On Fri, May 8, 2009 at 3:54 AM, <jievstheworld@gmail.com> wrote:

Matt,

Check out my manuscript in progress. It's almost done. I think. It might need to be a little longer, but I'm not sure and it certainly is a lot raw, but I want to know if you can read it and let me know, cool? Cool.

-Jacob


On Fri, May 8, 2009 at 12:47 PM, <mattrohrer1@gmail.com> wrote:

Jacob,

I read half of this. It's really good. Call me and we'll chat about it. Very magical mystical realist. I sense a little Ariana Reines who I know you love. XO
 
-Matt



On Sat, May 9, 2009 at 9:17 PM, Jacob Evans <jievstheworld@gmail.com> wrote:

Matt,

A pocket dictionary, endless peanut butter and banana sandwiches, the mullet of childhood, the mythic imagination of pop music, and people who use phrases like the mythic imagination of, you know, this is a serious conversation. A swollen tongue. This looks like a real email, and maybe it is, should I start over? Should it start with:

Matt,

Hi, how are you? I'm glad you like my new poems. Do you feel good about yourself? Do you feel like there's something you were meant to do? In a little bit, I'm going to start describing seemingly random things. I won't tell you what each of them means, but they will mean something:

Dear Matt,

Right now, I'm thumbing through a Webster's Vest Pocket Dictionary that I've had forever and I had a peanut butter and banana sandwich for dinner. Earlier, Josh and I were walking on Sunset. We had fish tacos and talked about our childhood mullets. This email had three false starts. I'm in a good mood. I'm going to go sit on the front porch and play the guitar.

-Jacob



On Sat, May 9, 2009 at 11:43 PM, Matt Rohrer <mattrohrer1@gmail.com> wrote:
Jacob,
 
I checked my email hoping to hear back from a record label, publishing house, some type of organization recognizing my mythic imagination and here was this email from someone name jievs who apparently thinks he's the world. His tongue is swollen and the way we spell tongue makes little to no sense. Once, in high school, I did E while listening to Korn and having sex with a hot girl with huge boobs. I actually never did any of those things in high school and that's what makes me unique. I feel OK about the parts of myself that are myself, and kinda bummed about the parts that are controlled by my parents' grumpy ghosts. My neighbor listens to radio rock at the seven in the morning. To get even, I play my guitar all day and sing about being a substitute teacher. Today, a bicyclist called me an asshole because I almost ran him over. He didn't realize that I am also a bicyclist who almost gets run over. I understood his anger and wanted to flatten him under my vehicle. Try removing the word but from your vocabulary and replacing it with and. You will likely have positive shifts in your mood. This email had no false starts and has several false endings. The end. Psych! The end. Psych! The end.
 
Marisa's,
 
-Matt



On Sun, May 10, 2009 at 1:48 PM, Jacob Evans <jievstheworld@gmail.com> wrote:

Matt,

Last night there were birds chirping in my neighborhood and I felt good about it. It was as if I was living in some enormous walled garden, not a neighborhood at all. A medieval desert city on a hill that sloped towards the sea. But that's not right because medieval walled cities, even those in the Mediterranean, don't have helicopters swooping overhead. Is that a spotlight shining in your yard? Have the cops arrived to break up the party? Just sit on the porch, play that guitar, sing that little song you wrote about being a wicked man digging up bodies in the graveyard, cooking up the pieces with some beans and lard. It's in moments like this that irony is important. We doubt the veracity of all symbols. We believe and disbelieve in the power of the sign. Sincerity is dead, we ridicule ourselves, and ride bicycles through endless city streets.
 
Previously, we started with false starts and ended with false beginnings, we should do the sensible thing: begin at the beginning. You thought tongue was weird to spell, wait until you get a load of beginning. Why the extra n? Why not begining?

I like the idea of a substitute teacher pop musician. You should write about it. It could be a compelling novel or nonfiction account. Take notes about everything. Write about writing songs. Write about the act of writing songs, songs about being a substitute teacher. It could be a compelling nonfiction account. It could be the compelling nonfiction account of a male nanny, surfer, poet, musician, publisher writing about writing songs; songs about being a substitute teacher, surfer, poet, male nanny. It could be totally cyclical.  It could be about the epiphany that changed it all, allowed you to realize what you needed to do. I'm big on epiphanies and compelling nonfiction accounts.

I'm 29, but I realize that my emotional age, if my emotional age is to be gauged by the ages of the girls I meet online, is actually between 19-25. What does that say about me? I wonder about our motives for sharing things with each other. Sometimes, to connect. Other times, to drive a wedge. To say, hey, look, I don't need you, nor do I want you.

I am going to write about internet dating and LA bicycling and other things. Bruxia for example. It means involuntarily grinding one's teeth. There's a part in Poems for Teeth where it just repeats brux, brux, brux, over and over. That must be where he got it from.

I'm sorry I wasn't from a record label or from a publishing company. I'm sorry. Maybe someday.

