The Oklahoma Gothic
15 August 1999
reprint from http://members.aol.com/oklagothic

Who are you personally and as an artist?

I'm the sanest crazy person you'll ever meet...too normal for the weirdoes, too weird for the normal. I'm alone.

Who is the most inspirational person in your life?

I'm not sure I know how to answer that question. Are you asking me who motivates me? Right now, no one. Historically, lovers give me something to write about, but watching films really lights a fire underneath me to actually write. Lately (maybe this means I'm growing up or maybe just growing older) I find the news really stirs me.

Who is the artist you most admire?

I don't like to name artists because the people who do this are usually trying to impress you with their taste. How about if I just tell you that I have bad taste and leave it at that. I will say this: certain qualities elicit my admiration. I admire anyone who pioneers something, particularly if it is good and I like it. I admire, and indeed gravitate to, depth of emotion and capacity for vulnerability. I also admire any genuine artistry that stands the test of time. It's nice when a work is amazing, but it's even nicer when people remember the piece and it's creator long after he is dead.

When did you start creating music and why?

More than half my life, I have been a poet, but I have to admit that there is something so penetrating, captivating and fundamental about sound, especially vocals. With words you must speak the language, but with music, if you are human, you will understand. You are born with an intuition for the melody, rhythm and texture of music. I have always felt compelled to express myself. Perhaps it is that I do not feel real to myself and I must actualize myself through my medium and then later through the eyes and ears of my audience. Perhaps I am preparing for my death by attempting to create a record of myself for history. Perhaps I am so arrogant that I think I'm worth listening to. In any case, I continue to write prose and poetry but also remain quite enamored with composing and singing. The rush that singing gives me (even at the height of maddening sorrow) is orgasmic. And although my lyrics are so simplistic compared to the complexity of my poetry, occasionally when I hear the sound of my own voice, it touches me so much that it makes me cry -- and that feels soooo good. When I was an adolescent I began singing, and though there are pockets of time when I don't sing a stitch, I am repeatedly drawn back to the microphone.

How would you categorize your own music?

I can't, and I have to honest be about how that irritates me because I never have a decent answer for everyone that asks me that. I wish I did. Heck, I still haven't even decided whether it is a good thing or a bad thing that I am not only unable to categorize my music but that I can barely describe it. I suppose if me and my music were accessible -- and by accessible, I mean understood and appreciated by a large audience, then I could just coin a phrase or a genre for it and start a trend. But most people just don't get me. I'm afraid that I'm not normal enough to be embraced by older people who listen to Jazz Blues divas nor am I sane and healthy enough to be embraced by younger people who lick up everything released by Jewel or Sara McLachlan. And I'm not angry or loud enough to be invited into the world of the guitar screeching or drum banging Alternative and Goth crowds. I'm a bad combination: sad, sick and soft.

It springs from the bottomless pit that is my heart...and from the seemingly endless pain that I create for myself or that I endure at the hands of others and the misfortunes of life.

There is a lot of pain and loss in your lyrics, is this music about you in particular or simply a fictitious narrative or symbolic in nature?

It's autobiographical -- pretty pathetic, huh.

Is your music more a tribute to someone or a denunciation?

Hmmm...I'm not sure it's either. I would best describe it as "caused" by someone. And in a strange way, it reminds me of a photograph taken during a war: it documents a point in time, the place and the feelings of a situation, ugliness captured and saved, a remnant that speaks.

Do you see these songs as once or retribution, resolution or simply an outcry of rage and pain?

Circa 1991, I began writing these songs. Initially, it was as a way to cope with my feelings. Some of my emotions are quite toxic, and if I keep them bottled up inside, they might poison me to death. In part, though, I wrote and completed the songs as a way to get his attention. I guess in my sick way I thought he would see how much he meant to me and then by some miracle he would do right by me. What I refused to believe was that he was incapable of loving anyone but himself -- and for that matter he didn't even know how to love himself right either. I could not have loved him; I was simply attracted to the idea of him, but more importantly, I must have been secretly in love with the idea of not being able to have him. There is no reason chase after someone who ignores, betrays and mistreats you unless you crave abuse or you need the chase. Later, I permitted myself the insight of how I had foolishly wasted my time and my affections on him. I was angry. I wished I could punish him or at least hold him accountable for how he took advantage of my feelings. After all, if he was entirely non-responsive or if he insisted that I go away, then my behavior would be tantamount to stalking. But he was quite talented at dangling that carrot, then getting something but not giving anything in return. And this left me in a rather bitter state of mind. I may have written the songs for private reasons but I didn't have to release them. As acquaintances have pointed out, the subject matter is embarrassing to me (i.e., how can anyone respect such a loser? why would I persist in such a pitiful situation? And the answers are even more humiliating). Well, I released the songs hoping to get retribution, but any wise person can see that that only meant I still cared. Instead of being done with him and moving on, I just dragged it out some more. By 1998, about a year and a half after the release of the CD, I finally came to my senses. I realized he did not care and he was not going to be sorry or be punished, and I got tired of caring about him. I do not regret writing or releasing the CD; it documents an important segment of my life -- and I believe there are people who will relate to it. I'm not saying I don't still feel pain about the whole thing. I've just found better things to worry about. I've discovered it was all for Henry, but to my surprise, it is not always for Henry. Now it's for other things...

