Maybe my regret is that I maybe stay too long in playing in a band Exnic Youth.
Good evening, everyone, and welcome to episode eighty nine of the podcast, which is going out a very strange time in the history of the world. Maybe you're listening to this in the future, maybe far in the future, and everything's back to normal. I certainly hope that's the case. But right now we are in the middle of the coronavirus pandemic. It's actually quite early days here in London. We've probably been isolation self isolation for about five days.
So yeah, I wish we'll think in saying that we're in the middle of it. But wherever you are, I hope you're dealing with the weirdness of the situation, and I hope you're keeping safe and busy and not going crazy yet. This podcast is one that we recorded maybe a month ago or something like that. I mean, coronavirus was very much the talk of the day back then. We recorded this the morning that South By Southwest decided
to cancel. That's where the conversation picks up. Obviously, since then, in terms of the music industry, everything has canceled, all festivals are on hold, for now. So yeah, it just feels it feels strange to listen back to this time capsule from a time not too long ago when we were speculating what might or might not happen due to this crisis. So I don't have any answers. Obviously, I am extremely excited that we have Kim Gordon on the podcast, So I mean, it doesn't get much bigger or better
than that for us. I mean, you know, ridiculous. I was a bit nervous meet and Kim. She's insanely cool and extremely smart, and we pick up in this conversation we kind of it's a bit of a whistle stop tour of loads of the different things that she has done throughout her life, and it's everything essentially from visual arts. She's recently been the week that I spoke to her, she's been campaigning for Bernie Sanders in the US primaries in California. She's done some acting, she's done some dance.
She's obviously changed the face of modern post punk with Sonic Youth, and she's released a solo album last year called No Home Record. She's written an autobiography. We touch on all of these sorts of things I'm sure you know, you know, maybe all of them, maybe some of them. I've put some links below this episode. The guy that Kim talks about who was married to Jane Fonder, I
believe was Thomas Emma Hayden. And that's pretty much all you need to know going into thank you for downloading Stay Safe out there, and in terms of what you can do to support this podcast and Loud and Quiet, because I'll be totally honest with you, we have no idea just how fucked we are right now, but we are working on it and we're seeing a way to continue. But we have created a donations button on our subscription
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dot com. Forward slash subscribe put in any amount, It doesn't matter what it is. Most importantly, though, just tell a friend about this podcast. This is number eighty nine, we're approaching one hundred. We've had some really great people on and we just as many people here as possible. So especially right now when people are twiddling their thumbs a bit, just tell someone that you like this podcast, if indeed you do, and hopefully you're like this episode myself.
Stuart Stubs talking to Kim Gordon. Thanks for doing this. Oh yeah you How was your flight in yesterday?
I was fine. I didn't know what to expect on the air plane, like if everyone's going to be wearing masks or how. It's great. It looks seem no, not really. I saw like a couple mass in the airport, but not not really.
It feels like this week here. I don't know what it's been like in the States, but here we've kind of gone to a new level with it with the whole Corona thing. Is it. What's it like in the States right now?
Well, I think kind of it's getting rough because well, for one thing, Trump is terrible, you know, like his
whole rollout of it. It's like he's always wants to make everything about himself, right, you know, which isn't constructive when there's a potential pandemic, global pandemic and so and he lies pretty much everything that comes out of his mouth is a lie, So you tend to want to assume the opposite sure for whatever he says, and it's this is you know, it's kind of like, you know, I saw that minis that series Chernobyl, you know, and that kind of reminds me of it was very timely.
It's it reminds me of kind of the potential with Trump because he just wants to make himself look good all the time and the fact that actually there aren't enough testing kits and things like that, or you know, it's it's it's like he just really says things like, well, we've had a really good, smooth rollout, Like that's what he is, like his message, she wants it to be.
And I understand he's trying to calm the markets, but I think if he talked to you know, if he if they had did a better job of preparing knowing what was coming, you know, that would have been more calming than.
So his kind of partline is everything's fine. That's that's his approach to it, right, how about like on a just on a street level in because you're in La, Right, what's the general kind of.
