~INTERVIEWS~
PBS FM 106.7, October 1998
Transcribed by Ash
Loh-Smith
"This PBS interview is an absolute fucker to type up,
and the fact that the
DJ is playing City in the background at the same volume
as Dev's voice
doesn't help. Sorry for any typos."
"The thing is, your separation, was it work that caused that or was it ...?"
"It was work, it was work. For me, doing Infinity made
me realise that I'm
manically depressed and required treatment, and being
in a relationship with
somebody is a full time thing - you either commit
to it or you don't. And I
married her and I had been through the situation before
(mumbles something),
when I came out of this I started taking this medication
and I sorta shook
my head and looked around and just thought my life
is my music, my life is
my art, my identity is based on what I'm able to create
from project to
project. Because of that, somebody's saying it's either
me or your music.
I had to choose my music, I HAVE to, there's no choice
to be made, and it's
difficult because it hurts everybody."
"Sometimes people have to have the lines drawn for them..."
"Yeah but it's unfortunate when you have to draw the
line and you're not a
very good artist, hehe."
"Yeah that's true... do you learn from these things?"
"I think you learn from taking a dump in the morning
(?!), I think
everything is a learning experience, it's like pain
is the greatest teacher.
You burn yourself on something and it grills into
your brain it's not
something you don't do again."
"Would you agree with me when I say that emotional
pain is the greatest
source of inspiration for any creativity?"
"Unfortunately you're probably right and because of
that an artist that is
in a position such as myself is doomed to a certain
extent to live in a
hellworld that they have to create for themselves
in order to satiate. For me it's almost like a martyr
syndrome for me, it's like the music that I write
I never really had any
peace. I used to get peace by smoking pot and that
just slowed me down and
made me feel like I was wasting my life. So I stopped
doing that and now my
brain doesn't have a shutoff valve."
"Yeah that's the problem cause I gotta tell you that
smoking pot enables me
to sleep, and that's something I don't get enough
of."
"And that's the problem is that now I have stopped
smoking pot, I work all
night. And it's like I really wish I could find something
that would be
healthier. After the Australian tour I'm gonna try
to go back to Japan and
see if I can go to a monastery and see if I can learn
to meditate or try
anything, just got to try to find a shutoff valve
to release some steam or,
y'know the next Strapping record will kill me, hehe."
"You'll burn yourself out, are you playing Japan cause
you're releasing the
No Sleep Till Bedtime there with the extra tracks
there aren't you?"
"Yeah we do two shows in Japan and two shows in Australia
(3 in Australia,
actually), it's just like a primer for the tours we
do in February."
"Those tours in February, are you talking stadiums
or large venues or
what?"
"I wish! But I mean, the thing with the tour in February,
this is the last
Strapping being Strapping tour that we're doing now,
these four shows.
It's gonna be like, pretty rough y'know everyone's
just gonna come out and
we've got our little blah blah blah blah blah (referring
to a small SYL
show) but when we come back in February it's gonna
be Infinity and Ocean
Machine and Strapping and it's gonna be slick. It's
gonna be heaviest,
heaviest more bizarre show that I can possibly put
together y'know? Cause I
want people to see there's something dynamic."
"Would you be aware of a guy from a few years ago called Todd Rundgren (?)"
"Mmm hmm."
"Do you think that you're similar to him in a lot of
ways? He was a
workaholic and liked to be in control."
"I don't know but just by that description alone I
sure we have something in
common."
"Yeah I mean cause every project he had, he was the boss."
"The biggest thing is that the only reason I'm the
boss is I'm alone. It's
not that I don't want to trust people, it's that people
let me down with
their own fear and weakness. And when I say weakness
I don't mean that in a
condescending way, I say it in a way that a lot of
people rely upon their
fear and weakness to get them through life, it makes
it easier to deal with
stressful situations if they can shut down and say
"I can't", as opposed to
saying "It's difficult but I'll get through it", you
know what I mean? That
was the situation with Infinity. It was the hardest
thing I've had to do. It
was sleeping on the floor, doing it all by myself
and there was probably
about 50 times I said "I can't do this record anymore,
it's too much, I need
some help", but I finished it."
