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Meghan Lamb
272 Plays6 days ago
Meghan Lamb is the author of Mirror Translation (Blamage Books, 2025), COWARD (Spuyten Duyvil, 2022), Failure to Thrive (Apocalypse Party, 2021) All of Your Most Private Places (Spork Press, 2020) and Silk Flowers (Birds of Lace, 2017). Her work has also appeared in Quarterly West, DIAGRAM, Redivider, and Passages North, among other publications. She currently teaches creative writing through the University of Chicago, Story Studio, Hugo House, and GrubStreet. She is the fiction editor for Bridge Books and the nonfiction editor for Lover's Eye and Nat. Brut.
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Transcript
00:00:02
Speaker
You are listening to Something Rather Than Nothing. Creator and host, Ken Valante. Editor and producer, Peter Bauer.
00:00:17
Speaker
Hey everybody, something rather than nothing podcast here. And I'm so excited to talk to Megan Lamb again. chatted at episode, uh, 245. I'm avid Megan Lamb reader. And, uh, uh,
00:00:33
Speaker
The occasion in part here is a new publication, Mirror Translation, of which two components I just wanted to mention.
00:00:48
Speaker
A music accompaniment by Violet Fistula is a project with Megan and Robert Kloss, partner. and also um the art paintings and mirror translation by Shannon Hosner.
00:01:04
Speaker
But you, Megan Lamb, are the author and tell I read the mirror translation. I read all your stuff, ah found it fixed out at Powell's bookstore in Portland with a few copies there. So tell us a bit about ah mirror translation and your new publication.
00:01:23
Speaker
talked about this in a few other places. I lose track of where I've said what, but it all kind of started um with this anthology that um No Press with the Denver Horror Collective was putting out that was being curated by John Tonson.
00:01:44
Speaker
and he reached out to me and asked if I would be willing to contribute a short story ah to this horror and uncanny fiction anthology that had all sorts of writers I really admired who had already committed to it, like Sophia Samatar and Brian Evanson.
00:02:04
Speaker
And I think Adam Golinski was kind of the writer of through which he found me because he had reviewed something or other I had written way back when.
00:02:15
Speaker
But um he he was basically asking, like, um ah could you contribute a horror story to this anthology? And I replied, like, i I would be honored to be part of this. Like, there are a lot of great people ah already on board, but I i don't think I'm a horror writer. I don't think I've ever...
00:02:35
Speaker
written anything that could be considered horror, at least not like genre horror. And you basically said, ah I beg to differ, or i think that you could push your writing further in that direction and it would work really well.
00:02:52
Speaker
um I think you've already kind of laid the groundwork for writing in that territory. If you just ah push a little further and the direction of things being deliberately horrifying rather than accidentally horrifying or whatever they were before.
00:03:10
Speaker
um but I i kind of thought challenge accepted and I wrote a horror story for this anthology or set out to write um what I consider to be a horror story. um And ah yeah, i when I was thinking through what in my arsenal would be good material for a horror story.
00:03:37
Speaker
um i kind of naturally landed iron a lot of my experiences ah during the year when i lived in Hungary.
00:03:48
Speaker
um during a really bad period of my life. um i ah was in a not so great marriage and ah my partner at the time ah really wanted to move to Europe.
00:04:02
Speaker
And um there's a lot behind that and before that. But long story short, I kind of, I got this job teaching at a university in Hungary and i kind of thought of it as last ditch effort to maybe,
00:04:18
Speaker
I don't even know if at that point I wanted to save the marriage so much as like figure out if there was a world or if there was some other place where this marriage yeah could exist or we could coexist.
00:04:31
Speaker
And, uh, if there was such a place where I don't think there was, but Hungary definitely wasn't that place. There's a shot that you gave, but it wasn't, yeah, it wasn't. hung Yeah. And, uh,
00:04:44
Speaker
And then the pandemic happened while I was there. That was terrifying. um much But in any event, I had been trying write toward those experiences for several years, um like a nonfiction or like autofiction book where I was kind of like writing about these, like these are my experiences. I'm taking ownership of these things.
00:05:11
Speaker
ah They happened to me. um But I and was really struggling to ah find the voice that I needed to for that kind of material and also really struggling with...
