anna joy profile picture

anna joy

Let your freak flag fly

About Me

I want to live near the redwoods with a horse instead of San Diego. But I'd still also like to practice complaining less. And interacting honestly more with people and other creatures, plants, and minerals. Bowing more, more often, to more.I'm a writer of sort of oddly designed narratives and conventional 3d wave confessional-type essays. Mostly I write about the many complexes of love, the interstices of being, and the way grief is sacred. I like text/image combination pieces. Used to be, I was a punk and got to play in the great bands Blatz, The Gr'ups, and Cypher in the Snow. I don't think you can get Cypher stuff anymore, which is such a bummer - it really was a great, weird band. I'd love it if someone could help me make a Cypher page here. I also got to tour around with Sister Spit a couple times. I love teaching writers whose hearts ache with foreknowledge of explosive possibility and want but mistrust connection. I hope to finish my first book, The Vicious Red Relic, Love really soon.

My Interests

Writing strange and complicated books. Birds and bird symbology. Sleeping, especially with dreams, kissing animals, wild creatures, teaching writing, alternative pedagogies, correcting misogyny, reading, looking at art and making it. Dharma talks. Experimental theater. Neuroscience and non-human intelligence. Honesty and a willingness to admit one's own fuck ups. Thanatology. Being in new places. Getting undermined by beauty. The many unnamed kinds of love. Mind blowing physical and intellectual exchanges. Grotesques. Medieval ecstatic religious poetry. Also very expensive underwear, makeup, perfume, and shoes.

I'd like to meet:

I'd like to meet Pema Chodron. Wild macaws. Melinda Gates. A herd of healthy wild elephants. Nina Hagen. Aruhndati Roy. Jenny Holtzer. Helene Cixous. Owls, quail, foxes, slime molds, carnivorous plants. Tapirs, Cockatoos,Walruses, Eagles. A Dodo Bird.And, those who have gone to hell, but have come back and have a story to tell and a strangely pretty, deep-throated laughter.

Music:

X, My Invisible, Rasputina, Dog Faced Hermans, Etta James, Freakwater, Aimee Mann, The Avengers, Ravi Shankar, The Gossip, Nina Hagen, The Gotan Project, Bikini Kill, Siouxsie & the Banshees, Astor Piazzola, The Subhumans, Crass, Tribe 8, Dirt, The Slits, Stevie Wonder, Juliana Snapper, Vice Sqad, Andres Segovia, The Psychedelic Furs, Brigitte Fontaine

Movies:

Fanny and Alexander, The Saddest Music in the World, The Children of Paradise, Little Otik, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf, By Hook or By Crook, Suddenly Last Summer, City of Lost Children, Fantastic Planet, Antonia's Line, Liquid Sky, Charlotte's Web, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Dumbo, The Host

Television:

Lost, Weeds, The L Word, Iron Chef

Books:

Cruddy by Lynda Barry, Dictee by Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, The God of Small Things by Arundati Roy, Jimmy Corrigan The Smartest Kid on Earth by Chris Ware, The Beautifully Worthless by Ali Liebegott, Don Quixote by Kathy Acker, What Begins With Bird by Noy Holland, Cane by Jean Toomer, Magic for Beginners by Kelly Link, The Melancholy of Anatomy by Shelly Jackson, Incubation: A Space for Monsters by Bhanu Kapil, Tales of Neveryon by Samuel Delaney, The Descent of Alette by Alice Notley, The Autobiography of Red by Ann Carson, Les Guerilleres by Monique Wittig, Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler, Dont Let Me Be Lonely by Claudia Rankine, Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism by Chogyam Trungpa, When Things Fall Apart by Pema Chodron, so so many more!

Heroes:

Noam Chomsky, Yoko Ono, Kathleen Hannah, Kathy Acker, Angela Davis, Enheduana, Lyn Hejinian, David Meltzer, Cybele, Carole Maso, Thalia Field, Nelson Mandela, Eileen Myles, Pema Chodron, Aruhndati Roy, the guy in Tiananmen Square in front of the tanks, Sharon Salzberg, ALF, Emma Goldman, Thich Naht Hanh, the girls at the Rubber Rose, and my beloved friends.

My Blog

Encyclopedia Project, San Diego

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LtOnMcmrDD8 ...
Posted by anna joy on Sun, 04 May 2008 03:02:00 PST

Gr'ups Video from '93 Europe tour

Have you seen this cute Gr'ups video made by Jasper of Citizen Fish? I'm posting the link to the YouTube page because the video is adorable. Notice Jesse's wolf-head costume in one clip. Also, the ...
Posted by anna joy on Sat, 21 Apr 2007 01:08:00 PST

What I read at TMI last night - one of the "metaforests" from Vicious Red Relic, Love

The Forest of Myth and StinkIn the forest of myth and stink, there's a long line for the toilet. The bathroom is a series of slits in the ground. The potty (slit) area is a site of unmediated expressi...
Posted by anna joy on Sat, 21 Apr 2007 12:59:00 PST

Somebody Else Broke the Rules

How profound to be moved by the emancipation drive in others  in its fury in its blame. Not to experience the feeling of threat and then leave and then rail against it, that feeling of being at risk...
Posted by anna joy on Thu, 22 Feb 2007 12:32:00 PST

New bit of my novel online at Suspect Thoughts

I'm pleased to announce that Suspect Thoughts Journal #18: the Utopia Means Nowhere Issue, is now online. Please check it out at: http://www.suspectthoughts.com/main.htm
Posted by anna joy on Thu, 11 Jan 2007 09:49:00 PST

What I read at TMI last Thursday - from Vicious Red Relic, Love

Meglomaniacal Rapture FlashCould it have been with anyone, anyone of those artful sex fiends who loved jumping sci fi worlds as much as I did? Who loved teaching, turning, as much as I did, who would ...
Posted by anna joy on Sun, 03 Dec 2006 01:41:00 PST