Underdog Cities. Stiches. And the End of the Democratic Process.
Mike Force interviews Al Burian
author of Burn Collector, Things are Meaning Less
and a key ingredient to Chicago's Milemarker and Challenger
"come on man I'd rather have my stoner roomates running the country."
When Al arrived at the coffee shop with a giant white bandage covering his forehead I knew the interview would go well . When I asked him about the wound he explained that during Challengers CMJ appearance the night prior, on the last note of the last song he had thrown his guitar up into the air and failing to catch it, produced a well of blood sprouting from his skull.
From this same skull sprang a series of Burn Collector zines, an immensely readable series of discussions on the nature of metalheads, the size of the universe, and the merits of sleep deprivation. And most recently he has released a collection of drawings/comics entitled Things are Meaning Less.
MF: How long are you going to have the bandage on?
AB: I think probably just today. Have you ever had stiches?
No.
Theyre supposed to come out Tuesday which I think is really soon. Last time I got stiches I remember it taking a lot longer before they came off.
When was the last time?
A year or two ago. It was a domestic dispute. Actually I got hit over the head by the girl I was going out with at the time and ironically she lives in New York now. So she was the first person I called when I ended up in the emergency room.
How is Chicago different from the East Coast/West Coast?
I think the East Coast and West Coast and Midwest are all pretty different. Ive been traveling around other towns, in Indiana, Iowa, Western Pensylvania. I think Midwesterners are pertty conservative and even keel. They sort of pride themselves on being reliable not very outrageous. Its strange for me.
And you talking about being here at hipster central [Bedford Ave], I guess its sort of hard for me to get too wrapped up in that kind of thing or get intimidated. In Chicago they wear the right clothes and stuff but if you talk to these cool scene people for three minutes they have pretty standard, corn-fed socio sexual values beneath the surface.
So its an aesthetic?
I think you can often divide peoople into those who dress weird to hide their essential normality and the people who are dressing as normal as they can to hide the fact that theyre just very weird inside.
Youve moved around a lot and you seem to have picked the most depressing places possible to plant yourself. I think of Portland as even more depressing than Seattle. How come you never moved to New York or Seattle?
I think Im just an underdog city kind of person. Providence is the same way. Providence has this whole chip on its shoulder about Boston. When I lived in Providence the mayor had a press confernece where he pretty much was like "we got this new mall were building, we got this, we got that and so Boston: were kicking your ass!"
Did he really say that?
He was pretty much like "we are beating the hell out of Boston." And the mayor of Boston had to have a press confernece to be like "I think Bostons pretty good and dont know what that guys talking about." And I think Portland has that same relation to Seattle. I lived in Portland when Seattle was becoming grunge central and the Portland music scene was not really going anywhere compartiveily. Chicago is the Second City. Chicago spends all its time feeling inadequate in comparison to New York and I sort of like that.
Most of the people reading this are 18 to 23 year old Art School kids. What's the differnece between your vantage point at 32, your perception of time?
I try not to think about that kind of thing too much. I spent the last fifteen years of my life thinking about half an hour ahead. I didn't think about doing this sort of stuff, writing fanzines, playing in bands. I sort of conceptualized my twenties as "I am going to make as much stuff as I can before life crushes me into the ground." Everyone was telling me at 23 "you're going to fail" and I thought they've got to be right.
When I was fifteen I figured I'd be dead by 21. So now I'm kind of like well what do I do so that I don't end up making stuff as a job. I don't want to be a professional, I don't want to be an author, or a professional musician. I just want to do whatever I do for fun and when you really start thinking about how to do it it's prety hard, it's a bigger struggle than I think a lot of people realize. In art school, and academic training really does condition you towards doing something that your parents can be happy with. Like "Go ahead and make you little painting but make sure you have health insurance."
Not really very many peole beleive in what they do enough to sacrifice or give up anything for it. A lot of art school kids are like "I'm going to live on the floor and eat garbage for my art." I actually do live on the floor and it's not very cool, it's just the way it ends up at times.
The strange thing is though you also have a first draft mentallity, it hasn't been edited, there are typos. Does your writing go straight from the notebook to the computer?
I edit mroe now. Earlier stuff that I put out was just kind of like "I'm going to make something," sit down and 48 hours later you're at the printer and it's done. I was living in Brooklyn briefly, I didn't have any money. I was in this apartment, everyone worked all day, I didn't have any money to go anywhere or do anything, so I was like "yeah I'll write this thing, xerox twenty copies of it and see how it goes."
I get the sense that you made these zines so you'd have pocket change later on.
I still have basically the same mentality. Making something like that is to push against anonmymity, it's nice to go into a room full of people and you leave and they've all got a little bit of you, and you never never know... someone's going to go home and say this guy seems like an assohole or this guy seems pretty cool. It's like shorthand for having the long conversation.
You remind me of Neitschze reincarnated. He would say you're never ill because when you're ill other parts of your brain take over to compensate. When he was the most ill he came up with the best concepts and you have a lot of classic aspects. Burn collector reminds me of the Odyseesy, and Dante's Inferno.
