Colin talks to Dessa about comedy, community, and the unlikely possibility of Dessa-inspired cookware
COMMON GOOD BOOKS: As soon
as I saw your performance at The Triple Rock I couldn’t wait to ask you what it
was that I had seen. I don’t know what I was expecting, but your performance
struck me as an insouciant amalgamation of storytelling, stand-up, poetry and
song. How often do you perform this way?
DESSA: I almost never
perform events dedicated to storytelling. The game plan for me is to build a
reputation as an artist for her voice and approach more than for any one medium.
I like being able to blend those forms of expression. It gives the performance
an elasticity. I’ve been calling it monologue: music combined with moments that
are more conversational. I did a show at The Fitz that was a mixture of rap
music and story with a slow thematic development.
How did you prepare for
that night?
I had a skeleton for that
night’s story, so it was just a matter of filling in the wording. Part of my
job is not to reveal which seemingly minor details might be pivot points
for themes that will continue to develop. I like presenting material that at
first seems incidental and becomes important as the story goes, and I like
having the ability to move between moods quickly. It’s like in detective
movies when you just know shit’s gonna point back to the fingerprint on the
knife--I’ve always felt dissatisfied by that. I prefer the idea of important
moments only being revealed as the story unfolds, only recognizable with the
benefit of hindsight. So there are themes, but they’re invisible. The Callback
comes as a surprise. I like a lot of Callbacks in my set. I think that’s a
comic’s term.
I think of that in terms of
writing and reading, too: what you’re reading the first time through that might
be important as you continue, incorporating phrases that turn out to unfold
into a double entendre or triple entendre. But with live music you can feed off
of the crowd, whereas when you’re writing you’re not in real time, so you have
to fake a kind of real time.
I’m glad you mentioned
“Callbacks” because for as well as you’re
known as a songwriter and vocalist, I left
with the impression that I’d just seen stand-up comedy of the highest form. Do
people know how funny you are?
Thank you. Trying to be
funny feels so risky to me, so I would probably never brand myself a comic. In
fact, I know I wouldn’t. I’m not really interested in wading into a field where
I don’t see an opportunity for excellence. But I do like the idea of
incorporating humor into deep material. I think we get affected by hyper-delicate treatments of the
profound subjects of our lives, and I’m interested in knowing if deep poetry
can be hilarious--actually hilarious, not smirking-while-drinking-martinis
hilarious.
Do you perform comedy with
Doomtree?
A couple of those guys are
so effortlessly funny it would probably be a bad idea. Lazerbeak actually
texted me last night to see how it [the Triple Rock performance] went. In
Doomtree, it’s such a fast-paced show with all of the emcees on stage--and I
think a lot of the humor I pull off depends on pauses, negative space, and good
lighting for facial expressions. If you imagine being in a club with low
ceilings and strobe lights you can see how that environment is less likely to
make the kind of comedy I do effective.
But you do write songs. How
would you differentiate writing songs or what you do on stage vs. writing
poems?
Well, I would say that the
area in which I’m most comfortable is creative nonfiction, the second would be
as a lyricist, and the third would be a page poet. I’m interested though in
developing a poetic skill. I figure if I can write good lyrics and decent prose I’d have to have a lobotomy to not write
decent poems. I’m actually working on a new collection tentatively titled The
Perfect Burn, inspired by the funeral pyres of India.
How then did you decide
that the poems in Spiral Bound were suited for the page rather than, or in
addition to, live performance?
Well, I had meant it as a
project to determine the viability of future projects. Could I be taken
seriously as a writer by members of the literary community, and would rap fans
be interested? As it turned out, the latter was much easier to achieve.
Rap fans were like, “Is it fiction? Is it poetry? OK, it’s kind of a blend.” It
was much harder to convince the literary community, not even to take it
seriously, but just to read it. Bad reviews suck, but they’re endurable.
If someone said, “This is garbage,” I’d blush and drink some whiskey. But
I think I’d see what I could take from them to make my work better. But a lot
of reviewers didn’t want to check it out at all.
All in all, my sense that
hip-hop is an open marketplace for new talent was reaffirmed. There are a lot
more networks and connections to be jumped through in the literary scene. I
think a lot of hip-hoppers are treated like kids who don’t have any interest in
fine art, and that’s not true. But the opposite--in my experience--the
transition from pop art to fine art was harder.
Why do you think that is?
Did you have a hard time getting the book out there?
On the commercial side of
things, you’re not being vetted by retailers for literary merit. I would go
personally from bookstore to bookstore and play the consignment game. “I’ll
sell you the first few cheap and if they move we’ll upgrade to a reasonable
rate of return,” and that worked. The hardest part was critics.
As far as even looking at
your work?
Exactly. I think it would
be vain to think that every artist is going to get a fair look. And maybe there
was resistance, in part, because the book was released by a rap label, as
opposed to a literary press—I think people hear a rapper’s got a book and think
of some insane book by Wu Tang--but the lack of attention seemed
disproportionate. It just felt like I was battling a head wind due to the fact
that my background was not in the literary and MFA community. And I like those
communities, too. I was a sucker for it as a kid, the whole idea of living in
New York and being a writer. So I won’t say I don’t see any romance in it. But
we would all do well to be more interactive. I mean, this is Minneapolis we’re talking
about. It makes you wonder, are we working at our best as a meritocracy here?
It seems there are other variables in the way.
Do you expect it to be
easier the second time around?
I don’t want to say yes and
jinx it. If it isn’t easier to push this second collection then at least I
better understand how to support it without the help of the literary community
in the twin cities. That said, organizations such as Rain Taxi have been very
supportive. I love art books, so I’ve talked with them about possibly
collaborating on a chapbook in the future.
In addition to your book,
you’ve got the t-shirt, now a lipstick… have you thought about coming out with
a line of Dessa-inspired cookware?
You know, I wasn’t
terrified to sell t-shirts, because that became so much a part of the
merchandise as soon as people stopped buying CDs, but the lipstick I was
uncomfortable with. But then after meeting with the woman who owns The Elixery,
a local cosmetic house, and pours every stick by hand, I felt really good about
it. I can make money for a charity that I don’t make enough to contribute to
myself. I have to be careful in interviews to explain why I’m doing this,
because I think that makeup can be a cautious, fear-based, anti-women thing in
a lot of ways, and I don’t like the idea of cheapening one’s self. But that was
my rationale.
You mentioned having taught writing in your set, but can you talk about what attracted you to writing in
the first place? Did you always have your sights on writing lyrics?
No, I was working as a waitress, writing manuals, and a friend of me saw perform slam poetry and suggested I try it over a beat. But I remember getting a prize
for a vocabulary contest in my after school program. I would look up through
the windows in camp and at school, and whenever anything caught my eye I would
make up a definition for it, just like in the dictionary. So I would say,
“hydrant--noun” or “wheel—noun—a round shape used in mechanical engineering…”
and so on. I’m not totally sure. But of all the stories that seem to me
indicative of a developing writer, I think it had something to do with that
initial interest, that fascination with language.
Dessa's Spiral Bound now available at Common Good Books
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