Zine School Reunion
The
zine movement began in its present form in the early '80's with the Gutenburg
Xerox machine. Lainie Duro, writer, publisher and inspired mother, has
been an integral part of that movevent. She currently blogs with verve
at Full Bleed, one of
the best reads on the internet. She also edits a collaborative webzine
called Clothespin Revolution,
and has published numerous chapbooks, some of which are still available
here.
I met Lainie in 1985, through a classified ad in the back of Flipside. She was doing a zine at the time called Lime Green Bulldozers, which inspired me to start my own zine. Ever since then she's been a source of creative energy, perception and sincerity in a cynical world. Here she talks to us about her life in zines.
What inspired you to start your zine? Was any particular zine the catalyst?
Hah...actually, the
name of the zine that was a catalyst was Mutant Cornflakes. It was my
friend, Pam's zine. Prior to that, I used to read Flipside and
Maximum Rock and Roll a lot, and I placed a classified in both
of them at one point, seeing if I could get someone to write for a zine.
I think I just enjoyed writing, and I felt isolated, and I saw in punk
rock a whole world full of people who also felt isolated and enjoyed writing.
I sort of wanted to gather those people together so that if we weren't
close in proximity...at least we were able to share our thoughts and feelings.
It gave me hope that life was more than what I saw on a daily basis, I
think.
Can you give us a brief history of your different zine projects?
Lime Green Bulldozers was the first. I named it after these tremendous green bulldozers I saw in a field on my way to school one day. It seemed bizarre that they were lime green, and I had a vision(that I thought at the time was original, but I'm sure it never was) of these giant green bulldozers plowing over cities and belching out flowers from their exhaust pipes as trees, forests and wildlife popped up behind them. I was pretty idealistic. That must have started in 1986 or so.
I started But A
Twist of the Lip in, I think, 1988...because I didn't want to include
music or reviews in Lime Green Bulldozers. I think I also started
"twist" to sort of explore a more brash, rude side of my personality.
I didn't give this alter-ego another identity at that point, but it definitely
was a different me than the livelifeloveLainie
that I portrayed in LGB. "twist" also took on a sort of community feel
when I moved out of my mom's house and into an apartment with a bunch
of friends. We all would work together on reviews and articles. One of
the things we did that was prescient of the blog movement was we used
to leave the disk of reviews at Kinko's (where everyone worked!) and we'd
all just add on to each other's reviews, making nasty remarks and joking
around and just being immature little brats. It was a lot of
fun...I really miss that energy. I think I'd love to start a blog like
that, but I fear that I've become too much of a grown up to do so.
bAnal Probe was started in 1992, the year I moved to Austin, TX
from Lubbock. I was still doing Lime Green Bulldozers, but I missed
"twist" & separated from my fellow smart-asses, it didn't feel fair
to go back to that format. So I started bAnal Probe as a solo project.
The idea behind bAnal Probe from the start was to print highly
personal articles that were also ultimately political. Sort of the idea
that you can't know until you've actually experienced. I mean, what better
way to combat the death penalty than to publish writing from someone on
death row, right? I also wanted to do away with the elaborate fancy layouts
that made LGB and "twist" really time-consuming. While I loved doing the
collaged backgrounds of both zines, I found it was getting in the way
of releasing issues in a timely manner. bAnal Probe, from
the beginning, was very straightforward with very little fanciness or
artiness about it. It was also more rough-edged and political. I used
to print off stickers with each issue. I also started writing under the
pseudonym "drucilla b. blood" at the start of the zine.
For a brief time from 1998-1999, I was doing a little quarterly review
zine called The Quarterly Pearl - just to get that stuff out of
the way. I tended to write longer reviews for bAnal Probe that
fit more into the theme of personal experience, and I wanted to give credit
to the other zines I was reading without interfering with that, so
Quarterly Pearl allowed me to do that. Plus it was cheap to mail,
because it was only one double-sided sheet of paper...and I was able to
steal the copies from my office fairly easily.
