I want to leave my readers with a sequence of ideas/phrases that makes them question something they’d taken for granted. Or that confuses them to the point that they laugh, but contains one or two phrases/lines that stick in their minds.
Aaron Belz
Aaron Belz
The brands with which
The brands with which we surround ourselves prop us up, make us feel sexy and beautiful, when in reality we’re pretty dumpy creatures.
Aaron Belz
Poetry is a way
Poetry is a way for me to explore a tingly feeling, to let it play itself out, and also to map it. I feel like I’m making little star maps when I write poems.
Aaron Belz
Surprise keeps the reader
Surprise keeps the reader awake. The only alternative is to continue saying what the reader is expecting. What fun is that?
Aaron Belz
I don’t really want
I don’t really want to write fiction at all. I don’t see why fiction is necessary when we have real life already confusing enough.
Aaron Belz
We just watch anything
We just watch anything speed by. To stop and really ponder what a product label says, or the tagline on a TV commercial, might be inherently silly. Those are things that are almost designed to be thrown away.
Aaron Belz
After the first few
After the first few readings in comedy venues I did begin to write for laughs. There’s something so gratifying about stimulating laughter.
Aaron Belz
I gravitate toward the
I gravitate toward the larger worldview questions such as, Why are we here? What are we supposed to be doing? What does it mean to know another person? To love someone? Of course, those questions are sort of in the background as I’m playing with language in the foreground, but those are the informing questions.
Aaron Belz
Nothing is as easy
Nothing is as easy or natural as consumer brands want us to think – no problem is as resolvable. Your hair will fall out, eventually. Yet we do have these brands, and we line our shelves with them. There’s an inherent irony.
Aaron Belz
The brand is lying
The brand is lying about something, or at least misrepresenting it. When I read a bottle of shampoo or moisturizer or other beauty product, I always perceive a dark subtext. The words haunt me. It comes across as humorous to the reader/audience, but in fact the words really do make me a little bit queasy. Nothing is as easy or natural as consumer brands want us to think – no problem is as resolvable. Your hair will fall out, eventually. Yet we do have these brands, and we line our shelves with them. There’s an inherent irony.
Aaron Belz