JOHN MADERA—Writer, Editor, Publisher

Delighted to share Jeff Bursey’s interview with me about Nervosities (Anti-Oedipus Press), which was published by 3:AM Magazine today! Big thanks to Jeff—a superb writer in his own right—for the insightful comments and compelling questions about my book! Thanks, too, to Andrew Gallix and the team at 3:AM Magazine for publishing our conversation!

Here’s an excerpt:

Ice melt at the poles, sea level risings, landfill mountains oozing tons of toxicity into coastal waters, yes, and then there are the insect apocalypse and the drought-induced tree die-off, and more and likely worse to come; but there’s also the radical imagination, that vital continuum of possibility, of being and becoming, all of which is to say, while it’s easy to despair, especially considering the world’s human-caused ills and catastrophes, I choose to remain, as best I can, within a zone of celebration and gratitude. Yes, despair is easy: a form of escape that, ironically enough, only returns us to where we already were: stuck in the muck of sterility, of the humdrum, of the unimaginative, uninspired, uninventive. Let us be courageous instead. Let us instead surrender ourselves to the subversive imagination, that vital, marvelous zone of love, creativity, mystery, invention, renewal, joy, community, of great potentiality, and much more besides.

And finally, if you’re an artist, or anyone else who deliberately hurls themselves toward mysteries, uncertainties, instabilities, toward darkness and the seemingly unspeakable, you are, in these trying times—and it’s always trying times; and if you don’t believe me, listen to Donny Hathaway’s impassioned “Tryin’ Times”—likely sometimes, maybe even often swimming in or through a sea of fear, confusion, and/or despondency, whether internal or external. And what I want to say to you is the following: First, and not to sound like the chorus of a cheesy eighties rock song, all we have is each other, and not only is that a lot, it’s everything. And second, you make the thing not because it will be seen, heard, loved, or otherwise appreciated, etc. You make the thing because the thing must be made. You do the thing because it must be done. You say the thing because it must be said. You share the thing because it must be shared. Et cetera. The obstacles to making, doing, saying, sharing, etc., are sometimes maybe even oftentimes enormous. It’s hardest, I think, when those you love, who say they love you, don’t see, hear, love, and/or otherwise appreciate the thing you’ve made, etc. But you made it because it had to be made. You did it because it had to be done. You said it because it had to be said. Your job is done. That is, it’s time to begin again. That is, it’s time to begin making, doing, saying, etc., the next thing that must be made, done, said, etc. And finally, please, please daily take some time to turn off the noise, whether internal or external, and discover what is there in the fertile silence of yourself, which is nothing, that is, emptiness, which is everything, that is, a marvelous place beyond hope and fear, greed and hostility, attachment and aversion, what Thomas Moore calls a “dark luminosity,” which is simply love by another name.

With you through the chaos.

Read the rest of the interview HERE!

Big thanks to Stephen Sacco for interviewing me about Nervosities on Plague Remedy!

An excerpt:
“Art is breath. Art is food. Art is life. Art is love. Art is us. It’s us! Art needs no justification. I see artists constantly apologizing for making art. Imagine a farmer saying, ‘Oh I’m so sorry for having tilled this wheat.’ ‘I’ve made this amazing meal for you,’ the chef says, ‘but I shouldn’t have made it.’ Art is necessary. Artists are just as necessary as doctors. So make art, no matter what!”

Tune in to also hear me talk about fearlessly leaping into the unknown; artful experimentation as a continuum; “nowness not merely as newness but as vitality”; on imagining and realizing not only another world but a better one; on shared power as the only legitimate form of power; impermanence, egolessness, and “aimlessness”; the fertility and generativity of exile and diaspora; on acting against the “tyranny of shoulds and should nots”; on the necessity of conscientiously doing nothing; and more besides!

Big thanks, too, to Christian Livermore, the producer of the show!

Listen to the rest of the interview HERE!

Big thanks to Ben Lindner for interviewing me about Nervosities! on Beyond the Zero!

Tune in to hear me talk about, among other things, my background as an artist, literary and otherwise; my work as a critic, editor, and publisher; subversive, viz., experimental and innovative prose and poetry, writing that writes against the logic of the marketplace, the state, and religion, and other machines and apparatuses of discipline and control; the ruins of Alt Lit; the vanishing and seeming return of the blogosphere; love, love, love; marginalization; small press ecologies; Rhizomatic, my boutique publicity firm; maximalism and minimalism; some of the themes of Nervosities, e.g., the perils and wonders of exile and diaspora, hyper-mediatization, death-cult capitalism, loneliness, consciousness, the mutability of identity and the so-called self, and more. The show ends with me sharing a list of my “gateway books”: books that inspired me as a reader and writer; a list of books I have recently read and am looking forward to reading; and finally a list of my “desert island books.”

Lindner has featured so many of my favorite writers, superb writers all (among them Louis Armand, Gabriel Blackwell, Jeff Bursey, Tobias Carroll, Rikki Ducornet, Brian Evenson, Babak Lakghomi, Lance Olsen, Dawn Raffel, John Reed, and William Walsh (each of whose work I’ve published in Big Other), and Sergio de la Pava, Álvaro Enrigue, Sam Lipsyte, Garielle Lutz, and Marcus Pactor, and many other writers), so you can imagine my delight to be featured on the show.

Ka-pow!

Listen to the interview HERE!

Big thanks to superb writer Rone Shavers for interviewing me about Nervosities! Grateful for his smart, challenging, and inspiring questions, to say the least. Big thanks, too, to Rain Taxi and Eric Lorberer (its stalwart editor)  for publishing it!

Here’s an excerpt:

To make something vitally unusual requires that one be “difficult,” requires an indominable obstinacy along with total vulnerability, a knowing steadfastness in the face of great unknowing, likely misunderstanding, possible censure, ridicule, ostracization, etc.; it requires rugged determination and patience that may on the surface look like foolhardiness or intransigence in the face of so-called reality, but which is really heartful pluck, whimsical vim, and empathetic elasticity.

That said, it’s not a willful difficulty that genuinely adventurous, generously subversive writers aim for; they don’t deliberately and mean-spiritedly set up obstacles for the unsuspecting reader to overcome, the act of which strikes me as a kind of sadism. The aim—or, better to say, the process such writers live within—is one where they set up difficulties for themselves, organize challenges that compel them to go beyond their current abilities, to go beyond, moreover, what society’s planners, the disciplinarians, the authorities, the professional managers, the haters, the naysayers, etc., say is their place, which is “nowhere” in the worst senses of the word.

All to say, difficulty is a pleasure, the pleasure of getting lost, of stumbling around in the darkness of the unknown, of the impossible.

Read the rest of the interview HERE!