from verbicide 23
“Pop Culture Is Culture”
A Conversation With Author And Artist Brian Joseph Davis
>>BY nathaniel G. moore>>PIC Courtesy Of Brian Joseph Davis

Brian Joseph Davis, author of I, Tania, is an artist and the author of Portable Altamont, a collection that garnered praise from Spin Magazine for its “elegant, wise-ass rush of truth [and] hiding riotous social commentary in slanderous jokes.” His audio art has been acclaimed by Wired, Pitchfork, and Salon. Davis is also a columnist for Arthur, eye Weekly, and wrote about the death of the cassette for the Utne Reader. – N. G. Moore

Where did you grow up?
I grew up in Windsor, Ontario and just outside. That means a lot of factories and a lot of acid, but you also got exposed to great things that happened nowhere else in world, like Detroit techno or Midwestern hardcore. And you understand Ted Nugent. I may be seriously frightened by Ted Nugent, as I am. I may hate Ted Nugent, as I do. But I understand him.

I, Tania combines many storytelling forms, including reviews, interviews, propaganda, satire, and biting humor. What was it like putting together this book? Did you have a sense of how the story was going to be told?
Looking at it I can see how someone could think its construction is pretty formal, or consciously anti-formal, but as I got up to speed I was going on instinct — which happens to any writer. When I started I thought I was going to do a serious retelling of the story, but as I got into the Hearst mythos it became apparent that the mistake people make is to miss the black comedy of the story. I don’t mean camp, though Hearst herself is now a camp figure. I mean the painful black comedy of it.

You design all your own covers. Can you discuss the importance of this to you as an artist?
I’m sure the idea of the author designing his own cover is the worst nightmare a publisher can imagine. They tend to think it’s like the slush submissions they get where the author has hand drawn a potential cover. I can design well and that’s what I’m used to doing anyway, working in art and independent music. I will say it’s best to have oversight though. With I Tania I spent six months saying that I wouldn’t “stoop” to putting the SLA [Symbionese Liberation Army] snake on the cover until I smacked my forehead and realized that I was being an idiot.

What about Patty Hearst drove you to write a novel about her kidnapping?
I don’t think anything drove me. I kind of stumbled into the subject and then the things I’m looking for in a subject became apparent. Humor comes from things like language, misinterpretation, pretentiousness. This story had all these things. You can’t believe how misguided the SLA were, yet their failure is something anyone can relate to.

Do you confront pop culture, or comfort it?
I’m not comfortable with any of those terms. Pop culture is culture. No going against or with it because there is no “it.” Even the phrase “popular culture” is this leftover category from the days of modernism. Saying something is “high culture” and better is long past tenable, but we’re happy to still use its antonym. Some critics have thought me perverse on purpose, but the words “Keifer Sutherland” are culturally and linguistically rich. Get used to it.

You are planning new works?
For music, I’ve just learned “Cheersquad Notation” and I’m adapting the entirety of Nation of Ulysses’ 13 Point Plan to Destroy America for cheerleaders and drumline. If it goes well, that will be the best thing I’ve ever done. It came from me being fascinated by school music. It’s completely indigenous American music, but relatively ignored. The Boredoms have nothing on a good drumline. As far as writing, I’ve been having fun with short fiction, something I’ve never written before. It should turn out to be a collection called Five Minutes to Sexy Hair.

You are married to novelist, poet, and editor Emily Schultz. What is it like sharing space and a life with another writer?
We’ve recently decided that we can’t be broke at the same time so we’re going to stagger working on projects versus doing for-hire work. I write for print and she edits. Other than that, we share the exact same neuroses, which has its benefits and its drawbacks. Our new joke we stole from Walk Hard is, “I love you. You’re gonna fail.” We whisper it as we walk past each other’s desks.

How can people find your music and other work? Can you discuss some of your audio art projects?
Since I’ve traveled in the States recently and the phrase “sound art” was met with a bit of confusion, I’m just calling it “experimental music” these days. My work comes from the idea of sampling, but in different ways. Like adapting Theordor Adorno’s Minima Moralia for a punk band to perform and releasing it as a seven-inch, or collecting five thousand different film tag lines and putting them in narrative order but then hiring a voiceover artist to perform it. I collected everything I’ve done on a compilation called The Definitive Host, which came out through the Blocks Recording Club. You can get it at independent shops across North America, or you can mail order it from Scratch Records.

Your first published book, Portable Altamont, seemed to be a celebrity tagging system, as if you were in the mall paintballing Jessica Simpson and Margaret Atwood. I, Tania, while still derivate of what can be called pop-lit (if that genre exists) is much more focused, refined, and particular. For you, the author, what was the biggest difference?
I think I gave myself the challenge of doing a comedic anti-narrative and seeing if I could make it readable. Altamont was one-page pieces. This, I think, is better because it has a spine that you have to wrestle with as a reader. How much of the Hearst story do you know? How much will you let me get away with?

In a previous interview with Open Book Toronto you said, “The only critique that’s valuable is one from within and using the structure of capitalism itself.” Would you say as a writer or artist (or in general) you are emulating your oppressors to communicate your work?
Not quite what I was driving at. What I was trying to say was that thinking your work, ahem, transcends the culture you create it in just results in failed humanism. Unless you’ve managed to turn failed humanism into a career and you’re okay with that.

What is next for Brian Joseph Davis?
Sunday.

Nathaniel G. Moore is the author of Let’s Pretend We Never Met and an editor for Danforth Review. (� link to www.danforthreview.com) For more information on Brian Joseph Davis, visit his website at www.brianjosephdavis.com.