INTERVIEWS & ARTICLES
KTRU 91.7 FM
Rice Radio Spoken Word Show
August, 2009 by Ayn Morgan
Bryan Lewis Saunders is a visual, performance and spoken word artist, living in East Tennessee. His recorded work is intimate, honest and unsettling. His recent release, N1-N4 Variations (vocal documentation from all four sleep stages) catalogs a spectrum of personal and jarring vocalizations during various stages of unrest during his sleep cycle. DAKU, a collaboration with percussionist Z'EV, is an intense and primal journey through traumatic experience and the physical manifestation of that trauma.
His spoken word performances are empathetic, raw and cathartic. He often tours Europe and the US, performing in festivals and exhibitions. He creates at least one self-portrait everyday (since 1995) and plans to do so for the rest of his life. He currently has 7000 of them in hardbound books.
Ayn - Describe the difference between the cathartic experience of your self-portraits and public performances.
Bryan - On the surface they both appear as vehicles for driving out demons. However, the self-portraits are more like praying or meditating everyday, and the performances are more like hosting an evangelical revival. The self-portraits are two-dimensional and tend to focus more on the present, and on personal daily mental health maintenance. The performances are big multi-media public purging events, more focused on the past, and the demons are much more social. When I draw or paint myself everyday the release is what keeps me alive and somewhat sane.
Ayn - Film projections on stage can distract from intense spoken word performances. With your strong background in visual arts, your videos compliment your work. When did you first incorporate video or projections into your live shows?
Bryan - I started doing the videos in 2006. I don't often speak eloquently, so the videos are left rough and crudely edited too. The rawness of both increases the tension. It makes what I'm saying seem even more real, because they're like home movies as opposed to being artsy-fartsy with a lot of transitions and effects. Video is the supreme tool, in that it has the ability to convey honesty, empathy, truth and believability. The simplest way to get people to believe and identify with you, when you say outrageous or unbelievable things, is to concurrently show them home videos of it. It becomes more powerful.
Ayn - How much of your life is as visceral as your work? Where do you think this intensity comes from?
Bryan - It comes from an exciting, yet often traumatic childhood. Now that my life has become totally devoted to documenting and sharing those experiences (much to my deliverance), new trauma is much less frequent. I tend to isolate myself while working and that helps cut down on it enormously. When I'm alone, my head becomes a can. Using the stories as a starting point, I weave the feelings, thoughts and beliefs around them, like fat twisted cords, really packing them down for several months. With the lid on really tight, I finally get out and on stage again. With great suspense, I slowly unscrew the lid and all of these snakes jump out of my head, at the audience. Only it's tragic, not funny, because the serpents are real and not felt covered springs.
Ayn - When recording N1-N4 Variations, what was your process? How did it start?
Bryan - Mysterious things have always happened to me in my sleep. I would frequently wake up feeling like I had just been run over by a truck or physically assaulted. I had great difficulty remembering any details of the events. So, I started sleeping with a tape recorder to get to the bottom of it. At first, I would awake and immediately record anything I could remember. The more I did it, the more Pavlovian my "button pushing" became until I was waking up between each dream and recording all of them. Eventually I pushed the record button in my sleep and documented my dreams in real time as they occurred. The CD contains artifacts of the entire process.
Ayn - What current experimental or spoken word artists do you listen to?
Bryan - "Amnesia" by Lydia Lunch and Jacob Kirkegaard is pretty transcendent. The combination of Kirkegaard's science of sound aesthetic and Lydia's graphic poetic analysis, seem to make her float inside the gravity of man's inhumanity. The work of Gregory Whitehead is functional-conceptual art and extremely fascinating. Out of all of his works, "The Thing About Bugs" and "The Hidden Language of Trees" are my absolute favorite. Headphones are a must. Michael Esposito's EVP collaborations, "The Summer House" with Leif Elggren and the ghost of Emanuel Swedenborg is great. Michael Esposito is an audio scientist. Leif Elggren is a contemporary artist who works with sound, drawing and performance. Emanuel Swedenborg was a scientist, philosopher and spiritualist who talked to angels and dead people at the same "Summer House" throughout the 1700's. Bryan Lewis Saunders is currently working on several projects, including a new release tentatively titled, Near Death Experience on the art/noise/spoken word label Erratum (France). For more information and current projects, visit bryanlewissaunders.org.
