“I very much hope to become some kind of fungus or moss when I die…” An Interview with Mariah Gese, Author of “Mold Vincit Omnia”

Emma Hurst, one of Black Warrior Review’s interns, interviews Mariah Gese, author of “Mold Vincit Omnia,” out in issue 51.1. Read the complete, colored version of Gese’s experimental piece here.

Emma: What was your inspiration for this piece?

Mariah: I wrote this a few years after I moved out of this tiny, mold ridden apartment that sort of ruined my health for two years. My asthma got very intense and I couldn’t breathe outside if it was under 20 degrees. Getting sick was an insidious process and I wanted to relay the slow, dreamlike quality of that time visually.

Emma: What made you choose this title?

Mariah: The title is a pun on the Latin phrase mors vincit omnia, death conquers all. I’m effectively a mold detector–I like touring historic buildings, and often I have to hold my breath and rush out because the air is suddenly heavy and thick. I’ve missed out on a lot of cool spooky basements this way, which obviously I resent. This mold allergy feels insurmountable, unavoidable—it’s a little taste of death.

Emma: What was your creative process for the illustrations? What inspired these illustrations?

Mariah: I’m a crow, I collect little trinkets if I leave my house, and this time it was a set of green alcohol markers at the art store that just called out to me. I started doodling with them and found myself naturally making these crawling patterns. One of the patterns that crops up in the essay is the Mandelbrot Set, a fractal shape that iterates itself infinitely no matter how much you magnify it. I like the idea of numbers marching into infinity, to me they have the same mindlessness as mold, just existing to exist. It helps that my favorite color is green, so I’m always happy to be doodling green shapes. When I find a shape or pattern I like I just let it grow on the page.

Emma: What was your process for writing?

Mariah: I like to think on the page, and when my notebook starts to fill up with recurring themes and images, I know it’s time to write them into something. I don’t write a lot of nonfiction, but I really needed to process getting sick from something I could have prevented or addressed sooner. I was thinking a lot about the fragility of the body, and how easy yet unimaginable it is to lose the use of it. I think the reason able-bodied people are so easily distracted from disability rights & accessibility is because there’s an uncomfortable dread in thinking “this could happen to me.” It’s an easy impulse to distance yourself from this discomfort, and like many easy things it’s not a helpful or useful way to let yourself think.

Emma: If mold is not driven by hunger like we are, what do you think it is driven by?

Mariah: Spite.

Emma: Can you discuss your thoughts on the eternal nature of mold as opposed to our limited existence as humans?

Mariah: I’ve been fascinated by thinking about how fungi and plants experience time. Both can live significantly longer than we can (there’s a several thousand year old mushroom in Oregon), and I admire that plants and fungi don’t seem to experience anxiety (the dream). They take their time because they can, and their main concern is existing—difficult concepts for humans to grapple with.

Emma: Is this an exploration of how humans will eventually return to being “one” with nature after we die? That we are not really separate from the mold at all? What are your thoughts?

Mariah: I very much hope to become some kind of fungus or moss when I die. I like to think that we fade from consciousness into the semi consciousness of the nonhuman, experiencing the world still but not as an individual and not bound by time. I think it would be nice to sun on a rock by a stream forever.

Emma: What is the intention of the mold splatter before “my” in line 10? Does it have a certain meaning?

Mariah: That was a spelling mistake! So it became part of the mold overtaking the page. Honestly some luck with form & function.

Emma: Is the mold representative of the not so clear line between life and death, existence and non-existence?

Mariah: Yes! It can be refreshing to think that life and death are not at odds with one another, rather facets of the same impulse, which I might call the urge to consume. We are alive in such a different way than mold is alive, but not for long. You might ask if a dying mold could become a ghost, and I would say yes.

Emma: Can you discuss the illustrations of the worm and skull on mushroom at the bottom of the piece?

Mariah: I love drawing worms, I highly recommend it. There’s a meditative quality in it for me, since most of the worm looks the same as the rest, and in that way can become unending. The worm is one of the creatures that bring humans and fungi together, I suppose. We’ll all hang out in the dirt together at some point.

Emma: Was there a specific meaning you had for this piece?

Mariah: I wanted to explore time and consciousness from outside the human, and from different states of embodiment. People don’t like to place themselves in danger even in a thought experiment, and wanted the essay to ask readers to do that with me.

Emma: What feelings or thoughts did you have while creating this work?

Mariah: It was a relief to process the anxiety, fear, and disappointment I felt at that time from a safer place. Drawing is my favorite brain-mode to be in, it’s my most curious and quiet—I suppose my most fungal mode.