"The thing with Infinity now is that, giving me a nutshell
about it, is it a
thing where you're going to be playing all the instruments
on it, or are
there other musicians on it?"
"Gene played on it, from Strapping. But I got him to
play a 5-piece drumset
as opposed to a double kick thing, just to sorta shift
his dial a little
bit. But Infinity is the most pretentious thing I've
done, I've said it
before..."
"You're allowed to be pretentious"
"... probably becoming more and more ridiculous each
time I hear it, but
it's a calling card for me. I have a real hard time
identifying with people
verbally, because I'm perpetually bored therefore
I talk in circles and the
circles always end up sorta making it like my first
knowledge didn't exist,
and with Infinity I tried to purge myself of every
emotion that I could
possibly vomit up, and give it some sort of "What's
it like? Would I like to
associate with you?" I'd be able to say "Here, listen
to this. Come back
tomorrow and tell me what it's like"..."
"That seems to be another thing too... do you have
a problem letting other
musicians translate into them what you're thinking,
or do they have a
problem understanding your concepts?"
"Always, always. Because my brain moves at a really
rapid pace I tend to not
have the patience to sorta sit there and labour things
with people. Even the
best musicians, like, you really can't get a better
drummer than Gene and
even he has problems, cause of the way I communicate
verbally gets really
erratic and really emotional. Like, I'll jump up and
down and point when I
want something to go there..." (says some other stuff,
but the fuckin DJ is
still playing City loudly in the background)
"Yeah I have that problem too, I know nothing about
music but I've written a
few songs and it's hard to tell musicians what you
mean."
"Exactly, cause I don't consider myself to be a musician
as much as I
consider myself to be an artist."
"Do you find that because of that, sometimes you have
to settle for second
best?"
"Yes."
"I don't want you to single out anything you've recorded,
but are there any
things on your recordings you'd rather have done differently?"
"Absolutely, absolutely. But at the same time you can
say that about
anything because that's just another side of being
a perfectionist y'know.
The only records that I've done that I stand behind
saying "This is okay, I
can stand behind this" are City, and Infinity."
"Would you say you're only as good as your next recording?"
"You could say I'm only as good as I am."
"Now this Infinity project, that's basically the last
recorded thing for now
then you're hitting the road and doing a short tour?"
"Yeah doing 4 days, then coming back and doing 2 videos,
and then I've got
another project called Physicist, and then I've got
this contemporary
classical thing... it's a new catch phrase I got thrown
at (eh?) called
"Worlds" which is going to be a symphony based on
colour and shape as
opposed to like, movements and other things... making
chaos and pulling a
melody out of whatever is presented to me."
"So you've got projects laid out to last you another 12 months!"
"Heh, another 12 years..."
"Hopefully, yeah."
"And that's why I used to smoke so much pot, just so
I could get some sleep,
but everybody's so close to me now (mumble mumble),
and for me I don't get
psychotic, I just get tend to get very verbal about
what I feel naturally,
which is nothing." *small laugh*
"Let's talk about that for a second - I'm a sort of
guy who believes a
person should always control their drug and never
let their drug control
them, and I find that fairly easy to do cause that's
my philosophy. So how
is that you have problems with something like pot
which is a fairly
innoxious (sp?) drug when you compare it with things
like alcohol and
cigarettes?"
"I wouldn't say I have problems with pot, the only
problem I have is with
the inability to turn my brain on, I think you're
only an addict if you want
to be. It's like I haven't smoked pot now for since,
when I think I was in
hospital. It's not like I stay up at night thinking
"oh gawd anything for a
joint!" y'know? It's nothing to do with that, it's
just me going
(something). I can't do that cause it sorta fucks
up my system so I gotta
find something else, what can I do? Maybe meditation
will do it for me. I
think addicts are certain personality types and you're
either one or you're
not and I'm an addict, but addicted to furthering
myself as a soul, as a
human being, as opposed to as a weed with nothing
better to do with my time."
"Cause it's played a big part in all sorts of creativity
and a bit part in
enlightenment. You'll find that even Buddhists will
use some sort of drug,
for lack of a better word. So how does it work for
some people and not for
others?"
