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“Jonathan Shaw. There are many words different people may use to describe him. What some may see as only a shallow, brash and impetuous incendiary; actually is a true philosophical, transcendent soul. With layers of insight waiting to be peeled away.” - By Lizzy Garcia

READ THE FULL ARTICLE HERE

Posted on LACityzine’s blog, and on Johnny-Depp.org, the article’s a pretty extensive and deep interview with JS regarding his tattoo career and his writing career. [click either link to read the article]

So it’s been brought to my attention, for the umpteenth time, that I am a horrific editor. If Helen Keller were asked to edit Mirriam Webster’s… it would look something like the job I do on a daily basis. But that is not the point.

Here’s a little story, to keep you busy while I figure out my point.

Back when I was a skinny little junkie of eighteen, I found myself in Hollywood, California, puking up blood in a gutter on the corner of Sunset and Vermont.

Suddenly I was startled by the engine of a motorcycle. I lifted my head and wiped my mouth only to see the enigmatic and intimidating Jonathan Shaw, looking down at me with hearts in his eyes from a smoking two wheeled gypsy perch.

“Hey little girl, wanna go for a ride?” He asked me. (I’m pretty sure those were the exact words…) Then he handed me a tiny battered “bitch” helmet.

“Sure” I burped.

He took me to a little barbecue joint on Cahuenga Blvd where we sat for about two hours and he asked me what I was doing with my life.

“I’m an editor” I told him with stars in my dope-pinned eyes.

It was not a lie, it was just the only answer I could come up with in my brain which had at that point been poisoned and roasted and toasted and burned out several times over. Plus, I’d like to think the question was a completely unnecessary means of creating “friendly conversation”, due to the fact that I was clearly insane, I weighed about 35 pounds soaking wet, had jaundice, staph infections, crack sores and reeked of detoxification.

I was not doing anything with my life, besides destroying what was left of it.

“Well, good,” he said.

Then he handed me 300 dollars and a little manuscript called Scardust, that he wrote with Hubert Selby Jr. and Kenny Schiffrin, which you will all be very familiar with in the not too far off future, if the world continues to exist for another few years, which it might not at this rate because I crashed my car. What time is it.

Anyway, he asked me to look this manuscript over for him and I said yes and then he asked me to move in with him in his lonely Hollywood penthouse to which I also said yes, since my boyfriend had locked me out of our apartment.

This 6 month period was split between Los Angeles, Rio De Janeiro, and New York City, trembling under Jonathan’s greasy black wing, during which time I flirted with the following possible career opportunities (in no particular order):

Painter, Tattoo Artist, Prostitute, Jet Setter, Egg Donor, Drug Counselor, Drug, Dealer, Drug Addict, DJ, Fashion Designer, Indentured Servant, Waitress, Phone Answerer, Suicide Girl, Chef, Insomniac, Mental Patient, Serial Killer, Serial Domestic Abuser, Poet, Psychologist, Philosopher…
Until one day… Finally… After much adue… Jonathan Shaw grew tired of my squirrelly behavior, put a notebook, a pen and a coconut in my hand, and left me sitting on a beach in Rio de Janeiro for ten hours.
The rest is history.

Here is the abridged version…

While Jonathan began his ongoing battle with Hurricane Narcisa, I returned to Los Angeles to “brainstorm” on the “future” of Jonathan’s massive memoir project, Scabvendor: - Confessions of a Tattoo Artist.

Soon enough, that veered off into Narcisa: Our Lady of Ashes which Jonathan played around with for three months until Heartworm Press having heard of it through some putrid underground grapevine, came along, unsolicited, and took it off his bleeding hands…

I then started a website called Scabvendor.com, a place for Jonathan and I to share Narcisa and the rest of his wacked-out life and times with other sick fucks like you, a safe haven for us to ruminate on all the cunts that torment our charmed existence and so, so much more.

The unabridged version will be available on my Wikipedia, someday…

The point is… I’m not an editor.

Right now I am a sleepy blogger. Tomorrow… I’m not sure. It will probably involve fixing some more typos.

So it goes.

So, now the time has come…  Jonathan has finally begun a whole new marathon rewrite of “Narcisa - Our Lady of Ashes“.