Love,

-Jacob


On Tue, May 12, 2009 at 12:02 PM, Matt Rohrer <mattrohrer1@gmail.com> wrote:

Jacob,

If we use Small Desk Press money to put out my band's CD and publish your writing, would that make us corrupt politicians? There is a pile of surfboards in my bedroom that grows and grows. It occupies the space where my bed once was. It is pushing me towards the computer. Surf wax smells like root-beer and there's no good reason for that. Bruxia is ruining my molars and giving me constant headaches. I say: Be positive. Be positive. Pain is a gift given by the body, a warning sign or indicator that something needs to shift. Don't forget Jacob, you are a record label and publishing company and bearded earthwalker.

Yesterday I walked into the room and said, "Please turn off your phones in my class. If we want this thing to last, we need to act like we mean it, and I believe that we're all talking about the same things. You know, the other day, all the people in my path looked like they were really trying to go somewhere." They said,"What does he mean." I said: "What did I just say? Your name is on the chalkboard anyway you want to look at it." I told them how I believe the sun is knocking on the windowsill, and if we let it in, we need to accept some wind. I told them how I have a car that overheats when I drive too far, how it makes me feel so stuck. Three fifteen came and I picked up my bag. They asked me,"Where are you going? Can we come with you? The only thing we'll bring is our backpacks with our I-Pods in them." I answered, "I see your scribbles on the wall. I hear you singing. I know what you need. I'm here to bring it."

Fondly,

-Matt
 

On Tue, May 12, 2009 at 1:23 PM, Jacob Evans <jievstheworld@gmail.com> wrote:

Dear Matt,

I think I love you. Not in the way one loves a parent, or a woman, or an old pair of shoes, or that book, you know, the one you read so many times the binding breaks and the pages slip loose into the air like little birds caught in a great wind, swirling over the ocean in a huge circle. And when I say love, maybe I mean remember, like you make me remember that people don't have to be one way, not that they are, but there's a current, a direction maybe. Like we're being herded. Go that way! Why? Shut up, just go! The pile of surfboards in the corner, it smells like root beer or maybe it doesn't, the wind blows, the car overheats, is that salt collecting on your skin? You know we could probably scrape that off and collect it in piles on clean bits of parchment and sell it as a Bay Area artisinal salt. The foodies would eat it up. There would be The Salt Of Depression, The Salt Of Joy, The Salt Of Writing On The Blackboard, The Salt Of Working On A Toyota Van.

But that realization, that your students need something from you and not just the lesson that you're teaching, that's big. Like those epiphanies I'm big on. We need more. We need to be less selfish and more crazy.

But back to that direction. I think as a culture we focus a lot on doing, accomplishing: What have you done, what have you bought, what do you do? Well, maybe sometimes, we need to undo, to learn the virtues of simplicity, of cracking up, of joyful refusal (I refuse to buy things for fun, I refuse to work when possible, I refuse to); this is a big mess, but I'm not sorry. In fact, no I'm not not not not not sorry and these are not negations of each other (a negative times a negative equals a positive), but adamant refusals, reiterations.

One side effect of doing ecstasy is teeth grinding. I think it's part of a mild serotonin depletion. I never did drugs in high school, but all of my friends did and I liked that because it made them act as unhinged as I felt. And I always hated Korn. Always.

I think it would make us corrupt politicians, despite what some have said and others have done.

I wonder.

Always,

-Jacob



On Tue, May 12 at 10:34 PM Matt Rohrer <mattrohrer1@gmail.com> wrote:


Jacob,

I love you too. The idea that there is "a way" to love a woman is offensive. Please delete it from the record. And while you're at it, please delete the whole record because it's just easier that way. If I wrote you an actual letter, and you decided to delete it, you would have to burn it, which would be impractical in so many ways; you'd have to find a safe place, perhaps the trash receptacle by your desk, you'd have to disconnect the battery from your smoke detector and open all the windows, find a match, a place to strike it, its ashes would haunt the corners of your wastebasket. Where do the ghosts of our emails go? 333 pages into our inboxes. Do not be tempted to resurrect them. Let the dead have their piece. Let go of all attachment. Let go.

In high school my best friends were all derelicts. The Mormon brothers who robbed professional skateboarders' houses, spiked their hair with gelatin and "fucked with crystal." My flat topped friend who tagged in every dry canal, skateboarded in every parking garage, went home to a dad who called him "faggot" between Miller Lites and cigarette stained walls. There is only one way to love a parent: like water loves the drain. There's something exciting happening here in the light blue email box. What is relevant to the Matt Rohrer and Jacob Evans collective? Tongue sores, kayaks, and higher thinking are relevant according to our Google sidebar advertisements. Does including that make this Flarf? Don't be self aware. Don't be. There is no self.  There is salt in the corners of our eyelids as salty as the saltiest sea. "Jacob Evans' ghost is not grumpy" you said in your grumpiest text message voice.

Bestly,

-Matt