[dropcap style=”font-size:100px; color:#992211;”]T[/dropcap]here is a possibility that all things are not what they seem.
That life is a cosmic joke. That everything you want to appreciate is a vicious insult, directed with evil glee at the core of your underachieving being. Worse still, it could be a lot less cool than you thought, or even worse than that: it could be accessibly good to a large number of lesser people. These lesser people might even have nicer things.
Regardless of the elliptical circumstances of your own post-Dalston interest, we quite liked this guy’s stuff so we asked him some questions and he didn’t disappoint.
Or did he?
How would you describe your work to the uninitiated?
Most of the time I don’t explain the things I create. There are official and indisputable meanings for everything I’ve created, but they are just for me. You can make your own descriptions for it when you see what it is like.
How did you decide to set up a website of your work?
Two and a half years ago I decided I was a research developer and I wanted to do my own course at the Delocalised University of Here and There, this is a an accumulation of some of the things discovered during that time, a bit like a thesis at the end a PhD.
Had you been doing poetry a while beforehand?
Poetry is what other people called it. I never wanted to do poetry, I actually don’t like poetry. I write quasi-scientific analyses and language experiments that are my little spoon gloss culture assault against grammar and monolithic lexicons. Unfortunately the place for performing these is quite often poetry nights and I been doing these for exactly 28 months.
You work with music, artwork and words – do you feel they are separate creative processes or the same process?
If I wrote like I make music I would make my own pens and write with them backwards in my notepad, which I rarely ever do. However if I made pictures like I wrote then I guess I would make collages, which I do, but they’re shit. They are all part of a bigger picture.
Is language a virus?
No. A virus is a type of simple DNA life form or something that fucks your computer up. Some ways of using language can be like a virus, a bit like using the word “like” all the time or saying “totes”.
Your moniker e.VhyRuss. Is it to be thought of as ‘e-virus’ or ‘avarice’?
It’s said like e-virus and it’s actually my name. You need a name to get on with using it for its intended purpose.
Why the mysterious nom de poem?
That’s what I decided my name was a few years ago when I got in to being a mid-Suffolk pyschedelic grime emcee. I’ve got loads of names actually, this is just one of them.
When something moves my thoughts into a new direction, I change my name. When I became a psychedelic grime emcee I got the name e.VhyRuss, so If do anything that involves words then I kind of have to use that name. I wanted to change it to Pink Mantis, Bach-Splash, Mung Dungley, Doobarius Drift or Prince of Monocles. But however, It would be silly to change it 24-8, so I used those names for other stuff instead.
Both your words and artwork plays with perception, things morph into other things and nothing appears permanent. Do you believe in the concept of permanence?
I don’t know, my permanent markers say they’re permanent but they rub off if I draw them on stuff and keep that stuff in my pocket, But on the flip side, pi and numbers are pretty permanent.
If things appear to morph into each other I believe they are actually always that thing as well, the end of some thing is always there from the start. Dunno who said it first but “form is a view of transition”.
What do journeys mean to you?
Sometimes I feel like I’ve been on a journey but actually I’m still looking out of the same head in the same world. Journeys are like a romantic way of describing the process of going A to B. A is B at the end of the day, it’s C where I really want to go.
Are you familiar with the work of David Hine and Shaky Kane?
No.
The psychedelic element, is that a comparison you welcome or one that you’re wary of?
Psy-trance is meant to be psychedelic and most of that sounds boring and exactly the same. I prefer glitchy breakcore jungle or wonky acid techno, I believe that’s a lot more psychedelic. I guess one person’s psychedelic is another’s meaningless drivel. I do however love the word psychedelic. I say my beat boxing and my grime emcee-ing is psychedelic so I can do it out of time and make funny noises .
[quote]To be fair
he said
not being funny
I was like ..
to be honest
trust me
and stuff.
Then i turned and round and said
with all due respect
at the end of the day when its all said and done
I’m not gonna lie to you.
you know what I mean.
I dont know
you know,
you would have never have believed it.
then he he was like
no offence but
the bottom line is
That It is what it is
soo…
– 2 from ‘Poems’ about nothing [/quote]
Your use of idiom in ‘Poems’ about nothing is quite funny, but suggests that contemporary communication is a bit tragic as well. How do you see it?
I mentioned earlier that I’m a research developer.
These are not really poems, that’s why I put the word poem in inverted commas in the title. They are actually language experiments. First I researched phrases that I hear people say everyday that are used to bulk out sentences (additive phrase expansion I call it). Then I tried to link them together into one big blabber where each phrase could be linked to the next with out it sounding out of place.
The result is the series of speeches that you hear or read that have zero intended meaning, a bit like vocal and literal brutalism. This is Noise “poetry” and retinal scratching word abrasion by the masses for the masses (lolololol).
You’ve got a lot of artwork on the site but fewer poems, are you more strict about which poems you release for your readers?
I force myself to make pictures for the spoon-vulture culture replacement supplements as a kind of visual diary.
Some pottery is made in quantity to eventually improve in quality. I have to finish or destroy every image I start. I want to draw better pictures, so I make more pictures, that I have to finish. Writing is different, I want to refine and translate my ramblings so that they’re exactly how I want them, which is never, that’s why all copies saved are slightly different and I do remixes.
There are more words than images because writing is more personal and I always want to perform them live somewhere before I want people to read them at home. sidemuncher.com is only a few weeks old and that’s the first time they have been available for people to read. I’ve got loads of writings I’m either saving, haven’t translated, or are just too nuts.
And with that we wait more oddness from a piston blowing air into the bellows of wordsmithiness. Look and read more of Sidemuncher’s stuff at sidemuncher.com
Images from Sidemuncher.com/Development of Frequencies series
Editor, founder, fan.