This time he’s working hand in hand with a seasoned book editor for a major literary agency - a real step up from a few weeks proof-reading the first edition’s funky first draft text with me, sitting in coffee houses and all-nite greasy-spoons around Silverlake, Echo Park and Hollyweird.

Our original editing system was always pretty haphazard and unconventional, to say the least….

But now…..

with daily blog posts, and this whole website shit up and running, and Jonathan long gone, back home in Brazil with his crazy crackhead, Narcisa, it’s all swiftly plummeted south to the next level of wierdness, coming together, a day at a time, mostly through tidbits and scraps of random emails, peppered with numbered headings, sometimes in strange heiroglyphic text but ALWAYS broken off in the middle by that familiar tagline.

“Sent Via Blackberry T-Mobile”.

That’s right kids, he now writes and edits all of his blog entries on a friggin’ blackberry.

BUT. WAIT.

The jig doesn’t stop there…

This is a 360 some odd page novel he’s re-working down there.

And, get this: Jonathan has proceeded to begin the whole fucking rewrite on his little pocket sized Crackberry too!!

RE-WRITE. AS IN, he’s re-writing… a book. On a Blackberry. I’m not joking. Or laughing. Well maybe a little.

Sitting on a motorcycle in the middle of the jungle, dodging automatic weapon fire up in some shanty town drug war favela, sitting on some rodent-infested rock by the beach or whatever whorehouse he’s sitting (or laying up) in right now…

Whatever the fuck he does that no one will ever really know…

Typing. On the Blackberry.

The following recent email exchange between us should give you some idea where my head’s been at today…

And as a pre-req, please envision the grimace on his Hollywood-bound assistant’s (that would be yours truly) pretty little face while I sit at my desk, running the whole official shit show from my office at the Crow’s nest overlooking the glittering lights of Babylon and the smog of the apocalypse.

I wrote this email to Jonathan a full FIVE times before sending it, searching for the right words to express my absolute outrage at his working methods…

At first it was a very angry email, I chastised him mercilessly for being an inconsiderate, unprincipaled caveman of an ignorant old Ludite prick with no decent sense of respect for modern communication systems or basic technology. But then I realized… how the fuck could anybody really get pissed off at such a spectacular display of savage insanity? Some might even call it genius…. I call it atavistic genius (something like a cross between Asberger’s and Bukowski logic).

- Alessandra

Here goes:

From: SAILOR

Subject: Blackberry endorsements and Lasek surgery

Date: June 13, 2008 4:14:52 PM PDT

To: JS

Captain-

Has that bitch got you smoking crack now? WHAT THE FUCK?!?!?!!   Shit’s cut off, nothing’s in the right order, I cant even believe you’re just merrily going about your business down there in the jungles of Hell, attempting a MAJOR rewrite on a 360 page book from your fucking Blackberry… as if that is something even remotely acceptable or normal.

Only you, you pirate-minded mentally insane psychopathic whore-fucking douchebag sniveling demented freak.

I have to wonder… How did I get so graced by the hand of such a technologically impaired innovator?

I fucking love you.

This will definitely go down in literary history…

Take the following, for example…

“So Jonathan, how did you become blind?”

” Well I was writing this novel on my blackberry and…”

From: JS

Subject: Re: Blackberry endorsements and Lasek surgery

Date: June 13, 2008 7:28:51 PM PDT

To: SAILOR

Little Sailor. You’re lucky I like you for being so hilariously… Retarded.

This aint exactly fuckin’ Starbucks here, darlin’!

I know you mean well, ya little suburban white trash SUV-driving, attorney-blowing hosebag amateur hooker… but it’s not like ya can just whip out the old laptop and start getting all artsy-fartsy here in the fucking vermin-infested crack ghettos of Rio, ya know…

I love you too. You are truly my other wacko muse, ya sniveling little cunt!!!

Btw, go ahead and put that ‘how’d you go blind?’ question into that big collective interview you’re supposedly preparing for me, whenever the time comes…

By the time you get it all together with all yer big shot Bel-air celebrity ass-sucking pals, maybe I’ll be deaf and dumb too.

And that could be a real fucking blessing, the way things are going loonie-toons around here lately, believe me!

Gotta go go go go goooo!!!

“Hasta la vitoria, siempre!”

Xx js

Sent Via Blackberry T-Mobile

WHAT A COMPLICIT BOND WE HAVE. Goodnight boys and girls.

