xp Read an interview with Brock Van Wey the other day about that record, kind of a bummer really:
Can talk about the quote on your album, “We all die alone, but some make it their last work of art”. What is its source and effect on your inspiration for this album?Its source is actually me. I would say it very much relates to this idea of how after you’re gone, others’ memory of you in their lives will intertwine with the story of their own lives, no matter to what extent. For me personally, the most beautiful way this can be achieved, at least in my ideal, is to somehow know the end is near, and to silently disappear to spend those last moments completely alone, thinking back on the life you lived, and then just vanish as easily and suddenly as you appeared.
This has always been an obsession of mine, but it had lay dormant for a while until one day about a year ago I asked someone what their ideal way to die was, and they answered very matter-of-factly, showing they had thought about it many times, that they wanted to die alone in a place no one had ever been. I thought that was such a beautiful answer (coupled with the fact it came from the mouth of someone around 19 years old, which was extremely unexpected) I honestly shed a tear, and every time I even think of it, including now, I do the same. Quite frankly, to me, even the thought of such a concept is truly a work of art.
No matter how many friends you make, how much your family loves you, or anything else that we arbitrarily attach to the meaning of life, we were intrinsically born into this world alone, and we will leave it alone. So to me, embracing that fact, and seeking to make that a time of beauty, makes much more sense than this absurd idea of being surrounded by loved ones etc. What possible good does that do? To me it’s just another attempt to distract ourselves from the inevitable, even when it’s weeks, days, or minutes away. I’d rather spend that time finishing the last few sentences of my own story on my own, rather than making others fumble through them on my behalf.
Basically the idea for the album, its title, and that quote all came about during an extremely low point for me, during a pretty much crippling depression I experienced when first moving back to China, when I was experiencing a loneliness that was really beyond all description. My mind being the tortuous Moebius that it is, I began to obsess on the thought of not only how truly alone I was, but the fact that I could easily disappear or meet my end and no one around me would truly care – it was the closest I had ever come to that point of being alone I had previously dreamed of as the perfect way for it all to end. And the lowness I felt, quite honestly, made me care less by the day as to whether the next day was the last. In fact, I reached one day where I literally didn’t care at all.
I don’t know what happened, but I all of a sudden decided to take that crushing weight and put it into music. I think quite honestly, it was a sort of last-ditch effort to see if I could feel something again. It wasn’t even depression anymore. I had gone numb. So thought the only thing I could do was attempt to put the experience to music, to see if I could come out of the tailspin by talking about it then only way I know how – with myself. It was the first time I had touched music since moving across the Pacific, but it seemed like the perfect time to start, to try to make something constructive happen from what I was fairly certain was a depression that might consume me.
Though from the title of the album to those of the tracks themselves, I think it’s fairly obvious how I was feeling at the time, but what I wasn’t expecting was the beauty that ended up coming through in the tracks (at least I feel it, I can only hope others do too). I think it’s the most overtly sad album I’ve ever made, but as I progressed through it, it began to take on more and more beauty along with the sadness, and before I knew it, it became as much a statement about the beauty of life as much as its futility. And really, I think it’s embracing both that futility and beauty, irrevocably intertwined, that can bring about that one last work of art – one’s ability to make that last stroke on the canvas of their life, alone, just as they were when they made the first.
― ka£ka (NickB), Thursday, 3 March 2011 17:50 (fifteen years ago)