Nadine Sellers has interviewed a writer of interest named Mathias Nelson, here is the dura matter of it all. Adjectives would only dilute the effect of reading him.
Q: You are poet, chronicler of current condition, a sum total of careful examination; when did you first realize the stirrings of wordsmithing?
A: In High School, during class I’d sit and think of short stories and jot down outlines in my notebook while the teachers talked their talk. Then at the end of the day I’d go home, smoke a little reefer, and get to writing. It came out really slow, because I was high, but that elevated feeling of consciousness really made me feel as though I was doing something terrific (I wasn’t. I write sober now, maybe because I’ve never tried coke?). In English class we were given a choice of three different assignments, one of them being to write a short story. I was the only one that handed in a story (one of the many that I had on hand, so it was a free grade). I glanced at the teacher as he read it at his desk. By the time he was done, hunched forward with his head in his hand and his mouth open like some idiot, he scowled and gave me this piercing, awestruck look, and it freaked me the hell out for a moment. I quickly looked away, but couldn’t get the image out of my head. That’s when I knew, when he looked at me like that, that something was going on. I didn’t love it yet, though. That came later. I could have dropped it back then, but not now.
As for poetry, recently some of my best poems have been coming to me in dreams. I’ll dream of writing, wake up, and hold onto what I wrote in the dream. Notebook by the bed, I get it down. That’s a good feeling.
Q: As Alberto Rios said, “The worst thing a writer can do is think”, you are tapping the purest source by jotting down your dream writings. It takes applied discipline to keep pen and paper by the bedside, and self discipline to act upon the free state of altered consciousness. Many a writer is relegated to mediocrity by self censoring and curtailing inspiration through analyzing or reacting to some perceived literary fault. In your writing comes a sense of spontaneity, almost innocence of discovery.
A: It depends if the person is thinking honestly or just trying to be accepted. Right. Honesty is the key, at first, but a person also has to have a certain intuition, and if that doesn’t also come naturally then they’re in trouble. Anyone who reads my writing will have to be open to anything, but I naturally don’t take things overboard. I once wrote a poem where Sharon Olds gave me a blowjob, and I think it’s one of my best. I didn’t get disgusting about it, didn’t take it overboard. I’ve written about burning racists, cannibalism, and the moon being the hole out of God’s ass. “Controversial” subjects, but I don’t delve into them in such a way that a sicko might, that’s where writers have to use intuition with their honesty, to not just come off like a total weirdo, and that is important if you want your words to be read. Intuition cuts redundancies. The writing comes out right, most of the time, because I don’t force it, and if it doesn’t I usually throw it away when I get the bravado.
On discovery: Yes, I discover a lot through writing. Right now I enjoy “confessional” poetry. When I pick up a book by another author it’s like an intimate conversation with a smart individual (if they’ve really got it, otherwise I just sit there like a prick and judge their craft). I’ve learned much more important things through poetry than through schooling. I feel like I know the authors when I’ve read their body of work. It’s a beautiful thing for outcasts, or anyone who wants to grow a mind. Finding your voice in writing is the same as finding out who you are as a person. All of those different perspectives that you’ve studied partially shape your person, help you to grow, just like experiences in life. And with it all comes empathy, which I think is the most important thing.
Q: The fruits of wrath could describe so much of youth, from your writings I gather an indelible truth about the disenchanted; can you relate instances which led you to write about disillusionment, yours or everyone else’s?
A: I’ve related love to a form of retardation. I see so many people doing things that they hate to do in order to please the ones they love, and to me that’s ridiculous and should be unnecessary. Changing their appearance, or the way they act, changing who they are, or trying to earn the other’s love through money. And of course religion. People who like to fancy themselves a certain brand of religion—that gives me the sick giggles. I don’t feel the need to elaborate, and hopefully I shouldn’t have to. There seems to be a veil over everything in the world. Like summer, for instance, when everything is pretty and green, there are terrible things going on, unnoticed. I don’t want to take this answer too far. Unfortunately, I get a little disgusted.
Q: In several of your poems, the reader finds a wide spectrum of emotional range, about 7 octaves of reactions. From tears to laughter, tenderness to violence, you leave not a brain cell unstirred. Did your youth provide you with such material as to elicit so much feeling?