"Um, it does, it doesn't. The biggest thing that I
learned is that with
Infinity, you can and you can't. You're here but,
I mean, you can go but you
can never go, is the thing that I learned from Infinity.
Anytime you wanna
leave you're free to go, but you can never leave yourself."
"Cause I often get this impression with you is that
you're trapped in a car
doing 120mph, the accelerator's stuck to the floor
and you're heading for a
wall, and while you're heading there you're writing
about it. Would you say
that's a fairly good analogy?"
"That's a VERY good analogy, thank you very much. The
reason why I'm writing
about the wall is that I'm not the only one in the
car."
"Who else is in the car?"
"Everybody else on the planet."
"Oh right, that makes a lot of sense. What makes you happy?"
"What makes me happy?"
"Overall, what makes you happy?"
"Define 'happy'."
"Well, what makes you at peace with yourself? *loooong
pause* I mean, you've
had a few rough patches, but what makes you forget
all about that and feel
contented and at peace with yourself?" *another pause*
"Nothing, yet." (or something that sounds like that)
"No? Not a good piece of music?"
"Noooo... I mean, a cup of tea?"
"Heh, you're an easy man to please!"
"I mean, it's like once you start asking for things
the list doesn't stop
growing (mumble mumble) because you get one thing
and it can't exist without
the other thing to make it a little bit better, you
know what I mean? So I
figure if you can satiate yourself with the least
amount possible that
should be okay. So I'll take a cup of tea and some
oxygen and I'll be okay
for a while."
"Okay let's attack it from another angle. What's the
best thing about being
on the road?"
"The view that at some point I'll be able to go to
a place where I'll be
able to sit at night with some people I've just met
who I understand and who
understand me and don't view me as being anything
other than just another
human spirit that needs to talk."
"That sounds good to me, meeting people."
"Having a sense of humanity at the end of it all to
look forward to is nice.
As for what there is to look forward to, there is
nothing to look forward
to, but there's everything to look forward to. That's
what Infinity is all
about, it's just a paradox... *long pause* ...I'm
yours, you're mine, and in
silence we are everybody and from that, silence is
where everything comes
from. So all we are really trying to do is getting
to a point where we're
'silenting' it."
"I gotta tell you, your dualities are showing there."
"But I don't have a choice, it's like saying your balls
are hanging out,
hehe you know what I mean?"
"That's what I was saying in not so many words."
"Yeah but I mean I don't have a choice. I don't have
a choice. That's why I
recorded the Infinity record, because I'm so perpetually
bored with people
and with fear and with pain that I talk in circles
and end up being nothing
at the end of it, and people go "I don't understand
you because you're
hypocritical". It's not that I'm hypocritical, I just
understand both sides
of the equation. And so, as opposed to me sitting
here all night and trying
to convince you that I'm a good person. I'd much rather
stay and listen to
my record, and if you like what you hear, you know
where I am."
"And another thing, is that there's ups and downs with
everything. The other
thing I want to get into is - Infinity's finished,
you'll be back here in
February, so when does Infinity get released?"
"It should be out there by January. But maybe even
earlier cause they've got
all the parts, they've got the cover, they've got
everything. It's finished."
"So over here they've got enough stuff to press?"
"Absolutely, it's ready to be pressed. It could be
out next week! If people
really wanna hear it, write into Shock records and
say "get off your ass!"...
"That will be done!"
"I'm really sorry to have to interrupt you, but I'm
late for this next
interview and gotta go..."
"Nah that's fine, you were generous with me last time
and I promised myself
I wouldn't take your time this time. Devin, when you
turn up on the 24th I
will be shaking your hand and saying "g'day!", I'm
sick of talking to you
over the phone!"
"Haha good! I'm sick of talking to you over the phone
as well so we'll make
a night of it!"
"Okay matey it's been good talking to you, I look forward
to talking to you
when you get here. You're a nice man, just keep it
up and don't crash into
that wall without being able to talk about it."
"How about this - I won't crash into the wall without you."
"Okay mate, I'll be there."
"Talk to you soon!"