The Lightning Room: Blog People

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.

3. Think of a word you hate and without saying what it is, describe why you hate it.

Some words feel really infantalizing to me and I cringe every time I hear them. There things that are only meant to be said to toddlers but some people use them in adult contexts and it makes my abdomen churn. After a lice-comb-through of my own novel, I came to detest like, very and really from horrendous overuse, but I’m breaking the rule of the question here precisely because we can’t function without those words.

4. How does your process differ between your writing and your music?

This is something I’m trying to think and write about. They’re extremely different processes with many overlaps. Songwriting relates to fiction for me. Experimental instrumental music relates to poetry. But these are more in terms of agenda and end results I think. The actual making/doing of the things are so different. In most basic terms, there is no writing that isn’t heavy lifting. Every second of it requires all ape brain all the time. Music can switch  between ape brain and lizard brain, and there’s much of music work that is texture, layering, filling in, and physical. I can put in a full day at my money job, then take a break and work on some music things – practicing, tracking a guitar part, figuring out a chord progression. If I don’t do my writing work before the day job, it’s just not going to happen.

There’s a lot more to talk about with this. We are all trained readers and writers (or are supposed to be) and most people are not trained listeners/writers of music, and that dictates a huge division between the disciplines. That’s an entire interview in itself.

5. What makes you happy?

The dog sleeping in my office while I’m working goes pretty far in that realm.

6. What do you regret?

Having taken out $40K in student loans to get my non-terminal grad degree in Music Composition. People, do not do this. It’s evil.

7. What does your dog think about you?

That my fingers often taste so good she just can’t control herself.

8. How did you handle your first break up?

Self pity followed by decades of insecurity. It was 3rd grade. Amanda Wallen. I asked her to go with me. She said, “Go where?”

9. What’s under your bed?

Bunnies made of dog.

10. How did you grow up?

In leisure and comfort with the constant anxiety that it would all be lost or taken away, which it often was, and in great envy of Richie Rich.

11. Close your eyes, take a deep breath, scream as loud as you can. Write the first thing that comes to mind.

I am wussing out on this one because the dog is sleeping and I am thus currently happy.

12. To what do you look forward?

Someday not pinning my hopes and fulfillment on future reward.