RHYTHMPLEX
Interview: Bryan Lewis Saunders
April 26th, 2009 by Jon Mueller
About a year ago, I found Bryan Saunders’ work through MySpace and I wasn’t prepared for it. It was not what I expected and it struck me as I watched video after video on a Sunday morning, eventually being brought to tears. Saunders has a great talent for presenting issues that have been covered before, but making you feel like you’re confronting them for the first time. It’s highly personal. I immediately bought all his CDs and sent him a personal note.
Soon after, on a trip to NY, in a van full of people, I put in one of the discs and played it loudly. After a few minutes, someone requested (demanded) to please turn it off. They said, “I get it. I just don’t need to hear and think about this stuff.” It’s that sense of confrontation that really appeals to me about his work — self confrontation. What the work produces is a situation not between Saunders and the audience — the confrontation is between the audience and themselves.
The following are a couple questions I recently sent him via email, interspersed with video segments of some of his work:
J.M.: Your work is visceral, both in content and presentation. Talk about how it began; was it initially focused on writing, and then performance?
B.L.S.: Actually it began with the restrictions I placed on myself as a visual artist. My ideas concerning the visual arts were both liberating and yet extremely limiting. While working within the tension between total freedom and self-imposed confinement for over a decade, I managed to become a more ‘feeling’ human being. Feelings like guilt, sorrow, empathy, essential feelings that were in many ways foreign to me in the beginning and had to be nurtured, all seemed to converge and explode in a desperate new behavior for me. Performance.
I do not consider myself a writer or a poet at all, though many seem to disagree. I have always been a storyteller socially however, it is only now that I am able to inject them with powerful feelings and tell them with tears in my eyes instead of grimacing or laughing. There are other factors too of course that helped lead me in this direction; the few special people I’ve had relationships with, and of course other artists whose works have had a profound impact on my life.
J.M.: The performance element carries many facets: activism, beat poetry, confrontation, sound art, and more. What is your aim?
B.L.S.: My aim up to this point has been to simply elicit these strong feelings in others. To make men cry in public. To make it socially acceptable to show ones pain and suffering. I do this by using any method, model, medium or combination thereof, so others can feel what I feel about any given subject. I am all about experimenting with the means, and for the most part the means is ’subject specific’. All too often true suffering remains hidden in the home, trapped inside the trapped individual, where tragedy is only communed with others through the television. There is an exorbitant amount of high quality tragedy and suffering on TV, rivaling in many ways that of the ancient Greeks, but the intentions are not the same and the amphitheater has been replaced by the recliner. I would hate to think that Sophocles wrote ‘Oedipus Rex’ so they could sell more chariots and soap, but you never know. I prefer the more romanticized belief that the tragedies were for ritual social cleansing and the hope that it worked. Anyway, today many are turning away from the TV, so I often have to bring one with me. Next to the stories and without exception the TV is my most powerful tool.
J.M.: How much of the content is based on experience, and how much is based on interpretation. In either case, it’s incredibly convincing. How do you hope people react to it?
B.L.S.: Almost all of the content is based on first hand personal experiences and how I feel about them and have interpreted them. I will of course combine stories and exaggerate them and make them rhyme for the desired emotional impact. It is more convincing and effective to take a simile or metaphor, and turn that into part of the story and make it sound true, than it is to just use colorful language, big words and adjectives. So for the few pieces in which the content is based solely on interpretation, they were constructed in that way for that very purpose. For example, I have on two occasions thought of an idea about what it was to be a ‘feeling’ human, and then I completely fabricated stories from a single metaphor, and then told them as if they were true, so people could feel just as deeply as I did about what it meant to be a ‘feeling’ human being.
J.M.: Some people might not like what you have to say, and how you say it. What do you think about that?
