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
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
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
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 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
