DeWitt Brinson

The Lightning Room: Blog People

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Welcome, once again, to Blog People, a venture here at the Lightning Room which gives you the pertinent deets on our fellow denizens of The Blog. In this installment, DeWitt Brinson presents the progression of the physical into a single syllable, as Scott Pinkmountain asks you to go with him and you must not ask where. Check out his Column Work: Surviving The Arts

1. What is the importance of art? Both the word and the concept?

Just to scrape the edge of this infinite question, I’ve been thinking a lot about how art has the potential to be one of the very few non-capital-driven endeavors in our otherwise Capitalist-circumscribed existences. For that purpose alone, it’s a life line. At this point in our culture, to be engaged in any public endeavor that is not for the purpose of making or spending money is essentially a radical political action. If you view family life, daily functional creativity (cooking, childcare, walking, sewing, etc..) and intimacy and play among friends and loved ones as private endeavors, spiritual practice as a kind of in between, and art as a public practice, art is pretty much it aside from direct political activism for standing up to genocidal, oligarchic Capitalism as it’s being perpetrated today.

As for the word, I don’t know it has any importance per say, but I’m glad it’s a simple, single syllable, grunt-like word akin to food, sleep, sex, birth, death. It helps strengthen the case for it being an imperative life function.

2. What’s your guilty pleasure?

If I could talk about it in public I wouldn’t actually be feeling much guilt about it, so there’s no honest answer to this question aside from declining to answer. But in terms of pop culture, I eat all kinds of shit and usually hate myself for it while/after it’s happening – superhero movies being my Achilles Heel, as I grew up reading and loving all things Marvel. I don’t feel guilt about that stuff though, just self-loathing and embarrassment. I draw the line at reality tv though. I have to preserve some self-respect. Continue reading →

The Lightning Room With Chris Speckman

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Interview by DeWitt Brinson

 

Consider the gnat as large as a relationship and a clue as pleasurable as it is rich. It is in the bondage of form we find Chris Speckman unrestrained. Check out Last Words for Larissa in our May issue.

 1. How difficult was it to make the actual crossword puzzle?

 It was extremely difficult. I almost gave up several times. I started out working with a few free crossword puzzle design programs that were really glitchy and not at all intuitive. I eventually just made a blank template and did the rest by hand.

 2. Did you start with the words or clues?

The words. I can’t imagine starting with the clues. I had some ideas for puzzle words that seemed emotionally resonant, and a basic idea of what the clues might be for those words. But that process got abandoned quickly when I figured out how hard it was to make real words fit on the grid. It never occurred to me that filling in the blanks for a crossword puzzle would be even more difficult without any clues to follow. As soon as I managed to fill in the puzzle, it was set in stone—I didn’t have the patience to tweak it. Changing one word forces you to alter eight other ones.

What was cool about having the puzzle set first was how it impacted my storytelling. It was sort of like working with a fixed poetic form. I knew the first line of the story needed to use the word “gnat.” So that forced me to consider all the possible permutations of the word and all associations I had with the word prior. I ended up stretching language in ways I never would have considered without the self-imposed restrictions. Continue reading →

The Lightning Room: Blog People

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To best understand Mia Sara’s interview it is necessary that you stand up, forget about Julie, and get yourself to the top of the Chrysler building. Check out her column Wrought & Found.

 Interview by DeWitt Brinson

1) Where do you find the photos? Do you search for them or wait until they find you?

“Woman, stuck in a bag, on the Chrysler Building.” An example of my everyday image search. Also, I’m colorblind, so I tend to like images in black and white, but sometimes color is worth it.

2) What’s the most common sound in your current life?

The sound of my daughter talking to her “Nintendog” Sparky.

 3) What was the first poem you fell in love with and how does that differ from the first person you loved?

