how did you get involved in zines/d.i.y. publishing?
There were these older dudes, juniors and seniors in high school when I got there in 1992, who were these weird, funny culturejammer dudes, converse wearing scraggly-haired dudes, who put out a couple issues of an underground "newspaper" they called "the red herring". It was really, really dumb but it was a beautiful thing, very exciting. The possibilities were really exciting. It seemed like an important thing they were doing. After they graduated, me and my friends tried to put out some issues, maybe we did like three in two years and everyone always hated them so much. Before we took it over, some kids put out an issue where they totally took the piss out of this one cheerleader. Her mom was a lawyer and she threatened to sue the school and sue the kids for slander or something and I guess those kids got in some trouble. But our issues were just weird collages and rants and stuff. We tried to be insightful and funny but we could never really get it together and everyone hated it and thought it was stupid.

I really liked making those zines though, I thought the whole process of writing and doing layout and making photocopies and distributing it was totally mind-blowing-ly great. It all felt very subversive and meaningful.

It took me a really long time, like until 2002 (ten years after I "got into zines") before I ever put out anything that I liked even kind of as a finished thing. I think that was "Day of Reckoning" #4.I have kept at it because I really liked the idea of zines and I get a lot out of making them. The act of constructing something and publishing it and putting it out there is still kind of scary and exciting. It's even better now that I don't think that everything I have ever published is totally stupid and trivial, because that is how I felt for a long time.

But there was always been so much great stuff around to keep me inspired and make me keep trying..

why do you continue making paper zines in the age of the internet? how do you think the internet has affected the world of paper zines?
I don't think the internet is worth too much really as far as zines are concerned. It makes communication easier, it makes it easier to figure out what is going on. It's a glorified phone book.

I mean, no. It's better than that.

I like wikipedia and common dreams and things. I like blogs and indymedia and the whole horizontal expansion of "the media". I think all that is all really awesome. I think that the explosion of zine culture in the 90's was a harbinger of that.

Obviously having all of the other options, to do blogs or whatever, to communicate with people through listservs and sell and trade things on line has had an effect on the world o' zines.

But I think that zines are going to exist and thrive because it's awesome to create a unified work of art. It is hard to write a book. One thing is that it is good to have some line of demarcation where a finished thing is finished. You have created something that represents some part of you and what you are thinking about and how you are feeling at a certain time, and you put it together and distribute it and some folks read it and that's it. The internet is great in how it is free-flowing and there is tons of stuff, but it is nice to have something just be there and be done and not have it be syndicated or linked to or commented on in the comments field.

Also with the internet everything is right there forever unless someone completely removes it. It's always in the same place and there is essentially one way to access it, sitting down at a computer and looking at it. But with a zine, to have it be a physical thing means that someone can pick up off of someone's living room table or forget about and find years later in a box or something.

One effect the internet is having is it means zines are not the most convenient, effective way to get information out. I think that maybe they were more important for that in the 80's and 90's, before the internet boom. And it might change again if the internet becomes more regulated and folks have to start paying for bandwidth or some other weird thing happens.

Regardless, I think that there are possibilities that zines medium offer that the internet cannot replace.

what is your writing/editing/layout process like?
Lots of notes and versions, retyping/writing things to get new versions from interacting with the words again. Lots of starting to write things and getting sick of them, lots of abandoning bad ideas.

Layout: lots of wrestling with margins.

how do you think the zine community or the process of making zines has changed since you've been involved?
I guess I have not really participated in the zine community too much over the years, I have never had the attention span, I guess, to trade a lot and get my stuff out there and write lots of letters to lots of people and stuff. I guess I feel a little more involved in some sort of community that has something to do with zines right now because I am hanging out at the zine library a fair amount, and doing this interview and doing some work on "Zine World". But up until recently the "zine community" was something I was vaguely aware and only really halfheartedly participated in.

As far as zine culture goes, there is the thing with zines becoming large and famous more. That's okay. I think it is great that there is a fringe of the zine community. I like that there is a nebulous center and an outside. I am equally likely to stumble into poorly-distributed fringe stuff that I really like as find something I am psyched about in the distro market. And I think it's great to stumble on those treasures on dusty infoshop zine racks and I think it is great to be able to track down good zines with ease via distros and such. I think that there is a pretty okay balance between those two things right now. I think it is great that the lines are so fluid between those two things. Sometimes I get nervous that the lines will harden more and it will be impossible for folks to get their stuff out there unless they can smash their way into "the community". But then I start thinking about what is "the community"? It's totally fluid thing, right? Is everyone who writes a zine in the community? Everyone who reads a zine? How long do you have to go without reading, writing, thinking or talking about zines before you are not in "the community" anymore? Everyone has a different "community" that they participate in, really, a unique network. All of those networks are constantly changing, growing, shrinking, twisting around…

The community…the community is great how it offers a lot of resources as far as promotion, distribution, camaraderie, and a lot of other things are concerned. And it will grow and change, but I think the great thing about zines is that you can just go ahead and make them, give them out to your friends and hand them out on the street corner. As long as the basic resources of cheap copies and a stapler are available, you can do that. The community is a nice byproduct of a bunch of cranks deciding they want to do that and no matter how fancy and sophisticated it gets that is all it will ever be.

are you "out" to people in your life as a zinester? how do you explain it to people who don't understand?
Oh, no one understands, you know?

