The lead singer of the Portland-based band Starfucker talks openly about death’s influence on his music, and the making of his latest record, Reptilians.

photo: Victoria Smith

An intimate discussion with Pen/Hemingway award-winning author Justin Cronin. Justin’s latest novel, The Passage, was released in paperback this month and can be purchased here.

photo by Gasper Tringale

TRANSCRIPTION

Ben Evans: When I spoke with you last week you said something that intrigued me; you related that you felt fortunate to have this story, The Passage, and impending trilogy, drop in your lap. It was as if you were referring to a muse. You almost suggested, as many authors have, that you were more of a conduit for this epic than a creator. Can you describe that feeling of inspiration as an author, and do you truly think it comes from somewhere outside of yourself?

Justin Cronin: Well sometimes you do, there are moments that you can’t really account for. You don’t know why, all of a sudden, a sentence kind of lays itself bare to you. But, on the other hand you can also say the reason that it does is because you’ve sat down at the keyboard everyday for twenty years making yourself ready and practicing your art. So while there is some part of it that’s mysterious, all of it is deliberate and all of it is yours. My approach to writing is quite thorough, I plan everything in advance, I sit down to work everyday, typical business hours 9 to 3; I’ve got kids so I have to keep a kind of ordinary domestic schedule. And it’s worked so far, no complaints. It’s produced three books, the last one of which was 300,000 words. So do I take credit? Sure, why not.

BE: You are more than entitled to it, you take your craft incredibly seriously and you’re incredibly committed. I just thought it was interesting that you had said it fell into your lap.

JC: Well I think, as I said, there is some part of this that does seem to sometimes come from above. Like my teacher in graduate school Frank Conroy said, writing is basically a daily practice to maintain a steady state of readiness for when something came your way that was worth writing. A lot of writing is failure; a lot of it is running scales up and down the piano until the concerto one day just shows up.

BE: You just said that some parts of the novel may have come from above, and that leads to my next question. There seems to be a sense of the spiritual running through The Passage, a certain otherworldly prescience, where certain characters are impelled to act, I presume by some kind of divine mover. Sister Lacey’s cross-country journey for example. Do you yourself have religious inclinations? And was it important to allow for spirituality in this book, as it can be a convenient explanatory device?

JC: Well, I begin by admitting that I practice no faith in particular. I was raised Roman Catholic with all the mystical trappings and no doubt some of that became part of my firmware, but when I wrote the novel you know part of the original conceit of the book was that the story that I was telling was the truth behind something that at some distant future time, a thousand years in the future, has become in a sense its own creation story. So it’s become a myth and–– here’s the story behind it, as I think most religious scripture is. It may not be based on divine occurrences, but it’s based on things that actually happened in some way, so that I always planned on as part of the underpinnings of the project. But one thing I discovered very quickly was that you could not write a book about the end of the world without questions of, for lack of a better term, divine intention leaking into the text. I meant to drag my feet on this a little bit, it wasn’t something that I was in a hurry to take on; not because I was afraid of it, but because I didn’t know how it would appear. And in fact it appeared very, very quickly in the book in the form of Sister Lacey Antoinette Kudoto, who is a nun from Sierra Leone. The one thing to do was give the reader some space to decide about matters of divinity, some invisible plain of existence operating in the world of the book. Just as people get to decide that about the world in which they actually live. So you could take a character like Sister Lacey, and decide if she’s an authentic mystic in communion with some divine force. You could also look at her as a woman with extremely bad post traumatic stress disorder, “that crazy nun,” as somebody else says. So when we’re inside her point of view, we’re inside a place where someone believes that they are in direct communication with the divine. Is that what’s actually happening? The reader gets to pick.

BE: And therein lies the author’s skill. Well if I remember correctly Mary and O’Neil were agnostics.

JC: Yes, they were agnostics, yes. It’s actually Miriam who gets that word, she’s O’Neils mother. She’s a Jew who has become agnostic.

BE: Was it more comfortable going into the writing of this book – a kind of science fiction project – knowing that you had already established yourself as a preeminent author of literary fiction with Mary and O’Neil and The Summer Guest?

JC: Well you know every book is practice for the next book, so sure, I felt more….

BE: I mean more in terms of your reputation as an author; this is a person (Cronin) who doesn’t need the shtick of vampires or anything, he’s already developed characters from nothing and done it exquisitely. I guess that’s what I’m asking in that sense.

JC: Well you write the book that wants to be written, the one that gives itself up to you most readily. I wasn’t really thinking so much about reputation as I was thinking about… Hmmm, I’m trying to find the right way to express it. Sort of the thing that makes me write, what keeps me writing, what makes it interesting, is not ever writing the same book twice. Mary and O’Neil and The Summer Guest were both on that broad shelf of literary fiction, but I had gone about those two books very differently. I mean Mary and O’Neil is really a novel built out of short stories, which was the literary form to which I was first apprenticed, the way most writers write short stories before they hazard the novel. And so from there to The Summer Guest which is more or less a conventional sort of novel, although it is four points of view in eight time frames, that was the next logical step. What I decided to do with this book, I had this conceit, I had this idea for a world in a lot of trouble and it had always seemed to me that every narrative of course has to be driven by some kind of urgency, its driven by moments where something changes that can’t be changed back, and I was very intrigued by essentially tightening the screw on that, making the decisions that my characters made and the situations that they encountered, to make them matters of life and death, to put my characters in a state of almost constant, overwhelming peril. So it was, in a sense, just sort of the next thing I wanted to try, and in order to try it I needed something really, really scary and dangerous. And as I said, I had this idea. This conceit came to me over a period of about three months chatting with my very precocious, at that time, 8 year old daughter. And it seemed kind of consistent with what I thought a novel could do, and what the next thing for me to try would be. I was perfectly willing to fail at it, which I think is the other thing you have to do as a writer, you have to be willing to have the whole thing not work, to come to a point where you see that “I’m not ready for this” or “I’m not up for this” and I was lucky that while I was writing this, it never came to that point.

BE: Is there ever a point, I’m asking this just after realizing that the cottage scene with Amy and the agent who takes care of her in Oregon, strikes me as somewhat reminiscent of The Summer Guest.

JC: Bingo, good job, you’re the first person to say that and you’re absolutely right. And its also a father daughter moment, which is in fact the central relationship in The Summer Guest.

BE: Yeah, I really loved him bringing his family on the roof of The Summer Guest and just taking in the panoramic view of the Maine wilderness.

JC: The Summer Guest, absolutely, and I didn’t realize it until after I’d done it, which is probably the best way to realize things about your writing. I came to it, and eventually said “oh I know what story I’ve gone back to” because it has some kind of real magnetic effect on me. I’ve often said that I’d be perfectly happy spending a few years alone in a cabin with my daughter playing board games. It’s absolutely true.

BE: I never forgot that I was reading a Justin Cronin novel as I made my way through The Passage. This book seems to stand out from others in the genre in that it both immerses the reader in a sprawling story, while also prompting them to pause in admiration of the prose. That being said, what is Justin Cronin’s most pronounced characteristic as a writer, stylistically or otherwise? What do think it is that distinguishes your work from other authors?

JC: Hmmm…that’s a good question and its hard to answer without sounding self-adoring.

BE: Do your best to be objective.

JC: Ok, I think probably my most distinguishing feature, and its not original to me, its one that I learned from other writers, is a desire to be absolutely clear. Which means when I write a scene I work extremely hard to know its physical and temporal reality with totality, and secondarily, it’s emotional and psychological reality in some totality; and then find, and this is always my ambition, not always achieved, the crispest, most compact way of naming that reality. The person I learned this from, and I’ve used his name already in this discussion, is Frank Conroy who was my teacher, who was a great teacher by example on the page and through his writing. He didn’t do very much of it, and I think that’s probably good, I think he wrote exactly what he wanted to write and nothing else. His sentences have an unbelievable sturdiness to them, they have no encumbrances, every word feels like exactly the right word. That’s what I always hope to try to do. Is that a style, is that a theology? I’m not sure which; I think it’s probably both.

BE: Throughout all your books, to me, the most marked characteristic is the sincere compassion you exhibit for your characters. What experiences can you point to in your own life, outside of the classroom, that you feel helped to shape your sensitivity as a writer?

JC: That’s a good question. I’d say some of the obvious ones and some maybe not so obvious. The most obvious is watching babies be born (laughs); and I’ve been in the room for two of those. I really like to write from the point of view of women, and I think that’s part of our job as writers–– to write with psychological clarity and insight about people who are not like us. The experience of watching a baby being born is a putting aside of your own ego. As the man in the room, I mean they give you these phony jobs to perform, you know they are kind of just keeping you busy. And at the center is another person, it is in effect one and a half people becoming two people and it is a situation where tremendous strength is called upon, and of course you’re emotionally involved in this, these are not total strangers, its your wife, its your son or daughter about to step on stage. And there is something very transformative about that that enlarges your sense of yourself, and maybe even by doing that actually sort of eradicates yourself temporarily and you come away fattened by it.

So that’s one, the other one I’ll say, and I wrote an essay about this long ago and I’m still not quite sure what it did to me, but I think something started there–– I was a young man, I don’t remember how old, I think maybe ten, ten years old, and for whatever reason I was driving on a dirt road near a reservoir with my father. I think we were going to the hardware store, and we came upon a car, a battered old Mercedes parked on the side of the road, it was March, it was raining a little bit, it was very muddy, and there was something about the car that seemed odd and as we drove past it I said to my father “I think we should stop, I think there is something wrong,” and we stopped the car, we backed up, and to kind of make a long story short, indeed something wrong, there was a man in the car who was nine tenths of the way to successfully committing suicide with a bottle of pills and a fifth of whiskey. There is more detail to this story that captured my attention, but it was the first time I had ever been in a situation even remotely like this, and where essentially it was my job, and my father’s job, to save somebody’s life who didn’t want it at that moment. The only thing to do was, my father tried to keep away, while I ran about a mile up the road to the next house, it was actually the house of a friend of mine, to call the ambulance. And this memory has stuck with me a million years and in fact it’s the basis of something, I wrote an essay about it many years ago, it actually is sort of replayed in a way, in the second volume of The Passage. But it was on my mind very recently, and as I said I think it’s a place where something started.

BE: Wow, that’s a complex and contradictory emotional event for a child I’d imagine.

JC: Yeah, it was completely perplexing; it was one of those things you don’t understand till many years later, if at all.

BE: I may be arching here, but at the conclusion of The Passage one of your characters, Sara, has a baby, and the way in which that’s written, it almost seems as if the birth is a metaphor for your creative process. As if you’re referencing this world that you yourself have given birth to with the book and the triology. Am I even close in assuming that?

JC: Hmmm…that’s a question about my unconscious mind as opposed to my conscious mind. I didn’t write that scene saying, “Oh, its time for one of the moments like at the end of The Tempest where Prospero comes on stage, becomes an actor and says, “Gentle breath of yours my sails must fill or else my project fails”” meaning I got to go home, can I leave.

BE: Or Breakfast of Champions with Vonnegut.

JC: I’m not meta-fictional in that way. Surprisingly, or maybe not surprisingly, I come back often to the experience of babies being born and a kind of, this kind of battlefield you go through, that people pass through and come out the other side changed. And I was thinking of that scene in terms of what my character Theo needed, and you know this is a book in which a lot of people die; babies should also be born, it seemed only fair.

BE: You’ve already committed immense amounts of time and energy to writing this epic which I imagine will come out to be somewhere around 2,500 pages, did you have any hesitation in starting a project this large, one that might impede you from exploring other things?

JC: No, not really you know I just felt lucky. I didn’t know quite how long the first book would be. I knew it was going be long, I didn’t really fully apprehend its length until I was maybe three or four hundred pages into the manuscript. The actual manuscript, I mean the book as a book is about, I guess, just under 800 pages in its English publication–– you should see it in the Norwegian, it takes forever, this book is the size of four books. But, I knew it was going to be long, the actual manuscript ended up in its longest version, from which I retreated somewhat, to be about 1400 pages. Which takes up a lot of room on your desk, and I had a good time with its length actually, I was really sort of excited at its length, like weightlifters are really excited about lifting something really heavy– its hard to do, but there’s a moment where you just want to say, “Look at me, look at me! Look at this heavy thing I can lift.” Writers are competitive you know, to my friends who have written 300 page novels, ha. So I didn’t worry about that, I still don’t, I look forward to writing other things but I also look at these three books as being separate challenges, its not just a continuation of story, each of the books resets the terms slightly, I want them to stylistically have little adjustments, and that’s as much for my amusement as anything else, but I think the reader doesn’t exactly want to hear the same thing over and over. I have a lot of faith in readers, I think they’re smart…

BE: Stop pandering (laughs).

JC: No, I think they are smart, I really do. I think a lot of writers write essentially episodic television by writing the same thing over and over, and I think that is pandering in a sense. I think readers are… they like something dense that has freshness to it and that challenges them a little bit. I know I do, and maybe I’m just assuming other people are the same as me, but I think its just… I think part of the book isn’t just for reading.

So yeah, this is going absorb a great big chunk of my, for lack of a better term, mid-career, but I’m lucky to have that. I don’t have to go hunting around, kicking over every rock looking for the next project and worrying if one will ever show up. I know what I’m doing from now until, I don’t know, the next five years or something, and that’s a tremendous load off my mind actually.

BE: Do you think, and this is somewhat of a generalization, that an author’s abilities and faculties diminish as they get older. I mean, how different of a writer do you feel you’ll be at fifty-five or sixty compared to what you are now?

JC: I hope better. I feel like… I don’t think I wrote anything interesting until I was close to 40 years old. And there are younger writers through maybe preternatural wisdom, they succeed earlier in saying something worth saying in a way that makes it seem true. But I think writing comes from two qualities: one of them diminishes in theory and one of them increases. The diminishing one is stamina, I suppose at some point I’ll have less stamina. And the other one, for lack of a better term, wisdom, is based on observing human life for a long period of time. In my case I hope that always increases, I hope the day I die I’m the smartest I’ve ever been. I do know stamina tapers off, but at the same time writers seem not to retire. Their careers seem to be the span of their adult lives. That is something to wonder about, you know, will there ever be a day when I say, “I think I’ll spend the last ten years fly-fishing,” and if that’s the case, I hope I catch a lot of fish.

Fly-fishing discussion ensues…followed by a discussion on obesity in Houston, TX.

BE: Can you talk about the relationship between experience and training in fiction writing–– how much can be taught and how much must be lived?

JC: I think the craft is both taught and observed. I think mostly how you learn how to write is by reading in some attentive way with piracy in your heart…

BE: Was there a point in your life when you changed the way you read; a light came on and you started observing craft and diction, as opposed to just being immersed in the book and the story itself?

