Mike Young, On Reading

"Reading is over there in a here house. Reading is fruitful psychotic installation art. When I'm reading, I like to forget I'm reading, but I like to remember that I'm forgetting. It is most fun, for me, to imagine vocality as the genesis of language. Sure, semiotics, but there's a team in your brain that doesn't know the difference between the sentence "He walked into the room" and someone actually walking into a room. That team is driving. Also there are mirror neurons that make you wince when the quarterback goes down. Sometimes, if I don't like the chips I'm eating, I read the ad copy, and then they really do taste bolder, I swear. Like boulders. The ability to read is a privilege; the ability to read well is a sleep killer. If you just accidentally thought of dead sheep, you're my kind of reader. When I visit, I try to act kind--so goes the read act. No one ever wishes me good luck when I tell them I'm going to read, but I wish a lot of things I never tell, and I wonder about the wishing of others, which is why somebody put two eyes in the middle of the word look."


{Mike Young is the author of We Are All Good If They Try Hard Enough (Publishing Genius Press), Look! Look! Feathers (Word Riot Press), and the chapbook MC Oroville's Answering Machine (Transmission Press). He co-edits NOÖ Journal and Magic Helicopter Press. Check out his website here for more information.}