I discovered Scott’s work a few years ago after reading a story of his on Hobart—it was this one, The Peyote Warrior of Window Rock, if you’re interested in giving it a read. I thought it was so great in the way that only stories with such a strong authorial voice can be. To read Scott’s work is to be freed from the shackles and mundanity of ordinary existence and transported into a chaotic and strangely compelling, almost surrealistic portrait of American life. Shortly after reading his short story I picked up a copy of his brilliant and hilarious book, Play the Devil, a semi-autobiographical novel about a writer who drops out of college and ends up getting sucked into cleaning pools with his best friend in New Jersey. Scott and I have since become good friends, but I remain a devoted fan of his writing. Which is why I’m so stoked that things have come full-circle and I’m able to chat with him and interview him for the very magazine where I first discovered his work. Read our discussion about his incredible new poetry collection, Rainbow Road below.
JO: You’ve recently released a poetry collection titled, Rainbow Road through your press, Bone Machine. It’s sort of a travelogue and spans a bunch of different cities and is a bit of a wild ride. Tell us a bit about the inspiration for this collection. How did this all come to be?
SL: My muse has always been America, but I didn’t realize that in the beginning. I thought getting to California was all that mattered, and I made it there when I was 16. And it really was the promised land. The girls. The sun. They don’t look like that anywhere else. But it was on that trip, in the backseat of a tour van with 8 other guys, that I saw the foundation of this country. The methheads in Bakersfield. The runaways by the trains in Salt Lake. All of a sudden my stories stopped being about girls and started describing train tracks, and gas station parking lots. I’m a son of the Empire, for good or bad I feel like it’s my job to capture it. I could’ve been born in Uruguay, but I wasn’t, and I was given these eyes that can see through the cracks. I really feel like I was chosen to leave the record behind.
JO: As someone who has never really written poetry, I’m always so fascinated by poetry and those who choose to write it. Especially those who do it exceptionally well, as you of course do. I, admittedly, have a hard time connecting with a lot of poetry—for me so much of it feels like stylistic flash without a lot of depth—so I’m always so impressed when a poet is able to really grab me with their work. I wonder, as someone who writes both, do you find it easier or harder to write than narrative fiction or nonfiction? And I guess additionally, why do you think you gravitate towards this particular medium/mode of expression?
SL: I agree, most poetry is awful. And it’s something I never really took that seriously because it’s easy. I just write about what I’m seeing, why it depresses me, then find a last line in my mind’s gutter that sums it all up. But I never saw it as a diary entry. I think I look at it like most people do micro-fiction, which I find impossible to write. But I see a moment, a city street, and I channel a girl who I still believe if I can just write the perfect poem, the one that sums it all up and explains it all perfectly she’ll come back to me, and then I have a poem. I just figured out a formula I can work to death. And I don’t know when it happened but I suddenly have a couple hundred poems that tell my life story. A reader can pop in and drop out whenever they want. That’s why poetry is cool. And I never realized it’s power until very recently.
JO: You have a fairly unique style; are there any poets who’ve inspired you or that you would say have influenced your style?
SL: This is going to sound stupid but I started writing before social media and no one in my life was a writer or cultured in any way. Kevin Smith grew up in my town and that was all we knew about art. Literally everyone in my town is a roofer or dock builder. I didn’t find out until much later there were contemporary poets, so my style developed completely isolated, I had no influences. Later, I was introduced to another New York poet named Jim Carroll who I admire greatly, he’s my favorite poet, and we have similar themes in our work as two New Yorkers who grew up very Catholic, but that’s where the influence ends. I do wonder if having no education in this field was a good or bad thing.
JO: The poems in this collection span the US, from New Jersey through to Texas and California, and even across seas to Ireland. The inspiration seems to be a combination of wanderlust and disillusionment. Has seeing so much of the US (and elsewhere) changed or influenced your perspective in any significant way?