JC: Yeah, I suppose there would have been, I’m trying to think when that would be. Probably not until graduate school because that’s when I started really kind of building a glossary in my head of the various technical and stylistic tropes that hold a fiction together. It wasn’t actually until few years after that though, when I began in an intelligent way observing the patterns of a novel, sort of the large super structures that make a novel work, and that was a case of me learning entirely on my own. That subject never came up at Iowa, where pretty much everybody at that time was writing short stories. I think that’s changed, I think graduate programs now at least make some gesture toward the novel. I’m actually much more of a novelist than I ever was a short story writer. I find the short story enormously demanding and exhausting to write, I’d rather go write the chapter of a novel any day. So, somewhere in there I made the transition, but it wasn’t all at once, and it wasn’t all forms simultaneously.

BE: I read a couple reviews of The Passage, and one reviewer said that there is a portion of the book that is written perfectly, and there was another reviewer who said you were over-reliant on kind of common overused tropes. I wonder how you’d respond to that, not the perfect part (laughs)?

JC: I would respond to that by saying let me come over to your house and do a load of laundry (laughs). But, you take the criticism of your book with a grain of salt. I’ve never found book-review type criticism to be something that I say, “oh gosh maybe that’s true I should be a different writer.” Because the truth is that any book is going to be met with a variety of responses and experiences, not every reader… For god sakes why would we expect everybody to love a book, that’s crazy, that’s like expecting everybody to love brussles sprouts.

BE: There also has to be a certain sense of envy there (for the reviewer), somewhere deep, buried in the subconscious, “I wish I could have written this.”

JC: Well, you like to think well of your fellow man and woman, but you know I m actually tremendously thin-skinned. I do want everybody to love me– men, women and dogs. So you know, I read the reviews, and thankfully most of them were positive and encouraging. What I decided to do, because this book was reviewed more than anything I had written, because among other things, since The Summer Guest there have been all of these online venues created for people, not professional critics, but just readers to post their thoughts… So literally, if you wanted to you could read thousand of opinions of your book, thousands. So what I decided to do was look at what would be helpful, that was sort of my standard, and if somebody just went on a rant, you know you could say, “Well I guess my book is just not for them.” We probably wouldn’t agree on many things: music, television, film, food, architecture, you know. Some people just don’t think the way you do. You know I did read a lot of them (the reviews) and thought about what people had to say. Both the praise of course and some of the criticism.

BE: If they’re not envious of the literary aspect of the book, Then I’m certain they are of the 1.75 million dollar sale for the movie rights.

JC: A book that kind of goes out to the world with a big number attached to it…

BE: I was living in France and I hadn’t heard of anything about you or your writing and one day, there’s your picture next to a story about vampires. I was shocked.

JC: You think you were shocked (laughs).

BE: Prior to embarking on this project, did you have disdain somewhere in you for genre fiction?

JC: Well, I think there is great genre fiction, and there is stuff that is kind of junk…

BE: Don’t say anything about Sweet Valley High (laughs).

JC: (Laughs) I will not talk trash about Sweet Valley High.

You know, there’s a lot of stuff out there that’s written for entertainment. In general it doesn’t entertain me because I’m a college English major and I’m in the business you know? What I really like is something different, the experience of language itself is part of why I read.

BE: Yeah, a pro baseball player is not going to go see a little league game.

JC: Exactly, unless his kid is in it. So, my point of view on this is a little bit different. I think disdain is probably just a bad feeling to have for anything. I mean you know, each to his own, god bless. That’s how I take it. The one thing that I do take exception to is sometimes there is sort of resentment going back and forth between the two camps. I’ve heard commercial writers say that literary writers would do what we do if only they could, and I’ve heard literary writers say commercial writers are always upset about not getting review attention but they don’t write well enough to deserve it. That’s kind of…

BE: I’d say the latter is far more accurate.

JC: Yeah, I mean you can pick a side, and I won’t do it here, but of course I have mine. It’s not a pleasant discussion and its kind of mean spirited and it mostly comes down to business. There’s a perceived dichotomy between critical respect and what you get paid and I’ll be perfectly honest, when I wrote The Passage I wanted both. I didn’t believe that they were mutually exclusive.

BE: No, there comes a time when you get paid for your craft and you go out and you hustle, and that’s what you did.

JC: Yeah, there was no reason not to try, because if it didn’t work, it didn’t work. It wasn’t going to cost me anything.

BE: While you’ve put your whole life into developing your craft as a writer, why not? Talk to me about getting plopped into the world of science fiction conferences. I saw some abhorrent interviews with you on YouTube (laughs). Not that you were bad, just that the questions were so inane.

JC: My relationship to the science fiction world is actually a slightly different world because it comes from the 1970’s principally. I’m still kind of first in line at the multiplex for what my wife – who prefers movies where people are trying to decide who marries the vicar – what she calls “outer-space shit.” I love it, I love science fiction. But most of my experience of it in the last 20 years has been through movies, I mean some books, Children of Men I think is a great novel.

BE: I just talked to Jeff Daniels and I guess he’s making a picture with Joseph Gordon-Levitt called Looper that is kind of science fiction-based. It integrates time travel and what not, so keep an eye out for it.

JC: I love good, high-concept science fiction when its well-executed and it has something stylistically innovative going on. I grew up on a steady diet of, at first the sort of juvee Robert Heinlein novels, you know Space Cadet and Farmer in the Sky, and Have Space Suit—Will Travel, and then graduated on to meatier stuff like Ray Bradbury, Arthur Clarke, Isaac Asimov.

BE: Who wrote A Swiftly Tilting Planet?… Madeleine L’Engle, did you ever get into that?

JC: I did, I read her stuff absolutely. A Wrinkle in Time was a really important book for me when I first was kind of reading fatter books, I couldn’t say exactly how old I was when I read that. You know the young mind is enormously receptive to the sort of catch-all category of fantasy and science fiction because you sort of spend all your brain time there anyhow in some way. And I was particularly attracted to the end of the world apocalyptic narrative, because it was the cold war too, I mean it was the kind of mental anxiety that I was living with, its like an itch you have to scratch. So I read all that stuff. Now I go to Comic-Con or whatever and it is a different world. It’s a lot of stuff that wasn’t around when I was young. I mean, just the idea of the graphic novel, nobody called it a graphic novel when I was a kid, it was a comic book.

So there is a whole other thing going on, but I assure you that when I went to Comic-Con I was prowling the bins for Planet of the Apes action figures.

BE: Well, its funny, you go to something like that now and you’re the center of attention. You’ve inserted yourself into that world.

JC: Yeah, its as unlikely a development in my life as I could possibly imagine, but the whole thing has been, it’s sort of been one shock after another.

BE: You know just reading your writing, at least the first two books, and knowing that you grew up on the east coast, I kind of envision you as a younger (John) Cheever, minus the harrowing psychological journey.

JC: Without the alcoholism, ya, (laughs).

BE: It seems to me that you grew up in kind of, dare I say, waspish environs. Is that accurate?

JC: Yeah, I always say I grew up inside of a John Cheever short story, although I didn’t understand most of what was going on. I did, I grew up in suburban New York not far from where he lived, which was Ossining. His short fiction was enormously important to me, still is.

BE: It’s the best.

JC: No dispute. I encountered the first story of his when I was a senior in high school. I was taking a creative writing class and a friend of mine who was a very intelligent reader and a really gifted writer handed me one of his stories. It might have been “Farewell My Brother” or “The Worm in the Apple,” I’m not sure; it could have been a number of them. And it was my first real encounter with sort of ecstatic language applied to a diurnal reality that I recognized. I was just an unrepentant lover of his work, to the extent that in the summer that he died I was working in a deli, I was painting houses during the week and working at a deli on the weekends, you know, making sandwiches and making coffee and working the counter, and I wore a black armband (when he died). And this is sort of in a working class neighborhood in Stamford, Connecticut. The major patrons of this deli… There was a post office near by with a big depot so all the postal workers came in, and I was wearing this black armband and they were like “Whose that for?” “Why are you wearing that?” And I’d say, “John Cheever died.” And my favorite response to this was a woman who said… This woman who is wearing a postal delivery uniform, looks at me and a great sadness comes over her face and she touches my hand and says “I’m very sorry for your loss.” (Laughs) I think she thought we were related.

BE: I have a copy of him reading “The Swimmer” that was recorded, I think in the 70’s sometime, I don’t know if you’ve heard it.

JC: I have not, I have not. I would love that.

BE: Do you think Carver a bit over-valued as a short story writer? He’s often lumped in with Cheever, and I understand the minimalism and the genius there, but there’s really no comparison for me I guess.

JC: Well it is…I’d say there’s no comparison in that its kind of apples and oranges. Cheever offered a richness of words and Carver offered a richness of silences.

BE: Very well put.

JC: So they are very, very different and I think they each made a significant contribution. The third leg of that stool for me would be Flannery O’Connor, as sort of the great American short story writers of the 20th century. You know, there’s the competition and it’s a three-way tie.

BE: What did you think about Dubus?

JC: A wonderful writer, I loved his stories. I thought he was a great novella writer, which I admire a lot because it’s such a hopeless enterprise in American publishing to write a novella. I mean it’s great if you’re a 19th century German, but nowadays its about as doomed a thing as you can do.

Some of his stories I think are just about perfect. I think “A Father’s Story” is the best story he wrote, or “The Curse,” and so he’s right up there, but I still would give special honors to Carver, Cheever and O’Connor just as people who really shaped the way we write short stories. They were very, very good, they were the best at it, but they also sort of shaped what we think of as a story. So I’d say, since Chekhov, those are the three.

BE: Is writing cathartic for you Justin?

JC: Yeah, something comes out of you that needs to come out. It’s an internal conversation that you externalize, you know, kind of getting at what’s eating you–– What’s eating you? What are you afraid of? What are you worried about? What’s on your mind?… And you know, you can only shout it so loudly at the hotel bar (laughs). You have to have some place to put it that’s actually useful, and building a story around it is a good way to tell it.

BE: Have you found yourself finding answers on the page, working things out of your head and actually coming to some resolution through what you’ve written?

JC: Yes, absolutely, there’s no question. Some of them are really deeply personal, nothing I would tell anybody but my wife. I think my first book was a place to put a lot of that, and I think that’s usually what drives, or customarily what drives first novels. I mean everybody’s first novel tends to be the most autobiographical and then they have to move on to other people and other lives. But my first book definitely, which I spent a lot of time writing, I mean among other things it was constructed of short stories which, as I said, are enormously time consuming and demanding; but that book came from more of a personal face. My other books did more to metaphorize those thoughts.

BE: There was more of Justin Cronin the person in Mary and O’Neil.

JC: No question, Justin Cronin the writer is in the other two books.

Author A. Manette Ansay discusses her prose, process, and playing on the boys basketball team.

Singer and songwriter Chris Bathgate revisits the “salt year” that led to the creation of his new album.

Jose Gonzalez calls in from Sweden to discuss humanism, happiness, and his band Junip’s latest album, Fields.

Songwriter Jose Gonzalez

TRANSCRIPTION

Ben Evans: So how did your approach to Fields; constructing it with two other people, differ from the creation of your solo records?

Jose Gonzalez: For this album we decided to write everything together; we feel like it’s a band, that everybody should be involved and everything. So we just spent a lot of time jamming and recording into the computer; and so hours and hours of jams, and after a while we took the parts that we liked, and at the last minute I would go home and write the lyrics.

BE: Did you find that you evolved, that collaboration allowed you more freedom; that you grew as a musician throughout the process of recording this album?

JG: Ya, it’s liberating in some senses. When we’re jamming, and the guitar parts- there not in the front of the mix so I can get away with simpler stuff than when I write my solo stuff. It’s more about the whole. So yeah, I feel like when we’re writing (as a group) and when were playing live I’m able to be more free and improvise a bit more. And also, while we were producing I was able to… I would play bass and synthesizer and percussion and congas, so it’s been like a musical…what do you call it? It’s been inspiring to play other things and not only guitar.

BE: Well, I’m going be honest, one of the main reasons I wanted to talk to you is because I think your one of the most thoughtful musicians writing and playing today; and all of your music, whether your playing with Junip or on your own, it seems to be under-laid with these potent, meditative undertones, these kind of philosophical currents. Who do you read and can you talk about some of your spiritual and philosophical influences?

JG: Ya, I mean for me it’s always been important for music first, and then lyrics. But I feel like for people who are interested and want to know more, I think they can notice that I come from a humanistic background. When I’m writing it’s usually from a humanistic perspective.

BE: I see a little Kierkegaard and a little Kant…there’s a song, on your last solo album, In our Nature, that’s called “Cycling Trivialities;” that’s always been a pretty poignant song for me, especially when you sing, “Oh, What is this thing in me.” Can you talk about that line, and have you identified that thing as of yet?

JG: I don’t think I sing that.

BE: “Oh what is this thing in me?”

JG: No, (laughs) but it’s a nice interpretation. It sounds like something I could write, but its not.

BE: I’m abashed. Well, can you talk about the song a little bit then?

JG: Ya, I had the song for a very long time, and I had the chorus (it) was ready a couple of years before I recorded the song. I knew I wanted to sing about when you get caught in trivialities and you can’t see past your own horizon, and basically how you can make things seem bigger and more difficult than they really are. Almost sentimental, the lyrics about…

BE: It seems to be almost in opposition to a humanist philosophy though, suggesting that we’re cycling trivialities. It’s kind of interesting.

JG: Ya, I mean its more of an observation, and not…Almost like complaining about yourself and how you get stuck in small things, and you want to change that.

BE: Well, I seem to have misinterpreted the song and I apologize.

JG: No, no worries. Its open for interpretation. I like it when people hear other things that mean something. It’s cool.

BE: Can you talk about the cultural differences between Sweden and the United States, and whether either atmosphere is more conducive to being successful in the arts, and in music?

JG: (Sweden) Its known for…When I grew up it was easy to get rehearsal spaces, and when I was a teenager I played classical guitar in a place where young people were able to play on big stages with a professional P.A. Then when my friends started releasing albums; it was really easy to get grants from the state to produce an album or release an album or go on tour. But, ya, I think it’s a good country for the arts, but apparently lately its been getting worse.

BE: Lets get back to the Junip album real quick. What do you think is the central sentiment or emotion that the album (Fields) is organized around? Or what is the general feeling your trying to convey with the record.

JG: I don’t know, because I feel like there are different themes on the album, and there are different songs. So if you look at a song like “Always” or “Off Point”…those songs are like sort of accusing songs or ????. Then you have a song like “Its Alright” that’s open and positive. So, yeah I don’t feel like there is one common theme on the whole album. And the song “Without You” is kind of a relationship song…

BE: Did you set out to weave the record together as one piece, or do you feel like its made up of disparate songs?

JG: I feel like what holds it together is the sound. The songs are very different from each other… I feel like the sound is similar, and people who write about our album seem to think the songs sound similar and that the record is cohesive.

BE: How does your reception, doing a live show in Sweden, differ from your reception in the United States.

JG: Well, it seems like its different from show to show actually. The shows in the States have been pretty good, we toured in June before the album was out and had pretty good crowds and were able to connect with the audience.

BE: You should be a national hero in Sweden, there should be a statue of you.

JG: (Laughs) Ya, I’m telling the politicians that here in my hometown.

