bind of the Dark Factory club itself, connection made and missed between characters, mycelium networks, orgiastic happenings, and the interconnectivity of tech. What is the narrative significance of connectivity?To highlight reality, because everything really is part of one big thing. There’s no meaningful organic separation between living things and their universal environment, everything exists in the same flow and flux—not in a wouldn’t that be wonderful? kind of way, but in a physics kind of way, a climate change kind of way, a karmic kind of way. Humans are the ones who insist that artificial boundaries are just as immutable as those laws of physics, and tailor their belief systems accordingly. And their behavior.Tech is a dominant feature, especially in the realm of interactivity. Perception and experience of reality is modified by technology, and the borderline between traditional definitions of objective reality and the virtual sphere overlap and interrelate. The game of life intertwines with computer generated gaming. Could you elaborate on the role of technology in the book?We like our tech. We’re ingenious in finding new uses for the things we’ve already made, and those things enable us to make still more new things. So is tech meant to be a toy, a tool, a lever? or all three? The people who come to the club to inhabit their shiny, sexy bespoke avatars, to dance and fuck the night away, are interacting on one level; the techs working on that augmented reality are on another; and the developers creating the games that lead to transformation are on another. How many levels are there? and are they necessarily hierarchal? The urge to transcend our human, body-based experience exists on all those levels. Is interaction with tech dependent on its functionality, or on ours?Interactivity extends to the novel itself, where the reader is provided with links to bonus content, placed at suggested points in the narrative. Was this aspect present from the start or did the idea evolve over time?It was definitely present, though I had no idea how to deploy it! Which is why that early period of What even is this? took so long. But once I got it into her hands, Tricia Reeks of Meerkat Press conceptualized the experience, with a very streamlined and engaging design for the print and ebook editions, to make sure people could enjoy the book at whatever depth of engagement they chose. Which all leads into –The world of Dark Factory widens into a multidisciplinary project, with a devoted website featuring immersive and multimedia content, and a varied online presence. What is your intention for the project as a whole?—the overarching intent, which is to present immersive fiction, a story that operates just like life operates, in a constant rolling moment of creation and action and loss and memory and art, in the core story of this club, and everybody whose lives radiate around it and around each other, just like our lives radiate around one another, every day. And to offer people a way to play in this world, if they choose to.One important aspect of the project is energy. When writing, or conceptualizing, did you use any methods to aid the mindset needed to sustain the desired energy for the project? Loud techno, and sitting at my desk every single day.How should I prepare for a night at Dark Factory, and what can I expect?Expect to have fun, expect to be surprised, expect a dose of possible heartbreak and/or everlasting friendship. Expect to play along! Hydrate. Wear shoes you can dance in. Bonus if you like flowers. Bonus if you know where to get excellent espresso.What tracks are essential to include on my Dark Factory playlist?Oh the best question of all! And the hardest to answer. Here’s a (very) shortlist, to get you dressed and out the door:
  • Lady Monix – Track 39 (feat. Rashida)
  • Green Velvet & Harvard Bass – Lazer Beams
  • Perfume Genius – Your Body Changes Everything
  • Romy –Lifetime (PlanningtoRock “Let It Happen” remix)
  • Lampé – Sunset Avenue
Any advice for the morning after a Dark Factory experience?Check to see what reality you currently inhabit. Check to see if you still have your shoes. Drink that espresso! And tell your friends.Lastly, what would you want a reader to take away from the novel?The indelible rush of fun. The urge to go make some fun yourself.
Crow Jonah Norlander

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KATHE KOJA on film with Rebecca Gransden

KATHE KOJA on film with Rebecca Gransden

May 3, 2022  ·  Interviews & Reviews
My sister had taken a bunch of us kids to the drive-in to see a scary movie, and we started out shrieking and giggling; by the end, we were jammed together in the front seat, silent, or crying. But the feeling I remember most deeply wasn’t fear, it was outrage.
Crow Jonah Norlander

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BRIAN ALAN ELLIS on film with Rebecca Gransden

BRIAN ALAN ELLIS on film with Rebecca Gransden

March 22, 2022  ·  Interviews & Reviews

What film, or films, made the first deep impression on you?

My aunt and uncle on Long Island, for whatever reason, had a big-box VHS copy of I Spit on Your Grave in their collection, nestled somewhere between Stripes and Mr. Mom. I never asked about it, or even watched it, but it always kind of confused me. I thought it was a porno or something. I finally ended up watching I Spit on Your Grave as a teenager, which made me thankful that I didn’t watch it as a child, though I did accidentally catch A Clockwork Orange on Cinemax at a very young age and it completely freaked me the hell out. 

Very often film is one of the ways we first come into contact with a world outside that of our direct experience. Which films introduced you to areas of life away from the familiar circumstances you grew up in? 

The coming-of-age films of John Hughes showed me that rich people have problems also, I guess. And it took me years to realize it, but Revenge of the Nerds taught me that nerds too can be real shitty, problematic people.

What films first felt transgressive to you? Do you remember being secretive about any films you watched growing up?

As a child I became obsessed with this Swedish film called My Life as a Dog that I’d see on HBO. It’s about a poor, lonely kid whose mom gets put in a looney bin. Then his dog is placed in a kennel. He gets abused by relatives and teachers. He learns to read by reciting lingerie catalogs to some creepy old man. Then he befriends this girl who is kind of a tomboy and they box for fun and they beat the crap out of each other. Then there’s a scene where he takes a bath with the tomboy and it all seemed very sexual and scandalous to me. It felt very much like watching porn, this movie. It made me feel icky and sad and enthralled and I’d only watch it if nobody was home. 

Are there any films that define your formative years?

The mid-1980s horror film The Gate showed me, at a very young age, that if you throw a dead dog (your untreated trauma and neurosis) into a demonic hellhole in your backyard (the void that exists within yourself) that bad shit will happen.

Can you talk about the influence film has had on your writing?

