Whoever wants to do dreamwork must mix all things together. --Albrecht Dürer

Part I

Ever by Blake Butler and Light Boxes by Shane Jones are two books of biting beauty and devastating disease. They are worm-eyes through protean fluff and flesh of the chimera on her jaunt through labyrinthine neural pathways. Some signposts have been staked in the badlands. Scavenger clues are uncovered from abysmal pockets. By the end of their beginnings, where have we been? Something about us is different, like maybe we have a third nostril sniffing from deep within our ear. Or the small bones of ears vibrating within our pupils.

For instance: I read these books and a smaller cauliflower sprouted from my larger cauliflower. I liked that. The smaller cauliflower then opened its wry mouth, embedded in one of its folds, and asked me:

What is ancient in us? What is cellular to the level of complete relatedness? How are we intertwined with the growth-pain of existence and the dissolving of the blood into hurricanes, tremulous streams, and bogs? How do we construct our own skin and then go about burning ourselves on mirrors? Where do we reside in the chiaroscuro of our own masterwork? Or the hatch marks of our naiveté?

These two stories are a chronicle of time unbundled from the clock. They do not tell their tales in a tick-tock; they murmur, pile up in snowdrifts, screech, inflate, deflate, crash and seep. They ooze connecting tendrils like mycelium at work within the dirt. Their rhythms are taken from life form: the dying-breathing world.

These authors have put their utensils into their brain-jars and scooped up spoonfuls of hypnopompic honey. And they've dribbled its viscosity over the waking world.

I would like to challenge the reader to create a sculptural knot out of the timelines for these two books. A brain puzzle that only the intestines can solve.

While reading these books, this mantra comes to mind: "You are not the knot you clearly are." These stories are formed by good knot tiers and undoers. It is a pleasure to watch their knuckles move. And to watch their timelines slip in and out of themselves.

(I admit: I fondled these books with intuitive hands.)

Meaning in these stories is not held up by mortal atlas arms. Meaning in these stories is all around, like fog, coating everything in a mirage that you can run your fingers through, like hair growing in an oasis. These books feel very felt if you make your skin out of fog and stay away from mirrors.

Because Light Boxes and Ever are contained fog, and fogged containment, harnessing something like the tension of ephemeral existence. The ache of that. The pain of the knotted mind wishing itself a seamless thread. Or the seamless thread knotting into grey matter.

Or the seamless thread burgeoning out into gossamer and burlap.

(I admit: after I read these books, I did a little jig in my root chakra because I planted these books deep down, in the dirt-stratum from where my cauliflower blooms.)

Part II

And...

...And there is the grave with its trap walls. A funhouse grave.

...And there is the thwarting of flight, balloons that have heaved their last breath.

...And there is the childhood knowledge that one can take a bath and disappear down the drain with the bathwater.

...And there is a man named February who sits in the clouds and says, "snow". And it does and it keeps falling. The paradox is the power to begin and the powerlessness to end. The potent impotence.

...And there were the days when Gods were jerks. But they were also big babies who we could empathize with, because we were barely out of diapers.

...And (foreshadow) "rooms are accidental". Rooms placed in successions eating their own tails. Rooms piled high into towers of the universal language of babble. And babble bubbles sometimes. As it does from the baby's mouth. The baby with the seamless thread bunching into cauliflower within its head.

...And you can feel these stories percolating in your myth-mind. When they happen, it's time to pour yourself a cup of mojo, put the myth-mind in your hidden drawer, then worm-eye these stories and feel them the way you feel the subwoofer rocking the soles of your naked feet.

...And their walls (pages) can be reached through. There is a palpable sense of the unseen seeing, of lives lived beyond the temporal plane.

...And mutable goop sprouting umbilical cords.

...And the architecture of womb-tomb.

Part III

Q and A

Q=KP
A=BB

What is responsible for your thoughts? Describe its visage, its appendage(s), its chariot.

It depends on which year I am in on which day. The body I eat inside is an 8 yr old soldered to an 80 yr old in a 25 year old body, though I am not aged 25. The inner female who wrote EVER out of me is much older than me sometimes and sometimes so much older than me that I don't think she's there anymore. I was thinking yesterday about what inside a person is responsible for the words that come out. I realized I think that when it is the me that is me making the words come out the words are really poor. Only when I can't remember what I ate for breakfast is when I am maybe starting to talk good, if I ever talk good. In those moments I don't think I look like anything except sludge.

Who plays the tiny violin in your dreammind?

The children I haven't had and probably will not ever keep putting the instruments down and going outside to stick their head against things like bugs and mud and sometimes light. Where they weren't is who.

