I found out about Jeff Levine’s website, LostforLife from a mutual friend. It’s a site built around daily journal entries about his solo meanderings WITHOUT a car around Los Angeles. It’s changed a bit since I first asked these questions, mostly in the addition of a weekly cartoon panel. Check it out!
K: How did you come up with the idea for the site?
J: I can't remember exactly. It was one of those things that slowly evolved. First I set up a page just to see if I could do it, to learn how to do it, then I kept slowly adding different features to the thing - trying out whatever would pop into my head. Some things stayed around and grew, other things disappeared or died.
K: How does living in Los Angeles inform the content?
J: Place has always been an important part of my thinking. I've lived in quite a few different cities and I like the way these different places can alter your mood, ideas, the types of things you do or see, how time is spent. A lot of the writing is soaked in this city. Los Angeles informs the content of the site the same way it informs the content of my life.
K: How does publishing on the internet function in comparison to making paper zines?
J: It's nice to hold a printed, finished work in your hands. It's not so nice (for me) to deal with attempting to distribute that printed work. I've completely had my fill of dealing with printers,post offices, money - if it wasn't for Internet self-publishing I seriously doubt I would be making any creative work for public consumption, simply because trying to get that work to the public in a printed form is something I find exhausting, completely no fun, and financially foolish. Publishing to the net is extremely inexpensive, a good outlet for my current mindset, easy as can be, exciting in it's ability to reach more people than traditional small press print media, people anywhere on earth with the press of a button. I've never really known ANY real artistic satisfaction, so in that sense there's no difference between traditional print and Internet publishing for me (yet). It's all just something to do. It makes the time go. I enjoy the doing.