Brown Jenkins Interview 2008

Interview with Umesh of Brown Jenkins 2008

By Bradley Smith

Angel Eyes is a noticeable development and refinement over Dagonite. What do you see as the differences between the two recordings and what sort of emotional and intellectual stimulation do you attribute this growth is a result of?

Well, I feel that songwriting is simply an art, a skill, and one can always get better at it. It just takes practice and patience and the willingness to experiment. I feel like I’m always improving and becoming more flexible, but at the same time I also know I have a long way to go before I’m writing what I feel are truly worthy songs…admirable not just for me, things that I can be proud of, things that are truly heartfelt and honest and purely reflective of my emotional states, but also “admirable” in the sense that I think they stand up to the work of my influences or idols in the genre, or in music in general. That’s really my goal…not just to write things that make me truly feel like I’m saying everything I want to say at the time, but also work that can sit by the music of my “heroes” in art without shame. That’s a worthy aspiration, in my opinion, it’s very inspiring and bracing, but it can also be really depressing if I feel I’m not living up to that standard. Still, I think it’s a good goal to have. It’s much more realistic (in one sense) for me than trying to write music that makes a lot of money or makes me gather lots of fans or whatever. So…there’s always that working for or against me, and it makes me try new things and continually reach over new ground to try to express what I feel as I change from day to day. My songwriting also continually reflects my changing abilities on the guitar. I practice every day, so I feel like that’s offering me wider fields of expression, more and more space for speaking. If I grow or change at all as a person the music is naturally going to change, as it’s all instinctive and refers constantly back to what I am thinking at the time. “Dagonite” was, for the time, directly expressing what I was feeling, “Angel Eyes” was the same, but that’s all in the past now. I can’t return and feel those things again, if I try to it just feels wrong, mournful, perverted. I don’t know if “Angel Eyes” - going back and listening to it now - was really as much of a progression as I thought it was when I was recording it. Compared to what I’m doing with the guitar now it already feels awkward, but that was...8 months ago, I guess. A lot has changed in my life and with my music. I feel more comfortable expressing certain states of being now that I would have been helpless with a year ago, hopefully that progression will continue. Emotionally I think that “Angel Eyes” was kind of step backwards, actually, back into a really deep depression, and it’s not a world that I like to live in for very long. I’m very thankful that I at least had my music to help me at the time. My girlfriend thinks that I was essentially psychotic during a lot of the recording for that album, she might be right. It certainly felt that way at times. Ha! If I was it was probably a form of psychosis that has always been inside me, that still is. I feel like it’s hidden now, for better or worse. I’m not saying this because I think psychosis or mental illness makes music more “authentic” or something stupid like that, I’m just stating a fact. But anyway, as far as stimulation goes, there’s not a lot that directly motivates my music outside of what is simply happening to me in everyday life. If I go out and interact with people and have new experiences and feel like my world is broadening instead of contracting or stagnating, that’s always helpful. I can’t say that anything I read or listened to or learned about from other artists helped with any of those changes. These days it’s simply my life as a whole that’s either inspiring or deadening. I feel like I’m past the point in my development where the art of other people openly inspires me. I merely have to reflect my world and my experiences (inner and outer) and the music takes care of itself.

In your mind what is the purpose of art? Do you consider Brown Jenkins and your other creative outputs as serving this purpose and if so how?

I don’t know if I can speak about the purpose of art in the abstract or, even if I could, if I should. I think each artist or musician has their own ideas about this…they should probably say “this is what my art means to me”, not “this is what art means for everyone.” I can’t control what people take away from my music, and at the same time I can’t control or dictate what art should be for these people either, if they’re artists or not. People become artists for many different reasons, I simply do it because it’s pleasurable and it allows me to feel (for a time) emotionally satisfied while I also feel that I’m growing and changing as a person, that I’m learning to speak in new ways. It’s a role in the world, in society, that feels natural for me, it always has. So I don’t have any grand plans or designs for the purpose of art or even for my art alone outside of seeing it transform into something that I feel adequately expresses a sense of time, space, culture, a location in my life, etc. Like anything else voiceless used to communicate it’s a defined language outside of normal discourse and it has its own peculiar rites and satisfactions, but if I’m not able to capture something from my own internal world with it then I can’t use it at all. I think that artists reflect the world (meaning their own world, as the thoughts of everyone do), but whether or not this assumes a critical function is up to the individual. I don’t want to change anything or influence anything or make things worse or better, I’m saying “here I am, this is me”, that’s all. I think that’s enough, and I would be lucky to even feel like I had touched this state successfully. I think Jenkins does that, but doesn’t do it very well at all times, although I feel, like I said above, that I’m getting closer to that: more flexible, variable, expressive, that I’m gaining a greater range while also becoming more comfortable with the medium. But art is a lifelong pursuit; it’s simply another facet of one’s being, another voice, and another face you present to the world. Ideally it should never be exhausted unless one is crippled by circumstance and a lack of experience. I currently don’t have any other creative outputs. I stopped writing essays or reviews a few years ago. Playing music seems to work right now.

