The following words regard my decision to no longer use the identity of “Andy Riverbed.” I say use, because if you, or any, were to choose to direct yourself towards me with a “Hey, Andy,” “Yo, Andison, what’s up?” “Andrew Riverbedian Constantinople,” I will respond. I will not ignore you. That would be tasteless.
But I plan to no longer submit my work or ask that my work be published under the pseudonym, “Andy Riverbed.” Like I already said, if you were to call me “Andy,” I will not be offended. It is the price I pay for following my misguided (I like that word a lot) whims of youth. I will respond civilly and rationally, dealing only with the aspects that have us interacting. I will not correct you, but I will sign off as “Gustavo Rivera.”
“Gustavo Rivera” is my real name. It is the name my mother chose for me. Many people know me personally by this name and are aware that I use “Andy Riverbed” for my writings. My mother despises this fact. Some only know me as “Andy Riverbed.” Some even know me a “River Head.” Some as “Gestapo Santiago Santiago.” Some as “…y la rivera.” I hope this change does not cause confusion or annoyance (one of the reasons it’s taken me so long to make this change), but if that were to happen, it would quickly pass, because this whole change is pretty insignificant.
Interiorly, I have always been the person I am. The only aspects of my self that have changed are my habits and outward persona given to those I interact with. These changes have nothing to do with “Andy Riverbed” or “Gustavo Rivera,” but with the experiences and life circumstances that have come to affect me.
This change, to using my real name in context to my literary output, may seem a meaningless occurrence, because it is, but nonetheless, I feel it deserves an explanation. The following is a “history,” or something like that, explaining how I came to use “Andy Riverbed,” and why now I choose not to.
I first used a pseudonym when getting published when I got my first poem put up by an online journal at the age of 19, as “…y la rivera.” Why? As a kid in San Juan, Puerto Rico, I spent a lot of my time hanging out on the streets at night with punk kids, hip-hop kids, and graffiti kids. Some of my friends were graffiti artists. I’d tag along with them as they went tagging walls of the city, and I eventually created my “tag.” Back then my “punk name” was “gustavo huele huele,” which literally translates into “gustavo sniff sniff.” I used to tag “HUELE” on walls. I found that to be funny. Then I had a pop punk band called “Mostro Verde” (the name of a local brand of heroin sold en Santurce), and I made a little design to represent that, and I would go around the streets tagging that. Then I went a little crazy. I had spent a summer drinking too much rum (about a bottle each night), and one night I blacked-out and fell a really high distance to the ground. At the emergency room they injected steroids into my brain to cease its swelling so they could sew up the gash on my head. After that I was put into a few mental hospitals and was diagnosed as bi-polar. What had actually happened was that those steroids had sparked me into a manic trip. I was like that for a period of about four to six months.
I had already gotten into writing poetry then. Sometimes I would go to the Nuyorican Café en Old San Juan on Sundays and read during the open mic. After I had been released from the hospitals, I continued to hang out, which was a terribly bad idea, but one I went with. Because I found myself so clever and wanted to emphasize that I had been diagnosed as “bi-polar,” when asked my name at the open mic, I told them to call me out as “Gustavo y la rivera.” This was supposed to represent me as two people in one. I guess it works, but now I look at it as totally pretentious and another misguided youthful whim. Eventually, I knocked myself completely out of the picture and just kept the name, “…y la rivera.” Then I went around the streets tagging that. This brings me to ask myself if I was maybe in denial of my self.
Eventually I moved to the States, and when I would get stuff published, that was the name I used. One day I was playing a boxing game on my roommate’s game system, and when I tried to name my created boxer “y la rivera,” it would not fit in the cells I was allowed to use. So I “translated” “y la rivera” to “Andy Riverbed.” How does that work? It’s weird, but works too. “y la rivera” literally translated into English means “and the riverbed.” Then I started thinking about how certain dialects of English pronounce the phrase “and the” as [æn di] (phonetic spelling), which spells out: “Andy.” So I named my created boxer “Andy Riverbed.” That was about four years ago. Since then I changed up my Myspace, made a blog, got stories and poems published, got a poetry collection and two eBooks published, all under “Andy Riverbed.”