00:05:26
Speaker
ah I don't know, not feelings of culpability, but like feelings of like ah what does it mean ah to write toward my end of these experiences that are also shared experiences to some measure.
00:05:42
Speaker
like i was really anxious about casting my ex-husband in ah negative light. ah Whether or not he deserved to be cast in a negative light, he probably did.
00:05:55
Speaker
um but i I didn't like the idea of, uh, I guess getting a kind of revenge via writing about someone, uh, that whether or not, uh, the act of that would be fair. Um, the, the idea of writing about it and like having like a document seemed unfair somehow. Um, but, uh,
00:06:23
Speaker
Having this container of horror fiction ah to put those stories into ah felt very natural for me. And it gave me all the plausible deniability I needed to to write ah whatever experiences I wanted to and cast whatever actual humans I wanted to in those stories because they're fictionalizations.
00:06:49
Speaker
um So it it ended up being ah the vehicle that I really needed to engage with some of those experiences that were horrifying from my perspective.
00:07:01
Speaker
yeah But yeah, long story short, that was kind of how how the collection came to fruition. Everything in that collection is based on something that actually happened, but just kind of heightened and augmented times 100. Yeah, yeah. was a little surprised when you were mentioning to your conversation initially about the ah horror genre or Maybe like I've had this conversation with authors before. It's like kind of like what that means categorically or when a reader where a reader sees a lot of or pieces or conventions within writing. And so I can be sensitive to like, you know, bodies out of shape, like in the sense of like exaggerated. Yeah.
00:07:53
Speaker
loneliness, searching, like trying to, you know, like all these ah components. And I think, you know, as placing it and in a different place, right. um And Hungary and it's like, where, where my things to latch onto? And it's really interesting. i had a sequence where I was, I read your book and I noticed at the beginning, just a short piece where are said it's to anyone who's ever wondered where home is.
00:08:21
Speaker
And at the same time, I was reading um a poet in the Corvallis area book about coming home. So like in sequence, I was reading about like people looking for like place and home and feeling feeling right. And um there is ah a horror or like underneath um the experience as you write it of like.
00:08:43
Speaker
The situation, you know, that that you're in there and and and that you that you create. um What I wanted to ask just about home since like it came up ah ah a bunch here. um And even in your search where you're saying like maybe like I've been in that and it's like a situation and relationship. but If we do this, and maybe.
00:09:09
Speaker
Maybe. Right. And at the time, people on outside are being like, if you're going to move that far with that person right here where things are now, they're like, that's the end. And other folks are be like, i don't know. Who knows? Maybe if they go to someplace else, ah ah things would work out. But your consideration of.
00:09:26
Speaker
Home. um for me, that was a huge ah piece within this. Is it, ah did you feel you were writing about ah home ah when, when you were writing this or like a strong yearning to find the spot you need to be?
00:09:44
Speaker
Cause there's an unease, obviously underneath the stories. is is is Was that the main quest or idea? Yeah. And all three of the focal characters in the stories are kind of, um,
00:10:00
Speaker
not necessarily looking for home, but they're looking for um something to latch onto yeah in the space that they're in. And I guess in a sense, ah the collection is about like the horror of the impossibility of finding a home. Yeah.
00:10:23
Speaker
That's it in a nutshell there. Wow. Yeah, yeah, yeah. um ah I will talk more about the stories, but I have listened to um the music accompaniment, and I'm sure how I'm supposed to accompany the work with the music because I love it standalone. I don't even know if I'd call it music or some of the tracks more than others. Yeah, it's... um know let's just for ease let's call it an accompaniment um but the violet fistula and and i know you've done some music and the first time i had on you on the show i remember a short-term effect the cover for the cure and i was gushing over it because i was like i remember talking about it being like man it's
00:11:06
Speaker
it takes something to try to cover that one. And you, and you did a, you did a great job um with that, uh, really beautiful track with this here. Um, the idea of, uh, I went to band camp and, uh, cause I've always been interested in your music and the work that Robert does as well, your partner.
00:11:27
Speaker
And, um, uh, I enjoy the, the, well, maybe like soundscapes, right? Soundscapes, music, um, industrial and such. And, uh, it was really and enjoying that, uh, that piece of things. Um, wanted ask you a question as a creator, right? So you write mirror translation and if you've done that, but you also have this, this mind and you create sound and, and, and music, um,
00:11:53
Speaker
How did that component develop? Right. Like the component of, you know, these pieces are connected to the to the novel. And what were your ideas as far as the experience for the, you know, for for for the reader listener?