Prior to Brown Jenkins you had another musical incarnation with Starshine. How do you feel it differs musically and ideologically from Brown Jenkins and will it ever be a source of creation for you again? Why did it suffer an early demise?

To be honest, Starshine came into being to help me deal with certain emotions and I think it did that admirably – not through any skill of mine, but simply through timeliness and the lack of other ways of communicating what I was feeling. You know…when you feel powerless, voiceless, helpless, etc. even making sounds on a guitar can open up new worlds to you and offer you new perspectives. I’m not saying the music was “cathartic”, that’s a cliché and I think people use that phrase without really understanding the implications, I’m saying that music, at that time, served a very important purpose and helped me to understand what I was going through – it also showed me a way out. It didn’t exactly “rid” my body of those states or those emotions, it allowed me to view them differently and also put them into another, alternate kind of perspective outside of these changing assumptions, one where I once again saw myself as an artist and could view my life indirectly without feeling, always, that I was directly experiencing everything and could never escape or go outside that raw immediacy – a world where I could never be healed by thought or internal events, by summoning what abilities I had to counter misfortune. So, having explored all of that and expressed (I believe) a large amount of it with the skill I had at the time – not much, it seems – I simply let go of it. By embodying it I could leave it. I don’t want to go back to that world. I know it’s still hanging onto me, I can feel it, but at least I’m not obsessing over it and trying to enter it again, time after time. I hope that makes sense…I’m trying not to get too personal or embarrass myself here. Ha! So basically, yes, it served a purpose and once that was done with I felt okay to leave it. It was time to move on. As far as ideology goes, I suppose it differs from Jenkins in that Jenkins is not so utterly personal and subjective that it doesn’t communicate anything at all to the listener – well I didn’t feel it did, really. I’m probably wrong. I think Starshine was a black hole, it was meant to be and it didn’t ask for anything from the person hearing it. I like that Jenkins means things to people and that it offers something to them – entertainment if nothing else. I’m not above thinking that’s a worthy goal, within my own terribly limiting standards of course. *grin* That’s also me trying to embrace or encounter the world again, deal with things outside of my own head, projecting outward. In terms of musicality or musical construction, I think that Jenkins logically shows me making headway on the guitar and becoming better at saying what I want to say, while also writing music that is (hopefully) interesting and moving to other people, not just a sort of solipsistic puzzle inside myself, mirrors reflecting mirrors. One can only navel gaze for so long, and I don’t know if other people should be privy to the working of that, especially when one is an artist and is implicitly claiming to be producing “finished works.” So in that sense, also, Starshine was a kind of workshop or sketch book for what later became Jenkins, the same way Jenkins is a working-through of problems that will allow me more range in my next band. I think that Starshine was a sort of impetus, a beginning, and it of course came out of desperation and despair…if it moves me through the years to a point where I feel strong and capable again with my music, then it was, in the end, a good thing. People have written to me and said that they really enjoyed Starshine, that it entertained them…I think they must be a little bit crazy.

HP Lovecraft seems to be a source of inspiration for you within the framework of Brown Jenkins. What is so inspiring about his writing? He seems to not only touch you but many extreme metallers? Incidentally what are your thoughts on literature based lyrics as opposed to philosophical or horror based ones?