I no longer want this. I no longer feel “pumped” when I think about “Andy Riverbed,” but I’ve gone with it because change seemed complicated and messy. And aren’t we constantly being scared out of possibly new and glorious decisions due to fear of complications and dirty hands? Well, fuck it, I thought. Now, I just don’t care. I have a new email using parts of my real name (gariverasantiago@gmail.com). And if you want to call me “Andy” or “Riverbed” or whatever, that’s cool too. But for the mentioned reasons I will no longer publish my shit as “Andy Riverbed.”
Thank you for reading,
Gustavo Rivera
St. Dad is over
And in honor of its memory I am releasing Side B of our upcoming twelve-inch which will remain nameless because we were so unable to work together that we couldn't even name the thing. So to me this is Side B of the S/T St. Dad record. All these are new reocrdings of older songs that had been previously released in earlier St. Dad recordings. Despite the band break-up, from what I have been told, this record will still be released. Side A are all completely new songs.
Side B of S/T St. Dad Record
Living in the northeast
Right now I'm in Queens, NY, and on Friday I should be driving with Popcorn to Boston, MA. Popcorn has suffered a lot this past week since I left Florida. Sunday night, at around 12AM, Popcorn, Matty, Rilly, and I followed Owen and Denise from Lagues towards Orlando, FL. I woke everyone up at 6AM, and dropped off Matty and Rilly in Gainesville, FL, and started off on my mission to make it to the northeast. Popcorn has been living in a small portable cat cage since then. We made it to Newark, NJ by Tuesday afternoon. I stopped in a few rest stops and slept in the space between the two seats of the Uhaul truck I had rented. I'd leave the air on until it got cool in the space, then turn off the engine, and sleep until it became too hot again and I was sweaty. From Newark I went to Queens, NY, to pick up Dru. We made it to Boston that night and slept at Joshua's. The next day Dru and I got all my shit into a storage space in Malden, MA, and then spent the day trying to get rid of the truck I had rented. Popcorn had been left in Queens, with Lily, and I had to return to get him "home." So until today, I wasn't sure what to do to get Popcorn to Boston. The public commuting services do not allow pets other than service-pets. Today I found someone looking for a ride to Amherst, MA, and he is willing to pay gas and toll expenses till there. So, then, I've reserved a car that will cost me a little over a hundred dollars for the day. Add that to all that has been spent getting me here in Queens so far. I don't have a place to live yet. Poor Popcorn's stuck in a little cage, and he can't understand when I tell him, "Popcorn, it's just temporary. I promise."
Before I left Gainesville, I had been sending out emails with the manuscript of my upcoming collection. The response to it got me thinking about this collection. One specific review that got me thinking about the state of this collection was written by the Puerto Rican ghetto-cat, Theodore Puertoriquez'. You can read that HERE.
Now before you read Puertoriquez' review and take his words at face value, take into consideration the following factors:
(1) Theodore Puertoriquez is a "Puerto Rican ghetto-cat," and therefore is extremely homophobic.
(2) Theodore Puertoriquez is in actuality Mather Schneider's Mexican girlfriend, that short bucket of hot sauce Mather's always writing poignant and heart-wrenching ballads for people who believe in the fallacy called "love" about. And if anyone remembers the last Manual update, in which I reviewed Mather's latest collection, I assure you she's looking to get back at me. And it was difficult for me not to notice that the style in which Puertoriquez reviewed my collection was obscenely similar to how I had reviewed Mather's.
And if you don't believe that Puertoriquez is Mather's Mexican girlfriend, well, check out this pic:
[The purpose of this note is to make sure that all can visualize the image contained above. Due to Photobucket's policies, the above picture may have been banned. It is an image of a man penetrating a woman from behind, and in it, the face of the male has been cropped to be the face of Mather, and the female's face has been cropped to be Puertoriquez.]
***UPDATE***
Like I was sure would happen, Photobucket banned my image of Mather fuckiing Puertoriquez up the ass. So I've uploaded the pic onto my Tumblr, so you can check it out HERE.
But regardless of the reasons why Puertoriquez may have ripped my collection, his review sparked thoughts and questions in me. One major question was this:
"Does my poetry suck?"
I began wondering if I had turned possibily vital words into shit through my having stared at them, worked on them, moved them around, for too many hours. Maybe there was once a vitality present in this collection, but I smothered it.
See, Puertoriquez writes these poems to be my "new poems." But they aren't. I have been carrying all of the poems of this collection around with me for over a year. What I believe I have done is that by working on this collection for so long, I have ruined it. It had been sucked dry into boring.
