Designer, writer, activist, muse, bodhisattva.
Writings
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Erika Lopez
When Mrs. Lopez is not too busy using scissors to cut up chicken livers for her cat or ordering soy lattes under her breath in San Francisco, she knots a silk scarf around her head in the wind and has big, big and important meetings with anyone who’ll listen. Listen to her big plans of turning this Trilogy of Tomato series into a grammar-school filmstrip to scare private school children with public-school techniques. Mrs. Lopez’s next book will be called Putting the “Fun” Back in “Funeral”.
What convinced, pushed or drove you to create and publish your stories?
I couldn’t find them for myself to read, so I reluctantly realized that I’d have to do the things myself so I could write about them. Each time I wrote an idea down about my fake character doing something, she was like my older sister, encouraging me to do it myself. Maybe it’s a sort of schizofrenia. I don’t care. It seems to work for me a little bit.
It’s even encouraged me to say “fuck you” to my indifferent publisher. I shoot myself in the foot by putting rants about them on my website. Pissed them off. Didn’t care. It’s not about making a living from my books and sucking up to my publisher. I might as well be in any job, sucking up to a boss so I can keep my health benefits and pay for kids. I don’t have kids so I can say fuck you. That’s the real fuck you money: living low. Low rent. Low expenses. Paying for things up front. That’s fuck you money because few of us will ever amass the mulit-millions of dollars we now need to say fuck you and live to a relatively unscary old age where you can say fuck you to the laughable amount of social security you’ll get and everything else once you’re one of the ones at the outer edges of the herd.
I told a friend I would be interviewing you, and she immediately recognized your name and exuded extremely love and respect for you. What has been the feedback from friends, family members, lovers, professional associates, and ultimately yourself?
I get a lot of support and disbelief because so many of us have been trained to be a certain way in the belief that you’ll finally get something like a car worth having. My grandmother’s old husband’s ears used to get beet red from anger at my ways–they were actually working for me! Here’s this old white guy who’d been subservient all his life so he’d get a little respect as he barely cracked the door open on his working class background, and he sees me, this big crazy brown girl, having the audacity to demand things from businessmen while drinking wine with them.
Did I get everything I wanted? No. But enough to make me want more on my own terms. I think it’s time folks like us take over America and do it on our own terms. If there’s enough of us, we don’t need their distribution services.
You began your trilogy as a Flaming Iguana, next as a Mad Dog, and finally a Hoochie Mama. Who was your favorite persona, and where do you go from here?
Where do I go from here? I think I go it alone more. Not sure. In the same way that my first draft inspired me to get on a motorcycle, my three books have inspired me to go it alone and hit the road and perform and publicize myself more. Sure, I need some of the more mainstream channels, but I’m not DESPERATE for them. That’s a big difference. I’m inspired by Margaret Cho’s turnaround as well as Ani DiFranco’s control and Andy Warhol’s big thinking. But the bottom line is that I have to have fun. And after so much lonesome time from writing novels and being the front man, I want to collaborate with others and be more a part of something larger so that when I’m tired, it’s a machine already running on its own. You have to be desperate and hungry to want to be the front person, always smiling, wanting people to love and see you--because that’s how you make your living, but that shit’ll eat you alive. It’s nice to have nappy hair and answer the phones behind the scenes and laugh and not worry about always saying the “right” things and “interview” right.
You described They Call Me Mad Dog as a “Rorshach Test”, getting whatever you want out of it to be its point. What did you get out of it personally?
I got calmness. The realization that we GET to be assholes as long as we pay the bill responsibly afterwards. This low key new age calmness is crap. It makes us tired. Getting pissed in a fun way is good for us.
Desire and love are imminent in all your stories, be it a love for adventure, a “victimless” crime of passion, or a desire for change. How have the two elements resolved themselves in your life in retrospect of your adventures?
Hmmm... good question. I think I may have answered it all above. I think that energy’s all we run on. Desire, love, and passion–the day-to-day crap can grind us down, the wish to not make waves or argue with the status quo will get you nowhere. It’s more fun to mess up hair and get a response–ANY response! A lot of us have these self-esteems that tell us we don’t belong in the group of artists, but you’ve got to become schizofrenic and employ your own internal stage mother who throws you out there in front, anyway! Don’t look at good books or good art–look at BAD books, movies, and art, and you TOO will have the courage to go out there because how much WORSE could you be? That’s the stage mom. And you’ll have a good time if you kind of don’t care about being perfect and move on. You’ll get better by accident.
Your books resonate a certain truth or resemblance to your life, but they are labeled “fiction”. How close to mirroring you and your life are your books?
They mirror some of what’s already happened, and they mirror what I want to happen, or what’s happened in my head, or my predictions...
Creative styles differed greatly with each book, and you’ve mentioned professional differences with your publishers. Are the two related and how?
My first editor who believed in my first book left Simon & Schuster and I was at the mercy of people who didn’t get it. That’s kind of what happened.
How would you write your life or books differently if given the chance?
I don’t think I would. I’d make it so that my family was still talking to me, though.
What sort of reaction do you get from people when they recognize you? What kind of recognition would you want more than anything else?
When people recognize me they’re really nice. It just unnerves me because I like to do things in public, but then I want to go away and sort of blend in. I don’t want to be watched or noticed.
How has your web site helped you as an artist, a writer, more importantly as a person?
My website reminded me that THIS is where I get to be a real asshole and be free! I love that! I hated the internet, but now I get it. I really get it.
If given the chance to collaborate with an artist or writer for another book, who would it be and why?
My friend Jeffrey. Jeffrey Hicken. He’s moving to Jersey to marry a girl there. I’d keep him here if I could and write things with him all the time.
How would your books ever translate to film and who would play whom? How would the soundtrack go?
The soundtrack would have the warbly soprano of Mrs. Miller singing popular cover songs. I always saw Tomato as an earlier John Leguizamo in his Puerto Rican girl drag–the one in the spandex pants in the laundromat who taps her cigarette ashes into her baby carriage.
You’ve written about flaccid Canadians in Flaming Iguanas; eating pussy the best way you know how in They Call Me Mad Dog; sucking off pre/post/pseudo-suicidal men and harnessing the power of labia-lifting a motorcycle upright in Hoochie Mama. So what could you possibly find inappropriate to write and/or discuss?
I find weird ways of murdering and torturing people and animals impossible for me to read. I love Stephen King because his stories are boogeyman/campfire-scary and his characters have heart, but I find it impossible and disturbing for me to read Poppy Z Brite and Brett Easton Ellis: reading them is like having a sleep-over with Charles Manson and Jeffrey Daumer.
Did the Latte People win in the end?
Nah. See the stress on their faces and the panic of aging as they run on treadmills with cell phones at their ears while rubbing sheep placenta on their faces? I don’t care how many houses they hoard around the country, they don’t win.
Visit Erika Lopez at her web site and join the revolution.
Friday, 2006 February 10