Where is the bud? How do you keep it perpetually unblossomed?

This question wins, because the bud is in, like Barthelme said, 'not-knowing.' Sometimes I think those with the certain words arranged on paper in fake maps must wake up in their bodies half above the floor. I am confused with the decision of words. I think maybe all books exist only in the minute they are being written, in one mind, and thereafter are only the thing yanked out of what was supposed to be there, the mess-up mess. Best for me comes when I am paying the least attention, when I care the least, and can hear less of my breathing and more feel the keyboard throwing up.

Who makes up the choir upon which you affix your ears?

From where I can see right here: Samuel Beckett, DFW, Brian Evenson, Gert Jonke, Robert Lopez, Lynne Tillman's American Genius, Noy Holland: and in the minute: the no sound between dogs barking and phone rattle and people coming in and out, the rare minutes where absolutely nothing happens.

When did you first distinguish the lullaby from the mourning dove?

When someone who was not someone made me laugh in that room where I'd been playing bass for decades and trying to teach myself to stop and then I started laughing and made faces and the song stopped and I was dizzy and I had to talk to gain my exit from the room.

How do you keep the brain-tongue loosely wagging over the lettered keys?

Forgetting everything so I can remember something that hasn't ever happened.

Who do you picture around the firelight, absorbed in the ageless remedies of your manuscript?

Sometimes my grandmother, who in her last years started hearing people inside the house, who heard the woman in her attic telling her to leave the place she had spent the majority of her life, who would hear my grandfather in other rooms breathing long after he died, the room next to the room where I slept best with my head against the air vent waiting for the air to come back on, and where I could hear into the basement with the closet full of trophies and the room hid behind that room, I am just now getting dizzy enough that most mornings I don't have to teach myself not how to think.

Why does the internal expose itself in a myriad of unkempt sores, glorious in their gapping sing-song?

Because even when someone is listening they are not listening, including me, and because the only thing that happens is when it happens and right now my head is starting to try to cut the color out, seriously, I am getting dizzy in the brown chair listening to Burning Star Core's Challenger album, I feel like I should stand up but if I did I'd hit the ground, I can't see what I'm writing, I should be writing sentences

Have you ever been arrested for an unintended breach of your breastbone? If so, what was your sentence?

I'd like to give a shout out to H Dav for my answer to this question: In males, retrograde ejaculation occurs when the fluid to be ejaculated, which would normally exit the body via the urethra, is redirected to the urinary bladder. Normally, the sphincter of the bladder contracts and the ejaculate goes to the urethra, the area of least pressure. In retrograde ejaculation, this sphincter does not function properly.

Who is the object of your sentry? Are they in danger? Describe their enemy.

The object of my sentry is my sentry of the object. Everything is always in danger. My enemy is sometimes thus: repetitions without repetition, anything with Seth Rogen in it, anything not constructed in great fright. They are only in danger as much as they allow their function to be realized as something outside of Hegel, in that any chair a man makes in a room is the same as me touching these keys, unless I am touching these keys to tell you something that could have as easily been delivered in a Friends script, in which case their enemy is god.

What makes this life (un)livable?

Accidental rooms.

Draw a word map around the borders of your reality.

Accidental rooms.

What tools do you use to ignite a smoldering laced with flame?

Accidental rooms.

What is your relationship to meaning?

Accidental rooms.

Describe your childhood bedroom in lucid detail.

There was only one door into the rest of the house, which now seems a hazard, one I am glad that I grew up in. There were no windows either. Just one skylight. There were so many shelves. One year I was given a tent that fixed to the mattress, you could zip yourself inside it. Later I moved it into our den. I chased my sister from it one day and she ran from me and fell into a chair and cut her forehead open and was taken to the ER. In the car she was bleeding all over and I was in the backseat watching her eyes. She still has the scar. Most nights I slept in the room next to the doorway with my head laid in the hall. There was a huge mirror that filled most of one wall. I liked to divide the room in half, by hanging fabric at its center. There was a closet in which I sometimes would hide paper women. I don't remember ever hearing sound.

*

Q=KP
A=SJ

What is responsible for your thoughts? Describe its visage, its appendage(s), its chariot.

Daydreaming I think. I daydream constantly. I'll get an image in my head and just follow that image until more images are trailing after that first image. Eventually I'll have a story or a poem or something. It's fun for me. I'm good at daydreaming.

Who plays a tiny violin in your dreammind?

A mess of bright colors being worn by an old man playing the violin.

Where is the bud? How do you keep it perpetually unblossomed?

The bud is in a closet in a house full of closets. I give the bud very little food.

Who makes up the choir upon which you affix your ears?

