WHY DO YOU DO IT? WHAT DRIVES YOU?
For pleasure, the transformation of thought to something tangible has always been seductive and mystical. Anytime I make something that I enjoy, I am forever trying to make it again but differently. So the drive becomes the thing I already created and it’s this sort of circular process, actually, that is to end up with what I started from.
WHAT IS ONE THING YOU DO FOR SANITY MAINTENANCE?
I cook. The act of feeding myself, nourishment, the tenderness of it all. It’s the only time where I feel like I am in an all-encompassing focus and time can majorly distort and slow. There’s obviously the repetitive nature of it that’s nice, but mostly I love the improvisation of it, and finding ways to make things that taste good — it starts to feel like I have these secrets that I can pull out and use when I need something particular. Taste is such an important sense. When I went to sleep away camp for the first time, a bunch of the girls would cry at night in the cabin and sometimes it would make me cry because everyone was just so fucked up and scared that it scared me, too. They gave us “homesick pills,” which were really just a pretty tart candy. It always helped a lot, particular tastes can be really healing for whatever heartache or sadness one might have.
WHAT IS THE SCRAPPIEST THING YOU’VE DONE TO MAKE OR SAVE $$?
I worked at a juice bar when I was 16, making seven dollars an hour at a place where the owner got sued for sexual harassment of the teenage employees. I suppose that’s not exactly scrappy, but to dedicate one's teenage years to making juice and smoothies for celebrities while their managers yell while only making seven dollars an hour is humiliating and weird.
YOUR TASK IS TO PRESCRIBE ONE BOOK OR FILM TO THE COLLECTIVE FOR MANDATORY CONSUMPTION. WHAT IS IT?
Oh god this might be corny, but I love to be corny. LETTERS TO A YOUNG POET by Rainer Maria Rilke. It’s medicine every time I have returned to it.
current obsession?
Grapes!!! Cotton candy & concord, mainly.
MOST USEFUL FAILURE?
The failure of any relationship is such a gift. Either romantic or platonic, every falling out and subsequent loss is usually a
sign to me to inquire within about the difficulty and pain. It’s rare that I never speak to someone again after a breakup of any kind. We usually keep each other around. I think it’s really useful to have people that have known you in various states of self throughout life who can offer insight to you. Usually this comes in the form of friends who become ex-friends who become friends again, or boyfriends who become exes and then friends again. All you need is love!
I often lie to complete strangers, especially when they ask me what I have been doing during that particular day or what I am doing later. I like to lie about mundane things quite often, sort of just bend my reality by talking about it in a way that is slightly different. Sometimes I try to match a stranger's energy and talk about something that I have absolutely no idea about or just isn’t a part of my world, like having a child.
WHAT ARE YOU CURRENTLY WORKING ON?
A book of poems about my dad since he died a little over a year ago. It’s poems about him, death in general, addiction, and I’m pulling text out of his autopsy and from text messages people who knew him have sent me. I finally got his autopsy a few months ago. It was in Spanish because he died on a plane to Costa Rica, so I sent it through google translate and it made some really beautiful documents.
DISCIPLINE OR ANARCHY?
Discipline.