I mean it's pretty you know, aside from the fact that people are stocking up on food and and you can't find hand sanitizer this this.
Week that's happened here. Yeah, sanitizer is like I know, I noticed, I went to look.
I was curious. I went in a drug store last night, the Super Drag and yeah, there was everything was gone.
Yeah. Yeah.
Aside from that, it's doesn't seem I mean, south By south West was canceled yesterday.
That's crazy.
I'm sort of curious what's going to happen with other festivals, Like maybe I won't be touring the summer.
Yeah, it feels like we're kind of in this real state of limbo now, doesn't it. With south By Southwest canceling yesterday? It does feel like how long is this going to go on? And does that is that going to be a domino effect now? Especially for things happening in the very near future. Are you, like, personally are you are you worried? Are you particularly worried yourself? I mean in terms of just the I'm worried.
Sure, I mean, yeah, I mean I'm worried. But if I'm not traveling, I'll just go in my studio and make urts. I don't know. I mean, I have other things I can do. But no, I'm worried for the world. I'm totally worried, you know, for other homeless people in Los Angeles and the immigrants who were you know, stuck in cages at the border, and you know, all the poor people in the world are going to suffer.
The Yeah. Absolutely, not to.
Be incredibly grim about the whole thing, but that's the truth of it.
Yeah, No, it is a happier note. I want to talk to you about your Bernie canvassing, which seems to have paid off. Has it been has it been called that he's one California Now?
Well, I mean I think they're still counting to see how many delegates. But yeah, that's kind of the one bright spot or you know, like he it's it's just it's so strange because the way the mainstream media works, the democratic establishment, it's kind of like you really want to dig into it, you know. Biden got that one endorsement and it really, uh just completely changed his momentum and the media establishment. We're just waiting for something like
that because they really dislike Bernie Sanders. Because of Sanders wins, they will lose their power in terms of being able to control the message. And as kind of like moderate proponents of moderacy and normal status quo, they'd be kind of at a loss. And so but the fact is that Joe Biden is kind of feeble, and that is very scary that they've chosen this For one thing, They've chosen a candidate that's not as smart as Hillary, and they're trying to run that same program. And they don't
understand why Trump won to begin with. They don't understand that, yes, even though Obama was a lovely person, he did nothing to you know, the trade deals weren't good for workers in America, and he was the one who started deporting immigrants, and I mean, you know, he was kind of more or less carrying on the status quo. We thought there
would be change, but there wasn't. He's just like a lovely person with the lovely family and a decent human being, but he didn't really change do much to change the last thirty years of democratic policies that haven't helped you know, the middle class on down really and especially people you know,
living in poverty. Honestly. So you know the fact that Trump proposed himself as a fake populist, he fooled a lot of people basically, but there were real problems there that so the Democrat establishment hasn't really taken the time to analyze really why he got elected.
Your campaigning for Bernie for the for the votes in California, you've been properly canvassing or you've been knocking on doors? Yeah, I mean, I'm guessing in California you don't come across many Republicans. That's that's how it seems size right at the Atlantic, but is actually I mean, my presumption would be you're you're asking people that I've went for and that you're trying to convince them not Biden more Bernie. Are you hit knocking on any doors and you're finding some dihydral Well.
The thing is the canvassing that I did and the phone banking that I did, it was mostly with people who were there were Democrats who it was trying to like or independence, you know, and if like they were very organized and basically you'd go out with an app that would tell you who who was doing a mail
and vote. If they were doing a mail and vote, you had to like ask if they weren't declared, which means usually met there were independent they had to know that they had to get a Democratic ballot in order to vote. So it's like doing things like that and then you mark it down on your Appy. And you know, we were going to mostly neighborhoods with a lot of Hispanics and you know people some people who'd never voted before, and so sometimes you'd have someone who was leaning or
they didn't know and you could convince them. But for the most part we weren't really getting any Republicans. It was pretty much all going to Democratic doors.
And yeah, I'd love to imagine how I would fail if I opened my daughter Canmiser and it was you. If it was Kim Gordon, who I know and recognize and know the musical, Did you have anyone like that? Was anything?