B.L.S.: The occasional person who walks out or walks away during the show aren’t the ones I am most concerned about reaching, those people are OK in my book. It’s the few people that have the adverse reaction that concern me and scare me the most, and those are the people that I try hardest to reach out to. The vast majority might not enjoy it but they aren’t supposed to and they know this, so they are the ones that are the most supportive and many people are hurting or personally know others that are hurting and are appreciative that I have given them a voice. They understand the method, message and goal because I make it quite obvious throughout the performance. The occasional sicko / whack job on the other hand, that then challenges to “outmasturbate me” afterward, or says, “You just inspired me to cut off a monkey’s head! Wow, you just made me want to cut off a monkey’s head that was awesome!” those are the people that I try really hard to reach. It is probably too late for them but I try anyway, because I can identify with them and I myself fear that I could have become one of them had it not been for the arts.
J.M.: Tragedy is a common theme in your work, yet the presentation implies an inspiration for positive change. How much do you think people can change, and how does your message address this?
B.L.S.: I don’t think, I know people can change but they have to seriously want to. They need the right emotions and they need the will. I myself went from being a self-involved violent criminal with little or no affect, to being a sincere and thoughtful, feeling human being. But it took a lot of work and time, not to mention will, luck, fortunate friendships, art education and believe it or not even racism in sentencing, to name a few. That is why my messages can seem so varied. I’ve gotten pretty good at channeling the essential feelings, to instill the will, that is the true challenge. Brainwashing only lasts as long as the subjects are under your control. It is probably a near impossible task, but it’s important that we continue to try anyway and plant the seeds of the essential feelings. So the people who are suffering now know that others care, and so the ones that don’t care know how badly some people are suffering and perhaps can even feel it a little themselves. It is a double edged approach. We should not allow people who are suffering in pain to do so alone, eventually they won’t feel anything anymore, and that is when we run into real problems. This is why my stories revolve so much around the subjects of sex, drugs, physical and psychological pain and institutions. These subjects seem to be the most direct way to reach those that are afflicted already as well as the most interesting subjects to those that are already numb.
Saunders has a new project with percussionist Z’EV - visit the label for more info. More information on Saunders’ activity can be found at his website.
East tennessean 02/19/09
"Bryan Lewis Saunders Offers Original Material To The Area"
by Johnathan Thacker
Bryan Lewis Saunders graduated from ETSU in 1998. Since then, he has performed throughout the United States and Europe, including the Museum of Contemporary Art in Bordeaux, France. Despite the extent of his travels, he still makes his home in Johnson City.
"I like it here because there's not much to do, so you have all the time in the world to do what you're wanting to do," said Saunders. "There are no excuses."
After extensive preparations, Saunders went to China in 2004. "I decided that if I taught myself Mandarin Chinese, I could go to China and be a kick-ass stand up comedian," said Saunders. "So I taught myself six hours a day, for nine months. When I got there, they explained to me that there was no stand-up comedy in China."
Upon his return, Saunders began performing in a completely different direction, which he called "Stand-Up Tragedy."
"The goal of Stand-Up Tragedy was to make suffering in public socially acceptable," said Saunders. "All these dark shameful things happen in our society, and nobody wants to talk about them. Suffering is not publicly acceptable in the United States. People are suffering all over, but think they are alone."
Saunders incorporates accompanying video packages and songs, along with his grim tales, for a presentation that results in a visceral response from audiences.
"I judge a show by people crying," said Saunders. "I've had guys, as well as girls, cry and walk out. I even got punched once. I know I did a good show when people avoid me, and won't look me in the eye afterward."
One tale recounts an incident he observed at a Dunkin' Donuts. An obese woman was offering her last $38 to anyone who would break her jaw so that it would be wired shut.
"The first guy hit her, and it wouldn't break," said Saunders. "He hit her a few more times, then pinned her against the wall with a cinder block, but it still wouldn't break. People were coming from down the block to get in on it. The first guy was getting frustrated and went to his car to get a baseball bat. I left then."
Another performance is based on the case of Lester Eugene Siler, who was beaten and tortured by five police officers in his Jacksboro, Tenn., home in 2004. "I did a tragedy in four acts using the FBI transcript as a script. I took a pillow case and ironed Eugene's face on one side, and had the other side look like a Ku Klux Klan mask, switching back and forth playing both victim and abuser."
Saunders is constantly gaining further admiration from his peers, even if the public has been slower to come around.
Sage Francis sampled Saunders' "PCP Poetry" for his song "Going Back to Rehab" and the artists who have worked with Saunders hold him in high regard.
