Interview with an Artist: Tara Giancaspro
The writer and musician talks to Sara about art, money, and more
Greetings, fair readers! Welcome to an occasional interview series in which I ask everybody the same questions, more or less. I have found that I’m consistently curious about the same things, so why not whip that up into a Proustian questionnaire of the SARATONIN variety?
My first subject is the inimitable
of . Let’s jump right in and see what she’s got cooking in her beautiful Jersey brain!
Here's a random way to start: do you know what your surname means? How about your first name? I've read "Sara" is "princess," but who knows. "Benincasa" is a version of "good house."
The legend goes that Giancaspro (pronounced jee-in-CASS-pro by my family, zhan-CASS-pro in the Motherland, and jee-in-cass-PAR-o by every other goddamn person in existence for some reason like as if I need ANOTHER vowel in my name??) comes from Gaspar of the Wise Men Three, who laid gold at Jesus' feet and probably gave him some light poisoning because babies are like all about having PICA. They cane you in the street for even giving a baby a stuffed animal with eye beads now! You give that little messiah gold bars?? Not even a gold rattle or some shit. Gold bars. Come on. My ancestors, like me, are not the kind of people who read Emily Post, apparently.
Tell me how you describe yourself as an artist/worker/creative human.
“Corporate stooge and aspiring hypermetabolic artist,” but more often, with growing pride, “writer.” I released music under the name Sweaty Lamarr, but always framed myself as a "terrible singer," not just a singer. Now that I have been writing my Substack and have had some work accepted and published, I am identifying more as a writer, a term which I am very grateful does not leave my mouth albatrossed by several disparaging modifiers. I am a writer. I write a Substack, I write nonfiction essays, I am writing a novel, I have my first poems being published by Bullshit Lit and more swimming around various Google Docs, and I have written a staggering amount of lyrics. I'm a writer.
Does the magic of New Jersey inform what you do?
Every day, in every way. If it's not the hair (which I refer to as an ecosystem) it's that the first line of my will asks for my repast to be held at the Saddle Brook Diner. It's that I use stroonz and medigan in my writing and expect you to just look it up. It's that I once wrote a longform essay about the paracosm of Bruce Springsteen's New Jersey for a literal college class I took on Bruce Springsteen and Bruce Springsteen alone. It's the sensibility of wanting to break free of a violently oppressive mundanity, to find freedom on the open road of elsewhere.
I don't know a single Jerseyan for whom the street they were raised on isn't a fucked up yellow brick road, not yellow of gold or yellow of sun but yellow with "don't park here" curb paint peeling from moonlit, harried pacing. And yet it's that nowhere else feels quite like home. The balance of stoicism, our dads with poet's hearts who got saddled with the family business, and the artists who had that eagleistic chairman's grit to get out: your Meryls, your Franks, your Whitneys, your Wyclefs, your Latifahs, your Travoltas, your Bongiovis. The best food in the world and the worst highway smells. I am incontrovertibly of my state, and it lingers in every drop of blood from my heart that lands on the page.
To what extent has mentoring been a part of your artistic experience, either as a mentor or mentee? (Maybe both?)
I recently took an excellent 92nd Street Y writer's workshop with Cris Beam, a memoirist and MFA professor at Columbia and NYU. I was terrified to apply, terrified to be accepted, terrified to share my work with students who I imagined were all better than me on even their worst draft. Instead, it was a deeply fruitful experience. I received positive feedback, useful feedback, and it let to not only me picking up a fascinating summer job thanks to a classmate but also the Jewish org with which I've become involved thanks to another.
I asked Cris after this class to give the first 150 pages of my novel a thorough review, and she offered such excellent notes that I of course have not had the time to fully weave into the manuscript. I would love to work with multiple writing coaches across my journey. I have no formal writing education and feel there is so much to learn from other's careful reads.
Can you share advice for artists - fellow writers or otherwise - that you wish you'd known when you started out?
