Pat King: What up, yo?  So, how did you feel about our recent collaboration?  You think it went pretty well?

Aleathia Drehmer:  I think it went bloody well and I would like to do it again.  Tell me about this haunting town in upstate NY?

PK: Well, as you know, I grew up in Upstate NY, though a number of strange life-factors, until I was fourteen.  My entire extended family was and still is from Alabama, but I spent the ages of 6-14 in a snowy village just outside Ithaca, NY.  The place was haunted and I think I carried a lot of it into my adult life.  Nearly every year I was there, there was some sort of gruesome murder.  My little brother's math teacher was killed when he jumped in front of his daughter just as her crazed boyfriend was trying to shoot her.  Later, two girls that I went to elementary school and middle school with were raped and murdered and their bodies were left in the woods.  And those are just a couple of examples.  They're extreme, but they illustrate the kind of black cloud that hung over me the entire time I lived there.  It was a cursed place.  I was horribly depressed as a child and even isolated myself for two years.  I cut myself off from all of my friends and spent all my time in my room writing suicide-type poems, reading and watching soap operas.

Have you ever been really depressed?  So many writers seem to turn to it out of depression and it ends up being their only reason to live and, consequently, they become good, or even great writers.  Speaking of which, do you find Upstate NY to be a particularly depressing place?

AD:  I would be interested to know the name of said snowy village, as I know of Ithaca and enjoy this area.  I too spent many years in a depression living in this area.  Feelings of being possessed sometimes and that something was following me.  But I did not have the best home life and I know that it provided some of the depression.

PK:  Good God!  The place is cursed!  Indeed, it was called Dryden, NY.  It was fun at times but it was dark.  Do you believe in anything supernatural?  I tend to be an atheist but I sometimes believe in curses and such.  There definitely seemed to be a black streak.  But I have whiskey terrors sometimes and I'm not sure there's anything supernatural about that.  Do you think a good writer should have a sense of the metaphysical, even if she's not sure exactly what is behind it all?

(PS--I don't know if I made it clear, but I'd like for this to be a sort of double interview for the site....eh?)

AD: You scad!!  You mentioned no such thing, but you know me, I'm up for something different.  I know of Dryden and am sure that I have been through this place.  I know there was an old hotel in Watkins Glen that overlooked the town that had a huge fire and people say it is haunted.  I do tend to believe in the supernatural as I have been exposed to it in some form most of my life.  I don't think it is essential that a good writer have a grasp of the metaphysical, but I think it can make for interesting story plots and opens up the mind for a new way of looking at situations.

PK: See, I disagree, to some extent.  I guess because I don't really see the metaphysical strictly in terms of the supernatural.....I see it as a sense of seeing something way beyond the everyday reality.  A sense of strangeness in our own bodies.  That kind of thing.  So, to me, this fits most great writing.  I was re-reading Sarte's Nausea the other day and I came upon a profound quote from one of the characters.  To paraphrase, he said that an adventure is something that's out of the ordinary but it doesn't have to be extraordinary.  Yes!  An adventure!  This seems to get at the heart of metaphysics to me. 

A lot of people seem to think that drugs are a gateway to the metaphysical.  I've always doubted this, for a lot of reasons.  What do you think?

AD: No, I don't see the metaphysical as strictly supernatural.  I understand what you are saying about having experiences or seeing things beyond the everyday, and I tend to agree that does make a better writer.  I think it is the writer's responsibility to notice the things that others don't and make words of them.

As for the drug thing, I used to believe that in the earlier days but how was I to construct a coherent sentence then?  Most of what I wrote did not make any sense to me after I was sober and read it.  I like being able to find those moments of adventure and have that elevation in a clear state.  I appreciate them more than I did then.  It isn't to say that some good things can't come from a bender *wink wink*.

PK: Well, yes, I think that some good things can come from the drug experiences.  I'm really into altered states of being, and drugs are one way to get there.  So is meditation, or so I've been told.  I've learned now to keep my experiences and my writing separate as much as possible.  I agree that it doesn't make someone a better writer, but altered states of being do broaden one's ideas of what it is to experience reality.  My friend Ben Gallaway titled one of his albums, "Balance is Beauty" and I think this sums it up pretty well.  Hunter S. Thompson went to Las Vegas and found the American Dream and it was ugly: Greed and excess and as much of those two things as possible. 

All this isn't to say that I'm a Buddhist and I practice the middle way or anything, because I don't.  I believe that one can balance more quiet, contemplative moments (i.e., when I do my reading or writing) with moments of complete excess and insanity.  For me, it's about not going over the edge either way.

What I like about you is that you seem to have reached a similar balance in your life, although the moments of excess have to be a bit less often than mine because of your kid and everything.  But I don't think you've bought into the American  middle-class dream.  Actually, I know you haven't because otherwise you wouldn't be an Outsider Writer, which you very much are.  I understand, though, that you were pretty wild when you were in your teenage years.  There must have been some positive effects?  Some things that you carry with you now?

AD:  I am a Buddhist, having taken vows and everything, but I must admit that I have not been very good in the last 7 years.  I have gone some great places with meditation...better places than with drugs.

I tend to live a life that runs straight down the middle most of the time.  It is difficult to live the exact life I feel I am meant to live with having to consider a child.  I love my daughter and would not trade a thing for her...not even a more exciting life.  Getting wrapped up in the American dream was tough and I did hold it in high regards for many years, but this year, I realized that isn't what I really wanted.  I like life with a bit of edge and consequence.

