Small Press Intravues:
Occasional Interviews with writers
working and publishing in the small press ecosystem
Interview #18: Eric Lindley is a musician, writer, and artist living in the bay area.
His writing has appeared in Fence, Joyland, Tammy, and
elsewhere, and other work at the Santa Monica Museum of Art, Machine Project,
Telic Arts Exchange, The Knitting Factory, and The Smell. With Janice Lee and
Joe Milazzo, he co-edited the online interdisciplinary arts journal [out of
nothing] from 2009 to 2015. You can find Eric’s work online at
likeoverflowing.com.
Joe Milazzo (MFA, Creative Writing, CalArts) is the author of the novel Crepuscule W/ Nellie and three full-length poetry collections: The Habiliments, Of All Places In This Place Of All Places, and, in collaboration with Eric Lindley and Miwa Matreyek, Words In Danger Of Falling Out Of The Vocabulary. Joe's writings have appeared or will soon appear in Black Warrior Review, BOMB, Fence, Prelude, Puerto del Sol, Texas Review, and elsewhere. Joe is also the Founder/Editor-in-Chief of Surveyor Books. He lives and works in Dallas, TX, where he was born and raised. His virtual location is www.joe-milazzo.com.
Michael Sikkema: Hey Joe, I've been spending time with the collaborative book you wrote with Eric Lindley, Words in Danger of Falling out of the Vocabulary, published by Free State Review. I had some questions to kind of get us started. Can you tell me a little bit about this project? What sparked it? How long did it take to write? What was your collaborative process? Does this project fall into the category of "word magic?" Feel free to pick and choose which questions you want to dive into.
Joe Milazzo: The manuscript that became “Words in Danger” grew from collaborative work we did as co-editors (along with Janice Lee) of the journal [out of nothing]. With the launch of each new issue, we would prepare a unique call for submissions for our next issue. For the call for our 6th issue, which we put out in fall of 2011, we cowrote new definitions for every word in the phrase “in the mirror, a sleep, a spectral nothing” (if we recall correctly, Eric dreamed up these particular words in this particular order), then created sentence diagrams based on those new definitions.
We found this exercise so enjoyable and even addictive that we continued it. At first, we gave ourselves occasions (or excuses), like the launch of issue #6, to choose new words and ornament them with new definitions. But we soon found that the work sustained itself: words, much like characters will, presented themselves to us and declared their new identities. We started recording these encounters in a shared Google doc, reading, commenting, and ultimately developing rules that would allow us to braid if not merge the many voices we were hearing. Examples of these rules included:
· Any new definition for a word already defined must assign the word to a different part of speech.
· If altering a usage example, you can only add three words to the existing sentence.
· The next definitions each contributor adds must be in
conversation with each other.
All told, we spent the good part of a decade letting this work take its time. That means there were long stretches of months during which neither us looked at or “touched” the text. We allowed ourselves to be called back to it whenever and under whatever circumstances. This gave the process the texture and dimensions of a kind of correspondence. We might not hear from each other for a while, but, when we did, 8 times of out 10 it was via a Google Docs notification: new activity!
One thing we realized as we prepared the manuscript for publication is that, over that decade or so, we both underwent many changes. Our personal and artistic concerns/responsibilities/obsessions dramatically shifted, along with aspects of our approach to writing and “style.” (To say noting of life changes.) So it's almost like there were several more collaborators—not just the two of us, but past versions of ourselves in dialog.
As much as we both take a kind of Perec-ian view of composition (i.e., we tend to give ourselves puzzles to solve, mazes to wriggle out of, formulae to disprove, and so on), we believe there is an inherent magic in all creative approaches to language. That is, what we say and write always exceeds our intentions to some degree, and that excess is a source of power others can draw from and activate. (As Joe has written elsewhere: “every time one speaks, one runs the risk of making sense.”)
Reading through “Words in Danger” again, however, we can see how maybe there’s something divinatory about it. The work we did was both interpretive and esoteric, and it does find us projecting ourselves—and, assuming we’ve given them a launchpad, readers—into a future in which the English language is perhaps less freighted with colonialism than it is now. Is this text an attempt to hasten the arrival of that future? We would be wary of making such claims, but we would be comfortable saying that glimpses of that other time give us pleasure as well as maybe a little hope.
M: Can you talk us deeper into the appeal of the Perec-ian view of composition that birthed this book? How did you two discover that this particular approach worked for you both?
J: We both studied creative writing at CalArts during a time (2006 – 2008) when the revival of interest in the Oulipo was really cresting. Constraint and conceptualisms were a big part of the curriculum we were exposed to. And we did indeed spend a good deal of time in and out of the workshop discussing these things. But I think it’s the element of play—or playfulness—in the work of Queneau, Perec, etc. that really appealed to us. Why shouldn’t writing be “fun”? We’ve also encountered curricula built upon that assumption: that writing is all about the anxiety of the empty page, that every word is so hard-won. You know: masochist machismo.
This is not to say that Perec is all popsicles and hopscotch. Far from it. But, as serious as his subjects can be, he offers the reader pleasures that aren’t pure diversions. They lead into and out of those serious subjects, often mysteriously (alchemically?) so. We’re not sure we took that specific inspiration from Perec, but we wanted our final composition to convey at least some of the enjoyment the act(s) of composition gave us.
M: Besides Perec, who would you say has a strong influence on this book? Who would you say are fellow travelers?
We would credit the following artists (some of whom work with words, some of whom don’t) with providing inspiration for our contributions to Words in Danger:
· Harryette Mullen
· Clarice Lispector (her crônicas in particular)
· Ronald Johnson
· Clark Coolidge
· Gary Numan
· Matthew Ronay
· Giorgio Morandi
· Len Lye
· Pierre Senges
· Felisberto Hernandez
· Brandon Downing
· Craig Leon
· Tsai Ming-liang
· Amy Clampitt
· Buster Keaton
M: What was the publishing process like?
J: Barrett Warren of Free State Press and Galileo Books has been supportive from the start and was among the first to help us put our work in front of an audience. And he wasn’t just enthusiastic about the work—he was curious about it. The conversations we had with him about the manuscript’s structure, orientation, and proclivities also helped us get it into proper shape.
Barrett also offered us extensive creative control over the design of the book. He even encouraged us to include visual elements, which led to us those wonderful collages by Miwa Matreyek gracing the book.
M: Where might we find some new work by you two?
Joe says: your mailbox. He’s been writing postcards for about a year now and is always loking for new correspondents. If you’d like to receive a postcard, get in touch with him at https://www.joe-milazzo.com/contact.
Eric says: he makes music under the name Careful, and every month through October he will be releasing covers of songs he'd never heard before. Find more at likeoverflowing.com."
Michael Sikkema enjoys making things and walking. He recently had a chapbook of vispo released from Sigilist press, titled Scarecrow I'm a Story and Three Fish. He also has a chapbook forthcoming from Cul-De-Sac of Blood, entitled Watch for Deer.