Plays, specifically movies based off of plays, probably influenced my writing quite a bit. Like Mike Nichols’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, or stuff like Comeback, Little Sheba. Splendor in the Grass. Tennessee Williams adaptations. I related to dialogue-heavy dramas about broken people. Experiencing Douglas Sirk films like Imitation of Life and Written on the Wind will really allow you to take your writing out of its comfort zone and just go bonkers with it. 

Do you use film as a prompt or direct motivation for your writing?

I try going into each writing project with the same energy as an Ernest P. Worrell film, especially Ernest Scared Stupid. 

What directors, film movements, or particular actors have been an influence?

I dig all the New Hollywood films of the 1970s. Hal Ashby, John Cassavetes, Peter Bogdanovich, etc. etc. That’s the best stuff, in a lot of ways. Great character stuff. Lots of hidden gems, too. Like Searching for Mr. Goodbar and Joe. Robert Altman’s Nashville is pretty much Brothers Karamazov, but better. 

Have you ever made a film? If so, has the process of doing that had an influence on your writing?

I’ve acted in little short films that friends and I have made, but nothing too serious. I would be down to do something more substantial one day. Filmmaking is a lot of hard work, even doing just nonsense stuff. 

Are there films you associate with a particular time in your life, or a specific writing project?

Ghostbusters will always remind me of childhood, especially because my mom sewed me a Ghostbusters jumpsuit for Halloween one year. 

My buddy and I, as teenagers, snuck into a screening of Boogie Nights, but it was at the end where the drug deal goes bad and then Mark Wahlberg shows off his prosthetic penis. We obviously stayed for the next showing.

Donnie Darko was kind of the movie of my twenties. I first saw it while my band was on tour and we were crashing on someone’s floor in Chicago. I didn’t think it was very good at first, but everyone I spoke to loved it. It took several viewings with different people at different periods of my twenties to really appreciate it. It’s now a movie I revisit often. 

My thirties were mostly spent in a majorly depressive stupor, though I do remember being very charmed by Frances Ha for quite some time. 

Note: How any of this random bs relates to specific writing projects, well, I have no clue. 

Thinking about the places you’ve lived, are there any environments that are cinematic? Have you lived anywhere that has been regularly depicted onscreen? If so, has this had an influence on your perception of the place, or how you’ve depicted it in any of your writings?

I grew up in a trailer park in south Florida, so maybe Gummo? I don’t think I put too much “place” in my writing, at least not intentionally. I guess I’m more into characters and situations than surroundings, I don’t know. There’s been a lot of films and TV shows made in Miami. The Larry Clark movie Bully was made in the neighborhood where I grew up. (The Florida Project also captures that empty, Florida outlet mall spirit pretty well.) I live in Gainesville, Florida, now, which is where that Paul Giamatti movie The Hawk is Dying (based off of a Harry Crews book) was filmed. That was 15 years ago, mind you, so the city has changed quite a bit since then. That’s one great thing about film—it captures a certain time and place to revisit, which is comforting. 

Are there films you regularly return to, and do you know why?

I mostly watch films I’ve already seen several times and I do that more than checking out newer releases, which is probably a bad habit. I think it means I have anxiety and that I’m mostly depressed. I especially enjoy revisiting “light and crunchy” stuff. For example, I recently watched 10 Things I Hate About You again, and let me tell you, it still slaps. 

Do you have any lines of film dialogue you regularly use in your daily life?

I regularly say “Dishes are done, man,” from Don’t Tell Mom the Babysitter’s Dead, even when there are no dishes involved. Also, I’m pretty sure I still quote Wayne’s World as much as I did as a teenager and people rarely know what the hell I’m even talking about. A sphincter says what?

Are there individual scenes that stay with you?

The super sad ending in Wayne’s World where Wayne’s hot girlfriend resents him and all his idiot friends perish in an electrical fire.

What films have roused a visceral reaction in you? 

My mom took me to see that violent Stallone cop movie Cobra when I was a kid and the film opens with a gun pointing directly at the audience and I remember it giving me quite a jolt. I probably peed my pants. My mom was nuts, by the way. 

Are there films that are reliable for inspiring your creativity?

Pretty much any John Waters movie gives me a creative charge, though the results are never as funny or brilliant. See also: the work of Rainer Werner Fassbinder. 

Which of your writings would adapt most successfully to film?

Probably my book Something to Do with Self-Hate, which would make a sad tour de force about lost, damaged people further damaging themselves. A real “feel bad” flick. Lars von Trier could direct. 

Can you give some film recommendations for those who have liked your writing?

I recommend Shakespeare’s Thrashin’ (1986), where the older brother from The Goonies falls for the leader of the rival skater gang’s sister at a Red Hot Chili Peppers show, which Shakespeare rewrote in 1993, replacing the skateboards with rollerblades and calling it Airborne.

 Brian Alan Ellis' yearlong Internet novel, HOBBIES YOU ENJOY, is being updated daily on Instagram.
Crow Jonah Norlander

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JAYNE MARTIN ON ADULT ISSUES with Rebecca Gransden

JAYNE MARTIN ON ADULT ISSUES with Rebecca Gransden

March 17, 2022  ·  Interviews & Reviews

With The Daddy Chronicles (Whisk(e)y Tit Books, 2022), Jayne Martin returns to bruised memories. The book is driven to explore how recollection takes form, fragments made vivid, torn from deep wells and thrust into an attempt at order, a chronology, a way to make sense of an absent father. This absence dominates, and is bitterly ever-present. Martin strives to confront the irony in this, and with this collection of memory vignettes, reframes her past. 

When did you first have the impulse to tackle this subject? Was the form of the book apparent from the start?

