Gabriel Ricard: With a book as absorbing, strange and engaging as prurient anarchic omnibus, I guess the first question has to be the obvious one. Where does something like this even begin? It certainly seems to revolve around a couple of key themes, but how does something like this book move from first line to completed manuscript
j/j hastain: Hey Gabriel. Thank you ahead of time for these questions. For the way that they articulate to me your having gone into my project/s. I think that they are very astute! Ok—re your first set of questions, prurient anarchic omnibus begins in the space before naming, which is a space before body and page. It begins as an undeniable aching to have a sort-of prismatic hammock to hold the flickering body and pages as they come into being. I am saying that this begins as a not-yet-visible satchel, and progresses by coming into visibility.
Regarding how the book moves from first line to completed manuscript—I think that first of all, the book did not begin as a first line (especially not as the first line that appears in the book) but instead as an intense feeling that was slowly turned into insulation, then instigated into form. A long time ago Melissa Buzzeo wrote "there is no curvature complete" and those beautiful words have always felt kindred to me. Mine is an undying interest in the preternatural curve and how to (as an activism) move that curve into varying types of visibility which makes the preternatural curve better able to be sensed.
GR: Let's go back to those key themes for a moment. Some of the themes I carried from this were things like biology, sexuality and the constant evolution of those things within ourselves and from there what we then do with the world around us. Do you feel that any of that applies to prurient anarchic omnibus? Are there are any other themes the reader might want to be aware of?
j/j: Regarding themes—I think you are very right about what you have mentioned. Biology and sexuality and the constant evolution. Yes! Also an in-depth look (by sound) at how things like biology and sexuality provoke each other toward deepened states of specificity. The book has some obvious interest in the notion of a motile benevolence. Of moving through matter in ways that stimulate matter. In ways that allow matter to be an at least somewhat autonomous partner with us in the composition of existence (retinas, pages, relations) moving toward_________.
GR: One of the constants in the book is the phrase "dear weaver of disparates." It begins the book and reappears throughout as a single line on a single page. It feels somewhat like a chapter break, but I also had a thought that it felt much like a chorus in a song. I realize both of these thoughts are probably way off the mark, so I'd be curious to know a little more about their inclusion, their use of repetition and what that means to the work as a whole.
j/j: Gabriel, it is funny to me how much you underestimate your reading! You are very right regarding the chorus-in-a-song like feeling of the "dear weaver of disparates." I would call it a book of psalms within the prurient. A hinge. A subtle repetition (like appears as middle repetitive dna) to keep the whole somehow vitalized by reoccurring or by biomimicy as it moves along and within its shape.
GR: I was really interested in the Transbody excerpt available on your site. It seems to suggest some of the ideas that can be found in prurient anarchic omnibus. Would that be at all accurate? If so, to what extent?
j/j: Thank you for referencing my website here Gabriel. Just want to mention that there will be some upcoming changes to the site in the future. Changes that will make all of my books and chaps purchase-able there…so keep an eye out!
But to get to your question re Transbody and how I view the body, genders, genitalia, naming, equities and the like. I could really go on and on about this. About the cellular complexities within our specificities. Yes—these logics or non-logics are certainly tidal presences in my books (prurient included). What is it to build a body entirely out of accuracies? What is it to demand from space, that our accurate bodies be held? Books are bodies. prurient is a cosmic shape to me. Just as a body is. Just as a gender is. I really see this related to creative capacity. To burrowing into and elucidating what exists beyond the generic or the given.
GR: If there is a line or passage in prurient anarchic omnibus that might best sum up the entire work? Would that even be possible, or is every line as essential to the core of the book as the other?
j/j: There are a few lines that work like the non-linear memory of the book, I think, however it is also true that every line is essential and equal to its other there. prurient is a type of commons. Some of the lines that ring in the body of this book are: "no different than any other type of arousal in the fact that you have to want occult in order to experience it", "able to acquiesce entirely", "languages of mystery and chronicles of timeless press", "oh unbridled omission-less."
GR: The structure of the book is not what I would call complex in terms of how it's organized, but it certainly has a chaotic effect going for it, and I would like to think that was deliberate on your part and just as critical to the narrative of the piece as the words themselves. Did the structure of the words ever dictate what you might write? Or was it a matter of writing and then manipulating the form to create the desired effect?
j/j: It is interesting to me that you would not call the structure of the book complex. I would be interested in what you would call it. You are right that there is a sort of lyrical chaos present in the structure. This compositional aesthetic is certainly deliberate and critical to the way that the text moves through itself. To the ways that the pages enliven surrounding pages. I like to think of this compositional work in the context of different types of sculpture. I am interested always in visible sculpture (how the words as collectives look on the pages and what those aesthetics make as sensation in the body upon reception) relational sculpture (the ways that the words driven by both their sounds and their aesthetics open the space of the page for more feeling or for differentiated specificities—I see this in the context of assort of inter-rubbing. A vibration of multiple parts against each other within a seeming whole) and audible sculpture (strictly the way that it sounds/feels in the body when the words composed on the pages are read out loud). I work with form and structure in the above stated ways, trying to generate varying types of sate in myself, in a reader.
