Emmalea Russo and Ariana Reines Talk About A Sand Book in the LA Light

Emmalea Russo interviews Ariana Reines for the Fanzine this week, after reading Reines's new collection, A Sand Book. "I was the passenger. There was traffic and A Sand Book points to traffic, both galactic and highway." How about an excerpt from their conversation (which can also be heard, if you prefer to listen, on Russo's podcast):

E: You spent seven years writing A Sand Book. That’s a substantial chunk of time. It makes me think of all the things a body can go through in seven years. All the cells in the body get completely regenerated in seven years. What was your body like? In what shapes? Was it a channeling experience?

A: That’s a beautiful question. There was a lot of life during that time. I taught a lot and I was doing a lot of performances. I was going to housing court for my mother, who was in protracted eviction proceedings for more than three years and I wound up giving her my apartment and then she ended up back on the streets, I had a fancy job in Boston and my boss was a gross predatory creep and so I sued. A lot of things happened. This book was written in very different states and very different worlds. The structure isn’t chronological. The first section is the most recent part. “Arena” and “Safeway” are the most recent sections of the book. They are very Trump-era. I was doing these performances, one involving kung fu and one involving a tarantula. When your career is getting busy and you’re flying around all the time, there’s a weird loneliness to it. I was dating a busboy and I just wanted to be a waitress. I just wished I could be normal and have a normal romance and like, a cute life. So, there was a lot of that going on in my body. Trying to say yes to what was saying yes to me. Then there’s a poetics and rhetoric of filling and emptying. This has been in my work since the beginning. It must just be my metabolism. I love to be filled and to empty myself out. That’s a good school for inhabiting consciousness for me. Like in Kundalini, the bottom of your breath is the scariest part. It’s actually very very good for your overall capacity as a person, learning to really empty your lungs, to withstand that terror, and I find that i have done this instinctively as an artist always. I have a desire to empty myself but it’s not easy to do. In some ways, it’s discouraged because it can make your life really weird. But then all of a sudden your life fills up with wonder. So, there is a transcription at the end of the book that I don’t consider my writing. But, I did write it down. There are other poems that arrive from the beyond. I can tell you that for the final section, I was sitting on a bench on Allen Street facing Delancey and there was traffic going by you on either side. You might know that spot.

E: Yes, I do.

A: I was sitting on the bench and the thing started happening. We can talk about it or not.

E: Let’s talk about it.

Read more of the talking here.