Q: Mike Dean released a DVD called DIY or Die: Burn This DVD with no copy restrictions.
A: He also wrote a book called $30 Film School.
The subtitle
of DIY or Die was How To Survive as an Independent Artist.
I interviewed Mike Dean in the anthology I edited for Pottersville Press, Postcards
From Pottersville, Vol. 3, Adventures in the Underground.
Q: That's the Blaster Al drawing of Jack the Raver with the stub of
a pencil for a nose and slobber running down his chin.
A: Yes.
I interviewed Blaster Al, too.
I have been doing
it myself since September 1, 1971.
Q: 38 years, come Monday.
A: That's a long time to do something.
How could you not be good
at it?
Q: You could be good at something nobody wants.
A: That's different. Isn't it?
To be world-class at something fewer
than 20 people are interested in. Perhaps as few as ten people.
Q: Didn't you call yourself a DIY Fellow? The year you gave yourself to write?
A: Yes. I stole the last year of my three-year NDEA fellowship in anthropology
at Tulane to teach myself to write.
I signed up for Thesis, to draw my stipend,
stayed at home, and wrote.
Q: And what did you accomplish in that year? Did you waste your time? Was it a wash-out?
A: To the contrary.
I found my rhythm. I developed my work-habits,
as a writer.
I found my seat. Found my voice, actually.
I wrote two
books and started a third.
Each book was related to the book before it and
the book after it.
There were continuities. I was working on a life's-work.
Q: You had doomed yourself. For having a career as a mainstream commercial
writer.
You had taken the wrong path.
A: I was following my vision where it led me.
Q: Do you remember the scene in the public bathroom in Where the Buffalo Roam, where Harris of the Post asks Nixon, "What about the doomed?" Do you remember what Nixon says?
A: "Fuck the doomed."
Q: Cottage cheese and ketchup, I presume.
A: Henry Miller told Lawrence Durrell, "Don't change a word. They'll
shit on you anyway--you might as well have your say."
You're doomed.
You might as well write as you please.