Extensive WILLIAM CARLOS WHITTEN Interview with FOKUS MUSIK

 

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William Carlos Whitten's Imagination and Literary Analysis
He met Diana Crash at the local laundromat, and with her singing on his new album, William Carlos Whitten can avoid being accused of being an AI.
 Here, he talks about how imagination, literature, police evasion and vaporwave influenced the album Telepaths, and offers both a playlist and a bibliography for the record.Without getting enough attention, Bill Whitten has made excellent albums for more than 35 years, first with St. Johnny until the mid-1990s and then with Grand Mal for 15 years. But music never gave him the commercial breakthrough he rightfully deserved, and in recent years, under the name William Carlos Whitten, he has directed his creativity towards increasingly eccentric music creation on his own, and also towards his writing. On his brand new album Telepaths, he hands over the vocals to Diana Crash, who caught his eye at the local laundromat where she was working while waiting for her next adventure. They were talking literature, and suddenly she found herself engaged in a sing-along to all the songs on William Carlos Whitten's album. 
Q: You met Diana Crash at a laundromat - what made you invite her to sing on Telepaths? - 
WCW: Laundromats have always been important to me. They are ancient and sacred. And it was a whim of the moment, the kind of impulse that has guided my whole life. While the dryers and washing machines were spinning and sloshing, we talked about books, and especially about Simone Weil, and I mentioned that I was a musician, and so on. I ended up emailing her a song. - I would say that the whole interaction came about because I was reading a certain book that she also knew about. When I lived in New York, half of all my friends were people I met because one of us was holding a certain book. That hardly happens anymore since no one reads books and everyone has delegated their "friendship" to social media. 
Q:Why did she agree to participate? 
WCW: She's an adventurous person who does things like surfing and rock climbing.So I guess it seemed like a fun idea to sing a bunch of songs with some obscure rock musician in a house full of his children's toys and drawings. I would ask her why, but like most of my friends since Covid, she rarely answers my emails. I think she's in the Chamonix region of France waiting for the snow to melt so she can start climbing again. 
Q:Does the song title The Singer is the Origin of the Song, The Song is the Origin of the Singer reveal a deeper role for her?Did she influence the lyrics? Did she refuse to sing any of what you wrote? 
WCW - The song is based on the dense, somewhat enigmatic and perhaps mystical essay The Origin of the Work of Art by Martin Heidegger, where you find the line: "The artist is the origin of the work of art. The work of art is the origin of the artist."That line has always struck me as profound, mysterious, and an excellent subject for a rock song. If the song creates the singer – where does the song come from? 
Q:How does it feel, after all these years, to have someone else sing your songs? 
WCW - Ever since I started rock music in the 90s, people have always complained about my voice. "He sounds exactly like Thurston Moore, like Stephen Malkmus, like a stoner, a slacker", and so on. I have a Youtube channel where I read literary texts, including my own, because reading is after all a mystical pursuit, and some texts offer a form of salvation. My Chris Marker-inspired rock videos are there too.- Anyway, in the comments section of the videos I often get accused of being an AI, or of creating a fake depressed tone. So of course I've come to the conclusion that if someone else sings my songs, they might be more accepted, or whatever you want to call it. Plus, I think her voice sounds better than mine, and records better on my 30-year-old, worn-out equipment. 
Q: What substances were used during the recording? 
WCW - Just coffee. The wild days of addiction and savage nihilism are over. 
Q: What is the significance of the two cover songs on the album? 
WCW - Loudmouth by the Ramones is a perfect song. I've always wanted to do a cover of it. Originally I wanted to do it as a piano ballad, but I couldn't make it sound sensible. So instead it became a kind of Liquid Sky version. Hi-Heeled Sneakers is another immortal classic, of which Jerry Lee Lewis has made the pentultimate version. But who wouldn't want to make a cover of it and weave in clips of Jean-Luc Godard talking about "listening to the image" on The Dick Cavett Show, and of Sam Neill making a phone call in Andrzej Żuławski's Possession? 
Q: You're working on your second collection of short stories right now. Tell us about it! 
WCW - My first book Brutes was about lovers, drivers, painters, filmmakers, detectives, murderers, writers, pianists, photographers, rock 'n' rollers in search of grace, and the sacred. Things that no longer exist. - The book I'm working on now, Hymns for a Bitter Star is about a similar gallery of marginalized people trying to make art in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. But a question about art as it has been understood since modernism reshaped society hangs over it all, at least for me; Does art, like technology, have a destiny of its own, one that is indifferent or even hostile to humans? Are we incapable of creating art that does not aim to destroy us? Is there any art that has any purpose other than to deceive teenagers and young children? - And further - art has always been initiatory. The point of it for the last 50 years has been to force the viewer, the listener, the consumer to accept everything that frightens him, that offends his morals. Art hardens him, or perhaps softens him until he becomes a person who accepts anything, really anything... The bourgeois, liberal gallery-goer is the perfect citizen of the spiritualized police state. He will accept fascism, totalitarianism, any abuse - thanks to the artist who taught him to submit.
Q:According to your very limited press kit, everyone in the world wears a disguise except you. Is that true? 
WCW - It's a joke, of course, like most things I do or say. All my albums are comedy records.