Interview, Pam Benjamin Pt. 1

Interview with Pam Benjamin, by Paul Corman-Roberts. (Part 1, of 3)

Pam Benjamin at Pirate Cat, Taken by Lynn Alexander in August 2010

On August 20, 2010, Full of Crow editor Lynn Alexander and I visited the Pirate Cat Radio studios to promote that evening’s third installment of the Anger Management and Revenge reading series.  Start time for the show was at 3, and we arrived shortly before then into a small scene that was a bit disorganized with a few musicians and activists hanging around the café which is situated outside the station’s studio.

That small disorganized scene quickly became a humming crowd scene where numerous people who had been scheduled for that afternoon’s show were suddenly swarming in and out of the café, and Lynn and I were wondering how on earth we were not going to get lost in the cracks of so many people clamoring for air time.

Not to worry, the producer was one of our featured performers at that evening’s show, the intensely energetic Pam Benjamin, who in addition to being a performance poet, has been producing poetry and karaoke shows for the underground radio station since the Summer of 2008.  She never lost sight of any guests, had them cued in time and kept them all on track despite the wild stream of consciousness hi-jinx of Diamond Dave Whitaker on hand, instigating the whole circus.  She ran a no nonsense interview with Lynn and I, and then Pam followed the three hour show up by going to her nanny job, and bringing the youngsters to the reading where she promptly delivered a knockout feature set.

 

(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R6KMESgvgWQ)

 

This turns out not to be a fluke as our interview reveals an independent Bay Area artist who has managed to completely transform her life and juggles any number of flaming swords in her creative life, both known and unknown.  Her first book “The Pigeon Chronicles or Bike Messenger Assassins” is one among the first wave of releases from the smart new San Francisco press Ink. (www.inkonbooks.com) We are beginning to wonder if there is anything she can’t do.

I arrive at her apartment in San Francisco’s Tenderloin district 20 minutes late having not had my usual decent luck finding good parking in that neighborhood, the twilight glimmering over the frenetic activity of drunk financial district workers driving home to the outer neighborhoods and the increasing freneticim of the neighborhood’s night life.  Pam comes and rescues me from loitering too long on the sidewalk and looking a little too suspicious or easy.  “I almost cancelled, I got so sick,” she tells me, even though she has made us dinner, she doesn’t partake because she doesn’t feel hungry, but at least felt good enough to do the interview after throwing up.  She’s made a pesto pasta mix with eggplant, and the fact that I’m starving allows me to scarf right in front of her.  We crack a bottle of wine, and the following interview occurs over approximately a 90 minute period:

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PCR: Am I correct in deducing you’ve done a lot of shows in San Diego recently?

 

PLB: Yeah, well not a lot; two.   It was really fun. Whistle Stop was amaaaazing and they made this poster of me that they had in the bar.  I love this poster. They had this in the bar for two weeks, check this out. (she gets the poster.) It’s huge.  It’s 2’ x 3’.

 

PCR:  That’s a beautiful photo of you right there.  What is that?  You’re getting molested by a bear?

 

PLB:  Getting spanked by a bear. But I was just really stoked they did that marketing. And these people came, and said “oh yeah we saw that poster and wanted to come see the thing about the Bike Messengers Assasins.*” And I performed for fifty minutes.

 

PCR:  I saw Robert Duncan ten years ago at USF read for an hour and ten minutes and these days you ask a writer to go for ten minutes “I can’t do that long, what are you talking about?”

 

PLB:  I did so much in those fifty minutes. I had a whole memorized set list. Then I read two chapters from the book. I did my on the spot typewriter poems. And people even gave me money for those.  And then I did Jesus poems from my upcoming poetry collection I’m calling “Love, Sex and my Ex-boyfriend Jesus.” And it’s all about my divorce from my religion. Anyways it’s Jesus poems, sex poems. It was very Jesusy. VERY…Jesusy.

