Ticked Off with `lightningmonkey!

The Ticked Off Project is all about Senior Members of the Community, with interviews and features on the illustrious deviants who are adorned with a shiny `, it went awhile for awhile, but now it's back and ready to rock! This is our chance to connect with some of our senior members and give them a chance to show everyone at dA what makes them tick.

This week, I talked to ikazon, who has been a deviant for only two years, but in that short time, has managed to make quite an impact on the deviantART community. Although he was a senior when he agreed to do the interview, he has since taken the reigns as a volunteer once again! Trevor's gallery features lots of written works – he reps hard for the lit community! Make sure to visit his gallery and stop by his page to congratulate him on being a volunteer once again!

AdamI, first feeling this sunken heat, first
scraping this grain desert, first
sitting under verdant walls, I
first touching these rooted crags, first
tripping in the mountain's gloam, first
reaching this brackish fountain, I
first holding the ocean, first
drinking its salt poison, first
sinking to my knees, I
first trying to understand, I
first trying to speak
I

Tell us a little bit about yourself.
My name is Trevor, though people also call me Spike and Monkey. (I've also been known to go by Diego, sometimes.) I'm a writer and music lover, and I have a thing for monkeys.

What brought you to dA?
I originally joined dA to find art to use as references for my characters, and somewhere in the midst of all that I ended up finding the community, and then I ended up hanging around more and more.

What are your top 3 favorite deviations from other artists? Why do you like them?
I've found all sorts of amazing stuff in the time I've been around here, but these three are probably the ones that I always look back on and still find myself impressed by:


"Three Kings" by gidferrer
blue sky Pilotsof blue sky Pilots
draw their breath white
lines Crossing the calm  
we measure distances In lungs
shaped like a plane spread
against same ozone
these years To last for miles
"blue sky Pilots" by myloveliestsequence
:thumb84699947:
"Vanish." By fabienpio

I love the first photo, Three Kings, because every time I look at it I feel inspired. Something about the open space above the water gets my brain going. To contrast that, the other photo, Vanish, makes me feel very contained, and the confusion and blur of the photo itself really sets it apart in my mind. As for the poem, it is to date the most breathtaking piece of writing I've ever read.

How have you grown as an artist since joining dA?
Well, I'd say a fair amount. When I first joined dA I knew virtually nothing about poetry, and now I'm a published poet, so I can say that without feeling too guilty, haha.

Why do you think it's important for senior members to give back to the community and how would you like to see them do so?
I can't really speak for other seniors, but for me, I feel like I took a lot from the community, both as a person and as a writer, and so I always want to give back, so that maybe I can be for other people what the people before me were for me. If that makes sense. I like the projects that some of the seniors run, and I think community-oriented things are an absolute plus, coming from the seniors.

You've been very active in the community here at deviantART. What made you want to get involved?
I kind of answered this in the previous question, haha, but when I first found my way into the community, people were very welcoming and were always very friendly, even when I would babble like an idiot, and so part of me wanted to stick around because I liked the atmosphere...and since then, I've kind of tried to keep that lively sort of feeling around the community, or at least where I hang out.

If you could dream up one new feature for dA, what would it be?
Automatic cake dispenser, where I get an actual, edible cake every time I log in. (Not that I ever log out, but if I got a new cake every time I logged back in, I'd log out an awful lot more! )

Who inspires you?
This is a bit of a tricky question for me, as I'm not really inspired by people, so much. Most of the time I'm just inspired by things I see, things I hear about, that sort of stuff. I love the way water feels and sounds, and so water ends up in my writing a lot.

What do you do to shake artblock?
I KICK IT IN THE FACE. Which is kind of true. I don't generally feel like I'm affected by a block of any form. If I don't write poetry for a while, then I redirect my energy on something else, be it prose or music, or even just cleaning and reorganizing things.

I see you're involved in some groups - - What advantages do you think groups have?
I am! I do like the way group are structured, in terms of getting news out to larger sets of people, and the sets of people that want to hear the news you have to give. That and on the one hand you can have groups where the focus is on critique and improvement, and on the other you can have groups for silly things, or even fandoms, stuff where you can have some common ground with other deviants.

I see you're a writer – what's something unique you think the literature community brings to dA?
I think more than anything, the range of talent in the lit community is one of the most impressive things I've seen. There are a lot of bad writing sites with a lot of bad writers, and there are a few good writing sites with a few good writers, but dA's got a great span of new writers and established writers, and for the most part everyone's kind of immersed in all that, where in other writing communities, it's often one or the other, without the in between.

If you could sit down and discuss art with one famous artist – alive or dead – who would it be?
Virginia Woolf, hands down. She had a lot to say about writing, and all of it was fascinating.

What's the most important lesson you've learned – art or otherwise – in the past year?
Don't jump on empty shopping carts while wearing sandals. You'll split open and nearly lose a toe, if you've got my luck.

Anything else going on you want to tell people about before we say farewell?
To explain the Diego thing from the very beginning of the interview, danlev mentioned once on Twitter that he wondered what it would be like to make up an entirely new life while talking to a stranger. In response, I told him that I always order coffee with a different name (which I do). I've been ordering coffee as Diego since like 2008, when there was a creepy guy at the local coffee shop and I didn't want him knowing my name. And ever since then, it's been a habit for me to order as Diego in coffee shops. So yeah, that's it. Thanks for interviewing me, 'twas good fun.