"Bryan Lewis Saunders is truly an inspiration for me and others in the local experimental scene," says experimental artist Mannequin Hollowcaust. "If you ever begin to think our area doesn't have anything groundbreaking or original going for it, check out Bryan Lewis Saunders to be proven absolutely wrong."
Aside from performing and recording spoken words, Saunders is also involved in other artistic endeavors.
"They say you can't do it for the money but you have to be able to survive," said Saunders. "I can make enough doing a few shows in Europe to live for a year here, but if you're only performing in the United States, you have to be selling merchandise to make anything."
Other projects have had a wide range of results, from Saunders sewing his mouth closed, to amassing thousands of self-portraits.
"I've drawn self-portraits everyday, since March 30, 1995." Saunders has implemented a wide range of drawing methods over the years. "I've done months where I did them without looking. I've done them using nothing but a pencil and my rectum. I could continue even if I lost a hand, or had both eyes ripped out and flushed down the toilet. The only way I won't be able to keep doing them is if I'm in a coma."
He keeps the self-portraits in hardbound sketchbooks, and says he has room to store an additional 10 years worth.
"Taking a lot of outside things and incorporating them into yourself is much more true to the nervous system, than portraying the outside world. You're a constantly changing human being if you chose to be. Encountering various stimuli and choosing how to let it affect you is what we do every day. If you have a migraine you might not feel like going out and painting trees, but you can incorporate it into a self-portrait."
Saunders is diligently dedicated to the process as a whole. "One time I got really super drunk," said Saunders. "I'd just broken up with my girlfriend and went out walking around during a blizzard. I woke up at a friend's the next day, and felt terrible because I missed a day. When I got home and opened the door and saw on the floor where I'd walked back in a blackout, done a self-portrait and left again."
The environment in which the drawings are constructed plays a large role. For that reason, he has attempted briefly living in various differing locations to see how they affect the process.
"I wanted to live outside for a year and figured the woods behind the police station would be the safest place, but they didn't like it," said Saunders. "They said no one should have to live outside. I told them I wanted to, but they still didn't like it. So I'm living in the John Sevier Center now, but I'll still move outside for awhile at some point."
Saunders has devised a formula for constructing three-dimensional graphs of human feelings. The Y-axis deals with energy, the X-axis would be the social evaluation, and the Z-axis interprets the stress level involved.
"I have more than 7000 self-portraits. If I can chart the emotional placement of each, and put them all on a giant graph, it would be as close as possible to a complete portrayal of myself as a whole human."
Saunders has a CD being released soon in France, and an album due in the U.S. by the end of the year. The domestic release will be dealing with his time in jail, prior to enrolling in ETSU.
"It was going to be called 'Prison for Dummies,' but the 'for dummies' people said they were going to sue."
Saunders also has upcoming performances in Ohio and Michigan.
VISION: ISSUE 4
"The Tragic Liberation of Bryan Lewis Saunders"
by Geoff Pratt and Ty Gorman
On October 25th of 2006, I shit the Venus of Willendorf," Bryan Saunders tells us as we get settled for our interview.
Then he shows a well rendered drawing of his turd, which, sure enough, resembles the 24,000 year old sculpture that ETSU students are forced to memorize in Survey 1. Shitting this masterpiece, Saunders goes on to say, solidifies his place in Art History. He probably is joking about this, but it is impossible to tell.
Saunders came to ETSU in 1993, diverting from an English major to a BFA so that he could freely express his view of the world rather than write structured remedial level essays on topics such as the construction of a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. The English department had placed him in remedial classes, a shaming slap in the face that he roundly rejected.
His background differs from 99 percent of the art students that you will ever meet. At first he did not believe that he knew how to draw, and found it difficult to put pencil to paper next to students who had already practiced for years. "I was either going to get mad or cry," Saunders said, "so I got pissed off." His anger allowed him to use art to express himself and what he felt, and later he did not need anger in order to see the world in a different way every day.
Saunders was born in Washington DC in 1969. "I got in with the wrong crowd," he said of his turbulent years in Northern Virginia that landed him in the Hospital and Prison before he "escaped" the area at the age of 24. His escape led to his Uncle's rustic shack in a Blountville, Tennessee ex-commune, from which he made his way to a Kingsport homeless shelter before being accepted by ETSU. Saunders' legacy since that time includes such notorious exploits as moving to China to become a stand-up comedian, sewing his mouth shut for a photo session, painting with his feces and living in a garbage can for a conceptual project.