I can’t point to exactly why I consider Lovecraft’s writing to be so inspiring…honestly, I don’t know if he even is. I don’t sit down and read a story and then leap up and run to my studio to record things. He doesn’t make me hear melodies or envision giant creeping things that I have to represent with guitar riffs. I think it’s more of a sense of…shared affinities, shared artistic goals or sensibilities. I started reading his work when I was very young and he was, for a time, my favorite writer in the world. I was obsessed with his fiction, I had a map of New England up on the wall by my bed where I used to plot the locations of his stories. Looking back on it, it was probably some minor form of adolescent escapism or whatever phrase one wants to use – that doesn’t make it any less profound, important, or critical. I grew up in a very small town in south Texas and he might have been the first writer I felt sympathy for - not just because of his fiction, which often said so many misanthropic and negative things (in his ironic, gothic manner) that I felt and identified with anyway (without knowing how to express or communicate, or even if I should) – but because of his life. The way he sacrificed everything in his life for his art, and would only live for that…I’ve always admired that. At the same time, having read a few of his biographies and volumes of his letters, I also know it probably couldn’t have been any other way for him. For introverts…it’s often what happens inside themselves that is the most important, the most momentous and fulfilling. So he had a tremendous amount of isolation and loneliness in his life, only relieved by his letter writing and short visits with his friends, and he refused to exchange this for an “average” life filled with workday existence mediocrity. I mean…he tried, he attempted to do the “normal” thing and get married and work, in New York for example, to live like everyone else. That was disastrous. For better or worse, he had to be true to his nature. That eventually meant living on 19 cents worth of beans a day, like the Rudimentary Peni song says, gorging himself on ice cream when a story paid. When I was younger that kind of dedication, that isolation and pain and purity of work, of staying true to what knew was one’s calling was became simply…enthralling, very inspiring. I couldn’t imagine a life that was nobler or more exciting than one of total commitment to one’s art. I know many, many artists have had to do exactly the same thing in their lives. Some of them lived to see their work embraced, accepted, cheered, or in some way become “successful”, most of them probably didn’t. That’s not the point, however…the point is that people who feel that way have to live the life they end up needing, not just “wanting.” They can’t have it any other way. So…one can see it as a curse, really. It depends on one’s perspective. I wonder if he could go back and live his life again if he would change anything. It’s not like he didn’t know what he was doing or what he needed…and he knew it very early on. He says in “The Outsider”: “I almost welcome the bitterness of alienage.” Life is bittersweet; one has to stay true to oneself, even if it means you’re a perpetual outcast, an outsider, a stranger in one’s own time. To do otherwise is to falsify all the dearest and most basic instincts one has, and the life one has after that might be more comfortable or pleasurable (not really, all pleasures fade) or “safer”, but is it worth living? These are all clichés, of course, but I wonder if people think deeply about them.

I think a lot of metal musicians write about Lovecraft or his stories simply as a substitute for Poe or other horror writers (there are so few to truly esteem), or because they’ve been shallowly inspired by his creations or the horror of the situations, thoughts, or feelings that overwhelm his characters. Have they penetrated beneath that to the real “horror” of his writings, what he meant? I don’t know. We all recognize that “horror” is a natural (traditional) subject for metal, it goes hand in hand with metal’s image and violence, its assignment to the “dark” side of life, although these days all of those ideas have been so utterly reified and commodified that they’re worthless, they’re simply token truisms, bought and sold, window dressing, decoration, t-shirt art, tattoo fodder. Meaningless. Commercial, corporate culture purchasable rebellion, it’s like pushing buttons and pulling levers. Rebellion is useless unless it threatens destruction and desecration, and what is there, really, to destroy anymore? Nothing exists. There are no values, no thoughts, no beliefs, and no objective freedoms; there is nothing to fight for. What use is rebellion in a world that would probably welcome complete annihilation? So what, in this kind of environment, can be a worthy subject for lyrical examination? I have no idea. I assume that most people just whine. They complain about their stale, boring lives or about that old whipping boy Christianity in their lyrics the same way they would complain about their dinner being cold. “This doesn’t suit my palate, send me something else.” Honestly, I try not to read metal lyrics because if I solely listen to the music I can pretend to myself it’s made by somewhat intelligent people. Besides, most lyric writing is simply posturing. People explain in great detail a number of things they’re afraid to do, lives they’re afraid to live, or thoughts they’re too cowardly to live by. If it’s not that it’s often occult or alternative “philosophies” that are as illusory and fraud-ridden as the Christianity they pretend to supplant. What substitutes are metal people offering? Look at their lives. Instead of Christianity and an existence of corporate subservience they oppose tacky living rooms, cheap porn, pot smoke, dogs barking, big screen TVs, and a succession of unsatisfying sexual acts with mediocre partners. One should be honest and look at their world without flinching. What is the “realm of sin”, for example, that Morbid Angel proposes and lavishes so much praise on in their lyrics? If it isn’t considered in the negative (and thus unformed, abstract) as an alternative to Christian prudery and self-enforced ignorance, it has no shape whatsoever. Much like the Christian Heaven, it can only exist in the abstract, as an illusion without definite details, because once it’s fully described it descends to Earth and starts to disappoint, as everything real does. Pain is real, pleasure is ephemeral and fitful unless it’s offered as an alleviation of suffering, which is a promise only the insane make. Metal lyrics fail because there is nothing left to rebel against, nothing left to destroy, nothing left to picture or describe or try to communicate, especially from the world of people who are, one has to admit, not exactly deserving of the title of visionaries. If it helps to free one from Christianity, then that’s good, I suppose, but it’s not offering anything satisfying to replace it other than stale platitudes, boring points of view, and uncommunicative allusions to mystic states that can be purchased on a street corner for a few dollars. One doesn’t have to scratch a metalhead too deeply to uncover a white trash pariah, which always means the same thing: dreams of power, potency, importance, impact, fantasies of desecration and rape (physically, culturally, religiously) among the helpless and downtrodden, among the restlessly unsatisfied and frustrated – no matter how skillfully they’re cloaked in formulae, abstractions, metaphors, or self-important mythology. So…I of course welcome any kinds of lyrics or “ideological” (another word that metalheads toss around without understanding) stances that aren’t typical, that strive to be truly personal and thus (hopefully) original, but I’m probably never going to read them. Besides, if you accept that Black Sabbath set the standard both for the basis of metal composition and lyric writing, what we’re looking at now in 2008 is, counting kindly, the 40^th generation copy of what they first put down. I can’t imagine a 40^th generation copy being anything other than gibberish or…a blank piece of paper.