The book just erupted from within and took me completely by surprise. It was subject matter I had tackled once before in an essay form, but never followed through on it. This time it wouldn’t let go. Why now? I don’t know. I think as we get older we have the desire to make peace with the things that have haunted us. I was in a flash fiction workshop led by Meg Pokrass in November of 2020. It was based on her novella-in-flash, The Loss Detector, about a fatherless family, single mom, its main narrator the young daughter. Each day we’d write a flash piece based on one of the stories. In doing so, I discovered that the character in “The Other Woman” waiting for her married lover who never shows, and the infant in “First Love” whose father ignores her cries, were actually the same person—and that person was me. That’s when it morphed from fiction to memoir. 

There is a fragmentary feel to the book, both structurally and narratively. How purposeful was this? 

Memory is fragmentary. We, or at least I, write to make sense of things. While there are many threads that make up a tapestry of a life and often writers interweave them in order to tell a larger story, my focus was singular and specific. I had questions. How did the rejection of the very first love of my life, my father, lead me to seek out others like him—men who were charismatic and emotionally unavailable? It was like putting together a puzzle without the benefit of the picture on the box. As I wrote, pieces emerged that I hadn’t expected. There was no way to plan the book in any kind of cohesive manner. Without Meg’s workshop, I doubt I would have found the structure at all. 

Did writing about real people, often in an unflattering way, lead to any conflicted feelings? Are there aspects you left out of the book, or wish you’d included?

Had I included every bad romance, this would have been a mini-series. After a while, readers would have justifiably said, “Oh, for God’s sake woman. Get it together.” The last thing I wanted this to be is a pity party. The fact is, things turned out very well for me. Granted, I forged my way alone, but whatever my father didn’t give me in life, he did pass on a gene pool that made me strong, resilient, accomplished, healthy and so much more. As did my mother. I regret that she may come off in an unflattering way when the truth is she gave up everything for me. My father was the love of her life. She entered into a second marriage that was unhappy for her in order to make a stable home for me, and then, divorced again, struggled to raise me as a single mom. She died at just 54. I was 23. After years of being a selfish, disrespectful, horrible teenager, I didn’t have the opportunity to convey to her how grateful I was. My mother’s story is a whole other book, but whenever I try to write about her I’m awash in guilt and tears.

For your previous book Tender Cuts you use flash fiction. Were you conscious of the influence of flash fiction on your non-fiction in this case?

Long before I wrote flash fiction, I wrote movies-for-television for 25 years. Different from their big-screen brethren, TV movies are written in seven acts to account for commercial breaks. The “two-hour movie” is a misnomer. You have approximately 93 minutes of actual screen time to tell the story and at the end of each act you need a “keep them guessing” story beat to lure your audience back after the commercials. Raymond Carver could have been talking about the TV movie when he said “Get in, get out. Don’t Linger. Move on.” As it was, he was talking about flash fiction. So I came to the form well-prepared and it felt very natural to continue with it in The Daddy Chronicles where each chapter is akin to a movie scene. 

Some of the most vivid moments are the observations of small, seemingly inconsequential incidences that ultimately have great emotional weight. This juxtaposition has a startling effect. Is this a technique you planned to use, or did it evolve naturally from the material?

Details place the reader in the story and create emotional resonance. I will never forget a scene from Mary Gordon’s brilliant novel Final Payments, where she’s dealing with the grief of her father’s death and the unresolved emotional issues between them. She’s cleaning out his refrigerator and picks up a head of lettuce that dissolves into a mushy, moldy mess in her hands. I read that book 40 years ago and that moment still sends me to my knees. The use of visceral details is something that pervades all my work. It’s how I see the world. 

How long did the book take to write? What is your recollection of the time spent writing it?

This book was one of those rare writing experiences where the story just poured out of me, like it had been hovering for years just waiting for a point of entry. In Meg’s workshop, we wrote a story a day for 30 days. At the end of that month I had a first draft. Of course, there was still a great deal of work to be done, but just a couple of months later, I was ready to send it out. It was crazy. It was like the book knew what it wanted to be. Everything about its creation was a surprise. Most surprising was the anger that came up for me. I thought I had dealt with my feelings toward my father. Intellectually, I had reasoned that one cannot give what one does not have. I had forgiven him. But there was still a very hurt child inside of me screaming, “Hey! Not so fast.” 

The book perceptively deals with trauma, both its immediate impact and ongoing after-effects. There is a self-awareness that accompanies the events, a distance that enables a matter-of-fact retelling. While this creates an unsentimental tone, it also demonstrates one of the main consequences of trauma. Could you elaborate on your intentions for the book with regard to the representation of trauma?  

You kind of nailed it here. Distance from one’s emotions as a consequence of trauma. There’s a scene in the book where a writing teacher suggests I see a therapist to get more in touch with my feelings and my response is “I don’t tell him I’ve been doing my best to stay out of touch with those things for most of my life.” As far as my intentions for the book, I guess it’s a book I wish I had read decades ago. Maybe I wouldn’t have spent so many years thinking I was the only one broken. During the writing, I read Denna Babul’s The Fatherless Daughter Project, where I learned that one in three women identify as fatherless. I saw myself on every page. Maybe others like me will see themselves in The Daddy Chronicles and not feel quite so alone.  

Could you talk about the locations in the book? Are there places you’ve returned to since the scenarios featured took place? Are there places you’d be curious to go back to, or those you’d not want to revisit?

I grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area, my early life imprinted with the sights and sounds of San Francisco, the bay windows of the grand old Victorian “ladies” like eyes watching over me. Although I haven’t lived there in many years, it is still the place in my heart that I call home. At the age of about six, Mom and I moved to an older four-plex building in San Mateo where I started first grade. It was my first stable home and I often wonder if it is still there, but have never gone back to look. When my mother married my stepfather, we moved to the house on Cherry Street in San Carlos. While all the houses around it are exactly as I remember, ours is gone. Demolished. As if it never existed. Those years of my life wiped away. In its place, a new modern structure. Seeing it gone felt like a death. 

What is your experience with catharsis?  