I'm currently working on a collaborative webzine called Clothespins
for the Revolution - we're currently in the very early stages, but
I'm hoping that it will be a work of resistance to consumer culture and
a supportive community atmosphere for people who are struggling to combat
oppression on any of the millions of levels it exists.
You are considering building an online zine archive of the numerous zines in your collection. Can you tell us a little about how you envision this project?
Wow. This is like
my dream. What I would like to do is have a searchable database of zines
in my collection (and I can add to that collection) so people can find
articles from zines or even entire zines that they are interested in and
download a copy. This would, ultimately, take a ton of time and someone
experienced with online databases, which I am not. Alternately, I could
just list what I have and see if anyone is interested in viewing copies
and making those copies available as requested (after, of course, doing
a rigorous search for the original "copyright" holder). I could charge
a small fee for the labor involved in scanning...or accept donations...orsomething.
This is all in very very vision phase, and I would need a lot of help
and I'm just not finding anyone to help me even though I've sort of brought
this up a few times over the past few years.
What I'm starting to think now is I can just slowly read and review the
zines in my collection and post those reviews in a blog somewhere and
see if anyone is interested and then see if enough people are interested
to start archiving. Because I have no idea if I"m just being a bookish
freak by thinking this stuff should be preseved digitally.
What are some your favorite zines in your collection?
Absolutely my favorite that springs to mind in my recent collection (and I don't do a lot of zining these days because money is tight and I don't have anything to trade, really) is I'm Johnny and I Don't Give a Fuck. But I love all of the old issues of my friends' zines most. I cherish them. Like Dove Politik (allyson!) and Tabitha's A Glass of Daisies (I wonder where she went) Do The Dead Know What Time It Is (by my ex-roommate Angi) and there was this really cool one from Seattle called Pansy that was awesome. I also have a couple of issues of this really neat zine called Wiring Department that was put out by a guy who ran a record label called Insight. Those are really beautifully done in a way that we take for granted now, but at the time it was really difficult to get the look he achieved. I'm sure if I looked through I would ooh and aah all over. There was this one zine called Eulipian that was like computer art before computers really existed that could do that kind of art, and I always thought that was neat. I just remembered 2 more zines that totally inspired me... There was CEHSOIKOE (by john porcellino, who now does king kat comix) and Yurus' Paradox I remember we would take things in trade for our zines.
Once I got an earring made of a chandelier crystal that I loved and wore all the time What were some of the strangest (or coolest) things you got in exchange for Lime Green Bulldozers?
I think a lot of
people really gave me their souls. I acquired a couple of roommates through
Lime Green Bulldozers. Maybe a friend or two or a
hundred. Actually the most bizarre TANGIBLE trade I ever got was from
a woman in Maine who sent me a necklace (and this was fairly recently,
like in the last 5 years) that has "live life love" in brail on it. Which
is amazing, because that's how I've been signing my name for the
past 15 years or so. One of the funniest things about zining for so long,
and doing it fairly anonymously, is the people I have met by chance who
have read the zine. My husband is one of those people. The first time
I ever met him, at a party, we were talking and somehow it came out that
I was the person behind bAnal Probe and he sort of gasped and said
"YOU'RE dru blood?!" I think he had a crush on me or something because
of the zine. So, I guess in some respects, I also got a husband in exchange
for zining...hahaha.
You have such a great memory. Do you think that your writing life
has aided this? Do you ever see your
writing as a kind of memory project?
What was the question again (ararar) - I actually have a horrible memory. But, since I write everything down, I'm able to make people think I have a good memory. So, definitely writing is a memory project b/c writing is my memory.
What are your thoughts on this "next generation" of zines?