I had sent out numerous emails regarding the collection, and only two people have posted anything concering it, (1) Puertoriquez, and (2) Scott Steinhardt, whose blurb you can read HERE. He seemed to enjoy the collection, but his reasons are quite worrying.
When asked for something said about the collection, Matt DiGangi had this: "If I must provide a quote, it’d go like this: Gustavo Rivera says it better than I can: “Small men baked pizza inside my chest.”
Well, what's that? That means nothing, really. I love you Matt, but that blurb is meaningless. Unless its meaning lies in the fact that it is saying nothing for a reason. I had a linguistics professor, Brent Henderson, talk in class about the meaning of not-saying. I think one of his examples was something like: "I would recommend X person for the job because he or she will not be late." But other than saying that X person will be there on time, it doesn't saying anything about the person's qualifications. Maybe because the person sucks, just like the poetry in this collection might suck.
So then due to the responses (or lack-there-of) I have received about the collection, I have come to the following conclusion: In general, the poetry contained in the collection I wanted to be my second, "We act agngry and apathetic because there's too much noise," sucks.
But I can't admit yet that my compulsion to write things I call "poems" to be a waste of my time. I recently submitted a few of my real new poems, poems from the past month, to the online journal BEATNIK, and a few days later, Bruce Hodder, the journal's editor, wrote to me this:
"Hi Gustavo,
I think the poems are great! Accordingly, I've been a greedy so-and-so and posted all of them at BEATNIK this morning. Hope that's okay.
I'm getting such great material from people who aren't the names you see on page after page of other journals I feel really lucky."
You can read those poems HERE.
What I must have happened with this collection, the one I planned to be my second, is that I worked on it way too much and for way too long, and I destroyed it. That now it's a futile attempt. I do not belive it is pointless to continue writing poetry, or to try to compile a second collection. But this one just won't be it, I think. Basically, this collection proves that what I needed was a roommate who was aware of the process of self-sabotage that I was comitting, and as a gift to humanity and a favor to me, he or she would have decided to drop tiny traces of arsenic poison into my daily morning coffee so that I would slowly wither away, instead of being able to "finalize" this collection. But that didn't happen, so I did finalize the thing, and have now come to this point: I have realized that I am capable of working on my own shit for so long that I can kill its life.
You must understand, this collection has taken quite a journey and has changed a lot. It began as a collection of pretty much everything I do in terms of "literary" output. It contained Spanish-to-English and English-to-Spanish translations, a lot more poems, and up-to-one-page pieces of prose. It was more than forty pages long. The ordering of the pieces was supposed to "maintain a theme" throughout, but never become boring because it was constantly changing from form to form. A few months later I got rid of some of the poems I felt were weaker. I got rid of the translations, telling myself that one day I'd just do a collection of translations. I also eliminated all commas and semicolons. A few months later I put back some of the commas, and where I had semicolons, I used periods. I got rid of all of the prose peieces and of a few more poems. I was finally left with just poems. I worked on these for a while, trying to make them as "clear" as possible (probably why Puertoriquez says the collection is so "conversational"). Then I rearranged the poems into four seperate series, and that's where I had left it. To sum it up, my collection went from a monster manuscript containing translations, prose, and poetry, to eighteen pages of very simple poems, seperated into four series of no more than four poems each.
I have a publsiher for this collection. A small press from Puerto Rico, which publishes beautiful-looking books, but right now I don't want this thing to come out. I rather wait a bit and take my time and maybe do something better. I enjoy the collection. It makes me happy, but it doesn't drive me crazy either. I feel that it should do more than it does. So then I guess I'm agreeing with the avereage response: this collection isn't alive, it's dead.
News shining a more positive light on my writing
New Mr. Potato Head story, in which Mr. Potato Head enters the hood of a city in search of heroin and ends up in a parralel dimension, has been published at Girls with Insurance. Read "Mr. Potato Head cops dope while on tour with the Vegetables": HERE.
My friend Marc Henessey from Gainesville, Fl, is in a contest for live looping, and if you go to his video on Youtube and leave a comment he might win. I have seen him play the song he used in the competition a few times. It's much more impressive that way, under the slight light of a small D.I.Y. art venue, under the influence of a few bottles of tasty beers. Check out his video HERE.