There might have been a couple of people like that. There was a guy who was managed a apartment building who let us in. You know is a locked you know, kay so and I think he might have recognized me. But I always remember my mom said, when Jane Fonda was married to what's his name, he was a politician and they were living in Venice like kippies. Okay, right, but anyway, she said, Jane Fonda came to the door
because that's funny. Yeah, but mostly, I mean we're going to like kind of lower middle class Hispanic a neighborhood.
Okay. Sure. Were you always politically active? Like can you remember like when did you get into like actively interested in politics? Was at a super young age?
I mean, you know, because I am old. I did go to a lot of you know, demonstrations, you know, as a teenager in the sixties, the late sixties, you know, in nineteen seventy, I remember we had a teacher's strike at my high school and we didn't go to school for like a semester. We were supporting the teachers and marching around the outside of the school and that was very exciting actually, and the feeling of what it meant to be part of a movement. And I have always been,
you know, interested in politics. I mean, but I always thought as a musician, if you're you know, it's hard to do both, you know. And because sonic youth was not a conventional band. I guess I always felt like anything you do that's that is work, that's against the homogenized culture that one lives in, is some kind of a political action, right, But now I feel like it's,
you know, really time for action. I mean I've been, you know, ever since Trump got elected too, it's just been you know, it's so hard to ignore the political landscape, and I've become pretty obsessed with it. And I've always been like a little skeptical of people in the public who have gotten involved with politics or but in a way, I kind of see how you would want to it, and it does give your life a little more meaning.
Certainly, I really liked the video that went online I'm guessing it was on Tuesday of you baking their cake. Oh yeah, that's cool.
Yeah. It was sort of a reference to this Martha Rossler kind of video she made, right, okay, yeah, artist, Yeah, I saw it everywhere.
Definitely got out there, worked. Yeah.
It was kind of a so simple and love fie and kind of fun.
Yeah, it look really great. But I mean originally, like because you grew up in la I think a lot of people maybe didn't really really realize this until your book came out, right, Girl in the Band came out because of the New York thing and everyone, you know, something that was such a part of New York in the eighties and nineties that they didn't realize that you actually grew up in LA and you're back in La now. Yeah, and you want it to be a dancer, right, is that right?
I mean, yeah, that was part of my I mean I always wanted to be a visual artist quite frankly, but I did take Martha Graham, and I did want to be a dancer. I liked my mom kind of even though she was the one who found the class and everything, she discouraged it. She just said, it's a really hard life, but it mostly I just wanted to be a visual artist.
How about like, now, if you're at a wedding and that you are you the first on the dance for a wedding?
Oh god, no, no, I mean you know I have done this dance. I've done a few sort of conceptual dance pieces performances, and I worked a few times with this really great choreographer dancer called Dimitri Chamblay. We do this thing that revolves around contact improvisation. I don't know if you know the Sea Paston started it and kind of comes out of a sort of flexus Judson Church dance group in the seventies. Basically it's using gravity and kind of each other's bodies. But I've introduced so we
do that. But I have my guitar also that I that kind of enters into it with sounds. And but we did. We did this performance of the Louver last fall, I think it was last doing Fiat. That was pretty amazing just to be do it in that place. We've done it a few times. Yeah, And he's super interesting. He started a dance program in this maximum security prison in Lancaster, working with these super macho guys. It's incredible.
I saw his wife was a documented filmmaker, sent me a teaser of what she shot of it.
It's amazing, Like hearing you talk about that, it just amazes me the amount that you do and the amount of different mediums that you've worked in through throughout your career and stuff, and it just makes me like, how do you have the time?
One?
How do you have the time to do all this stuff? But I suppose the thing that connects everything from your visual art to your music to sonic you if your solo stuff, even like you're writing your essays and things, is this kind of thread of it being unconventional within each of those things. Is there anything you love or do that you consider or maybe we would consider like conventional. What is the most conventional thing that Gordon likes?
Well? Maybe does this new band? I suppose like to go back and have a band where you rehearse and write, you know, there are songs, yeah, then you go out and perform. I don't know, because with Bardyhead it was me and Bill improvising, even though it felt like a band, and it is a band. I mean that's I guess conventional. And dealing with music press and interviews and promoting, I suppose that's pretty conventional.