Do you think emotional pain and loss have a positive side to them?

I am a firm believer in the idea that you cannot truly know anything, unless you have something to compare it to. I'm not suggesting that pain and loss are pleasant, desired or something to aspire to (although sometimes I cannot imagine my life without it and consequently I embrace it -- and generally speaking that is not healthy). But what I am saying is that anyone who has not felt sorrow has no basis with which to judge happiness. Anyone who has not gone without cannot truly appreciate what he has. Most people who appear happy are not actually happy; they are simply indifferent or in denial. They cannot feel extremes of positive or negative emotions. To those of us who are feeling bad, when we see their calmness, their ignorance, or their denial, we mistake it for happiness. But believe me, when you genuinely feel good, you want to jump out of your skin with joy -- every bit as much as sorrow and wanting cause you writhe in agony. So in answer to your question, yes, pain and loss do have a positive side: they are the yardstick by which happiness and fulfillment are judged. All emotions are relative.

That question inundates me with so many thoughts that if I were to elaborate, my life might wrongly appear to be one gigantic tragedy. Don't get me wrong. My life has not been a bed of roses. It's been a real bitch, but I also have a lot to be grateful for. I am so tempted to just start in with a lot of stories about this loss and that, as I have a real talent for melodrama. It would be difficult for me to list them all -- let alone rate them and pick the worst one. Plus, I'm sure if I were to read this interview in five years I might think myself silly for mentioning some of them. So I'm going to take the high road...Let me just add before I leave this question that many losses are the result of wanting. If you can get over the want, then you feel no loss. Unfortunately, some wants are difficult, if not impossible, for some personalities to get over.

Your album comes with a warning sticker advising against suicidal listeners. While I assume this is simply humor, what are your views concerning suicide?

This is a loaded question, but since I'm responsible for the warning sticker, I owe an explanation. First off, let me say something that most people will find distasteful: I think every person should have the right to kill himself. You do not choose to be born, but you do choose to live. And that choice inherently implies that you can choose not to live. Life can be a prison. Those who truly want to leave should be allowed. The world owes you nothing, you owe it same, and we all have to die sometime. If you cannot endure the pain (physical or emotional), you have the right to release. With that said, I'd also like to mention that as a person who has attempted suicide, I truly believe that those who attempt and fail are usually looking for help and support. The irony is that no one around them recognizes their pleas or takes their desperation seriously, and that is why they are driven to such extremes. If I told the people around me that I was very upset and they did not give me any emotional support, if I am unstable, I might be tempted to threaten killing myself to demonstrate how truly upset I am. Now, if I threaten to kill myself but even then I am ignored or I perceive that I am invisible to the world, then perhaps landing in the hospital might get someone to reach down into my dark abyss with a flashlight. It amounts to scaring people into being there for you. The weird thing about my music is that sometimes I wonder if the only people who will get it are those who are actually feeling what I felt the moment I wrote the songs. And at that time, I was feeling slightly suicidal. All you need is for that extra something to inspire you to an extreme, and let me tell you, music is very inspirational. In my mind, the warning label serves two very odd, very contradictory purposes. First it attracts the right audience. If you're depressed and you like wallowing in self-pity, then this is the CD for you and the warning is an amusing tip off. On the other hand, if you are the friend or the relative of a suicidal person and this person actually wants to get your attention, they may create a scenario for you to stumble onto the warning label. Take it seriously. I know this is going to sound completely off the wall, but I don't want the blood of my fans on my hands. It does not bother me that my audience is depressed or that they are people who can appreciate a moment of sorrow. It does, however, concern me that they might accidentally succeed in killing themselves and their mothers may try to blame me for their deaths.

I see all art as having several purposes. One is to document the human condition, all that is beautiful and glorious as well as all that is ugly and unavoidable. Another is to move the heart, either into your throat or into the pit of your stomach; if you feel compelled to stare, to scream, to laugh, to cry or to dance, then it's done it's job. Finally, it should make you think or wonder. And all of the above is relative, so what is art to one person may not be to another.

I honestly do not know how to answer that question. I sometimes have a difficult time relating to a lot of music but I'm unclear as to whether this is because I was not meant to understand it or because people (and their music) have become ingenuine and impersonal.

Where are you going with your art? and in your life?

A question for which I have no answer. I have plans and ideas, but my life and my art move forward so excruciatingly slow that I feel it would be dangerous to attempt any predictions. I sense that while I still remain quite egocentric, I am developing a need to be more worldly and philosophical. Perhaps, I might compose music and lyrics that have to do with something other than personal relationship-oriented pain. Maybe I might dabble with percussion. Really I do not know...

What do you seek most to say with your music?

I'm not sure what I will be attempting to say with my music in the future. But for now, with my current releases, I only wish to find those who have felt and understand the way I have felt or those who are still feeling that way now. I want to know that I am not alone. And I want to say to them that it is okay to feel this way once in a while or a little more often than once in a while...

Remember: everything you do, or fail to do, will effect others in some way. Think before you act. Wake up and see what you're missing. Look at both the forest and the trees; they are both important. Oh, and one more thing, please buy my CDs or I will go broke and have to kill myself ;)

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