Banango Lit

Jordan Castro is a writer living in Ohio. He is the co-author of Cute (Thumbscrews Press, 2011) and author of Supercomputer (Deckfight Press, 2011) and the recently-published KADIAN (hiphiphooray press, 2012). Banango writer Jackson Nieuwland interviews him here.

Jackson: How is college so far?

Jordan: I like it.

How long have you been there now?

Since August 25, 2011.

What are you studying?

I currently don’t have a major and am enrolled in 7 Ideas That Shook The Universe, Media, Power and Culture, Understanding of Music, and Intro to Creative Writing.

Once I get my GPA up I think I’m going to major in English and maybe minor in Marketing.

Can you tell me a memorable anecdote about college?

Oh man. I don’t know what to type about. “Every night is Valentines, every day is Christmas” I guess.

The weekend before classes started I showed up at my friend’s house, high on Xanax, to a roomful of females and one male - my friends - eating a roast, sitting around a table, topless. We drank alcohol and ate Xanax and danced then went to a party and drank alcohol and ate Xanax and danced. I threw up ~15 minutes in the only bathroom in the house, ~10 minutes on the back porch, and ~10 minutes in my friend’s house after we left. One of my lesbian friends sat near me while I was throwing up the third time. I brushed my teeth. At some point, we had a threesome with my gay friend. I sucked a dick and had my dick sucked by a male for the first time in my life. After he came, my lesbian friend and I went upstairs and continued. I don’t remember many specifics except for her saying “You don’t want to be friends with anyone who cares about getting cum on their face.”

What do you hope to gain by going to college?

I currently view college as “like a job” - my parents pay for me to live and eat because I go to school. School also takes up less of my time than a job that would pay for my rent/food would, so I have more time to focus on my writing/music grind and other things.

I also like learning shit and want to get a degree.

Gotta be somewhere doing something I guess.

Do you think that writing will be your ‘career’?

Yes.

Do you think that music will be your ‘career’?

Yes.

Do you plan on doing any more acting?

Yes.

What was it like acting in the Shoplifting From American Apparel movie?

http://muumuuhouse.com/jc.fiction1.html

Can you tell me a memorable anecdote filming the movie that you haven’t mentioned online before?

While filming the trailer in Youngstown someone decided that we should skateboard in this abandoned building they came across while filming The Human War. I fell hard - like, really hard - and cut my knee on dirty glass. Mallory [Whitten] helped me hobble through to her car then drove me to Noah [Cicero]’s house.

Did acting have any similarities to writing or performing music?

Everything I ever do is different than anything I’ve ever done before that. Acting felt similar to writing/music/[life] in that it sometimes felt “meaningful,” like I was actively participating in the creation of something potentially sweet, while other times it just felt like a chore. I don’t know.

Can you describe your acting ‘method’? 

At first I just let my anxiety and self-consciousness consume me until it was time to film then I’d just try my hardest not to worry about my how my face looked or whatever. 

Eventually I focused on other things besides myself (the cause of my anxiety, etc) and just did what I needed to do.

The director told me that I could either say and do what Tao would do in [scene] and try to emulate Tao or I could be myself but just do and say things that Tao (the character) does and says, the former being harder and less believable because if I did that, I’d always be a person acting like another person, not a person, which is what the audience is supposed to view me as, or something.

You have a number of books forthcoming, some of which I believe have been ‘finished’ for a long period of time. Why has there been such a long wait between books being accepted and being published? 

In my experience, certain publishers wait to publish certain manuscripts for a period of time for any number reasons.

In terms of my books, it’s because of the presses already having a certain number of books set for publication, needing time to layout/design/edit, and [other things].

Can you tell me a bit about each of the books? 

if i really wanted to feel happy i’d feel happy already is a full-length poetry book forthcoming from Black Coffee Press in 2013. It was initially accepted for publication on February 21, 2011. Here are some links to poems previously published from the collection…

‘the last, and‘ 

‘*‘  

‘[thought]‘ 

YOUNG AMERICANS is a full-length poetry book forthcoming from Civil Coping Mechanisms in 2013. It was initially accepted for publication sometime in late November, 2011. Here are some links to previously published work from the collection…

‘EXTREMELY HIGH IN DARK ASS ROOM‘ 

‘RAYMOND CARVER’S ‘WHAT WE TALK ABOUT WHEN WE TALK ABOUT LOVE’ (THE STORY)OR DENNIS COOPER’S ‘UGLY MAN’ (THE BOOK)’

‘SELECTIONS FROM JORDAN CASTRO’S TWITTER, EDITED BY MALLORY WHITTEN’

What are the differences between them? 

if i really wanted to feel happy i’d feel happy already currently contains 34 poems and 1 story.