A: When I was very young, I think right before Kindergarten, I developed a certain hair condition that made my hair fall out in clumps. My scalp would literally flake off, but it wasn’t like dandruff, it was deeper than that. Like maple seeds, groups of hairs would helicopter down to the ground, weighed down by a chunk of my head. I clearly remember pulling it out on my own, and laughing my ass off, unknowing that it would never grow back. It was like pulling grass. So pretty much my entire life I’ve had these bald spots on each upper side of my head, which I’ve tentatively covered by parting my hair down the middle. Elementary school was hellish to me. I was terrified that the kids would find out that I had bald spots (they are not small), because they would undoubtedly heckle me for the rest of my life (so I thought). I was unaware of hair gels or sprays that would help me to part my hair and cover the spots, so I used to sleep in certain positions at night to mold my hair, to press it into place. For the most part I did okay. The wind was my enemy. I feared rain. Didn’t go swimming. Kids would try to mess up my hair and I’d have to fight them off for what would normally be a silly, unimportant thing. I remember one boy that was relentless, like his whole day revolved around fucking with my hair. I had to resort to choking him with a cast that I had around my forearm.
That constant trepidation helped me to develop empathy for other kids with problems that were a constant source of embarrassment for them. I left the inferior alone, which says quite a bit at that age, because most little kids, like it or not, are mean as hell when it comes to taunting. It all sounds silly now that I’m grown up, but back then it was a huge deal. So I’ve pretty much always had a ‘You leave me alone, I’ll leave you alone’ attitude. I’ve also been stuck with this goofy hairdo. Sometimes when I wake up in the morning I look like the old Dracula from the Francis Ford Coppola movie. It grew on me though. Plus I discovered hairspray, so I’m okay.
Of course there were a lot of other things that elicited a lot of feeling in me at a young age. My older brother, six years older than me, let me hang around him and his friends. I was drinking 40ozs in elementary school (some of the funnest times of my life)—it made me mature a lot faster than the other kids, because I just didn’t find the things kids my age were doing fun anymore. I hung around my brother whenever I could, but of course he’d go off to parties and what not and I’d be left back at the house, too exposed to the things older kids do to want to hangout with kids my own age. Being alone teaches a person a lot. All that time to think, I had no choice but to be a dreamer.
My mother was also overly protective, a peculiar lady riddled with anxiety. We lived on the busiest street in the city. Behind our house was the railroad tracks; in front of our house was this busy street; sometimes it’d take us ten minutes just to get the car out of the driveway. All the other kids were on the other side of that street, and I wasn’t allowed to cross it on my own, so I rarely did. By middle school I was a little pothead loner, drinking too much already, courtesy of my bro and his friends, but I don’t blame or scorn them for it. It was my company in silence. It felt like I was made to be an observer. When I got around people I didn’t even feel like talking. It was all blah blah. Silence had grown on me, I had learned to love it. I watched people when I had to, took it all in, and now I write it down, try to make the blah blah interesting.
Q: So the view from both sides of the street gives you a wider glimpse at the rest of the world. Now can you tell how you grew to enjoy the vivisection of family life in black and white, in monotone for headphone, in palpable poetry.
A: I can’t say that it gave me a wider glimpse of the rest of the world in the living sense, but certainly in the imaginative sense. And I can’t really say I enjoy the vivisection of family life. I write it because it happened, and often times I feel bad about it because I don’t want a family member to read a poem I wrote and become offended (although if it happened it happened, and hopefully they will be mature enough to accept it). But I am glad when it comes out in a way that someone can relate or simply sit back and enjoy. I would write more nice things about family, but that stuff just isn’t interesting to me. I like to examine the darker parts of life. My parents were like any other young couple in that they had their moments in the hot hot sun, just more extreme and completely insane in some cases, not to mention weird.
Q: Notable venues have embraced your writings, will you answer opportunity when it knocks on your abode?
A: I certainly will answer opportunity, given that it’s the right route. I better, because I don’t seem to have any other talents, besides being a prick.
Starting to think about publishing a book, but I just haven’t yet. A few magazines I’m scheduled to be published in are Rattle, Paraphernalia Quarterly, Zygote In My Coffee, and The New York Quarterly.
Mathias Nelson writes from Wisconsin.
Nadine Sellers lives and writes in the rural Midwest but has never forgotten her French roots. Her work has been featured widely in both English and French, most recently at Up the Staircase, Full of Crow, Hobocamp, Prate Interviews, Nebo Literary Journal, Traction-Brabant, and Saintes Revue.
Great talk. Does Nadine Sellers have a website?
yes, indeed, had a website, dormant and cached in a cozy little googly corner, visible on demand.”Under Acceptable Pressure”
http://www.rsellers.esmartweb.com/
Omphalosdada.org/nadinesellers offers a few MP3s and newer dadaist inclusions.
allo and thank you, ns
Nadine….what a lovely interview of my friend Mathias. It has been awhile since I caught up with him as I am not on MySpace much anymore. He has always been an interesting character and it was nice to find out something more indepth about him. It has been good to watch him progress over the last few years. Nicely done the both of you.
Aleathia