internal exile

Jeff T. Johnson is currently exiled from internal exile.

[raygonne]

Fish in Exile

On November 3, 2016, I sent this message to my friend Vi, whose book Fish in Exile is helping me breathe:

Sent Nov 3, 2016 11:04:08 AM Vi Khi Nao Vi, I just love yr book. Do you know that my blog, going way back to the live journal days (and now tumblr) is called internal exile?

This opened a conversation in which Vi generously asked me about my writing and thinking. I believe her ability to draw out language for what people have in mind, and her curiosity and compassion for what people are thinking and how thought is linguistic, is crucial to her poetics. It is one of the things that makes her such a breathtaking (and breathgiving!) writer.

I want to share some of our conversation, which picked back up today, November 12, 2016. Vi asked me to share it on my blog and on Amazon. I hope that if you find her book at Amazon you will order it from Coffee House Press or find a copy at your local bookstore, or I hope you can make it to a not-so-local bookstore to find it.

Our conversation continues [note: the “Sent” messages are written by me and the “Received” messages are from Vi, though they are all stamped with her name]:

Sent Nov 3, 2016 11:06:33 AM Vi Khi Nao i don't write there much anymore because i wrote trouble songs instead, but exile is writing space. position from/in which to write. feel that strongly in yr book.

Received Nov 3, 2016 12:14:06 PM Vi Khi Nao Ah. I am glad you love the book, Jeff. Tell me more about internal exile and why you feel connected to it with my book?

Received Nov 3, 2016 12:19:05 PM Vi Khi Nao I am in Baltimore!

Sent Nov 3, 2016 12:19:22 PM Vi Khi Nao Internal exile became meaningful to me during the bush II regime when i read about the idea that people are in exile in their own countries because of a profound disconnect with cultural and political realities. Over time that became a way for me to think also about the simultaneous sense of alienation and connection i have when i write and read. There is a community of writers and thinkers but i feel more connected to them when i write and read then i do in person. Then there's the complicated position of the non-conventional writer in the culture at large. They legitimize literature as art but are also marginalized for their abstractions and resistance to commodification.

Received Nov 3, 2016 12:19:33 PM Vi Khi Nao And, when you get a chance will you post a small review on Amazon and Goodreads?

Sent Nov 3, 2016 12:19:38 PM Vi Khi Nao Sorry for such long texts! OK so how that connects to your book...

Sent Nov 3, 2016 12:20:17 PM Vi Khi Nao That sense of living in exile where you are (still?) in the place from which you have been exiled is palpable in your book.

Received Nov 3, 2016 12:20:40 PM Vi Khi Nao Will you put all of this in your review?

Received Nov 3, 2016 12:21:15 PM Vi Khi Nao I wonder if others feel the same as you. Perhaps to give it opportunity to expand the conversation.

Sent Nov 3, 2016 12:21:28 PM Vi Khi Nao I will post things for sure. I'll put this stuff in a post on internal exile tumblr then excerpt for goodreads etc. thanks for writing such an awesome, inspiring book!

Received Nov 3, 2016 12:21:53 PM Vi Khi Nao Yes, meta-exile.

Received Nov 3, 2016 12:22:40 PM Vi Khi Nao Thank you for reading Jeff and providing me feedbacks. It is nice. I don't want my book to be in exile!!

Received Nov 3, 2016 12:22:51 PM Vi Khi Nao Even if it has exile in its title.

Sent Nov 3, 2016 12:22:59 PM Vi Khi Nao Baltimore is great! What a bizarre city! Speaking of meta-exile. There is an odd bookshop there i like. Have to remember the name but maybe you already found it.

Received Nov 3, 2016 12:23:48 PM Vi Khi Nao That is an astute observation about internal exile, still experiencing it despite thinking one has escaped it.

Sent Nov 3, 2016 12:24:00 PM Vi Khi Nao I do not think your book will be in exile, tho it speaks to the exiled. Like how jalal toufic wrote a book for the undead (called (vampires)).

Received Nov 3, 2016 12:24:12 PM Vi Khi Nao I am only at the airport, waiting...

Sent Nov 3, 2016 12:24:32 PM Vi Khi Nao Then when you leave a place you are still there but also can't return.

Received Nov 3, 2016 12:25:12 PM Vi Khi Nao Yes..exactly. You nailed it.

Sent Nov 3, 2016 12:25:17 PM Vi Khi Nao My architecture students are writing about atopic spaces (atopias), and airports are an example.