I mean the new record that came out last year, No Home Record, because that was your first solo record that you've done in thirty eight years, which seemed to be the narrative that a lot of people picked up on. Was it as big a deal for you as it was as it seemed to be for everyone else that Kim Gordon suddenly made this solo album all these years.
In It wasn't a big deal at the time. When I was making I didn't really think about it. And yeah, it was only when yeah, I started doing interviews or that people wanted to do that. The record company wanted to promote it so much. And I mean, you know, when I put the book out, that was kind of I felt like my first time other than having various solo art shows, you know, but not on the same scale as like, Oh, I didn't realize like what a big deal books worked. It's kind of.
You found that everybody wanted to know about it. They were like hungry for this stuff. We really want to know what life's been like. Yeah, was that like a surprise?
Yeah, totally. Yeah. And you know, I went to a school, this lab school at UCLA, which was all really learned by doing, and so it kind of was this cross contextual learning situation very early on, before people really talked about that in education. So it's kind of in a way my natural instinct to work in different mediums, although I do always did kind of see myself form us as a visual thinker, visual artist or whatever.
Yeah, is there any mediums that you either haven't done or you've not done that you feel you've not done enough of?
Well, I guess I'd like to work in film or with film, and I did actually this film as an art project that Dimitri's wife shot. Actually she's a director with me with my guitar downtown walking around downtown LA basically using corporate buildings as a guitar slide and logos and things like. I had a little app and it just and I had a show that opened in New York. It was up a couple of months ago or a month ago, and that was an installation. There's part of it.
And I would like to do, you know, more things with film in art but also in a like a some kind of feature way.
I didn't realize until yesterday. I was reading up on you a little bit here and there, and I didn't realize that you had a fashion label as well back in the early nineties.
Yeah, Ex Girl, Exgo.
Yeah, how was how was that being like in that fashion world?
Well, you know, my friend Daisy von Firth, who the sister of Julie Cafritz and Pussy Color. We you know, we knew the ex Large Boys through the Beastie Boys and they would you know, one of them. Here Daisy and Night discussing buying boot cut by cords in the seventies and finding the right T shirt that fit and stuff like that, and there wasn't a lot going on in the street, wise in the fashion world in downtown New York then in the early nineties, so they asked
us if we wanted to do a girls line. We never really considered ourselves designers really, and they it was. So we did that for a couple years and then sold it to Japanese basically okay, which I made more money doing that than I ever made being playing in a band.
Yeah, yeah, sure, yeah, that's the perfect business movie. That's that's the model, isn't it. Build it up, sell it quick.
Yeah, people, I think, don't make money till they sell it. But you know, it was also a good lesson in what happens when you sell your brand name, because what they do in Japan it's we thought it would die off, but it's still going and it's still nothing like what we did at all or our idea. It's just but
the name ex Girl really registered with people. And Mike Mills was a actually big factor in its success because he made you know, we he designed the T shirts, like the graphics, and you know, we talked to him
about what we wanted. But and you know we'd reference like Francois Hardi or Anita Pallenberg, you know, but the clothes never really came out to fit the way we wanted them to because ex Large didn't know anything about making girls clothes, and we would send samples back and forth and then to get it to fit right, and then it would just come out as something different. But
we're constantly being like harassed. Things were too small and or too big, you know, and you know we didn't have there wasn't a big budget for production, and a fashion industry is super frustrating.
Yeah, yeah, but have you have you been involved in that a little bit of the fashion industry Away from a little.
Bit I've done like small Collapse, but nothing you know that was kind of interesting, like for some reason at that time, it had such an impact. It was also when like a streetwear like for dudes was also like super baggy clothes, you know, and you know, we were trying to do something more fitted and you know, something that would appear to you know, the would appeal to and look good on different body shapes and things like that. I mean, now, like there's so much street you know,
streetwear is now high fashion. You know, it's all like totally bananas.
Yeah. Yeah. One of the mediums that you've done a bit of, and I just wanted to ask if you enjoyed, was like the acting. You were in Girls and I'm not there.