SL: We’re really just one single hive mind now. The “omni-culture” is here. When I first started traveling everything was regional, the way people dressed, the music they listened to. Now it’s just Taylor Swift and Skims or Under Armor workout clothes. Everyone looks the same. You used to dress to let people know what music you listened to, now you dress to look like everyone else. Even when I was just in Ireland, I heard zero Irish music. The old guys with guitars and banjos in the pubs were no more. If there was any live music, it was just a guy and guitar playing Sabrina Carpenter songs. Then you got into the car and every station on the radio was playing Sabrina Carpenter. And in regard to the US, most of the cities are being reclaimed by an upper-tech class, and all that stuff that was really cool 15 years ago its quickly getting bulldozed for those ugly box apartment complexes.
JO: One of my favorite poems of yours is Behind the Belle Motel. It’s about stumbling on domestic violence and trying to decide both what the responsibility of the person witnessing it is and when, or even if it’s okay to step into a situation that looks bad but could reasonably be made worse by a clumsy intervention. We always think we’d behave one way in a given situation, but reality often proves different. I feel like this is a common thread throughout your work, this sort of gap between idealism and reality. Would you say you consider yourself more of an idealist or realist?
SL: I was SO idealistic when I was young. I found punk rock and alternative literature and great books written by people no one had ever heard of. And I wanted to write like them so bad. I never realized that writing and emulating people who’d hadn’t made it was a sure way to make sure your writing also never gets read. So now I’m a realist. The music is dead. Fruit just tastes like different shapes of wood. Every book I put out gets read by less people. I think it’s all over. And everyone loves being around someone with this philosophy. Especially your girlfriend who was smart enough not to get involved with art.
JO: I’ve heard you say that most of the things you’ve written were about or inspired by one woman and you’re not even sure if she knows they exist. I think the paradox is that if you had stayed together those things likely wouldn’t exist at all. Maybe this is just me and I fetishize suffering too much, but I often feel the types of things I write when I’m happy are much less interesting and wonder if others have the same experience. Do you feel like, for you, some suffering is a necessary catalyst for creation?
SL: Yeah, for me it was but I also don’t know if it was worth it. I have a novel, an almost movie, and all these short stories and poetry, and while I have no control over writing them because it’s the thing I was put here to do, I don’t think any of it has made me happy. I think my friends in the suburbs who just keep getting fatter with their kids and their Superbowls are happy. I don’t know if happiness is real or if I even want to be happy, but they’re always smiling, and that probably feels pretty good. I liked the 90s when nothing was happy and everything was real. Now people pay extra for art that makes them “feel good,” and everything that comes out is garbage. Life isn’t good, it’s pain, and it’s horrible, and we used to want that reflection in our art. Now we want to pay to escape it.
JO: The last poem in this collection, Outer Sunset, is so great. There’s a line:
Always chasing something that takes and never gives
I think one of the things about being an artist is that it is sort of an inherently selfish pursuit. The desire to create something important, to leave a legacy can be all-consuming and often leaves little time or energy for much else, but it also gives very little. Few artists make a good living off their work, and of course, most great artists remain fairly obscure in their own lifetimes and never even know if their work will survive to posterity. And yet we persist in creating art. Why do you think that is?
SL: I’m sure some old-timer told you once, “If you can picture yourself doing anything else, do that.” But I always thought those old-timers were bitter, and they must not have made it because they weren’t that good. But that was the stupidity of youth. If you’re a real artist, and not someone who thought this was a fun hobby to pick up during the pandemic, or you’re divorced now so you’re looking for a scene to attach yourself to before your next husband, you really don’t have a choice. I quit writing all the time and then I get a job and I can pretend for about a year. But then the words have built up in my head, and I start to think, “Ok, I can be homeless and it won’t be that big of a deal because I can write in libraries,” so then I start stealing whatever I can from the job, and showing up late, and soaking it for whatever I can get before I quit. And that’s going to be my life and I’m 40 now so I can accept it. Everyone’s born to do something, an unlucky few of us are born to do this, a very lucky one or two get picked to win. But by the time you realize this it’s too late in the game to do anything else anyway. So we’re half mentally ill and half too stupid to throw in the towel. But you get to write your own epitaph as a writer. And that’s pretty cool.