YOUNG AMERICANS currently contains 55 poems, a ‘SHOUT OUTS’ page, selected tweets, and other things. 

Have you continued working on them since they’ve been accepted? 

Yes.

Are they being published in the order that they were written?

Yes.

Is the print edition of Supercomputer still happening? 

Yes. It’s not finished yet. I’ve been editing the stories/collection ~1-3 hours a day recently.

What is the difference, to you, between writing prose and writing poetry? 

Poetry, for me, has always been more of an internal experience, if that makes sense. Like, as opposed to prose, where I might be writing about something that happened between more than one person - a dialogue, sex, an observation -  most of my poetry is just like, me, my brain, freaking out inside of itself, or something, generally speaking.

Either way, the fundamental desire is to create something. To remember something, to reflect on or think about something to a certain degree, to relate something, to work my thoughts out in a manner that feels like I’m a functioning human being.

Does one of them come more naturally? 

I don’t think one comes more ‘naturally’ than the other. I don’t know if anything ‘comes’ ‘naturally’ to me or anyone except maybe everything, or something, maybe. I don’t know.

To me, everything I do is ‘natural’ or nothing I do is ‘natural.’ It seems impossible to me to discern what ‘natural’ is or means in the context of writing poetry and prose.

Do you plan on/have you begun writing a novel? 

In 2010 I wrote ~10k words thinking it’d be my novel then deleted it.

In 2011, I wrote ~20k words thinking it’d be my novel then deleted it.

I currently have ~35 words written from late 2011-[now] of a working outline of what I currently think my novel is going to be.

Can you rank poetry, short fiction, novels, and non-fiction by the amount of time you spend reading them?

Poetry, Short Fiction, Non-Fiction, Novel

Is everything you write based on your life/’true’? 

Though much of what I write is based on my life, I tend to view all writing largely as fiction, via one’s (invariably subjective) perception affecting words on paper, etc, and don’t feel confident in saying that the way I remember things is the way they ‘actually’ were.

I edit things in a certain manner, ‘from an artistic viewpoint,’ that may or may not affect the ‘truth’ of the thoughts/words/actions in my writing, even if it’s based on something that ‘actually’ happened.

What is the difference between a piece you would submit to a literary magazine and a piece you would submit to somewhere like Bulk Culture? 

I don’t really submit things to literary magazines anymore unless I’m asked, in which case I’ll usually send poetry, prose, or an essay or something explicitly dealing with something re literature.

For websites like Thought Catalog or Bulk Culture, I tend to write/send more journalistic-type writing, I think.

What is the difference between Bulk Culture and Thought Catalog? 

I encourage you to see/decide for yourself.

http://bulkculture.com

http://thoughtcatalog.com

In terms of me and what I’ve discerned via my involvement with both, Thought Catalog and Bulk Culture are two entirely different websites with different goals, audiences, and brands. The only thing they have in common, to me, is that I like both of them and I like a lot of people who write for them. They also both want to monetize and reach out to as large an audience as possible, I think, without compromising a certain aspect of ‘themselves,’ or something, maybe.

When you read KADIAN now do you agree with the statements you expressed in the poems? 

I don’t think I agree or disagree with anything I’ve written in the past. I’m constantly assessing/reassessing myself and don’t view much of what I think/write/do as a ‘way of thinking/writing/being’ or with any sense of permanence in general. 

I don’t really think there is much to agree or disagree with in KADIAN, to me, as none of the sentences have periods at the end (except for the last line of last poem, which was intentional and which I still agree with), and weren’t written with the intention of expressing any sense of long-term permanency, ‘truth,’ or anything like that, just the thoughts/feelings/actions of a moment, of a collection of moments, or whatever, that I want to document in a certain manner for certain reasons. ‘Agreeing with’ or ‘Disagreeing with’ the sentiments in KADIAN, to me, is irrelevant - they don’t exist to prove a point; they ‘simply’ exist. The poems in the collection frequently contradict one another. They’re like an assortment of recipes for dealing with the person you’ve become. Excerpts of existential despair and self-deprecation/doubt. If a friend said “I had a fucking shitty day today” or “I want to do something different with my life,” it wouldn’t make sense to agree or disagree with him/her. That’s how I view my poetry. I don’t know.

Are the poems in KADIAN your most recent poems? 

No - I write poetry daily. The poems in KADIAN are my most recently published poems though.

Why did you choose KADIAN as the title?

I the poems in KADIAN on a couch in my friends’ living room in Kent after ingesting various quantities of Kadian, Adderall, marijuana, and alcohol. My friends were in the basement playing music. I was alone, in the fetal position, writing poems on the Notepad app on my phone rapidly for ~45-60 minutes. I think I wrote ~30 poems originally then cut the collection down to 12. I’m using some of the other poems in other collections.