SONICTALK
(New York, December 15, 1988)
interview by Robert Fischer

Fragmented Stories

RF: This ... electric urban folk music we are loving ... has a lot to do with telling stories ... traditional folk music was about telling stories on history, psychology, hygienic topics, initiation patterns ... for people which could not read ... These stories where usually made up in a very linear or chronological way. Somewhen during the 60es this kind of story-telling started to change. The story-line got scattered, a new kind of lyrics that was based on a mixture of catchphrases and impressionist "poetry" appeared. The influence of jazz-talk and jive. Dylan was very good at that ... Amphetamine, scatter-brained, surrealist fast talk ... Country-music kept up the traditional narrative lines in its songs; Rock started to develop new ways of telling stories -- maybe or probably with the beginning of the drug-culture. At the end of the 70ies/beginning of the 80es appeared a kind of literate, nearly academic Rockandroll- storytelling: Patty Smith, Tom Verlaine or Richard Hell; and then Lydia Lunch, Exene Cervenka, Jeffrey Lee Pierce, Chris D. and now Henry Rollins or Michael Stipe. This new Rockandroll literature and poetry has now established its identity ... What kind of stories is SONIC YOUTH telling ?

Kim: They are quite ... abstract ... stories.

RF: Do you think there are new ways of telling stories ?

Kim: Today everything is so isolated. If you take a story like a ... soap opera on TV .. and right after that you hear in the news that 80´000 people died in a an earth quake ... you know that the one story is a news story and that it´s probably true, but right after that you have this fantasy stuff ...

TM: ... I don´t think that we tell stories ...

Kim: Because of the way we live ... this incredible input of information ... simultaneously ... You know what happens all over the world instantly because there is this large communication net ... It doesn´t give you a greater sense of reality ! But mostly things are not progressing forward. The ARE no real stories anymore. It is all fragmented ... like the news.

RF: The early story-telling on songs was because people couldnt read and they needed and got information that way ... Now everybody in the industrial world can read -- and everybody looks to TV and listens to the radio. The 60es was the beginning of the media age and that is when story-telling started to change ...

TM: ... we are not electric urban folk music ...

RF: In Country Music, traditional, straight Story-Telling remained ...

Lee: ... Country Music today is absolutely anachronistic ... it is not a modern form anymore.

Kim: .. probably they stayed in that mould because in that way they can reclaim a sense of .. history ...

Lee: ... to calm down our crazy world ... But in a way there is so many stories around now. Every way you turn there is another story ... Current music isn´t telling stories in the same way. Today it is a fractured narratives kind of thing.

Kim: .. you don´t have time for the full story ...

Lee: Well at one point you have a story that is true -- you have a catastrophy on the news and the next story is soap opera and that is not true. At a certain point they get blended ...

Kim: ... this is the way people get their sense of history ... That is one persons´ representation of history.

RF: The idea of reality is completely biased ... Now, in the band, three of you sing and make songs ... so each of you has his own stories to tell ...

Kim: ... yes, we all have our projections.

TM: ... I´m not interested in stories ...

Kim: Thurston weeps !

Lee: What do you do ?!

RF: Thurston doesn´t tell stories ...

Kim: ... he´s got a big spinning wheel upstairs ...

TM: I am looking for stories !

Lee: ... for stores ?

RF: So one of the reasons why I started here is because I try to find a form for this book, for these talks ...

TM: The thing is, we don´t want to know what we do ... (...)

RF: ???

Lee: Why, you´ve got a secret ? (...)

RF: Thruston says that the group doesn´t want to know ...

TM: ... you know, it´s like the dreaded third album.

Lee: I thought it was the second album that is the dreaded album?

RF: ???

Lee: ... The second album is usually not very good ...

TM: The second album is the one when you actually come to terms and you find out who you are ... and ... the third one is usually a failure because you know who you are ...

Lee: You know who you are ...

TM: ... see, we are all failures ...

Lee: Usually the second album is the classical failure !

TM: Yeah, the second one is the one in which you know what you can produce ... like, the first album is like a conception ... the second album is the pregnancy and the third album is the birth ... which is the failure ! And anything that goes after that is like ... walking with the cross ...

RF: I think that failure is an anachronistic concept !

TM: I don´t know too much about concepts of anachronism ...

Lee: What do you mean: anachronistic ?!

RF: ... eeh ... obsolete, outdated !

Lee: Failure is obsolete ?