Received Nov 3, 2016 12:25:35 PM Vi Khi Nao I see. Why is that?

Sent Nov 3, 2016 12:26:12 PM Vi Khi Nao I think about this (exile) a lot as a former californian. I lived there for a lifetime.

Received Nov 3, 2016 12:26:55 PM Vi Khi Nao I see. Tell me more !

Received Nov 3, 2016 12:27:11 PM Vi Khi Nao About your experience in CA

Sent Nov 3, 2016 12:27:43 PM Vi Khi Nao Atopic spaces are non-spaces that cannot be incorporated into a sense of place. They operate like traffic islands that are in the middle but also the periphery of city activity.

Received Nov 3, 2016 12:30:31 PM Vi Khi Nao I see.

Received Nov 3, 2016 12:30:55 PM Vi Khi Nao An architectural island

Sent Nov 3, 2016 12:31:21 PM Vi Khi Nao I grew up in southern california (socal) then moved to northern california (nocal?) to go to college and ended up living in oakland for over 15 years. So i was already in exile from california in california. Then i almost moved to pittsburgh but met c who was on her way out and almost moved to oakland, then we moved to providence for a year then brooklyn. I also moved to brooklyn for 6 months before pvd while i also still lived in nocal, so i was in exile from my nocal community (and alienated all my friends unintentionally). I didn't know it but i was already leaving nocal.

Sent Nov 3, 2016 12:33:56 PM Vi Khi Nao But c loves LA which gave me a new connection to it, except that i grew up there and am in exile from LA. So when we visit it is new but also the old LA and i do not belong there just as i do not belong in the valley (the suburbs outside LA) where i grew up. And i am in exile from the bay area (nocal) though i could easily move there where there are lots of architectural drafting opportunities. But the bay area is in exile from itself now, as it exists inside a burst tech bubble.

Sent Nov 3, 2016 12:35:31 PM Vi Khi Nao For now i prefer my internal exile in brooklyn, where my favorite writers and thinkers, my compatriots, pass through but do not live.

Sent Nov 3, 2016 12:36:29 PM Vi Khi Nao Or they live here in exile from finance, real estate, nyt bestseller list, baby strollers, etc.

Sent Nov 3, 2016 12:37:06 PM Vi Khi Nao Ok you pried open my lid! I guess it wasn't on so tight. Thanks for listening!

Received Nov 3, 2016 12:39:34 PM Vi Khi Nao Wow!!

Received Nov 3, 2016 12:40:00 PM Vi Khi Nao That is a lot you covered there Jeff in a tight space.

Received Nov 3, 2016 12:40:23 PM Vi Khi Nao You are also a fast typist....I am very slow.

Sent Nov 3, 2016 12:41:16 PM Vi Khi Nao I am cheating because i have an external keyboard attached to my phone!

Sent Nov 3, 2016 12:42:08 PM Vi Khi Nao Ha ha that must have been strange for you to imagine fingers moving like that on the screen!

Received Nov 3, 2016 12:42:12 PM Vi Khi Nao Ah!!!

Received Nov 3, 2016 12:42:49 PM Vi Khi Nao Indeed!!

Sent Nov 3, 2016 12:44:05 PM Vi Khi Nao Sorry if i was unintentionally terrifying! ;)

Received Nov 3, 2016 12:44:49 PM Vi Khi Nao Lol. Hardly :)

…

Time passes, a racist sexist anti-gay authoritarian billionaire is apparently selected by the electoral college to be the next president of the USA.

…

Received Nov 12, 2016 8:49:59 AM Vi Khi Nao Dear Jeff - How are you ?

Sent Nov 12, 2016 10:55:48 AM Vi Khi Nao Hi Vi! Having a hard time with this bad reality. How about you?

Received Nov 12, 2016 10:56:50 AM Vi Khi Nao Very sad....so sad, Jeff.

Received Nov 12, 2016 10:57:04 AM Vi Khi Nao How is C?

Sent Nov 12, 2016 11:01:45 AM Vi Khi Nao She's frustrated, sad, in pain. But we're both trying to take some measure of solace in people on the street, who are generally being decent. But like one gross older white man having a tantrum at the food coop last night, and the other white man defending him, is a reminder of this gnarly male fragility going on.

Received Nov 12, 2016 11:02:42 AM Vi Khi Nao What an image, Jeff !!

