ZONLY ZOOLS

 January

Originally published by Zonlen Zoolen Haus, February 2024

The month was January and the year was 2009. BART cop Johannes Mehserle shot and killed Oscar Grant at Fruitvale Station, cuing riots and protests that presaged the tinderbox summer of 2020 by more than a decade. The genesis block of the Bitcoin blockchain was laid. Crypto bros didn’t exist yet. Only total fucking nerds even knew about the stuff. Sully Sullenberger landed a plane on the Hudson River and would be portrayed in a major motion picture by fellow American treasure Tom Hanks for doing so. Hamas accepted an Israeli ceasefire and something referred to by the analysts who knew about it as “the three week war” came to a close while the IDF pulled out of Gaza. Barack Obama was inaugurated as America’s first black president. His eyes became drones. The year had only just begun. 

Most millennials on the cusp of adulthood maintained an inherited complacency as well as the optimism of their boomer parents. They wandered wide eyed through the internet’s coming of age, exposed to too much of everything all the time, unaware they would be forced to either process these things or learn to ignore. They navigated social media the best ways they could figure out, tripping over their own narcissism and nudes, unsure of who the main character really was. They escaped into a neon party we now call the “indie sleaze” era clad in American Apparel underwear and v-neck tees, oblivious that the end had begun some years before and was drawing down upon them. The motion would crescendo to a whistling speed and would not slow. These people, my generation, would come to realize this in their own time. This is to say, at very different times. At the time of this writing, many still have not, while the end continues its drawing near. 

In January of 2009 I had just returned to California from studying in Israel, where more than a few of my small town ideas had been sanded away by months spent outside of a country I had never left. I was approaching the end of college which had been funded by loans I doubted I’d pay off in my lifetime, without a single idea of what to do next, unaware of what my strengths were, and with a degree I knew would take me nowhere I wanted to be. An everyday brand of confusion priced between the drug store brand and as advertised name brand trademarked itself when I wasn’t looking and took hold. It was during this time that I met Anthony Crupi.

What happened was: a college friend connected with Anthony on the still buzzing with activity Bridge Nine Records message board and he caught a ride with us from Santa Clarita to some hardcore show at Chain Reaction in Anaheim, or from the suburbs to the other suburbs. We drove sixty miles one way exclusively on California Interstate 5. My sole memory from that night remains connecting with Anthony over Zao’s 1999 album and childhood favorite Liberate Te Ex Inferis. It was the most meaningful connection I could have imagined at the time, sharing a love for a piece of music. 

Having come of age musically in the storied fallout of midwestern punk rock, I arrived to the world of Southern California hardcore in my late teens naive, without the canonical backlog of Revelation Record favorites or 7 year old t-shirts worn thin into flags waving bonafides. The Ramones were the greatest band in the world to me while Black Flag was a sidebar in the documentaries and Henry Rollins the universally revered archivist who transcended genre infighting as the sagely talking head. Try as I might have, I couldn’t find punk rock in the northern suburbs of Los Angeles, where I lived without a car. But when the Lord closes a door, the unimaginative insist he opens a window, and that window took the form of hardcore shows happening down the street from my barrio apartment in the back room of the neighborhood American Legion, where booze fumes drifted in from the bar up front and lights flickered while bands played the floor, just as God intended. And while I have on good authority that this sort of thing no longer happens in the Newhall American Legion Hall, the Ramones remain the greatest band in the world. 

Two thousand nine was a wild time for California hardcore. Beatdown was taking a breather and weirdos filled the gap. Trash Talk was at the height of their productivity. Ceremony had just released Still Nothing Moves You. Lewd Acts would drop Black Eyed Blues later that year. The Locust had not yet given way to Justin Pearson’s ceaseless stream of single album iterations. The Che Cafe, Chain Reaction, and 924 Gilman calendar’s were all inked up top to bottom. FYF was running at a full clip, still held in the giant dirt pit in Chinatown charitably called the Los Angeles Historic State park. Sound & Fury was a mere three years old. Shoebox carmaker Scion had taken to throwing free metal and hardcore shows at actual venues in an effort to woo the wayward young. Hired blondes in black tank tops would hand out free black socks to whomever waited in line. No one questioned their methodology. Fewer purchased Scions. 