These are the strangest questions I've ever seen. I like them. I don't even know how to answer them. For this question, I will say children wearing small fox-fur coats.

When did you first distinguish the lullaby from the mourning dove?

When I was sixteen. I started reading a lot of Emily Dickinson. Actually, I read a lot of female poets. Anne Sexton's Love Poems is a huge influence on my writing. Everyone should read that book.

How do you keep the brain-tongue loosely wagging over the lettered keys?

Just this morning my father asked me this same question and I told him that I try to read a lot. I'm not even sure that's true. I think a lot about books and how they are written. I love finding new authors doing new things. I like style and storytelling. Also, looking at art. I always check out Fecalface.com and New American Paintings.

Who do you picture around the firelight, absorbed in the ageless remedies of your manuscript?

Midgets? I don't know. Female hipsters? Male hipsters having a contest to see who can wear the tightest pants? I would like to picture young intelligent people reading my books. A nice group of readers would be nice.

Why does the internal expose itself in a myriad of unkempt sores, glorious in their gapping sing-song?

Same question my mom asked me last week. That's fucked up. I told my mom to stop asking me literary type questions. She said to take a bath. I'll try to actually answer this question. Or figure out what it is. Hmmm. I don't know.

Have you ever been arrested for an unintended breach of your breastbone? If so, what was your sentence?

No, I can't say I have. That is a boring answer. I want to write interesting questions with lots of interesting images. I feel like I'm failing as I answer these questions one after another. I feel like I would give myself a C- for this interview. Could you imagine if that was on your tombstone? Shane Jones: C-.

Who is the object of your sentry? Are they in danger? Describe their enemy.

I had to look up what the word sentry means. I'm trying to think really hard about this. I don't know. I imagine a man in a basket being attacked by dogs with bows and arrows. Poor guy.

What makes this life (un)livable?

Guilt.

Draw a word map around the borders of your reality.

There would just be balloons floating around I think. Balloons are in the book a lot. They surrounded my reality for a really long time when I was writing the book. My reality is fairly boring. I think everyone has a pretty boring reality. That's why I don't understand writers who just write about what they do or their personal experiences. Well, I guess I do. I get it. I just think it's boring.

What tools do you use to ignite a smoldering laced with flame?

That's a really funny question. I imagine blacksmiths with huge iron planks.

What is your relationship to meaning?

I rarely think about meaning. This is probably bad. Maybe in life I do. But in my own writing and writing I enjoy, I don't think about meaning. It really takes some of the love and guts out of words. I'm thinking about college, dissecting stories and poems. Sure, you can, and I did, learn from that, but meaning I'm really not interested in. I keep going back to style and image and surprise and all those things that make that visceral impact on me.

Describe your childhood bedroom in lucid detail.

There was a small walk-in. On one wall I had this wallpaper that was a detail of the ocean with cartoon fish that was incredible. I had a light on the ceiling that looked like a basketball hoop with a net around the glowing ball of light. Two windows. Twin sized bed with He-Man sheets. A closet with brown doors that never worked. Green carpet. A desk my father made. I really loved that room. What I remember most was my headboard to the bed which held lots of books and these two little lights you had to click on for just enough light to read under.

Part IV

1) BB and SJ ask KP.
2) SJ describes BB; BB describes SJ

BB asks KP:

I am positively certain someone came inside my body and threw up into Ever. Who was it?

I'm picturing someone fossilized, but with a nougat center filled with yolk. She has a garnish by her side. Parsley maybe. And she's wearing a fleshy hat and underpanties covered in snails.

BB describes SJ:

In reading Shane's book, I was shuttled through my body to my 14-year-old-self, a man with no face came in through the window of my bedroom now curtained in gel, took the book out of my hands and began to read to me through his pores in such a voice that I felt both frightened and filled with glee, the book also feels to me like shopping for watermelons in a dark room.

SJ asks KP:

What one word would you use to describe my book?

Kore-ageous.

SJ describes BB:

Blake Butler's Ever is raw and organic; you can actually feel it moving in your hands while you read--sick.

Part V

Brevity is the source of longing...

In these times we inhabit, with their prefixes of posts. I wonder what is the prefix for then/now/after? These stories are about both now and then and then again, they're about ever and ever after. The temporally indistinct realm of myth. And they grasp myth with the prehensile knowledge that myth is our maker, and without it, here we stand, unmade. These books are creation stories, funeral dirges, and the mystifying yawn between. Ever by Blake Butler and Light Boxes by Shane Jones remind us that while we might don our contemporary halo of wireless connections, we continue to source a taproot that is buried in the whole. Drink up.