Writing the book wasn’t so much a catharsis as a way to step out of my “strong woman” persona for a while to say, “This is who I am and this is why.” I’ve allowed few people to really know me in such a way and I’m honestly not sure if I’m ready for the response. 

You mention a spiritual component to your life, and cite a particular incident as having significance in the process of moving on from feelings that had a grip on you. Could you expand on this aspect?

I was raised Catholic and, although I left the church while still very young, the concept of a higher power, an energy that some call “God,” never left me. There’s a reason such beliefs are called “faith” and not “fact.” My mother was a big believer in guardian angels. When I look back at, particularly, my adult life, I have to believe in a Divine energy. No one could have been so “lucky.” There has never been a time when, confused or depressed, I have asked for guidance that some type of opportunity did not appear for my highest good. Every single day, sometimes several times a day, I align myself with the creative force of the Universe by taking a quiet moment to simply say “I AM” and express gratitude. Again, faith not fact. 

A central theme, especially in the earlier part of the book, is of a young person burdened too soon with adult issues. For many, this leads to a perpetual state of being ill-equipped to deal with vulnerability. What challenges or observations did you encounter when compiling examples of this for the book?

“Burdened too soon with adult issues.” Yes. That’s exactly it. From very early on I was acutely aware that the adults were not in charge. That I’d better take care of myself because they were likely going to drop the ball. As a result I became a total control freak. “I’ll do it myself,” my mantra. Vulnerability? I avoid that like Covid. The use of humor to sidestep my emotions is still my go-to coping tool. There’s a chapter in the book called “On My Own.” It was during a time in my life when I was no longer a child, but not yet an adult. I was engaging in very destructive behaviors involving sex and alcohol and I had this dream where I was in a room from my early childhood with my younger self and she says, “You were supposed to take care of me.” As an aside, it is very common for fatherless daughters to become promiscuous, to confuse sex with love, use one to try to get the other. 

How would you describe the book to a potential reader? And does this differ from how you describe the book to yourself?

The story of a fatherless daughter, my journey from hurt to healing. There comes a time when we all start to take stock of our lives. The focus begins to shift from mourning all the things we didn’t get to gratitude for the things that gave our lives meaning and joy. Honestly, if I could change the past and have the father I wish I’d had I don’t think I would do it. I’ve known people who had wonderful fathers and their lives still turned out a mess. My life turned out pretty great. 

What was your original intention for The Daddy Chronicles? Has this evolved or changed? Do you consider your intentions to be fulfilled?

My intention was to write the book and put it out into the world. I’ve accomplished that. Now it’s out of my hands. The search for and need for love is universal. When we learn to love ourselves first, we attract the love of others. My hope is that the book finds its way to those who need to hear that message the most. 

 

The Daddy Chronicles is published by Whisk(e)y Tit Books and is available at https://whiskeytit.com/product/the-daddy-chronicles/

Crow Jonah Norlander

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I DON’T GET HOW ANYTHING WORKS ANYMORE: a conversation between Tyler Dempsey and KKUURRTT

I DON’T GET HOW ANYTHING WORKS ANYMORE: a conversation between Tyler Dempsey and KKUURRTT

March 10, 2022  ·  Interviews & Reviews

TYLER DEMPSEY: Going to a music festival ten years after you didn't like going to them in the first place. And, just not being able to get that feeling you could back then. Understanding from now on it's a memory unreachable. I've never read a book that used this location/theme combination. Did you come up with that, you bastard?

KKUURRTT: Hahaha I mean I wrote like three versions of this location before I found the theme of chasing a memory unreachable and they were all just pure fucking trash. 10K word false starts that will never see the light of day. Like, look at how fun this thing is wow. But don’t people already kind of know what is fun for them? One day something just clicked, the first line of the book really, the idea of a character being over this thing he claims to still treasure and it all just worked from there.

So, the location was there the whole time, but the theme came later.  I don’t know if that’s the most effective way to write, but I always just start with an inkling and then let it develop on its own. When you write, do you outline, do you plan? Is theme x location a concern?

I’m more in love with this idea of ‘having fun,’ than having my chain yanked tight in anticipation of anything providing it.

Easier said than done but I love the ethos. I hate when I forget this kind of shit and settle into some caveman brain kind of shit, existing on survival mode that doesn’t even apply to this situation I find myself in.

An older friend (97) said the trick to not blowing his head off was being sincerely interested seeing what his brain might think next. I would blow my book’s head off if it didn’t offer results I didn’t anticipate. Heard common burnout, in nonfiction, comes after the research stage. Like, your brain worked through whatever made it interesting.

Bye.

But if you don’t take notes. Just let it swirl around. It’ll remain interesting and sustain the marathon of book writing.

The biggest points will stick. The others, the brain’s ass will shit out.

I’ve never gotten past the research part of a research-heavy project.  Collapse under the weight of more and more and did I do enough? The only research I let myself do now is in-the-moment kind of stuff. Even then sometimes I just use a [placeholder] and come back on the rewrite. Maybe I’m a fuck research except for that of a life lived kind of guy. I guess that’s what they mean by writing what you know. Not like in any “this is the only way” sort of way. More like, why not use the tools you already have?

I never know what’s about to happen in front of the blinking vertical-line on my screen. A character worth chasing presents a melody to me. The longer I mine it–see where the particular combination of tones leads them–the more image chips out of the marble. A novel I wrote last winter was an exception. Dreamt it. Then had a sense of urgency to get it down. A crime novel set in a fictional, Midwestern town. Realized once I started I needed a map/character outlines/other shit I hate.

Power for you to be able to pull this off. Glad there was benefit in map/character/outline. Some people only write that way and I wish I could. My brain just gets bored by this process and starts acting out against itself.  Self-sabotage my entire life any time someone told me what to do—and that includes me. It’s fucked.

Hope I never do it again. Was it scary writing a book that spans only a few days? Or did it allow you to settle in on the line-level. I gotta be honest—I don't read a lot of Twitter-writers engaging a reader like this—you're actually funny.

