Interview at Bibliophile Stalker January 11, 2010 – Posted in: Aberrant Normalcy, Free Content, Interviews, KGB Readings, Paper Cities, Sybil's Garage

Charles Tan over at Bibliophile Stalker interviews me about Sybil’s Garage, KGB, Senses Five Press, and my own fiction.  Here’s a little clip:

CT: What made you decide to include those cryptic marginalia, or music suggestions under each story/poem? (And wouldn’t it be cool if one day each magazine came packaged with a soundtrack?)

MK: For the latest issue, I created an iTunes playlist (http://www.sensesfive.com/2009/05/30/sybils-garage-no-6-playlist/), which is about 95% accurate to what appears in the magazine. I know iTunes isn’t available or convenient for parts of the world, but it’s a start.

For the musical suggestions, it’s simply because I love music. Music has always been very inspirational for me, and I thought it would be a fun way to see what others were listening to and inspired by. Kind of like peeking into someone’s record collection. Crap, I just dated myself. I should say “mp3 collection.”

For the marginalia, I’m not sure I can answer that simply. I think part of the reason I pepper it throughout the pages has to do with my obsession with detail, a desire to fill in every nook and cranny. I also think it has to do with the joy I’ve felt in finding similar cryptic messages or imagery in song lyrics, album art, comics, books, films, and other media. And then, as I dig in further, discovering what they mean. I’m purposely trying to invoke that in Sybil’s, that unexpected frisson when you suddenly discover three quarters of the way through the magazine that there’s a story written in the margins, for example. It’s no secret that my favorite film is Blade Runner, and I’ve always admired Ridley Scott’s obsessive attention to detail, the intense layering of objects, so I guess in a way I’m emulating that too.

But yeah, a Sybil’s Garage soundtrack would be brilliant. I’m actually working on something related to that, interestingly enough.

You can read the full interview here.