Host Derek Denckla spoke with Impresario Mathew Timmons at the tail-end of August, after Matt had recently produced, "We Made It," an event celebrating the 15th Anniversary of his LA-based imprint, Insert Blanc Press, and as we were swinging into the September start of the Art Season (with its renewed post-COVID flurry of publications, openings and fresh performances).  

In our conversation, we grappled with the sometimes painfully incompatible and sharply conflicting motives of those who make art and those who consume it.  And, how artists might find ways to reconcile themselves to continue to create work with integrity.

Matt read the work of an author that inspired him, Harold Abramowitz, whose book, Colloquy at the Abyss, he has recently published on his imprint, Insert Blanc Press:

• "It was one, or it was the other. That much, and violence. If you were a prince. That was the way the picture wanted to go. To put up its fists and fight. But we were broken for the way we spoke in mediation, as if your emotions were better than anyone else's. It was in the way we looked at time. It told us, told us all sorts of things. I was walking, I was eating food from the palm of my hand, and then I wondered what the point was. Troubling times, it is the force, full of the violence that calls us names. I'm a junior laying in my casket and that was before you believed in me. What I would then say to you is about the state of my heart." - Abramowitz

Bio:  Mathew Timmons is the author of Love Prose, a recent chapbook from eohippus labs. He is the author of the books Terrifying Photo (Wonder 2015), Joyful Noise (Jaded Ibis 2012), The New Poetics (Les Figues 2010) and CREDIT (Blanc Press 2009) among other editions and ephemera. He is the Editor and Publisher of Insert Blanc Press and the Director of General Projects gallery in Los Angeles, CA.

Look for his forthcoming video edition of Love Prose, vintage editions of Parrot and other re-releases of early chapbooks from Insert Blanc Press.

•  “My biggest problem would be that I want to do all of the things.” - Timmons

A special note of gratitude for our original theme music composed and performed by Cato and Creative Soundscapes.

Inspiration Practice was produced by Taller Alturas with contributions from Derek Denckla and Neyat Yohannes. Sending out a glowing beam of gratitude to all those lovely beings who have either inspired us or given us space, time or love to practice, practice, practice.  (c) 2021.