BE: I don’t know if I’m making a leap or inferring too much again; but is music a tool you use to search for answers? Is there any instance when after writing a particular song you’ve discovered you’ve learned something about yourself in the process.

JG: Ummm, I think its more about having music being…Ya know I think it can be liberating in a way, meditative…

BE: Is it cathartic?

JG: Ya, exactly, like your doing something creative and you feel really good while your doing it, or after. So it’s not so much about finding out who I am, but about feeling very excited when you come up with a riff or a line that you like. It’s more like therapy than a way to know yourself.

BE: You seem like a very grounded, balanced person; are you happy?

JG: Yes, I mean I have my ups and downs like anyone else; but especially now, I am very, what do you call it?

BE: Content?

JG: Yes, with both Junip and my solo-stuff and my relationship with Yukimi (Nagano), so life in general feels pretty good for me now, and balanced. But I mean I’ve had my ups and downs; I’ve had periods of time when I’ve been really down and super unbalanced.

BE: And I’m sure you’ve turned that into beautiful music.

JG: Yes, but afterwards.

In a truly classic interview, Canadian actor John Dunsworth drifts in and out of character to discuss politics, liquor, and the inspiration behind his signature character:Trailer Park Boys’ Officer Jim Lahey.

Jim Lahey / John Dunsworth

TRANSCRIPTION

Ben Evans: What are you working on now? Where are ya?

John Dunsworth: We’re in Peterborough, Ontario and were doing a show here tonight. Were going to zip over to Lindsay and do a show at the university.

BE: Is this an offshoot of Trailer Park Boys, or is this something different?

JD: This is Randy and Lahey doing a live show. We’ve been traveling around Canada for about five or six years now.

BE: So, talk to me about the live show, what’s it like, what does it entail.

JD: Well, ordinarily its two 45-minute sets and it can go well over that depending on what time we start and how voracious the audience is, but essentially its physical comedy; we have a lot of props, we play songs, and involve the audience as much as possible. We’ve discovered that audience participation is golden. When you get people from the audience up on stage, for some reason it makes the show better in the eyes of the audience, I don’t know if its because they feel represented or if you need to embarrass people to have fun nowadays, I mean that seems to be almost the new ethos in television entertainment, someone has to take it in the face or something.

BE: Do you find there to be some general thematic and conceptual differences between the American and Canadian comedic approach?

JD: Well, I’m not that up on it, but if I had to say…and I read an article in the paper today saying that they relaxed the rules in Canada for CRTC, the Canadian Radio Television Commission, they relaxed the rules so that you don’t have to be accurate in your commentary; and one of the comments was made was that the American style radio has turned to hate radio. Now I haven’t heard a lot of American radio, but I know what that means. But when I put it up against the republican attacks- Sarah Palin-type crosshairs, and I compare that to our own prime minister Stephen Harper, who is really – I don’t know if its him – but certainly he’s in charge of what goes on in this country and he keeps a very tight rein, and he is going, pushing as much as possible toward the American style. And to me, we are different here…Last week this new arrangement between Obama and Harper about having a unified protective agency around both of our countries…that’s the kind of thing that is going to marry us. But, if I can be specific, the reason that the trailer park is appreciated north and south of the border is because its not derivative, it isn’t Hollywood, it doesn’t copy, it doesn’t have the shoot-em-up, ugly nature of the….it doesn’t have races…you know, go on for fifteen minutes with these stupid car races and high speed crashes and impossible events, nowadays we’re into things that can be presented as truth, and they’re not truth at all, its just fiction. And Trailer Park Boys… it’s a mock dock, but you look at it and you think “that us, that’s who we are.” We’re losers trying to do little plans and always getting screwed up doing them.”

BE: So, let’s talk about your character, Jim Lahey. How much of an influence was Hunter S. Thompson in the creation of that character?

JD: Ya know, I know about Hunter S. Thompson, and I think his ashes are probably circling the earth as we speak; but, very little, I know so little about him. When I was a kid I knew about Lenny Bruce, and he was quite influential in terms of the anti-establishment stance that I personally have. The thing about Trailer Park Boys is there’s no politics, there’s no evil intent. I would like to think that… its so hard because John Dunsworth wants to be political, he wants people to be taking a look a look at the given circumstances in the world and saying “why is this happening? This goes against every single grain of common sense; and why do we allow the American military to dictate whats going on in the world?”… That’s what I would like to do; but what I find myself doing as an entertainer is completely ignoring that and talking about bullshit things like over-consumption of alcohol and shit jokes and things, and I find myself feeling like I’m pandering to the masses when I do that.

BE: Ya, I imagine it must be frustrating for someone who is politically informed and who has a platform from which to comment…

JD: Well, when I say frustrated… its not that I’m frustrated because I do find vent, ya know, like I just did right now, but its hard for me to hold it back. For example, we did a show last night here, and I think it was our funniest show we ever did. I mean, there was some politics there, I was poking fun at the Pope and all kinds of things; but I really was playing as drunk a Lahey as ever there was and really, totally enjoying it; and enjoying it because the audience was cracking up… I think I love to be; I love to perform. I mean you said that 1987 was the start of my career. I started way back in the 60’s at the University of Guelph playing Charles Manson and Shylock, and started my a theatre way back when I went to Halifax in 1970. I’ve done mostly theatre until the 80’s, live theater, and I still do it today when I’m lucky enough to get involved in a good production. But I’m kind of a will-o-the-wisp, I go where I’m wanted. People tell me that there’s a movie, and I go and audition for the movie. Only lately have I decided, have I been able to pick and choose. I had an offer today to be a spokesperson at a certain function and it didn’t appeal to me, so I made an excuse and said I wasn’t available. But for years…I mean, I ran for politics because I was asked, I did everything. I did writing commercials and directing and teaching at university and work-shopping and producing; anything that came along I would do. Now I’m 64, (and) there’s a luxury here because I get to choose a little bit.

BE: I didn’t mean to sell you short in the intro there.

JD: No, no, I’m just pointing out that I’ve been around a long time, and I’m still like a kid and I’m not jaded at all. I look at the world as a very exciting, wonderful place and I’m just wondering why we have to be hamstrung by so much bullshit, like the drug industry and the fear factor, and the people who are fighting over religion. Have you ever heard of something more ridiculous in your life than people who believe in a great creator wanting to kill someone else who believes in a great creator? It just sounds ridiculous.

BE: Well, its incredibly contradictory. It’s very easy, I’ve found, to become apathetic when you look at all of this, all of what takes place in the world. But there are great things, and there are funny things, and Jim Lahey is certainly one of them, and we thank you for that.

As you said your 64, what do you think the advantages are of finding the success you’ve achieved with Trailer Park Boys later in life?

JD: Well, I give in to any creative urges that I have now, including painting and sculpture, building with granite rock and writing stories. I just finished a book that’s being printed right now in the States and were going to get it in the first week in March.

BE: Is it fiction?

JD: I just put out a CD in December of 16 stories that I wrote and it’s an audio book, I’ll send you one if you like. You can go to johndunsworth.com and download it; matter of fact if you go there you can checkout some new stuff, see a couple of pilots we just put up over the past two years. Me and Randy did one of them, its called “The Lot,” and (we’re) getting really good reviews and reception on that. But a lot of the stuff I do now, I’m not doing it to make any money. I’m doing it because I really enjoy doing it.

BE: Talk to me about how your relationship with Randy developed.

JD: Well Pat and I never, Pat Roach, never knew each other before Trailer Park. He was a friend of Ricky, of JP Trombley and Rob Wells, and they had a pizzeria over in Prince Edward Island, which is a small province in the gulf…

BE: Anne of Green Gables

JD: Exactly. And they used to, for entertainment, used to make videotapes, and they’d send them to Mike Clattenburg who was their friend in Halifax who was making films and things; and he thought they were hilarious and he said “lets make a movie.” So when they found success in their first film, which was called One Last Shot, which nobody can see because its never been released, well it was a small release but…when we finished editing it a half an hour before the drama festival, the film festival, he got best director and I got best actor. So when he decided to do the Trailer Park Boys he thought, who would be better to run the park then old Jim Lahey the drunk? So that’s when I got involved and I’m so happy that I did, because it was the best ten years of my life.

BE: Ya, and we touched on this, but you’re a talented actor and I know you’ve worked very hard at your craft. Do you ever feel that as a comedy actor, especially playing someone as funny as Jim Lahey, that the skill and attention you put into the character, I guess the craft of comedy itself, is under-appreciated or overlooked?

JD: Well ya know, I don’t have any great insights into it. As I said, I played Charles Manson, but I didn’t play him as evil; and, and Shylock. I didn’t play them…I played them as human beings. I think that…same thing with Jim Lahey, I didn’t play him to be funny, I played him to be a guy who was seriously interested in trying to quash the recalcitrant, recidivist reprobates who live in the park. And, because you know yourself… I’m going to speak as Jim Lahey right now…When you give vent to what it is that you truly believe…sometimes I have to admit that alcohol gets in the way a little bit…I think that I have a mission in this life and ill be damned if I’m going to let those guys wreck this park, cause I am the park.

BE: Mr. Lahey, is that you or the liquor talking?

JD: Randy, I am the liquor.

BE: (Laughs loudly) The best line, perhaps, ever spoken in contemporary comedy.

JD: (laughs)

BE: I don’t know if you understand why that character resonates with so many people; its because we’ve all been that fucked up, that belligerent, and that, I guess, unconcerned. There’s this disregard, that I’m sure comes with drunkenness with Jim Lahey, that just seems to be… its pathetic, but it’s also freeing…it is truly the most pure form of escapism with Lahey.

JD: Well, I have to give credit where credits due here because Mike Clattenburg…the most disparaging thing you could call actors nowadays are meat puppets… and if you actually look at the industry and you see what people have to do to be a success in the in industry, whether its (being) beautiful, like Jolie and all those, ya know, the movie stars… But Mike Clattenburg actually said, “John, give me a six on that for drunkenness and give me a four for anger.” Ya know, he actually told me what it was he wanted and that’s what I did. I taught a lot at the university and directed a lot over the years and I never minded giving readings— because, two people cant… there’s no way, I can say like “I love you” in a certain way and you can say the line with the same cadence that I said it, but when people see them (on stage) its meaning is totally different. So somehow there was this lucky coincidence between Mike Clattenburg saying “John do it this way” and me doing it that way; and then he would laugh and then I would know that I hit the right note. But I just really have to give the credit to the script and to Clattenburg…uh, because I’m an actor and, to the best of my ability, I do what I’m directed to do. It’s a diarchy, it is. It is two people contributing to the role.

BE: Well one looks at you play that role, and I know you’re not much of a drinker, but I’d have to imagine that you’d spent some time in that state to know it and portray it as well as you do.

JD: I can’t remember anymore than a couple times I got drunk in my life, and I only did it once on purpose when I had 16 draft when I moved away from home and went to Toronto, Ontario, and I got arrested that night for jumping on a policeman’s motorcycle and going “Vroom Vroom.” But, another time I was on a Russian ship and they were plying me with orange juice laced with vodka, and another time I got drunk inadvertently, but… a half a dozen times in my life. And I don’t enjoy being drunk because…I love playing drunk, and I tell all my audiences (Lahey voice): “Look boys, its more fun to pretend to be drunk than it is to be drunk ya know why, cause you get to say stuff to people. Ya get to say, “Listen you know that hundred bucks you owe me? Ah fuck I shouldn’t have brought that uh ah cause I’m drinking.” or you can say, “Ah listen honey, I really, listen, please excuse me, but I think you’re the most beautiful woman I ever saw.” You can be very, I think ingenuous is the right word here. It’s fun to pretend to be drunk because you can get away with anything and then you can drive someone home. But people phone my daughter, my daughter Sarah who plays Sarah on Trailer Park (Boys); every once in a while one her friends will say, “I saw your dad on the street driving his car, Sarah he’s drunk out of his mind you’ve gotta do something.” But I value my license, I think that might be one…I mean, I don’t like the taste of beer. It’s an acquired taste and I never acquired it.

BE: You’re a liquor guy.

JD: I like a little Blackstrap rum with my Coca-Cola; but I love Coca-Cola. My favorite drink is a chilled glass with ice and a freshly popped tssssh, Coca-Cola.

BE: Nice are we talking glass bottle or can?

JD: Oh I don’t care.

BE: Really well you have to go with…the bottle is phenomenal.

JD: I can tell the difference between Pepsi and Coke and I can tell the difference between Coke that’s been open for three hours and Coke that’s fresh.

BE: You’re a connoisseur

JD: Ya, I am. I started drinking it when I was two years old. My dad was a psychiatrist and worked in Topeka, Kansas at the Menniger Institute there way, way back when I was a kid. And so we’d drive back and forth to Nova Scotia, which was thousands of miles I guess, long ways, and I’d go into the service station at two years old and say, “Coke, man.” And I still have all my teeth.

BE: Well, what do you think the perception most Canadians hold of Americans is?

JD: Pepsi and Coca-Cola

BE: Commercialism?

JD: Um…which one’s are the republicans the Pepsis or Cokes; and which ones are in Russia, Pepsi or Coke; and one’s in China, tell me. I mean, if you start drawing the lines down between Republicans and…, or Catholics or Jews, it just seems to me that there’s just too much combativeness. Ya know, the United States prides itself on freedom of thought and stuff, but it doesn’t; it isn’t; it doesn’t wanna be. People are convinced, and I think that that’s the problem that’s wrong. Canadians aren’t convinced of anything, except, in the winter it gets cold, and, if you can you go south. And the thing about it to me is, when you’re convinced, “My country right or wrong,” then you’re going down a path to perdition. You have to say right comes first, and than family.

BE: I think there are…though it might not appear so, I think there are many different sects in terms of what people believe and how they’re reacting to the U.S. government and really the ideology that we seem to be purveying to the world. But, I know that a lot of us get lost in art, and, as I said, some of us have become so apathetic that we get lost in things we can control. Because when George Bush got elected the second time you really felt helpless, and then with Obama there was this onrush of hope and ambitiousness, and then…we’ve been kind of disappointed. I can’t speak for all Americans, obviously, but I have… I thought there was some real, for lack of a better word, change coming.

JD: When the American people will put up with lies, knowing they’re lies, but lies told by guys on their team, whether it’s the Packers or the Steelers, then, then your in trouble. Because, if you can’t say the truth is more important than the team, than your in trouble. And that’s the zeitgeist in the states right now for me, is that although they know that its right to do this…I mean how many people are still saying there’s no such thing as climate change? Tell me. And when there are things happening in the Gulf of Mexico and Louisiana gets inundated with oil, which, probably in three or five years from now, probably… I mean… I don’t know how many people down there made a lot more money saying they lost money; but the thing is that over in places like Somalia or places like that they report; there’s a spill over there every year, every two years. So why is the environment of the U.S. more important than the environment of the world? Because aren’t we world citizens, isn’t the world important? Doesn’t America believe in equality for all? Or is it just equality for Americans? I mean, its not fair. I mean, I think that the government…and I’m not trying to pull anything here, I don’t think Canadians are superior for a minute, but I just think that if you dumb down a population on purpose, your going to get a dumbed-down population. And the education system, unless it embraces the truth as something that’s sanctified, unless we are allowed to tell the truth…people here…I was in a town the other day, its called Swastika, during the second world war the government came in and tore down all the signs and put up a sign calling it Winston, Winston Churchill of course, not Swastika. Swastika was named after…it’s an Indian name and it means a meeting place. When these guys go down to the states wearing there Swastika shirts they almost get killed. Now why does a symbol, why does a word…Why do people get so upset with things that really, in and of themselves, are not threatening at all?