The schedule kept grounding me. Always pulled me back to a timetable, even if of my own creation. Otherwise I have the nature to get lost in my diatribes, rather than being in the moment. Time isn’t real when you’re on drugs, so it’s like all really fast or really slow and it didn’t have to be 10 pages = an hour or some shit. Just as much as I wanted to hyperfocus or not. But time kept pulling me out of musings or philosophy or high-speak and into narrative. And even though there’s not much of a narrative, days passing became a sort of replacement narrative. The original version was five days instead of four, but I worked with an editor who helped me pull back slightly. There’s something infinitely relatable about just a weekend. Who hasn’t had one of some comparative nature? I don’t want to call it a bender, but yeah… eventually there is a return to normalcy.

Thanks for the compliment on being funny. I feel like such an asshole when people on twitter are like “are there any actual funny books,” and I’m like ahem… Are there any other books that make you laugh?  Are we supposed to laugh while reading fiction?

Agree. The weekend works on many levels. It’s juuuuust long enough. But not too.

Wasn’t wired for drugs. Even in my 20’s. After 3/4 days I needed 48-hours to grind my teeth in soft lighting. Felt strung out toward the end of your book. Seriously, I wouldn’t say it’s a ‘difficult’ book, but it’s not as easy as railing coke.

It’s just not sustainable. I feel like people think “I’m just a drug guy,” and sure I’ll advocate for experimentation all day, but the book is also very clearly trying to come to terms with the notion that maybe this isn’t the best. Feeling strung out by the end of the book was by design. I got strung out writing it. Too much of a good thing…

Being stuck in a cosmically-unpleasant situation like your narrator hits different. Like watching, Seinfeld, or something.

Funny’s hard. Which is why your book’s refreshing. Zac Smith tickles me in an intellectual way. I see his ‘flex,’ if you could say he has one, as subversive. Very: don’t look at me, but please, please look. He’s phenomenal. Stuart Buck’s recent novel, Hypnopony, made me laugh.

Lots of writers seem to be doing similar, highly-cerebral comedy. Aimed at a writerly-audience—Cavin, Sam Pink, et al.

LOL on Zac. His writing definitely has a flex. I see the look at me/don’t look at me kind of thing, but I also think it transcends even beyond that. I can’t wait to see what Zac is writing in thirty years. Cavin and Sam, I’ll ride or die on both of their writings. Haven’t read a page I haven’t loved. I need to read Hypnopony, fuck.

We love seeing people get what they deserve. As the situation becomes more a mockery of itself, tension builds, almost in the way horror operates—even minor situations are imbued with oh-shit-what’s-gonna-happen feels. Being one step away from a k-hole…

Just putting people in worse and worse situations. And drugs make that even easier. Like I knew a k-hole and a bad trip were incoming, but I had to save them for the right moment. Tension and release. I love horror movies, but can’t really fuck with horror fiction. Guess I’m more inclined to let comedy be my horror. Same kind of visceral reaction… just horrible shit happening to people. Except here, it’s funny.

Roland’s musings act like an adjacent narrative, then SNAP back into the flow of what's going on at the festival. And, because the paces (like, how they say people in different cities walk different speeds) aren't aligned with one another in each narrative, there's a pleasing warble when the reader gets to pull off that merge. Like nailing a simple trick. An ollie. You still feel good.

The musings to narrative snap IS exactly what I was going for, something that could balance interiority and presence in physical space simultaneously. I really appreciate you comparing it to an ollie. There’s an excitement to it, even if it’s simple. The author who inspired this stylistic effort most is probably Henry Miller. But his obsessions are more fucking-influenced than mine.

It’s just the way my brain works and I couldn’t do anything else if I wanted. How do you translate your thoughts to the page? Do you silence some and let others through? I’m sure everybody’s process is different, but mine is 100% apparent on the page.

Agree, everything’s on the page. Henry Miller, haven’t read him. What book/s operate/s similarly?

Sexus, Plexus, and Nexus and Tropic of Cancer/Capricorn are all too long and the magic trick wears off well before you’re done. The books of his that get it most right in my opinion are Quiet Days in Clichy and Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymus Bosch, but I like to read Miller more for tone and style than narrative anyway. Can pick it up, read 50 pages, and put it down for six months. I haven’t read everything, nor do I really intend to.

I translate my thoughts to the page in a murderous sprint. Most of what’s left, after editing, is propelling plot.

I DO try to reward in craft-y ways. Another reason I’m drawn to your work, I’m sure. My novel, Consumption, switches narrators each chapter, so it has that ollie-reward. Readers get to know narrators/voices, and don’t need fancy bells and whistles, like me saying who’s talking, to know who’s talking. Writers who pull this off, I see as magicians.

I had a screenwriting teacher when I was 18/19 tell me—as nice as she could—that all my characters sounded exactly alike—like me. Probably why I just tend to write in first person present. I have a lot of ideas that need close narrative distance to multiple people, and I always feel incapable.

Do you write on drugs?

Write high, edit sober…? No, write sober, make stranger/sillier high, edit sober.

It’s occasional. Like a pass or a paragraph. Moreso I let music guide me. Obviously I was listening to a lot of house music when I was writing this. Just 2 hour set after 2 hour set, putting me in that forward momentum. Though, music depends on the project. I write a lot to the Grateful Dead and Kanye. Right now the thing I’m working on is Aphex Twin. We’ve been talking music in the DMs. Do you use music to write? Does it change?

Music’s huge. It’s a daily necessity. I struggle with mental health and can only get by off the music in my head a few days before I need a massive aural-assault from the outside to set me straight. I use music to check whether what I’m writing/reading is good. If it can’t compete with mid-volume background noise for my attention, it probably isn’t.

I’m going to start using that as a litmus test for both things I’m writing myself and also reading. Nothing worse than reading the same sentence over and over. Can music focus me away from my phone? Here’s hoping. If not, trash it.