Saunders does not brag about these reactionary projects of his earlier years. They are stereotypical, he seems to think. He said, "You would read about the Vienna Actionist movement, people would cut themselves and spread blood on the audience or have sex with dead animals. People sew their mouths shut in tattoo magazines. But because [this is] Tennessee, people will think that it is controversial... In the grand scope of things, like Art Forum, it's nothing." The fascinating part about Saunders is his obsessive nature, and that he follows through with the kind of ideas rational people only dream about being crazy enough to undertake. Saunders does not seem to over-analyze the originality or social ramifications of his projects, but makes them personal, committing to them without losing their authenticity to irony or fashion.
When in Europe during his senior year, Saunders collected the signs of the homeless, "It would say on the sign: 'please, a little change to to feed the dog,' in French or 'Hungry, need food' in German. I would give them something they wanted in exchange for the sign. My idea was to draw on top of that. Instead of a cheap piece of Strathmore you could find at any store, I'ld be drawing on top of a good deed," he said.
Another exaple of Saunders' commitment to simple and open expression is his self portraits. Since 1995 he has drawn a self portrait everyday. He has never missed a day, and he is currently working on his 72nd black hardbound sketchbook. Saunders has now drawn over 6,500 self-portraits, covering the spectrum in both technical and conceptual style. He says that his favorite portraits occur while experiencing something: drugs, daydreams, sadness, all bleeding into the many versions of himself. In recent years Saunders has expressed himself through spoken word poetry. After being a stand-up comedian failed in China, I opted for stand-up tragedy, because the world sucks and it's tragic," he said. Contrasted to the sing-songy flowery flower child poetry or the new Beat style at an Asheville cafe, Saunders' method of using a megaphone and yelling at specific people in the audience gets mixed reviews. His goal is to make his audience aware that they are experiencing something -not an actual traumatic event, but a hyperreal picture of it. He admits he wants people to cry; sadness he says, is the most difficult emotion to display publicly.
Over the past few years his connections have grown significantly. His work has been sampled and appreciated by such artists as Lydia Lunch, Sage Francis, Z'EV, Todd Burris, and John Duncantoo name a few. Saunders has developed a network by directly contacting individuals online about his own work or getting to know them by sharing and selling the work of other artists, including his own work in the package. Saunders loves Johnson City as a base of operations. It provides a low cost of living that he needs. His art lives on the web: Myspace has made up 50 percent of my career. When I was in Cologne the kids were like, 'Myspace sucks,', but if it wasn't for myspace, I wouldn't have even been there," Saunders said.
November is a busy month for Saunders. He will be performing at the Bowery Poetry Club in New York City on November 20th, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Paris on the 22nd, Marseille on the 23rd, The Burn-Out Post-Crash Festival in Bordeaux on the 24th, and Emmetrop in Bourges on the 28th. With his commitment to creation, performance and reinvention, it is a safe bet that Johnson City will keep hearing from Bryan Saunders. If you would like to hear more, there are videos, poems and other Saunders media at www.myspace.com/therealbryanlewissaunders
THE BOWL: NUERO DOS ESPECIAL 4/20
So, Bryan, explain to us what it is that you do, as far as your art goes?
"Since March of '95, I've been drawing myself at least once a day, everyday for the rest of my life. I have over 6,300 self-portraits now...
For hundreds of years, visual artists have been putting the uniqueness of themselves into representations of the world around them. I decided to be different, and put the uniqueness of the outside world into representations of myself, it seemed more honest, more true to my Central Nervous System. The video artist David Larcher has titled it, "The Endlessly Reconstructing Auto-Autopsy". I wanted to make an encyclopedia of the self - I'm not a narcissist though - THEY'RE NOT FLATTERING ! I seldom share them with people though, because it's not about each singular image - it's about all of them together, a body, an action, a process, and it's impossible to present them all at once. It's also very therapeutic. Like an exorcism of sorts, day after day expelling demons, stress, anxiety, fears etc. You know - The garbage we go through everyday in life and dumping it out like trash in one big continuous creative act.
For years it kept me intraverted, so I got into storytelling as a way to come out of my shell and share, you know - to balance it out.".