I was and I'm not there. And Olivia is a French director. Yeah, his film boarding Gate And I've been in a couple of guys friend's ant movies.
And then you've been in a few things that just playing yourself as well. Yeah, those are the little yea. I was going to say, what's that like, because you're I was gonna actually ask if that's the easiest thing. You just have to turn up on set and be you, but that's hard.
Well, we did Gossip Girl. I think that was the only time, right, Okay, yeah, I mean that was It just felt really ridiculous. I mean honestly, like we only did it because my daughter watched the show.
Sure, okay, but oh.
And there was gilmore Girls too, A lot of shows with the name of Girls in it. But I don't know, like I I find Yeah, I'm a little tired of doing cameos. Not think I want to do it anymore. But I would like to to me, it's all of a spatial experience in a way, and acting to me is moving through space and psychological stuff, which I like.
Yesterday I also listened back to your podcast with Mark Maren on the W two from a couple of years back. I think when the book came out, and it reminded me on there, there's you mentioned on there that you growing up, you used to be an easy crier. You'd cry a cry a lot. Yeah, younger, How's is that something that's that's still around?
I'm still like that.
Yeah, I feel I'm getting more of a crier as I get older. I think I was quite to get through my twenties and teens and now it doesn't take much to make me want to cry.
Yeah.
Is it for you? What what sets you off? Is it? Films? Music?
And like it can be a question, you know, like I just did this fifty question thing with the Guardian, you know, and I was like, well, you want me to tell you what my biggest regret is or you know what I mean? Like like some heavy questions which I a lot of the really personal ones I kind.
Of flew off way. Yeah, sure, Like.
I am pretty susceptible in a certain way, to a cry, to influences.
How about films. I'm not a crier at films weirdly, unless they're like documentaries or real life things.
Yeah, no, I definitely can be. I mean, honestly, yeah, I can be, even though I'm mad that it's making me cry or something. I hate manipulation.
Have you seen any good films recently? What did you watch on the plane coming here?
Oh? God, I watched what is it? Ferrari versus?
For it? Oh yeah, we have a different name for that here.
Okay, I actually liked it. I mean, seeing it on a small screen, it's the worst, but yeah, yeah, I had low expectations. But I mean I love both those actors. Christian Beal's amazing. And did I cry?
It's worse when you're at altitude. I think, yeah, you're more susceptible.
I think I didn't quite cry.
Okay, good the Yeah, that's film's got a different name. We've got a different name here for it. So when I was winning the Oscars, I watched the Oscars and they kept saying Ford versus and is this the same film? As I can remember what we called it? Oh Laman I think it's quite okay. Yeah, have you seen Parasite yet?
Yes? That was amazing.
Yeah, it's incredible.
Right.
Yeah, I'd like.
To see his other films, which I hear kind of more oblik is it The Host or yes?
The Host? And this one called Mother.
But there are these Revenge ones are supposed to be amazing. Yeah, Revenge series.
Yeah, I thought Parasite was just I didn't know it. Did you know anything about it going into it? I did.
I knew it. I knew a little bit. Well, I just knew that it was a film about class, right, that's about it.
Yeah, really, I knew nothing of it and I saw it in the cinema and then it just for anyone listening to this as I won't ruin it, but it just goes in a way that I just did not expect it to go, you know, like the way it escalates.
Oh, yeah, it was amazing.
What you know, there's that moments in that.
Yeah, that he achieved a certain tone was incredible.
Yeah. It just looks so unbelievably beautiful. Yeah, and incredible. Yeah.
Have you seen that documentary series called cheer Nelix?
You know what I have because my wife.
I think watching that, did you at the end.
My wife is a really big fan of that, so I would see some of it. I've seen some of it. It's but I didn't realize. So if anyone listening that hasn't seen Cheers a Netflix on Netflix with the Netflix show, it's a documentary about a cheerleader squad in Texas, right right, but they're not.
It's like their gymnet. Yeah, it's almost like I had no idea. My idea of cheerleading was not that. No.