What were your favorite tropes to riff?  Aurora? The druggies/dealers? So many prepackaged images, you could really go crazy there and I found myself able to catch up, even if I got lost for a second. Kind of BLE-URBG'ing myself back into the scene.

There’s this total visual overload at a festival, and I did my best to capture it, but I don’t know if that is even possible through prose—especially as someone who largely lays off of description.

I think my favorite tropes were describing one or two people in passing: the viking men or the guy in a suit or the couple out of basic raver monthly. Find a way to cut them down to size with a half a phrase rather than a full description. So much going on that it always felt like a flash of this and a twist of that would work. I feel zen in a situation of overstimulation, but it’s impossible to catch all of the details.

Had a poetry professor say we write about our obsessions, and I definitely got some out with this book. Might try to avoid drugs in the future. Try and come at it from a different angle. Do you have obsessions that refuse to leave your writing?

I had fun writing Crime. The one I enjoyed most, though, was the Californian. Already Dead was the first book I read that made me want to write that trope. Lived in the Bay Area for a few years. Made me realize these unique cultures—the Bostonian, Californian, New Orleanian, the Southerner, the Appalachian–naturally brought so much to the fiction table. That book has such real characters. Have you read it? One of Denis Johnson’s lesser-knowns.

There’s something so cool about California lit. It has the ability to be a million different things to a million different people. Such thematic differences between say Good at Drugs and Body High, which are the only recent California drug novels of my recent memory. I’ve only read Jesus’ Son and Largesse of the Sea Maiden, but Johnson is a king, so I can’t see why this wouldn’t be as well.

Read the plot summary and it was an instantaneous cop:

Can’t wait.

Awesome. Body High floored me.

Obsession is an obsession. I riff origins, often. Surreal seems pervasive. Thinking of Brian Evenson, Stephen Graham Jones, etc., here.

Hell yeah. You ever watch any De Palma movies? I feel like he nails this.

I haven’t. Sounds like something I should pirate.

I imagine if anything my career throughline will be music more-so than drugs. This is my rockstar shit… fictionalizing rock star shit.  Honestly, the only thing Dave Chappelle has ever said that was of any interest to me was in his Block Party movie directed by Michel Gondry: “Every comic wants to be a musician. Every musician thinks they're funny. It's a very strange relationship that we have. Some musicians are funny. Some comedians can play.”

I’m neither, but writing both.

Good at Drugs is about belonging. Or not. Didn't realize how whored-out-for-community every facet of festivals sadly broadcasts itself being—sunglasses/face-paint/glowsticks, groupthink, I-knew-about-this-band, yoga. The only similar trying-this-hard-but-failing-sortacommunity I can think of is the Writing one. Do you mind talking some on your own sense of alienation? What, if anything, have you gotten from the writing community in making this book? How’d you come by the Anwyll blurb?

Welfare is so so good, so I just shot him an email and he dug it. Felt really quite fortunate. I still feel like I owe him, but I don't know how or what…? The communities can be very similar, except doing drugs with people is definitely this bonding experience and I’m pretty sure I was the only person at AWP on acid that year. I got my MFA and felt like an outsider because I didn’t write in literary or genre stylings. In fact, all of the people I bonded with (aside from the wonderful Tex Gresham) were poets. People that were obsessed with language more than plot. God, the first piece I wrote for that program was about an open-mic comic who goes on stage and melts as performance art. In retrospect, it felt like out of the gate I was like “fuck your workshop.” When I found this literary community I felt that I belonged. A bunch of weirdos who took writing seriously and sometimes even let themselves have fun with it. I think with time I started to see the false trappings here just like the festival-community, but I’ve made good friends in both.  You’ve just got to weed through the bullshit.

Or slide into the DMs. I read Newspaper Drumsticks when you posted it as a pdf months back and I liked it but I didn’t say anything. I’m glad you reached out to me and started talking rap music.

But maybe the bullshit is just the timeline and we all really need to get to know each other in person better. Maybe there is value in things like AWP or writing retreats. I don’t know. I’ve been at this too short of a time to be jaded. I’m glad we met. The internet itself is alienating, even though it has this great power of bringing people together. Maybe it’s all about finding your niche and being satisfied with it? From the phrasing “trying-this-hard-but-failing-sortacommunity” it seems like you’re feeling alienated. Is that the case?

The Timeline’s a big table. Everything’s picked over. Or, like, the apples and shit laid around deflate if you bite em. I’m too new to be jaded, too. But, you're right. Everything requires bullshit-combing. Hearing you say you liked my book is awesome. It’s nice hearing anything. Most of what I read hits the way it sounds a lot of the stuff in your MFA did. Like, a completely different sport, or something.

I don’t know why sometimes telling another person that I liked what they did feels like the hardest thing in the world. We really are fucking weird creatures.

For sure. Still haven’t found a ‘community.’ X-R-A-Y is the closest thing. Reading there has been huge. A few individuals respond to my thing. And, you know, I see writerly groups on Twitter connecting, and I’m happy for them.

Don’t know what people think about my circle on their timeline.

I used to wish people would understand me. But, that didn’t work.

What we’re circling—maybe—is work? Like, you can’t expect community to come on, like you crushed it up, loaded it in a bong, and sprinkled DMT on top. Your efforts usually end with the message never answered.

But, that isn’t the point.

Or is it the point entirely? Are we having a conversation (partially) to embolden other writers who feel without community to start talking? Two Writers Talking—a new series on [wherever this ends up getting published].

I hope.

Good at Drugs feels like it needed to be written. For you. To set down a thing that once buzzed and felt special. A book literally millions of seemingly 'normal' people, who flashback every time they sip orange juice, would love. Do you get a sense it's reaching readers? Can you envision a way writers might hustle in the future to reach niche-but-adjacent audiences?

