Jase Daniels & Forrest Armstrong
John Edward Lawson

John Edward Lawson: Please tell us about This City is Alive.

Jase Daniels: Forrest can probably answer this one better than me.

Forrest Armstrong: This City is Alive is a surreal novella that Jason Daniels and I put together. It merges the experimental nature of beat writers like Burroughs and Ginsberg with the modern surrealist sensibility of Steve Aylett’s novels. The story follows two lines; Chevy as he leaves the bleak, empty island he was born on, and a homeless man named Simon Klepper enduring life on an eerie dystopian city in the middle of the ocean.

JEL: How did your collaboration come about? Was the prose crafted around the images, vice versa, or were they developed simultaneously?

JD: I made contact with Forrest through Mondo Bizarro, the old Bizarro forum. I made a couple of posts asking if anybody would be up for collaborating on a book and it went from there.

Initially the idea was for me to produce some art and Forrest would tie it all together. It didn’t really happen like this in the end but it was a good starting point.

FA: Jason and I spent a couple months just brainstorming and throwing ideas off each other before we began either of our contributions to the project. Jason envisioned the dirty, urban environment and the arctic wasteland our two main characters come from, and developed a lot of the setting detail for the story. I was working more with characters and plot, and bouncing off of his prompts. After we were done with the initial brainstorming we just reacted to each other’s work to keep things going. For example, the red capsules were Jason’s idea, the concept of them being used to deport insubordinates was my contribution. I can’t remember who decided they should be secreting acid onto their victim.

We both definitely knew we wanted to channel our surreal impulses into it.

JEL: Does having images accompany such amgrim text draw readers in or make things even more grotesque?

FA: Jase could probably answer this better, but if you ask me, Jason’s paintings are no less “grim” than my writing; if anything they are more grotesque and work to make the entire picture even more terrifying. But that’s good, that’s what this story needed. I’m not a horror author or a gory author or anything like that, and neither is Jason an artist working strictly along those lines, but this is a violent, frustrated story, and I feel like every measure taken in it to bring it to what it’s become was the necessary one.

It’s also important to remember that while I was the writer and Jason was the visual artist, we put our heads together in the conception of this novella. The images are the mood of my writing, because I was writing to his input and he was illustrating to my input. It was a beautiful collaboration.

JD: Hopefully a bit of both. I don’t feel as though the illustrations are grotesque in a way that would repulse anybody. In fact I think there is a fair amount of humor in the images and the text, but I guess it all depends on how you look at things. The combination of the two is just meant to achieve a more complete experience of This City is Alive.

JEL: Forrest, you have worked on both sides of the fence as both editor and author. What are the pros and cons of each? Do you prefer one over the other?

FA: I much prefer writing. That’s what I set out to do, that’s what I dropped out of high school to pursue. I liked editing The Swallow’s Tail because I love literature and the concept of putting together a whole new journal to showcase literature that may not be seen otherwise appealed to me. I did that strictly for the passion, there was never any money generating from it. It’s definitely more workish, while writing is more like jumping off a bridge, everyday—I’m sure any writer will know what I’m talking about when I say that—I think it’s commonly referred to as “facing the void.” Writing is scarier. Editing a journal is sitting down at a computer and putting in the time and energy to get everything right. But writing is infinitely more rewarding, in my opinion. I’m sure there are people who would say the same about editing—but that’s good, we need people on both sides.

The Swallow’s Tail is done for now. Until I can get the resources to put out a truly extraordinary journal—and more importantly, pay my authors—I’m not going to do it anymore. Writing, I’ll be doing till death.

JEL: Jason, your illustrations and cover designs are all incredibly distinctive. How did you develop your aesthetic?

