Jim: Explain how the title Transversal connects to the text. 

Fin: In geometry, a transversal is a line that passes through two lines in the same plane at two distinct points. In two thousand and twelve I got off of a tour with this band playing drums, and got interested in poetry. I got back into college for creative writing, where I was writing a long poem in my fourth term titled Transversal, it was professor Kirk Perry (singer in the band the Girlfriend Club) who asked me to try and write an epic poem, so that's really what started this book. I was thinking of (book one) as an epic poem. Really, I had no idea that a line that connects two parallels would be so significant later on for me, but it made sense, and stuck as the title.

Jim: Does the structure of two “Layers” correspond to the “Layers” of conscious/subconscious layer of thought in humans?

Fin: Maybe you are talking about the books structure, being in two parts, or you read a version that only had book one in it, either way that's not an issue, layers is the issue at hand, I think of layers too much, to a sickening degree, I make myself sick thinking of how many tiny layers come together to form a larger, vibrating layer, which in turn creates a building block layer for another aspect of a structure, the layers you are referring to are mostly the conscious, omnipresent conscious or stream of consciousness that can be, through longsuffering, as you know and a little listening closely, revealed, I love that about writing since it is a secret world, locked just below the surface inside the text formed from agreed upon language. a hip hop writer friend used to pop his head in wherever we were in the middle of a conversation or whenever we were out, he has all these great one liners, he used to say this: layers player. since I used to go on and on about layers while on mushrooms at his apartment. 

Jim: Layer Number One moves from flying/sky imagery, back toward earth again, then up again, then down, then evens out toward the end; an undulation of sorts. What is this intended to illustrate?

Fin: Death and the afterlife. A miserable kind of beauty’s fate to your new life in the afterlife, in the new realm for grizzly and I (in the story).  They have just died, he calls it having her balloons removed through the story later on, so it becomes this daily chore they are suggesting to me (author) that they must simply adjust to, after their deaths,  almost like her period in this reality (TV show.) a sort of monthly ritual, any ways, after that, they go through the first layer of tissue,  the skin, then the fat, muscle, bone, and the first layer falls away. It’s a kind of metaphor I imagine i am using to lead the draft, since it is poetry, but also a story of love.  I want to simply imply instead of showing, or telling. some of my nudges are simply too subtle even for me, but they are sometimes there for reasons years later I end up drafting out because I forget the meaning.

Jim: Layer Number Two describes a sort of journey over water (mostly) in a ship, or in/as a fish, or fish/ship. Then when arriving on land, the narrator makes a phone call. This travel/trip imagery is saying what? 

Fin: I think of images as oil paintings when I’m writing, so I try to imagine the background, the foreground, the character, writing evident material is fundamentally decomposed whether poems, quote, note, scene, its collaged and taken out of order si i can see the parts.

 storyline is important but its only one texture in the writing a story, i think of writing like i am painting a picture with layers, each scene has been worked over many times and some of the old layers (meanings) have been cropped over, left half exposed, or even fully painted over, leaving only a sheen beneath that I like to allow to show through. I'm not "saying" anything but what i have left said. i intend to not show or tell the reader anything, I’m simple about it. The characters are flying around on fish that are sucking them off, how much clearer do I have to be? When they land, he makes a phone call, so that's life in a nut shell. there are hidden meanings everywhere. 

(I like how this question got me to hank you Jim.)

Jim: Then there’s a break, looking like the start of a third layer (though not labeled as such). The narrator and companion arrive at and enter a tower (“their” tower). They finally enter the top chamber of the tower and start preparing for something, but. Transversal ends here. The overall flow of this journal and arrival symbolizes what?

Fin: They have arrived in their defining moment in the high castle, the super ego, or spirit body, Christians call it heaven. Terrence McKenna talks about creatures who can sing worlds into existence, i wanted to hang out with those guys. 

Jim: What gave rise to the idea for Transversal?

Fin: the poem Transversal first published in Spinning Jenny 13 NY

Jim: What method was used to weave together the narrative?

Fin: I used a method similar to the cut up method, but not as crude, just a bit more delicate, the effect being still as crushing in the reading, where I used an epic number of poems and short stories and a wove them together and rewrote them into a novella.  I spoke most of it out loud then typed it down.