Jordan Castro Interview

I read the name ‘Jordan Castro’ (I recently read a thing that included the middle name ‘Julio’ and inexplicably giggled a little) after reading a Tao Lin novel and then being interested in his and Noah Cicero’s blogs ~2/3 years ago.

I think when I first read some of Jordan’s writings I liked it. I think I then discovered he was ~2 years younger than me and I’d ‘attack’ his writing until I felt ok about myself or something. Then I noticed that and stopped doing whatever that was. LOL. :|

“YOUNG AMERICANS” is Jordan’s poetry book recently published by Civil Coping Mechanisms. I liked it (you can see my review on the books Goodreads page).

Here are some parts I put marks next to during my first ‘full’ reading of this book at a diner at ~7 a.m. after a night of laying in a friend’s bed and not sleeping:

         'i feel like a b grade actor trying to ‘salvage my career’ by taking any

      opportunity i get to pretend i’m someone else

i don’t do enough nice things for the people i care about but from

      now on i’m going to do more – hopefully enough - nice things for

      them

it will never be possible to do enough nice things for a person'

*

'everybody knows

i’ve been gone for like 10 min

pooping during class'

 *

'when i look at my face in the  mirror

it’s everybody ever looking at my face in the mirror

i’m listening to paul baribeau

before going to a paul baribeau concert'

Jordan seems like a productive person; he’s in a band called the Ohioans, he has published books, and has many things published on the internet.

I emailed Jordan soliciting his book in exchange for a review and interview saying I am a poor and he seemed like he would be down for something like this.

The following interview was conducted through email.

What was your parents reaction to the book?

I don't know if my dad's read it. He bought some copies via Amazon to give to a staff member (he's a periodontist) and some of his patients. My mom said she thought "the writing was good, but as a mom, it's a little upsetting." She linked it on Facebook and some of her friends ordered it. Both of my parents have said something about "not prefacing the book when people ask to read it"/just letting people read it and think what they think.

How did students/teachers you attended high school with react to the book?

I don't know if any of my high school teachers know I have a book out. Some of my former classmates have expressed interest in/supported/ordered the book, but I don't know how most of my former classmates view the book.

What were some thoughts you had naming the book “YOUNG AMERICANS”?

There's a poem in the collection titled "YOUNG AMERICANS," which I wrote before I decided to organize the poems into a collection. I thought it sounded good as a title and I felt like it kind of "encompassed," to some degree, many of the things I wrote about in the collection, in a vague, funny-seeming way, to me.

Could you describe the ‘set-up’ of the band The Ohioans? Who does what and such in the band?

I play guitar, sing, drum on most of the recordings, and write some of the songs/all of the lyrics. Evan Swenson, who's been one of my best friends since I was 3 years old, plays bass. Ziggy, who's been one of my best friends since I was ~13 years old, plays "lead" guitar, piano/banjo/[other things] on recordings, sings backup vocals, writes some of the songs, and records/mixes our mixtapes. Andrew Borstein, plays drums when we play live and on some of the recordings too.

In my house I showed a few friends videos of your band (512 and What Dying's For) then asked them what they would wanna ask you. Here’s 2 question things that came out of that:

 1. “Looks like he’s having so much fun. Why can’t I do that? Like that seems great. Like what the fuck. [laugh] ‘Fuck him’ is my question.”

“Yeah. I was thinking I wanted to yell something like that at him too.”

 2. “[something]. Ask him. Ask him. Ask him like what animal parts he’d have. If he could choose. Like I’m picturing maybe an octopus tentacle just coming out of his side right now. What animal appendages would he have if he could choose? And why? Make sure you ask why… Are you gonna ask why?”

Any response to those 2 things?

1.) S/O to my haters.

2.) I'd want to have a turtle-like shell so I could hide from people/things whenever I wanted to, and I’d want to have wings so I could fly/shit on people from above.

As I understand, you went to college for a short period of time and then stopped. I’m currently attending college, it often seems horribly disappointing or something. How was your time at college and what were some thoughts that went into your decision to stop attending?

I don't think I'd be able to adequately answer the question "How was your time at college?" without typing like 70,000 words.

I decided not to go back to school for many reasons. Some of the reasons include wanting to get clean/go to rehab, focus more on writing, and generally "get my shit together.” I viewed college as "a job" - my parents supported me monetarily (my "pay") while I was in school (my "work") - but at some point I decided I wanted to become financially independent, and since I didn't know what I was doing in college - I didn't have a major, I didn't want to do anything other than write, and I didn't want to take writing/literature classes - I decided to just work a "shitty job" to account for the majority of my monetary income and to keep writing until I could make enough money from writing for that to be my job.

Do you have any recommendations/suggestions/tid-bits for young writers who want to pursue writing/art? 

Buy my books. Follow me on Twitter. I don't know. Work hard. Don't worry about what other people are doing. Work hard. Follow me on Twitter...

Most of the time I feel like I’m just a person who writes, not a "writer." Writing is something I do, but I also eat, sleep, fart, walk, etc. I wouldn’t refer to myself as an "eater," "sleeper," "farter" or "walker," I think. People are never like, "Do you have any advice for people who want to be a farter?" People just fart. People just write. I don't know. I feel like certain things cause people to feel the need to define themselves based on things like their job, political views, taste in music, hobbies, [whatever], but I think all that really does is separate people into abstract categories that don't really mean anything.

My advice for aspiring farters is to fart - don't clench your butt cheeks, don't apologize or say "excuse me" - just fart.