RF: ... in a fragmented world. Failure has a meaning in a dualistic world, in a world caught between two opposites -- like succes or failure; win or loose aso. -- in a world that is functions according linear, causal structures; in which you are something because you did something else before that induced what you are right now. In the present, fragmented world these concepts are not relevant anymore: to loose is a good as to win ... theoretically ... "Before" does not count anymore. You live only the present. There is no past, there is no future anymore.

TM: HaHaHa ! Church of the Scatterbrained

RF: ... yeah, well ... We have new concepts of reality: nothing is real anymore

TM: ?!

Lee: You are shattering his reality !

Kim: ... This is probably where individual projections come in ... because .. every individual has an illusion of ... makes up his own illusion of living, of existence. Within this whole fragmentation ... And that is how people exist day to day. Otherwise you couldn´t possibly function ...

Lee: I think that talking about reality this early in the relationship is going to bed too soon ...

Kim: It´s good to get it over ...

RF: (...) ... so this brings us back to storytelling; to the story each individual has to tell ... He can only tell his own story, because this is the only one that is real ... (...)

TM: But how do you know that the storyteller is actually telling the story of himself ?

Lee: ... Because he can´t tell anything else ...

TM: ... The stories that he tells about himself are usually the story of what he sees in the mirror ... and that´s not really him ...

Kim: But that´s part of him !

TM: No ! That´s the fucking mirror, that´s not him ...

Lee: What he sees in the mirrir is what HE sees ... that´s him ! He is the one that is doing the seeing.

TM: ... Did you know that there is band called "Blanket of Secrecy" that had an album called "Walls have ears", Ha !

Lee: Fragmentation !? It´s happening right in front of your eyes ... Fragmentated narratives !

RF: Scatterbrained !

Lee: The Man in The Mirror ...

TM: There is much to be said about scatterbrain !

Lee: Ha ! Yeah, you mean the "Church of the Scatterbrained" !

Kim: ... THAT is Thurston´s philosophy ... (...) I think that we are making TWO interviews (...) Logistics of Interviews

Lee: Yeah. Sometimes this happens when we do interviews ... where an interviewer wants to do his questionning in a certain ... along a certain path ... and sometimes, if it´s niot the paths along wich you are feeling at the moment or not something you feel easy ... or, sometimes, certain things are easy to talk about and sometimes they are not and it depends it dep4ends on everyones mood ... and sometimes when an interviewers comes in -- ok, this is not an interview -- but sometimes when an interviewer comes in with a tape-recorder and start asking questions and we do what we just did with you ... they get very upset and leave thinking that we are saying "Fuck you" to them or someting like that ... but it is not necessarily that at all .. it the difficulty of idscussing some of these thgings in a rational way and like what Thruston was saying before about -- I don´t even know what he was saying -- but he was implying that we don´t want to know what we do in terms that we want to keep a lot of it as intuitive as possible ... and not ... you have to be in the very right moment ... to be able to talk analytically aboput what we do .. because usually we tend to resist it because we feel like to uncover too much of it ... is to ruin it ...

Kim: ... is to die ...

Lee: ... yeah, ... is to die ... in a sense.

RF: Well ... it is just difficult to walk and having everybody talking and I just have one tape recorder !

Lee: Yeah. Maybe we should have lots of tape recorders ! Yes, and in a way it should be an indication of how this book should go ... because this the way we operate, and this is the good AND the bad of our group ... that everyone is shooting off in different directions at once and ... on the occasions when it combines ... then it works. But that´s sort of the ... template ... of the way that we work ! Pinkis´ TV (with RF crawling in between pieces of fragmented reality)

RF: You wouldn´t do any ... private interviews ?

TM: No ... Talk to the band only ... I really not worthy of a private interview.

RF: Is that like ... amoebic life: severe them, they multiply ? As part of the band, you have a collective Ego ...

TM: ... We ... ah ... don´t have Egos ...

Lee: HaHa ! RF: The band has a collective Self ...

Lee: ... Igloos ...

TM: ... Egos are very beautiful ... I lost my Ego.

Lee: Now film these guys right now, talking !

RF: Can you have one ... in a band ?!

TM: I desperately want an Ego ... I mean, I would gladly talk to you ... if I had an Ego. I think part of the problem is an unresolved desire to have an Ego.

RF: Well ... it is easier to talk if you don´t have an Ego ?

TM: It is easier to talk with a parka on ... than without one ... I would think.

RF: It is easier to GIVE interviews with an interview with an Ego ... but not to talk. (...)

