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"You've put it in the book and in reading it my brain is having a response like 'things as they are are really part of the world and I forgot.' How nice to just feel them roll over the brain! It's like a brain massage!"

— Gallagher, Kirsten

Author

Gallagher, Kirsten

Work Title

Interview with Chris Alexander, Kirsten Gallagher, Danny Snelson & Gordon Tapper

Publisher

Edit Publications

Date

2010

Metaphor

"You've put it in the book and in reading it my brain is having a response like 'things as they are are really part of the world and I forgot.' How nice to just feel them roll over the brain! It's like a brain massage!"

Metaphor in Context

KG: I know from hearing you talk, and also from your last few books, that you're interested in ephemeral language and use it to generate writing. For example, more recently we've had the experience (which is a clear concern of yours in Heath) of all kinds of writing happening on the web, which I suspect many people don't yet think of as writing, like product reviews or little spur or the moment notes to friends that then some other person copies onto their blog or cuts and pastes into a poetry project, etc. -- those bits of text that are probably the most common form of writing happening now. 7CV seems to be constructed entirely out of that, though I think a good bit of it is not from the web, but instead I imagine it being from brochures, reviews, little product labels and tags. I sense that some of the images in the book are among your sources, whether a painting you've used for description, a used postcard, or a little slip of paper like a receipt that is mostly flooded with product codes one wouldn't even know how to decipher. I especially like that it seems the numbers from these kinds of codes get recycled into your text. There's something pleasurable about seeing and knowing as I'm reading these that these things I'm reading might be from this kind of ephemera--a poorly paid cashier mechanically hands over this odd slip of paper full of numbers and says "have a nice day." You've put it in the book and in reading it my brain is having a response like "things as they are are really part of the world and I forgot." How nice to just feel them roll over the brain! It's like a brain massage!