Robert Bradley is an Alexander Technique teacher. He lives and works on Long Island. You can find his stories in taint, SmokeLong Quarterly, Juked, and the Avatar Review, among other publications.

Taint Magazine dedicated their last issue to you, publishing twelve of your stories. Your work was published in past issues as well. What was it about taint’s aesthetic that made your work particularly suitable to their publication?

An issue dedicated to me. That sounds pretty impressive. But I’m a little suspicious of how soon after I started sending stories to them that they decided to close down. I suspect that it must have seemed like I would simply not stop sending stories to them, so they cobbled what they had left of my stories, put them together in a last issue and folded. I don’t think anybody else would do that. I mean, send one magazine 30 stories in a couple of months time. But they took most of them. Thank you, Michael Kimball.

My aesthetic: language is a kind of glue; it’s probably red. Or red around the edges. White in the center. If you understand it, if you can remember its origins, its single celled origins, and understand its purpose, you will realize its necessity, its power to call back, to will itself into existence and to magnetize and electrify the space around it for its own aims. Language is the key to existence, I’m pretty sure. Maybe taint’s editor saw that in my writing when he read my story about a guy standing outside a restaurant restroom asking for a handjob.

You’re currently working on a book of linked stories. What is the linking factor? The title of the manuscript? Can you tell us anything more?

The current title is: “This is a Dark Time In a Dark Time of the Year In a Dark Year.”

The linking factors are first person point of view, recurring characters, and the stories are sequential. In it, I’m teaching myself how to sustain a narrative flow, how to process my experience into fiction and uncensor myself in order to build worthwhile characters. The whole thing seemed ready to collapse at any point. It took two years to write. I have fewer friends than when I started.

The theme of the book can be summed up by an old flash I wrote called “Generic Philosophy.” It was mostly dialogue, and states: “Do you ever feel like you have no control over your actions, like an unknown power is working inside of you making you do things and you know for a fact that it’s not you at all?”

It’s 170 pp. in Currier New type.

In addition to your book of linked stories, you’re also working on a play. How did this play evolve? What is it about?

I’ve stopped writing the play. Now, I’m kind of just painfully, monotonously, blindly waiting around. Thanks for asking.

The play, if it gets written, will be about violence between men and women. Nothing overt. The subtle kind. Where power is in play; love, absent.

You have a knack for dialogue, and many of your shorter stories are told almost exclusively through conversation. What attracts you to dialogue? Why the emphasis on it? (Not that I’m complaining, mind you. You have a true talent for it!)

Thanks. Probably, I use to it cover up weaknesses in other areas, probably.

Many of your stories also contain humor. Humor that’s not quite funny, if you know what I mean. Like you laugh, and then feel guilty about it. Do you purposely incorporate this type of humor into your work, or does it come about accidently? In your opinion, what is the funniest story you’ve written?

The humor is intentional, everything else is an accident. Seriously, I’m just trying to be funny whenever I write something, but you’re right, it’s not quite funny. I need to work on that.

Funniest online story, at taint, I suppose “Later, In Bed.” When is a story about anal sex not funny?

I have a story I think applies in The Apocalypse Reader called, “Square of the Sun.” In the introduction the editor describes the story as “feisty and unpredictable, with a real mean streak—the kind of story that slaps your face and then laughs at you for crying…”

You have such a unique style. Where did you learn to write? Which writers, if any, have influenced you?

I didn’t learn to write in a building. I have a friend who is an English Professor and I’d write poems on the drive out there from work every Thursday; like Mary Robison, following in the great tradition of writing in cars. We’d play basketball in his driveway, then drink and eat—he was also a chef—then the best poets who were also the prettiest girls from his class would come by and we would read our poems and stories aloud, get drunk. So, that was something that happened. Then about four years ago I started writing those stories in taint, after failing in my attempts to write plays. Now, I have a book of linked stories. I wrote all of them sitting here in my apartment. I recently reread the first drafts of some of the early stories. They were pretty bad. But there were some worthy passages and lines. I kept those and kept rewriting the stories. I’m still rewriting the first 75 pp. The last hundred pages came out almost whole, with little need for revision. That’s how I learned to write.