Received Nov 12, 2016 11:03:09 AM Vi Khi Nao Adult tantrum is important

Received Nov 12, 2016 11:03:42 AM Vi Khi Nao What do you do to cope ?

Sent Nov 12, 2016 11:05:32 AM Vi Khi Nao i prefer yoko ono's eloquent tantrum (did you hear the audio response she posted to her twitter?) to some dude complaining that he can't have what he wants right now (in this case he wanted to shop after the store was closed, so he started yelling at people).

Sent Nov 12, 2016 11:05:42 AM Vi Khi Nao trying to read and look people in the eyes.

Sent Nov 12, 2016 11:06:07 AM Vi Khi Nao frustrated that i feel busy with work. being busy with work is part of our problem.

Received Nov 12, 2016 11:06:35 AM Vi Khi Nao No. I have not seen Yoko Ono's tantrum.

Received Nov 12, 2016 11:06:59 AM Vi Khi Nao Ah. I see. Why is it busyness part of our problem?

Sent Nov 12, 2016 11:07:24 AM Vi Khi Nao https://twitter.com/yokoono/status/797187458505080834

Received Nov 12, 2016 11:08:12 AM Vi Khi Nao Oh my god.

Sent Nov 12, 2016 11:08:54 AM Vi Khi Nao Need to make money and produce goods/services supersedes more vital exchange of warmth, compassion, ideas.

Received Nov 12, 2016 11:09:37 AM Vi Khi Nao That. Yes.

Sent Nov 12, 2016 11:10:19 AM Vi Khi Nao Also concerned about this emergent refrain of "self care" which sounds like another route to individualism, when we need to take care of each other.

Sent Nov 12, 2016 11:10:56 AM Vi Khi Nao Woke up to that Yoko Ono recording this morning. A glimmer.

Received Nov 12, 2016 11:12:40 AM Vi Khi Nao Yes. We must take care of each other.

Sent Nov 12, 2016 11:12:44 AM Vi Khi Nao Here are the books I'm turning to. Also Fish in Exile.

Received Nov 12, 2016 11:16:30 AM Vi Khi Nao Ah. Beautiful.

Received Nov 12, 2016 11:19:07 AM Vi Khi Nao Will you post a review of Fish In Exile, atropic space, and internal exile today, Jeff?

Received Nov 12, 2016 11:19:40 AM Vi Khi Nao And Yoko Ono's tantrum and this:  i prefer yoko ono's eloquent tantrum (did you hear the audio response she posted to her twitter?) to some dude complaining that he can't have what he wants right now (in this case he wanted to shop after the store was closed, so he started yelling at people).

Received Nov 12, 2016 11:20:17 AM Vi Khi Nao I want you to document this moment on Amazon

Sent Nov 12, 2016 11:21:33 AM Vi Khi Nao Oh yes this is one of the things I want to work on and that's a good example of busyness superseding more important matters. I will try to do this soon. I want to read more of your book first, as I am savoring it. But you have a good point about documenting this moment!

Sent Nov 12, 2016 11:22:18 AM Vi Khi Nao I'll start assembling snippets from these conversations and put them there and on my blog!

Received Nov 12, 2016 11:22:35 AM Vi Khi Nao Yes! Please do.

Sent Nov 12, 2016 11:22:44 AM Vi Khi Nao Our chats have been a great comfort, as is knowing you are there in the world!

Received Nov 12, 2016 11:23:09 AM Vi Khi Nao I want others who read reviews of this book to know the context in which this book was born into.

Received Nov 12, 2016 11:23:30 AM Vi Khi Nao Likewise, Jeff. This conversation is important.

Sent Nov 12, 2016 11:24:28 AM Vi Khi Nao It has been a ballast!

Received Nov 12, 2016 11:24:55 AM Vi Khi Nao If you post it today ! I would love that very much. It doesn't even have to be about Fish in Exile ! I hope people will respond to your Amazon post and a dialogue can get started

Sent Nov 12, 2016 11:25:56 AM Vi Khi Nao Went on a road trip with c and i to clarion PA for a university reading last weekend and the 3 of us talked about how wonderful you are and how you draw out eloquence and thoughtfulness in conversation.

Sent Nov 12, 2016 11:26:17 AM Vi Khi Nao Ok i will work on this now! Xox

Received Nov 12, 2016 11:27:57 AM Vi Khi Nao Excellent, Jeff !!! Thank you for sharing your words with me and the world. I know you make a huge impact through micro things.