BE: Whereas, they don’t become angered at all by things that truly are?

JD: Exactly, why do we have all of these people being hired to repress our citizenry at the airports, at… ya know there’s stories of people a hundred miles from the border being pulled over with plates on and being run through the mill students at universities down there from Canada who are being thrown in jail for days…Why is it in Canada right now are we training ten times more people that we need to do security? If I wanted to go on an airplane and bring that plane down, I could. Why do they pretend that they can protect us? They take away my little jeweler’s screwdriver from my little jeweler’s screwdriver set from my sunglasses and I can’t go through. I’m allowed to take one of them on the plane with me but I can’t take the set of three. There’s a tiny little blade about an inch long on it, but when I sit down in first-class and I have breakfast they give me a stainless steel knife with a serrated edge. Now you tell me what the hell is that all about? It doesn’t make any sense. All of that is based on this kind of let us assuage the population and let them think that we are taking care of business, when we in reality… the future is the future and there’s no way you can… You can’t defend yourself against a hurricane that hits and inundates New Orleans. You know? You can make political hell out of the aftermath, but the things that are happening in the world are things that you have to, aw, man…

BE: I don’t think there’s the level of political activism. It peaked a little bit when Obama was running for President, but I just don’t think we’re a very politically engaged country.

JL: Who isn’t?

BE: America.

JL: Are you kidding?

BE: No. In terms of being heard and standing up. Well, look. We declared war on Iraq in March of 2003. The true outcry didn’t begin until, I want to say, January of 2007, when people would actually go protest the war. We’re very late actors, it seems. So in terms of maybe partisan engagement…:

JL: We’re delayed because who controls your media? That’s why you’re delayed. People that were saying there’s no weapons of mass destruction did not get a platform in the United States media, and they didn’t get a platform because it wasn’t au currant. It wasn’t what…. Oh, man. There’s so many things. I mean you hear about the fall flag and you realize that the USS Maine that blew up in Havana harbor… I mean, who made the money on that? I mean, who started the newspapers down there? What was that chain of newspapers… Hearst. I mean it all comes down to money. Who’s making the money out of the Iraq War? Who? Halliburton and Dick Cheney, and don’t I hear that. Oh, man. When you say that the American people are not politically engaged, you’re absolutely right, but they’re convicted. They have conviction. “My party is right and nothing you can say or do is going to change my mind.” Period.

BE: And there is opposition. Not all Americans are like that.

JL: Oh, I know. Are you kidding? I know. I absolutely know.

BE: It’s incredibly frustrating. Isn’t it interesting, the dynamic that’s there? Whereas most Americans couldn’t tell you who the Prime Minister of Canada is, and yet here you are, with insight on every significant historical event that’s taken place here? Educated insight. I just think it’s interesting.

JL: Well, I love the American people, and I love the Canadian people, but I hate the politics of both countries because…

BE: Do you feel that Canada and the Canadian government is kowtowing to the Americans?

JL: I hate politics. If you… In Canada, right now, there are attack ads by the conservatives against the liberals, IE the Republicans against the Democrats. And the conservatives win every time, because they scare people. They say, “We’re going to get rid of crime in the streets!” And who doesn’t want that? But they lie about the crime in the streets. In Canadian politics now, the lies that are being told and perpetrated… We have a Prime Minister that stole two-million dollars from the Canadian people. Karlheinz Schreiber, of Germany, talked the Canadian government into buying the Airbuses. Right now, I’m going to deviate for a sec, the F-35 or whatever that new plane is that cost eighteen billion dollars, and don’t forget there’s going to be a hundred percent cost overrun. It’s going to be over thirty billion. We have a Prime Minister that stole money from us who’s walking the streets! And they say there’s no double standard in the world of politics and free democracy. It’s a sham. Don’t get me wrong. Winston Churchill said democracy is awful but it’s the best possible form of government, and I agree. But true democracy is when people have a government that represents what the will of the people is. I mean that stolen election down there in Florida or New Jersey or wherever it was… It’s sick! And yet American people, when they look abroad and see people stealing elections in Haiti or wherever, they stand up and say, “This can’t be!” but why can’t they do it in their own country? Because they’re afraid. Because there are so many people who will bat them down.

BE: All your points are well-taken.

JL: It’s the same thing in this country. The only difference in this country is that you might get a brick through your window, but no one’s going to shoot you. And when they do have something, like we had in Nova Scotia last year – a couple young guys put a cross in somebody’s lawn and burned the cross – now the person that they put the cross in the lawn of was black, and with a white wife, and so people immediately said it was a hate crime. These guys are going to jail. They’re talking about it in the papers, making a big case of it. But instead of talking about the true racism that exists, they take this little incidence, which isn’t racist at all, and they pretend that that’s what the essence of it is.

BE: Well, back to Jim Lahey.

JL: What we can do is we can ignore the last twenty minutes, and we can move on, and we can talk about art, because I think that that’s where it’s at. All of these people in the States right now and in Canada who are out of work, who have nothing to do, who spend their time watching TV and wanting to have the latest gadget, and not being able to afford it, and who are all sucked in by twenty-three percent interest rates on their Master Cards instead of being told and warned and educated… I mean the government of Canada, right now the provincial governments are killing people in this country by getting them to buy lottery tickets and to play the electronic gaming machines – we call them VLTs – there’s thousands of people in Canada who kill because of their addiction to these machines, the government knows the machines are addictive, but the governments themselves are addicted to the money and the revenue that they get, and that is the problem in a nutshell. The government… In democracy the government is supposed to stand up for the rights of people, and protect them against hawks, and that’s what’s wrong in North America today: the hawks have taken over, and Eisenhower was right when he called it the industrial-military complex. So let’s move on from this into something wonderful, like art!

BE: Well, I think in a way what we have been talking about relates very closely to art, because art is a response to political and social turmoil, but also because the funds are being suffocated and choked off because of a lot of poor political decisions. I know the state of Michigan, where I live, our arts budget went from 19.6 million in 2005 to 2.4 million.

JL: But here’s the thing: populations under attack are much more fecund. If you take a tribe and you start to oppress it, there will be way bigger birthrates, and it’s the same thing in art. I actually read it in The New Yorker last month, and it compared the amount of money that is given by different governments, and it turns out that countries that have less money have more artists. And I could be misquoting this, but what I’m simply suggesting is that in this time, when so many people are out of work, and in desperate situations, they can improve their lives by being creative. Because this thing that is called dopamine that makes us feel good about ourselves, I think there is a paucity of dopamine in North America. I think it’s drained by the negative aspects of our reportage and of all of our media. Even when you look at reality television, it isn’t real at all. It’s pretending. Like when we present our guys from Trailer Park Boys as losers, and depicting that as the reality, it feels good because it’s true! These other things about these big busted or blond beautiful or Angelina Jolies or Sean Penns or the successful people, when we hold up Two’s Company or… I don’t even watch television, I don’t know, but there are so many people living vicariously through these dreams that are not true. Like I talked to a guy last night. He wants to be a porn star. I said, “Do you know what the chances of you being one and what the rewards are of actually being one? Buddy, look at the given circumstances in the world.”

BE: Was he in school?

JL: What?

BE: Was he a college student?

JL: Yeah.

BE: I bet his parents are going to be happy with his career choice.

JL: Well, he’s not going to get to be one. He’s probably under-endowed. The thing that I’m getting at is that if we are taught in school that creativity and following your bliss, if you like, that’s not one of my words, but if you know what you can do to help other people and to make yourself feel good, then that’s the way you should go. If that’s what we’re taught, instead of “You’ve got to make lots of money” and “You’ve got to be like these people who you watch on TV”, that’s why Trailer Park works: because it doesn’t say that. It doesn’t make you unhappy with your life. It makes you happy with your life, because you say, “Hey! I’m not that bad.”

BE: What do you think art’s primary function is?

JL: Oh I couldn’t tell you. I just know that I push myself in every direction that I can, that I feel comfortable, from sculpting to painting seascapes. I do it. Last week I engaged in all of it. Writing and painting and sculpting…

BE: Do you find that when you spread your talents out, and I guess your intentions out, that the quality of your work suffers?

JL: Well, what they say about multitasking, and you read the studies on it, and you can’t do anything when you’re multitasking, you lose thirty percent efficiency – I disagree. I think when you can go from one thing to another thing, to another thing, you’re carrying with you as you move through that a kind of inertia, a kind of confidence, an ability, and the ability to express yourself… Some people don’t have it verbally. Some people have it in their hands. I find that if you don’t express yourself that just taking that first step sometimes is impossible to do because you have no dexterity at all. You don’t have the ability, but if you do it, if you say, “What I want to do is I want to create in me a feeling of feeling at home in my community, or in my environment, and I would like to…” Shakespeare said it best. You hold the mirror up to nature. That’s what art is. Of course, life mirrors art. It’s what’s happening now. And that was Oscar Wilde who said that a hundred years ago. And he was right, and now days, they say, “Big Brother is Watching You”, well that might be true but worse than that is that we are watching Big Brother. All of our values are being inculcated by the silly… I mean you watch television now days and you get programmed. There’s not any question that that is true.

BE: I couldn’t argue with that.

JL: But television done well is art. I’m in a series now called Haven, and I think the guys that put it together decided they were going to put together a hit show. That’s what they did. Now, some people decide that they’re going to write what’s in their heart, and they’re going to follow something that they sincerely believe in, and that’s what happened with Trailer Park Boys. How it became a hit I have no idea, because it was Michael Clattenburg following his heart.

BE: Well, that happens, and I think that that’s when the best work occurs – when someone follows their heart. Well, at least the best results, and it’s adopted by a larger audience. So where did your legendary shit analogies originate?

JL: The book I told you we’re working on, it’s called Dick-shit-nary. It’s a hundred and twenty-four pages hard cover with gold emboss, and it’s illustrated, and we did it. We decided to spend one month on the project, kind of as an homage to Lahey. It’s strange because although I’d like to re-brand Lahey to Dunsworth so that I can continue to work as an actor, former lecturer, teacher, whatever, because everyone knows Jim Lahey but no one knows John Dunsworth, what we’ve done is that we’ve gone all the way, we’ve pushed the envelope as far as possible. Although the book does not have any grothy shit stuff in it. It is an attempt to be clever with the word that wasn’t even in dictionaries until ten years ago. For some reason, this thing people can call it ca-ca, or feces, or excrement, or poo-poo, or whatever it is, but the word shit for some reason is not as accepted as… I can go around staying, “Jesus Christ!” I can go around saying, “Oh, God!” But to me, that’s way more blasphemous than saying shit, because everybody shits. Does the word… Like people can say frig instead of fuck but it means exactly the same thing, and if you say excrement instead of shit, why is it more polite? And the reason it’s all right is because of O Tempora O Mores. For some reason, that little word, that little word shit gets so many people so upset. “Listen, honey. I’d like to watch the show Trailer Park because my friends like it, but I just can’t get by the language.”

BE: Here I am thinking you said, “Oh, I write short stories and I sculpt and you said, ‘I have a book’” and I’m thinking it’s this novella, this work of literary fiction, and here it’s called the Dick-tionary.

JL: Dick-shit-nary. If you look up dictism, it will say, “A word coined by John Dunsworth to describe his philosophy or religion of dictism,” and I totally believe it. I mean, with tongue in cheek. But if you take any dictionary, and you ask a question and point at random, nine times out of ten it gives you some really insightful, specific word, and I discovered this way, way back in university. I started. I looked up the word theater, and I noticed that the word before theater was the, the most specific word in the English language, and then one day I just looked it up in a different dictionary to see where the word theater was, how they described it, but it was the theater of politics, the theater of education, or the theater of the absurd, and I discovered that there’s a word between the and theater, and that’s theanthros,or theanthroplogoy. It’s the combined study of god and man. And that really got me interested, because I decided that if I ever have to play a character, he needs to have a spiritual as well as a physical being. So when I’m playing a character, I like to ask the question, “What does my character believe in?” And when I do that, I have to ask myself, what do I believe in? But how many people actually… one guy today I was talking to… I went to an antique store and I found this beautiful white tiger, ivory tiger, and I was showing this guy and I asked him if he was happy. I said, “Are you happy?” and he said, “Well jeez, I don’t know.” I said, “Oh. If you could have anything in your life right now, what would you want?” He said, “Ah. You mean physical or emotional?” And I said, “You pick.” And he said, “My head hurts.” I said, “No, it doesn’t hurt. It loves it. You’re just misinterpreting it. Think about it for a second,” and he thought about it, and he said, “Can I want something for someone else?” And I said, “Now you’re talking, buddy.” Because what are your values? Like, nowadays we talk about what’s selfish. What is it we want? What is it we desire? What is it we have? And a lot of times it comes down to the exclusion of everybody else, and when that happens the world becomes a frightful place where everybody’s just moving ahead, trying to accomplish their own goals, and if you extrapolate that, what it comes down to is that we have a society that needs growth. It needs growth for progress, and that is the wrong paradigm. We need to make sure no one in the world is starving. That’s what we need to do. But it doesn’t become a principle in this free world, because we are the ones with it, and everything that we are doing here is to preserve our way of life, to go back to the old days if we can, put let us not let those other heathens, those other people who want what we have, we can’t let them have that. Anyway, I get political here. But what I wanted to simply say was about creativity, that this dictionary, if you don’t have an imagination, and you need one, you point at random and the dictionary will give you lots of food for thought.

BE: Do you think people would be surprised to know, after watching you play Jim Lahey, that you seem to posses a real, intellectual curiosity. You think people would make that connection, or people do make that connection?

JL: I like playing Scrabble. I like playing bridge. I like chess.

BE: I love chess, too.

JL: And I don’t know if that’s intellectual curiosity or not, because it is a pastime…

BE: Well, no, you’re engaged. Just listening to you speak, you’re clearly someone who’s thoughtful and engaged.

