interview

Interview questions in which I am sauced on vodka

Q: I've been reading Show & Tell since about four issues back and I've noticed a lot of change in what you're doing and how you articulate your ideas. Do you feel like a different person from the person who wrote the first one?

Show and Tell was written in a kind of obsolete vernacular. Early on I was hoping to convey what a zine was to my simple-minded community by following a consistent formula with various mediums. Hand drawn cover + one-of-a-kind embellishment + personal essay + comic + DIY thing + the emptying of my soul. It's like playing Billy the Bunny and Alicia Hermanny's Best-Game-Ever. The formula is there, you just need a good binding method for maximum points. And hells yes I feel different. I was a fucking kid. A secret abortion, a couple heart breaks and a few jobs later I'm still in the same godforsaken town with the same prospects of absolute bullshit but god knows I am 26, not 20 and my frontal lobe is fully developed and I have Joel.

Q: I really like reading about Bend in your zines. What's Bend like these days? What's an average day like in Bend for you?

Bend is fucking awesome no matter how much I shit talk it to Anita from L.A. when we are having tea two days ago. An average day in Bend for me is getting up and going to my nonprofit at-risk-toddler-job and cook some crepes and make some pizza for some kids with shitty family situations. Then I'll go home, chase my finches around the house, check the mailbox, go on a run or not, find Joel or Rinnah or someone to have an adventure with, or not and type written short-stories to an erotica zine I'm putting together or not and stream SNL or 30 Rock on my laptop or just get hammered at the theater and wander home, stopping to dumpster dive flowers from the flower shop, leave said flowers at Jake & Laura's house, go home, put blanket over finch cage, read this shitty western novel and drift into sweet dreams thinking of why my ex-boyfriend dumped (more than a year ago) and why other girls are prettier than me and I go through a list of people I can invite over to sleep with me but realize they all suck and will make me give them a hand job in the morning. 

Q: You're close to Portland. How would you say it compares to Bend?

Jonathan lived in Bend for a hot second and I love shit talking Portland with him. Portland kicks my ass every time. Portland hates me on a personal level. I don't know why. Every time I'm in Portland I go into anxiety mode. Only when I'm listening to Greg Ashley in Hanna's car do I feel ok. I am scared to death of Portland. 

Q: Have you thought at all of moving there?

Any good artist in Bend worth their grit has moved to Portland. Because Portland is where real artists live. Not people like me who have somehow managed to trick a bunch of locals to think I'm cool and write about me in the papers. Portland would swallow me whole. I would suck there. I world be dwarfed by true artists, people that know what the fuck they are doing. 

Q: Who are some Bend artists you're into?

Sarah Mikolowky moved to Orcas but she's kind of a Bendite. Alicia Renner is worth her grit, but she lives in Canada half the year planting trees for old Oil Leases that have devastated the land. Sarah McMurray is a good writer and teacher. Jonathan Ludwig is fucking awesome writer and painter, but he is depressed and squanders his talent. I believe he wishes to debut in his sixties Caroline Cornell makes me wild with envy. She is gorgeous + she is an incredible artist and human being but she's leaving to Montana soon as Rinnah leaves for au pair job on Poland. Goddam Kasey is worth mentioning with his beautiful interviews in the recent Occupied Cascadia documentary speaking with Derek Jensen and other activists. Stunning documentary. Cari is fucking awesome, she started the Work House and writes some cool shit. I don't appreciate musicians as much as I ought but Joel Sousa, stunning. Rinnah Henderson, gorgeous amazing. James Ryan Adams, fucking ex-boyfriend and pile of shit/genius. 

Q: The new issue is the winter issue. How is winter circa February 2013 treating you?

Not so bad. I'm thinking about starting a fire outside to burn all the pine needles that have fallen in the yard. Pick up some pine cones and break-up some pallets enough to start a fire big enough to read by. I've got this shitty Western novel I got on a whim, a real piece-a-shit but it's all I got right. Joel comes by late at night and wakes me up and a couple times a week. I find my head in the Donner's Flowers shop dumpster picking lilies and roses and carnations. Been sleeping alone a lot lately which both parts suits me fine and another part drives me mad with the desire to have some warm body next to me to share dreams in the morning (not to deliver a morning-wood hand-job). Taking medication consistently, gave myself a bonus at work, super stoked about new zine, turning 27 in March... 