I don't really care about people being indifferent to or not understanding or not knowing what I am doing. I will tell someone I do a zine if it comes up and then I am fine with not talk about it to them if they don't seem to engage with the concept. That's fine with me. We can talk about something else, I am not going to try to explain the whole thing from the beginning to someone who it's obvious doesn't really believe me.

I gave a copy of my zine to an editor I was doing freelance work for and I never heard from her again. That was a little disappointing. I mean, I don't think it was because of the zine, probably she just doesn't have work for me. I got the sense that she was the type of person who would be interested in what I was doing, would probably understand it and like it, even if she doesn't know too much about zines and stuff. I really hope that she liked it.

(Note: Hey, she actually just e-mailed offering me a story, but I got the message too late, damn!)

I mean, I am just trying to create a little piece of art or whatever that I think some folks might like okay. I am interested in trying to make it available to those folks. I am not concerned about the whole world or the whole counter-culture or the whole zine community or my whole band or my whole house knowing I do a zine.

If asked, I would never deny that I do a zine.

what do you like best about the zine world? what do you like least?
Least: It bums me out to hear about people exploiting zinesters and ripping them off and doing what they are doing according to some sleazy business model. It bums me out sometimes when stuff gets glossy and starts looking like a magazine, when someone starts paying to much for production and then passes the cost on to the customer. It's like, what the hell? I can buy your $5 "zine" or I can buy these three other things that all look pretty awesome and unique.

Those guys are total ball hogs. Fuck them.

Best: I like zines best about the zine world. I really like how a good zinester can convey thoughts, experiences and feeling in way that can really make the reader feel them, relate to them on an empathic level. I especially like that when the empathy is really farfetched. I have read death metal zines that have made me think for a minute that I dug that music. I have learned a lot about the different ways folks experience gender and sexuality and music and work and culture and a whole host of things from reading zines and those lessons have some been life-changing and many fascinating.

I think that part of the reason zines as a medium, are such a great means for inspiring pretty deep understanding is that the medium is so accessible. If it feels a lot like you could have made the book, it feels a little more like you could have written the words and had the thoughts and experiences. That is another reason that the glossy and fancy zines kind of aggravate me.

Also: I got a zine out from the zine library called "The Answering Machine Project", and it is poems that the zinester's friends left on his answering machine. I guess he set up his machine message so it asked callers for impromptu poems based on various themes like laundry or vegetables. I think this is an okay idea, that makes for what, in any other context, would be really annoying poetry. I think it makes a great zine though. I love it how zines totally lend themselves to the question, "What can I try next?"

do zines play a political role in your life? are you involved in other d.i.y. projects? do they play a political role?
I think that zines are political in the same ways that anything is: the free flow of ideas is a political issue. Access to resources to facilitate self-expression is political. It is a political decision to decide to be open to zines, I think, to decide to respect the form and all the effort folks make. Further, I think I have learned a lot from zines that has shaped my political perspective.

Also, any d.i.y project is political, I reckon, trying to eke something out, build something that is different from sucky and alienating and exploitative and hierarchical.

But, at the same time I really have a problem with looking at d.i.y projects as "political" per se. I choose d.i.y because I think it is fun and more meaningful and fulfilling than consumer culture or whatever. I think that it opens up more and more interesting possibilities for self-expression.

But it is not the way to the eight-hour day. It's not universal health care.

What I am trying to say is that things do not play "a political role" in an individual's life. Politics is about how societies make decisions about how they are going to function. It is also about societies reacting to the effects of those decisions and re-negotiating the terms pretty continuously. But those decisions play a role in everyone's life. Individuals don't get to pick and choose what things play a political role in their lives.

I think that zines and d.i.y culture do play a political role in our society. I think it is a small one right now but I think that there are important lessons that people are learning from d.i.y culture will probably be increasingly useful in the process of re-negotiating how society works in the future.

what advice might you have for someone who is new to the zine community?
Careful with those margins. Rock it.

what role do you think distros can/should play in the zine community?
Distributing zines. By that I mean providing exposure and easy access to many awesome things. Also I think they should play a role where they aren't sleazy or unfair to people.

are there changes you'd like to see in the zine community or your own
zine creation?
Yes.

David--"Big Swirl Fanzine #1" out now!!! Lots of stuff!

#2 Out in July--interviews, interviews: Richard Stallman, (on being the founder of Free Software Movement and inventing Copyleft and just generally being a free speech curmudgeon), Ciara Xyerra (on being a zine distro curmudgeon and maybe some other stuff), Ciara's mom (on being a high speed internet live chat investigator of contemporary culture in the middle east from her home in Bowling Green OH)

Very exciting and dramatic!

My band is Stick and Rag Village Orchestra.

check out david's zine, day of reckoning #6, through the distro.