You bring up an interesting point about the supposed intelligence and rebellious nature of metal musicians which in all actuality is really a description of their lack of true individualism and power. Do you not find any true rebels out there in the underground? Have you found it true that meeting or engaging in discourse with your once revered idols has met with disappointment both in regards to their intelligence and artistic integrity?

“True rebels?” No. Never. I’ve found a lot of people who pretend, basically. As far as meeting people that I looked up to when I was younger, well…it has almost always turned out to be negative. I made a promise to myself a little while back to never seek out other musicians in real life. One gets tired of the disappointment. I email with a number of people, but…I’m not much of an extrovert. And…yes, most of the problems have been with their intelligence. Artistic integrity is so rare that it’s usually not worth looking for.

In this day and age of the internet and readily accessible flow of metal and philosophical related information, do you think that an underground, at least a worthy and viable underground, still exists? If so, how do you define it? What does it consist of and what makes is separate from the mindless drivel that assaults our senses on a regular basis?

Yes, I think the underground still exists, but it’s a state of mind and a set of beliefs, it’s not a gathering of like-minded souls in any one location or anything like that. It’s no longer a community of people who are trying to make noncommercial music that is important only within their limited and deliberately enclosed “scene” or group of artists. So, what typifies, cements together, or defines the underground today is solely that same noncommercial (meaning personal, amateur, willing to experiment, willing to defy the accepted conventions) attitude, there is nothing else of the underground left. When you get right down to it, it’s simply an approach that says “I’m not the greatest musician, I’m not a professional, but I can still make music, release it, and it can still be important for me and for other people.” That’s all there is to it. I consider anyone who makes music for the love of it and to communicate with other people, and who doesn’t do it just to make money or to make a living or whatever…to be a part of the underground. I don’t care what genre of music they’re interested in or what style they play, if they have that attitude and they don’t write music solely in order to sell CDs so they can spend all of their time shopping and sunning themselves by the pool, they know the truth of the matter. One would hope they know what is really important…but if they don’t, someone else will be along later who does. The ancient underground of letter writing, tape-trading demos, snail mail and little fanzines, etc. only exists among connoisseurs who keep it alive; it seems, for the sake of nostalgia. Still, I suppose one shouldn’t sneer at the emotional power of looking at the past. The internet killed the underground, of course, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. People complain a lot about how the internet destroyed the viability of “real” bands or “real music”, and how its position as a proponent of instant-satisfaction culture seems to enforce a level of mediocrity that perhaps should have been hidden or left to obscurity (it always existed, there were always bad bands), but I wish they would worry less about how the internet is supposedly destroying the ability of people to write good music and more about how relatively irrelevant or even impertinent “good music” even seems to most people. That’s a symptom of a dying (or dead) culture, not a problem of technology. It’s not that the bland, cliché-ridden, or vacuous is deeply satisfying to shallow people, the problem is that their ability to be affected profoundly was never a possibility in any case, and there is nothing to be stirred. Power chords and artificial harmonics can only do so much, you know, the ears (and hearts) of the dead are terribly insensitive. *grin*

Do you think in general that bands and metal mags play it too safe? They seem to shy away from controversy and extreme ideals despite their “extreme” stance. I mean it is acceptable to hate Jesus and life but to hate something like Judaism is not acceptable. It feels for the most part like bands ideologically fall in line and play it safe like good little sheep. Do you agree?