Q: There's a lot about the seasons in your zines. What would you say is your favorite season?

SUMMER. Where the flowers grow and the river flows and meadows bloom and I run and run and run around like the madness of child that is in me. I try to write according to the season. I let myself take on a slightly morose tone and allow myself to process in my zines the wintertime. In the summer, I make a slight mess and lose myself in friends and silliness. My summer zines are not proud accomplishments. I feel they are shitty and scattered. 

Q: Finally, what other projects are you working on? What can we expect from you?

I have this Erotica zine I am working on. There are a handful of us, all anonymous, writing short stories and only shared within community of contributors. I also have this secret French zine I'm going to try and get out to people in Montreal and France. Other than that, the same old shit I bust out in Show & Tell/Shoe & Tail - the thoughts I cannot communicate on a daily basis, the moments with friends that need to transcend myself, my soul, comics, trifles, etc. etc.  

Why the fuck did you change the name to Show & Tail? That is so lame.

I changed the name to Show & Tail because Show & Tail was an organization that I saw at the PDX Zine Symposium and I went up to there booth and was all, "THE FUCK!? I have a zine called Show & Tell! One of us has to go! Let's fight motherfucker." And this dude was all, "I just work for them," and wouldn't fight me. So. There is nothing I can do. And I feel like a poser of some other kind of group that is more established and has workers that will not fight against crazy bitches that contest the namesake. 

Oh, and Shoe & Tail just sounds similar. That's it. I could have said Shems & Tull but whatever. It wasn't that thoughtful of a decision to honest. 

Giving Tree

Comic

Thought I saw the old man from the Giving Tree cross. 

I wanted to run up to him and say

Why didn't you learn some gratefulness you asshole?

That goddam tree gave you everything. 

But I knew it would just be startling. 

And he might call for help. 

Gah

Thinking back to the first moment I realized it was true, the glaring denial of my past understandings. Maybe just rekindling a friendship with Chase and spending so much time with him, thinking at first I had him figured out and realizing I didn't and having the whole picture explode. I had no one figured out. If there is any art medium I seek to do well at it is that of the witness.
So lost.

Top 10 sweetest things I did in 2012

1. Skyped with Ira Glass and Mike Birbiglia
2. Hung an art show in Olympia, Washington
3. Read Lonesome Dove
4. Published a compilation zine with ... contributors
5. Got stitches

Walk a Mile

There are too many factors to consider.

The microcosm. The ecosystem. The you, me, the finches, the plants in my yard, the burning candles.

How we get along. The things I love about you. The things I can't stand. Our angels and demons love and battle and push and pull. Looking closely into your eyes I know more, we sleep together, wake up with similar dreams. "How strange," we say.
You put eggs in the boiling water.
"I never learned how to make eggs that way."

You've made some beautiful things. Built them with your hands. You've climbed trees and tagged the baby eagles. Sent me a birthday package with a pink stone from Arizona. You wrote that song about her, because she hurt you. You're doing heroin, sometimes, but you have it under control. Dancing, always. Kissing people and breaking their hearts when you leave. Putting the children last and your art first. Borrowing money you'll probably never return. Of course we understand, your intentions are good. We understand. We love you.
Spreading into the streets, getting farther from a comfortable source, I wander. There are more stories, the complication becomes greater, like those Eye Spy books. Things become more complicated.  I'm drinking now to not be so afraid and my heart cracks open dumb and wide. The stories blur. Crashing into the mass in parties I am held.

I think we all have these moments. When we're drinking at a party and we go to the bathroom and think, "how the hell does anyone like me?" and it happens all the time - this goodness. This true kindness of being surrounded by compassionate and caring beings that see a little of your demons and angels and see your face and say, "you're ok. You're alright. This world is troubled but for now we're here and it's good and it's real."
"Your friends will carry you home," he tells me as I stare in the mirror.
Farther out, away from the pallet fire and the tribe, spinning under the stars in the midnight, I stretch my whims and collect new names and faces. The streets and sidewalks, in the buildings, at the market. We smile, gesture, say. Our story is simpler. We use less words. Maintain a distance of a few feet. Little comments about the weather, the expectation of rain, a passing compliment on a bright scarf or carefully placed cap. Brushing against you here and there, we look like a mass, we maintain a polite distance, brief eye contact on occasion.