GR: I love the photographs included throughout. Could you tell us a little bit about them and why they were included with the book?
j/j: Thank you for that! They were included in order to add yet another inter-component to the movement of the cosmic shape that prurient is. I mean that they are another aspect of the visible sculpture method of the book. I think that books are places. Can be non-classist palaces. I want my books to perform in this way. To offer space. To take up space. To hold a you into them. I am saying that I had a strong intuition (usually these come by dream for me) regarding the necessity of inclusion of the images in the book. I consider these images to be both visual sculpture and visual sound. Necessary ingredients to make the whole, a flexible and reflective animate.
GR: More photography is available on your site, and we've got some more included here. I particularly liked "new ways to strengthen." These photos certainly seem to offer a lot in the way of interpretation, but I would guess that you had some very specific ideas in mind with them. Would you be willing to share them with us? Do you have a preference between creating works like prurient anarchic omnibus and photography?
j/j: I am glad that "new ways to strengthen" touched you. The images that I create/work with do offer a lot of space for interpretation. This because for me/my projects, another entering the creative space with me, and comingling with the matter that is spinning there, is integral. I am saying that I do not think that a thing is ever 'my voice' until another has entered it and found contact there. Found touch. As I said in my book: asymptotic lover //thermodynamic vents, it only has to touch once in order to have mattered.
There is not really a difference for me, between prurient and the composition of images. I see all of these works and gestural wonders as activisms for naming and then for moving those activated nomenclatures into positional nexts.
GR: You were raised in California but currently hail from Boulder, Colorado. What brought about the move? Did living in California have any kind of influence on your work as a writer and performer? What drives you to a place like Boulder and keeps you there? I only ask these things, because the book suggested to me someone who would be constantly traveling, moving around.
j/j: I mention on my website that I was raised in California only to give human planar information about geographies and lineages. I might also add here that I was raised Mormon (obviously not a part of the Mormon religion anymore). These aspects of the upbringing are worth being mentioned, not so that they are emphasized as integral to the current identities, but to have done the work of inclusion of all parts. It has taken me a long time to identify as human and as from this planet. I really did not identify as this until I started to compose spaces like prurient. Spaces where ulteriors could flourish. But needless to say, the more I compose non-linear sites where the entirety of my being/others' beings can reside, the less threatening it feels to name my existence in the context of what of that existence was attributed to me by previous geographies and lineages (vs what of that existence is my authenticities).
To get to your question about how I got here... one afternoon in my tiny apartment in Loma Linda California, I was mid-meditation and a thick beam of light came through the window. Within the beam there were all of these particulate pieces (dust making visible duets) that I could hear by watching them waft. I am saying that I could hear the music in them and the music was conducting me. I was conducted to pack up my things and move to Colorado. I think that there is something that drags and draws, in my being literally located in the Rocky Mountain's cleavage now. I am saying that that is surely a piece of what keeps me here. But I am positive that I was pulled here to find my beloved in human form. To pursue a human life with my beloved. I am positive that this move is what was required of me then, in order to get here. Here in the vastness of a voice I actually feel acute and enabled in. Here like Lapis Lazuli unearthed after being buried with the Egyptian dead. Here amidst a topography and energy that could that would offer protection. My beloved, my cosmic compass. How dreaming of Lapis would foretell of amorousness and commitment that would be that could be forever faithful.
GR: One of the things I've noticed from your work and website is a determination to break down traditional thoughts and ideas of gender and sexuality. There seems to be more of an effort to do that than ever before. New York State recently legalized gay marriage, and I was reading the other day that more and more parents are refusing to announce the gender of their unborn children. With your own work that notion is perhaps best-expressed in your site's biography, in which you describe yourself as a "post-binary genderqueer." I really like the sound of that, and I was wondering if you care to elaborate on it, if that's at all possible.
j/j: Yes. I identify as keen with determination to break down traditional thoughts and ideas regarding gender and sexuality. Thank you for naming two of many social facts that I feel are worth celebrating! The legalization of gay marriage and the refusal of parents to announce the gender of their unborn (and born, might I add) children. There was a case recently, where a child was born (by midwife) at home and the parents announced all aspects of the child's birth (weight, hair color etc.) but did not announce gender. They decided to let the child begin to flourish without having that binary stamp forcibly present to interrogate the body for whether or not it would comply or 'fit'. I think that is wonderful!