JL: But I’m only half-there. I mean, it’s a constant, constant thing. Even today I heard on the radio someone talking about the contemporary state of the art in philosophy, which is the same as it has been since Alan Watts suggested it in the fifties, is that you have to be in the moment, which is a zen thing. But the truth of the matter is you have to know where you are. You have to know what’s going on in the world at this moment, and if you’re not then you’re living in a dream-state and so you’re not connected and to me people can live that whole way through their life in sort of a dream-state and they can live and die and they haven’t missed anything, I suppose. But that’s not what I want to do. I want to feel like I’m in charge of my destiny. I want to feel like I’m the star of my own movie, that I get to choose where I go and who I hang with, what I read, and what I eat. And when I drive somewhere I want to drive down a different route. If I’m going downtown I like to take different streets every time just because, to me, the most important thing to my life is variety. I think that is the spice of life. I have not excelled in any particular… I mean I think I’m a better stage actor than anything, and I think that I’m a really good voice for radio, I like doing very strange voices and I really appreciate playing different characters, that is from England or Russia. I didn’t do a Russian one there, but all you do for Russians is you go down deep into your chest, and you say “I’m drinking a lot of vodka until they doubled price last year. The Russian government changed the rules on what could consumption because sixty-four percent of Russian men are alcoholics. That’s why the Russian women are all going to the poor Chinese guy.” There’s four-hundred million extra Chinese guys now than women. Where do you think they’re getting their ladies from? These big strapping blondes from Russia coming down there boys! Ha ha ha.

BE: How’s Barb?

JL: Barb’s got great breasts. I want you to know, but she run off, she’s run off with that caveman. Now see talk about creativity here. You know Sam Lasko from the show? They gay man? His real name is Sam Tarasco. Well, a couple weeks ago, Sam phoned me and he said, “I need you to do me a favor.” I said, “What’s that?” He knew I was making little documentaries, like I have a young videographer that hangs around with me. He’s making a doc on me so I put him to work and we’ve made a whole bunch of little docs on some interesting people, like three-stringed guitars with electrical hook ups. So I bought one and I’m teaching myself how to play it.

BE: Are you funded at all by the Canadian government?

JL: No.

BE: Could you apply for funding?

JL: I have advice to anybody who wants to apply to funding for anything: don’t.

BE: Why’s that?

JL: Because it’s a waste of your time and talent. The people that you apply to are all getting paid to make you rework your stuff, and then they’ll move on and the program will be discontinued. Do you know how many thousands of people do prep only? They get money to develop a script and then the script never ever ever makes it past… maybe they might get a pilot made. But there’s ten thousand, a hundred thousand in Hollywood, a hundred thousand scripts a year, ten thousand get played with, one thousand get done, and one hundred are good. But regardless, if you want to, you could buy a video camera for two-hundred dollars, and you could put something on that video camera, and you can download it and put it on the internet, and you can share it with the world, and that to me is the new way to express. This other thing about having millions and millions of dollars to put a program on prime time television, for people to actually… if that’s what they really want to do, that’s why they do when they’re going out and asking for funds to do stuff. I mean it’s so much easier to get a group of people – I think the most important thing is the people you’re working with – that they’re progressive and they share your ideas and they share your enthusiasm, and nowadays if you are hanging with a group of shit apples or shit weasels or shit monkeys or shit birds – birds of a shit feather flock together – if you’re in a morass or living in a dead end community and nobody has any dreams, move. To be able to express yourself in your own art, in your own way, is way better than going to somebody with a proposal and saying, “Hey! Check this out. Can you give me some money for this?” I learned when I went to the Canada council back in 1972, when I had a theater in Halifax called Pier One, and I applied for some grants, and, man, it was so disappointing when they turned me down and all the work we did toward it, and then again I applied. I had a publishing company, and it was called Solid Image, and these guys got in touch with me out of the blue from the government and said, “Hey! We’ve got funds. You should go to the stationery and variety show in Toronto and show your wares. If you fix them up like this and you do this and you make some business cards and you do this…” We only had about ten grand in the bank, but we weren’t drawing anything. We were putting all our profits there. I was traveling around the province when I was directing and acting, and we had a whole product line. We went to Toronto to a trade and variety show, where nobody came except for the exhibitors, we came home, gave them our bill, they didn’t pay it, they said their criteria had changed, it cost us all our profits, and we swallowed up in our own self-pity and closed down. And that has happened so often. I went to CBC with a great idea for a script about Wilhelm Reich, who was one of your American FDA victories when they shot him down because he said he had a cure for cancer, and I wrote this great little script, and they reported after I did three rewrites that it was still too turgid, so I put it away and about six months later didn’t I hear a program on Wilhelm Reich.

BE: Really?

JL: I get so disappointed when I hear people saying that they’re going to do this and all they need is the funding to do it. Just do it. I mean if you think you’re a great director go to grade three, and get the third grade kids together, and write a little play with them, and put it on for their parents, and charge ten bucks and move on. And if you’re good at it, if you do what you love to do and what you want to do and you just do it for that reason, like when people come to me and say, “Do you want to help me do this?” and I say, “What is it you want me to do?” and they say, “I’m auditioning for a part in a movie,” and I say, “Great. Why are you auditioning? Why do you want the part?” And they say. “I want to be a movie star,” I say, “I don’t want to work with you.” If you want to do this audition to do the best work that you can, and get better at doing auditions, and act, then I’ll work with you. But I don’t want to… People come to me all the time and say, “I want to go to LA.” Well, go. How many people there, how many broken dreams… stay in your own community. That’s what I learned with Trailer Park Boys, that in Nova Scotia, in this little backward place on the edge of the Atlantic Ocean, there’s so much art and creativity going on there by people who not only are from there, but have come from all around, at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, and there’s a feeling, kind of a renaissance feeling of freedom that you can express yourself there, and I just love being a part of it.

BE: Well, hey, John it was an absolute pleasure talking to you.

JL: We haven’t finished. We haven’t even scratched the surface. I wanted to make a point.

BE: Go ahead.

JL: It’s this: you can, I can, I have, I have spent a lot of my capital, my energy on lots of things that – they’re disparate in nature. But every time I’ve attempted one of them, I learn skills in that area, and every single time that I’ve discovered that I’m not good at something, that’s a revelation too, and the ability to know that the world is a place of amazing potential and possibility, but that we have to sometimes chose what it is we don’t do. That’s where I started in this conversation. Now I’m sixty-four years old. I get to be a little more selective in what I do, and what I try not to do is to do it for the money. I try to do it… I try to do it now because I’m going to enjoy doing it.

BE: Absolutely. And I think you have. At least, what you say suggests that you have.

JL: I’m thinking of putting my seascapes up…

BE: You know what I was thinking about as we’re having this conversation? I think it would be neat to put up all of your art, at least selections, maybe a short story, and a portrait, or a gallery of portraits you’ve done and just kind of illustrate your diversity as an artist, and I think it will help people relate to what you’ve been saying.

JL: You know, when people ask me – I’m an actor; I like to say I’m an actor – but more than that I know in a kind of faux-humility, I know that I’m a student of the theater. I know that, and I know that every role I play is a brand new experience, and I take with it all the doubt that’s from the very beginning at every audition I do. I have a doubt, and I have found in my career that the plays and the performances that I’ve had the most doubt over are the ones that are really the most successful, because it propels you and pushes you further than if you’re confident. The worse thing that can happen to me when I’m halfway through developing a role in the theater, say after a couple weeks rehearsal, is for someone to say, “You’re really great,” because it takes the drive away. Only incrementally, but it does. And this book, if anyone wants to back, this Alan Watts book from 1958 I think, The Wisdom of Insecurity, I call it the wisdom of doubt, is way better than conviction. Like for you to be convinced of something that is black and white, is really unhealthy, I think.

BE: Oh, I agree. There is no true objectivity, and you have to always be willing to reformulate your web of beliefs if new information should enter, and there’s a real unwillingness to do that.

JL: And the sad thing is if I was in a room right now with George Bush, after an hour I’d leave thinking, jeez he was right to go in there. It’s true. It is sad, but I have fun.

BE: You have a show tonight?

JL: Yeah, I have a show.

BE: What time?

JL: Eight-thirty.

BE: So do you go out and hang out with the audience when you’re done?

JL: Well, the reason we’re going to have a full house tonight is because, when we did this show here last year, we went out afterward and partied with them, and so they’re all calling the venue saying, “Are they going to party tonight?”

BE: Better strap on your Lahey shoes.

JL: Well the thing is that since I don’t drink, I can outlast any of them. They’re only twenty

BE: What’s your favorite line you’ve ever uttered as officer Jim Lahey if you had to pick one.

JD: The next one

BE: The next one?

JD: The next line… The reason I’ve loved touring with Pat Roach is because we change every night. Like last night, ten different things happened that never happened before at any of our other shows. When I have tears running down my face, or he has to turn away from me because he’s laughing too hard, I know that we’re doing it right.

BE: What do you think the compliment Randy provides is? How would you best characterize it?

JD: This guy in Britain wrote a book on Laurel and Hardy and he compared us to Laurel and Hardy.

BE: Really

JD: I don’t know any secrets about comedy. When I have a good script, If it’s an… that’s a different kind of comedy. I love when Mike says “Trip over the lawnmower” and I just pretend it’s not there and just go for it. I get used to the lawnmower first and I step on this wheel and I step on that wheel and I step on the top of it and I see what happens if I push down on that handle and then I just go for it and whatever happens. Or I’ll catch my bathrobe on the door, you know. I’ll put it on there, hook it on and pull away a little bit at it and see it go, but when I’m directing people for comedy, I have a really good eye for physical comedy when I’m directing people, but when I’m doing it myself, it’s kind of mechanical and I don’t see it as funny.

BE: Yeah

JD: I just see it as kind of interesting because that’s what it comes down to.

BE: When you’re giving the speech and the lectern is moving and you’re pushing it along. (laughs)

JD: I did that the other night too. We were in a beautiful theater up in Kirkland Lake, which is… I drove for seven hours straight to get there through the snow and it was wonderful. A stage, a theater, I started doing Shakespeare because I loved that theater. But, the acoustics were incredible; you could turn your back to the audience and 50 seats away, they could hear you whisper. That’s how good the acoustics were.

BE: Wow

JD: And when you’re in a theater like that, you can control the audience because you go “shhhh” and there won’t be a sound and you can say “Randy, can you feel how the shit clings to the air bud?” People love it when I go shit barometer. I don’t know why but I think it’s because in a way we’re all bad little boys and we like to talk about poop and stuff.

BE: It’s injecting the creativity and the spontaneity and using it with a very otherwise dull word.

JD: Yeah. Like the shit abyss, when you think about it, everybody who hears that term will have a slightly different idea of what the shit abyss actually is. There are some people who are truly anal, you know, they’ll know exactly what it is to them. The way I envisioned the shit abyss and the way I say it, you know… or if I talk about a shit spark, and say “Ricky grew up as a shit spark he started as a shit spark and fanned by the flames of his monumental ignorance, he grew into a raging shit firestorm Randers.”

BE: (Laughs)

JD: You know, what makes that funny? I have no idea. Or, shit moths. Like, to me, shit pupas or talking about the metashitmorphosis. (Lahey voice): “I’m telling you buddy, when I get control of this park, I think it’s gonna be the shit spark that is gonna change the world because, just by example, one utopian trailer park. It will ride like a wave of righteousness in the world. And Randy, ya know bud, I’m thinking of running for prime minister of Canada. Who knows? Like, I could say I was born in Hawaii and then I could be president of the United States of America. Kenya just imagine that?”

BE: Do you guys ever perform in Windsor?

JD: Kenya. Was that the country?

BE: Yeah, it was Kenya

JD: There you go, I am funny and I didn’t even know it. Yeah I do, I’ll tell you one thing… What was your question?

BE: I’m wondering if you guys ever perform in Windsor, near Detroit.

JD: Yes, several times.

BE: Really, do you have anything coming up there?

JD: No, but there’s a good chance we’re doing four venues in the states this fall, me and Randy. And then there’s a chance that we’re doing a Christmas show with the boys. But I can’t tour after the end of March because I’m in two different television series in Nova Scotia this summer. Haven…

BE: Yeah, what is Haven?

JD: Haven is a sci-fi Steven King thing. We’ve done 13 episodes and we’ve got a really great fan base already. The guys that are putting it together are out of LA and they really know what they’re doing. It is so much fun, I mean, I drove three minutes to get to the set from my house. They’re shooting on the south shore of Nova Scotia and they picked the most beautiful place to shoot. The whole team is really very excellent, I mean, the director of photography, to the directors that they get in, to the producers, the whole thing is just top notch and what a joy.

BE: Are you familiar with Tim and Eric? Tim Heidecker and Eric Wareheim down in the states?

JD: No

BE: I think you would be perfect… They do this comedy like you’ve never seen. It’s absolutely hilarious. And we just talked to another songwriter who works a lot with them and I think it would be something interesting to hook you guys up.

JD: Well, you know, I love working. I’ll go to the ends of the Earth to do a play. I’ve been so lucky in my life that I’ve had so many fantastic experiences in film. You know, I got to be in a film this year with Michelle Williams?

BE: Oh, Blue Valentine?

JD: No, amazingly, I don’t think it’s out yet, it’s a film… the title just escapes me. It’s one of Leonard Cohen’s song titles.

BE: “Chelsea Hotel?”

JD: No, keep going. Good for you. I love Leonard Cohen

BE: As do I.

JD: See though, that guys a flaming narcissistic, oversexed, piece of poop. But I saw him in 1967, in the very beginning, at a university, him and Joni Mitchell.

BE: Oh wow. I just got Blue on vinyl today.

JD: The guy’s an inspiration, He was a poet… But, I can’t remember what my point is.

BE: You went and saw Leonard and Joni. I mean, look who Canada’s churned out. It’s phenomenal. Neil Young, Joni Mitchell, Do Make Say Think, Broken Social Scene, so many, you know? Mmm… I’m throwing in a plug of tobacco. So, did you used to gamble? That’s what I saw on Wikipedia.

JD: Well, my brother-in-law stole a half a million dollars from my wife’s family and gambled it. And I started doing a little bit of poking around and I found out that 80% of the billions of dollars that the government are taking is from people that are stealing money from their families. And I thought that maybe I should, since I played the machines myself and have probably lost over 50 grand over the years. I think I did that for the dopamine, I’m sure. But, I never spent anything more than what I had in my pocket. I didn’t use credit cards or spend rent money or anything like that but I decided to set myself up as a little bit of a poster boy if I could. And I did. I’ve done several documentaries. One of them was on CBC last year, and it was very effective. I deal with quite a few people who call me every once in awhile and talk about their problem and give them a little bit of help here and there. I’m a very poor gamble but I love cards. I like bridge… I love bridge. I play duplicate competitively and I find the most incredible thing about when you’re playing bridge is that all the other things in the world go away because it takes all of your concentration to do it. And the difference between that and gambling, it’s a tiny difference, but somehow it pulls you out of everything and puts you in this state. So that if I had two hundred dollars in my pocket, the whole thing can go in the machine. I’ve done purposeful studies going in with a hundred dollars in my pocket and said, “I’m only going to spend twenty,” and walked out spending the whole hundred. I’ve never been able to not do that. The only time I’m able to do it is when I have a camera crew with me

BE: When you able to stop?