I’m guessing that this question is sort of related to the fact that you were talking about interviewing Arghoslent a little while ago? I do agree with you. Still, one has to be true to one’s own thoughts and points of view. If you don’t hate Jews, it’s useless to write about it, I suppose, and if you truly do hate Christians (a logical inconsistency, it’s better to say you hate Christianity) I don’t know that your lyrics or writing are going to be doing anything other than preaching to the choir. I suppose a rehearsal of beliefs has its place, it has always appeared in cultural productions. Still, if you do have a particular aversion for Jews or black people or whatever minority or majority you choose and that belief comes from your own life, your own experiences, I don’t see the point of censoring yourself to try to fit in with any kind of politically correct standard. I think people should write what they want to write, sing what they want to sing, say what they want to say. Who cares, really? That’s an essential part of being free, of being alive, of being a human. You have the right and honor (some would say curse) of being absolutely free, you live your own life, you have the ability to sum up your experiences and what you have learned about life in order to try to make sense of things in your own way, why should you censor yourself? I don’t understand that. To do so is to be dishonest. Do people really want a world where everyone thinks in exactly the same way and has exactly the same thoughts, no matter if those thoughts applied to their own life or experience? That’s frightening to me. I consider it to be somewhat insane to hate whole groups of people and not individuals, as a group means, by its very definition, that not everyone will be the same within it, but I understand the feeling that goes behind this and the form that it often takes. There are “accepted” methods of communicating anger, even when they are unacceptable culturally or socially – it doesn’t make them any more real or coherent, it just means a concept exists for them already. Even so, I consider hatred to be an individual emotion or passion, “meant”, if such things can be meant, to be experienced by one person for another. I think hatred is weakened when it’s applied to abstractions or groups or things that plainly don’t exist in reality. The result seems to be depression, manic frustration, or some bizarre form of pompous defensiveness that seeks outrage everywhere. Why not save the hatred for people that deserve it, people in one’s own life? Hate them with an unspotted conscience and then do something about it.

As for why certain things are considered safe to hate and others aren’t, that’s just the political and social climate of the time. It wasn’t that long ago that anti-Semitism was acceptable and commonplace. I believe that’s equally stupid, as most culturally-mediated beliefs seem to be that teach people things that have nothing to do with what they’re experiencing in their own life. But…people are always free to reject any of this. If people want to be racist, fine. If they want to be multicultural or religious, fine. Just…please don’t be boring or mediocre, and don’t think that if you believe something that goes against the majority that it somehow makes you a “freethinker.” Don’t live a lukewarm life. You’ll know you’ve achieved free thought when you’re in horrible pain every day.

But I also believe that often people are too…open in expressing their beliefs when it doesn’t serve their best interests, or even when it’s just impertinent or unimportant to do so. In saying this I’m not referring to the seemingly universal apathy among others concerning one’s own beliefs and the reasons for them, but rather the responsibility one must take for one’s actions, and…spoken words are most definitely actions. For example, my own beliefs, which would one could facetiously label some sort of satanic nihilism if one were in the mood for mental shortcuts and misunderstandings, are not meant for people who haven’t lived the life I’ve had. I’ve personally seen the destructive effect my beliefs have had on other people…not destruction in the way of liberation in a positive sense, but purely devastation in the name of soul-deadening, evil (what else can one call it?), ill-fitting, irresponsible attempts at lateral domination on my part, trying to teach people things that didn’t suit them – not because they were weaker than me or not ready for “my truths” (a terrible illusion), but because my thoughts didn’t fit them or their lives in any way. My beliefs weren’t meant to be theirs. That doesn’t make me better or stronger or anything like that, it makes me different because I’ve lived a different life…as everyone has, no matter how much they try to forget it. Truly, if silence is often the best reproach, it is even more often a sane policy for psychological self-preservation…not in the face of adversity but for the sake of civilization. Again, one has to ask oneself, “Do I really want a world where everyone thinks like me?” These days I like to sit back, watch, and wait…I suppose that’s a luxury one has when one is older.

The starting point for me and you was your well written and thought provoking, Erebus zine. Many rumors have circulated about it seeing the light of day in print format. Will this ever happen? Incidentally why did you quit writing it? And what do you think of your ex-partners new zine Convivial Hermit?

Well, first of all thanks for the compliment. I’m always glad to know that people read Erebus or got something out of it. It was a labor of love for most if its existence, it seemed to serve a vital purpose for me at the time. I wrote when I didn’t know what else to do. I felt like it was saying things that other zines weren’t saying or was interested in things that others weren’t, so it was enjoyable and made me feel like it did have a special place, although that of course could have been an illusion. I tend to get so lost in my head that I often don’t know or can’t understand what other people perceive. I suppose it was enough to try to be original and to work at it hard, to put a lot of time into it. I really enjoy seeing that in other publications, in watching…people put a lot of effort and heart into what they’re doing and really care about their own writing. That right there, and persistence, sets them apart immediately from everyone else, doesn’t it? I mean…the baseline standard of most fanzine writing seems to be either of a cheerleader type of inane complimenting or some kind of bitter, self-chewing, self-referential ironic posturing. The line goes “critics are just failed artists”, but these days it seems to be closer to the truth to say “critics are failed human beings.” I don’t think a truckload of resentment-filled psychological undertow and an eon of hammering at the gates of standards they can never understand will save these people from self-loathing in the end. One has to step back at some point and gaze in wonder on their vanity. I admire writers who scorn the title of “critic” or “journalist” and write what they want to write, simply out of love and for the pleasure of writing, for its own sake. I almost never admire the writing itself, what I find enjoyment in is the feeling behind the words and the beliefs or enthusiasm that find expression obliquely through their wish to share things they are spellbound by with anyone at all, anyone (these days) on the internet, for example. I respect that kindness and generosity.