TM: See, I´m just a 30 year old Stringbean from Alabama and ... I have absolutely no ... philosophical input to anybody. (...) What makes you think that I am in a position to employ any ... kind of ... like ... (...) Voices and Noise in the Background.

RF: Aah ... Could you please give me a break !

TM: Do you think that I am posing as a teenager !?

Lee: Give you a break ???

RF: I don´t think it´s funny ... This is work ... ARBEIT ! Freedom.

TM: ... Only freedom can defend me ...

RF: Only freedom can defend me ?

TM: You know who wrote that ?

Lee: Who ?

TM: Greg Ginn, Teenage Philosopher.

RF: Teenage Philosopher ? (...) I think I am sitting on the microphone ... Hmmm ... Yes, I think that anybody can expand on his ... doings. I am not here for the philosophy ... I want to hear stories !

Lee: Stories ?!

TM: Like Springsteen ?

RF: I dont like his stories because they dont relate to my life.

TM: So you think that mine may ?

RF: If I go from the music, I would say so.

TM: I tell you that Springsteen tells more interesting stories than I do.

Lee: Well ... Why don´t you tell a story of your youth ! ... smoking pot behind the science wing ... Thurstons´ Youth

TM: One time I sneaked into the Art Class ... in my High School, with another friend ... and we stole this big boards and we were walking to the hall ways were all the classes were in sessions ... and in the cafeteria- studyhall, there is about a hundred kids sitting there ... and there were three teachers monitoring ... and in the study hall you had access to buy milk .. and coke ... and snacks ... and what we did ... we broke these big peices of 2 x 4s in the stair wails and we slit them into the door handles of the cafeteria-studyhall, so you couldnt open the doors. And when the bell rang for the next class, you had a hundred kids ... not being able to get out of the cafeteria. We had jammed the 2 x 4s in the doors handles in such a way that you really needed to ... hammer them out for a while to set them loose ... and one teacher had a near heartattack. And ... I got seriously reprimanded ...

All: Haha!

RF: You got caught ?

Kim: How about the one you doing the hunchbacks´ son ... and getting arrested.

TM: I won´t talk about the pigs ... Well. OK: Ask me any question, I will answer it. I know now that it´s not an interview ... So let´s go.

RF: You just came back from a tour ... You have been away from your bedroom for many weeks ... How does it feel to be home again ?! Are you home again. Is this your home.

TM: Are you implying that my home is the womb of the Statue of Liberty ?!

RF: I was talking about your bedroom, actually ... TM: What makes you think that I HAVE a bedroom ?

Lee: Doesn´t EVERYONE have a bedroom ?

TM: I have a bed ! RF: Is this your home ?

TM: My parka is my home ...

RF: Hmmm ... Could you expand on that, where did you get it.

TM: Do you think Europeans have much more like a profound interest in the concept of home than americans do ..

RF: Oh yes, definitely. BEcause Europe is much smaller, there is less space. You cannot choose your home ... Lee: What do you mean by that?! Nobody chooses their home ! Until they move away from home ...

TM: See ... In Europe it is like "Home !", "Homeland!" ... the Motherland, the Fatherland. In America it is like: "Honey, I´m home!" ... This says much about the vastness between the two cultures.

Lee: The white ones

Kim: They white ones, yes.

TM: I think it has much to do with us trying to reach the moon ... (...) ... Do you think the moon is twin ?

RF: A twin ?

TM: Do you think that the moon is earth´s twin ? How important is the moon to the earth ? (...)

TM: What do you think that our songs are about ?

RF: For me they are definitely not from this earth ... Not one of these sounds that you make does relate toany human sounds. Its not sounds of trains, of Mad Max movies, underground transportation, factory-chains ... It´s sounds from farther than the moon. Extraterrestral Sound ... Not like Science Fiction Sounds ! It´s sounds from another planet ...

TM: If it was fiction you wouldn´t hear it.

RF: You make them hearable !

TM: Yeah ... maybe it´s apprehension of what it could be.

RF: You give a form to this fiction ! I saw it like a huge ... living planet .. that has the form of a ... dark flowerbud. When you play, this bud is opening ... It´s made out of metallic rubber ...

TM: You are talking about sex ... through concepts of photosynthesis. Do you realize that you as the listener ... you are a bee ... buzzing around our hive. Listen to that earliest of rock-songs "I´m a King Bee baby ... buzzing around your hive. I can make honey. Let me come inside" ... That has a lot to do with ... with cosmology ... through photosynthesis. Which is basically the most ... highly natural state of ... of sexuality. Ha ! Why is Jerry Lewis so popular ! Well, the orgasm is just a frogleg twitching ... Ha !