JD: Yeah, I’ll say, “We’re going to go in and I’m going to put twenty bucks into the machine and we’re going to time how long it takes.” The last time we did it, about three weeks ago, I put a twenty-dollar bill in and it lasted two and a half minutes. And that was just a $2.25 bet. I could go on for days about the government being culpable. In the same way that residential schools and the priests abusing people and how that has come to be criminalized and recognized. The same thing is going to happen, I think, with gambling. It’s going to be recognized. It’s murder, it absolutely is, its government-sponsored murder.

BE: Wow, this is unanticipated, really interesting.

JD: You know what? I just looked at the clock. 6:24. We’re leaving in 20 minutes to drive over to the university and set up the show. I’ve got to do a quick shave and a shower and I’ve got to get into my Jim Lahey duds.

BE: Alright, well hey, John Dunsworth. It’s been a pleasure talking to you. Thanks so much for taking the time

JD: You know, I love the opportunity

BE: Send us out with some Lahey

JD: Alright. (Lahey voice): “You have to know what’s going on around you. You can’t stick your head in the sand. You have… ych… if there’s some… Randy! Bring me double cheese… yeah. No no no, the other forget it. Listen. Wait a second bud. You know what I gotta run right now, I gotta go. Who am I talking to?”

BE: This is Ben

JD: (Lahey voice): “Buzz Aldrin? Asimdlg? Holy shit! Hey Randy! George Sheppard or whatever the fuck his name…” (hangs up the phone)

BE: (laughs)

In a rare interview, the prolific musician sits down to discuss his time with Saturday Looks Good to Me, his creative process, and his cyclical youth.

Also in This Issue:

• Listen to Fred Thomas’ album, Night Times
• Listen to Fred Thomas’ Fogged Clarity Session

TRANSCRIPTION BY DYLAN BROCK

Ben Evans: I’m always interested in the way emotion shapes a musician’s work. I’ve found that some artists approach music with more of a clinician’s eye for tone and cohesion, while others are more concerned with the raw release that playing music permits. How do you approach making your albums?

Fred Thomas: That’s a good question, but it probably doesn’t fall into either of the criteria that you mentioned. I started playing music, as a lot of people did, in the punk and hardcore scene of early adolescence, and quickly at the same time found a home in improvisation and a love of early free jazz. And so I had this weird dichotomy going on where I wanted the fast and aggressive release of punk, but I also wanted to stretch out and explore the possibilities around me. So it’s always confused by that approach to music. To answer your question though, as formed from that approach to music, I just start playing and whatever happens that’s what the song is.

BE: What jazz musicians were you attracted to?

FT: I had a friend who was a roommate of mine who was about three or four years older and he was just really into early 60’s stuff like Albert Ayler, Pharoah Sanders, Sun Ra, Art Ensemble of Chicago, and I kind of approached it the same way. There’s always this arc of disgust to curiosity to complete love with anything that you really love. For some people it starts out, “That’s annoying,” or “That’s kind of repulsive to me,” and then eventually they are obsessed with it, and that’s what it was for me with those artists and that kind of music.

BE: It’s funny, oftentimes music that you dislike upon the first, second, third or fourth listen, you later fall in love with.

FT: There is a reason you’re listening to it over and over again, even though it seemingly annoys you so much.

BE: Yeah, this free jazz, almost stream of consciousness approach to songwriting you take really seems to fit into your lyrical style. Your lyrics, especially in some of your solo work, they seem conversational with a heavy dose of literalism. Can you give me an idea of where you’re writing from and what you hope to accomplish with some of the prose in your work?

FT: I couldn’t completely say I understand it myself either. I definitely, like I said, start going, and I find that when you do that whatever your thinking about the most comes out in what you create. Whether it’s musical, lyrical, whatever kind of art you’re making. If you’re just expounding on your feelings, whatever’s weighing heaviest on your mind is going to come to the surface, so I think it makes sense that a lot of literal prose comes out when you’re going at it that way.

I write songs a lot of the time about either things that are happening to me in a very overt, direct manner like people’s names, situations, places… don’t care, everybody is represented as actual literal figures, or a complete fiction that’s based on something –maybe the way I want things to be, maybe the way things are, but with kind of a different take. It’s either one extreme or the other. It’s either like, “Yes, this is exactly what’s happening!” and it’s no holds are being barred, or it’s kind of just utter nonsense. I have definitely had people come up to me and say, “That song about that one situation, I could tell you were singing it straight from your heart.” And I’m like, “Nope, that’s just a dumb song I made up. I m sorry to let you down like that.”

BE: Talk to me about the song on your album Night Times that talks about attending a blind play where there were costs cut on costume design.

FT: Yeah, complete fabrication. I wanted to write a song for this kind of music I started, and I was staying in Olympia, Washington for a little while at the K Records studio ’cause I just got done with a big tour that ended in Olympia. So I was exhausted and sick, and I was sleeping all day while the people were working upstairs, and then by the night time I’d wake up and play on the piano and dick around in the studio and cough a lot. And that was a song I made up on the piano at K, and was like “Oh this song’s so good. I wonder if I should write something.” I started writing this thing and I wanted to write a song that references my friend Amy because her name alliterates with this one thing…But yeah, the whole song, it never happened. I don’t smoke pot, Amy’s married, she certainly isn’t having trysts with anybody or one night stands, which is kind of…for those who haven’t heard the song…it’s this weird stoner’s tale about this completely impossible thing….that kids would be doing a play for blind people? That doesn’t even make sense. I don’t even think there even is a center for the blind in the town where I lived. That’s just something that came out of my head.

BE: So that’s where the freeing element of music comes in: for you to be able to just pen a tale and bring it to life at the piano as you’re dead sick in Olympia, Washington.

FT: I think that’s what draws people to music even as children. People start their love affair with songwriting when they’re just kids singing into the tape deck, or just singing into the iPhone now. I have so many friends who are like “Yeah, I made tapes of fake radio shows with my sister” or, “I had a band that was just me in my head and here’s the tape of it.” Or, just this crazy, outlandish stuff that is purely from your imagination and anybody can do it. It’s really one of the most beautiful things.

BE: You were the one saying that you have a tape of girls talking about boys and why they like them or didn’t like them that you play at shows… Am I recalling that right?

FT: Yeah, my really good friend Amber left the tape in our car – Amber plays in Swimsuit with me and we have a band together called Damn Dogs; we’re very very close – this tape of her and her friends. I think she was eight, and having fallen so deeply in love with her as a person that hearing the young her taunting her friends and being like, “Say it in the tape recorder! Say why you don’t like Dan Evans!” It is just heart melting. It’s such an amazing thing and I just play it through delay at City Center shows, and I’m sure it came off as just a spectral sonic background for the audience, but for me it was definitely a tribute to this person I was missing very much while I was on tour and also just made me think about the beauty of youthful innocence. And it’s just great, y’ know?

BE: Yeah. Especially in your Saturday Looks Good to Me stuff there seems to be a large element of nostalgia in that work, kind of harkening back and imagining adolescence. Am I on point there?

FT: Well, yeah, I’ve kind of had this thing for that as long as I can remember. People I see sometimes, people I went to high school with I see, and they’re like, “Hey, what’s going on?” and I’m like, “You remember when I was fifteen and I was in bands and trying to play music with people?” and they’re like, “Yeah, yeah, yeah!” “Well it’s almost twenty years later and I’m still doing the exact same thing.” And maybe they’ve moved on and have more normal lives, or more traditional family structures forming, and I’m still stuck in the excitement and rapture of these feelings that started when I was very young. So for me, it is a nostalgia, but it’s also this weird, potentially unhealthy – but who knows – trap of being like, “Yeah, I still play music. The same way I ever have been.” I’m still playing the same types of shows that I did when I was first starting, and I’m no less excited about it, and a lot of my audience is people who are between the ages of fifteen and twenty-one who are just getting into it for the first time, and I’m connecting with people who are significantly younger than me, because I’m thirty-four now, and so I still have this – it’s sort of nostalgia, but sort of like an on-going nostalgia. It’s hard to get away from. You know what I mean?

BE: It’s a cyclical youth.

FT: Yeah, exactly. Cyclical youth. It’s much better said, and much more succinctly said. Thanks.

BE: A few years ago you made a move from Michigan to New York City. How did that transition affect your work, and do you ever find yourself feeling lost, or somehow less artistically relevant in a big city like New York?

FT: Well, I don’t want to bore you with the time-line, but I don’t live in New York anymore. I lived in Portland, Oregon for a minute, I lived in New York for two or three years, I kind of floated for a little while, and I’ve definitely been back in Michigan for over a year now, but there was definitely a big shift in what was happening moving around for all that time. I had toured a lot before then, and spent years and years on tour, but there was always an address, and there was always, like, the record shop I could go to and the bar where my friends would be, and I could always call that home. But for a while I felt very displaced, it didn’t feel home, and New York especially… I feel New York is such an amazing place and a place I think everybody should spend some time – whether or not it’s good time – I think everybody should spend some time living there, ’cause it really can… It’s just not like any other place, and I was certainly challenged by trying to make ends meet in New York, trying to just deal with the whole unending hustle that New York City proved to be for me.

BE: Yeah, and I hear that from a lot of people.

FT: It’s the classic story, right?

BE: Yeah. Although it’s this hyper-stimulated place and so much is going on, really the only place to look is inward after a while, and I think you can do quite a bit of self-reflection or grinding and hustling, as you suggested.

FT: Well, I felt like it was a hyper-stimulated, over-saturated, full, full place, yet I didn’t have a job for a while there, which is murder, because it costs so fucking much money. But I would just see the same people all the time. I’m not sure the exact dimensions, but I think it’s around nine square-miles for Manhattan and Brooklyn, so I would bump into people as much as I would in Ypsilanti, and I was like, “This is kind of weird.” Or people are always visiting, so it’s like, “Oh, here I am at a show and I know fifty-percent of the audience from all over the world. This is really, really strange. It just doesn’t make any sense.” So with the feelings of displacement and big city existential angst, there’s also this almost comical… Yeah, it’s just a little town that thinks really big, and to me, looking inward was definitely one of the results of that living period. And that’s when I started doing City Center, which was way different than anything I’ve done before, and definitely a direct result of not really knowing what to do with myself, not really having any money to do anything, not really having the space for a bunch of friends to jam with. I just was in headphones every single day, trying to connect with some really, really displaced feelings, and I thought it was really positive. I thought it was really a success for me.

BE: What were you able to do musically in City Center that weren’t able to when playing with Saturday Looks Good to Me, or by yourself?

FT: Well, it’s really strange. City Center just started as… a friend of mine was doing a CMJ showcase, and she was like, “I really want you to play this. I really like your songs.” I was like, “I’m so sick of my songs. I’m so sick of singing these songs I wrote five years ago” that to me just range kind of phony or love struck about feelings I didn’t have anymore. And I’d been playing this kind of like weird, troubled music in my bedroom, and she was like, “Just do whatever you want. You’re going to play first of seventeen bands anyway.” I was like, “Okay.” Call it City Center, and do something for it, and that was November of 2007 at the Cake Shop, and we did this… There were songs in there, but it was really a very emotional, kind of experimental thing, and everybody hated it who was there to see me play songs that sounded like Jonathan Richman waxing nostalgic or waxing heart-struck, and for whatever reason – maybe I was being contrary or something – but I was like, “Yes! This is what I want. I want to say goodbye to this feeling I felt kind of trapped in.” Saturday Looks Good to Me would go on tour, and people would be like, “This isn’t the band I like. You’re not playing… Where’s the girl singing about cupcakes and bobby socks?” and whatever the fuck. I was like, “Well, I’m actually thinking about how I have terrible nightmares every night about violence, and I’m thinking about the breakdown of the human body, and I don’t really feel like singing about happy shit right now. I have some way more damaged feelings that I want to express for myself. And I was a little bit bitter and obtrusive about it because I was reacting, basically, to people saying, “You should do this because we like it,” and basically saying, “I don’t care what you like,” and “Fuck you! I hope you don’t like this.”

BE: And it’s cathartic.

FT: It’s so cathartic, and it worked, because a lot of people didn’t like it. It was cool.

BE: Did you consciously want to reshape your identity then?

FT: No, I didn’t really even think about it like that, because I just felt like… It wasn’t for me a reshaping, because I felt like the last several Saturday Looks Good to Me records I was trying to warm people up to the idea of all the stuff I felt like I was interested in the entire time. Like the early stuff was a little bit lo-fi and had some dub influences, so I’d like to do something that’s really, really messed-up sounding, and it was met with lukewarm reception, so it was like, “Now that the band is kind of done, I’m just going to take this as far in whatever direction I want it to be.” And it wasn’t necessarily looking to re-invent or to even try anything new. It was just going to shed a skin a little bit and be like, “Yeah, if you were wondering if I’m ever going to do the exact same record that you heard again, the answer is, ‘No, I’m not going to do the exact same record again’.”

BE: Are you still playing with City Center? And how many bands are you in right now?

FT: Well, I don’t want to embarrass myself by talking about all the bands because I definitely have… I haven’t had a job for a long, long, long time and I’ve just been working on music for a long time. Not successfully, mind you. It’s definitely been one of the more trying times financially, because I haven’t been touring, but I have been jamming with people all the time. City Center toured for the majority of 2009. I’m in a band called Swimsuit, we’ve been playing a lot and touring, and people have been kind of interested in that band regionally, and we’ve done some shows out in New York, and we’re getting ready to do a record and a full tour. I have a band called Mighty Clouds, which is basically like a duo between myself and Betty, who was the main vocalist for Saturday Looks Good to Me. She lives in Sweden, and we made a record recently, and we’re going to tour Europe in March and April. Here in town, like different noise stuff all the time. I have a band called Damn Dogs and a project with a friend from Kentucky that we do through the mail called Settle.

BE: That’s cool, man.

FT: I don’t like talking about it sometimes because I feel like it’s almost like a gimmick. Like, “Oh, yeah. I’m in like fifty bands.” That’s boring. Who cares? I’m sure that if you could only praise even one of them, it’s good. Y’ know?

BE: It’s what you love, though.

FT: I know. I totally… I like all of them, but it’s basically… it’s not really for any sort of press release, y’ know? It’s hard for me to talk about it and not feel like I’m trying to sell it to people, ’cause I really am not. Some people like to hang out and socialize and go to parties, but I would much rather make some recordings for people that I love, y’ know? So that’s how it happens for me.

BE: What are some of the best stories you’ve accumulated over the years being on the road and playing with people? What are a couple of moments that just stand out in your mind as being, I don’t know, magical or significant?

FT: Well, the magical moments are so many. I think about… there’s an Elliott Smith song that says, “Happy and sad come in quick succession.” I think he’s probably talking about addiction, or maybe not, but I always thought of that any time I’d be on tour because it would be these incredible mood swings. I definitely… I had this a moment at one point… this spanned-out moment. We were traveling. I can’t remember where. Somewhere in the United Kingdom on the first Saturday Looks Good to Me tour overseas, and that just blew my mind completely that we could even do that, this kind of like scrappy band of basically punks was able to get it together enough to cross the pond, y’ know? And we were taking this long ride on a ferry, and everyone got sick as hell, myself included. I just remember being in the car just trying not to vomit, and we looked over out the window and in this field, there was a flock of birds, seemingly thousands of black birds were in a migrating cloud together, and it was the most calming, natural sort of reset you could possibly hope for. I couldn’t believe it. I was like, “Whoa!” I’ve seen birds flying around, but I’ve never seen a cloud of four thousand birds all the same, all moving in unison, and it kind of struck me that here I am in this foreign place I’ve never been to just to play music for people, and they’re excited about it, and I get to… I don’t know… Through the waves of nausea I was like, “This is the best life I could hope for.”

