screwing off

at work.  Just got back from the paper warehouse where I really took a beating wallet-wise.  It is depressing to spend money, even if it is for something I believe in.  I try to be scrupulous and thrifty but the truth is I am a terrible shopper.  I choose convenience over savings, even after I research in an obsessive-compulsive manner.  I say Fuck It, How Much.  With effing press, my aim has been to clear the economic obstacle by purchasing quality materials and services in bulk and to (eventually) print/bind/trim on my own with equipment I've found/stolen/borrowed.  To make it work, ya know, to say, "hey, print ain't dead, you just have to be crafty and a thief."  To go it alone without grants or handouts or help is rather foolish.  But look, it is happening albeit not at the $ return I might like, but it could, in theory.  It could with more hands. 

I'm going to wax on a bit here.

Last Sunday I walked a few blocks into downtown and witnessed at least a half dozens cars driving backwards downhill on a street.  I walked closer to see what the hell was going on.  When I got there it was clear a car commercial was being filmed.  Not unusual around here.  All along a multi-block route were PA's, set people, camera people, and cops.  There were cameras mounted on the back of trucks and on a few cranes.  One out of every three people had a clipboard in hand.  Many people shouted into bullhorns.  Many people were running as if something important were happening.

A car commercial.

I thought, shit, if a few people got together like this occaisionally in the name of poetry, what couldn't get done?! 

fucking car commercial. 

But on the flip side to that, one can ask themselves "what work is actually needed for poetry in this country?"  I don't know.  It may in fact be the wrong attitude entirely.

I miss college like that.  The collective dreaming.  That while in training the situation of poetry out in the great unknown was simply waiting for your arrival.  I miss walking into the English department and being around people with words swirling in their minds.  I do not miss a lot of other stuff about school, but I miss the rare books collection and the archives and the conversation.  I miss that feeling of the future.  (I still have that feeling, ya know, and it is the very reason to be on this planet at all.)

Here in Austin I rarely set foot on the UT campus.  It is huge and frightening.  A city within a city.  I don't know but a few people in their grad department and their MFA program is like a secret society.  I don't mean that in a bad way so much, I just don't know who they are but no doubt they are badasses and they are propped up to be badasses.  I'm told this at least.   

But let's be clear (and I am quite fine with the implications of such honesty):

The effing press project is not about saving poetry or putting it out to a wider audience, though aspects of those notions are embedded in the act of producing as it is.  It is not so much about discovering or promoting less published/read people, though that of course is attached.  It is not meant as an alternative to web publishing which many people do and for many understandable reasons.

It is simply about books.  Designing, producing, and distributing small books.  Of course, the manuscripts are chosen based on what I like.  I am advised here and there from people I respect.  I enjoy working with an author to make something we can both be proud of, of course, and to make a product (there's that word) that people will like and want to buy and read and keep.  I can appreciate that web publishing takes the finacier out of the equation and that is kind of cool.  But one can't do that in my situation, or they could, but they'd be a saint, driven by a deeper motive than I can sense in myself.  This is not noble or God's work, but would you believe people say this occaisionally to me?  To be frank, I do think it is noble, I do want to feel like I am doing something that is larger than my own ambitions and need for approval.  I do want to contribute in a positive way.   (And hey, I've been a lot of things in my nearly 30 years, all sorts of jobs.  not one of them did I not want it be noble, for it to work in my mind as useful.  It's got to mean something or I feel to low to go on, or I get angry.)

I knew I always loved books.  I knew that despite the words within the books I loved books anyway.  As well as being a writer, not necessarily of poetry, I knew I wanted to edit and publish.  Wasn't until a couple of years ago that I got interested in design.  A month before effing magazine #1 was printed was when I bought layout software and Dale Smith gave me a tutorial on layout basics.  I got laid off from my job as a training coordinator then and I got a nice severence so I thought it was the best time to launch EP and that it would simply define itself as I began.  Of course it didn't.  I blew through the cash quickly before I even realized how to go about doing it.  Then getting another job got tough as Austin, a city of coders and tech talkers, felt the full crunch of the dot com bust.  I was pretty much out of work for 6 months and was painting houses and doing a few typesetting jobs and pretty much living off the state dole I was recieving and it wasn't pretty.  I sat on my porch a lot and wrote a body of poetry called The Street is Large that should stay buried in a box for some more time.  I chronicled mostly insignificant things that happened around my neighborhood. 

I tried to get hired on anywhere that had an offset press.  I offered to work for free, just teach me the machine.  And people laughed, they laughed because offset is on its way out they said due to the new digital age.  And besides, most printers were unionized.  There was and is so much I didn't know.  While I was playing art student and amateur filmmaker in college I should have done some machinery training....but ahh, hindsight.

I eventually took a crappy job at a print shop hoping to learn the presses, (I thought of this constantly) but instead was running paper stock from plant to press, press to plant, and pedaling business cards and brochures around downtown.  I wore a fucking tie and drove a little deathtrap pickup truck.  The pressmen I met were cool guys though.  Gruff and big and tough-talking.  They couldn't give a shit about the words and images they printed.  They loved their machines.  I realized what an old division of labor there is in the commerical print world, like so many things where design/engineering/theory/money meet.  Industries don't occur and situate themselves overnight.   How set the distribution of profits were, how little those profits were, and the difference between a salesman and a machinist.   You want to see how Capitalism works, check out the commecial printing industry.  It is complicated yet the most basic principles are at work.

I digress aplenty don't I?  I am at work, I do not like to work but I have to work, so I will continue on with whatever this is later. 

--

Go outside.

Smoke

a cig. 

Compose

myself.

Comments

[justin]

You should have placed a disclaimer at the top of this piece, "The following contains language and tone that may deepen a pre-existing sense of despair." I'm sitting in a faux coffee house past the middle of the day surrounded by wallets and gloss. Frank Sinatra is deliberately dripping from hot plastic holes in the ceiling and everywhere smells of disinfectant and burnt bean. A retiree requires the back-up cashier to the front and everyone is spending money. There are more books here than they could ever read. But, that's not always the point in purchasing them.

We need to get the hell out of here. We need solitude and the internet. We need a do-over. We needed to know what we know now ten years ago. Twenty.

Capitalism, huh? Is that what they call it? Well, one thing's for sure; they do love their machines. And still they need more cashiers.

this is not a new day.
-ju