I thought it was like that you see on like NFL or at basketball games. But actually, real cheerleaders have to retire at the age of like fifteen or something like really early, don't they in that show.
I mean there is no They go through carl Is a college program, right college, and yeah, there isn't anything after that, really, yes, unless they become Olympic gymnasts or something. I don't know.
It's kind of brutal that they train, and they train them so hard, so hard, like they're like breaking spraining ankles and breaking noses and falling off pyramids. Yeah, that show is really quite fascinat Yeah, world totally.
I mean I was watching it while I was rehearsing with this new band that I just never played with before. I'm pretty nervous about the whole thing, and I was like, they can do that, Pyramid, I can do.
Yeah, it's great inspirational TV. Yeah yeah. And then they get to the end of their college career and I.
Just that's it's just go.
And do something else with you all.
And a lot of them came from just these really screwed up background and said, yeah, they kind of it saved them and galvanized their life in a certain way.
Yeah, it's nuts. I suppose this fits in actually with you know, everybody thinking how wild it is that you've just made a solo album. Is it right that you first picked up an instrument when you were like twenty seven?
Yeah, that's true, which I mean I was in a band, was in this sort of garage noise band in college briefly, right, but you know that was kind of a just for an art class.
Sure. Yeah, it's I think that's quite. That's really inspirational to hear that, because it feels like twenty seven. In the music industry, twenty seven is considered quite.
Yeah, and yet that's kind of how old Patty Smith and Debbie Harry were when they started, right. Yeah, you know, it's just I think people's focus on age became younger and younger. But I honestly still don't think of myself as a musician. You know, I never learned to play conventionally, and I you know, I've sort of picked it up
in the spirit of post punk. You know, do yourself in a downtown music scene, be inspired by no Wave and which were mostly bands started by artists, and you know it was completely expressionistic and not conventional.
Did you have you had to kind of almost try to not learn convention.
That's my technique. Yeah, it is a technice, certainly not getting too good or polished.
Yeah. You know, there's those stories of Malcolm McLaren when he formed the Sex Pistols, getting angry at them for like practicing too much because they wanted to get better, and he was like, you're missing the point. Why would you want to be good? Right, that's not the point
of this. We actually had viv Albertine on the podcast last year and she was She told me how she wouldn't necessarily choose the life that she's had if she could go back, and she certainly would discourage her daughter from doing what she's done, and the point that she made was that it's so exhausting being a punk and being creative in the way that she's been creative throughout her life. She said, it's exhausting. It's a really uncomfortable
was the word that she used. Does that resonate with you in any way, like just that that idea of being operating outside of the mainstream to such an extent and being continually creative.
I mean not really, because I basically wanted to be an artist, which is sort of the same thing. I think it's you know, my mother said to me once, like she didn't give me much advice at all, but she said, you should learn a technique, which I'm not
sure I did it. Yeah, but I understand that like to have something that because there's something about being in the public that you know, it's fame, it's weird and the way people appreciate what you do, and it can make you feel like an impostor because the value system is so askewed, and you know, like how do you
equate the worth of what you do? You know, it's not like being a plumber where you can do really good work and see it, you know, but I you have learned something about performance, I think, And so that's a weird thing to say that's a technique, but it's and it's also within that it's like not being too polished or you know, for me, like that's what I relate to like a but I you know, I appreciate other people who are really good at it, but I
don't relate to it myself. It is uncomfortable. It's uncomfortable not knowing how you're gonna get your next set of dollar bills or you know whatever. It's kind of you know, financially unstable. And but I think, you know, and maybe my regret is is that I, ah maybe stayed too long in playing in a band like Sonic Youth. And I only did because continue to like the music and want to support it, but you know, and it's it
becomes a machine that's hard to get out of. So basically I took the breakup of the marriage to do that. But I always felt like I owed it to myself to really go back. And even though I had tried to maintain my pulse in art and and do things when I could, I owed it to myself to really you know, focus on that more.
Is there anything that you can imagine you would have done if it wasn't a life of art? What else would you what would you have done if you weren't doing this?
You mean not working in film or anything else?
Uh no, I'll give you that, you can accuse.