00:12:08
Speaker
Yeah, I feel like in a different way, but maybe similar in some ways, the album portion of the album the Mirror Translation Project, or however you want to think of it, ah kind of came about um from feeling like I didn't have a container to experiment or like but much like ah I didn't feel like these attempts toward nonfiction books were the right container um for the writing that I was trying to do toward those experiences.
00:12:49
Speaker
um When I was in Kill Scenes, the post-punk band I was in before, um i I don't know. I kept feeling compelled to do weird things or I really wanted to, um, not just like have a role in writing the lyrics or, um, writing the songs. Um, and like part of the nature of a band of course, is that it's a collaborative endeavor. So, um, you never should have too much control over any one thing because it's a, something that you're creating in participation with, um,
00:13:27
Speaker
three other people. But ah yeah, i
00:13:33
Speaker
I, long story short, I ended up leaving ah that project and ah kind of having, that identity crisis, because I had um like i I basically left kill scenes because I didn't feel like I felt like there were too many things I wanted.
00:13:54
Speaker
Well, not so much things that I wanted to try, but um I felt like I needed room to ah experiment and fumble around in the dark a little bit and figure out how i wanted things to sound for me which um i didn't have uh i would never have been able to do that in kill scenes because the sound was already so established and kind of ethos of what what kill scenes was was already uh established enough that there wasn't a lot of room for fumbling around in the dark but uh
00:14:35
Speaker
Yeah, after I i left this band, literally the day after um we played our last show, um i had like a panic attack and I was like, I'm never going to be able to make music again. Then I just sat down at my computer and started making music. Yeah.
00:14:52
Speaker
good yeah it this violet fistula was kind of so I was making music as iron like nylon that ah day after our last show when I was having my identity crisis and I'm still I'm still making music as iron like nylon but um Robert had also um like uh he had logic on his computer and he was also he was making like uh these uh
00:15:26
Speaker
not quite sure what to call him, remix audio collages um from ah like things he would download from YouTube videos and stuff on the internet.
00:15:37
Speaker
and And he was just kind of like learning how to control sounds by ah taking clips of people's voices and chopping them up and screwing around with them.
00:15:49
Speaker
And he was coming up with some really interesting things that way, but i I don't know that he necessarily had planned on or had any designs on like making music in a formal capacity. He was just seeing what that felt like.
00:16:04
Speaker
um But I proposed, like, I really liked the stuff that he was doing ah in the course of his experimentation. So I proposed that we work on something together and ah we We came up with the name violet fistula kind of as a joke, but we looked at the actual definition for fistula. And I'm not going to give that definition because I know I'm going to butcher it. But um that there's it's like something with like a joining together entity. in an organ in like kind of a grotesque way. But it felt very apropos for ah whatever I figured we'd end up doing together.
00:16:48
Speaker
um and it's also like kind of ah cute gesture to the fact that we're working on it as a pair. um But he just kind of started out like um ah He would take like recordings and like chop them and screw around with them. So it was like a mix of like field recordings or like ah sometimes like we'd be passing like a construction site or something and he'd like hold up his phone when a machine was making a weird sound.
00:17:21
Speaker
um Some of it was... ah ah We bought a bunch of ah records um that had like sound effects and um like ah weird audioscapes on them.
00:17:36
Speaker
ah like If you look in like one of the bottom bins in a record store by the soundtracks, they usually have like albums of like ah sound effects or like speeches from American presidents or how to teach your parrot to talk or...
00:17:55
Speaker
So there were a lot of things like that that he was kind of like chopping up and screwing around with. um And ah to the end that they're on the album, even I don't know, like, I don't know where he got like 90% of the sounds that are on there. Yeah.
00:18:11
Speaker
but that's part of the appealing mystery. So he would just make these, uh, basically like rough backing tracks and send them to me. And I would listen to them. And, uh, I, I actually had the whole book written at that point. Um, and I knew it was going to be published by Blamage Books, which, um, uh, Scott Keinberg, who, uh, runs Blamage, um, uh,
00:18:39
Speaker
also runs petite souls. Um, and he's a very, uh, well-known noise musician or like very established within that world. Um, so we had already talked about potentially, like if it all works out, like putting out an album with his label.