I don’t think I ever considered myself a “critic” (I would feel dishonest and low with that kind of arrogance), so I usually attempted to write about things I cared about or was interested in, obsessions of mine, etc. I wrote for pleasure, for the emotional release it brought. If I loved a work someone put out I tried to share that enthusiasm with other people, it was enjoyable for me to even attempt to do so. That’s all it really came down to…the feeling that I was communicating something, that other people were reading it and understood and could also find enjoyment in it. If I was writing articles or essays I wrote about issues or problems that I always wrestled with anyway…if I attacked something it was not exactly out of malice, but out of a feeling of…imbalance, a feeling that things weren’t as they should have been to continue the harmony of appearances. So if I criticized a band, for example, it was often for not living up to (musically) what they said they were. That concerned me…not the supposed excellence or paucity of what the music was offering people, but rather the fact that the music wasn’t measuring up to what the musicians thought it was. Again, it was never personal; it was out of an almost fastidious desire to make all the equations balance. I said many, many times that my opinions were simply my own and that I wrote for pleasure, that people shouldn’t take my “judgments” (if it ever came to that) for objective fact, or for critical opinions pretending to be objective, but many people didn’t seem to appreciate that. I never understood how something as obviously subjective as art could ever be criticized without saying, implicitly, that I believed there were objective standards of art behind the scenes that, being permanent and real, or at least realized, could then be taught and assumed by others. That isn’t logical at all. So, if there weren’t objective standards there were only personal, subjective opinions, no matter how much “objective” language one used in order to fake the semblance of permanence (and thus of power, of importance). Knowing this, how could anyone really be upset about what I was saying, or not saying? I chose to not say things about certain bands as often as I did to promote this or that, simply out of discretion and a sense of place – not because I was “merely” a writer, but because what I would say didn’t have any importance, aesthetically or otherwise, in any way whatsoever. I hope all of this makes sense. *grin*

As for why I stopped writing…I no longer felt that it was helping me in any way, or that I needed to do it. All of a sudden the urge just disappeared. I still don’t really know why, I only know that it no longer satisfied me…and right about that time I started working on music again. I felt that writing couldn’t express the things I wanted to say anymore. It was too literal; it offered too many chances for miscommunication, for misunderstanding. I also knew that I was writing for the wrong audience. The things I wanted to talk about were not what people reading metal magazines wanted to read. It took me a long time to realize that and not feel bad about it, or to be disappointed in the “metal scene” (an illusion in itself) or in people who liked the same music I did. I think that…the attempt to communicate with people who aren’t the right sort of people to talk to (at that particular time and place) is just doomed to failure, so to choose one’s audience wisely is a skill an artist - writer, musician, whatever – must have in order to not feel utterly unappreciated or like one is screaming down a well. One must take care of one’s own psychological well-being. There are so many inherent dangers of being an artist or any kind of communicator, and if one is broadcasting a message that isn’t the most feeble and lukewarm of platitudes, one shouldn’t be surprised at hostile receptions. If rabid antagonism doesn’t cheer you up and you consider your message to be untimely, you should direct your communication to those who are also outsiders. Luckily my magazine attracted quite a few of those…some of them are still my friends, thankfully.

I would love to present Erebus in printed form…all that it requires is work, I suppose. Maybe I can work on that when I finish the next Jenkins release. It would be really interesting to go back and read all of that Byronic striving and tragic, young-20s questioning. Ha! I tried to read through some of it recently while I was struggling to prepare a few PDF files so people could read the old texts and it was often embarrassing. But…I suppose one shouldn’t be ashamed of earnestness, it seems to be so rare these days. It should be decanted and sold like wine. “Bold, creative, thinks he’s right earnestness from 1999, $50 a bottle.” Ha!

As for Yury Arkadin, we’ve been friends for 10 years now, I believe. I love him like a brother and I truly appreciate and value his friendship. The fact that he wrote to me all those years ago (after he heard a tape from an early band of mine) and that we started writing together is incredibly fortuitous, when you think about it…but we complimented each other very nicely and there wasn’t anyone else I would have wanted to be part of Erebus. He is an excellent writer and I always enjoy reading his work, not just because he is so eloquent and truly communicative, but because he is one of the few people who can make me laugh without self-consciousness. I am very glad that he started his own magazine and that he is working independently now. He has written for a number of different people and I know he always resented any kind of control over his work or interference, which of course is natural…he is original and mature and needs to be on his own. I think his Convivial Hermit is fantastic and a real credit to old (true) underground sensibilities, and I’m waiting eagerly to read the next issue. He is an absolute pillar of the underground and I believe that anyone who knows anything at all recognizes this.