BE: Do you aim to get back to that point, where you can be in a project that is as big as Saturday Looks Good to Me, and go do some of the same stuff you were able to do when you were touring with them?

FT: Well I don’t know. I never thought about it in terms of a scale like that, because it just doesn’t seem to be a healthy way to look at things. I definitely… People sometimes ask me about Saturday Looks Good to Me as though it was…

BE: Your prime?

FT: Maybe that, but maybe more like I think that other people think it was more like a bigger deal than I did, because I feel like I’m still constantly going and playing shows and doing stuff all the time and touring a lot, and I just feel like there’s… maybe it was just more like a moment that I wasn’t recognizing. I have conversations with other people who are in bands that started in like 2001, and kind of toured and reached their apex in the 2004 era when people were still buying records and CDs, and it seemed like there were less than forty billion bands. It seemed like you’d actually be excited about it and not like, “Oh, another show tonight.” It seemed more like a thing where we’d go to places then and it would be like, “Oh we’re so excited you’re coming! We heard your song on the college radio, and it’s good!” And now it’s the kind of thing where it’s like, “Yeah, we were going to try to swing by your show tonight, but we downloaded your first five demos, and I’ve got to do my DJ night tonight at someone’s house in this weird crunk bass-off down the street.” And so I think it’s just a different time, and I prefer to think about it in those terms, rather than like, “Why am I not more famous?” or “Why am I not selling tickets or records?” I never really felt like that was actually happening. I feel bad to actually break it down to numbers and be like this is the amount of records sold, or people who actually bought T-Shirts or saw shows because that’s disgusting to me.

BE: It also minimizes the importance of the music, which is the only thing that really should matter.

FT: Yeah. Definitely I feel like that’s right on and that’s what I’m trying to work towards, because I feel like a lot of bands that move me so much, sometimes it’s about the music and sometimes it’s not. I love certain personalities, and a certain… Some bands, I can listen to their records all day long over and over and over again, and I’d never want to see them play. I don’t think I’d ever want to be like a fan of, like, the Beach Boys, in the way that I’d want to go check out the show. But I’ve listened to those records religiously, and sometimes I’m like… I just want to look at this amazing Aphex Twin record, and I don’t really want to listen to it right now. I just want to feel the cultural elements of what it means to see a record cover that looks like this, maybe hear the first thirteen seconds of the song. I don’t know. I don’t know if that even applies to what we’re talking about, but I feel like music is this unnamable thing, and what makes the band big or not big doesn’t even really apply anymore.

BE: There’s so much that lives within the music, in your thoughts of listening to a record, like… I don’t even have an album player, but I ordered Blue by Joni Mitchell on vinyl two nights ago just because I wanted to have it.

FT: It’s a perfect record. I mean, you just want to stare at it sometimes.

BE: Yeah.

FT: It’s good.

BE: In listening to your solo records, I’ve found that there’s a greater degree of sophistication there, a sharper vision, I think, than in the Saturday Looks Good to Me albums. Do you prefer working by yourself, and do you feel as if your solo LPs like Night Times and Flood are more intimate records?

FT: Well, I guess that would be hard for me to say. I love pretty much most of… at a point I love most of the music I’ve put out. I had to care about it to some degree to release it, and I don’t really ever revisit stuff all that much, but I do remember feeling more pressure, or intensity about making the Saturday Looks Good To Me records– these perfect capsules of… I wanted to have every sound imaginable. I wanted… It would start with a demo, just me singing and playing guitar, singing and playing piano, and after a time there were eighteen instruments on it, and a string section, and several thousand backing tracks, and so maybe a little bit of the intimacy was lost in the production and the mayhem of it all. Whereas for the solo records it was really just like you and I talking right now, except there’s like a song to it, and I guess that I’m doing all the talking. But for me it seems more conversational and more… I don’t really feel like keeping things in very much in any of my songs, and I guess if it’s something where I’m just going to be by myself in a room, there are even less walls. I just let it all go.

BE: I must say I’d been familiar with the Saturday Looks Good to Me albums before this interview, but this really gave me an opportunity to check out your solo albums, and I really like them. I think they’re very, very well done. When do you plan on releasing another one of those?

FT: Well, thank you so much for checking it out. I record music pretty much every day, or every week. Something gets put down on tape, and I have so many songs, and for every one song that finds the light of day, there’s about five or six that just get thrown out, or put somewhere to be reworked again. So I’ve got a bunch of songs for a solo record that I’m just waiting for the best articulations of. And with Night Times, the last record I did, I think it might be one of the stronger solo records I’ve done. But I just couldn’t really be bothered to deal with like, “Okay, I’m going to master it, or I’m going to make CDs, or try to get a label to put it out, or make some artwork for it,” but I was like, “let’s finish it on Monday and put it on the Internet on Tuesday.” And I feel that people really responded to that in a big way, and people seem to like that record a lot. I’ve gotten lots of comments like, “Oh I really like the songs! Thanks for giving that away.” And with City Center blog… I’ll go on record as saying that the Deerhunter blog was the direct and only inspiration for City Center starting a blog where we gave away free mp3s every couple of days. Any time I recorded any song with City Center, in the beginning, I would just put it online, and that’s because I was so taken with Bradford Cox, not as much his music as him being like, “Oh yeah. I made this song and I might be in a band that could easily sell it to you, but I’m just going to give it to you because, why not?” And I love that. I think that’s where music’s going. So I stripped that idea and stole it and put my own name on it, and so I got really into… every time I’m working on something, it’s mostly free, online, so I’ll probably just keep doing that and maybe start leaking songs out as they go.

BE: Well’s it’s nice to have that communal feel, and I do totally agree, that’s where music and literature and poetry are going, but at the end of the day, I mean, you’ve got to get paid. You’re in seventeen bands and you’ve released this great catalog of work, and I hear you saying, “Well it’s a grind right now,” so how do you reconcile that? How do we, I guess, reconcile that?

FT: That’s the question with no answer. This is the ultimate punk moment I’ve been waiting for… We have the tools now, that anybody… the barricades between audience and performers are broken down. That was the goal for me all throughout high school and college, and to this day, and now it’s here! And so it’s hard for me to feel too bad about eating beans and rice every day, because I’m stoked about it. I think it’s so amazing that I mean everybody has access – I guess not everybody, because not everyone owns a computer, not everyone has internet savvy; there’s definitely issues of class and other stuff that goes into that – but if you’re already into the Zombies, and you want to download everything they’ve ever done, you can do that, and you don’t have to be smarter than someone, or cooler than someone, or more attractive than someone, or wealthier than someone to do it. You can just fucking do it. And I’m happy to… my passion and my heart is in music, but if I have to find some other way to get by because music is free, that’s totally fine.

The prolific American poet discusses language as music, the politics of war, and his new collection, Beautiful Country.

That which goes into the mouth and is eaten

is mortal, perishable, transformed

like knowledge, the way a subject takes within himself

something important, alien, that which is hard

made soft, deliquesces, and this thing becomes him,

doesn’t it, isn’t this what Dali wanted us to see,

to understand in the teaspoon, the prolongation

of its handle and the shallow bowl which contained

the little watch, or the ossification of a railway station,

the soft clock making its first appearance

in The Persistence of Memory, saying all gnosis is found

in phantoms, dreams, the fourth dimension…

I listen to the sax and trumpet made malleable

by Billy Holliday’s limbering voice, I take

the host in my mouth, crack its weight against my palate

and it bends, I remember how my breasts

were sex once, when the rigid milk ducts filled,

then the little pump’s blue horn, the rich liquid rising

inside the midget bottle, the yellow colostrum

like chrism, and I remember my son who tried to stuff

all my mother flesh inside him, in his small Pavarotti mouth;

how heroic it seemed when the string of milk left,

that sudden ribbon of white, opalescent, when he thirsted

like a night-blooming flower, his gullet becoming

sated, fed clear to the core, and distance bent backwards;

yes, the stuff of time vanished when I unbuttoned my blouse.

Recently, you have been everywhere. I carry
your journals as weathered talismans, a sign
of misguidance – the way you stole
my voice when I was five and I learned
that mountains shed such long shadows
in rooms that don’t face the sun. I thought

I saw you, the other day, walking down West St.
It was you, gaunt face, faded
baseball cap, hooked nose. Only you disappeared
up some unknown gravel driveway and walked
into some unfamiliar house. Lately,
you have been visiting me and I don’t have the strength
to tell you to leave. You never mentioned

my name in all of your nine journals. I searched, checked the spaces
in between the words, scanned the yellowed pages. So I wrote
in black felt tip, “He had a daughter.”
Maybe now that you are gone

you will remember.
I have been seeing you often. Not as a ghost,
but bodily, solid. I remember the way your flesh looked
in the end – elastic and pale. Maybe that’s when you remembered me –

doesn’t death always reclaim names from the subconscious?

Like smells from childhood. Your grandmother’s
wooden cupboards decayed by moths; your yellowing
heart buried in sequestered pages I’ve uncovered.

I swear you descended our backyard steps late last night, swear
I heard you say my name; whispered it with the breeze in
the tomato plants that are now just rising from your
ashes beneath the walnut tree,
so tall and wide –

the towering father
amongst the inconsequential grass.

*Out of all this I’ve learned the steady art
of breathing. In and out. Over and over. Lungs
expanding, rib cage widening, the soft innards
of  sides making hollow space.

Those memories go to my brother’s eyes: kidney red
from drugs. My mother rubbing them with a dishrag,
praying to the saint of addiction. Then on our row house lawn
he swung clubs with an Asian woman,
who one midnight said, you teach me golf.
My mother worried: the husband might mind.

He would watch from the doorway. His cigar smoke
moving like stories: a school bombing in a Saigon village—
blood from flesh and orchard fruit, the first carwash
he opened in some ghetto off I-395,
and how he took her in that shaky attic at a cousin’s wedding.
Not against her will, but against all the city gardens’
orange blossoms and sirens for a gas station robbery.
Against whatever else nights are lit and burned by.

He says swallows circled over them.
She remembers no sound of wings. Only
of water harsh with autumn. Sometimes now
birds–cries shrill through dream–converse
and she wakes awed by a strange
sense of flight, just as he says he must
have imagined the swallows.
He speaks of an apple tree
bee-loud with blossom. She insists the tree
stood bare, the harvest long past. Yet, in odd
moments she catches the scent of flowering.
He shivers in recollected wind.
His memory jewels the sky with a crescent moon
and Orion. No, she says, wind and black clouds
scudded with storm. Now, looking up at a half-gone moon
she remembers a faint light
silvering his face. He ponders a moment,
admits to the dark.

A Pilgrim into Silence, Tiger Bark Press, 2010

Karen Swenson’s newest title, A Pilgrim into Silence, is divided into four sections. Each of the sections explores the life journey of an urban American woman—a woman of a generation and a class perhaps tinged with theatrical qualities of pomp and circumstance; a lady propelled by notions of religion and reason.

The privileges and joys of such a woman are no less real; her observations, no less driving and unremitting. Nor is her will spared in any way from the stifling rigidity of role expectations. Griefs are sedated and finally deadened with alcohol. The metaphysical places of beauty, desire, and love are dished out with heapings of loss on the long road to self-possession. Early on, love and despair become traveling companions in this collection.

Sonnets and villanelles are employed, and the lives of animals often serve as metaphors.  Sparrows are quarrelsome in spring:

But come a warm June evening, rancor gone,
brown pinstripes smooth, one holds the rail, his soft
throat feathers pulsing song, just as my wrist
beats my blood, in the mindlessness of beauty.

(“Sparrows”)

After an operatic evening out on the town, the voice of one of the poems drifts into an instant of third person disembodiment:

At intermission she [a neighbor] leaves in her mink. But
I know the score. While Violetta has
her last ecstatic moments, my ghost, home
alone, holds her pose before her claque of empties.

(“The Phantom at the Opera”)

In an unexpected leap in the section, in a food court somewhere in a more modern Teheran, girls giggle across tables at the close of a sonnet:

. . . even
a Tex-Mex. An isle of adolescent liberty,
where boys stroll by to look at faces that leaven
dreams, creating divine and political difficulty.
The essence of adolescence is invariably heathen
and totally in opposition to religion and reason.

(“Teheran, The Food Court”)

The second section of the collection is composed of poems that take place in or near Mother Teresa’s Home for the Dying Destitute in Calcutta. Ironically, it is not only a home for the hopeless, and those with more privileged, languishing spirits also abide.  In their service, they find life among the death.

The poems oddly dovetail with the poems in the opening: the themes of need and an abandonment of maternal love; infantile—even animal—survival instincts; again love and despair. But even here there are small gestures of collegial cooperation in a world of almost Darwinesque competition and unrelenting denigrations. It arises between two foreign women volunteers:

In Holland
a psychiatric nurse, here she’s bemused,
as I am by how habit-forming
it is to wash the clothes and patients, their
skin crackled–sun parched, river mud.
We shop, lunch with our fellow foreigners
on meat, not dahl. We move with ease
from the Dead to the Oberoi Hotel
at night watch Rambo videos
or else read Indian philosophy.
Returning in morning air, sour with exhaust,

we find a white wrapped shape . . . The
nurse and I agree, it feels as if we almost
have a life here—a white-wrapped gift from Death.

(“Two Foreign Volunteers”)

In another, the will to live is animated:

. . . no, not pity, rather astonished admiration
for the sheer willfulness of life—a blind
and cornered cat slashing at Death’s dogs.

(“The Austrian”)

The third section is an account of the poet’s pilgrimage to Mt. Kailash—a holy mountain in the Himalayas. Still the journey of exploring will, sacrifice, and discovery.

Had this book ended with the third section, this reviewer would have set the collection down feeling the book’s promise fulfilled—the arc of a journey of discovery to the edge of self-possession. But the last section—poems returning to the themes of motherhood and urban scenery—made the collection feel less artful and more valedictorial and willed, an unnecessary bringing of things full circle. An outstanding sonnet about an aging mother’s demise, “Driving,” could have served as the sole closing poem for the book:

When she picked up the hitchhiker Death,
that beggar’s first demand was the alms of her eyes,
the cataracts were the blur of his breath,
his exhale shrinking her boundaries without reprise.
He shut her highways, lowered his border bar
till the only way out was on his road, in his car.

The award winning author discusses the influence and process behind American Salvage, anachronisms, and her days in the circus.