1. Keep a database - a Word document, a notebook - with words you come across that excite you, and their definitions and consult these when you need a certain number of syllables to end your chorus or when you are stressed over how many times you've used the same description of your protagonist's blue eyes.
2. Get. Something. Down. For years - YEARS - I sat there mentally doing the SpongeBob "What I learned in boating school is..." moment over and over, and instead of words, that white Google Doc page became filled with my doubts and insecurities and my dumb, drooling face looking back at me. It's scary, but type any goddamn thing you want there. The lyrics to Limp Bizkit's "Break Stuff." Anything. Then write why you just wrote Fred Durst's magnum opus down. Then keep writing.
3. I was lucky enough to know this innately, it's maybe the only real skill I have as a writer, but I want to share it: be specific. If your song is about your high school best friend and you driving around in her new car and you secretly wanting to kiss her, is it her brother's handmedown Durango? Is it a pink Jeep because she gets everything she wants and you're hers so why doesn't she just want you, too? Did she buy it, a battered old Camry, with the money you two made working summers at the Dairy Queen? Use language that applies to you: maybe you use Spanglish, and you like your characters dropping "Mira, mira!" and "pero" between English sentences. Even if I, your reader, can't relate to the exact detail, I feel like I know you or your character better. I may think their preferences are strange - they chew banana flavored gum, really? - but that's inviting engagement with the text, and inviting me to remember your work when I've finished it. Everyone who watched Garden State for example, remembers "New Slang" and that it will "change your life," and I guarantee you about three people remember the name of Zach Braff's character. Be specific.
When you begin a new project, do you experience nerves? How do you deal with them if so?
I pretty much only experience nerves 1. submitting my work somewhere including off to respected writer friends to read and 2. realizing how much fucking trouble I am going to get into for what I've said. My response to this is the special brand of narcissism that has birthed every creative since the dawn of time.
At which time of day are you likely to feel most creative?
At night. I wrote about 40 songs during the pandemic, all between the hours of 12:00am-3:00am. I am one of those people whose lives would be far less dramatic if they just went to fucking sleep.
What supplies do you prefer to have around you?
My cats Simone and Lugosi, also known as "the chickens."
How do you set up your home in order to best suit your lifestyle?
There can not be a worse person to answer this question. I write at 3am on my phone on the toilet.
Do you regard yourself as a confident person? Has your self-confidence changed as you've gotten older?
It’s gotten WORSE. I have gotten MORE insecure. My confidence in my words has been bolstered and strengthened, but my confidence in myself? No. I am a burro carrying more and more trauma up the mountain on behalf of several bad ex-boyfriends, some of whom aren’t even drummers or Aquarians! I am a Leo rising, which instills a sense of confidence nigh cockiness to others, but no, I would be asking “hey are we still in for today?” to my fiancé as I pulled up to the wedding chapel.
To what extent do you experience the "despair and compare" issue that haunts so many human beings? How do you return your eyes to your own paper, so to speak, and focus on your work?
I, in a past newsletter, referred to someone as a “smegma stain.” I am a woman who has not one lick of shame around calling another person a smeghead. For my insecurities, I know that I am the only person with my specific voice. It does help. Where I wish I could write like someone else lies, most often, in their critical analysis. I have a petalsoft, gentle faith that through continuing to read or enjoy the work of people smarter than I am that I may catch up. I also delight in any occasion where I am the dumbest person in the room. There is so much to learn! There are so many new words, new ideas, new facts to explore!
Do you consider yourself to be good with financial planning? (I am not good at it, so I've started asking everybody about this!)
I spent way too goddamn much on shoes, but otherwise yes, in that I have a savings, I have a CD, I have a 401K. This is only because I pursued a "day job" above writing, to the detriment of my creative growth and progress and the purity of my soul. Oh, and that I didn’t pay for college. My parents paid because I otherwise refused to go. I wanted to work. I regret not fighting them harder. Every. Day. Kids, don't go to college. It's always a mistake.