Yes. I do identify as post-binary genderqueer. This means to me that my interest is not in upholding the norms or the status-quo shapes that have existed in historicity, but instead to continually inhabit and sustain the vivid and necessary aberrations to that status quo/norm. I am also interested in amplifying the swelling body facts that in their own right are entirely autonomous to socializations concerning binary/polar paradigms.
GR: Do you feel you've been successful so far in trying to break down those traditional thoughts and ideas about sexuality and gender in your work?
j/j: I do feel like each book (of which all engage breaking down of traditional notions re sexuality and gender and limit) has been a success, yes. I also feel that success is not whether or not the books break these traditional notions down, but instead is measured by way of how the document exists as an inebriated zone, outside of these paradigms and limits. I am saying that the way that I know that a work is ready to go into public space, is when the work feels like a myriad satchel. An extant ecosystem held together by sound, image and relation. I know I am ready to let the phoenix into the human sky, when the bird is whole and autonomous to me. Is gripping to my arm (perhaps even making me bleed a little) and poised for take off.
GR: You also work as an educator and have had numerous speaking and teaching engagements. Any of them particularly memorable? If so, why?
j/j: I would have to say that any space where I have the opportunity to work with students (either one on one or in a group setting) the experiences therein are profoundly memorable. I think that this happens because the space itself is poised toward both breaking open and creating sealants. I really enjoyed teaching a class at DU a while back. In the class the instructor Danielle Vogel instructed the class to literally make 'home' in my book: asymptotic lover//thermodynamic vents. The people who shared the space of the class with me, had literally cut into my book. Had implanted themselves in the text as its livelihood. There were nests in there. Colors. Pieces of poet's poems. I had originally suggested to Danielle that she suggest that they make home there, but to see the altered books. The altared books. Was so wonderful for me. Really felt like instances of 'my voice' (as mentioned as a difficulty for me above) being real to me.
GR: I'd love to know more about your work in music. According to your bio you play violin, guitar, piano and vocals. Do you have a favorite amongst those?
j/j: When I lived in L.A. I had a jazz/blues band. We would play all through the night. Those good ole standards are in my body. I think what I most want to mention here regarding music, is the act of 'torching' a song. This because I think that there is some torching that goes on in my writing/composition as well. What is it to engage a 'standard' (which is merely a form to move through or from) in ways that feel most vital? How can vitalizing or vamping a jazz/blues standard, make more space for beings to enter it? I admit that the 'torched' tune really gets into my blood and my bones. There is something about the way that the cells slow there, that expresses a power that is undeniable. Anyway, if there is anything that I see as god/gods, it is the act of 'torching' matter. Slowing it down. Turning the chaoses into a sort of silken rubato or ritardando.
GR: You consider yourself to be an educator, activist, musician and poet. Is there any one of those four that you consider to be more important than the other? Or is each a necessary part of the whole that makes you what you are?
j/j: Yes. I had an interesting conversation the other day with a friend of mine who identifies as a poet. I do not know that I identify as a poet at all. In fact I often revolt against any of the cultural strictures that can come along with being a "poet." I have many meta-identities and those feel much more true to me than a categorical/historical one. I consider myself a lover, a queer, an anarchist, an ephemeral being...but if we want to get to some sort of a cohesive or solid or potentially remaining name I would prefer to be called a sound artist. A composer of new materialities that bring forth new sensations. This for divulging other ways to wish.
GR: Plans beyond the publication of prurient anarchic omnibus?
j/j: Yes my friend. Many plans. In the next month or so I have a book coming out with Say It With Stones Press. The book is called long past the presence of common. In the next year or so I have a book coming out with Furniture Press. That book is called myrrh to re all myth. I also have a few full-length Vispo works coming out this year (Scrambler Press, Knives Spoons and Forks Press). I do not need to go on here about this. Just know that there are some exciting works coming out with amazing and radical presses that are worth checking out. Feel free to look at my website for info about these books. I will try to post them there as soon as I get ordering info.
GR: Tell us about some of the other books that are available on your site?
j/j: Sure! I will put a little list re some of the full-lengths below. Feel free to contact me with any questions at jjhastain@mac.com. I am happy to send links to sites and such.
- asymptotic lover // thermodynamic vents, BlazeVox Books
- we in my Trans, JMS Books
- autobiography of my gender, Moria Books
- the ulterior eden, Otoliths
- our bodies, Rebel Satori Press
Gabriel Ricard is a Staff Interviewer at Unlikely 2.0. You can learn more about him at his bio page.