Interview with Brandon Shane
What’s something you notice that other people seem not to notice?
How existence is inextricably beautiful and terrifying at the same time. How transcendent beauty is found only in or after the most terrible moments. A field of flowers quickly means nothing. A single flower growing in a field of rubble means everything. In every space, there is something or someone growing, dying, and laughing. The ordinary world is so spectacular and I laugh when people talk about aliens. You are the fucking alien. The flower is the fucking alien. Go on a hike, trip and bleed all over your fucking jeans, then stumble upon a patch of buttercups or dandelions and sob. See God in a bee pollinating a flower you don’t know the name of. The fact you can cry while covered in blood at the beauty of something, anything… is fucking alien. Those tears are everything, and that beauty is everything.
When you’re not writing, what does your brain keep returning to anyway?
I have images in my head, and sometimes I’ll just walk in circles for hours… looking? A hill of sunflowers, an empty train and I’m staring out the window. It’s always nature and windows. I was born in Tokyo, and grew up in San Diego. I've lived in big cities my whole life. I deeply require connection, but can only live in isolation: it’s a very selfish place to be. I can only watch movies in a theatre, and I can only listen to music on walks. I can’t play video-games. I listen to Sylvia Plath recite her poems. I read Red Comet by Heather Clark. I imagine the fig tree like Esther Greenwood did, and how I’ve chosen but don’t know what I’ve chosen.
What kind of contradiction are you most interested in—the thing you can’t quite resolve but keep circling?
There’s something beautiful about tragedy. Not the tragedy itself, but the opportunity of expression, or the revelation of what is. When a leaf from a Jacaranda falls into the gutter on a rainy day in Autumn, and the water that runs above it reflects purple light, when a plum falls from a branch and ferments beside roots and dirt, I find that more beautiful than the plum born to be plucked, than the leaf that falls at the perfect time and is swept. That rot is the center of all my poems. I find such profundity in melancholy. When I am happy it is nowhere. When I am sad it is nowhere. When I am in the space where the sadness of death intersects with the beauty which is the temporal, may it be a flower in bloom, the bird outside your window who sings a slightly different song than the last one. I think that is where God resides, I truly think things are only really beautiful because they die. Nothing that is forever could ever be beautiful. God created death to experience beauty, maybe.
What’s a belief you used to have about writing, art, or people that you no longer believe?
I used to believe people were more independent. I think so much of who we are and what we do is inhibited by everyone around us. The reluctance to say something in fear of punishment is the pacifier of our infancy, and we have labeled power as inevitable and rid ourselves of all power in the process. I want to put my hands on a stranger’s shoulders and tell them to wake up. I want to be woken up. I have realized we are more cyclical than we are agents. I used to worship technology, but now I think art is the only thing that justifies humanity.
What makes you distrust a piece of writing, even when it’s technically good?
Writing that ignores the sublime or seeks to explain it. I don't see writing as an equation, but it can help you get there. I will speak specifically of poetry here: I think poetry is an attempt to reach the abstract God, which is expressed in the indescribable. I distrust poetry that doesn’t say anything. I distrust a poem that can be fixed by a workshop. I think workshops can only ever point out the obvious, the rest is up to the writer; it’s just an exercise if not.
What’s the strangest thing that has ever become emotionally important to you in a piece?
The end of A Simple Heart by Gustave Flaubert, where Félicité sees God in a stuffed parrot, because it suffered as she did; the experience meant more than the body. The shared experience between her and an animal meant more than species.
What are you obsessed with lately that has nothing to do with literature?
Flowers? It’s a lame answer. I founded a journal called Odd Lobster with Kate Efimochkina, and she draws flowers, and sends me pictures of all her nature walks. I recently got a water crowfoot and a purple leaf tattooed on my hands; both from her adventures. I think the most brilliant things are what we approach with callousness, and return to with worship.
What question do you wish people asked you more often?
By the time a question is asked, the true feeling has already been repressed. I don’t care about polite inquiries. I want to hear what people would say if there was not a reluctance or person or belief stopping them from saying it. I want people to make me feel uncomfortable, and to engage the discomfort. I think questions on writing are largely useless, I think it is an individual pursuit, and that while wind can fasten the sails, the destination is predestined.
What’s something you’ve written that surprised you because you didn’t know you knew it until it was on the page?
Nearly everything. Strangers who read my poetry know more about me than friends and family that don’t. I really don’t know who I am on a moment-to-moment basis, but there are themes and patterns across all my writing that can answer that question. I don’t lie in my poetry, but I also don’t intend on telling the truth, I just let it all exist, and maybe what I write about is what I most am. I think my subconscious is stronger than my conscious, or perhaps I’m sure that it is. I don’t know who I am, and I don’t want to know. Someone can read my poetry and know more about me than I do. I’d rather just assume I’m no-one and nothing.
What’s currently itching at you?
I’m fucking drowning in inauthenticity. I hate how I second guess everything I read and see. I despise how everything is shoved into a template. I hate how I grew up saved by the internet and am losing my mind because of the internet. I hate how technocrats devoid of art think they know what art people want. I think a lot of scumbags get popular for this very reason, and we lose a lot leaving controversy up to them. Just say it. Just fucking say it or do it. I’d rather someone stab me than watch them stare at me their whole lives thinking about it.
Brandon Shane is a poet and horticulturist, born in Yokosuka, Japan. You can see his work in Rattle, trampset, Variant Lit, The Chiron Review, Stone Circle Review, UCLA Westwind, The Marrow Poetry, One Art Poetry, Spectra Poets, Thirteen Bridges, Muse Journal, The Itch Lit, among many others. He graduated from Cal State Long Beach with a degree in English.
