(continued)
V.C.: Some of the characters in your books are outrageous as are some of the people you work with, like Clint Catalyst and Shawna Kenney. What attracts you to that type of outrageous personality?
I don’t know, I guess it’s because that’s how I am too. It’s the two birds of a feather syndrome! (laughter) Actually the person that’s my boyfriend now has a story written about him in Escape from Houdini Mountain.
V.C.: Really? Which one?
Coco the Zombie Clown from Heaven. I didn’t see him for almost nine years and then he just got in touch with me out of the blue last year because he read the book.
V.C.: Do you have any favorite local writers? Well, local and mainstream.
Well, mainstream writing I love Joyce Carol Oates. I just read a couple of new Joyce Carol Oates books that I hadn’t seen before. I totally love her. A lot of people don’t even count her as a real writer because she’s so popular and prolific, but she’s completely amazing! I like Suzy Bright. I like Lydia Lunch. I just read a book called The Circus Fire that was a non-fiction book but the guy had done a lot of fiction before, he did this book called Speed Queen, but that book The Circus Fire just blew me away! Let’s see, locally the people that I already just mentioned before—Shawna (Kenney), S.A. Griffin, Iris (Berry), Clint Catalyst, I really like their writing. I mean that’s how I actually met Clint, because he was on Manic D and my publisher gave me his book. As soon as I got done reading it I just called him up and said, “We have to know each other!” Then we met for lunch and he showed up with all my books and he said, “Oh, I’ve been trying to stalk you for years!” (laughter)
V.C.: What’s your work process like? Do you have any peculiar rituals or a special room you write in?
Ha ha! My kitchen! (laughter) I keep a diary—my journal, and then I usually have a notebook going on with interview notes or notes of some personal story that I want to do, but I actually do write in my kitchen--just because there was like a big wall there that I built a desk onto. My apartment’s laid out really weird because it’s like the back part of a house, but I just like to write there because it’s sort of a big space.
V.C.: And do you have to be alone when you write?
No, I can function in complete chaos, because I grew up in such a big crazy family. I mean it’s always nice to be quiet and alone and stuff but I could write in the middle of a party if I needed to.
V.C.: Wow! That just seems so rare! I haven’t met too many people that can do that.
Well, that really was because of the way I grew up. There was always like dogs and cats and kids on tricycles peddling around, dinner bubbling over, the phone ringing and the TV on.
V.C.: Your poems almost seem to have a punch line to them. Do you have any foresight into how the piece is going to end or does it just come out that way?
Both ways, it works both ways. Like sometimes I have no idea how it’s going to end or sometimes it’s just something I type and sometimes I already know exactly how it’s going to end. Usually I think of how it’s going to begin first. Usually if I get the first couple of lines down into any story or poem then the rest of it just almost writes itself, and a lot of times I’ll just let it sit for a few days and then sometimes I make revisions … and sometimes I don’t. Once in a while something will come up exactly the way it should be and then other times I’ll just write something stream of consciousness.
V.C.: The earliest poetic work that you released was a spoken word compilation in 1983 called Voices of the Angels, and then there was long gap after that. When did poetry actually become an integral part of your artistic career?
There wasn’t a gap for me, it’s just that stuff wasn’t really … the first chapbook wasn’t that long after that. There wasn’t that much of a market for it. I was doing a lot of live readings and writing constantly but you know, that was just a different time period when there wasn’t a lot of avenues for publication. And the band was going on too--so we were touring a lot and I was really concentrating on that. But I was writing a lot too when we were on the road and in the studio. Actually I was writing a lot for the (LA) Weekly too, so I was doing a lot of journalism at that time as well.
V.C.: Do you have any plans for a new book now?
I’m working on another book right now. Actually I’m working on a couple. Someone just contacted me right now and wants me to do a book of either short stories or poems and it’s probably going to be poems, but I really don’t want to say who that is right now. And then I’m working on another book of short stories and I just started working on my memoirs, and then the Underground Guide book, which I just got done with.
V.C.: You’ve been getting paid for your writing for a long time. Was there ever a time when you didn’t get paid for it?
No, I’ve been getting paid since I was like fifteen. Unless you count stuff like Puppet Terror or my own fanzine! (laughter) I mean just stuff that you do for like your own personal pleasure.