In yoga and the teacher says, "if you are comparing yourself to others, realize you don't know their story. Recognize you don't know what is going on in their lives."

Paris, 2006, in view of the Eiffel Tour dinner a group of international students are ranting about how ignorant Americans are. How they reckless, how cocky. Pigs. Assholes. The Hungarian is speaking above everyone. The Mexicans are the most scathing. Soviet Julie notices me and says we should change the subject.
"Horses" I say.
I don't defend my country. I don't defend myself. Their points are valid. Who am I? part Irish, part French/German, Vegetarian, Twenty, Writer, Illustrator, Zinestress, Dancer, Pisces, Democrat, Reckless, Watcher, Tiger, occasional Drunk, Hopeless Romantic, Reckless, Tall, Female, Oregonian, Cascadian, American, American.

Standing outside the venue, we're hot from dancing - slamming into one another, fist pumping. We are wild, we are young and poor and full of light. They walk by - mittens and boots and suit coat with the fur rim, silver tipped hair from the salon. Indicating to them, you mock. A nasally English accent with stick-up your ass you swing an imaginary cigarette holder and scrunch your nose, say something pretentious.

"You don't know them," I say. "That woman was in one of my classes in college. She's incredibly generous and sweet. We both wear size 10 shoes."

I stumble, farther and farther away.
Going farther, my looks leash*.
I strain my eyes to see what is really there and not what they are saying beside me. Looking on, squinting, how can miss it? Though a distant observer, I can still see. I am careful, I try not to make up stories, but they come. The farther the look, the fiction flows, trying to make sense of this or that.
It is in the screen. In the pictures in the paper. From the farther points out I can't see the whole picture but only what they show me. I try to look beyond, see with my own eyes, beyond the limitations, but I can't. I can't be there. I form my opinions based on the half-story they tell me.

The farther they are, the more they become them. They are. They are not here. We are here. We have our own stories. They have their stories.
We have never met them.

Here you are beside me, telling me about them. A story you heard, of the things they did. Of all the hurt they spread. I don't know them, but I listen to you, because I love you.
"They are not like us," you say.
"They are not like us," the television says.
"Their stories are not the same. Their thoughts are not the same. They are the bad man. We are the good man. We are human. They are not human. Their atrocities are not our atrocities. They are different. They are sick. They act without reason."
There are so many words for them. Savages. Monsters.
When they do kill us, which they will, of course. Our last breath will be a curse on them, just as it was of their fathers and grandfathers before. They survived to make it right. We died and pass the hatred on, just one more generation, we promise. We'll get them, this time. Just give us the chance.

"You've forgotten," I say. We're lying now - beneath the stars. A reminder of out smallness.
"That they're just like us. They want to eat and sleep and fuck."

"Russians love their children too," Gordon says.

I turn into you, we don't know each other, do we? There might have been moments...

So much of what we perceive cannot be expressed. It's unspeakable.

              And yet, you know, when we communicate with one another,

              and we--

              we feel that we have connected,

              and we think that we're understood,

              I think we have a feeling of almost spiritual communion.

"

Look at the man in the eye to hate him.

I met a man from Iran. A doctor. We were riding the same bus to the airport. He made it clear to me the people in Iran don't hate Americans. The 2009 protests were an example of Iranians attempting to buck a government that further isolates them from peace-talks. Though he was only one person, he represented the larger picture. The side of Iran that isn't acting out of fear, but appreciation.
"We don't hate you," he said. We, Iran. Me, America. A summit of nations you might say, on the bus to the airport.

I know this doctor is there. He is them, a piece. I am, us, another small piece. What to make of it?

When the protests broke out in 2009, protesters used social media to broadcast their experiences.
For me it was the thousand voices of that doctor were saying, "HE (Ahmadinejad) is not US. We are our own voice."
And I call back, "THEY are not ME. I am my own voice. I am American, I don't hate you. I don't want to bomb you.

Our voices mesh, I can't hear you above the shouting.

it's hard to see the individual. The shouting is so loud, unable to make even words out of the scrum.

You can't meet a person and look them in the eye without loving them a little.

You see my demons, I see yours. We're apart of this.

"If you must, shoot a man. But don't hate him."