00:18:56
Speaker
Um, but, uh, So i i was basically going through mere translation and like while I was listening to tracks that Robert had made, i would make like little poems or I hesitate to call them lyrics. I would take lines from the different stories and I would kind of yeah chop and screw with them in my own way.
00:19:24
Speaker
um But ah and then I would also then like take Robert's track and I would chop it up as I saw fit. um But yeah, the the end result was a lot of different kinds of bricolage and chopping up and like passing things back and forth.
00:19:45
Speaker
And it was all just kind of very intuitive. So it's it's difficult to describe beyond that. but But it was exciting because it was so intuitive. And it was kind of a way to take a written product that I had ah made a lot of very painstaking, deliberate decisions about um and engage with it in a more intuitive, raw way, which is exciting.
00:20:13
Speaker
um And i I advocate for all writers trying something like that because ah it's so easy to get tunnel vision or feel stuck in the, in just the the whole process of writing and the um so overthinking that often accompanies writing.
00:20:38
Speaker
And it's great to have a vehicle where um you're still engaging with the world of what you're working on or have worked on, but in a ah new and kind of renewed way. that makes a lot of That makes a lot of sense to me, I guess, particularly as you described it as far as um you know, like maybe the option of saying something in, in that sound where you're like, I was trying to work out this frigging thing in there, like how to say it. And like, it's on, you know, it's on that recording, like that, the sound that you need to be in there, but it's like, that fills it out a little more.
00:21:19
Speaker
That makes a lot of sense. Cause you know, it's kind of the energy and right now like, I fucking, I want to say this. I want to say this. And it's, you get caught up in your, in your head. And sometimes it's the, it's a yell, right? Sometimes a yell or a discordant, like pieces of metal, you know, together.
00:21:37
Speaker
um Excellent work. Everybody, yeah ah of course, um check out ah mirror translations we're talking about, but of course on band camp, Violet Fistula. So, so cool.
00:21:50
Speaker
I, I love that. And i love being camp particularly for that, you know, like, you know, just kind of in my head as an art lover and, you know, enjoying your work being like, okay, that's cool. I can download that over here right now.
00:22:03
Speaker
Talking about the book, the book ah visually is striking with this, these gorgeous ah paintings, the pieces of art um intense by Shannon Hosen. ah I can't, to you know, look at this book or talk about this book about these other components, but, know,
00:22:24
Speaker
ah What about Shannon and where these paintings? I'm losing my mind over them. Tell us about the ah the art that accompanies the book. Yeah, ah Robert and i kind of have a standing tradition now, I guess, of our friends um creating cover art or artwork that accompanies our projects in some way.
00:22:49
Speaker
um My last book, Coward, the cover was ah drawn and designed by our friend Devin Staconis and ah the cover of Robert's last book, The Genocide House, which was incidentally put out by Bridge Books, the press that I edit for.
00:23:08
Speaker
um But the skull on the cover is not only a print made by Devin, but it's actually skull. um She had um issues with ah TMJ and she, long story short, had to get out x-rays of her skull to to show what was going on with her jaw and uh she took those x-rays and and created a lot of art with them so the the skull that appears on the cover of the genocide house is based on an x-ray of devin's actual skull oh wow well let me pause let me pause you there and and obviously we keep going with shannon but uh everybody um robert claus i um
00:23:53
Speaker
ah The Genocide House. I picked that up at his Powell's as well. Like I got this hookup from Chicago. It's just Powell's books when it comes to your books coming out. But I'm amazed, amazing book by by Robert as well. We'll have everybody listeners. We'll have Robert um on on the show well late spring.
00:24:12
Speaker
ah early summer, but ah the genocide house, get it. We'll be talking about it soon, but Shannon, ah as you're describing, Shannon was also, ah you know, part of, part of the the visuals there, but go on. I just wanted to mention that. Yeah. Yeah. I, so I'd known for a while uh,
00:24:30
Speaker
I would love to work on something with Shannon and, ah like, kind of as soon as I knew I was writing a horror collection, um i i knew that her paintings would probably be very appropriate for that.
