Matt Love, publisher of Nestucca Spit Press and Newport HS English teacher, has been in love with Oregon for a long time. I originally met Matt because I heard him read at the Blackbird Wine Shop and tell a story about a guy named Todd he met in the woods along Fish Creek near Mt. Hood. Todd was swaying visibly from what Matt believed to be a mixture of meth and malt liquor. He said to Matt, My name’s Todd. I was born by Todd Lake, Oregon. I live in Oregon City, and I love Oregon. It don’t get no more Oregon than that! I knew right away I wanted to interview Matt for the New Oregon Interview Series. Matt is always talking about what Oregon is, what it means in terms of place. In the video below at the Walt Curtis Benefit at Berbati’s he talks about a story Walt told him about Ken Kesey. Apparently Kesey told Walt that Oregon is a citadel of the spirit. In the introduction to Citadel of the Spirit: Oregon’s Sesquicentennial Anthology, Matt writes A citadel towers over all it surveys. It is a fortress seen from afar protecting something important, perhaps even sacred. I think Oregon does offer the chance to start afresh, to create something outside of the blueprints used in other locations such as New York, the Midwest or Los Angeles, even in this day and age, and it was certainly true in the days of the Oregon Trail. Folks who wanted quick gold-mining cash and easy sunshine took the turn to California. Folks who were willing to create their own farming setups and barn-raise with like-minded individuals, they took the turn for Oregon. Today, the distance from major industry and infrastructure in film, literature, visual arts and many other disciplines means independent artists and makers collaborate and create their own infrastructures often outside of corporate or governmental structures to make work that often is marked by a purity of artistic intention, because that is what people come here to do. It’s a petri dish, an incubator, a microclimate of creativity that needs this particular combination of scarcity and resources to flourish.
The video’s a bit dark, but Matt’s voice is well worth watching for.
Matt Love at Walt Curtis Benefit from Nora Robertson on Vimeo.
Just so you know what I’m talking about in terms of Oregon love, here’s Matt accepting the Stewart Holbrook award from Literary Arts.