That's definately understandable, so what made you decide to do this? Was there any one situation or just something that you decided to do?
"Well, I went to the Acoustic Coffee House to hear people reading poetry, and everyone there made a big deal about the fact that it was a "Free Speech Zone" and you could say whatever you wanted in there. So I gave it a try. I started off by reading a letter by Francis E. Dec Esq., "The Frankenstein Earphone Radio Slave Communist Gangster Computer God..." and it went over really well, it gave me the confidence I needed to really take writing seriously. But all of the creepy drunks and coke heads there hated me. "It's just shock value", "All you do is say fuck!" etc... So it didn't last long."
As far as the stortelling goes, I don't know if it would be possible to give an example or not, but could you try?
"Sure. When I performed the piece "38 dollars" there -
(A true story: about an overweight girl I once saw, offer to pay 38 dollars to anyone who would break her jaw - so she could get it wired shut and not eat anymore...)
It left a lot of people wondering why on earth would someone do that? So the following week I read an explanatory piece about overweight girls and girls with low or no self esteem, sucking dicks to be accepted, and how serious a problem it is. There were some overweight girls in the audience and they understandably got upset. NOT AT ME, but at the skinny Asian college girls that were laughing and carrying on up front. And unfortunately some beer distributors had come in from out of town that night, because they had heard that it was a "COOL PLACE" to hang out and they wanted to sample the beers there... They heard one or two verses from "Small Town Dark Secret" and said, "fuck this" and left. The smarmy sleazoid owner Jim Benalisha, cancelled "Poetry Night" because it cost him a big chunk of money. And my career was born. I KNEW THEN THAT I WAS DOING SOMETHING RIGHT."
"But believe it or not, the "Free Speech Zone" sign, still hangs on the wall, a marketing tool, conversation piece, an empty gimic useless and vain."
Do you draw other things besides the self portraits?
.
"Nope, I only draw myself, but I mean if I'm in a car accident that day, I'll draw the car too, like slam crunching smashed up inside my left over face."
So where can people catch your storytelling?
"I'm usually at Malaprops in Asheville, the 4th Thursday of every month, The Hideaway in Johnson City whenever they have open mics, if friends of mine have bands playing I'll play with them wherever they play, I like surprising people. I have 3 cd's out now with screwed up music backing me, so that would be a good place to start. They're available at my site (shipping included). May 18th,at The Hideaway, I'll be opening up for Z'ev , Sikhara and the Growth. Come see it, it'll be great, I'll have videos and music as well... Also on May 8th, I'll be appearing on Sage Francis' new record for Epitaph, titled "Human The Death Dance", and I have a Tape coming out on Teenage Whore Tapes, with Todd Burris of Kaontrol Kontraos."
Any last words?
"Be leery of signs. Once I drove to Alabama, and the first fruit stand I came to across the State Line had a sign that said, "COLOREDS WELCOME". It struck a nerve. I didn't know if they meant it or not. With language like that - surely they didn't. It confused me. The same with the "Free Speech Zone" sign. I've performed at many places here in Johnson City using the exact same material and have never had a problem with censorship. After all it's America ? The only place that advertises FREE SPEECH here, is the only place that DOESN'T allow it. So be wary of signs, chances are - THEY ARE INSTRUCTING THE EXACT OPPOSITE !!!"
GHETTOBLASTER (UNEDITED VERSION): Issue 19 / Page 20
On your MySpace page, you say you have mental problems. How do you deal with these on a day-to-day basis?
I've been labeled with: Antisocial Personality Disorder (as a child), Borderline (in my teens), Schizotypal (as a young adult), Paranoid Schizophrenic (at present)... but I believe all that says much more about the system of classification than it does about me as an individual. Their response to that, of course, is that I’m in denial. So I self-medicate with art, obsessively and constantly, and when things in my environment get too overwhelming, I check into a hospital and get medicated, get out, wean myself off the drugs and start over. Not a cycle I recommend, but I know myself well and have the art…
I've been living with it forever. Sometimes when I get "woggy" and can't understand what people are saying, I'll go to another country and fight the (imaginary) mental language problem with a (real genuine) language problem and make art... It depends on how severe the crisis is. I'm the most rational psychotic I know, if I even am psychotic? I'm fortunate in that respect; most aren't so lucky.