My dad is a classicist so I grew up with a lot of that. Some people have the family dentist and they have the pressure to go to dental school. My dad is a specialist in greek tragedy so theres always been the family pressure to kill him and gouge my eyes out.
And your mother's a musician so you're fulfilling your parents dream in the end.
They're psyched. You try to rebel and you end up coming back around. I think the classical themes, I'm into bringing them out in another context. You get a xerox fanzine and you think it's going to be like "in the new Rancid song" and instead there's a Neitsche allusion. But you know punk rock was not the first itme poeople had that idea, a lot of the modern left politics can be connected to political movements all throughout history. The punk rockers would do good to look at was going on in the 20's with union orginzing, or the 60's. Neitszche had a lot of the same ideas as Iggy Pop.
I think in terms of weeks rather than days now. The diffennce in your 20's it's still cool to be semi homesless but in your 30's you're a fucking loser.
John Waters said "crazy when your'e twenty is sexy, crazy when you're 50 is pathetic." So how long before it stops being romantic and start being weird? Or how many people just can't get it together because they have a mental block?
My goal has always been definitely to not stay 18, but to have my day to day be fun.
It seems like a perfectly logical goal but a lot of people don't think about it that way.
There's some pretty obvious reasons why it's a bad idea I guess.
It's not technically productive?
There's no security, no pension plan. It's not going anywhere. I'm not going to get a raise any time.
Being in your 20's is like having a free pass but I still get about one panic attack a year.
Just one a year?
Growing up I listened to indie rock and shit. So I never had any serious issues when I was a kid but when I moved to the city it freaked me out. I had a panic attack right before my 23rd birthday and bought a guitar. Because I was like fuck art, I'm wasting my time.
People who are, by some objecive social standard, successful or have a good job, they'll have this kind of like "fuck I should have been playing music all this time." And I think everybody wants that freedom to some extent and so for me it's interesting to be pursuing this, to some extent I have the fantasy life of a lot of people but to me it's just my regular life. I feel like when I'm around people who observe my day to day of things a little bit more, they say it's not so fantastic, it's prety much just regular. everybody has the same problems and it's sort of inescapable. But I feel like I have a good life. The idea of freedom, abstractly, well a lot of the american's want a free pass, they want soemthing for nothing. it's kind of the classical idea of anarchy. In America people want totalitariansim, they want fascism because they don't want to make decisions for themselves and they don't want ot be responsible for their life. They want people to tell them where to go and then they can go home and sit in a corner which is a lot more comfortable. The idea of taking responisbilty for yourself is you get more autonomy but you don't just get to hang out.
Is the Midwest all for Bush?
I got a lot more cynical after the last presidential election because Bush was not elected, he just just took power anyway. And like I said people are complacent and they don't want to take responsiblity for what's going on because no one did anything. That's the end of the democratic processs. It's hard to gauge because any information you get is filtered though people who have agendas.
But you hear what people say in Chicago while riding the elevator.
Yeah, but on the other hand everybody ghettoizes themselves into hanging out with people who have similar opinions... it just seems, the arrogance is just so blatant. You see these "support our troops" signs and how does anyone think that having them over there getting killed is supportive. I went to Europe recently and everyone there is like "so there were no WMD's found so I guess Bush is getting impeached now, huh?" and I say "he's probably going to get reelected actually." You look at Tony Blair and his political career is over.
Really?
No, but for all intents and purposes he's just incredibly discredited and the fact that he exeggerated the striking capability of Iraq. He said Iraq can launch an attack on us within 48 hours, which turned out to be just random information from some random website. The headlines over there are "Tony Blair: Liar" and here the headlines are "Bush defends his policy, says the war was just." Straight out of his mouth. It's like George Orwell.
We have a fervent as ever Right and a Left with tons of ammo (the budget defecit, the failing war). What's going to happen in 2004?
Right now if the opposition side can't put up someone better than Bush than that's like "come on man I'd rather have my stoner roomates running the country." But I think that it's perfectly feasible that they can't. And that's just a sign that the American raft is just a disaster.
Dean won't come through?
I think it would be better for the Democrats to be in power but esentially I feel like what Bush has done is increased the aggressiveness of the military imperialist agenda and I think it's pretty obvious that the guy is an insane fundamentalist Christian who believes in the book of Revelations and doesn't care if the world is destroyed because he knows he's going to heaven ... but even if the Democarats win, it's just sort of the kinder gentler version of the same thing.
The attack on the World Trade Center happend while bush was in power but it was obviously planned while Clinton was in power. The "enemies of America" are not enemies of right wing America but anyone in power. There need to be fundamental shifts. I think the politics of America are way too big business and high gloss. I think the Arnold Schwarzenegger thing is really great. I think Andre 3000 from Outkast could make a great President.
But you get to go back to Germany.
I'm thinking about expatriating. Regardless of whether you voted for Bush or against him or at all, he didn't win. School kids, apparently in Zaire were studying this election as an example of voter fraud. If bush wins in 2004 it's time to move to another country and wait for the big war of America versus everyone else.
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