Over the past month or so, I’ve been exchanging e-mails with Ales Kot, as we often do. I feel this is important to state upfront because while Ales certainly finds himself being interviewed at various other outlets, our relationship is (assumedly) slightly different. Whether it’s the discussion of films that we think the other will appreciate, discussing scripts or simply catching up, I often find myself e-mailing with Ales — so when the time comes for us to talk in a way that will be shared with people outside of ourselves, I think noting our familiarity with one another and the comfort in which we talk is an aspect of our conversations that should be considered.
That being said, today I am presenting on the site a portion of a recent set of dialogue that transpired between Ales and myself. Starting on August 11th, Ales and I discussed a great many things regarding his work in the comic industry and in regards to himself as a person, how his experiences translate into his work and from where his inspiration comes from. While the conversation is cut-off (specifically because we both agreed that we’d reached a good breaking point for this portion of the article), this first installment of “My E-mails with Ales” finds us discussing in great length the second volume of his creator-owned series “ZERO,” with the second collected volume ‘At the Heart of it All’ arriving in stores next week. (Of course, this means that spoilers are discussed.)
So read on as I share with you my e-mails with Ales.
Let us begin with something easy.
Hi, Ales. How are you?
Ales Kot: “Your flight to LA departs in four hours.”
SCREAMING
How about you ask me that same question again so I can answer when I’m up in the air and no longer screaming while throwing my clothes around, attempting to simultaneously shave, pack, shower, write ten pages of a script, retrieve smoothies for Fifi & I and read about sleep-deprived astronauts doing Ambien in space?
Regardless of whether you ask that same question again or not, let’s keep this in. Let’s keep all of it in. No censorship. No data borders. No second drafts of interviews. Let’s abandon the policemen in our heads.
Speaking of, what a great poem:
To triple that
Irreversible retreat
Into summer in slow motion
By an intensification
Of the powerful
To isolate the surface
Adding energy to winds
Future governments
Spend to protect
Fuck the police
To rise as you
Disappear below current
Interpretations of observations
Fuck the police
Eric Linsker, ha? More here.
What was the question again?
Your wish is my command, sir. No holds barred.
I’m going to skip repeating the question, though, and go into the first topic of discussion I’d like to have with you: “ZERO”. With issue #10 out now and the second arc wrapped, one of the first things I noticed about it is that it was structurally different in its storytelling — volume 1, ‘An Emergency’ seemed mission oriented, introducing us to Zero’s world, but volume 2, ‘At the Heart of it All’ was a bit more personal to his life and events. What led to the decision to make the second arc more about his life and what we could call his family?
AK: I primarily base my storytelling decisions in feeling. I often prepare outlines and have loads of notes. At that stage, I use everything at my disposal. When the writing time comes I dive in and only consult the already prepared occasionally, letting the story come to me by — allowing it? Yes. The story is already somewhere out there, it often feels like. I let it come and then mold it if I feel that’s needed in order to communicate something specific, or I let it flow without immediately seeing why a certain image or a sentence or a scene wants to be there. There are plenty sentences, images, and scenes in my work that come directly from dream states, meditation, cut-up technique, synchronicity awareness, various flashes occurring whenever.
This might all have to do with me integrating a lot of storytelling possibilities when very young. I read voraciously since I was about three, four years old. I read through a stack of magazines about cinema when about seven or eight. I read massive amounts of varied cultural criticism by the time I was ten or eleven. I read stories, too — and watched, and perceived. So, in a sense, perhaps sooner than many others, I became conscious of everything being a story.
I find the external and the internal often, if not always, mirror each other. Perhaps, to some extent, we are the stories we choose to tell. If we choose to tell an honest story then perhaps we will attract the same through the law of attraction. If we choose to tell a loving story that perhaps through the law of attraction we will receive love. I mean this in the sense of telling fictional stories and also in the sense of telling stories in our reality, in our everyday lives, stories about ourselves, stories about our families, stories about the rules and/or non-rules of the world, stories that tell us what is what and what isn’t, and more. These storytelling paths are ostensibly the same to me, or very nearly the same. Where do dreams end and where does reality begin? I genuinely do not know. I see one interact with the other all the time. This is a dance; a dance of reality.