I think my friend, Jamie Garvey, also from Gainesville, and vocalist of the hip-hop group, Scum of the Earth, has two of his tattooes in the book, "Word Made Flesh," which compiles pictures of literary-inspired tattooes and the stories behind them. Jamie's stories include apperances by Harry Crews, e.e. cummings, and a broken heart. Check that out HERE.
Based on my understanding of the emails I've exchanged with Sam Pink, I am his "official to-Spanish translator."
The following is the first ever (I believe) Sam Pink play translated into Spanish. Another thing to take note on is that I'm publishing this translation without having received proofs by one of my better-in-Spanish-than-me female friends. I think Lola is really busy and has had trouble getting computer access. So there might be some spelling errors and missing acentos, but nothing that I believe should make it unreadable. I can understand it, and right now, coming close to two months without a Manual update, that's enough for me.
Una obra sobre dos personas
De dos hogares adjecentes salen dos hombres. Cortan por sus patios y se paran frente a frente a una distancia de tres pies. El aire entre ellos los aprieta. Un foco sobre la entrada de vehiculos de uno de los hombres alumbra. El aire sugiere el fin del verano.
Uno: Que bien verte. [Sonríe.]
El otro: [Volviendo la sonrisa] Si, me siento igual.
Ambos alcanzan dentro de sus bolsillos. Las miradas de sus ojos juntos. Con precision lenta, ponen cuchillas de filetes con mangas negras contra la garganta del otro.
Uno: Creo que se ha hido el verano. Siento el enfrío.
El otro: Igualmente, me siento asi. Pronto cerrare mis ventanas.
Uno: Si, cuando llegue el frío, es mejor cerrar las ventanas. Así mantienes la casa caliente.
El otro: Gracías por la sugerencia. Eres un buen amigo. No como el sol, cual esta muy lejos.
Uno: Gracías. De eso trato. Me da felicidad.
El otro: Observando fotos de mi mismo me da felicidad. Aveces me hace bien recordar que una vez fuí una persona distinta.
Uno: Los retratos me asustan. No dejo que me tomen la foto.
El otro: Gracías por decirme eso. Ahora se más de ti.
Uno: Por favor, no lo menciones. No es nada.
El otro: Me gusta ser tu vecino. Eres humilde y eso me hace sentir poderoso por que te podría golpear hasta la muerte y no harías nada. Dirías, “No es nada.”
Uno: Estas abusando de nuestra amistad.
El otro: Si no cortas la grama de tu patio periodicamente, los insectos y animales lo infiltraran.
Uno: [Lamentando] Lo se.
Una hoja es spolada entre ellos. Uno le pone un poco de presíon al cuchillo. Le pellizca una vena del cuello de el otro.
Uno: [Brincando los pies para evitar el calor del suelo] Es bueno verte.
El otro: Si, es bueno verte a ti tambien. Creo que ya hemos tocado este tema.
Uno: Cuando no te veo por mucho tiempo se me olvida que existes.
El otro: Hay, que gracioso eres.
Uno: Estaba siendo sincero y ahora me has ofendido. Y que hicistes eso me deberias golpear hasta la muerte por que ya no me queda nada.
El otro: Si, mis brazos son fuertes. Mi mandíbula tambien. Te podría comer cuando estes ya muerto—huesos y todo. Mi esposa dice que soy capaz de comer piedras. Aveces, cuando duermo, ella pone piedras dentro de mi boca y me mueve la mandíbula hacia arriba y abajo para poner en prueba su teoría. Usualmente estoy despierto, pero me hago el dormido.
Uno: Eres una persona buena y un esposo bueno y es bueno verte.
Comienza una larga pausa en cual los dos tratan de presionar las cuchillas, cada uno con miedo de ser detectado y que haiga retaliamiento. Pasa un carro y sigue por la cuadra y se convierte en nada.
Uno: El fin de semana pasada estaba cocinando y sono el timbre de mi puerta. Luego, sono otra vez. Mantuve mi cabeza sobre la estufa con mis ojos abiertos. Mis pestañas se derritieron y bajaron bajo mi cara y mi cara se sintío apretada. Me quede quieto hasta que finalizo el timbre. Me quede parado hasta tener la opcion de sentirme comodo otra vez. Cuando escuchó el timbre de mi puerta sé que es porque todo el pueblo me quiere asesinar para mejorar la comunidad y se han hecho voluntarios. De esto estoy cierto. Una porción de mi quiere ayudar al pueblo mejorarse, pero otra parte naturalmente le tiene miedo a la muerte. Especialmente si fuera de una muerte de manera horrible, como ser golpeado repetetivamente sobre la cabeza con un bate de beisbol. Me imagino que eso haría el voluntario. Asumo que todos aportaron dinero para comprar el bate de beisbol, asi ahorrar en mi asesinato.