It's to goddam complicated to make these generalizations. Us and them. It's easy this way, but it's not the truth. Dole hatred out when you see clearly what it is. Judge a man, destroy a man, that stands in the way of truth, but don't kill his family.

*Plath, Soliloquy of the Solipsist
** 147, A Teenagers Guide to God, 12.17.1999 This American Life Episode
***Waking Life


She is nesting. He is sitting on the typewriter hanging out with me.

Some hearts

The parts are like best are the ones where I'm not thinking at all. We were staying in a hotel room and I couldn't sleep so I went into the bathroom to write. The light above the toilet was also a heater and you put it on a timer, fifteen minutes maximum so I set the time for fifteen and would try to become so lost in the writing, without looking at the time, without thinking about the possibility of the light turning off. Like going to sleep while waking. It took awhile. I was incredibly conscientious of the timer and the possibility of myself being left in the dark. Then it happened. I was writing, and suddenly, it was black.

Sarah McMurray asked us to talk about abudance. And gatherings. This was our homework.

Walking down that neighboly patch on Ogden I came across a box of moisturizers. Night creams, day creams, eye creams, charcoal scrubs, facial tinters etc. etc. I took several bottles and have been using them often. I considered several options: someone recognized the lies of these products and stopped believing they could reduce aging. Someone

If you start talking about "us" and "them" your going to lose me, sorry. I won't listen to you. Whenever you say, it is all "their" fault for "our" problems I won't be able to hear you anymore.
When you say, it's all men. When you blame it on women. When you say it's the 99% or rich people or poor people or smart people or dumb people you lose me. I can't listen to that shit anymore.
We're winking at each other from across the aisles and dissolving our world. We're biding our time to make these casual loyalties real ones. We're talking a lot of shit and losing something.
We can talk about differences but for godsakes, leave "them" alone.

Don't get me wrong. There's some real shit out there, but there's some real shit in here. I've done some shit so my brothers and sisters and they've pulled some real fast ones on me. A goddam I couldn't say that I've never hated a bitch

Got drunk the other night and wrote in my journal
"I adore humans to their fullest extent. To the fullest of their absurdities. To all of them. I adore them."
Just like Kevin, I get downright sentimental when I'm drinking.

Funny thing about me, I don't accept compliments. I just don't believe them. For the same reason I don't give compliments only in true occasions. Compliments feel cheap. I try to honor something I appreciate by spending some time with it without words.

Tony was telling me about the Soviet New Year. He says it's on the thirteenth of January, which I believe, but some sources are pointing to the 14th. This year we'll wear grey working class uniforms, turn off all the heat and electricity and pound vodka.

In my dreams, I'm in Olympia. Neighborhood cafes and so many genuinely likable people.

God is the dream giver.

The medicine path is all our lives, it all the ways we hurt and heal. It is what we put in our bodies, it is what our bodies are made of. It's where our spirits are. It in the balance. The earth, wind, fire and water inside and out.

Jake, Laura, Nico, Ory and I are in the medicine field. Yarrow, mullein,
By the river I ask Jake,
"What is this?"
-Hemlock, he tells me
-It kills you. Sometimes the Natives were called to it.
-What happens when you eat it?
-You die.
-What happens when you die?
-You're heart stops.

I didn't ask, I knew. Why were the Native called to it?
Because it was part of their medicine path.
I wish I could hear them. Hailee brought in her aloe plant to take care of while she's away. (I need to take care of her) I was hoping they would speak to me.

My realization of my medicine path started with mullein. It started with Natty when she walked me through the mullein and sat with them for the first time, her interpreting their song. Then I met yarrow - little white petals, feather bristled leaves.
Seth and Hailee took me to a field of ancient sage.
-The deer live of sage in the winter, Hailee told me. (I wish I could find a medicine to help her with her deep and wild heart break)

In the little garden this summer the sunflowers bent towards the path. The catnip was covered in cat fur from Miso rolling in it. Tomatoes were stunted by the deer eating the blossoms (more on that later). Basil and terrible unsuccessful

Laura was building a fire and I was on the mattress reading to Nico and I asked her,
-What do you need?
-Firewood, she said
-and an hour to massage this woman from Honduras.
What I needed I came there for and was taken care of. Cut off the bandaid they had wrapped around my pinky at the Urgent Care and re-bandage the stitcher wound that made me dizzy to look at.