 “Down By The Salley Gardens” by W.B. Yeats. The first person I loved was of Irish extraction, melancholy, and musical. Not so different. Still some of my favorite attributes, I’m a sucker for a melancholy baby. Continue reading →

The Lightning Room With Will Kaufman

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 Read Will Kaufman’s Selling The Fall in our May issue, then join us while we become the perfect human platonically together.

 Interview by DeWitt Brinson

 

1. How was your childhood? One truth and one lie about it, please.

a) I grew up comfortably middle class in a San Francisco neighborhood with about five million Chinese restaurants and markets. I had a stable childhood, in that my family stuck it out in the same house for twelve years even though my parents probably should have been splitting up when they were getting pregnant.

b) I was a savvy kid, who definitely knew the difference between “Stussy” and Macy’s generic “Stylin'” brand. I watched MTV and My So Called Life and understood my peer’s frame of reference, and so fit in quite well.

2. What would you like to improve about your writing?

Everything. I want to tell stories that engage and enrapture with sentences that challenge and undermine. I want my writing to embody an emotional and ontological ambivalence. Obviously, I’m a long way off. Also, that shit sounds like it would be too irritatingly precious for anyone to ever actually read. Except for Moby Dick. Moby Dick was a nearly Platonic experience for me.

At this particular moment I’m trying to better understand the crafting of plot. I should probably also learn proper grammar and punctuation at some point. And then become a wholly better being so I can potentially produce work that would live up to my expectations. Continue reading →

The Lightning Room With Elvis Bego

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Interview by DeWitt Brinson

Check out Elvis Bego’s There Like Nothing is Ever There in our May issue, then grab a watermelon and come watch him being obscene in cafes while he reads every book in the world at the same time hoping to meet a Jesus he doesn’t believe in.

 

1.Where do you write? 

The thing is you’re never not writing, so: everywhere. As with most writers, it happens in two stages, making notes and the actual composition. I never go anywhere without my notebook. I spend obscene amounts of time in cafes scribbling in the notebook — small observations, lines of dialogue, ideas for stories and essays. I also make lists, endlessly. Lists of stories to write, chronological lists of my books, that is, the ghosts of my books to come, often with dates of publication, which seems dangerously pathetic. And now that I have written and published a number of things, I try to come up with a possible list of stories for a first collection.

For actual composing, I work mostly at home. Either in total silence or with wordless music, something perfectly realized, like keyboard music by Bach or Schubert or Scarlatti.

Then there’s the third stage, the absolute necessity of not doing anything. It may even be the most important part of the process (hateful word). I don’t know who it was that said, When a writer is staring at the wall he is not doing nothing, he is working. I think that’s true of any artist, as well as any self-respecting building inspector. Continue reading →

The Lightning Room With Kimberly Bruss

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Welcome to the Lightning Room, where DeWitt Brinson & Simon Jacobs take turns asking PANK authors extremely difficult questions about their work.

February interviews by DeWitt Brinson.

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Lovely heron hue, Kimberly Bruss’ two poems in our May issue. Now watch. She is reborn! A rum drunk man right before your eyes!

1) I think, natural and familial poems are the most ancient because they’re about all that actually exists, because natural is love and family extends it. How do you feel?

I am never consciously trying to write into a tradition; family and nature are what I love and what I know. They are complicated and beautiful things and, at the end of it all, I’m searching for beauty. Though I do believe that nature must be the original source of pleasure and inspiration. Most people, when asked their favorite place, choose a natural scene, not a busy intersection or the top of a skyscraper. I think nature appeals to us because it reminds of what we can not create. Continue reading →

The Lightning Room With Chloe Benjamin

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Things To Do: Dress up your pet porcupine, read Chloe Benjamin’s “In Which We Pay Tribute to Swallowtails” in our May issue, enjoy the gentle stimulation of our interview.

Interview by DeWitt Brinson

1. What is the connection between strangers and dreams?

All dreams are strangers, and all strangers are dreams? I recently dreamed that I had a pet porcupine named Sweetie. She liked to eat yogurt, and I dressed her in a fur coat so I could pet her without getting pricked. When we hung out in my bedroom, she said, “Favorite room!” When I woke up the next day, I missed her.