 

PCR:  As in a Christian Jesusy? That’s your background?

 

PLB:  Zealotrous.

 

PCR:  Zealotrous? You were fundamental when you were younger?

 

PLB: I was a bible delver.

 

PCR: A delver?

 

PLB:  A delver. So you would close your eyes and go out to the forest or your backyard or somewhere secret and you’d close your eyes and be like (whispers) “Dear Jesus, show me what you want me to know.” And you’d open up the bible with your eyes closed and you’d run your fingers down the page and you’d STOP, then open your eyes and look at your finger and I’d read the bible verse and then I’d be like “all right Jesus this is what you want me to think about, sweet.” And I’d sit there next to the fence and then notice some dog poop or something and be like “oh no, that’s gotta have something to do with it.” Or I was out in the woods and there would be a raccoon or something lovely, and you know, that was bible delving.

 

PCR:  That’s interesting because you’re incorporating all this immediate imagery based in nature, or what some people might think of as a pagan or Wiccan aspect into the interpretation you’re getting from this book. I have to ask, is there a particular passage you remember from your delving, that when you read it really struck you that this was so right on?

 

PLB:  I have it tattooed right here on my arm. My favorite bible verse of all time it’s 1st Peter 2:11; “don’t indulge your ego at the expense of your soul.” *(Dear friends, I urge you, as foreigners and exiles, to abstain from sinful desires, which wage war against your soul.) Oooh.

 

PCR: Good stuff.

 

PLB:  Yeah, it’s an important mantra.

 

PCR:  (Laughs) Do you know some people who do that?

 

PLB:  Me number one! I only have it written on my fucking arm, so I can look at it and go “oh wait, oohhh right I’m not the center of the universe.” See once Jesus wasn’t the center of my universe then it was suddenly “well who becomes the center of the universe?” That’s kind of the idea of incompleteness or addiction. You can’t have yourself be the center of everything because then everyone thinks you’re a selfish bitch. But if you have someone else be the center of everything than you become a co-dependent insane person. So…like then who becomes your other? Is it nicer to have an invisible friend be your other that takes you through the whole trip? Or do you need a physical person that you co-exist with?

 

PCR:  Do they need to be real or unreal? That’s probably one of the first questions you have to answer. When you’re young and alone sometimes you have to make up someone to fill the space in for you.

 

PLB:  Uh huh. And Jesus is a convenient boyfriend.  When you’re a junior high gal, and boys don’t like you but hey, look over here: Jesus LOVES you.

 

PCR: When you grow out of your exact double on another planet that thinks about you at the exact same moment you’re thinking about them and you start to realize that is probably really not happening, you’re left with the hairy Jew.

 

PLB: But the thing is, if you think it and you write it down, it exists. And if anybody else reads that then they’re in that space.

 

PCR: But that’s a different sort of spirituality than Christianity, much more Eastern in flavor, when we actually have a physical scientific equivalent of being at the center of the universe. I mean how far above our heads does the universe extend?  Or how far in any given direction?  It continues on forever in all directions.  Who is always at the center?  The self.

 

PLB: Well, in your own head.

 

PCR:  When you’re tripping on acid in the Mojave Desert it’s very easy to visualize this giant sphere that follows you around wherever you go.

 

PLB: Sure, it’s your universe. Well and different people have different size “spheres.” There was a friend we used to always say had a two foot radius. She could only see and understand things that were two feet in front of her. That was her dome, her bubble.

 

PCR: That’s truly living in the present.

 

PLB: But if someone is within your two foot radius does that mean you have a four foot radius? Do your radii extend farther on how many people join together in a group and believe the same thing?

 

PCR:  Some dowsers I fell in with for a bit in Nevada believe your radius trails behind you.  Like, you’d just stand there, and they would use their dowsing rods to trace this energy ostensibly emanating from your body in a pattern around your body.  What was interesting was that the longest part of the field was behind your body and there would be this jag, this split where there would be a longer trail on one’s left side than on their right.  But some people could trail longer on their right side as easily as their left.

