Frank Hinton, the Canadian mastermind behind the online magazine Metazen, recently e-sat down with me to answer a few questions. Here’s how it went.
1) What’s the lit scene like where you live? Have you always lived in Nova Scotia?
I was born and educated in Nova Scotia, but I’ve lived all over. I spent a year in the US and a year in Korea. I was engaged in Japan and lost my virginity on a field trip in a dilapidated motel outside of Mexico City. Somehow I’ve been sucked back to Eastern Canada.
Sometimes it’s hard to find a lit scene on the east coast. The artistic centrifuges are located in Toronto, BC and Montreal and the East Coast seems to remain out of the loop. I’ve looked for a lit scene here, but I haven’t found anything substantial or youthful. It might be too cold.
2) What inspired the creation of Metazen? Was it a dream? A nightmare? Something you ate for breakfast?
I suppose Metazen began with a gynecologist. In university I befriended this British gynecologist that introduced me to Alan Watts and Osho and a bunch of other mystics. I became obsessed with Eastern writings and philosophy. I started meditating a lot and kept pushing myself toward some spiritual enlightenment.
When none of that came, I suffered a kind of disconnect with any crisp sense of reality. I think I had a mental breakdown, or something deeper. I started to think of life as nothing but metaphors and psychological abstractions. What I ended up with was a kind of existential crisis where I literally started to think of my life as a fiction embedded within fiction.
I started writing a lot about my problem and reading about other people in the same boat (like David Bohm). One night last March (halfway down a bottled of Canada 83 whiskey) I started to assemble Metazen as a blog to chronicle everything. I think somewhere along the way I lost sight of the purpose of self-discovery and started writing about Frank (the character) and his journey back to reality. So the site began as a blog chronicling a guy (me) on his path from insecurity toward enlightenment, or as the gynecologist said “It’s like meta – zen”. Along the way I started recruiting authors and the Metazen blog became a literary publication. We went from monthly, to weekly to daily in six months.
3) The format of Metazen is very clean and easy to read. You also include very cool pictures. Where do you find them? Are some originals?
I don’t really like reading off of a computer because there are too many distractions. Like right now, I see all these lines and boxes and bits of script trying to catch my attention. I wanted to make something simple and clear so people could get the type of feeling they get from reading off of paper. As for the pictures, I’m a snobby aesthete so I spend a lot of time looking for/ asking for/ begging for pictures that I feel compliment the stories in the same way a music video compliments a song (insofar as they may not be wholly related).
4) Tell us a bit about the Metazen Existential Christmas Book charity. In addition to being a writer, editor, and publisher, would you also consider yourself a philanthropist?
The Existential Christmas Book charity was launched on World Aids Day, and basically what we’re doing is making a collaborative Christmas Book written by various indie authors. People who donate money on the site will get the Christmas book (for .pdf) download on Christmas day. All the proceeds will go to the Sunrise Children’s Village Orphanage in Siam Reap, Cambodia.
I thought it would be interesting to see the value of trading literature for charity. So far it’s going well.
The idea came from my visit to Cambodia last year. I didn’t really know what all the hullabaloo about 3rd World countries was until this woman came running up to me holding a child up over her head begging for me to take it because she couldn’t pay for its AIDS medication. So the next day my girlfriend and I went and brought a bunch of food and toys to an orphanage and ended up sponsoring a little girl with AIDS. The scene there is just so dark and desperate.
5) I think I read somewhere that you don’t eat meat and you wear tight pants. Is there any connection between these two things?
I guess I’m one of those hipsters. I look for tight pants, thick glasses and non-violent but aggressive means of existence. I try to listen to alt-bands no one has heard of and own hoodies of every color. Sigh. I don’t eat meat because I think the act of chewing on flesh releases a kind of subconscious violence in a person. Tight pants keep me nefarious.
6) From where I sit, it seems like Metazen broke onto the underground lit scene and is showing no signs of slowing down. What changes/additions do you see in Metazen’s future? What do you hope to accomplish with the magazine?
Hmm…I go jogging every night and by the time I get home I either have ten story ideas or ten new ideas for the site. I am compulsive, so I always feel that the site is under-developed. I want to get into video and audio stories for sure. On Sundays we just started a new thing where authors add critical thoughts/ notes on craft to their previously published Metazen stories. I’m exploring how to do print media and e-books as well because it would be nice to have some larger selections for readers to pick at or download. Really, I just want the site to have a hundred things going on at once but appear in a transparent and clear fashion.
7) Finish this story: It’s the year 2020. Frank Hinton wakes up and…
Examines his double-chin and man-boobs in the toothpaste speckled mirror (not much has changed in ten years). He yearns for the days of a morning boner.
Click image to visit Metazen and to learn more about the Existential Christmas Book Charity
Correction: 6 Questions with Frank Hinton. But I’m sure there’s a 7th in there somewhere. Maybe more. Anyway.
Nice. I’ve hit metazen only a few times. Maybe I should dig deeper.
Good stuff, guys. A fine set of questions that gave me an even deeper appreciation for Frank and Metazen. Nice.