Derek Sitter has just played the part of the Devil in the play Bobby Gould in Hell, put on through the new  Volcanic Theater Pub. He sits at the edge of the stage, wearing devil horns and a fishing vest as he fields questions from the audience.

I found the play excellent and amusing.  Derek was dynamic and riveting as the devil (he apologizes for the use of curse words). He spent much of the the play chastising Bobby Gould (played by Wayne Newcome), demanding he confess his life's evildoing.  

There's been a question I've been dying to ask Derek to add to the stories in demon zine.  I considered addressing my questions in an e-mail but Derek mentioned his medium of expression is through acting. Asking him while he's on stage, still dressed as the devil could not be more appropriate. 

"You won the Source award for Sexiest Teacher (light laugher) and in the article you mention fighting your demons alone in a motel room. Do you mind expounding on that experience? Sorry to get all Terry Gross on your ass."

Years ago, Derek responds, he was at a Motel 6 in Tallahatchi withdrawing from his medication. It was a long night. He had been afraid of everything. He had jealousy. He was in a three-year depression. Walking through his life asleep. 

"I was either going to die or be a better person." 

Saying to the demons, "You can't kill me. What am I afraid of? Fuck it."

It was a long, terrifying night.

It's difficult to draw a demon out. They move carefully around the bones, between the ribs and under, over, around the organs. They are nearly impossible to pin down.

Derek invited his to surface when he stopped taking his meds. He didn't go to sleep. Let the skin boil and the organs shift.

It took staying up all night.

Joel once told me sometimes you just have to stay up until the sun rises to push past something. And if you want to face your demons like Derek you have to give them the space to show themselves. You have to stay awake and exhaust yourself and be at the brink where you'll either live or die. You can't go to sleep. You can't deny them. You can't bury them. You have to sit there and be ravaged by them until they're done with you. Allowing the demons a space to present themselves. 

Giving them the space and madness to speak. And moving forward, whatever it takes 

But in the morning, something was clearer.

Derek, on stage in his devil horns, pretty wife by his side, says he did it for his family. For his daughter.

Now Derek has his theater.  The Volcanic Theater Pub, a dream of his, where you can drink a beer and the characters move from the stage to the audience. His space is off of Century across the courtyard from Goodlife Brewing. He's taking his meds. 

& he's playing the devil now. 

"I want to know if you can sit with pain, mine or your own, without moving to hide it, or fade it, or fix it." - (From the poem The Invitation by Oriah Mountain Dreamer) 

Review for Show & Tell

"Rachel Lee-Carman's comic diary zine is equal parts devastating and joyously life-affirming. Issue nine of Show & Tell is packed heavy with mood as Rachel's drawings and writings swirl together across the page; unlike a lot of diary comics, Rachel's aren't necessarily sequential and don't come in panel form. It's an earthy structure she's using, very much like something growing wild in nature, all tangles and vines and sun-grown intricacy. What you get in issue 9 is a big dose of life--searching, fighting, celebrating, troubled, anguished, worried, humorous, philosophical, patient. Rachel's looking at some hard and sad things in this issue, death and estrangement, growing up and finding your place. But as heavy as it can be, Rachel knows how to showcase the gentle and beautiful things, the good hearts, the parts of life worth loving. You get a well-rounded thing with Rachel's zines, a life (hers) examined from all angles. Reading Show & Tell is like looking at old glass-case biology exhibits or reading pioneer diaries; there's a very comforting, soothing manner about her examinations of everyday living, something young and new but refreshingly timeless. Show & Tell has been a Microcosm favorite since day one and this issue is Rachel's best."

-Microcosm Publishing 2011

"Similar to Nicole Georges or Erin Tobey, Rachel Lee-Carman documents her daily life in thoughtful lines, daily anecdotes, and love. The composition of the pages grabs you and commands that you reflect—if only for a minute—before retreating inside your own skull to reflect on the ways these things ring true in your own life. Operating as a filter for Antoine Saint-Exupery's The Presence of The Little Prince, this zine reflects on feelings, love, and spirituality. Without ever getting dogmatic, she reflects on yoga, Anne Frank, religion, concepts of abundance, relationships, and feeling better through buying yourself roses. This issue is a thinker and will shed many hours of joy upon you. "

-Microcosm Publishing 2011

http://wemakezines.ning.com/video/bling29-1