I guess that would be it. Yeah, I did film, and I I think in college I made a.
Film, right, Okay, what's that about?
It was about It was a surrealist film. It was about Patty Hurst.
Okay, cool, I am talking of plumbers. I sometimes quite fantasize about being a plumber. It's not a great fantasy to have. But that thing that you mentioned of just knowing there's no subject activity to whether it's yeah, you go and you fix the sink. You have to fix the sink, and you fix the sink, right, and that's tick. You can tick that off as a done thing. And I think that's something that it sounds quite appealing. There might be plumbers listening to this who are bought sick
of that. Yeah, but I under I can see what you mean by I think by like, oh, that would actually be quite a novel. Nice if you've not been doing that for your whole life that that's actually quiet.
I mean, I'm not saying I don't mean to take away from plumbers. I mean I just think that doing something concrete, but actually, you know, water in leaks is also incredible mysterious as electricity to me. But yeah, just having something concrete to do, you know, whether you're a nurse or you know whatever, and you leave your job and you go home, and you go home. But honestly, like I wouldn't know what to do if I had nothing to think about.
Yeah, do you find yourself just working constantly on things?
Pretty much? Yeah?
You kind of. Because you've got a studio at home.
Do you have I have a studio outside of my home?
Okay, like just you have to go to the studio. Yeah you have to go to this, Okay cool, But then when you get home, are you just are you good at just leaving that there and watching cheer?
Yeah? Sure, I mean I don't go I'm not like an artist who goes my studio nine to five or anything. It just depends on the project. And I but I mean as like, not a conceptual artist. But to me, it's I like, to you know, it starts with an idea, so you can do that anywhere, or you can you know, write write things, or you know, anywhere and just kind of looking around and observing and just thinking taking things in And to me, that's kind of fun. You can
do anywhere. I like, I admire poets because your life is just a constant. You know, you can do it anywhere and think about it.
And yeah, poet has to be the most romantic of the arts.
I would say, my daughter's become a really good part.
Oh really, Okay, great, it's kind of the forgotten art. A lot of people say, isn't it poetry?
It's funny though, I think there are more living poets in there have ever been, right, Poetry has never been bigger.
Okay, it's coming back in a big way. How did you enjoy the book writing? Did you Did you enjoy putting the book together?
I mean it's kind of one part torture. I mean some parts I loved writing about, and then other parts were hard to write about and it was kind of daunting. But I had an editor who's it was almost like getting an assignment, Okay, write more about this, you know, and something to nudge you along.
So the bits that you didn't enjoy writing about for whatever reasons they were were there, ever, I'm guessing it's not an option to just be like, we're just not I'm just not going to write that. I'm not going to put that well.
I mean the hardest thing actually to write about in a certain way was, well, one, how to integrate sonic youth into it, which is was such a big part of my life. But I didn't want to write a book about sonic youth. I'm sure some days someone will
write a good book about sonic youth. And the other thing was how to how to talk about the art world and certain artists who are influential and you know, not knowing is this going to be boring because no one knows this is not a public figure, and it's a lot of abstract ideas that just really hard to put in a format that's kind of a popular format. You know, my mom writing that was the harness thing.
And I had a book of essays that came out maybe the year before, and I wish that they could have just been put together.
Yeah, do you think that's on the book front? Is because some people write, you know, three autobiographies. That book felt like it was all there and it doesn't need to be anymore. But how do you how do you feel about it? Would you write not necessarily another autography or an extended one, but is there any other writing that you particularly want to do?
Yeah, I mean I have I have to get back to it. But there is some something I started writing that was more. It kind of came out of something I wrote for an art show and it was really just an excuse to have a structure to write in, and I've sort of extended it. I would like to finish it and just put it out more as like an art book or something and not promoted.
Yeah, exactly, Yeah.
Like a novel letter.
Yeah. Nice. Well, the book's amazing. The new record is not that new anymore, is it. It's an old record. It probably feels weird to still be like talking about that kind of thing. But they're both great. So thanks for coming on the podcast.
Oh thanks, Lash, It's a pleasure.
Anyway. Good night,