Un camion de helado pasa y su cancion se distorciona al que su distancia incrementa. Carillones de la brisa gotean notas y las susurras de las hojas las devoran.
El otro: Tambien disfruto del mantecado. Pero aveces me preocupo que en lo que me como la barquilla, el mantecado entrara algún boquete de mis dientes y un diente se pudrira, convirtiendose de color a gris, y el diente se caira en mi barquilla y me lo comere, pensandolo un nuez. Fuera de eso, verdaderamente disfruto del mantecado. Muchisimo.
Uno: Aveces, tarde en la noche, te veo nadando en tu picina. Sé que crees que estas escondido por que tu picina esta en la esquina de tu patio, y ahí esta debajo unos arboles. Pero como quiera te veo. Subo el arbol de mi patio y me siento ahí y te miro, y a tu esposa tambien, nadando. Ella se ve bien con el pelo mojado y flotando hacia atras. Tu te vez bien tambien. Pero la manera de tu esposa de verse bien es mejor que tu manera de verte bien. ¿Eso te hace sentido?
El otro: [Arrastrando su cuchillo un poco, de manera como si estubiese usando una sierra. Una mancha de sangre roja pasa lentamente sobre la navaja.] Si, eso me hace sentido. Me hace sentido por varias razones. La primera razon es por que me siento igual sobre mi esposa y la segunda razon es por que he estado tratando de entender porque había un gato enorme, que se parecia a ti, sentado en tu arbol todas las noches que estabamos nadando. Agradezco que me hayas clarificado esta curiosidad. Tambien quiero que sepas que cuando dije varías razones, hablaba de dos y te las he proveado y ahora he terminado mi discurso.
Uno: [Tragando. El sangre se rompe en riachuelos de sudor y luego cae lentamente bajo su cuello.] Una vez cuando estaba arriba en el arbol viendolos, había comprado popcorn y me decía a mi mismo, “Betty, vamos a ver el espectaculo de imagenes,” aunque sabía que no era un espectaculo de imagenes y aunque la frase “espectaculo de imagenes” es un anacronismo y aunque no conozco a nadie llamada Betty.
Uno gira la navaja y corre su punta sobre el cuello de el otro hasta que la punta esta puesto directamenta sobre el nuez de Adán de el otro.
El otro: Aunque tienes amigos imaginarios y comes popcorn sentado en arboles, te acepto como ser humano.
Uno: Gracías. Pero enverdad que he sido un burro cualquiera contigo. Por favor, dígame sobre usted. Quiero saber todo sobre ti.
El otro: Pues—anoche estaba pelando manzanas y accidentalmente me corte. Me quede observando la herida. Alumbraba de color purpura bajo la luz de la cocina. Había un ciempies fijamente mirandome desde la pared. Solamente me miraba. Le volvi la mirada—hasta que se hizo de día. A ese punto la manzana estaba cubierta de moscas. Cada par de minutos, levantaba la manzana para que las moscas se vayan volando. No soy el rey—solo observo al reino.
Uno estrecha sus ojos. Un conejo cruza entre sus patios. El conejo entra una mata. Una mata es la madre de un million de brazos.
El otro: Ya viene el enfrio.
Uno: [Casi riendose] Lo se. Lo puedo sentir.
El otro: Esta noche, ¿cierraras tus puertas y ventanas?
Uno: Es la unica manera.
El otro: Si.
Ahora el cielo es de color azul marino. El foco de uno esta rodeado por insectos. Bajan sus cuchillas y caminan por sus patio, sus zapatos cubiertos por la humedad. Sienten el enfrio. Cierraran sus ventanas. A sis mismos, menearan sus puños en silencio. Los digitos de sus relojes cambiaran. Ellos miraran—para asegurarses que las cosas se estan moviendo y cambiando. Ellos se veran otro y otra vez.
- Sam Pink play translated from English by Gustavo Rivera
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