And perhaps what I wrote above is the best answer to your question: I don’t know. I can dance around it and offer you after-the-fact dissections but the complexity of the second arc came in waves and many different choices. There was no neat way, no simple plan with a perfect follow-through. If anything, it was a mixture of working with order and chaos and going with the flow of the universal, choosing what to do and when based on feeling first and foremost, and the feeling itself is partially rooted in my genetic memory, in my personal memory, in the nightmares, anxieties, hopes and dreams I feel, in what I see externalized and in what I want and don’t want to see externalized. In what I wish to resolve within myself, understanding that when I change, the world changes. The guidance is internal.
Sometimes I dissect during the act. To pretend what I do is purely feeling-based would be a lie. I use my mind. I strive for balance and sometimes imbalance has to be a part of it. I aim to use whatever is right whenever it’s right.
I know this is a long answer and I propose we do not cut a single bit. I wouldn’t cut Alan Moore’s answers or Joan Didion’s answers or Kanye West’s answers or Susan Sontag’s answers regardless of their length. And while I am not them, we have something in common: our humanity.
I will also create a secondary (tertiary? more?) narrative by posting other media throughout the interview.
Read ACLU’s report “War Comes Home: The Excessive Militarization of American Policing” right here.
This is not me hijacking the conversation. This is me adding layers.
I’ll admit that I’ve spent a good portion of my evening just watching streams of the events in Ferguson. It’s beyond unsettling at this point.
However, I think there’s actually a good transition here in the interview. Where “ZERO” began as an exploration of war almost in a Hideo Kojima meets David Lynch style, the second arc is more raw. You directly reflect events from the real world, these dark uncomfortable truths of things that existed in the past, that exist now and could exist in the future; issue #9, the story of Zero’s birth, is a particularly haunting reflection of the Bosnian War. We talked about structure before, but what about in terms of focus and the type of things you wanted to address in the second arc — the horses, the cartel and what lay beyond the door, Bosnia — how did you curate these events into the series, and why?
Why not start with some Adam Curtis on culture freezing.
I’ll take the events you mentioned and I’ll do my best to tell you, one by one.
The horses I discovered when I researched CERN. The story appeared somewhere (Vice?) and I put it down and chose to integrate it. I didn’t know how exactly it fit in until I wrote the final pages of #6, but it felt right. It also connected with the horse collector theme, which, in synchronicity with the CERN horse story, revealed itself to me as I researched more of Simo Häyhä’s life as a sniper. I put Häyhä into #1 without knowing what it meant. I just felt the connection and allowed the universe and eventual research to help me sort out the rest.
The cartel and what lay behind the door — there is a massive war right next door and many Americans are acting as if it’s not happening. Ridley Scott’s ‘The Counselor,’ written by Cormac McCarthy, hit upon that beautifully and perhaps so precisely that it gave many people and reviewers something they didn’t want to get: a dose of unfiltered reality. People come into countries they don’t understand taking advantage of them and they expect to walk out without getting the same back? That story is old. Very old.
Then there’s “ZERO” #9, and Bosnia. I remember being nine or ten or so, traveling through post-war Croatia with my parents. We went for the sun and the beaches and on the way we saw houses torn apart by bombs and bullets. I saw eyes of men who were in the war, who in some cases have done things that haunted their faces, their postures, too big to carry without your bones breaking down one by one over the course of the years spent selling fresh orange juice and cevapi to the tourists. You had power once. You had the gun. Things were happening. What is there now? Peace? Perhaps better. Hopefully better. Haunted faces.
I don’t know how or why the events of “ZERO” #9 came to me, at least not for sure, but when they came they came and were felt fully. I cried repeatedly when writing it. Then, and this will include spoilers, I realized the violent separation from the feminine, from the mother — it might have had a lot to do with my own separation right after being born, with being separated from my mother in a cold grey hospital full of nurses who in some cases just see another number born into a totalitarian country just three years before the Berlin Wall breaks but they did not know that so they just put me away. Then I realized there was another time, when I was maybe three, a separation that took two or three weeks as I was in a hospital that resembled that grey cold death place so much.
Therefore I do suspect “ZERO” #9 is (spoilers) my reliving/re-processing of these traumatic events. By reliving them safely I gain deeper insight into them and mutate or transcend them. I create a symbol of the past trauma (the comic, the story) and work with it by creating a new narrative, a narrative I want, or maybe simply allow the old one to vanish. This also reminds me of the perinatal matrix theory.
As for the why of it, “ZERO” is certainly about war and how it thrives on (at least) two things: unprocessed loss and lack of the feminine. The lack of the feminine comes to its horrifying, troubling head with #9, but it’s present throughout: in the cast, in the absence of genuine nurturing, in emotions that are avoided or repressed, in creativity and sexuality redirected into violence and war, into the black war impulse, the “black thing,” as soldiers with PTSD often call it. Unprocessed loss is there from issue one, as well.