 

PLB: Your wings.

 

PCR: Yeah, that’s what they said, and I don’t know if these are actually wings or not.

 

PLB: Sure.

 

PCR:  Well, bottom line, its energy.

 

PLB: But I always thought that about Christianity.  It’s really hard for me to go to church. I had some really, really religious friends when I lived in San Diego. And every once in a while they would say “come with me to church” and every once in a while I would say “okay.” But I’d always end up crying, and everybody always thought “oh Pam is being so repentant! Our prodigal daughter is coming back to the flock!” No, I’m crying because when four hundred people are sitting in a room singing the same thing at the same time something magical happens. It has nothing to do with God or Jesus, it has to do with four hundred people thinking and feeling the same thing at the same time and how many feelings does it take to create a religion? Is it two people in a room thinking about God and something magical happens? You could sit there and feel a vibration that’s happening. That’s really just sonic energy from these four hundred people. It’s pretty fucking magical. So I get overwhelmed by, you know, large bubbles of energy or what have you that makes me cry and then I feel like an asshole because I’m thinking everyone is looking at me because I’m crying, and everyone thinks I want Jesus in my heart.

 

PCR:  (imitating churchgoer) “Didn’t you want us to dip you in the water?”

 

PLB: (laughing) Yeah. “Come on back to the tub.” But no, it’s nice for people to believe the same thing. And I don’t know…I want people to read my stuff and say, “hey, I remember Pam.” I got the best compliment from someone in the Mission the other day, some sort of distant friend who came up to me and said “hey, you’re that poet.” You know, not even “poet girl” but “poet”, and I was so proud to say “YES!  YES I AM!”

 

PCR:  (laughing) You will so own that.

 

PLB: I’ll totally own that and then someone else said something about my Judy Garland bit down at 16^th and Mission. There’s a hipster stage that they cater to down there and I have to say, it’s pretty badass. And they remember the people who are dedicated to that.  I’ve been called out in Dolores Park (uber crowded Mission District public park with a smashing view of San Francisco) and of course you see the same people.

 

PCR:  Again and again and again. Sure, it’s the neighborhood.  It’s the Mission.

 

PLB: I love the Mission.

 

PCR:  It’s the place that never stops bubbling even when there’s not supposed to be a bubble.

 

PLB:  Well the comedy thing that just started, I mean holy fuck! Amnesia (well known Mission District nightclub) used to be all poets, because that’s when and where I started writing poetry and short fiction.  And now it’s all the stand ups.

 

PCR:  Have you been in San Francisco long enough to remember when Amnesia was the Chameleon Club?

 

PLB: No, I’ve only been here since November of 2007.  I’m really new actually. I spent a lot of time in San Diego.

 

PCR:  Ah, so that’s why you had the shows down there.  Is San Diego where you’re from?

 

PLB:  I was raised in Danville, across the bay. Yeah, I was really, really rich.

 

PCR:  Oh.  Okay.

 

PLB: My family, still, incredibly bourgeois, very, very sheltered.

 

PCR:  In a very well to do neighborhood.

 

PLB: I look at them now, like the waste.  Ziplock bags alone.  How many ziplock bags do we need to go through? The waste and the insanity happening in Danville, like…buying so many clothes, buying so many things, this whole idea of “retail therapy?”  Oh my god, I can’t stop thinking about stuff and things, things and stuff.  My Coach shoes, my Lexus status symbol, my Louis Vuitton backpack (whispers) which is so ugly; but this whole stuff and things mentality which is so scary.  I had a nervous breakdown in seventh grade because I had Palmetto jeans, but I wanted Guess jeans.  You know, the VERY cool, high waist zippers? But we couldn’t “afford” Guess jeans because they were $50 bucks a pair.  My mom was all “you’re getting a pair of Palmetto’s, those are $25. There’s an upside down triangle and they have zippers, what?” And I was just crying saying “no, no, it’s not enough.”  And I got made fun of.  I got made fun of at Los Cerros Junior High, mercilessly for having zippered jeans that were not Guess.