Lee: Did you just made that UP ?

TM: I just read that in a Lou Shiner (?) book. I mean, he was just talking about jerking off without realizing that it is basically ...

(John throws his plastic frog on RF´s lap):

All: Haha !

RF: ... and slap it against the wall ... and it will fall down as a princess ...

TM: Do you think that humour is our downfall ?

RF: You call that humour ?

Lee: A good counter, there. We should keep a blackboard, keeping count. That´s one for you Robert !

TM: Do you know the etymology of the word Robert ? Are you interested ...

RF: ... has to do something with ´strength´ or something ...

TM: Does it ?!

RF: ... Hmmm ... ´robur´. Scandinavian.

TM: So you are aware of ..

RF: I was told ... I am not very aware. I am not very interested ...

TM: See. There is really no such thing as philosophy ... as far as we are concerned. Because we are basically aware of the truth ... Philosophy is just like ...

RF: It is a fiction too ...

TM: It is a fiction ... and we are trying to deconstruct the philosophy so we can get back to ... get back to home.

RF: We have to deconstruct the importance of philosophy ... or the status of philosophy. Not philosophy itself ...

TM: So, how important is the philosopher ?

RF: Hmmm ... I like stories about Nietzsches´ life ... or Witggenstein ... or Freud ...

TM: You are talking about a minority of people

Lee: You can wrap a philosophy around anyone´s life !

RF: Rockandroll is the ultimate philosophy ... existential ...

TM: If Rockandroll is the ultimate Philosophy ... I tend to aggree with that ... I think that Rockandroll and modern literature are the most important philosophical movements of .. human history ...

RF: Philosophy has to do with ... people not being satisfied with their home ...

TM: You think so ?!

RF: ... or with their appartment, or with their bedroom, or with their bed. And ... being confronted with the unbknown ... and trying to find ... a new home ! And, as far as I see Rockandroll ... it is about the same. Maybe you need more than a froglegs´ twitching as a home. You need to put your head somewhere ... and if it´s on the moon ... then the moon is relevant to me. I was thinking about this story Burroughs was telling: he basically says that everything that exists has a sense and that this sense is evolution. Man has now come to end of his evolution in his present state. He has been existing in this form for a few ten thousands of years and now he is preparing to take his next step ... which will be space !

TM: Well, we all agree with that !

RF: Andto go into space with this body is rather unpratica, but we have another instrument ot go into space which is the astral body ...

TM: ... the amplifier !

RF: The amplifier, the astral body ... right.

TM: We´ve been hitting space for quite some time, pal !

RF: So ... how is sex in space ?

Lee: That is a great question ! How is sex in space ?! Do they know yet ? Has anybody ... has anyone ... has it been documented wether people have had sex yet in space ? Cos´ the russians did have some co-admissions ... It seems like a basic scientific bit of research ...

TM: I think sex IS space !

RF: Hmm.

TM: I think space is basically resultant of sex ... But let´s not get heady about it ... Yeah. Why is the microphone in the shape that it is ?! (To camera-team:) Can we have a shot of this microphone !!!

RF: It is not running ...

Jean-Luc: It has been turned on and off.

RF: ... fragmented reality ...

TM: Jean-Luc, turn the camera on !

Jean-Luc: It runs now. You can see it by the little light ...

TM: (sings:) "I can see the light ... in your eyes.

RF: Jonathan Richman did a song about "Meeting on the astral plane" ...

TM: He got all his ideas from comic-books ... and he is quite removed .. he refused to take it all the way .. and therefore he lost track ... on what was going on.

RF: So that is the difference between fiction and fantasy ! And we were talking about fiction and not fantasy ...

Kim: That´s reality ! RF: Reality is a fiction ...

TM: Fantasy is truer alternate reality than fiction would be ! Fiction is just a tool. And that is why philosophy is just a fiction ... because it´s just a tool. Something that is already inherently there ... But then you are getting into realms of phenomenology which is like ... forget it ! It´s the birth of Rock ...

RF: Crawling from under a milk truck ..

TM: Crawling King Snake ! (...) Do you think that my heart is beating faster than yours ... or what do you think that is going on ?! (...) ... What do you feel like right now ? (...) ... Why are you basically generating your questions toward me ? Why is that ? Why don´t we just throw them up in the air and jump for them ... (...) ...