If I look back at myself in early 2013, writing the first issues of “ZERO”, I knew I wanted to write it in order to dissect, understand and mutate precisely that bleak, dark thing that came hand in hand with anger and violent impulses. I’ve been in fights and I do believe in the beauty of a consensual fight, which is a way of play, but I do not believe in fight that is rooted in wanting to commit violence. And sometimes I saw an emotion or a thought pass through me and I went — what the fuck is this doing inside me? I need to investigate it. Where is this rooted? Why would a child ever smash ants? Why would a man ever get into a fight when there’s a chance to avoid hurting another person, or himself, or both?
I discovered a lot of this bleak dark thing had to do with loss in my family. During writing Zero I had discovered, by asking questions and by being kind, and also by applying some psychomagic principles before I even knew how exactly psychomagic worked but I did it regardless because it’s essentially a shamanic tradition and I came to realize that I am a shaman. How could I not be? It’s part of what I do every day. I can enter trance states, I can help myself heal, I can help other people heal. Sometimes I can see spirits. Are they ghosts of other people or other life forms, or are they Jungian externalizations of my psyche? Shit, why not both?
Anyway, loss: I discovered my grandfather on my mom’s side lost his father in Latvia during the Second World War. Then, before he was eleven or so, he lost a girl he loved — she was an Ukrainian prisoner of war who became a part of his family, shot to death by the Russians as they were liberating and “liberating” Czechoslovakia. My grandmother on my mom’s side spent days underneath the ruins of their house when she was just four years old or so, and likely saw multiple atrocities. My grandmother on my father’s side saw her father die of a heart attack on the Christmas day when she was about eight — he died in her arms as she stuffed his mouth with adrenaline pills the doctor left behind after his first episode. My grandfather on my dad’s side lost his father early as well.
Thus I realized my family is riddled with unprocessed post-traumatic stress syndrome. Thus continued my way towards healing myself. And through that, perhaps, towards healing my family as well, and maybe helping others, too.
We’re at that point already where I have about five or six questions I want to ask at once, but I’ll restrain myself and boil it down to one, the one that I think is most relevant right now.
A lot of the second volume of the book has dealt with Edward’s mental state, particularly coming to the front in issue #10 when we see the effects that PTSD are having on him. It has been permeating throughout the series, but the finale of this arc was decidedly less subtle than the book normally is about the subject. What’s fascinating to me, though, is that this sort of story is one that we actively seem to avoid; war stories are about triumph, about good guys and bad guys and the justified dropping of bombs — and the few times we look at the aftermath in fiction, it’s often times with a specific goal, like what Jeremy Renner does after coming home in The Hurt Locker as a recent-ish example.
Given what you just told me and considering the nine issues of violence, sometimes incredibly brutal violence at that, what was the process like for you in channeling and then talking about this particular aspect of Zero’s life, and your own, in a way that felt most true?
AK: I wrote the issue in two large chunks. The first eleven or so nearly completely silent pages came first. I wanted to get pages to Mike Gaydos fast and thankfully being quiet, immersing in the solitude of Iceland, letting the pages flow out of that place, it all came naturally. Perhaps it helped that I had a one-way ticket to go to Iceland ready for late June; we originally scheduled chapter ten to be released in July, so I would likely be on Iceland when the story dropped. I invited the synchronicity, allowed the story to work through me.
The rest came…in waves. I wrote the initial dialog, then the script, then I rewrote after I got back the finished pages. If I remember correctly, the entire second part also rolled out of me in a single day or two.
Another element of the process I invited was creating issue #10 as a very specific (psycho) magical sigil for me — letting go of pain and wounding on a deeper level, creating space and energy for a meeting that had to be simultaneously defined and unspecified, seeing clearly, being clear. The realization and execution of this came gradually, from the first words until the chapter got sent to print.
We had to push the issue due to being late with chapter nine, and I already spent two to three weeks of June in seclusion in the Czech mountains, so in early July, for various reasons, I decided to return back home to Brooklyn instead of going to Iceland. I got back to Brooklyn, ready to do the final rewrite and send the issue to print. As I wrote the final and sent it out the sigil worked its magic.
So — it’s all true. Everything I put inside “ZERO” has to be true. Everything I put outside of me has to be true and I consciously aim to make my truth intake the same every day; bullshit shall not pass. I don’t have space for lies in my life. And before you say stories are lies — if we apply the multiversity theory and say that every possible world exists, then each story is true somewhere. Does that mean lies don’t exist? They do and then there are also worlds where the lies are no longer lies but the truth instead? What a cosmic paradox that would be.
