Author (and long-term Rave contributor) BIANCA VALENTINO tells ALASDAIR DUNCAN about CONVERSATIONS WITH PUNX, the series of zines she created to explore the intersection between spirituality and punk music.

ALASDAIR DUNCAN: How did you get into punk?

BIANCA VALENTINO: I had some awesome older siblings who were into punk rock. My brother gave me Suicidal Tendencies’ self-titled album and The Dead Kennedys’ Fresh Fruit For Rotting Vegetables, and my sister gave me The Sex Pistols. I got into it from there.

AD: What is it about punk that you love so much?

BV: I think it’s the energy and the connections, and the knowledge that you’re not alone – I don’t want to sound clichéd, but there’s a real community vibe. For me, punk has always given me a platform to express myself.

AD: Conversations With Punx is a very ambitious project – what inspired it?

BV: I fell into a bit of a depression a few years ago – I was with a person who wanted me to be someone else, and had one of those moments where you realise that sometimes the things you wanted maybe aren’t all you thought they’d be. I’d been involved in the punk community for about a decade at that point, putting out zines and putting on shows, and interviewing bands for various publications, and the music had always been there with me, through the happy times and the sad. I started to turn inwards, getting into meditation and a little bit of self-reflection, and I started to ask the bands I was interviewing ‘what are your thoughts on spirituality?’ I got so many good answers that I decided to push forward and make a publication out of it.

AD: When you knew you wanted to do this project, did you put together a wish list – did you ever sit down and say, right, I really want to interview Henry Rollins and Exene Cervenka and so on?

BV: I had a very basic wish list, but it was more just talking to people I knew for a fact were into spirituality. One of the first interviews I did was with Noah Levine, the author of The Dharma Punx, who’s a Buddhist punk rocker over in The US. He’d suggest someone, then the next person would, and it would just go on like that. The whole project just went forward on gut instinct, really. I followed my heart and went on what felt right.

AD: You’ve said that the project made you realise a few things about yourself – what were those?

BV: I’ve realised that I’m a really strong person. I’ve been through so much in the last six years – I’ve been through a lot of personal things, and that was interwoven with the project. I found that when I was interviewing people, I’d ask their advice in a sort of a general way about something I was going through. I ended up getting advice from Ian MacKaye and Henry Rollins about things that were going on in my life. There was in interview I did with Duane Peters, who was talking about his ten years of heroin addiction, and I had a friend who was going through a similar thing at the time who really respected Duane and considered him to be one of his heroes. I thought, well, I’m going to talk to Duane about this, and about how he beat it, because I know my friend will probably listen. A lot of my writing and what I do is centred about helping other people.

AD: That’s one of the things that always seems paradoxical about punk, because the music can be very loud and aggressive, but on the flipside, you do have a strong sense of community and trust.

BV: Definitely – for me, punk is a form of communication, and our frequency is zines and records and things like that. A lot of my values and beliefs come from the punk community, like vegetarianism and the DIY ethic. Being a part of the punk community has given me the confidence to do anything. I hope that people who read the zines find something that rings true for them, or something that makes them realise they’re not alone.

AD: How will you be releasing the series?

BV: There will be 12 issues over 12 months – a year of punk! That’s one of the things that was important to me – rather than releasing it as a book, I wanted it to be a continuing thing. If you subscribe to it, you’ll get a little bit of motivation in your mailbox every month. The zines will all be hand-bound with screen-printed covers, and after that, they’ll be coming out in book form. Then after that comes my hip hop and spirituality project ...

BIANCA VALENTINO launches CONVERSATIONS WITH PUNX: A SPIRITUAL DIALOGUE at The Bleeding Heart Gallery, 166 Ann St, on Thursday Sep 2. The event is part of a three-day exhibition for the Paper Cuts Collective (Sep 1–3). See www.conversationswithpunx.tumblr.com and www.papercutscollective.tumblr.com

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