I read that you like to write and create music that makes you feel “good.” Is that truly the emotion that your music summons for you? I know that is not what it summons within me. What dark forces help you give birth to new sonic visions that you call Brown Jenkins and how do you shape and sculpt this into its final result?

Oh yes, I absolutely love music…I always have. If music isn’t pleasurable to me I don’t see the point of listening to it or writing it. It’s not the joy of catharsis or some kind of relief or anything like that (most of the time), it’s the delight of creation for its own sake, of building, of making something new. It’s fascinating to me to see how ideas inside of my head can be embodied in a musical language that then communicates without words to other people. I suppose it’s a fascination with forms, with abstractions, with thoughts that unfold over time and are then joined together or interrelate. My music is just a picture of myself…I don’t know what else to write about. So it often makes me feel good, or at least…calm, like I’m inside something familiar. If there are dark forces that drive this they are all personal “demons”, different parts of my past or of my personality. I suppose I could talk about all of that at length but I don’t feel that’s a fit subject for this kind of conversation…it’s all in the music, anyway. I would wager that the personal details are relatively trivial; it’s their impact on me and the way that I then push them out of me again altered for better or worse that becomes interesting for anyone who likes the music. But…I’m just one musician among thousands; we all deal with these kinds of things. If there is one lone desire or drive that seems to motivate the artists I know it’s the very profound urge to make the outer world mirror the inner one…a sort of harmonizing or balancing act. For me that drive is very important in order to make me feel at home or comfortable in my own world, in the world I have to live in every day. I suppose it’s like weaving a web…creating a dwelling for yourself. As for how I shape or alter what I think of…almost all of that happens in my head, and it often transpires on a level that I can’t reach consciously, especially with a guitar in my hands. Sometimes I can, however…if melodies that I like come to me I know how to twist them around and illustrate them or place them in a song in order for them have some kind of impact, but that’s part of songwriting, again, it’s something one can learn. I practice the guitar and bass every day, so…I’m constantly playing with ideas and moving things around and experimenting – just for fun, really. I record all of the riffs I come up with, or the ideas for song sections, bridges, or whatever, and over time these are fit into songs. I often go back and add things to them or switch them around, alter them in some way. As to how that happens, why they fit together…sometimes it’s conscious and sometimes it’s not. To be honest, I don’t know where a lot of it comes from. If something sounds “good” to me, meaning that it communicates something or it’s pleasurable or has ideas within it that I like or find to be powerful, and then I use it. I try to utilize only the best material. So much of this is simply instinctive…I don’t know whether I was born with that instinct or whether it comes from so many years of listening to music – it might be a little of both. I don’t know what makes some people musicians and other people listeners. It could possibly just be chance.

Will “reason” eventually crush religion or will humanity just continue to live within an eternal cycle of framing and reframing the same dogmas? I sometimes get the impression that humanity in general relishes servitude to a paradigm or a system and therefore continues to create ways to enslave itself. Do you agree or disagree and what is your logic behind your answer?