I’ve read Samuel Beckett continuously since I was 22. I try not to sound like him. Sounding like someone else, I decided, is death. But I do subscribe to his listening to and transcribing the voices as they come.

How do people respond to your work? Has this affected how or what you write?

People are often somewhat or completely puzzled by my stories, whether they like them or not. I am not immune to this response. I think, because of those responses, I have changed my writing style and content considerably. For instance, the new book is anchored in day to day life. The stories online at this point are more abstract, ridiculous. (It should be noted that no one has actually said that the new stories are any less puzzling than the old stories.)

What is your favorite line from a novel?

Samuel Beckett’s sentences tug on me, every one of them; they pull me in, alter my brainwaves, and tranquilize my mind.

From Beckett’s Molloy: All I know is what the words know, and the dead things, and that makes a handsome little sum, with a beginning, a middle and an end as in the well built phrase and the long sonata of the dead.

From Malone Dies there’s this:

It was summer. The room was dark in spite of the door and window open on the great outer light. Through these narrow openings, far apart, the light poured, lit up a little space, then died, undiffused. It had no steadfastness, no assurance of lasting as long as day lasted. But it entered at every moment, renewed from without, entered and died at every moment, devoured by the dark. And at the least abatement of the inflow the room grew darker and darker until nothing in it was visible anymore. For the dark had triumphed. And Sapo, his face turned towards the earth so resplendent that it hurt his eyes, felt at his back and all about him the unconquerable dark, and it licked the light on his face. Sometimes abruptly he turned to face it, letting it envelop and pervade him, with a kind of relief. Then he heard more clearly the sounds of those at work, the daughter calling to her goats, the father cursing his mule. But silence was in the heart of the dark, the silence of dust and the things that would never stir, if left alone. And the ticking of the invisible alarm-clock was the voice of that silence which, like the dark, would one day triumph too. And then all would be still and dark and all things at rest forever at last.

You are a teacher of the Alexander Technique. Explain what this is, and how you got into it.

I dove into a pool when I was twelve, fracturing my spine. That was one reason I got into it, though I hadn’t known at the time that it had done so much harm until I’d started taking lessons. I wasn’t aware of the damage I’d done, since the prescription for it was to lie in bed for a day. I thought I felt fine for all the years in between. But the Alexander Technique will tell you that you don’t really know how you feel, because you don’t really pay attention. You become inured to the pain and habituated to the imbalance and it can go unnoticed for the rest of your life, getting buried deeper and deeper into your unconscious, unless you have it worked out, let’s say, by an Alexander Technique teacher.

The body is very resilient but eventually you will start to break down. You’ll hurt your back and think it’s because of a singular event…when, in fact, it’s because of every event leading up to it from birth, and you having paid it insufficient attention. All the stresses and strains of life accumulate. And one fine day…

Our attention needs to be trained. I would say it’s one of the most important skills in life. I can’t think of anything more important, because everything comes from what you give your attention to, and how you give it.

Here’s an example:

Turn your head left and right. That’s your habit. What did you notice? Usually, not much. Now, follow your eyes left and right. Was that any different? Maybe you used less muscular effort. What else did you notice? Now, follow your eyes left and right but also be aware of the back of your head moving in the opposite direction. Eyes right, back of the head left. In other words, place your attention in the upper visual cortex and direct your attention from there through your eyes and turn your head either way. Are you aware of more space, now? This is the space you live in, and have likely abandoned. This is your depth, your three dimensional birth right. If you continue to see and move according to these directions how might that change your life? This is only the beginning. It’s the beginning of learning, and learning how to learn. Sit, stand, see, hear. It’s all done for you, by you, you only have to want to and there you are, sitting, standing, seeing, etc. It’s programmed for you since the age of one and you haven’t had to think about it since. That’s the problem.

What’s the first thing you have to learn: What are my habits? Because habits are immediate and unconscious and preclude learning. If you try and learn something without suspending your habit, then you’re placing the new information on top of an old habit, new wine in old jars. This is a hard way to live, I found out. So much harder than paying attention. The more you pay attention the more you’re paid by attention. Over time you’ll develop constructive conscious control…you’ll be presented with choices in life, where before there were none.

In a deck of cards, what is your favorite suit? Why?

I favor no suit, one over another, but hold each in highest regard according to its function and utility: a source of beauty.