When did you start doing spoken word/ stand-up tragedy?
Several years ago I wrote a piece called "White Trash Psychobabble" and read it live. That would be where it all began. I had such terrible stage fright back then that I had to play a tape recording of it simultaneously on the boom box so whenever I froze up the tape would carry on without me and I could regain my composure. It was basically just "Cut-Up" negative self-talk mixed with vivid descriptions of all the trash I saw, on the street and gutter between my apartment and the grocery store. But I didn't get into it seriously then, and it was several more years before I started writing and performing regularly - AND THAT'S WHEN I NAMED IT "STAND-UP TRAGEDY.”
Are you active in other media besides the verbal?
Sometimes I'll go all-out and paint my face and use doll babies and exacto knives and make a real spectacle out of it, like a ritual sacrifice... But the writing has gotten a lot more important to me over these last two years, and I don't want to take anything away from the stories.
Although right now I am making videos to go with my dialogue because
my stage presence is for the most part the same: kneeling on stage rocking back and forth, purging myself of all of these Post-Tragic Shocking Traumatic experiences. The new videos definitely amplify all that, and Todd Burris AKA Kaontrol Kontraos, is amping it up even more with the Underground Noise.
I draw myself at least once a day. It's been over 12 years since I started, never missing a day, and I have over 6,300 self-portraits. No two are the same. The video artist David Larcher has titled the work, "The Endlessly Reconstructing Auto-Autopsy" and I think the title is fitting.
Would you say that your material is mostly true stories with some details made up, or made-up stories with true details?
For the most part I tell true stories, with minor made up details. I change words for rhyme and rhythm. Some pieces are based solely on dreams and "what if scenarios," like "Death of a Loser" and "I Quit.” Sometimes I'll change things for emotive impact, to convey the emotions I truthfully felt at the time.
Have you had writing classes/ teachers or are you an autodidact?
I went through the developmental English classes at East Tennessee State because the staff thought I was literary-ally defective. But that decision was based more on my subject matter than anything else. The creative writing department was so structured that I changed my major to Drawing because it offered more freedom of expression
For the most part I'm self-taught but I wouldn't say naive. I know what's been done. The common qualities my influences have are that they are all people that express themselves verbally - powerfully - honestly - and uniquely. That's something I wholeheartedly strive for.
What do you do: for work? for fun? for spiritual fulfillment and shit?
For work, I clean a machine shop. For spiritual fulfillment, I do what I do on stage. Letting people know what's wrong with me, themselves and the rest of the world.
What was the journey to China like? And what do you think of the paranoid supposition that the Chinese will soon replace the US as a hegemonic superpower with economic control over most of the globe?
The journey was comfortable and cheap ($600 round trip). I stayed for several months until my visa expired. I went there with the delusion that I would become a famous Stand-Up Comedian and in one year have my own TV show. On the 3rd day, I found out there is no such thing as Stand-Up Comedy in China. They put on sitcom plays. Skit humor. So I wrote a pilot called, "The Drunken Tourist" (written with only the language from the Berlitz guide), but apparently what's funny here is not allowed to be funny there. I could tell jokes on the street about diarrhea and drunkenness and have big crowds die laughing, but it was inappropriate for the stage. It was nice being the only white person in a city of millions.
As for the soon to be economic super powerhouse? I say, "BRING IT ON! GUO LAI!" China is by far the best, safest place I've ever lived. The people there make other humans seem rude, lazy and uncivilized. Nothing like I imagined it to be. I HAVE NOTHING BUT RESPECT, DEEP ADMIRATION AND LOVE FOR THE MAJESTIC BEAUTIFUL CHINESE PEOPLE. When you see people doing Tai Chi on the streets they are armed - even the elderly - with really heavy swords. The great-grandmothers over there are practicing chopping people up for exercise, it's no joke. Watch for 10 minutes, and you can tell exactly which move CUTS THE HEAD OFF. GOD HELP THE ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE'S REPUBLIC OF CHINA.
Byran Saunders lives in Johnson City, Tennessee. He can be found on MySpace at http://www.myspace.com/therealbryanlewissaunders. A sample from his, “PCP Poetry” can be heard on the new Sage Francis track, “Going Back to Rehab.”