It’s the third hundred-fucking-fifty degree day in a row here in Los Angeles and I’m completely deranged. I peel myself out of the chair in the office to lay paralyzed down by the pool, over and over like a fucking rat race while Griffith park is slowly burning down and my head is imploding because there’s no oxygen in the air anymore. Coughing cause I can’t catch my breath. It’s pathetic. Thank God I can laugh at myself.

Why is sitting around so exhausting?

I whimpered and limped in to the elevator like a squashed roach and crawled back up to the office to sit in my shitty chair and burn my ass three times already today. Now I’m having delirious jealous day dreams of Narcisa smoking crack in a cold dark cave… Oh to be Narcisa. Without the pipe. That’d be ideal.

I wonder what the fuck Jonathan and Narcisa are doing now. Does she know how lucky she is to be sitting on the back of that motorcycle cruising through Cabo Frio, or Penedo, or Resende or São Paulo, or wherever they may have ended up today on their roadtrip through the jungles of Hell. Atleast that Hell is moving and changing and green.. and alive. This Hell is stagnant. I’m grateful for my writing and editing to keep me busy and my general appreciation of awareness on days like this where I’d normally be shit-housed by 2pm and half-way on my way to being in a total blackout. That kind of shit happens in the summertime. It’s just what people like me do.

But it’s really not bad. I have fun all day doing what I’m doing. And the nights are sublime. They cool down and Candy I can just sit on the balcony of the Man Mansion in Laurel Canyon or at the Cat and the Fiddle and play lazy games of backgammon and collect our thoughts over coffee so I can prepare for the next sleepy haze. My Grandpa’s death has made the last few days a haze.

Yesterday I spent the day dragging myself around and wringing myself out like a wet towel, wiping the sweat off my Blackberry until it was so sweaty and dirty I could taste the salt coming off of it every time I answered it and the trackball got so slimy it just stopped working. Contacting so and so for a review… following up with others for some sign of life. Following up. Following up. There are no signs of life. I feel a great calm in this. I have some peace of mind for a moment. I wonder, does Narcisa have these moments?

It looks like everyone’s checked out this weekend. I don’t blame them.

So today I was sitting at Solar De Cahuenga on the corner of Cahuenga and Franklin, which is my usual haunt if anyone I owe money to ever wants to come find me, and after a particularly draining and bizarro phone call which I shouldn’t have answered but did anyway, the guy siting next to me made a comment about something I’d said on the phone- something about my hair. I looked at him for a second and then cracked a smile. We started talking about writing, books, I told him about Narcisa and all my other projects and he told me he runs a magazine. I said which one and he said “have you heard of FOUND?” to which I replied “umm yes, I am obsessed.”

FOUND is a compilation of love letters, grocery lists, photographs and other things that people find on the street. Send all your found shit to them and they will publish it.

some letters people found on FOUND

Now I’ve spent hours and hours of my lowly existence sitting on Howie Pyro’s couch laughing at this magazine and the sheer brilliance of the effect that looking into other people’s lives, even for just a glimpse, has on the human psyche. I don’t know if it’s therapeutic or just entertaining to live vicariously through other people for moments in time.

That is why I enjoy Jonathan’s work so much. I think I get off on it, being there but not being there. It’s like something I experienced last time I was in Brazil, riding through the favelas on the back of the motorcycle. At first I was scared shitless and did not want to go in to Rocinha, did not understand the De Facto government of the Drug Lords and why I had to take my helmet off when we passed the police barricade or why I had to show my face at all times and take off my glasses too. It was so foreign and I didn’t want to be there. So we left.

But as soon as we left, I wanted to go back in. I was curious, I wanted a taste. I wanted to live it, just a little. And then get out on command.

That is what FOUND magazine allows the reader to do.
That is what NARCISA allows the reader to do.

Fucking brilliant. Now I’m here, reading the issue of FOUND that Davy gave me before I left the coffee shop, between bouts of editing Narcisa and watching Forensic Files and smoking cigarette butts.

The whole conversation was inspiring though. It really put some fire under my ass to get this new project going with Jonathan, a book that will feature scanned journal entries that we’ve each saved over the years. It’s eerie how some of them mirror each other exactly. I am still kind of freaked out at how much our minds have melded.

I gotta go.

A