We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Alexander Laurence a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Alexander thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. We’d love to hear about when you first realized that you wanted to pursue a creative path professionally.

Fairly early on. I felt like there were a lot of yuppies and business majors around me back in the 1980s. I felt like making money as a goal wasn’t something that I was going to do. I just felt like I need to read a lot of books, and travel around the world, and learn as much as possible from people and the places I went to. Later in my twenties, I decided that I needed to reconcile my artistic vision with some sort of realistic financial situation. This led to me to keep a day job in fields like art galleries and magazines. As my own creative writing developed, I kept afloat by being a journalist, and keeping an open mind to any sort of job. I had a lot of support from family and friends in those days.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

Alexander Laurence was born in Los Angeles. He attended CSULB and San Francisco Art Institute. He has contributed to the books The Hipster Handbook (2004), Reefer Movie Madness (2010), Degenerative Prose (1995), and books about the history of Grove Press. He is also the author of a book of short stories: Five Fingers Make A Fist (2007). He has recently written two chapbooks of poems The New Spain and The Dieppe Circuit.

He presently works as a tour manager and has traveled the world with indie bands. He is the founder of the website The Portable Infinite, and has a weekly internet radio show New Noise on Radio KAJW. The new book coming this year is THE ANALOG BODY, which is a collection of poetry.

We’d love to hear the story of how you built up your social media audience?

I am not a fan of social media. But still my Instagram has over a thousand followers. I have been posting concert photos by myself and a team of professional photographers. My YouTube channel has become monetized in the last year. I have been interviewing artists and writers the past two years under the title “Alexander Laurence: The Portable Infinite Interview.” I am just a curator of interesting content. I focus on good music and good writers. I am not interested in popularity and fads.

Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?

I probably thought of giving up many times. I have had slumps. I have had depression. I have hung in there and it seems like this has been a good year. Many people who started around the time I did, are either dead, or have retired. I feel like of you stay for the long game, you can be a more complete artist.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://portable-infinite.blogspot.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/portable_infinite/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/infinite.alexander
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexander-laurence-4a319bb/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/portinfinite
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/c/AlexanderLaurence/videos
• Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/alexander-laurence-1
• Other: https://portinfinite.tumblr.com/

Image Credits

photos by Alexander Laurence