 

PCR:  I’m sorry, Los Cerros Junior High, class of..?

 

PLB: 1988.

 

PCR:  Let’s call out class of ’88 right now, you sons of bitches.

 

PLB: Sons of bitches. You wanna see a picture of me from then? You people out there can’t see it but it’s really funny. I remember this day of it being taken too because my bangs stayed really, really high but it was the rest of my hair that went flat around it so that was so that was a problem.  Right there.

 

PCR:  And oh my goodness, there’s Pam Benjamin.

 

PLB:  I look exactly the same now.  Same haircut and everything.  That’s fucked up.

 

PCR:  Are those braces I see?

 

PLB:  I did.

 

PCR:  You look younger than your years in that shot.

 

PLB:  Well I still look younger than my years.

 

PCR:  You have a very youthful spirit in general. You’re very high energy, you skate, you DJ, you’re a sound engineer and I’d go so far as to call a “Jill” of all trades.

 

PLB:  How about manic? (laughs)

 

PCR:  And despite the standard issue author’s dissatisfaction with publishing and life in general, the Pigeon Chronicles, or Bike Messenger Assassins is a very well written and good looking book, and a pretty good story and people are pretty high on it.

 

PLB:  Thanks!

 

PCR:  And you’re an amazing sound engineer as well.  I want to know what your fundamental creative influences are.

 

PLB: Cooking.  Well really, here is my most fundamental source of everything: Martha Stewart.

 

PCR: Ha!

 

PLB:  No, no I’m not fucking with you. Her attention to detail is so extreme. People don’t know this, but I was bourgeoisie. I was married to this guy I was with for thirteen years living in San Diego in this big house, and I was a great chef. I cooked, I had these parties, I had a catering business, I did theater stuff and I think that theater and food are the same thing really. What arts gets down to for me, which is so fucked up, but for me this is why it comes down to cooking.  You create it, you consume it, it’s enjoyed; it’s gone.  I totally get off on people saying “holy shit, that dinner was amazing!”  There’s a connection there to something in the creative process.  When you read or write a book, it loses its ephemerality. It becomes something real. You can read it and be consumed in a story, and then there is a connection in the art as well, which is bad ass, but I don’t get to see that connection like with cooking.  I get to see it in cooking and in theater, like if you rock it and people clap you’re going “WHAT?!”

 

PCR:  That’s a rush and a high; the difference between the page and the stage as “they” say.  The stage is very immediate with its deep human connection.  A book can be so much more of an inflamed, bittersweet affair, particularly when it’s over.

 

PLB:  Well, when they buy it you can kinda get this “yyyeeeaaaahh!!”

 

PCR:  Yes, true but you never have a guaranteed forum for that type of consummation, because so many great books you just kind of stumble across once in a while, crack the pages from this deep seated curiosity that wells up in the moment, and the next thing you know it’s days later and you’re in tears because the book is “over” and you shut that cover and have that moment where you’re saying “what the fuck just happened to me?”

 

PLB:  That would be nice to have happen.

 

PCR:  Have you never had that experience reading a book?

 

PLB:  Yeah.  I just read “Wetlands” by Charlotte Roche which was amazing. It was the most dirty, disgusting book I’ve ever read and it was so awesome and amazing.  I’m re-reading Dorothy Parker stuff.  Oh, this book!  I was so sad when it was over!  I’m into the “Wheel of Time.” I’m into episodic things. I like stories that last for a long time. My style is just really condensed you know. Robert Jordan is bad ass.  When I was married and I had all that sequestered time when I wasn’t doing open mics I was working at Ethan Allen and being a visual merchandiser “woo hoo!” so I read the Wheel of Time series five times, and just finished book 13, all 840 pages in one week.  I carried it with me everywhere, re-reading parts as I went. I even want to read it again.  But that’s different because I don’t have TV or internet so I have nothing else to do but read. And sometimes things get too heavy. If you look at my toilet books I have Paul Hoover’s “Idea” which is a poem book from 1987. I have the history and critical theory of performance art.