[raygonne]

Asking for It

Late June. The last few years June seems to fly by as it always does, but it’s just time. June used to feel like the sweet spot of summer, full of nothing and everything to do, salt-crusted and slightly buzzed. Now it feels more like trying to rest and regain all the energy teaching requires. I wrote and read a lot, worked a bunch (a relief after working so little last summer, flirting always with running out of money), went to a few readings and shows. Didn’t make it to the beach, didn’t get out of town. It’s been OK. 

One of the things I read was Anwen Crawford’s book about Hole’s Live Through This. I milked it for a couple months, somehow. Brought it once to a bar where my friend James works, and his eyes got huge and he was like, That’s my favorite album of all time I’d read that in half an hour. See but I can turn a half hour into a month and a half. I can read so slowly it’s really just staring at words.

So this album’s been on my mind, which means it’s crept back into my life. Good. This summer I’ve also reconnected with a friend from the Bay Area, Keala. Back then we swapped band members and probably secretly competed with each other. At one point we had practice spaces across the hall in the Tenderloin, and shared band members would cross the hall for back-to-back practices and Keala or I would sneak over to listen at the door. Really it was fandom more than jealousy. At least someone liked our bands!

Anyway, Keala’s band got started by learning and covering Hole songs, and Courtney Love was his musical and stylistic role model. You should have seen Keala in a torn slip, broken heels and smudged makeup, playing in a Castro storefront alcove until the cops came, then bargaining for one more song. Glorious.

After rereading Jessica Hopper’s truly marvelous oral history of Live Through This (first caught it in Spin, and now in her killer book The First Collection of Criticism by a Living Female Rock Critic, which everyone who cares about music rather than just listens to it should read), I remembered this piece I wrote late last summer. I wrote it on assignment but went over (the minuscule) word count and didn’t want to edit it down, which I know is silly (esp. since I love counting words) but it got wrapped up in my feeling for the album, my own adoration of Courtney, and my feeling that (almost) everything was terrible last summer and this was just another little indignity. Also, as another friend points out, I’m a triple goat who can’t help bumping my horns on everything. Fuck it. So here it is, in all its latent g(l)ory.

“Asking for It” by Hole

The song with the eponymous lyric on Live Through This, “Asking for It” is the part for the whole, and Live Through This fills the room like a single song. Twenty-one years after its release, Hole’s second album is the age I was when it came out. Part of my mind is always on Live Through This, but every year or so I take the LP off the shelf and let it talk. Lately it’s moved closer to the stereo so it can find its own way to the speakers.

This July I participated in a Twitter-based collaborative improv narrative called All-Time High (#ATH15). Rob Wittig and Mark Marino invented what they call Netprov internet storytelling, and after taking part in previous iterations, Claire Donato and I suggested a theme: What if everyone ever went back to high school together in 2015? Rob suggested the name All-Time High, and the four of us set to work preparing the conceptual framework for the wormhole that ripped through summer for everyone who dove in.

It’s been an opportunity to revisit lost tapes and poke old wounds, and to figure out what you’d do then if you knew what you know now—if then was now and you could be yourself and whoever else you want to be. It’s totally bonkers, and has made a broke-ass summer that anchored us to Brooklyn less of a bummer. (As bratty as I feel complaining about my life in NYC, I can’t pretend the dog days of seasonal unemployment here are fun.)  

Though I’d run three years from high school by 1994, Live Through This was among the first music I thought of when I started a playlist for All-Time High (including “Violet,” “Miss World” and “Rock Star”). Halfway through the Netprov, I created a character @hscarriewhite, setting the profile pic as the iconic pre-bloodsoaked, beautiful and doomed prom queen shot of Sissy Spacek in the first Carrie film adaptation. Every time I tweet in pop-cult drag, the mini screenshot grabs me by the feelings. Today I recognized its echo in the cover of Live Through This, that shot of not-Courtney as the girl with the most cake, before and after all that blood.

Live through this with me and I swear I will die for you the song of an earlier youth calls back—or is it forward? Nobody here but us ghosts.

[raygonne]

Scary Monsters (& Super Creeps)

Here’s how I remember it (with a dance prelude when “Queen Bitch” comes on the stereo):

1995, Bay Area, David Bowie’s Outside Tour

Nine Inch Nails opens, begins a cover of “Scary Monsters” at the end of its set

Stage fills with fog, swirls and disperses to reveal figure in ethereal silhouette

Enter Bowie, destroying Reznor, song, stage, audience, my mind...