The teenage years were not wild as I was chained to my house other than for work or school.  My mother had a large fear that I would get pregnant at 15 like she did and "waste" my life.  The years that were gravely out of control were 19-24.  There were a highway of hallucinegenics running through this body along with a fair bit of alcohol.  But things got out of control for me and I realized that I was going down a road I didn't want to walk.  That was the year I started practicing Buddhism.

There have been many great things out of that time.  It was the only time in my life that I ever felt free, the only time I really didn't hold myself back for anything.  My novel is about that time in my life.

PK: That's kind of funny because when you were 24, I was 17 and just starting my journey of acid, acid, acid.  It was 1998 and I had just graduated high school.  A bunch of my friends were becoming involved with the rave scene and, although I couldn't stand hardcore ravers (so un-wonderfully shallow and without an intelligent thought) I loved the after-effects of the scene.  Acid and E were hella available, even to a guy who preferred Industrial music and German philosophers.  I get the feeling that taking acid in the late '90's wasn't the same experience as when our parents' generation did it.  We were all stuffing our faces with downers and drinking heavily at the same time.  Weren't no spiritual revelations ever came to us!  We were fucked, but occasionally happy.  For two years, our entire group, who had been artists all throughout high school suddenly quit doing anything but taking drugs and trying to kill each other and ourselves.  My friend Ben, who I mentioned earlier, even sold his guitar to pay for his drug habit.  It was a dark time for all of us.  We recovered, but I think we were all left with a sense that we could never fit into middle-class society after this.  After those years, we all began to evolve as Outsiders and began making art again.  And good art, I think.  At least, art that reflected a genuine Outsider perspective.

So, roundabout, my drug taking helped me evolve......

Anyway, I thought I'd ask you about a different, though related, subject.  What do you think about dreams?  Are they important?  Do you dream when you sleep?  Can you remember them?

AD:  Dreams are a hot bed for me as far as creativity goes.  I have had wonderful powers of perception in my ability to remember dreams.  I can remember many vivid ones back to when I was 5 years old....can recall them with clarity.  I have had several dreams that are recurrent over a span of 20 years, but those are usually something unresolved deep inside me coming up as reminders that I have business to take care of in the soul department.  I have had many prophetic dreams concerning transportation and natural disaster.  I have dreamt train crashes, plane crashes, floods, tsunamis, and earthquakes.  I have not honed the ability to decipher when these things will happen which make them useless to me in some ways.  My life has always been full of vivid dreaming though I must say that I have seen a decrease in that since I began working the night shift three years ago.  Not that I don't still remember some of them but not as many as I used to.

PK: I find what you just said incredibly interesting.  I've never been totally convinced of the supernatural powers of dreams.  Not even after THE DREAM.  It was a couple of years ago and I dreamed that I was having a party.  I wasn't sure who it was for until the guest of honor showed up.  It was Hunter S. Thompson.  He looked sullen.  He looked around and then walked up to me and said, "I just want to let you to know that I really like what you guys are doing.  Keep it up."  And then he left.  I wake up from the dream with my phone ringing.  I was married at the time and my wife was on the phone.  She asked me if I had heard that Hunter S. Thompson had committed suicide the day before.  I was shocked to my core.  I hadn't dreamed of Thompson before or since because I almost never dream about celebrities.

But, it could have been a coincidence, right?  I mean, that's not totally out of the question.  See, the skeptic in me wants to see it as a coincidence, but the romantic in me wants to see it as a weird connection......which one is right?

You said you were a Buddhist and you just mentioned the "soul."  How literal is the soul to you?  Do you think that something of ourselves, our egos, say, escape after we die?

AD:  I have had similar dreams about celebrities in the past, not too many but those that really effected my life in some way.  The dreams could be messages or they could be the way your subconscious is dealing with the events of passing.  In your case, it might be different because you didn't know about his passing.  I remember having a dream in which River Phoenix visited me and we walked down a dirt road in the middle of nowhere and it was summer.  There was dust and pollen floating through the air and we crossed a creek using a plank of wood and the balance of our bodies.  We came to a cabin that had a rocking chair on it, River sat in the chair and I sat under a tree and watched him as he went gently back and forth.  He looked at me and told me he was just so tired of the way his life had been going, and that he just wanted to go to sleep.  He rocked and rocked until he did fall asleep and there was the sweetest, most peaceful look on his face.  I remember that face like it were my own, something so tender about the release.

As for the soul business, I got called out on this the other day by Ed Churchouse.  He was being a devil and was sure to let me know that having a soul wasn't part of Buddhism.  The problem with saying you believe in a religion or philosophy is that people always take that as a concrete deal.  I did not grow up with religion in my house.  My mother was a Catholic but stopped going to church when I was small.  We did not speak of God in my house.  I was allowed to go to any church I wanted to find what I needed.  Mostly, I found it full of pomp and bullshit.  I thought it was boring.  Part of me however, has a sick facsination with all things Catholic.  I don't collect things, but I guess it is more movies and stories about how people move around in that world which I find to be an island unto itself.  But the soul, I feel that is something part of me.  It is an essense rather than something tangible.  I feel like it is the receptor of everything we have ever seen or done or felt.  Almost like having a matrix within the body that doesn't die when the body dies.  Sometimes, soul can be loosely sides with reincarnation.  Soul is the accumulation of negatives and positives you have done in your lives, it is your karma counter if you will.

PK: This was a fascinating discussion, Aleathia.  Let's do it again sometime 'er other!

AD:  It was mighty fun.  Thanks for engaging my brain for a little while.

Last update : 11-09-2007 20:15

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