 

PCR:  It sounds like you’re pushing your envelope on the can. You’ve got your recreational reading material working in transit, at rest, in every faculty of your life.

 

PLB:  Right, I spend a lot of time on the toilet, who doesn’t? (laughing.)

 

PCR:  I’m a believer in the notion that a lot of great literature gets read in the voiding of the bowels.

 

PLB:  Indeed.  Or in the bathtub.

 

PCR:  It’s a place for real transitory literature too, trash literature.

 

PLB:  Absolutely!  I have no problem saying Bike Messenger Assassins is trash literature.  It’s fun; it’s pulp, it’s quick.  I want to take it and put it on a chain in the bathrooms of bars around town.  I want to make like a little loop-de-loop and stick my book on it with a chain and attach it to the toilet with a screw.

 

PCR:  You’re also doing something with the stickers at the bus stops around town too yeah?

 

PLB:  Oh yeah, I’m really excited about this!  So I read this book over winter break, the Street Art book. And one section was on stickers. And I’m like “oooh stickers.”  So there are those I-Pad ads around town which make me fucking crazy, and there’s one of them on the bus shelters with a Mac logo that really just seems to say “fuck books!” So I just need to find a designer who can get the right dimensions and I can go around putting these up on the bus shelter ads and then people will think it’s my book on the I-Pad!  But it peels off, so I’m not being too much of a vandal. But it’s funny, and no one is gonna know anyway, and it is a real book.  And screw MacIntosh!  Whose agent gets them on that ad?

 

PCR:  But wouldn’t it be so much more effective if your book were indeed available on the I-Pad?

 

PLB:  Here’s the thing about Kindle and all that shit, I don’t know how I feel about it.  If I ever get an agent, I have so much work. I have nine episodic journeys, tons of stuff like Bike Messengers I mean just…(throws hands up.)

 

PCR:  Basically you have a huge trove of stuff that hasn’t seen much of the light of day.  How long have you been writing for?

 

PLB:  That’s hard because I’ve wrote a lot of plays as an undergrad; playwriting was my major. I took ten years off of it and started writing again seriously at the beginning of 2006, and like, every day since then.  And I have four completed novels.  About crazy ass shit. But I feel like, with an agent…I don’t know.  Is that the key?  I don’t know how to push myself, because I’m so busy trying not to die and writing every day and school.  I mean, how?  I don’t even have internet in my apartment. How do I get to that level?

 

PCR:  I mean here you are, a DJ at Pirate Cat.  We’re talking about grassroots DIY at its most manifest. I mean you can shop around and play the market game, and everybody has the right to take that chance…

 

PLB:  What does that even mean?

 

PCR:  Getting an agent?  The market game?

 

PLB: The market, that’s the word. See, I don’t even know the terminology.

 

PCR:  Well, yeah, do you want a contract that pays you for your work?

 

PLB: I just want an agent to believe in me.  Maybe I’m an insane person and I’m shooting way too high, maybe I’m not that creative, maybe I’m not that special and that is TOTALLY possible. I don’t know. I have very little understanding of where I stand.

 

PCR:  Can you allow for the possibility that maybe you actually are that creative, that special and that amazing and that the larger world simply doesn’t have the ability to recognize it?

 

PLB: But I can write weird stories for TV too. How do writers get those gigs for these amazingly creative shows that are proliferating?  Does it all come down to just who you know?

 

PCR:  That has to be considered a big part of it.

 

PLB:  Or is it Jesus?  (intensive snickering from both interviewer and interviewee.)

 

PCR:  So when did it stop being about Jesus for you?