00:24:46
Speaker
um And i the two that I chose for the front and back cover who were actually ah paintings that she had gifted to us. um But even before she gifted to that but ah them to us in part because ah when we were staying with her ah i her, her apartment is like a gallery full of paintings that she... um ah has yet to share with the internet and like things that I've seen on the internet. and and also um
00:25:21
Speaker
But yeah, i I saw these two paintings that I had um seen her posting about on social media, and I was really struck by them in person. i was like, oh, those are those are two of my favorites.
00:25:38
Speaker
um ah So she gifted them to us, but um part of what I really admired about them was and part of what felt so apropos for this particular book is that um they were kind of made ah to be a partnership with one another.
00:25:58
Speaker
I... and i I kind of narrated my ah perception of the paintings when we were deciding how they would appear on the cover. And I said something like, I feel like the the front cover is like a ah figure, like a ghostly like human figure.
00:26:18
Speaker
And the back cover is like some grotesque transformation they've gone through. And she shared that that was basically what was going through her head when she created those two paintings. Yeah. two versions of the same figure.
00:26:32
Speaker
um So that was kind of cool that we both had that kind of subtext or translation of the paintings in mind, even though we hadn't articulated them overtly to one another.
00:26:46
Speaker
um But I knew for sure that I wanted that to be the cover art. i I just proposed to her like kind of offhandedly, it would be cool if you could do some illustrations. like I was thinking of having boilerplate illustrations between the three different stories. so it would like If you have time, it would be cool if you could do something like that.
00:27:10
Speaker
Of course, I'm thinking, like just like a little scribble or something. like I wasn't expecting Shannon to make a whole series of extraordinary paintings.
00:27:22
Speaker
um There are, like ah I think, five or six within that series that she created that didn't even end up on the pages of the book. did there did there dirt there They're stunning. and It was like almost this enmeshment.
00:27:37
Speaker
With the book itself, you know, like, it's tough to describe. him Well, it's an art show, right? So, like, it's it's tough to describe because visually they brought in, just very quickly for me, it was almost like um like super, like, human, ghostly, and grotesque, alien, alien form. Yeah.
00:28:02
Speaker
Yeah. And the alien form, when that appeared to me, that... that was sinking in with, um, the work. It was the the outsider of the don't fit in of like, where does this creature fit in? Like here, is it the human still just looking at differently? And, um, it really, the interplay and worked wonderfully with that. Um, and, uh, to have her, to have her actively creating towards this project and, and, uh,
00:28:32
Speaker
Yeah, I can't imagine what Shannon's apartment, not to be creepy or anything, but just Shannon's apartment, wow. Like you get to visit and and and get those things. But ah but just striking. And it's the combinations of of your great writing and these other components that like excite me from like the kind of idea of the create an art together and like how these pieces work.
00:28:53
Speaker
yeah It's just another realm where, cause she actually read the collection in its entirety um before she created these paintings. So in addition to the album it's this other medium through which the the book is being translated by someone else.
00:29:13
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. um Everybody ah when we talked with Megan Lamb, she, answered oh the all the ah profound questions or most the profound questions of life. and most of us ah two forty five So 45. So we've got some of those out of the way and having a casual, more casual conversation about, about your work. Um, I see you, uh, and Robert over there talking about you in particular in the Chicago area, an area that I like a lot, uh, musically, know, as I could feel, and I feel something Chicago coming out of, out your writing. That's just me, you know, just kind of city, uh,
00:29:55
Speaker
I'm really honored to hear that and really curious about that. do you feel like you can put a name to to what it is that feels Chicago-ish about it? Well, here's how where it starts with, and pardon me for an inexactness here. um When it comes to, going to step way back ah to um the the sounds back behind this here, to bio-official, both the content and such, but it really harkens back to me like a hugely influential piece where it's um david lynch early david lynch the industrial soundscape there's horror in there and there's sounds and things are tinny uh what a racer head sounds like a beauty and discovery in those sounds so it's in that world it's in that world of
00:30:48
Speaker
big industrial city of big shoulders uh chicago um so there's a whole piece back behind everything that i encounter with yours that's um uh that's like that i think part of it too is the disparate pieces of your art that you're connected with um has this industrial seems like an easy word to use but it feels of the city and for me it feels of Chicago and and like maybe it's the the toughness or maybe the rawness that's there and I'm placing some of that in there but that's where the whole thing comes from me and comes out of that you're doing
00:31:34
Speaker
so I have place you know when we're talking about home and place I think when we're talking about the begin with um it's a It's a city I'm familiar with. And like the sounds when you're like walking under the train tracks in downtown. Yeah. Different levels. Like it's like I can travel up there and I can travel right. It seems so enmeshed and loud.