V.C.: I love the line in one of your pieces: “the idea of a straight job is like the idea of a straight jacket.” Did you go through your share of the nine-to-five slave shift?
Oh, totally! I’ve done every kind of horrifying job you can imagine! Maid, firework stand attendant, temp worker, stripper, kids birthday party clown, bartender, … you know, I used to do like two or three jobs at a time for like six or nine months and then go traveling for like two or three months, you know what I mean? Just pay my rent and just go somewhere. Finally, I guess about 1989 or something, I just decided that I couldn’t fucking work in an office any more and I was like, “Okay, I’m either going to be like a bag lady or I will make a living off only doing art” doing whatever, like painting murals or writing or dancing, you know. Then as soon as I made that decision I was really starving for a while but it’s been functioning pretty well ever since then. I just felt like I was wasting my brain you know? I really started realizing that a lot of people can’t do the stuff I did. I kind of thought that everyone could do this kind of stuff but then I’d be talking to people where I was working at in offices and they were like, “Well, you do this and you do this,…” So it took me a long time to realize that not everyone does that. Just because it seemed normal in my family and with me, and I’m not saying that in a snobby way it’s just that when people go home they don’t work on something that makes having a day job sort of worthwhile. Then I just started getting really resentful and thinking, “I am really wasting my brain”. I tried and tried to figure out a way to get out of it.
V.C.: In the book We Got the Neutron Bomb you mention that all the people of the 80s punk scene who were well read in art or pop culture didn’t have Internet resources like they do today, referring to a sense of unity. How was it different then?
I think in those days you had to really, really, really work at being up on things. Like now if someone discovered like a new band or a new trend or a new writer people would know about them immediately because of like email or you know, any kind of mass communication.
V.C.: Do you still see music in your future? Any chance of you working on any new bands?
I just sang with Barnes. He’s got a band called Loudboy and a band called Blue Radio. I sang with them a couple of months ago at Akbar and that was the first time I sang live in a while, it was really fun. I’m telling you this without permission from the other people but I think we’re going to have a Ringling Sisters reunion for Christmas this year. We just started talking about it and everyone’s into it. We were talking about doing the regular Christmas fundraiser benefit thing and getting together and doing that but that’s still in its total planning stages. We all kind of miss it.
V.C.: Speaking of the Ringling Sisters, Debbie Dexter told me that Johnette (Napolitano) was never actually a member of The Ringling Sisters but only a celebrity guest. True or false?
She was in it but it was hard because it was at the point that Concrete Blonde was touring and stuff all the time so she only did a few shows. I mean she was always at our meetings and in the press and all that kind of stuff. She just did like about two years ago, the last time we actually worked together, the soundtrack to this movie called Pep Squad. She produced this song of mine that’s on the soundtrack of it. Steve Balderson is in pre-production of a movie called Firecracker, based on a true story about this murder that took place on the fourth of July in this carnival in Kansas. I’m going to be in that movie, and also Deborah Harry is in it, Dennis Hopper, Sally Kirkland, and Karen Black. That hasn’t even started shooting yet though.
V.C.: In your 1999 release Education Infestation, you worked with Johnette Napolitano. How was she involved?
Yeah, that was when we were recording a lot together. She produced that track and then she also produced a few other tracks, most of them were just sort of demos but one of them was the one that got used in that movie Pep Squad. A couple of other ones sort of got a little bit of airplay because they were sent out but they were never released on anything. We were collaborating; she was doing music and backup vocals in some cases, and I was doing the singing and some spoken, and we had other people doing music too.
V.C.: You wrote a screenplay in 1988, The Runnin’ Kind, in which you also acted in. Is that something you could see yourself doing more often? Getting into the Hollywood movie thing?
Well, I’ve been doing a lot of acting lately, but not like giant things. I played Mata Hari last year for this Learning Channel special called The Top Ten Ultimate Spies. I was Mata Hari in the re-enactments, when they were talking about how I got executed and stuff. I did some belly dancing, seduced some french officers.
V.C.: How is writing a screenplay compared to writing stories or poetry?
It’s a lot different because you’re dealing mostly with dialog. I’m working on something now, it’s a project that’s not a movie but it’s for the movie screen, but that’s all I can say!
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