The Birth of Bitch King:

Do-It-Yourself (DIY)

 

I started to make my own zines (they really seemed more like expanded fliers) occasionally. My zines which were really made out of whatever school and office supplies I could beg, borrow, and pilfer (this mandated a rough and collage-y aesthetic). I rarely gave the zines outÑthey seemed to be more for my personal edification than anything else.

I began to hang out at the Life Arts building, a rundown brick building that housed cheap studio space for many of the local artists (who were good friends of mine). As far as I could tell, this building was the heart of all the artistic work that was happening in Riverside.

While at parties and art shows, I met many of the people involved in the art scene, especially in writing. Occasionally, some of them encouraged me in my writing and asked me to write for themÑfor instance, johnnie b. baker from Budget Press, one of my early models for DIY. He told me later: ÒBudget press was all about DIY. I did everything except write the stuff. From rounding up the writers to layout to printing to stapling to mailing, I was budget press, and budget press was me. I mostly even stole all my printing costs, so by the end it was almost free to make my chapbooks, which was good since I gave them away for free. And I got the idea from the record labels I listened to when I was younger, SST and the like. They did things themselves. Community? That is a term that could be defined in many different ways. I miss being part of the larger zine community. I guess without the Life Arts community I never would have got started.Ó

johnnie harassed me endlessly to publish through him. I considered it (especially because he would print virtually anybody) but I just didnÕt feel ready to put myself out on a limb. More often than not, I would write and not show it to anyone: my high school literary journal was one thing, but these were bohemians!

I was a voyeur: the terms and conditions of their artistic conversation were so different from anything I had ever experienced that they restructured how I looked at art and writingÑespecially my art and writing. These artists used things to make art that I would just throw away: old appliances, broken bottles, you name it. The artists here did conceptually amazing things using their surroundings to inspire and to create (and quite literally using their environment as the medium for their art). The locationÑthe people, the places, and the objects that surrounded usÑinfluenced our art profoundly.

I started to realize that I hated my writing because it wasnÕt me; I was stuck in a very literary journal sort of aesthetic, since that was the artistic conversation in which I had been immersed previously. That aesthetic didnÕt speak to my everyday, lived reality like the Dada artists did (who were early zinesters as well). I wanted a Stolen Sharpie Revolution!

By the time I was in college, most of my writing energies were focused on schoolwork, but I still managed to make a short zine here and there. The Dada-esque carnival of freakish art that I saw every night began to influence my writing. LET THEM EAT CAKE was my first large collection of writing and artwork that I would properly call a ÒchapbookÓ (a Òone-shotÓ publication, unlike a zine, which has successive issues). It was black and white and made with gluestick and scissors. This chapbook was the first baby-step in what would later develop into the Angela Chaos aesthetic. I made twenty-five copies of Let Them Eat Cake, paid for them out of my own pocket, and passed them out during an art show my best friend and I organized. In order to solicit artists for this show, I attended a meeting of the Riverside Community Arts Association and met Mark Schooley, and thus connected with another group in our artistic community.

People encouraged me in my endeavors, but I mostly focused my energies on submitting my work to scholarly literary journals, even though, judging by the rejection letters I got, my voice obviously did not fit. I also attended the Riverside Underground Poetry Organization open mic nights at Back to the Grind, a local coffee shop. In order to encourage more spontaneity at open mic night, there was no sign-up: whoever got to the mic first, well, got the mic. Most of the time I only sat, listened, and wrote. The only way I read was if I got harassed into it (this is still trueÑI rarely ÒvolunteerÓ to read). I was publishing regularly in Digress, which was, for me, a safe outlet.

For my undergraduate honors project in English at California State University, San Bernardino, I found out I could present my poetry. I had been working on a new chapbook off and on for a while, so I decided to use this opportunity to finish it. This book carried on my aesthetic of collage and poetry and emphasized my interest in feminist issues even more. I called it CURIOUSER AND CURIOUSER, a tongue-in-cheek reference to my Òbi-curiousÓ sexuality at the time.

While revising the poem ÒOut:Ó I changed the pronouns from ÒherÓ to ÒyourÓ to ÒherÓ and back again. I wanted to make it obvious that I was talking about a woman, but I needed to reader to feel the immediate exchange that happens when I write Òyou.Ó I finally published the poem using ÒyourÓ because I knew that it was a confession. Next to the poem, in the modified tarot card ÒThe Lovers,Ó I code Adam, the Christian bestower of names, as a female. (The second issue of Bitch King will include more sophisticated analysis of ideas of gender, including a piece called Gender Deconstructs Itself.)

I read most of my work in the WomenÕs Resource Center to a standing-room-only crowd. It was a very supportive environment, so despite my blinding nervousness, the show went great.