00:31:56
Speaker
I don't know. i see your words there. i see your sounds there. I see your...
00:32:01
Speaker
books there and the same thing with Robert too so I'll probably be more articulate on the Chicago component but that's that's where it feels like for me yeah yeah I'm I'm I'm really glad that it feels that way for you particularly uh admire what you said about um like the Lynchian sensibility behind the sounds, like the sense of ah like the sounds being a portal to another world or an opening to another world.
00:32:34
Speaker
um We recently rewatched, well, we rewatched Eraserhead, of course. We had a David Lynch-a-thon, like I'm sure so many people of our ilk probably did after he died. um that was That was the first one we revisited in the Lynch-a-thon. And i I was really struck by just the way the radiator sounds are like build and like the the tension or like the the horror behind that curiosity around the radiator builds and builds to a fever pitch.
00:33:15
Speaker
um And then like, ah like at the point where the sound is like so overwhelming, it seems like it's about to explode. Like that's where he actually goes into the world behind the radiator. Yeah, know. I think but for me, for me, like on the sounds of that or the ethos around it, when I was younger, I saw, you know, freaky kid, love all this wild stuff. Right. And I remember buying the soundtrack I was like 20 and my friends were like, what the fuck is this?
00:33:44
Speaker
Like what the, what the fuck you just buy? Like, you know, and it's the, it's the racer head soundtrack, but there's these beauty, is mysterious singing in some of it. And, um, just like that industrial piece. I grew up in Pawtucket, Rhode Island. So like, I think sometimes like industrial, like industrial, you know, collapse and what happens with the sea. Like and when you talk about home I'll give you an example. When I moved to Milwaukee, Wisconsin, a lot of people are, ah my gosh, like the building's a little bit dirty. It's Milwaukee, right? i was like, oh this fucking great.
00:34:21
Speaker
I'm just used to the industrial landscapes and what comes out of them. And another piece too, the reason why Eraserhead kind of really had ah an impact on me was has to deliver papers when I was a kid, right?
00:34:35
Speaker
Papers. And i was ah I was fascinated because ah you know, i delivered a paper and it's a peek into everybody's world, right? They opened their door. Hey, Kenny's here to, you know, collect the money, come in. They rummage into their change, trying to pay for the paper back in the eighties when it was maybe a dollar 30 a week or whatever to date me.
00:34:57
Speaker
But people had change, people had change and they paid their weekly paper subscription by change. But when I, ah there's some part of that, it was always stuck in my head of like,
00:35:09
Speaker
And it's in like an eraser. Like what happens when you open a door? Like who's behind that? Like what type of world? And like for a racer head, that was like right there. Like when you open that door, like, like what are people doing? Like what exists in there? And like who's in relationships with each other and secret? like You know, there's this whole.
00:35:28
Speaker
thing tied to us i've always been like super sensitive to that to that feeling and uh that's why i razor had just like kind of like cut through like my brain and everything it's like before that maybe you weren't supposed to make art that was that discordant that tense that nightmarish i don't know
00:35:51
Speaker
Yeah, I, as you were talking about this kind of simultaneous intimacy with what's behind the door, but also like ah limited access, like you come onto the threshold, but you're not like most of the time, at least going inside the house.
00:36:12
Speaker
Right, right. But Thinking of how I map that onto home and how I map that onto the sense of horror and disorientation I felt living in Hungary that I channeled into this collection.
00:36:29
Speaker
i think maybe a way of thinking about home or like the feeling of home is that you have some sense at least or something in your imagination behind that threshold.
00:36:42
Speaker
Like even if you don't see it, like you feel like you have some familiarity with what's going on inside most of the houses or at least like a sense of comfort and like, ah like, like, you know, where you fit into that. Yeah.
00:37:01
Speaker
When I was in Hungary, I didn't like have any interaction with anyone aside from ah my established contact.
