(1) Who is your Muse? May we borrow or rent her/him/them/it?
My muse is a revolving door in bitch-regalia. That’s why she has a habit of hitting you in the ass on the way out. Yes I believe in muses. How else to explain such vagaries as 3 amlucidity? All I know is that something that hates my day job keeps me up way past my bedtime. It has to be a woman. And as she insists it’s her shed too, the rent must be free. But if you have an application, I can leave it for her.
(2) Have you written something, crumpled it up and tossed it across the room, then rescued it and smoothed it out - - only to spill coffee/tea/Koolaid on it? (If so, did you write about that?)
As this is the lit zine realm, may we acknowledge the much-heralded onset of the Digital Age? Crumpled paper issoyesterday and you guys shouldsoknow better! I have four or five carcass PC's strewn about that I can't bear to discard because I can feel the ghosts-of-genius-past in the machine-code. You'll just have to trust me on this. All that standsbetween me and iconic stature is a string of bad hard drives. In other words, somewhere in Windows 3.1, I'm H. L. Mencken. I blame Bill Gates.
(3) How does your daily life affect your writing, and vice versa?
Writing for me is like a can of whup-ass from Planet X. One day I awoke to find my life bathed in a weird gelatinous substance which, in addition to inhibiting movement, opened me up to a twisted inner landscape of egregiously mixed metaphors. I hope I’m making myself clear. Anyway as my skin continued to flake off and I grew more to resemble a writing hack, there was a simultaneous awareness of becoming a barely serviceable parody of my former self. Parody by the way is a writerly term.
(4) How has your own writing been affected by the "rules" (whichever list you use), and by teachers, programs, seminars, etc?
On paper at least, I bristle at the notion of mass coordinated writing efforts. I thinkwriting by its nature is a maddeningly solitary affair. How can you possibly bemoan the featureless void in a conference room with Swiss Miss and ergonomic chairs? But as I'mnot a frequenter of such events that could just be my aloof hoofin’ it. I will say that on-line workshops, when judiciously applied, have been very helpful. Alsop’s Gazebo is a favored haunt as well as the Melic Review in times past.
(5) When did you start writing, and why?
Recently a friend of mine offered quite innocently that 'man you're pretty good, you should have been a writer'. That cracked me up. He's right. Where's my plaque or for that matter who affixed the silencer to the starting gun? I've written on and off all my life, I think in large part to help myself see myself. I'm big on the idea of gnosis. For one thing, writing’s helped me regain most of the former feeling in my soul. Yes indeed, the swelling's gone down. I also believe that when a compulsion seeks to expand its operable province, i.e. court an audience, the infected host should have the good sense to just go with the pathogenic flow. So Typhoid Mary says thank you, she's feeling much better, and have you tried her fresh broth?
(6) Best rumor about yourself?
Hmm...best rumor in the sense of most complimentary? Let’s face it, if rumors were particularly laudatory, they’d lobby the rumoree for a line or two on the resume. Okay, one --confirmed by no less an unimpeachable source than my son Gregory-- is that I can present a rather malevolent, intimidating presence. Et tu Junior? This caused me to make a proper study of my menacing, somewhat dark demeanor in the mirror, and for the life of me I just can't see it. Perhaps the dungeon needs larger candelabras. Okay, my girlfriend’s pet name for me is Lucifer. But honestly, I don’t try to be dark. No really -- swear on a stack of Necronomicons.
(7) Where are the best and worst places you've ever been?
The worst place I've been is in my head without recourse to mordancy and trenchant counter-attack. The best place is your digital-ink-factory and mine, that inexhaustible well, the wired-in keyboard. When I don't hate Bill Gates, did I mention that I love him? Geographically I like Scotland, my place of birth, the farther north the better. I suppose I'm more a Zarathustran than a Bohemian sensualist. Though I wouldn’t kick a nympho out of bed for eating crackers.
And The Bonus EIGHT -- How are you for pearls of wisdom?
Can I veer macroeconomic? Like a lot of people, I suppose the financial
state of our world has been very much on my mind. The world is moving into
a period of deprivation. But I see the potential for a half-full glass as
we endeavor to reacquaint with Saturday evenings spent at home, bicycles
and John Steinbeck. There will be a renaissance in art as introspection
supplants conspicuous consumption. We will be keeping it real, by
necessity. Deprivation will also help reign in resource depletion. Damn, I
had something else really profound to say, but my crystal ball fogged up
all of a sudden. Nostradamus sometimes gets jealous on the other side.
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