I am woefully out of the zine scene right now, being too poor to publish anything to trade or to purchase much. I think blogging is like a free way of zining, though. The unfortunate thing is that you don't reach a whole segment of people who don't have access to computers, so it's like "zining for the privileged..." Then again, the zine crowd has always been fairly privileged anyway...so maybe it's not much different.
In 1983, alternative culture was very male-identified. How did you negotiate this, being a creative feminist?
I never called myself a feminist until I had children. I was in denial
that sexism really truly existed until then. I mean, I think I noticed
it...I'm sure I pointed it out, but I didn't really understand it fully
until I was on the freaking narrow bed in the hospital, pushing with all
my might, wanting to walk around and being told by the man (in
the form of a female nurse, no less) that I wasn't allowed to. That was
when I realized what patriarchy was. I had a homebirth for the second
child....but that has nothing to do with zining.
I think my perception was always that it was less of a boys vs. girls
thing and more of a bands vs. zines thing where the punk bands got all
of the glory and the zines just sort of reported on it. But I really was
ignorant about women's issues back then. I'm sure if I were to go back
to then with what I know now, I would see things a lot
differently. I think I was pretty male-identified at the time, too.
You've written about the sexual harassment you witnessed as an everyday event at your junior high. I know many of us can relate to this. Do you feel your creative impulse, later taking the form of your zine, was somehow a protection against this hostile environment?
I think of that a
lot. And I'm pretty sure my creativity existed before this, but my desire/need
to mark myself as "different" was pretty much born of the disadvantages
I saw in being "desirable." I enjoyed making myself look as different
from "them" as I felt. And now that I understand I have a history of sexual
inappropriateness being enacted upon me, I know that shaving my head and
wearing goth make-up was a healthy way for me to create a safe space for
myself. I remember very clearly being approached by one of the "popular"
guys when I was in high school. My friend had just shaved my head in the
bathroom and he kept saying stuff like "do you think you're pretty when
you do that? Do you think that's pretty? Do you think your make up makes
you look pretty?" and I felt very strong and unafraid as I looked him
in the eye and said "Do you think I want scum like you to be attracted
to me?" That was such an empowering thing to me that I can clearly visualize
the exact place it happened.
I think it was very valuable to me to have an outlet. I don't know what I would have done without it. Honestly I could say that punk rock saved my life. It gave me something to think about that was larger than my life...and it brought me to places where I could be with people who had similar experiences. So not only did my creativity set me apart from others, but it also brought me closer to the people that I really truly needed to be communicating with.
The mixed tapes you made for me in the mid eighties were some of my most prized possessions. How do you think music informed your zine project and your life during the eighties?
During the 80's? Wow. The same way it does now, as I seem to be falling back on all of that old music. I think I started to say it above, but it bears repeating...punk rock saved my life. I was always so appalled at people who would say that punk rock was negative or bad for kids or what have you because so much or what I experienced was positive and life affirming and very empowering. I mean, here were a bunch of kids who most of them weren't even old enough to vote and they were making bands and record labels and zines and you name it. It was a very amazing time. And I'm not sure if it was so much the music as the community. But the music, I think, was another thing that divided me from "them" and united me with "us"
In your blog you talk about the silencing that went on in your family-- the persistent invalidation of your experiences. I think many of us can relate to this. Do your feel your first zines were a response to this silencing? A resistance?
I was absolutely not conscious of this at that time. No. the fact that I was silenced as a child by my family is something that has only come up recently. Although it could have been a subconscious thing. I can say that I was pretty lonely. That I was the only member of my personal family, and I do know that I felt a need to create another family for myself. I didn't at the time understand where that came from. I have more of an idea now.
The
zine impulse-- that confessional rant rendered with such verve has taken
the form of a blog. What I get from your blog is a daily record
of living consciously, of resisting consumer culture and its attendant
mental garbage cluttering the landscape. And living daily with love.
Does anything from your early zine work inform your blog?
ha! Certainly. My zine and my blog have always been all about me. I'm glad that's what I appear to be. That's what I strive for.