2. Do you feel you have to fight for what you achieve or do you let life come to you?

I try to do a little of both.

3. What do people most commonly ask you when you tell them you’re a writer? How do you answer?

I always expect that people will give me the hairy eyeball or ask what I plan to do with an MFA, but I’ve been delighted to find that they’re generally excited and supportive. They tend to ask what my novel is about, so I’ve had to spruce up my elevator pitch.

4. What do you look forward to in the morning?

Coffee.

5. How and where do you write?

I used to only be able to write alone at home, but then I discovered ear plugs, and now I like the passive stimulation and gentle peer pressure of a coffee shop.

The Lightning Room with Jasmine Sawers

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Welcome to the Lightning Room, where DeWitt Brinson & Simon Jacobs take turns asking PANK authors extremely difficult questions about their work.

December interviews come courtesy of the mind of DeWitt Brinson.

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Read Jasmine Sawers story How to Commit Suicide in our March issue, then join us as we enter adolescence and howl at elderly hamsters.

1. What’s the worst thing you’ve ever done but are not ashamed to admit?

Entering adolescence.

2. How do you deal with your destructive emotions?

I allow them to consume me until I am a howling abyss.

3. What did you do the last time you knew a friend was in an abusive relationship?

Proper friendship is at least partially defined by not spreading the other party’s intimate business in public spaces.

4. Why does being human mean that we will hurt someone, that we will hurt ourselves? Continue reading →

The Lightning Room With Tanya Olson

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Welcome to the Lightning Room, where DeWitt Brinson & Simon Jacobs take turns asking PANK authors extremely difficult questions about their work.

December interviews come courtesy of the mind of DeWitt Brinson.

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Tanya Olson’s Ain’t I Pretty Fought to get into our March Issue. Now read as Tanya beats the shit out of anyone who’d try to put Ali in a Greek box, people who can’t not buy tigers, and those who choose not to see. All this before being eaten alive by a snake-shark.

1. Your bio says you have a book coming out, but that was months ago and YesYes Books’ website says Boyishly is out. Wanna plug it?

Heck yeah! Boyishly is beautiful to look at, unsettling to read. It is an American book that asks why we see what we see, as well as what is the cost of not seeing, not being seen. I also like that it is a book that is stern but forgiving to its readers.

2. Muhammad Ali is like Plato in that he’s known as a philosopher, writer, and fighter. Do you think he should be studied in school the same way the dialogues are?

It would seem a shame to lock Ali up in academia, behind school walls. Ali needs to be free to move between worlds- schools are not good about granting the folks they focus on other understandings, so poor Ali would end up like Plato, a one trick pony (Greek, philosopher, allegory of the cave guy) instead of the beautiful complex dude he is. We need to keep the loud Ali who talked and talked alive beside the liquid Ali who hit and danced beside the Ali who is locked inside his own body, who serves as some sort of cultural touchstone. I love that all those Alis live simultaneously in the poem. Once Ali dies, I’m afraid he’ll become only the guy who used to lip with Cosell or some other similar reduction. Continue reading →

The Lightning Room With Jennifer Pilch

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Welcome to the Lightning Room, where DeWitt Brinson & Simon Jacobs take turns asking PANK authors extremely difficult questions about their work.

December interviews come courtesy of the mind of DeWitt Brinson.

Two poems by Jennifer Pilch appeared in our March Issue. Read them won’t you? Especially, if you work for or own a circus, because Jennifer will infiltrate you, release all of your animals, and drop a mighty sequoia on your ass.

 

1.  What is the connection between sex and the definition of words? Why has it always been that way?

Words are our bodies; definitions are directions how we would like it done.

2.  What questions do you try to answer with your poetry or with these poems specifically?

What collides visually, emotionally, and historically?  There is no other present. Continue reading →