I think that the world will eventually see an end to religion…you can say that it has already happened, actually, and that the “religions” people follow today are utterly pale, weak abstractions compared to what that part of life once meant. I don’t know when people will recognize this, however. I can’t speak for the rest of mankind, but I’ve never understood the willingness or need to follow lists of rules or the desire to have my life guided by the ideas of other people. I don’t feel much hatred for religion (aside from the idiotic attempts on the part of the religious to either interfere in my own life or to control large segments of society they don’t have any business trying to master) because I don’t have any religious instincts at all. I don’t need it in my life and I don’t really understand the people who do. I don’t directly attack religious people because it’s a waste of time; it’s like trying to wrestle with shadows. I think that the best way to counter religion is to live a long, healthy, happy life as an atheist, to worry about oneself and not about other people. I don’t mean being irresponsible, I mean…being a strong, free, important member of one’s society without religion. If one isn’t a total idiot this isn’t too difficult to do. The people in life who need religion either find solace in it or find that it allows them to live without despair (in some moments, in others it just increases it)…I’ve never understood that hopelessness when faced with the “realities of life” either. Life is often cold…especially here, America is just the space between other people’s narcissism. Most people need some kind of guiding influence in their life (one wishes it was just their own reason), often the community of a church helps with this…so that they don’t feel so alone or lost. I appreciate that, but I don’t understand how believing in some imaginary father figure can help with any of those feelings. I think it’s the community itself and help of other people that humans really crave. We’re social creatures, social animals, we need other people in order to feel sane, or even alive. Is life so hard, so confusing, so bewildering and painful that one has to invent an entire pantheon of controlling influences and myths in order to make it seem less so? The intellectual, irrational dishonesty of that act (the fact that it’s internal doesn’t make it any less of an act of the will) is something that’s nauseating to me. I’ve never been able to comprehend why some people are so afraid of life, or afraid of being independent. I can’t imagine a universe where we weren’t completely free – free to believe anything, free to think anything we wanted to. If a “God” did actually exist I would spend the rest of my life trying to destroy him in order to free myself. A universe where existence itself was based on invisible, eternal hierarchies is something only a fascist would dream of – someone who would rather subject all of humanity to emotional bondage and personal slavery rather than face a universe where “order” didn’t predominate. That’s a truly craven, miserable way of seeing being or reality. I don’t think that humans are naturally subservient; I have a great deal of respect for the human mind, for human possibilities, for our shared spirit. I believe that people are either taught to be servile (they don’t see the options, which is just a matter of education) or that they often don’t reach a point of emotional and intellectual maturity where they feel able to face their own lives without beliefs that force them back into irrationality. People flee from reason when it doesn’t offer them what they want, or what they think they want. The fact that they often yearn to remake the entire world in the image of that irrationality is an unfortunate side effect, but thankfully anyone with a brain can fight both the illusions of other people and the pernicious results of irresponsible education.

So basically if I understand what you are saying correctly, you are saying a sense of community and fellowship is what drives most participants that adhere to religious tenants. Don’t you think that there is another source of motivation there because if that were just the case people would just all be members of clubs and fraternal organizations. Also that religion is dead because of the way people follow it today is a pale shadow of what it used to be? Do you think this view applies to the Islamic world? There seems to be quite a fervor both in doctrine and a need to export it in regards to religion there.

No, I’m not saying that a “sense of community” is what drives most of these people towards religion – or, rather, that it’s solely that, but I think that’s what a lot of these people need in order to later leave religion behind. They don’t need to turn from a religious life back into isolation and tell themselves that an alienated, atheistic life is somehow “better” because they don’t believe in certain illusions…one can only wish that there were more avenues for social interaction.

I find it hard to believe that people actually have faith in anything anymore. I don’t know that it’s needed. Like I said above, however, I completely lack the religious “instinct”. As for what is happening in the Middle East right now, I can’t really say. I’ve never been there and I don’t have enough information to make any kind of judgment. If there truly is an increase in religion (in whatever way) then it’s probably either a reaction to economic troubles or the effect of political parties coming into stark conflict with Western culture. I mean…these things increase in strength or grow because people who have a vested interest in spreading them see an opportunity based on whatever else is happening in the region.

What are your Future Plans for Brown Jenkins and for yourself in general? I understand you are recording a new EP. What will this consist of? Anything waiting in the wings besides Brown Jenkins and an outlet for your creativity?

Well, yes, I’m finishing a new recording for Jenkins right now, the “Welcome the Bitterness” EP (I referenced where that phrase comes from above), and then I have one more full album to complete for Moribund which will be called “Death Obsession” – which was the title of an article I wrote for Erebus, actually, a long time ago. After that Jenkins will be over for me (I feel it’s time) and I will begin a new band, with different plans, opportunities and goals. I’m also constantly working on other ideas or other forms of music, so hopefully some of that will see the light some day. I don’t feel comfortable talking about any of that right now, but if it does come out I suppose people will hear about it.

You said that your new band will have different goals and plans and I am sure a somewhat different “shape.” Have these ideas started to coalesce yet and how do you see it differing in regards to Brown Jenkins?

I think Jenkins is centered on a few key ideas, a few methods of playing and recording the guitar, and I want all of that to change in the future. I want to challenge myself to either open up completely new ways of approaching metal guitar (a style I will probably always play, I love it) or go back and reassemble the traditional ways so that I gain a more expressive range of songwriting techniques. So…I think my next band will be even more traditional and “rock-based” in certain aspects and then more experimental in others. As long as it sounds good to me and means something, I don’t care. I always want to write stronger songs. Jenkins is often a little “hazy” in its ideas…I want to do away with that and have the music become much more forceful and direct. We’ll see…

If we don’t get to talk again before you publish this, I want to thank you for this interview and for the opportunity to speak in your magazine. I really appreciate it. Anyone who is interested in hearing Jenkins or learning more about it can visit my profile at myspace.com/brownjenkins13, or go to the Moribund website, which I’m in the process of updating right now. I keep a blog page reserved on that myspace profile to list the interviews I’ve done, a lot of them are available online. Hails!

Umesh