One particular element I just recalled is the discipline shown within the first eleven pages — Zero’s way of utilizing discipline as a way of control over himself, or at least maintaining himself. This goes back to the process question, too, and to my life in general. I love discipline. I love order. I love eating the same breakfast almost every day, waking up around the same time, my workout routine, a daily page ratio, my tea. The routine is anchoring, grounding. It’s easier to soar up into the air and deviate, play with chaos, go with the flow when I have a good sense of the ground, and it’s easier to land, too.
Talking to you here and having talked to you in the past, one thing that I find fascinating is the relationship between the comics that you work on and something else. We can call it magic, others may call it something else, and even I’m not entirely sure that’s quite the word I want — but there’s certainly an essence to the series, one that stands out and seems to hold within these transformative properties, distilled down from yourself, as you speak about issue #10 and its particular sigil.
As the book evolves, as you write more and collaborate with new artists every issue, how have you found the creative process for the series evolving per issue? As ethereal as it may be, how does the magic work; and when you look back at how you worked on the first issue, or even putting the pitch together, what do you find is different for you now at issue #10 and beyond?
AK: Is there even a word for it? Or is it beyond words? Consider the theory of the word virus.
The creative process evolved from a relatively clear idea of what I wanted to do into a whirlwind of making connections and adding and taking out and processing and readdressing and…I have no idea. It changes every single day. How does the magic work? I take imagination and will and intent and time and energy and surrender and memory and “history” or whatever that particular illusion is called and I GO. I step into the blank white black nothing and I make it up as I go along.
The original pitch document…well, I wanted to do 30-40 issues, make a break in the middle, tell a relatively linear story, albeit one that begins in 2038 and then we go back in time to 2018 progress towards 2038 with an occasional move into another time entirely. Except that I changed a lot of that. I thought I’d work on issues 16-30 or so with one artist, but after writing #10 and feeling its effect as well as going through other events, everything in my life started clicking, smelling, feeling differently than before, and my fatigue with war narratives also came to its head. So I changed things.
I am bored with writing about war for most part. I will retell some bits in different variations if the “ZERO” TV series takes off, but I want to write about love now, much more about love, much less about war. I never glorified war and I always aimed to dissect it or show its innate stupidity but I am not interested in doing it forever. The next few years should see me transitioning from that space and into a new one. It’s already happening.
Consider the theory of the word virus. Consider Terence McKenna’s theory of fungi as space travelers.
Continued below“From symbiosis to parasitism is a short step. The word is now a virus. The flu virus may have once been a healthy lung cell. It is now a parasitic organism that invades and damages the central nervous system. Modern man has lost the option of silence. Try halting sub-vocal speech. Try to achieve even ten seconds of inner silence. You will encounter a resisting organism that forces you to talk. That organism is the word.”
— William S. Burroughs, “The Ticket That Exploded”
Are you paying attention? This is all relevant to the comic we are talking about. There is a good reason why Jeff Lemire’s painting William S. Burroughs on the cover of “ZERO” #15. I mean, “Ginsberg Nova”? It’s there. It’s been there since the beginning. See it? Up there, in the stars? Down here, underneath your feet?
Interestingly enough, you hit not one but three topics I wanted to discuss with you about the series. Rather than ask one at a time in this instance, to keep the flow going I’m going to throw a bit of a curveball and ask you all three questions at once for this one as a mega-follow-up. Please forgive me in advance.
My first question is, how is the “ZERO” television program coming along? You’ve done work on the pilot that was announced about a month ago, but has there been any new developments? And what are you hoping to do with the show that you can’t necessarily do with the comic?
My second is, one thing that you’ve mentioned in the past both to me and on social media is that you’re a bit of a pioneer in what you’ve dubbed as “fungal science fiction,” along with Warren Ellis (recently in “Moon Knight,” for example) and John Smith (“Indigo Prime”). We’ve seen it from you in “ZERO” certainly, but also in “Secret Avengers” (which I originally took as a coy nod to “ZERO”). Where did your interest in fungi develop, what do you find fascinating about this fauna and how did this develop into something applicable for science-fiction?
And last but certainly not least, what is the future of the series? I know you’ve always stated in the past that the length changes, grows and decreases, with an ebb and flow based on how you’re feeling about what you want to hit on in the book. Do you have a set mind in length now and a plan for the rest of the series, or are you still feeling out the future? The future of Zero is a bit pre-determined given the first page of “ZERO” #1, but knowing you I’d imagine there’s still room to surprise.
