Matt Margo ought to drive you wild. With his finger in so many pies, it is pretty difficult to avoid bumping into him. I’ve seen him (virtually) in countless ustream chats. In his own words, he’s still exploring himself as a person, as a writer. Though he is exploring, he’s doing a great job. Since I see him everywhere I notice how much of other people’s work he readily consumes.
“Cormac McCarthy’s Dead Typewriter” combines a few of his interests. Besides the joy of being named after a still living author’s supposedly deceased typewriter, he has multiple categories one can submit under. It is a literary blog but Matt appears to be a bit more open regarding what counts as poetry, what is art, sound, and photography. Sometimes the lines blur between each form. Matt realizes this and offers what are extremely welcoming terms.
A lot of the submissions celebrate the beauty of randomness. There are an unusually large amount of ‘algorithmic wordchains’ and ‘asemic writing’. For Algorithmic wordchains you can technically read them though they prefer to be near-nonsensical. Whoever can read asemic writing probably has some serious issues or is incurably insane.
Other submissions are a bit more graspable and slightly less experimental. Flarf, that delightful poetic form, is given a home, as are fiction dribbles and cut-ups. Really, I don’t see enough people doing cut-ups so it is good to see someone wants to give them a home. See Logan K. Young’s piece for an example of the form’s madness. Even though he didn’t state it, normal poetry of the make it yourself kind, occasionally appears on its hallowed pages. The fiction dribbles keep up the slightly cryptic tone Matt has set for the site. Keeping a piece only 50 words long reminds me of the ‘micro-story’ genre, a one I used to dabble in a long time ago.
Harsh noise gets some attention. As a big fan of noise, I’m glad to see I’m not the only one. Though seeing the harsh noise releases on his blog further convinces me that noise fans exist on the internet. Noise fans otherwise can never admit to it in person or even meet each other in person. Sometimes I think geography exists for the sole reason of keeping weird music fans apart. My personal experience hasn’t shown me any other alternative reason. Matt knows the genre well as he puts a ten minute limit on the noise pieces. Without any kind of structure, noise often outstays its welcome even with its few fans.
The site is full of love. Under the contributors section, he allows any contributor to write as much or as little about their work, lives and interests. I’m glad to see Matt taking a more personal approach to literature and music than “Here is a link to their blog. Have fun.” Reading about each one of the contributors makes me happy. Whatever the contributor did is suddenly humanized. Now I think of the contributors as people rather than faceless people on the internet. Having spoken with people about their perception of bloggers, Matt’s approach is something more people ought to be doing. Most people I speak with barely think of the individual behind the actual pieces of writing. Seeing how some of his contributors do multiple art forms (Matt and a Finn named Jukka-Pekka Kervinen) cheers up me enormously.
Despite the dead typewriter, the future looks bright for Matt Margo. To celebrate the blog’s three month anniversary (in blog years, three months equals a year) he’ll be doing a live reading of some of the material this evening at 7:30PM on ustream. I’m excited by this prospect. Harsh noise walls may or may not be played as he’s particularly fond of them even creating his own noise project accessible here. I’d suggest he look into a favorite genre of mine, yet to be created, called “Polka-Noise”. By this evening I hope he gets some pictures of butterflies or carrots (those remain the only submissions he has not received). I’m dreaming of a noise dance party.