An Interview With Tao Lin (+1 poem)
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NOTNSTRUMS: What got you first writing poems?
TAO LIN: I listened to The Lawrence Arms and Jets To Brazil and Blacktop Cadence a lot while really depressed and lonely in college. I printed out some of their lyrics on paper so I could look at them sometimes when I was really lonely and depressed. I tried to write like them. That is how I started I think. Later I took a creative writing course and wrote more poems.
NN: Did you start writing short stories and novels around the same time?
TL: I wrote stories after. Then novels. I've written two and a half novels. One is not published, one is "Eeeee Eee Eeee," one is my next one. My first novel is gone, it was on some disk somewhere and on a computer somewhere. The disk and the computer are both gone. I rarely think about that novel. I wanted to sell it on eBay but I don't have it. I went from poems to stories to novels. Now I write all three depending on I don't know what.
NN: How do you decide which form (poetry, short stories, novels) to write in?
TL: I don't feel pressure to decide. I can write in all three forms at one time. Sometimes I have two files open on the computer and one is my novel and one is poetry. I can think of some factors. One thing I think about is how it will take me a month-and-a-half to write a professional twenty-page short story. And I feel like it will require intense concentration during that one month-and-a-half. And I don't feel like having intense concentration, partly because I am in process of saving money to move into an apartment. And things like that. So then I don't work on a professional twenty-page short story. I write different kinds of short stories I think. There is the professional twenty-page short story. There is the 500-1000 word short story where the main character is an animal or a muffin or something. There are many factors. I don't know how I decide.
NN: Have you read any Donald Barthelme?
TL: I have read most of 60 stories and I think most of 40 stories. I felt pressure to read him because a lot of people like him a lot. I think the pressure was what made me keep reading each story. In contrast for someone like Joy Williams or Matthew Rohrer I feel pressure to read them for reasons that would exist if other people did not exist to pressure me about things.
NN: I like to read Matthew Rohrer for different reasons depending on the day. So who else do you like to read? Do you ever say to yourself I wish I was writing this? I think that’s what it means to live vicariously, to imagine your own life through the lives others, do you ever do this? This question may seem incohesive. Do whatever you will with it.
TL: I like to read "A Green Light" by Matthew Rohrer. I like Ben Lerner and Michael Earl Craig. I like Lorrie Moore, Lydia Davis, Richard Yates. And some other people. I like "Chilly Scenes of Winter" by Ann Beattie. I don't think things like "I wish I was writing this." I used to think that sometimes, now I don't think I ever think that. I don't get "jealous" that someone wrote something that I like a lot. If I think anything (in vicarious terms) when I read something that I like very much I think about how much effort and concentration it probably took for the author to write it. How lonely or alienated or disillusioned the author must have been to have felt motivated to be by him or herself for long periods of time typing sentences alone and working on them.
TL: Where would you hide all of the hamsters, if all of the hamsters were in danger and it was your responsibility to hide them? And what do the bastard aliens eat, if they eat, and do they love their mothers? And I’m assuming they have mothers.
TL: I got a worried face when I started thinking where. I'm thinking right now. I think I would hide them in a cruiseship. I would just let them go into the cruiseship, they would have fun. Bastard aliens. I just thought about that and got a confused face. Then I got a normal face. I think they eat vegan food since they don't want to hurt animals. They live alone and don't think about their mothers.
NN: Cruiseships are known targets of marauders and pirates, though i don't know of what species, except that it is probably a vicious kind. Does this have any affect on your plan?
TL: I don't want to think about it too much. They'll be happy. If a missile hits the cruiseship they'll all die quickly I think, I'm okay with that.
NN: Good. You said there is another novel you've written. What are you willing to say about it?
Tao Lin: It was about a 30-year-old or something woman living in Florida with her son. People disappear gradually and then there are less people. There are less people and then it's only the woman left. I don't like books like that as much as other books now.
NN: Do you like books where people appear?
TL: I like books where the people are already there. I don't know.
NN: If you were somehow coerced into teaching your book of poems to a class, and told you must talk about its "craft" what would you say?
TL: Paolo Javier teaches at Rutgers (and other places) and he invited me to his class. He was teaching my book. And some people asked how I wrote some of the poems. I said things like, "I was in bed. I thought I wanted to a write a poem about biting my fingernails in bed at 4 a.m. I thought I would talk about how I felt which was bad. Then I thought that it felt dramatic so I did this thing that made it less dramatic. Then I finished and I thought it was funny and I liked it."
NN: Something like "thank you for reading my poem." That makes me wonder though. Do the "things" that diffuse what might come across as angsty and dramatic come after you've written the poems? Are you doing a lot of editing?