00:37:13
Speaker
yeah And my students, and I never and never saw where they lived. A lot of them actually lived outside of Sombaté and would commute for school. um A lot of them actually lived in Austria and they were going to school in Sombaté, 10 kilometers away because it was a lot more affordable.
00:37:32
Speaker
Oh, wow. i Yeah, I, as you were saying that, I realized that, like, i I never, aside from, like, that brief g glimpse into Esther's apartment when she was helping me fill out my papers, I never saw inside of anyone's home, like, even to the point of the threshold, aside from aside from our own,
00:37:57
Speaker
um I would walk around like for hours and hours every day and I would see old grandmas smoking at their windowsills and looking at me suspiciously.
00:38:14
Speaker
um and I would pass by all of these like windows into other people's lives. But i never and never had any more access than that. And there's something
00:38:26
Speaker
Yeah. I, there, there's something to that, like feeling alienated from a place to the degree that you don't really know what's inside.
00:38:39
Speaker
yeah Yeah. I, um, well this, when I was, uh, reading mirror translation too, um, you know, sometimes like personal experience, I could like, uh, look back yeah naturally. I moved back to like what the analogous was, but, uh,
00:38:55
Speaker
For me, I was in, me reading this book, where was I? Because I was a place I could go. I was in Prague in a failing relationship in your book. um That was the place I was able to go to. Now was visiting. I'm glad that you were able to experience like a like the space as like an amalgam of places in Central and Eastern Europe because that was very much how I tried to write it. Yeah. Yeah.
00:39:19
Speaker
Yeah, you know, I had that sense. I had that sense, too. and um But when I read it, was you know I was able to, like, ah even, like, the physical, how the body felt, like, even way back then.
00:39:30
Speaker
I'm saying, like, that's how I was able to... but To move to move into it. And at the time, the relationship wasn't overtly known in my head, to but it was, you know, towards the end, it was first significant relationship.
00:39:45
Speaker
And then i think I was able to to have ah an extra sensitivity towards ah the desire for home, right? Like if you're in. this strange place right here looking for um a comfort uh connection uh adventure something bigger than than life like wanting it like all to and it me it was a bit different as a vacation vacation as such so your mindset's like oh it's enjoy i'm in
00:40:17
Speaker
Prague, I'm in London and like, like to do it that way. But underneath it all, that can also be like that you're traveling with somebody and you know, there's things going on in a relationship to where it's, uh, when you're in a tough environment, you're tested individually. When you're tough environment, you're tested as two people or what have you. So, um,
00:40:42
Speaker
I really felt it. I really felt it too. um So kudos on that because that's not easy to kind of bring into that kind of complicated feeling of where the hell am
00:40:56
Speaker
I? Really enjoyed that. Really enjoyed that, Megan. um I want you to tell me about where to find your books and Are you doing any readings?
00:41:11
Speaker
What else are you working on? Like, I want to know the what's going on now. Oh, gosh. i I should be prepared to answer that question because it always comes up, but I always forget to be prepared somehow. um i So it it's available um on the Blamage Books website, which is also um where...
00:41:40
Speaker
You can order all of the tapes that Scott's label that's affiliated with Blamage Books puts out um and also where you can ah procure the tape as a physical object of the Violet Fistula album. Dang, got to get that tape.
00:41:58
Speaker
I'll take care of that. And ah it's at Powell's and a few other bookstores in Pittsburgh um that I probably should have... ah written down for these purposes.
00:42:11
Speaker
but i um And yeah, I have yet to take it around to bookstores of Chicago. That's something I've been ah meaning to do for the past couple weeks that haven't quite had time for.
00:42:25
Speaker
But by the beginning of May, it will be in various bookstores, um But yeah, and part part of the reason i i haven't felt so motivated to um take the book around and like ah distribute the physical copies is like one of the blessings and curses of working with a small press, a very small press, is that um you have a lot of creative freedom and you have opportunities to ah do things like create an album to go with the book that they can put out.
00:43:03
Speaker
yeah But at the same time, ah like it's ah he's almost sold out of the second printing of the book. And i I'm hoping there will be a third. But yeah, it's it's very hard to keep up with the demand for the book.