Yes yes. The people that are reading it are feeling a connection even if they don’t have that direct experience and that’s definitely exciting to me. A solid amount of people have bought it, but I believe it’s just sitting there on most people’s shelves. I appreciate everyone who tweets about books they love. Obviously indie literature lives or dies by buzz. I don’t think this book has connected with ravers quite yet. Like there are hundreds of thousands of people who do drugs and go see live dance music, but getting this book into their hands has proven to be a challenge. I believe the right DJ gets their hands on it and posts about it and it’s like, game on. I didn’t write this for a niche, but I wish that niche would have the desire to support it. There aren’t many novels about the rave. I figured I could be at least one of the ones that matters. But maybe I was barking up the wrong niche and it’s only those adjacent that will come out with the hell yeahs and the high fives.

I think the answer about hustling to a niche is just authenticity. Write about what you love and it’ll show. I’d love to read your rap writing. Do you have any? If someone were really into watching twitch streamers, I’m sure they could write a really great book about watching twitch streams. I think readers are fundamentally interested in what other people are interested in. How do you get non-readers to read? Fuck if I know.

Like, have you read Convenience Store Woman? Literally shut off my phone every night to read about convenience stores.

No, but this is exactly what I’m talking about. I think we all have those interests, even if we struggle to see them through the fog.

Interesting, you think it’s sitting on shelves unread.

You mentioned Tex, and I thought of him while reading. Yours doesn’t match his epic, page-number-wise. But, mentioned yours requires work. I see that requirement being antithetical to what (most) indie publishers are pushing and people are reading these days—the bite-sized novel. There will always be readers for harder works, but maybe the breed is thinning?

Tex was really important in validating this book for me. He read an earlier draft and gave me the confidence that readers—and not just ravers—would like it. That it had a universality in its fiber. But then again, I think the people that are coming to it are appreciating that it’s got some heft to it. That it feels like a traditional novel in many ways, and is not just bite-sized (even though I like the bite-sized as much as the next guy). I know that the heft and sprawling epicness is definitely part of what I appreciate about Sunflower. Like, oh, wow, yeah, okay. That book might not get the love it deserves in Tex’s lifetime, but it is a masterpiece, and I hope some future society is able to look back on it as the postmodern classic it is.

Recently, I had a rapper cosign Newspaper Drumsticks. While my Amazon rank soared, I was like—wow, the rap community is a niche for prison-writing. How a writer domino-effects into several large, otherwise unattainable audiences is something I’m very interested in.

For fucking sure. Doesn’t it all feel like a goddamn fucking mystery sometimes? Like I don’t think I get how anything works anymore.

Thanks for saying you’d love to read some rap-writing. Pretty sure the last thing Rap needs is a white guy named Tyler. I’ll keep sounding the whistle about what I think needs more ears, and flooding DMs with playlists.

We started here by the way:

Tyler’s got the ear that’s for sure. Maybe you just write about being a white guy named Tyler who likes Rap. A playlist creation obsession…

I could slay that book. Hear you're writing now. Can you talk about it?

I’m doing this thing where I write three to four microfictions a week. I’m going to keep at this for the entire year of 2022. From there, see what my obsessions are and try to find a collection within that. Other than my collaborative novel with Tex Gresham, Easy Rider II: Sleazy Driver, coming out this Spring, I might hold off on publishing for a while. It feels like a three year cycle is healthy. I want people to want me. This book still has buzz to build. I have some other bigger projects in the pipeline that I want to keep close to the vest, but I will tell you that I’m terrified of writing a second novel. It already feels like I forgot how to do that thing I just did. Humbling as hell.

What have you got coming? Tell us about Tyler’s ’22.

I’m writing a novel. About halfway done. Still no clue what it will look like. But, want to experiment with self-publishing? See what it feels like to have control? What difference, if any, I feel with sales?

We’re putting out the co-written book ourselves. Through an imprint, but ultimately the same steps as self-publishing. We can compare notes when it’s all said and done.

That’d be awesome. Thanks. Keeping close tabs on what rappers are doing to push numbers…might try getting weird, start some writing feuds.

Let’s go you fuckin piece of shit motherfucker.

I’m a dawg and you a pussy you eat cat food.

Definitely finishing the novel I mentioned. Who knows? Might finish a second poetry collection by year’s end. Want to write a pulp novel. Maybe under a pseudonym.

Uhhhh.

More of these? I like this. Feels genuine. Unlike reviews/blurbs, which can feel like having a stranger’s dick/cat in your mouth. You can’t even see their face. IF this gets published. Maybe someone will skrrt in my DMs? Maybe, I’ll start interviewing rappers?

I think we’re onto something. 

Consuming nothing but interactions, right? I’m hungry. Thanks for talking. Making me feel less alone.

You too, my man. Love a situation like this. To break down the borders we have in our heads and talk it out with someone we might not have otherwise. Can’t be beat.  Peace.

Crow Jonah Norlander

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DEREK MAINE on film with Rebecca Gransden

DEREK MAINE on film with Rebecca Gransden

February 22, 2022  ·  Interviews & Reviews

What film, or films, made the first deep impression on you?

The first film I saw in the theater was Flight of the Navigator. We must have arrived late. Or it was unexpectedly full. We had to sit in the very front row. I was very uncomfortable. I was seven or eight. It came out in 1986 so I would have been four but that can’t be true. Anyway, when you are four or seven or eight you are really small. I remember the screen was huge. I couldn’t handle the sensory overload. It felt like the screen was going to swallow me up and take me away on the spaceship. It was a very good movie. I have not seen it since.

I was visited by an apparition the night I watched The Care Bears Movie (1985). This sounds like something I would write in a story, but it’s true instead. My parents did not believe me. They told me to go back to bed. They said, “go back to your room,” or something just like that. They said I was scared from the movie. They said it was because of the movie I was scared and not the apparition. But I don’t remember anything about the movie, and I certainly remember the white mass of light that stood over my bed. That was 35 years ago. What did Daniel Johnston say? “Some things last a long time?”