TL: No. They usually come with the poem. I feel that I've felt "bad" enough that I almost never feel completely, inescapably bad anymore. Or I just feel a different kind of "bad" than the kind like 14-year old emo kids experience, maybe. I almost always feel sarcastic or detached in some way which manifests in my poems as things like "thank you for reading my poem."
NN: Imagination is good for that, especially when you're able to express it. What does "detachment" mean to you?
TL: Being able to act like everything is worth the same, I think. For example if my worldview was that pain and suffering was bad, and someone told me that I needed to cut my hand off because it would relieve pain and suffering overall, in the world, I would do it if I was completely detached.
NN: Do you think there such a thing as "truth"? Or that there some way to know that a thing (a feeling, place, sensation, idea, and so on) is true? And if you believe there to be how does it affect your writing?
TL: I used to think about "truth" and "meaning in life." I don't do that anymore. "Truth" is an abstraction. You can define it however you want. It doesn't exist until a conscious brain, based on what I know, defines it. If one person defines truth as, "A tree with red leaves." And another person defines truth as, "Having sex with a model while wearing a wreathe made of $1000 bills." They are both right, from their own perspectives. But only from their own perspectives. This applies to all abstractions even things like "good," "best," "important," etc. I don't like talking about this, I think mostly because I've talked about it so much.
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room night
i held the cruelty-free soap to my arm
and moved my arm in various directions
a kind of meat-eating liberal
was making me move my body
that was the day i argued against publicly-owned companies
on my blog; the shower felt nice
so i did not leave the shower
something beautiful was moving me
away from my philosophy; in my room at night
i blogged about the preconceptive nature
of right and wrong
a kind of self-righteous argument
something about the cruelty of abstractions
capitalism felt harmless and fun
really, it was just a kind of game
that made people into various abstractions
a kind of harmless movement
of bodies; laying on my bed
a kind of emptiness
moved through my politics
it was cruel
to leave the homeless man
'there's no such thing,' i mumbled
'as good or bad'; something about being
in the center of my philosophy
i walked through someone's vision
and it was a vegan walking through someone's vision
something about the way i felt kind of abstract
the impermanent nature of things
was making a terribly beautiful emotion
in the center of my being
i was going to feel it as a kind of emptiness; really
the political gesture was neither good nor bad; 'see
when you break a heart nothing really breaks,' he screamed
to music, 'it's just a figure of speech'
an indefensible waste of water
the day i unofficially changed the name of my job
to 'fuck craigslist' politics moved through my brain
in various directions
and made me choose the cruelty-free soap
i moved my body to the kitchen
to get something to eat; alone at night
a kind of abstract longing
the uncompromised expression of emotion
through words and music made me feel better
because it was not really changed by abstractions
or publicly-owned companies
something about the kind of vegans
who feel terribly empty and alone
at night, with peanut butter
i listened to beautiful music
created by depressed vegans
i tightly held my sesame bagel
'the peanut butter is not a metaphor,' i mumbled
something about how the emotion was felt alone
'my life is empty without blogging,' i emailed someone
'terribly empty'; the existence of beautiful music
was kind of depressing
because of the unidirectional nature of time; i got a job
the day a terrible emptiness moved permanently into my blog
i stole the organic lip balm
by putting my cell phone and the organic lip balm in my pocket
a kind of emptiness existed in the center of my bagel; really
it was just the hole that's in the middle
of all bagels; 'i need to go read my blog
to find out what my politics are'
the cruelty-imbued pork chop
was a terribly expressive pig
i held the sesame bagel to my face
because i was going to eat it
the homeless man's politics
were telling the homeless man
not to exist; melodrama
had infused the evening
in the kitchen i felt sad
the indefensible nature
of existing alone; a terrible longing
not to exist; the abstract nature of sadness
the existence of movement, and a kind of harmless fun
'this organic peanut butter tastes like carrots changing into brains'
really, that was the kind of terrible night
it was; a kind of eighty-cent sesame bagel
my cell phone shook
with a kind of existential terror
really, someone was just text messaging me
i decided to take a very long shower
'someone find out exactly who loses money
if i steal from whole foods,' i blogged
an indefensible cruelty towards animals
a vision of being kind
and alone; i longed to be permanent
the corporation existed as various abstractions
a terrible self-righteousness moved through the emptiness
in the center of my being; really, it was just what happens
when you kind of try to do things; kind of happens
a vision of brains
a sort of harmless world
something about the various emotion in the center of my being
really compromised
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Tao Lin's blog
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