AK: “ZERO” and TV — developments yes, and I am feeling elated about them. Do I want to talk about them more? Not at the present time, but I’ll gladly admit I’m answering this question while in Silver Lake, Los Angeles for a variety of reasons.
The comic and the show — I have no interest in doing the same thing twice. Would there be similarities? Yes. Would there be differences? Yes.
Interest in fungi — my parents used to take me to the woods. We would look for mushrooms, bring them back home, put them into scrambled eggs and such. Nothing quite like fresh mushrooms. Later on I begin learning about mushrooms as complex organisms. Did you know that mushrooms are, according to our current science, closer to animals than to plants? And we don’t know what their biodiversity is like. The estimates are 1-5 million species. And these are just estimates based on our current understanding, which is limited.
Where are mushrooms? Mushrooms are everywhere. Look at the walls around you. Look at the ground. How many different types of fungi does your body currently contain? And speaking of, how do our bodies operate? How many organisms are operating us while we assume that we are operating “ourselves” ?
Mushrooms and fascination come easy. Look at the mushroom death suit. Consider that fungi recycle plants and convert them into soil, and plenty other ways they interact with the environment. What would this Earth look like without them? Consider the ancient practices of using mushrooms as spiritual helpers. Some of the oldest living mushroom colonies are the circles around Stonehenge. Could this have anything to do with what “ZERO” is about, considering “ZERO” is set (mostly) in the United Kingdom?
I mean: how is all of the above applicable for SF? It just is. Everything is SF. We live in a world that is effectively SF. This world is a speculative fiction world — we constantly create and discard fictions. Everything is permitted. Perhaps we’re finally realizing that the membrane between fantasy and reality can be extremely thin and sometimes perhaps non-existent. How is this going to change our lives, our society, our universe? These things are connected. The internal changes the external. The micro changes the macro. You are important. Everyone is.
Continued belowWhat are you gonna do?
Go into the forest
Until I really can’t remember my name
I’m gonna come back and things will be different
I’m gonna bring back some stories and games
I mean: how is all of the above applicable for SF? It just is. Everything is SF. We live in a world that is effectively SF. This world is a speculative fiction world — we constantly create and discard fictions. Everything is permitted. Perhaps we’re finally realizing that the membrane between fantasy and reality can be extremely thin and sometimes perhaps non-existent. How is this going to change our lives, our society, our universe? These things are connected. The internal changes the external. The micro changes the macro. You are important. Everyone is. What are the stories and games you play and how do they interact with the stories and games we play?
Speaking of mushrooms, ha! The cover of “ZERO” #12 by me, Adam Gorham and Tom Muller:
The future of “ZERO” as a comic: I know when and how it ends. Mostly. It’s in sight.
One thing I think we have sort of danced around in this discussion, but something that we’ve talked about in the past, is influence. I think in earlier issues of the book it was easier for me or anyone else to say, “ok, this influence is influenced by that,” and so on. But with the second arc, we move past that initial point where we have to compare everything and come into that groove where “ZERO” is the thing influencing itself.
While there are obviously still things in your world that will influence you in the most literal sense — as we’ve discussed here, as is referenced in the book like with issue #10 — do you find that statement to be true? Or do you find it’s more that you’re able to draw from that which inspires in different ways as the series goes on; that it all gets mixed up in the magic, so to say?
And on that same thread, I enjoyed at our post-arc discussion for the first volume when you offered up teases for the next arc, with music and art and the like. Rather than ask you what is coming up in the next arc, could you do the same exercise as before?
AK: It all gets mixed up. I certainly feel more immersed in the universe of Edward Zero than before because at this point I have spent nearly two years in it. Not “building it” but being in it, a process which involves not just building but also observation, sitting still, letting go.
I had an engaging discussion with a Lakota shaman last November; he told me we are not creators but co-creators, co-creating with the universe. I found some truth in it. So it’s all true. Everything is true, everything is permitted — just watch for your intent, Ales.
And sure, why not — let’s tease the next four issues, which comprise the third arc.
“ZERO” #11: still Iceland, just some time later. I won’t tell how long. But you might want to reread chapter two before you read this, or after, or both.
“ZERO” #12: Ophiocordyceps camponoti-rufipedis.
“ZERO” #13:
“ZERO” #14: Why is Sara Cooke singing this song?