Cooking naked:
Seasoning salmon fillets
with sensuous overture—
olive oil, oregano,
lemon juice, black pepper;
I shave the asparagus stalks,
she tosses salad.
Dancing as one, we
revel in soft gazes, urgent touches,
tongues respond with bluesy kisses,
sounds in our throats as
sighs cross desires.
At dawn our music ceases.

Skinbag of bones
at a backchurch graveyard,
where we drove to
fuck, while bruised December sits low
over your loose tongued
’85 Toyota

You are Adam
I am an Adam
too.

And next to my window, a church lawn holds the sign,
LIVE! YOU ARE GOD’S CHILDREN
over Trinity’s Christmas nativity,
hushholding
still
it’s nightly creatures
like crude moonbaby dreams,
dim in the light of plastic eyes;
Mother, Joseph, and Child
awake in the snow.

But I don’t know
if their redemption can find us,
can soothe the spaces
between our limbs contorting in your car;
escaping their eclipsed battery forms,
the coils of plastic eyes
now pooling light
upon our fallen
Adam tangles.

My hand
is on your arm,
my hand is on your
zipper,
I find you
to enter
the garden
as if our reprise never happened.

You are reborn
you are reborn
you are reborn
you are reborn
you are reborn
you are reborn
you are reborn
now

Fractures of rapture in our boughs,
under the coarse candescence
shed from infant Jesus onto
ribbons of muscle, tendons
and sinews
of your body
on top of my body,
bold as brutality.

And it is only then, as
it is finished,
when you wipe your thumb
against my passenger window,
that I see new
through the steam of holy water,
read new the church sign’s message
rupturing dark against all the white
of snow,
of skin, and your
Celica.

Black lettering which once was
LIVE! YOU ARE GOD’S CHILDREN
has been rearranged, so that when I read
GOD EVIL CHILDREN YOU ARE!
I think that it’s true,
oh God, I think that it’s true and want to
cry or maybe
pray or
laugh
and instead,
grab my winter coat
from the backseat
tucking you in it
as though to cover you,
wrap you
as in swaddling clothes.

The lights of the
nativity scene flicker up
as dusk trails around us,
baby Jesus, cold
blind irises open under the black script.

Sandy Harris died on her way to dress rehearsal two days before the opera premiere. Most of the ensemble didn’t notice her absence. She was nine years old. The other children in the chorus whispered her name while mothers fitted their wig-caps and buttoned their long red robes. Her costume remained on the rack, stiff and heavy over satin slippers. Before long, the stagehand appeared, miscounted, and led them to the orchestra pit.

The children passed an exit propped open with a travel mug; wind and cigarette smoke pushed into the hallway. Near the stage, a row of impaled heads leaned against the stairwell, suitors who failed to answer the princess’s riddles. Layers of drops, snow-capped mountains and Chinese gardens, lined the backstage. The principal singers remained behind doors closed to their dressing rooms while sopranos and baritones from the adult chorus attacked the empty seats with their vibratos. The children sat on the apron and dangled their feet into the orchestra pit, above a tuning tuba. “We’re missing one,” the children’s director said. “Who’s missing?”

One child raised her hand, out of habit, and told him Sandy was probably stuck in traffic. He told her to spit out her gum, threatening to replace her with someone more professional. She swallowed. Tears smudged her almond-painted eyes. He conducted their scales and they returned to the dressing room.

Homework waited in book bags. The boys drew caricatures of the girls with extended noses and wider ears. The girls filled their notebooks with lists of potential husbands, makes of cars, and dream careers. The mothers made sure they kept their fingers away from their powdered faces. They watched the door for Sandy to barge in at any moment, out of breath and apologetic. She did not come. The overture commenced through the intercom.

“This music is disturbing,” one mother said to another while re-stuffing her daughter’s braids into a wig cap. The opera began with the dissonant chorus harmonies; slaves beaten, crying for mercy.

“He was sick when he wrote it,” the other mother said. “He died before he finished the score.”

The stagehand reappeared and led the children backstage for their first entrance. The princess climbed into a wooden lotus flower suspended by piano wire. She did not return their stares while she rose into the fly gallery. The flower wobbled, bits of light caught on her icy crown, until she disappeared into the shadows. Meanwhile, the stage manager passed out paper lanterns dangling from brass rods for the children to carry. Just when she would ask them about the extra lantern, a tenor from the adult chorus interrupted and pulled her aside.

The music stopped. An hour passed while light board operators refigured cues for the princess’s entrance.

“She’s still up there,” a child said, pointing.

“Maybe she’s sleeping,” said another.

“Less orange.” The director’s voice echoed over the loud speaker. “I want to see the lanterns glow.”

The children took turns balancing the rods on their curved palms. Their scalps itched. They had to wait for a stagehand to escort them to a bathroom. Girls practiced ballet positions while boys played a condensed version of freeze tag around a row of Chinese dragons.

“Children stand by,” the stage manager said.

At her command, they crossed the stage in a solemn procession. Their melded voices drifted over the accompaniment. The girl last in line nearly tripped while arching her neck to catch a glimpse of the princess floating down to center stage. Behind the curtains once again, they leaned their lanterns against a wall and flexed their aching arms. The children’s conductor waited in their dressing room with notes. He told them to hold the rods at waist-level and keep them straight, to open their mouths more when they sing, and that he noticed the girl who broke her concentration. He did not mention Sandy.

At intermission, the children darted out into the auditorium. The house-lights dimmed and act three began in front of a Chinese palace façade. Their eyes grew heavy while attempting to follow subtitles. It was well-past their bedtimes. They slipped to the floor beneath the seats until a stagehand tapped them awake.

“It’s finale time,” she said, and counted the tassels on their hats as they lined up once more. When she only counted fifteen, she glanced beneath the seats and across the aisles for the missing child. She found no shadow, figured she was tired. Paper petals drifted to the stage floor, the curtain came down, and at two-thirty in the morning, the director called it a night.

*

One of the mothers brought carnations for the opening and set them along the dressing table. She wrote the children’s names on colored paper, bent into the shapes of fans, and attached a chocolate kiss to each. “They can’t eat in costume,” another mother said. Sandy’s flower was pink with yellow around the petal tips.

Before the children could change into costume, the artistic director gathered the ensemble behind the curtain for a ten-minute memorial. “We’ve had a tragedy,” she said, and told them Sandy’s body was found beneath a shattered windshield on the Lodge Freeway. Her father also passed away in the five-car collision. The ensemble would collect donations for funeral flowers. The director said, “She was a nice girl,” as if she knew her well.

The children returned to the dressing room filled with her absence: quiet Sandy Harris from Farmington Hills; dark haired, wide-eyed, quick to pick up complicated melodies, always on the outskirts of their attention with a book in her grasp. After the performance, her carnation remained on the dressing table until the petals withered and the chocolate melted beneath warm lights.

The ladies of Singing In The Abbey sit down to discuss Wake Up, Sardis!, literature, religion and Chicago.

Mardi Gras

Across the club is a man on fire—
phoenix of mine
burnt offering of cologne
Calvin Klein briefs
tight abs and arias
on vinyl.
I’m fierce with house and tonic

Chiaroscuro:
how they see me, feel me, taste
but never hear me.

Dangerous geisha,
you’re so comely.
Tell me, where’d you fashion that kimono—
so dark?

Song of David

Amulet and apricot
give my voice an expensive
leathery sound.
It never grows dull—this life
Everything fulfilled
with imagination.

Granted,
a father who worked in the Marcos regime
isn’t glamorous
but half a world away
it delivers your hands from calluses and blood—
if only temporarily.

Pardon me
but didn’t we meet at one of David’s parties?
Yes, David Madson. Yes.
He was found on the edge of a lake in Rush City
just north of Minneapolis.

Aubade

Possessing you seems impossible now.
Your closed eyes scan my body—
useless and contracted
hell-bent
on morning relevance.
Last night our bodies seemed endless.

Am I your renaissance winch,
parting mouthfuls of hair in your lap?
This morning as penance,
I’ll take whatever you give.

Aria on Vinyl

Sipping tea with Versace
and I see him
beyond skin and insignia—
my final broach.
I am plaid and khaki. He—
the whole world.

Today a sixty-something man zooms past my sedan.

Last night he came during paid sex

faster than his Mustang’s top speed.

His plugs look believable; they blow like bewildered bumblebees

caught in the fiery hive of the Santa Anas’ swarm.

There is no one in the passenger seat.

He is smiling as if only he knows why.

Today the U.S. hockey team is down one

in the last seconds of the gold medal game.

They have pulled their goalie, a frenzied last ditch effort to tie.

Prayers become pucks become score.

Bodies collide into each other as they are reborn,

given new life known as overtime.

Today a black boy runs after an ice cream truck.

His rangy inner-city limbs taunt the wind.

Change rattles in his pocket like

meager tithes in a collection plate.

In ten years he will be a millionaire,

sprinting down European straightaways

destined to become a track and field God.

Within the past month, there have been major earthquakes in Japan, Haiti, and Chile.

This morning at church my preacher says Soon we will all die.

Today the U.S. lost in overtime,

settling for a metal shining like a second-class citizen.

Today I am sitting alone on the floor in my living room.

Today I am crying.

I don’t know why.

I don’t even like hockey.

West Michigan’s favorite folk duo sits down to play and discuss the inspiration behind their fourth album, Turn Back a Page.

Haunting, beautiful, and sweetly melancholic, the music of Judson Claiborne has long been a favorite of Fogged Clarity. In a very special acoustic session, founder and frontman Christopher Claiborne Salveter sits down in a Lakeview apartment to talk and play a few songs, including a rare solo rendition of the Low Skies track, It is True.

after Portrait of Paolo Morigia

You’ve posed Morigia as bookish,
as in his seventies but still busy
with his reading and writing.
He’s removed his glasses to study you
while you study him.

He doesn’t see you as Judith
holding a sword and the head
of Holofernes. No, he’s admiring
an eighteen-year-old holding
a brush and palette. He’s confident
you’re painting a miracle.

He’ll admire the crumpling
of his belt-tightened smock
as much as the truthful lines
around his eyes. He’ll admire
how his glasses reflect the room.
He’ll admire how well—and upside down—
you’ve forged his handwriting.

He’s trying to write a poem
to match the portrait. And he’ll admire
how you’ve created a look in his eyes
that expresses the charm of failing.

I am on my way to extinction,
here, today, Christmas morning,
my blanket spread out, my wine
uncorked, lighting my first cigarette
before the stone that says my father,
and the tiny angel smiling
on the granite roof, and those
who have gone past their deaths
in rows up along the banks of lawns
and flowers–all anonymous, even though
I know the names of those closest,
and my sneakers are wet from walking.

Diasporadic, Helicon Nine, 1998
Mechanical Cluster, The Ohio University Press, 2002
Hilarity, New Issues, 2009

Suffering and poetic inspiration are complex traveling companions. Some poets rise out of inflicted harshness and physical deprivation. Inversely, physical comfort can deepen a writer’s sense of poetic urgency. We have proof of the latter in Patty Seyburn’s third title, Hilarity.

In 1998, Diasporadic, Patty Seyburn’s first collection of poems, was a winner of the Marianne Moore Poetry Prize. Though the abstractions of Seyburn’s vision are often far reaching, the poems are not pompous or set in grand cosmic rhetoric. The images and language wisely stay in the realm of the fundamental. This first collection is bookended by poems about God. But, both are cast more as casual conversations with a neighbor about an erratic slacker who from time to time ghosts the neighborhood and leaves his cigarette filter off the edge of the porch.

In 2002, Mechanical Cluster, Seyburn’s second book, won The Journal Award. The poems spanned from Detroit (the received hometown of Seyburn) to southern California (the location of Seyburn’s own family). David Citino wrote admiringly of the poems that they were “filled with a strange, ambitious, and compelling music made of the mythic, momentous, and mundane days of our lives:”

One hears a bit of Blake, a bit of Frost

*

Seyburn’s third collection Hilarity took New Issues’ 2008 Green Rose Prize. The book is sparkling and smart, and Seyburn is as likely to draw from children’s rhymes or Groucho Marx as she is from Biblical history or classical Greek mythology. In one poem, “Cassandra in Suburbia: A Monologue,” she sings as if from Orange County:

Seyburn is a philosophical poet in disguise as a high suburbanite. Sometimes she is someone’s daughter. Sometimes she is someone’s bride. And yet, at other times, she is someone’s mother. The guises are tricky, but, through them all, Seyburn is a good self-possessed poet. Her attention is far from the feral. She, herself, is a product and a citizen again of the neighborhood. Seyburn is not a poet expecting or searching for escape. She has read carefully and broadly. Between two poems–a poem about nymphs and one about the three little pigs–is a poem about rampion:

With poetic attention, she enlists the literary and physical landscapes that compose her world; but the poet is ever measuring her own authentic inner landscape. With great skill, Seyburn’s poems keep focus: poetry does not spring from the assigned origins or the needs of the world. It arises from the poet’s attention:

Author Daniel Pinchbeck expounds upon existence, psychedelics and politics while waiting for a lamb sandwich in an East Village bistro.

Jeffrey Rotter joins Ben Evans in a Park Slope beer garden to discuss his novel, The Unknown Knowns. Watch the book trailer, entitled The Museum of the Aquatic Ape. The Unknown Knowns is available for purchase on Amazon.

Today a 59-year-old golf legend had a 7 and a half-foot putt to win the Open Championship, (formally know as the British Open) perhaps professional golf’s most prestigious event. Watching Tom Watson outplay the best golfers in the world this week was one of the most invigorating things I have seen in a long while. For four rounds of golf he was the essence of decorum, a testament to resilience, and the same magnificent player he was 25 years ago. The shots of him standing stoic on the cliffs of Scotland waiting to tee-off, were some of the most compelling images I’ve ever seen in the sporting world. The possibility of what could have been today, what was 7 and a half feet away, is mind-blowing. I felt like a child, nervous and bursting with excitement.. One par=four strokes on the last hole of play. That’s all he needed to do to become iconic.

And he didn’t. He missed his par putt, played the hole in five strokes and lost to a 36 year old in a playoff.

Some dismiss sports as something narrow or trivial, they could not be more wrong. The elation I felt today watching an old man walk on emerald carpets while scowling in the face of age and expectation, was perhaps the purest and most cerebral feeling I have ever had. I raise my glass to Tom Watson for reminding me that anything, absolutely fucking anything, is possible. I believe that again.

Joe Meno discusses politics, process, and the inspiration behind his new novel, The Great Perhaps with Ben Evans.

Purchase The Great Perhaps here.

It was published today in The Muskegon Chronicle (circ. 48,000).

But then, while standing atop the summit of invisibility, a small worry metastasizes, loneliness creeps in, or a cousin in California hits a tree and perishes. Then the small concessions are made again; I will only drink four beers, I will skip the gym today and workout harder tomorrow. One seeks distraction, the four hour feel good regains its allure, and the circle game continues.

Until one day, having become well-versed in the rise and fall, our subject seizes on the beauty of purpose, spending his days trying to enshroud the world in fog. All while drinking a quart of Sierra Nevada.

32 ounces is less than 4 beers right?