Friday, March 27, 2009

2001 interview

Name: Joe Dimino
Age: 28
School: None
Interests: Interesting Shit

1. How did I get into writing?
I think it started when I was 3-4 years old. My folks were pushing me hard to get my A-B-C’s and 1-2-3’s onto paper. After that, I really took to the process. In all honesty, I started fighting with our 26 English characters when I was about 20-21. I got into it simply because it made sense. Some build boats, some grow bananas, some build computers and others do many things well. This is a craft that I see eye-to-eye with. The words laugh and poke at me while I smoke and paint the billboard a new color just to throw off the passing motorists.

2. Some of my favorite authors
John Steinbeck, Charles Buokowski, Franz Kafka & Fyodor Dostoevsky

3. What I am currently reading
Native Son by Richard Wright

4. My three wishes and why
One .. For Bob Ross to come back and live on earth forever. For obvious reasons .. though, he had an amazing afro for a white man .. he could put anyone to sleep with a soft coo even as you writhed inside about him continuing with a painting when you felt he was done with it .. & he could make the hardest motherfucker out there laugh with pure abandon ..

Two .. Turn the moon into an enormous, dripping, (still spherical) dill pickle and to be transported up there yearly for a two week vacation .. My reason .. I just fucking love the pickle that much!!!

Three .. To own and wear one of Winston Churchill’s hat’s .. The reason .. he was one with it, cool ass cat .. he had style .. grace .. could quote anyone into the ground and was one of the few that could silence the Queen with drunken wit ..

5. What inspires me to write
Listening to my lover brush her teeth nude in the other room as I lay in bed .. watching someone leaping into the air just for the fuck of it .. Seeing a man two stories below my window digging through the trash for that one score that will make the evening whole .. having a solid conversation with a stranger without having one word about the weather or other flailing subjects of abject bullshit .. Bottom line .. the tick .. the movement .. your desires .. the stranger out there I will never meet but know through 7 degrees of separation ..


6. Connection between existentialism and spaghetti
You know Kate, I think you’re on to something with this question. I do believe their absolutely is a cosmic connection between spaghetti and existentialism. More so, I think there is a deeper connection between any pasta and Jazz. Listen to M. Davis’ “Kind of Blue” over a heaping, hot fucking bowl of pasta and you’ll know where I’m coming from.

To get back to your connection .. I believe the mother and father of Existentialism .. Ayn Rand and Jean-Paul Sarte had many bowls of this delicious Italian dish through their formative years of refining the individual experience .. thus, they were responsible for choosing spaghetti instead of Mexican, Greek or Mediterranean food .. so, the connection is assuredly ripe with the authors of this lifestyle .. It works for me .. I know when I dive into a steamy bowl of pasta that they have to be smiling somewhere as my path diverges into the woods, so to speak ..

7. A bowl is sitting on the table and I will describe it as fit as a nail on a thumb

First of all, bowl, you have to stop looking at me like that so I can accurately describe you to Kate.

What? You can’t avert your eyes from me?

Stop .. stop .. you have maybe one eye. If we count the opening in the top of your top. Now, it’s looking straight towards the ceiling and me. So, close it off so I can get this description down for Kate.

Huh? You refuse. Well, should I come back another time and describe to her the fact that you are glued together and may have 10-15 new eyes between the shards that were hastily glued together? You wouldn’t want that now would you little fella?

Oh you would huh? Look man, can I call you man?

Sorry, you’re right. Look bowl, Kate has a deadline here and I have itchy fingers. So, close the eye and let me get on with the description of you. Look, I will fork over the description to you before I submit it to her so as to not inaccurately describe you dips, divets and drooping.

END

*Edidtor’s note. I apologize Kate for going over the 10 line limit. This bowl didn’t cooperate. After I’m done with all your questions, I shall fetch me a newer and more cooperative bowl to describe to you. But for now, the day’s of people lopping food into this bowl’s one eye is over. The birds are going to have to laugh over it’s scattered remains in some landfill East of here.

8. Where would I like to go with my work
Simply put .. To the people ..

9. What came first .. the chicken or the egg
Good question. I don’t think there was a chicken or an egg. I think there was a murky pond and a monkey. How they got here you wonder? Through one of the genie’s three wishes another person used in a different manner than me.

10. A pivotal writing experience or breakthrough personally
I will always look favorably on my folks pushing me as hard as they did to hammer out my A-B-C’s and 1-2-3’s. That was a real leap for me. Especially at my age and the point I was at in my early childhood development.

Seriously, I think it was when I started printing and distributing my poems into chapbooks and placing them in random spots around the city for people to read. Such as you. The chap-collection you picked-up was my 5th in about three years of placing my stuff out for the people to see. When I decided it was better to let many strangers read my work rather than friends and a dusty bookshelf, it bode well for me and others out there that get some kind of charge from reading my printed word.