00:43:24
Speaker
But I... i I have a couple of my own copies. i think i I think hope I have enough to to take to bookstores.
00:43:34
Speaker
But you're going to get it out. I want to say i want to say this to both for your book and Robert's book. Like, I'm serious. Like for me, like I'm really into books. Right.
00:43:45
Speaker
And, ah you know, I've studied books and books. think about books, how to put together and such. But like these, both Robert's book and your, like volumes that I want to own or at least have for my own for a while because then I get to a point where I'm like, yo, know somebody else needs to read this.
00:44:02
Speaker
I got to bring it to the bookstore and put a used copy of this out there. But um, uh, beautiful volumes. And, um, just there's, there's a, there's an attention to them and a beauty to them. So I just encourage you just, you know, the world, the world needs you.
00:44:19
Speaker
The world needs those copies. so when you have time and energy and get enough more copies out there, it's, uh, it's a, it's a, it's a great book. I'm going to, I'll get it, um, over in, uh, Albany, Oregon at browsers bookstore, which is about a,
00:44:33
Speaker
block away from here and, you know, spread spread the good word. But um ah yeah, and to the world out there, like if there is a place you would like to see it or you would like to order it, um if you contact Scott directly, I'm sure he would be more than happy to arrange that.
00:44:55
Speaker
um But yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely. um ah Anything, anything else, anything else we need to cover about the work? Remember everybody, we covered what is our, why is there something rather than nothing? What's the role of art? When did Megan become an artist? You find that at 245. We're talking here, mirror translation, talking sound, talking paintings. And I just wanted to thank you, Megan. It's been, it's, it's great to, it's great to,
00:45:27
Speaker
chat with you um to to learn about your art that i that i that i really enjoy and there's a particular really nice feeling uh for me that and i take photos of it stuff like that i' going to a bookstore be like ah that's megan lamb's new book like i needed to get it like seeing that there and it's it's a thrill in in in in the in the search and so i always like to try to just Really, yeah you know, the beauty of bookstores and the beauty of books and art, being able to connect with you. um
00:46:02
Speaker
Great work as always, Megan. I just wanted to let you know. Well, and I definitely have Kevin Samsell at Powell's to thank for making physical copies of our books available at Powell's.
00:46:17
Speaker
um He's been ah wonderful advocate for making sure that like every time I have a book out and every time Robert has a book out, um They are there. they're They're actually, I think at present, ah they're like on the featured new small press shelf, like next to one another, ah which I think was pretty adorable. It's adorbs.
00:46:40
Speaker
It's adorbs. really is. ah ah So happy to see again, ah Megan. um Thank you. Thank you. um Thank you for your art and your music. And you might be proud. I do expect ah my partner, Jenny, and I to go to the Coffin Club, the great ah goth club in Oregon.
00:47:02
Speaker
They do, as we're recording here on a Sunday late in ah March, they have the early... early ah opening for dance, which is 8 p.m. rather than 10 p.m.
00:47:13
Speaker
on a Sunday. So my chances of being productive and doing all the things I need for the week and hitting the God Club will be in full effect later on today. so I have been experiencing that more and more myself where like and anything later than an 8 p.m.
00:47:34
Speaker
start time is a no-go.
00:47:38
Speaker
once you start dancing, I try to get it all in and keep going. And then I'm revved up for a while. And of course work, uh, quickly approaches. But, uh, Megan, thank you so much for popping back on something rather than nothing from the great city of Chicago. Good luck with your, your, your teaching, your art, your writing. I look forward to, um all your work you put together and and folks listen up, uh, pretty soon late spring.
00:48:07
Speaker
ah Robert Kloss genocide house in the other part of Violet Vistula getting the whole thing from this incredible art household over there in Chicago.
00:48:17
Speaker
Megan Land thank you so much. Thank you Ken and thank you so much for for sharing your personal connection to this book it means a lot to me. Yeah thank you that's what that's what books can do.
00:48:31
Speaker
Love it.
00:49:31
Speaker
to care
00:49:37
Speaker
i
00:49:43
Speaker
a
00:49:47
Speaker
I didn't have to care for you. I didn't care. I didn't have to care for you. I didn't care. I didn't have to care for you.
00:51:39
Speaker
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00:51:53
Speaker
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Speaker
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00:52:23
Speaker
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Speaker
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