The Oracle of Los Angeles is the guest on this week’s edition of the Otherppl with Brad Listi podcast. Her name is Amanda Yates Garcia. She is an artist, writer, witch, healer, and oracle.

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What motivated you to write this book?

Same thing that motivated me to learn karate—having the last name “Faries,” and I can show you how good I am, just like I showed Donnie Manfredi in 1981 when I did a round-house kick over a five-foot fence and knocked Donnie into the dirt. He didn’t take the bus for two weeks after that.

Tell me about music and its place in the book.

The book is music. If you put it to your ear I am sure you can hear a guitar solo. I’m just not sure if it is acoustic or electric. When the first box of review copies arrived in Thunderbolt, GA, the UPS driver strutted to my door snapping his fingers and swaggering through the humidity. He put the box on the porch, did an about-face, and abruptly dropped his head and shuffled back to the truck.

Each chapter is framed in a particular song that helps contextualize the emotion of place. In the 70s, rock and roll was still defining itself and it seemed to change monthly. It was moving, just like Mother and me. In trying to find itself, it was screaming, “Hey, where am I? What am I supposed to be doing? This feels good! How about this? Oh, you don’t like that sound? Well fuck you…. How about this? Can you feel that grinding? Can you feel my chest expanding and my britches getting bigger?” I am chopping down mountains with the edge of my hand. I am chopping down palm trees and they are landing on your back.

When writing a memoir, is there such a thing as objectivity?

No. Objectivity in writing is a myth because the very act of selecting content is by nature subjective. Now, in my book I was incredibly objective. For example, when Mother was making love to John P. on the mattress above the Jack-o-Lantern Bar I objectively described the situation: I was happily bouncing up and down because there was only one mattress. It was as if we were all playing together. There were strippers from out of town blowing men in the parking lot while we hid from Mother’s boyfriend , Junior, in this wonderful little upstairs apartment. That scene was just described objectively (sic).

Tell us a little about your concept of truth in memoir, or at least truth in this memoir.

Well, my narrator will likely be accused of making certain things up. But if you ask a first grader—raised by parents who were always tripping on psychedelics—why the family had 18 dogs, he would likely recount this mystical experience where he saw them all emerge from a vaginal opening in a barn door. And that is exactly what happened. If you are going to be a little magical, just remind your reader that you are a magician and not the messiah. They will watch your magic show and even accept some of your failures, like when you pull a monkey out of a hat when everyone was expecting the same old rabbit.

What’s the story behind your trailer?

The story is that two wonderfully fascinating mothers trusted me with their boys for a day. I transformed them both into Chadillacs (that’s been my nickname since birth) with Big Wheels, Barbies, classic cars, motorcycles, and music. It was the closest I ever came to being a parent. And Ashley Newsome, who plays my mother in the trailer, I spotted her at a coffeehouse where we were both watching the band Shovels and Rope perform, the song “Boxcar.” It had the same emotion as the book, and I looked over and saw Ashley in bell-bottom corduroys with a beer in her hand and knew she had to play my mother. We shot various scenes from the book. took a bunch of stills, and recreated the 70s. The most disturbing element was playing Mother’s boyfriend.

After what is now over 40 houses in 40 years, have you managed to stay put, or are you still rambling?

I’ve got rambling on my mind. I say I’ve got rambling, rambling on my mind. But I’ve now lived in the same house for four years. That is the longest I have ever lived in a single space, though I transform that space constantly. I am a carpenter, and I have created fantastic nooks and tree houses on my property so I can ramble from space to space. But I am not very successful at that either. I run away to ape sanctuaries and mountains on my motorcycle at least once a month. Rambling does have some costs I suppose. I really only have two childhood friends. And my friends from high school always treated me as a second-class citizen. Yeah, you know who you are and you are going to be in trouble. I know karate.

You are at your grandmother’s deathbed right now, on the release date of your memoir. I know it might be difficult, but can you contextualize the scene for us?

I am in Iron River, Michigan in the Northstar Hospital on the shore of Ice Lake. There is a window and I can see the water. I pissed in that water, cut my foot open in that water, had sex in that water. And I think Gramma did all of those things in that same water. And aunt Molly too. She is on the other side of the bed. Grandma calls us “the smart ones” sarcastically. That is one of the last full sentences she got out. The sun hasn’t shone in three days. Gramma has that death rattle people describe. It sounds like a car crash played in slow motion., complete with people screaming. But occasionally she will cough out a feverish laugh. Sometimes she sighs and lifts her eyebrows. When I touch her hand she breaths heavily and squeezes. “Grandma, I made the cover of the paper today” I tell her. I play the music from my trailer for her, “Boxcar.” Ain’t it just like you and me to go down like that? The dust jacket on the hardcover has an excerpt that reads “We talked fast because we thought we had a lot to live. And we did. Still do. We are all still alive, even with the years of damaging relationships and drug treatment behind us—years of cheap Wonder bread full of mold, and sour milk. No one has died, at least none of the women. They have centuries left I am sure.” Well, surely not. I am a damn stinking liar. I am telling you this now so you know there are no surprises.

Is there something you want to say to your grandmother?

There is a difference between scratching your ass and tearing a hole in it. Step up to the magic and disappear.

I’ll get one thing out of the way first of all, to address whose in the know, and as a point of interest for those who aren’t. “Akata” is to some a pretty nasty word. It’s Nigerian Pidgin deriving from the Yoruba for bush civet cat, and is used as an epithet for Americans of African descent. Some people claim it’s not derogatory in intent, but I don’t really buy that given the context in which I hear it used most of the time. It certainly leaves an offensive taste in the mouth of many Nigerians, especially in diaspora. Yeah, taboo language sometimes marks the most superficially surprising vectors. Nnedi Okorafor, author of the recent fantasy novel Akata Witch (Viking, 2011 ISBN: 978-0-670-01196-4), is well aware of the controversy she courts with its title. It takes an extraordinary book to put such an abrasive first impression into the background, and in short, I think Nnedi has well accomplished this.

One of the great tragedies of childhood was my inability to harness the forces of witchcraft. It wasn’t for lack of trying. You have no idea how many times I stared at my homework and wiggled my nose, hoping to cause math problems to magically solve themselves, how many times I urged the kitchen dishes to become spontaneously clean with a snap of my finger. For years I was convinced the problem had to do with sound effects, or more specifically a lack of them. On “Bewitched,” whenever someone cast a spell, it was invariably accompanied by the sound of a harp or a bell or both. My spells were devastatingly silent.