Interviewed by Nicholas Zurbrugg
N.Z. Perhaps I could begin by asking you what projects you are presently working upon?
J.C. One of my most recent projects is called The First Meeting of the Satie Society. It consists of a plurality of texts which are conceived of as presents for Erik Satie. For instance, I made eighteen writings through the Essay on Civil Disobedience by Thoreau. All of these texts are in the form of mesostics, but the string words of the mesostics are titles of compositions by Erik Satie. So that Thoreau's present is written on the title Messe des pauvres, since Satie was known as ''Monsieur le pauvre", and Thoreau said that the best thing a man can do for his culture when he is rich is to carry out the projects that he had when he was poor. So, I thought of poverty as a bond between Thoreau and Satie and so on with the others. I also used a text by Chris Mann to write mesostics. I think of Chris Mann' s work as being fresh and a new direction in poetry. And Satie said "Show me something new and I'll begin all over again!" I've managed to make all of this material - which is over two hundred pages - accessible electronically through an organization in San Francisco called The Well, which means ''Whole Earth 'Lectronic Link’". I believe that the people who started that started the Whole Earth Catalogue earlier in the century. So now, no matter where one is, one can contact this work.
I'm also working on Europera, an opera without a libretto. There's no plot. It's a collage of... The rest of this article is available to subscribers of Eyeline