[raygonne]

Let me in! Hey, bring it down! —Iggy Pop, "Fun House"

[raygonne]

State Department Supports Conceptual Writing

"At the request of the State Department, Mrs. Clinton turned over about 50,000 pages of emails from clintonemail.com related to the government issues late last year. But her aides have declined to describe the process by which they selected which emails to hand over and which to hold back." —"Membership in Clinton’s Email Domain Is Remembered as a Mark of Status," NYT

[raygonne]

It is better to substitute a word with a similar sound than one with a similar meaning (Kruchenykh) which is to have it both ways.

[raygonne]

Lost Weekend

Where and when am I? There's a new Erase Errata album and it's awesome!

[raygonne]

"Price Tag"

Corin Tucker sings like she's stoked to be in Sleater-Kinney again.

[raygonne]

Albums That Made an Impression in 2014

It's the last Saturday of 2014. Raise one to each of these albums. You may need help. And more time. Apologies and your welcomes for all that is wrong.

Albums That Made an Impression in 2014

With comments!

D’Angelo, Black Messiah

A record at last. Late February will be awesome.

Angel Olsen, Burn Your Fire for No Witness

High five! So am I!

Mac Demarco, Salad Days

Recommended to an older guy at the corner bar: Kind of like Lennon!

Scott Walker + Sunn O))), Soused

Disney on downers.

Sunn O))) & Ulver, Terrestrials

Ambient AM radio metal.

Ty Segall, Manipulator

He’s gonna make a movie of his entire life.

Eduard Artemiev, Solaris OST [reissue]

Turns the flat into a space station.

Sleater-Kinney, No Cities to Love

Heard two songs, but this album preoccupied my listening imagination in the 4th quarter of 2014.

Stephen Malkmus and the Jicks, Wigout at Jagbags

Can’t believe this came out in 2014. It was a very long year.

J Mascis, Tied to a Star

Dinosaur Jr. had to get back together to make Mascis capable of a solo album like this.

Juliana Barwick, Nepenthe

Kept sleeping on this; every time back made it better.

Kevin Morby, Still Life With Rejects From the Land of Misfits

Dylan’s mid-career release of 2014.

Ex Hex, Rips

I’ve been the object of your affections /…/ And I’ve been the target of your cruel intentions

St. Vincent, St. Vincent

Continues translation of pop history into St. Vincent.

Swans, To Be Kind

Mean and hurt. Dangerous combo.

Miles Davis, Miles at the Fillmore 1970: The Bootleg Series, Vol. 3

Endless as it should be. Not the revelation On the Corner Sessions was a few years ago, but still melts brains in the herenow.

Perfume Genius, Too Bright

When I sashay…

Real Estate, Atlas

Reading the obituary for someone you didn’t know was alive, this one plays with Wigout back in the early days of ’14.

Flying Lotus, You’re Dead!

I know!

Grouper, Ruins

Frog opera.

Parque Courts, Sunbathing Animal

Had to check in with Iota Ro Nu (Original Indie-Rock Nerds) on this one. Caught a late wind, so the first and last listed here are the haziest and most immediate in my mind. Happy to greet a kitbash of Pavement and Flipper. Yes please.

Nux Vomica, S/T

Punish myself for forgetting this album in my unrevised list. Too ancient-sounding to have come from 2014? Or too singular to be grouped with other albums? Yeah, that.

Arthur Russell, Another Thought and World of Echo

Both albums were reissued on vinyl, and have changed my ears. You can see Russell there in the music.

[raygonne]

best toast ever: emily dickinson, 1866

[raygonne]

fall

realizing how much pavement owes (and acknowledges) debt to jesus & mary chain's second album. and how i slept too long on darklands.

[raygonne]

a flim by ernst jandl

[raygonne]

metal heart

every once in a while cat power hurts your feelings

[raygonne]

Lambchop's "2B2" is still some kind of masterpiece

the exquisite and astonishing pathos of 

It was good to talk to you while we're cooking Sounds like we're making the same thing

[raygonne]

In the 1960s, Batman was camp. The hero himself, portrayed by Adam West, seemed winded, even lazy.

—Mark Spitz, from Twee: The Gentle Revolution in Music, Books, Television, Fashion, and Film

BTW, the whole book is kinda this good.

[raygonne]

Rocky Raccoon

Paul McCartney saying I can do anything

[raygonne]

Mlle M., an elderly secretary, cannot write the word "erasure" without having to erase;

Roland Barthes