What films first felt transgressive to you? Do you remember being secretive about any films you watched growing up?

I was downstairs on the couch, alone, and it was late. I pressed rewind a whole lot of times. Let me back up a bit.

I knew why Friday the 13th (1980) made me horny. I wanted to be a teenager at a summer camp having sex on the bottom bunk. You could pause it and pretend. That wasn’t transgressive at all. If anything, it was obedience. I was secretive about watching it (and wearing out the magnetic tape of the VHS) because I did not want my parents to catch me being horny. I think that is good and I hope my son, when he gets there in a couple of years, affords my wife and I the same courtesy.

Oh, but I started to tell you the real answer which is Disclosure (1994) starring Michael Douglas and Demi Moore. Demi Moore sexually harasses (assaults? rapes?) Michael Douglas in the movie. Spoiler alert or content warning, perhaps. Demi Moore and Michael Douglas used to date & have sex with each other. Michael Douglas is married now. Demi Moore gets hired to be his boss. One night they are working late. She makes a move on him, and he demurs. She gets more aggressive. He gives in, momentarily, and then, while she is giving him a blowjob and he is saying nasty things to her, he recalls he has a family, and he is able to break free from her grip.  Well, I’m not interested in the movie on its terms so I won’t summarize further or offer anything resembling an opinion of its internal politics, but it was the sexiest thing I had ever seen, and I felt so naughty over and over every time and I would like to say two things about that:

  1. The idea of desire so overwhelming it upends your life is extremely appealing to me. I don’t mean Demi’s desire. Her desire, in the context of the film, is to set up an encounter that forces Michael Douglas to lose his job. Michael Douglas’s desire for her, and the transgression of that desire, is where I am at. I am someone with big feelings, not always knowing where I am supposed to put them.
    1. Sometimes my feelings are inappropriate. I do not act on them. I share them, sometimes, in my art. Sharing them is not a ploy to make my reader complicit. It is a bloodletting, a release, a solemn prayer that I am not alone.
  2. I know now, because I am older and have some life experiences under my belt, that my own desires awakened by the scene were intimately tied to the feeling of transgression itself. It is a naughty thing to be a pre-teen boy downstairs, alone, on the couch, and it is late, and touching the private parts of your body to arouse apleasure. I connected with Michael Douglas’ feelings of wrongdoing, of sin. Bad, bad boys we were.

Are there any films that define your formative years?

Tombstone (1993). I wrote a fictional essay that touches on the ‘why’ and was fortunate enough to have it published by/at Misery Tourism, but it honestly boils down to “I watched it a ton of times, at a certain time of my life,” which feels sort of accidental/incidental. Most of my favorite pieces of art feel that way. A friend gave me Roberto Bolaño’s The Savage Detectives as a 30th birthday present. My father liked North Carolina Tarheel basketball. Our tastes and preferences are less like choices and more likely circumstantial or inherited.

Can you talk about the influence film has had on your writing?

I can’t claim much, truthfully. It’s difficult for me to parse out my (non-literary) influences, but film is such a visual medium, and I cannot think visually. You know that exercise they give you, sometimes in therapy, where they ask you to visualize a red cube and then turn it over, so on and so forth? I cannot visualize a red cube. I thought, for a long time, that my memory was leaking out of me faster than I could make new memories, but it was just that I could not, and I cannot, imagine visually. The elements of films that have stuck with me are always lines. Or, more precisely, how it felt and how I was feeling when I saw the film.

Once, for instance, I went to an afternoon showing of Being John Malkovich, with a friend. When we went into the movie it was light outside. The movie messed with my head. I have some fears surrounding consciousness that were tested by the film’s premise. I was feeling sick to my stomach. I did not like thinking of someone else up there steering my thoughts. I have enough trouble controlling them already and back then, sometimes, they’d try to hurt me. When my friend and I walked out of the movie theater it was dark. I felt like I’d lost time. I felt like I was lost in time. I did not like that. We went to a Boston Market next where I had one of my spells. It was an unpleasant feeling. If I need that particular feeling for a character or scene then I can access it, but I cannot picture what John Malkovich looks like.

Are there films you associate with a particular time in your life, or a specific writing project?

During my mid-to-late-teenage years I lived with a much older man. He had an open-door policy and a couple of guest rooms for young boys to stay with him and he let you smoke in the basement and have full access to his impressive record collection. There was bread and cheese to eat, and usually he would bring home a case of beer and watch us drink it. Some nights he gave us pills and we’d take our shirts off and dance in the living room. If anybody asked, I was eighteen and just didn’t have any ID with me.

He would start asking, usually around midnight, if anyone was up for a massage. That was the only time you could go into his room, if you were up for a massage. I did not ever want a massage and my secret weapon was I can stay up later than everyone else always. So, I waited him out. But as soon as someone did take him up then I would have the television and his video cassettes all to myself. He had a copy of Koyaanisqatsi (1982). The film just blew me right away and I watched it every chance I could get. The house was small, so I turned it up loud and the score was done by Philip Glass and the whole movie was just a series of images illustrating how much we fucked up the environment. There is no dialogue or words, I don’t think. I cannot remember a single image now (no visual memory), but it gave me a feeling of great unease and catastrophe. I have never written about that period of time. I can’t recall anything of interest or particularly literary happening. But I do remember staying up later than everyone else to watch Koyaanisqatsi and being drunk and not understanding the film, but completely digging it.

Do you have any lines of film dialogue you regularly use in your daily life?

  • When I am arguing with my wife, “I’m calmer than you are,” (Walter, to the Dude, in The Big Lebowski [1998])
  • When I am stuck in a social situation I cannot get out of, I mutter to myself “I realized that not only did I not want to answer THAT question, but I never wanted to answer another water-sports question, or see any of these people again for the rest of my life.” (Anthony, to the two girls Dignan invited over to the pool, in Bottlerocket [1996])

Crow Jonah Norlander

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