Are there any resources around finance that you think artists should check out?
Besides not going to college? Be dogged in researching grants and scholarships for the writing programs you take. There are scholarships you can win for just being left-handed, or a triplet. In my leaner corporate days, I did Swagbucks surveys at my underemployed office jobs. I made 3000 untaxable untraceable dollars in one year that way, all as PayPal payouts directly into my checking account. I did and still do focus groups. You get paid anywhere from 75-250 dollars to sit in a room and opine about gum for an hour. The best part is that they always overrecruit, so sometimes you get paid without having to opine about gum for an hour. Unless that's really your thing, that's a damn win. I've also never gotten paid for photos of my feet but I know people who do and listen....it's worth considering. Get that (toe) cheddar.
Who are the artists to whom you return when you need inspiration?
Carrie Fisher. Leslye Headland, Melissa Broder, Megan Abbott, Meg Wolitzer, John Irving, Mike Myers (I'm not kidding - I saw him moderate a Q&A at the Metrograph and had tears in my eyes the entire time), Phoebe Waller-Bridge, Liz Meriwether, John Patrick Shanley. Hattie Hayes [author’s note - here she is: ] My grandmother, who was not only a master crocheter and rice pudding gourmet and veritable style icon, but who loved and lived more artfully than anyone with whom I have ever shared a room. She was everything, and is still my everything, and the art of her will outlive us all.
Does physical activity play a part in your creativity?
LMAO. Now you know good and goddamn well the answer to that question.
Are there habits you've put in place to help enhance your mental health, and do they ever require you to put aside your creative work?
I really should, shouldn't I? My mental health is, largely what I call "male depression," because I truly feel that my depression manifests like it does for men, and very particularly men of the Byron era, walk-into-the-ocean-ass depression. I have never gotten breakup bangs, for example, or had a La Dolce Vita fountain dance public breakdown. Before this sounds too "pick me" or "one of the boys," it pops up in a clockwork PMDD cycle.
I have a system that mostly involves napping until the desire to die passes. I have definitely put aside my creative work for the sake of my mental health, however. I largely stopped making music (though part of me feels I will go back to it someday) because of how much self-hatred I wielded at myself over my voice. I hate my singing voice the way people hate the word "moist." It made me hate myself to a scary degree, and so: I have put a personal embargo on ever singing in a studio again.
I also have not touched my novel in (redacted) months, because it is so intensely personal and digging into the scrapbook of my worst trauma is not that Nancy Meyers, Nora Ephron cashmere writer life we all dream of living. If you need to take a break, take a break, BEFORE you break.
If you decided to retire from your current career tomorrow and start a totally new one, what would you pick? Imagine you've got enough money to live comfortably no matter what. Would you go back to school? Would you start your own new business?
I am a disgusting pig person, so my answer is that I would become an ear doctor so I could spend my day filming the insides of people’s ears as I suck all of their errant wax and dead skin out with a tiny tiny vacuum. I have only had a good week if I watch Dr. Neel Raithatha of Clearwax attend to at least three patients. I would also settle for being someone who gets paid to pop people’s pimples. My little doctoral lab coats would have to be leopard print. This is very important to me.
Where can SARATONIN readers learn more about you and your work?
I have a Substack just like you, xoxo Gossip Giancaspro, and I am on social media everywhere @sweatylamarr. I’ve also released music under that handle, and it streams everywhere: Spotify, Apple, Bandcamp, whatever Deezer is. I have work published over at Wig Wag Magazine, Drunk Monkeys, and in print through Bullshit Lit, and I am so proud.
******
Thank you Tara! I’ve opened comments up to everybody, instead of the usual paid subscribers-only deal, so that folks can suggest other potential great interview subjects. Also feel free to share your own answer to one of the questions I posed above. Or just say something nice about Tara. Thanks for being here!
Love,
Sara