Wednesday, March 28, 2012

Yareah Magazine, Literary Interview with Jason Greendyk

http://yareah.com/?p=2196


Tango de la Materia by Jason Greendyk
Tango de la Materia by Jason Greendyk
Q- When do you begin to be interested in writing?
I have been writing my thoughtful silences as long as I can remember… a more explicit and aware interest was conceived in young philosophies, nurtured and grew in academic language, and has since perennially borne fruit in vernacular life.
Q- What were your influences?
I am broadly informed by the history of literature and the arts, contemporaries, and by the continuous re-conceptualization of experience in the ongoing course of enlightenment.  Further, some of my deepest influences tend to be the cultural and ideological abstractions of individuals in my personal life.
Q- What do you think about the relationship between literature and other arts?
The transition might be vague, but is seamless… it is a matter of translation, naturally prone to subjectivity, but no more so than the work in its authentic state.  A poem can be a painting if its imagery is so distinct to some person that the visual extension of the language manifests more powerfully than the raw language itself.  Or vice versa, and likewise for any other reasoned category of artistic expression.
Q- … If you were able to find a time machine and to return to the past… What writer would you like to meet with?
Karel Hynek Mácha.  His writing was informed by a young life in Prague, a city which I have found in my travels to be beautiful.  As well, a romantic true to his word, he spoke of endless love, and died young at heart, by accident.
Viennese Waltz, by Jason Greendyk
Viennese Waltz, by Jason Greendyk
Q- Do you use a method? How many hours do you write at day?
I suppose I write continuously, as technology allows for this.  I can gather poems, line by line, as I go about my life, and as some concept begins to congeal psychologically, and demands release, I can take some time to compile and flesh the notes of my experience into a piece, and on and on, ad infinitum.
Q- And how many hours… even weeks… even months did you need to finish your last book?
My latest work, Šariš, is the crystallization of selected writings over the course of five years.  Previous works have ranged from one year to four years, but overlapping, with more than one work occurring simultaneously.
Q- What do you think about the future? Do you believe in the dead of hardcover books?
The future is now… perhaps hardcover books would attain some greater value as explicit pieces of art, that is, for their material being, in addition to the words contained therein.  As for the words alone, they can easily be extracted from the materiality of the book and employed in a variety of digital forms, and be seen off to the seas of the web.  The impetus to create, authenticity, intellectual property in a strict sense, that is, devoid of substantial material interest, and the etiquette of a proper reading environment and the divulgence of attention and ingestion of language are all threatened by this, but nevertheless is engendered the experience of communal egos of expression, a democratic moderation of psychological resonance, and the consensus of differences to be a silent truth, all of which tend to approach more honestly, if fearfully, the united existence sought in the appreciation of the arts, although still limited by the availability and affordability of technology and the restrictions of its use between varying geographic areas.
The appel juice, by Jason Greendyk
The appel juice, by Jason Greendyk
Q- What do you think about new publishing methods like Amazon create space?
They are wonderful for the moment.  They make dreams come true.  They make available on the market the true work of freedom of expression.  They significantly diminish material bars to the completion of a finished product.  Difficulties arise in the volume of availability, which tends to largely eliminate casual browsing.  It becomes increasingly more difficult for any individual’s work to stand out in the digital seas of this volume, hence the experience of communal egos as previously noted.  What is caught by any audience might be only the slightest essence of a work, or conceptual group of works, the branded image, which has had years of passion poured into it, though this escapes in the culminated expression.  Raging, hopeless throes, redundancy of self.  But, at the end of the day, it has to look effortless, even when it’s not.  Somehow, despite the emptiness of the individual in this notion, there is some ineffable beauty to it.  At the least, it brings further question, and on a mass scale, to capitalized democratic processes and the guidance of reason.
Q- Do you have an ebook?
Two of my books, Ontological Intoxication and The Apple Juice, are currently available in eBook formats.  More to come!
Q- And now a personal and difficult question: do you continue reading? What kind of books do you prefer? Have you changed your
Saris, by Jason Greendyk
Saris, by Jason Greendyk
reading after you begin to write?
To some extent I’ve fallen prey at the moment to the advent of digital immediacy, for the reason of time constraint.  I briefly, though not inattentively, peruse a wide selection of various literatures and capture those bits and pieces which resonate to my momentary psychological condition.  Over time, I find these resonances to repeat themselves in various, even distinctly different works, and to follow what might be considered a natural course of development.  That is, natural in the sense that it relies on the fast moving continuity of democratic, digital marketing, for instance, via social networks, and what by force of communal will continues to reach itself out to my attention.  Even so, my attention is steeped in a history of more extensive and detailed reading, which undoubtedly informs my selections and judgments thereof.
Q- How many books do you buy in a year?
The above being said, there still arise works which penetrate my attention so decisively that I am compelled to take a step back from the fronts of immediacy and embark on a slow and entire digestion of the piece.  This results in my purchasing a few select books per year, and subsequently devouring them.  Further, I might purchase and read a book recommended insofar as it will develop some abstraction of and relationship with the recommender in my life.
Q- Talk about your writing… What do you think it’s your best?
My writing is the overcoming, though not the betrayal, of culture, that is, the real expression of philosophy.  My writing forges bridges of class in all its relations.
Ontoligical Intoxication, by Peter Greendyk
Ontoligical Intoxication, by Jason Greendyk
It is best when read J
Q- What adjectives would you use to describe your books?
Romantic, cynical, apathetic, moving with unrest, convicted, mellifluous, inspirational.
Q- Where or how do you find the inspiration?
Inspiration is in relation… of mind to mind, mind to body, body to mind, body to body… of thought to thought, thought to world, world to thought, world to world… in meeting expression, expression of silence, silent expression, silence pure…
It is in the observation and abstracted incorporation of beauty.  Inspiration is life, nothing more, nothing less.  In love with nothing, but in love, always.
Q- Do you think about your next book? Can you talk something about it?
I am in the process of compiling a piece that will serve as a raw, experiential take on the technological.  A philosopher has suggested that humanity did not have to choose the route of technology.  Nevertheless, humanity has democratically made its choice.  The piece will serve in some sense as a take on this choice expressed distinctly in its resultant context, yet as if it had not actually quite been made, merely an imagining, and perhaps suggesting, or distantly praying, that it is an ongoing choice, and not irretractable, a lucid dream that we might wake from whenever we choose.  Immediately, it is the bittersweet tail end of a love story, itself enclosing an empty romance, like a Яйца Фаберже, blossoming with philosophy and poetry carried out in the day to day workings of the digital age.


Jason Greendyk, www.jasongreendyk.com

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