(This is the entirety of an interview which I gave to the mercury and which they had to edit down pretty thoroughly due to space constraints. I wanted to print it up here because I got to talk about people who I like a lot and because I was proud of myself for not clamming the hell up. here's their copy.)
-why did you go there
-miss portland
-what's new musically
-why you're in town for this show
-any funny stuff
-etc.
1. New York is good. It took a while to get used to it. My mannerisms were foreign and useless.
2. The main reason I came here was to spend time with my friend Patrick. We used to work projection together at the Bijou and walk around town in the dark hours of the morning after our shifts. I consider him to be one of my closest friends in the world. When Patrick and I are together, our lives are happening. Even when things are bad sometimes. He's lived here for about three years and every time a projection job opens up, he calls and tries to convince me to come out and spend some time living in NYC. This most recent time happened to fall in the middle of a planned move, so my belongings were already mostly in easily storage'd boxes. Other things too.. there was just sort of a convergence of events and happenstances that
made it easy (in a very specific and limited and warning-quoted manner of speaking) to pick up and relocate myself.
3. I miss the living hell out of Portland. I left at a pretty strange time, because I had never been so in love with a place where I was living while I was living in it. I miss Half & Half and Food Hole and Valentine's and Hotel and DJ Nate's Tube noise shows and all my friends who do such totally insightful and humbling music and art and activism and fuckery. I could easily parse those groups, but the list of names would be pretty ridiculously long.
4. I've written a good number of new songs since I've been here, but have only been recording really experimentally. In the past the writing and recording processes have been pretty intertwined, so this is different. Planning on doing a lot of focused recording when I get back to PDX, though. I have played a few really fun shows in NYC. I've been reading and drawing a ton since I got here, too, and I know that carves its way into the concepts I grope around at with these sorts of songs. I also had the amazing opportunity to accept Chris Johanson's generous offer to play at his gallery opening at Nicolai Wallner in Copenhagen.. so I played some shows around Denmark, Germany, France, Scotland, and England last month. I met lots of rad
people and came back with tons of great recordings. Hm.. I've also been starting to get more into building my own very primitive electrical instruments.. mostly busted speakers and backwards-wired transformers and such.. I go through a lot of nine volt batteries, but am still pretty respectfully intimidated by mains.
5. I'm moving back. The plan all along was to live in NYC for six months. Time's just past up. I'm really excited to get back and have a simple address and to get to live (in a room bigger than a closet in a house bigger than a room) with James Argumentix, Daniel BirdCostumes, Eric GhostToFalco, and Alex Hando. We Will Have A Basement! I am really lucky to have such a nice arrangement waiting for me. Really really really lucky.
6. Different things are funny to different people. The night I got back from Europe, the man across from me on the subway projectile vomited across the train and it was just everywhere.. none got on me, but this poor girl.. some of it totally got on her dress.. and he just looked pretty tired and got off at the next stop and everybody had to move to a different subway car because of the smell. The next day I couldn't even hold down water for 24 hours. To the Brian of early december, this was not funny at all. To the Brian of early january, this is funny in sort of a sad Goonies way.
7. etc.
