I do a lot of different stuff.
When I was 18 I started a political party, the Revolutionary Dance Party. It was surprisingly easy. All you have to do is get three signatures in most states. Being a political party allows a person to host events and gatherings that are otherwise not allowed. The RDP for me was primarily situationist, a critique of the contemporary political spectacle.
When I was 19, I rode freight trains from St Paul MN to Lawrence KS. It was lovely. When I was 20, the RDP crumpled and I rode freight trains to Helena MT. Freight train riding is beautiful and dangerous.
In 1994 I was homeless in Portland and went to a poetry reading and met some very intelligent and cool people. They offered to publish my poems. I only had three, I had to make 9 more. It was every vagabond poet’s dream, to be discovered by the right people at an open mic. I met my best friend, Curtis Knapp. I stayed in Berkeley and then in the mountains with some deep hippies and came back to civilization on Halloween. Curtis had taken the role of a bird. My poems were published in Rococo Anerca.
I made a chapbook and put two green fuzzy stickers on the cover as the title. People liked it. I don’t have any copies.
I started jamming with Rob Walmart. We made/make experimental free-form improv music. I always wanted to be good at keyboards but am not. The band would give me a microphone and I would close my eyes and do vocals. I make up characters and impersonate heroes and its mostly funny but there is a poetic undertone that rises sometimes.
Curtis and I worked forever on a book called if ever then always. We went to Ireland and stayed in a cabin on a swampy mountain.
I had a lovely apartment with a great window that I called the sky position. I would walk home from the cafe looking up at the clouds and trees and write all day. I got laid off and I went deep into the poems. I knew it was getting serious when I started getting hand cramps.
Tom Blood 