how did you get involved in zines/d.i.y. publishing?
I started doing zines a couple of years ago while i was living in this shed in Greensboro for the summer. It was hot and moldy, and I didn't have any friends, so I thought, "Hey, things aren't going so well. I guess I'll make a zine". That was the beginning of a tradition of putting zines together when I'm not so happy. Hopefully those first couple of one-shots will be lost in the sands of time. This year I started doing the "Big Hands" series, which is, like the Crass song, about appropriation.

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?
Zines are an obsolete medium. Wikipedia says, "The classic era for fanzines ended in 1996". But it is something that is nostalgic and retains its allure and charm for a certain segment, just like typewriters, laserdiscs and record players. Pamphlets of writing have a pretty illustrious history. Copy art is still as of yet a virginal, unexplored, underappreciated medium. A perfect response to a commodity culture: infinitely reproduceable, disposable art. The combination of the two parts and creative control over an infinite number of a palpable art object that you can give away makes a zine interesting. I think the widespread use of blogs has decreased the number of zines being made; but it has made zines, and their content more valuable. I think blogs are great, but blog writing is a more immediate form of communication where people are more apt to write their daily schedule or how they're feeling rather than their ideas. Zines allow a writer more space to grminate a more fully formed idea. And since the medium is more personal, the eader might absorb the ideas more fully.

what is your writing/editing/layout process like?
I just write stuff and then type it up. I don't write every day, mostly ust when I'm upset or want to work out in words something I can't understand. I work my ass off under self-imposed deadlines. I've made three zines this year, I'm half done with a fourth that should be out in the fall. After I type it up, I reread it alot of times under different mental states: caffinated, exhausted, drunk, depressed, feeling brilliant, feeling like shit, etc... and see how it holds up.

how do you think the zine community or the process of making zines has changed since you've been involved?
I didn't care about the zine community before i started writing zines. I went to the Zine Symposium out in Portland in 2002 and helped some iniebriated North Carolinians layout a "zine" that was just cut and paste letters saying: "Stop writing zines. It wastes paper". I guess i feel pretty dumb about that now, being a devout paper-waster. A case of being outcast among the outcasts, I suppose. At the time I was reading zines but wasn't participating, and from my perspective it just looked like a big popularity ontest. A networking event with obvious celebrities and lots of backpatting.

are you "out" to people in your life as a zinester? how do you explain it to people who don't understand?
Most of my friends know I write a zine. I think the concept of a "magazine" is something that's pretty easy to describe, I think what most people don't understand is the subculture behind it. Thanks to the early 90's boom that broke punk, a lot of people in their late twenties and up know what a "zine" is. My mom knew what a zine was long before I ever told her.

what do you like best about the zine world? what do you like least?
I like the zine format. I like the ease with which you can meet the people whose writing you like, and keep up a correspondence with them. I dislike the careerism and upward mobility.

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 a lot of zines are either radical or subcultural. I use my zine as a blackboard to work out my political or social ideas, which at this point are fairly bleak. But it's interesting to go from cynicism to hope, rather than the typical descent the other way around.

what advice might you have for someone who is new to the zine community?
I'm new to the zine community. I've written some things in the past, but I've just started to focus on writing and crank them out this past year. It is 2006. If you start writing a zine now you will not be cared about by people younger than you, who grew up using blogs, and you will be brushed aside as trifling by an older generation who have seen the end of the "classic era" of fanzines and are jaded from 10+ years of looking at the same old shit. "Heartattack", one of the surviving bastions of DIY punk from the 90's, just published their last issue ever. It's a time of transition and I think the DIY community could use some new outlets of creative expression. The other surviving "punk" magazines seem to be heading in different directions, like focusing on only heavy music, or getting more mainstream (see: Cannibal Corpse interviewed in "Punk Planet"). My advice would be not to play the game. The best zines to me seem like they have been written in isolation; ie. the people that wrote them did not spend their time at zine symposiums. They were holed away working on their creative endeavours.

what role do you think distros can/should play in the zine community?
I think small-scale distros are really great. I am not excited about the Wal-mart/Amazon.com model of zine distros that are popping up. The online stores where you can get all your favorite zines or anthologies at the click of a button. I'm also suspicious of zines getting "published" by someone else. I don't begrudge anyone who writes a zine for doing this, as it sounds like a pretty sweet deal and a way to get some quick money from a medium that has never been lucrative (except for the other Aaron, who I'm sure has stacks of dollar bills hidden under his couch mailed to him as concealed cash from sixteen year olds in Missouri). But, I think having a zine megastore misses the point because they have traditionally had a very personal medium of distribution.

are there changes you'd like to see in the zine community or your own zine creation?
I'm always to some degree dissatisfied with what I do, which is why I make something else that I think will be better. Sure, I hope the zine community changes, evolves, and grows. I hope to keep doing zines, which means I hope I don't get too satisfied with what I'm doing.

Aaron Smith--Big Hands

shakinghell@gmail.com

1104 Imperial Rd.

Cary NC 27511