JD: I have been working on it since I was a kid, but it wasn’t until 2004 that I made the conscious decision to put everything together into a complete package. Back in 1999 I was unemployed and as part of a government scheme I was sent on a multi-media design program; I think I came out of it with a pretty worthless qualification but I learnt quite a lot and I also discovered that when I was sitting behind a computer working on my images there was a direct connection between me and the image. It became possible for me to experiment freely and feel as though the result was a finished piece, whereas before, with a drawing or painting, it always felt like there was a stage missing from the process.

It took me years to get my hands on my own computer equipment, and in that time I developed my traditional art skills, drawing, etc. During those years I also did my degree in animation, and experimented with sound. Somehow that led me to try and work sculptural and sound elements into a two dimensional piece which had no noise or duration. The events that came before and which followed along with all the unregistered stimuli got mashed together and put into one final image.

There are still plenty of avenues I wish to explore and I am certain that my work will evolve further. As to where it will go next I can’t say for sure, but I am excited to find out.

JEL: How would you classify your work, particularly This City is Alive? Would you consider yourselves part of the Bizarro movement?

JD: I can’t speak for Forrest but for the moment I think I do. My art didn’t really fit comfortably into anything else, and when I discovered Bizarro a few years ago, it felt like something I had to be part of.

FA: I am a surrealist, in the tradition of Dali’s paintings (as opposed to Breton’s manifesto), I suppose. This City is Alive is surreal but not always as extreme surrealism as I practice in other works. I love dream aesthetics; the majority of my work runs completely on dream aesthetics. But I wouldn’t really consider myself part of the Bizarro movement. To me, Bizarro is an umbrella that encompasses a lot of different styles of writing, and surrealism sits comfortably under that umbrella. I embrace Bizarro because it appreciates the kind of fiction I practice. But as far as the movement goes, I’m not so sure. I wouldn’t associate myself with any movement. I’m definitely supportive of it.

JEL: Can we expect any future Armstrong/Daniels collaborations?

FA: We have discussed it and are definitely both open to it, but we don’t have any definite plans. I loved working with Jason. I respect him as an artist tremendously. We did everything through international e-mail, never met face-to-face. Jason lives in England and I live around Boston, so there never was a chance to speak in person. But who knows; we have certainly left This City is Alive in a place where there could potentially be a sequel—or maybe something completely different. We’ll have to wait and see.

JD: Definitely. We haven’t discussed future projects too much but I think we are both very proud of what we have achieved with This City is Alive and we are both keen to see what we come up with next. Forrest mentioned maybe another book set in the same reality, which is something I would certainly be interested to explore. From an illustration angle I would like to produce a series of works around the different creatures that exist alongside the people, kind of a naturalist’s notebook, filled with pictures and scribbled notes on the animal life he has encountered.

However, nothing is concrete yet, wait and see what happens.

JEL: What other projects are in the works?

JD: I have had a really busy 12 months and so much has changed in my life that I really want to sit back and take a look at everything from a fresh perspective.

Animation is something I am planning on getting back into. I have been working on a solo project for a while and I am excited to see how it turns out. I want to try my hand at sequential illustration, a graphic novel or a comic. There are a few books not yet released for which I have produced cover art.

I am eager to pursue the interest that has been shown from a few galleries.

There are loads of things.

FA: I’m working on my first full-length novel. Up until now all I’ve done is shorter stuff—novellas, poems, a lot of short stories—but I felt ready, after years of writing the smaller stuff, to approach something this big. It’s exciting. It’s very surreal, follows six characters through their lives in picaresque fashion. I guess the central conflict would be a war between America and the Dutch, though what it’s essentially about is everyone’s quest for some sort of “higher mind”—in The Fountain, an Aronofsky movie, there’s a line that I like, something like “We all strive to maintain a certain level of grace before death.” I feel like all these characters are fighting for something like that. Many of the characters are based on people from my own life. Nail and Chevy reappear in this one, though wearing different masks, so to speak. All I’ll say for now is that Chevy is a scientist, and Nail is a city kid, whose protoplasmic flash addiction is much more focused on. Besides that, I'm just trying to bring my visions to the world, however I can.