|
Joseph "Yes, that's my real name" Zitt is an all-around interesting guy, or at least that's what he tells visitors to his Web site. Zitt is a performer, technical writer, composer, video artist, and self-described Net hound. He's currently preparing for an East Coast tour with a strictly vocal ensemble called Question Authority, The. A New Jerseyite by way of Brooklyn and Austin, he's rocking the modish Dallas music scene with an instrument-free band while waxing about the future of teledildonics, what ever that is. Some people might think he's kinda weird. And they'd be right. When you were little, did kids call you Zitt Face, Zitt Head, Papa Zitt? Luckily, that slang popped up, so to speak, in the mid-'70s, after high school. And fortunately, I had a good complexion. My brother wasn't so fortunate, and now bears my mother's maiden name. I'm the only person in my immediate family who hasn't changed his name. Were you a total egghead in school? Actually, I started off at a religious college studying to be a cantor. I bet I know what happened next. You saw The Jazz Singer and wanted to be like Neil Diamond? I grew up in a religious household. I went to religious schools all the way through until I left that first college. When I told the dean I was leaving, he said, "Zis is good news, and zis is bad news. Ze bad news is zat we're losing a brilliant student. Ze good news is that we don't have to throw you out." So what's your scene, man? I belong to a performance ensemble called Question Authority, The. We're not a singing group, per se. It's really sound poetry with improvisational structures. I try to compose so that if there's any number of actions that can be taken, anybody can take them. If members of the group feel like it, they can stand by the side and groove on what the rest of us are doing. Anybody get naked when you're jamming? It's not entered into our pieces, but I wouldn't say it would never happened. Like anything else, it would have to be appropriate to the piece and the audience. What's the kookiest thing you've ever done in a performance? We did a performance at an outdoor poetry circus. One of our members caught a flying folding chair and motioned for me to sit down on it. I walked over and laid down on it, with one hand one the ground and one foot in the air, and stayed in that position for about a minute, then did the rest of the piece looking up at the sky. Explain this line from your poem "New Year's Eve": "I lean into the corner, want to kiss the person in it (I cannot sense the gender, do not care) Rattle on instead about the death of syntax." What is that all about? Actually, it's fairly literal. Hmm. What's the ideal computer like? The ideal computer would be completely invisible. You wouldn't have to think about it at all. Married? No. Girlfriend? Kids? Dogs? Cats? Anyone depending on you? Just my computer, which requires a lot of care and feeding. I think I know why you're so into your computer. You're probably right. But they haven't quite figured out teledildonics, yet. What kind of, er, videos do you make? Ambient videos. When watching TV at home, it's more appropriate to create an ambiance than trying to grab someone's attention because of all the interruptions. If you look at an ambient video, you'll notice a change, but you don't feel like you've missed something. On your Web site (http://www.realtime.net/~jzitt) you say you're an all-around interesting guy. What right do you have to say that? If I weren't, you wouldn't be interviewing me. |