Kim: Are you talking with me ?!

Lee: Hey buddy, are you talking with me, Ha !

RF: ... Hmm, the point is that I don´t exactly see the situation: is this an interview (pointing at Video-camera) ?

TM: Why do you have to know that ?

RF: Well, I want to know why I am in this picture ... because ... it winds up to be an interview or a reportage about somebody who does a reportage with an anti-interview concept.

TM: Well, you can actually convince yourself that we actually talk different languages and ... in a matter of time it just will become ... like just soliloquies running through your head ...

RF: That´s the point of my business, because I am a writer !

TM: Just think of it in .. just like ... totally sonorous levels.

RF: Hmm, yeah. Satisfying !

TM: It´s just much more rewarding, I would think. It is actually much more sort of ... like ... I think you can get more of an insight ... into the Rock.

RF: The point is ... I like to think about things ...

Kim: And that is where we are opposite ... because we don´t really like to think about things.

TN: Because we are of the realization that everything is thought out ...

Lee: We do think about things, but we don´t like to talk about thinking about things. Because it´s like doubly abstracted from the word Go.

TM: And worst about it we have to think about talking about it.

Kim: We work more with our feelings ...

RF: I am in the unconfortable situation that I have to look ... now ... for material to think about ... later. But I have at the same time to think about what I will want to think about later.

Lee: Right ! But why do you wait until later to think about that ?!

Kim: I think it is a ... thing about going back and listen and reflecting on it ... and approaching it again.

Lee: it is also .. in way ...

TM: ... think of a woman !

RF: Hmmm. Control and Psychic Coincidences

Kim: I think that you don´t know yet what you want to do, except the stories ... and right now, Thurston is on your face and it´s kind of hard to see what there is to do.

RF: Thurston says that it is all thought ou ..

Kim: He doesn´t really believe that !

Lee: Also, you are putting yourself in the position of -- wether it is called a conversation or an interview -- of asking questions. We are in the position of being these people that other people come up to and say like: I´d like to talk to you, I´d like to ask you a question. And then sometimes, if they don´t get what they want, they get annoyed. And yet it is not our responsability ... utlimately to spoon-feed the proper path of conversation ... or whatever.

TM: Our only responsability is to be gosts ... Voice in the back: Goats ?

Kim: That´s the confusion ! Some of us think we should be gosts and other people think we should be goats ... within the group.

TM: Well this is confusion ... that´s sex also ! ... (...) ... I am thinking of a girl!

Lee: Who is she Thurston ? Voice in the back: Tina Louise ! Lee. Wow ! Hey, how did you say that !

TM: I recently found some great photos of Tina Louise ...

Lee: ... in an old Modern Man Magazine ! ... there is pages of pictures of Tina Louise ! We have been looking at them for the last week ... See, that kind of coincidence is realm on which we operate. Now. We found these pictures of this girl. And now, out of the blue, this guy (Byron) knew it ! And he mentioned her name ... That happens quite often: that kind of psychic coincidence.

Voice in the Back: You make it happen -- or does it just happen ?

Lee: I don´t know. Can we make this happen ?!

RF: Yeah. That´s the point can you make these things happen in interviews ??

Lee: Why should we ?! Voice in the back: Just to find out you can !

Kim: There is always a certain amount ... we don´t control EVERYTHING ! And that´s oart of the balsie (?): we are supposed to control something ... There is always a certain amount you CAN control in your life. But we are not sure we WANT to control it ...

RF: But this is the same with the ... interviewer ...

TM: ... the quiz-masterist !

RF: He also is expected to be in control ... and it is not obvious.

Kim: But this is your responsability. You are have to have a certain order, you are making the book ... an order you feel conforable with ... in relationship to how we are.

Voice in the back: It is like a set-list for a show. Somebody has to present an order in which the chaos can happen ... So that it actually starts and then it ends.

Lee: But the show is OUR responsabilty ! Not the talk.

Kim: We are responsable for the stage, for the music -- and we accept interviews. But we don´t take them so seriously ... We mostly care about the music.

RF: But if you set up an order ... or you put an aim and you steer towrds that aim ... you are not open for anything else that can happen.

Lee: That´s not true !

Voice in the Back: That´s the Ego !

TM: You are the Ego ! You are creating the Ego ... that you think exists ... and therefore you are basically pointing at a portion of yourself.

(End Side A)