All of this hummed together, melding into some ungainly gallery of frustration personified, of that bleached white heartache set aside for the young, of blistering moments dispensing a catharsis tailored to each individual. All you had to do was reach out a little and give your attention, maybe five bucks at the door. Attention paid in dividends then as it does now. Once it revealed itself to you, the gallery was too loud, too fast to ignore. It shone bright white into the dimly lit sidewalk of your heart. And if you were someone who was capable of walking into the gallery and promptly out untransfixed, the socks still lasted a good two years of heavy wear.

In a perhaps effective and certainly unconscious effort to be invisible, I wore the same grey pocket tee to every show, feeling like an intruder in crowds of people my age who all seemed to have known each other forever. I’d never talk to anyone. I’d cross my arms in the back. But I couldn’t stay away. Here was a violence like I’d never seen. Here was a Paleolithic energy. The whole mess— and it was a true mess— blistered magnetic. Besides, these people weren’t unfriendly, I figured. They all seemed congenial in the way most people do— sweet and hurt and trying their best. They just had enough friends, which was a very normal thing. All of them except Anthony, who was the first friend I made through hardcore. 

The years, in their hushed persistence, passed around us. I tripped and fell into the film industry and disappeared from the real world, spending a decade almost entirely on set as a lighting technician, outlining stories in my downtime on the clock, piecing together self produced music videos and scripts with what time and energy remained after 12 hour days five, often six days a week. Throughout this time, The Confusion™ had not subsided.

Anthony played music under a dozen different bands and names. He wrote poetry and published zines. I still reread one called When We Get To Heaven every couple years. Inescapably romantic, he moved from city to city, state to state, settling down then skipping town again before too long, always on the move, always generating work. He was on his own journey. I was on mine. 

We would have a cup of coffee or dinner whenever we found ourselves in the same place, chatting about women, music, and whatever it was we were working on at the time. There were always multiple projects half done in the stack. There was always some waning heartache. We’d compare notes. We’d encourage one another. I didn’t then but I recognize now how much I needed it. Talk to talk, we learned to better juggle projects and life’s comings and goings. We learned to prioritize. And in our growing older, we found it easier to be more realistic. 

Through all of this, neither of us stopped generating work. The prevailing ethos behind my output at the time was twofold. 1. If I don’t do this right now, I’ll never do it and if I never do it, I’ll never get to where I want to be. 2. If I don’t do something, I will lose my fucking mind. Anthony seemed to share this headspace, or his version of it anyway. He would tear through dynamic chapters of prolonged output, either alone or collaborating with others, then retreat to solitude, whereas I was slowly but constantly chipping away at personal work, saddled by a career I had let myself become swallowed by. Why not? I thought. Everything I learn there I can plug into my directing work. This wasn’t necessarily untrue, it just turned out not to be true in the ways I’d imagined it would. It was a militant chapter. I slept only when I had to. Meals were utilitarian. I spent everything— time, money, health, sanity— in service of either my trade or my own work. Both were growing fast. I was more structured because I had to be. Anthony was chaotic because he could be. I found a good deal of comfort in this at the time, as I do now. 

When I asked Anthony if he would be willing to appear in my short film Laundry, his answer was a swift “Of course.” He fell in with a few others I had conscripted to play a wandering clique of post apocalypse badlanders. We had ourselves a fevered time, I fevered by lack of sleep and the exhilaration one is gifted when directing a first film, he by the drinking that started shortly after he donned his costume, which was around 9:00 am. He and the others trooped through a 17 hour day of shooting, aiding and abetting my every bloodshot whim. We achieved together. I remain grateful. 

By the time I had a workable cut of the film a few years after the actual shoot, THE THING-19 had interfered with a good many life plans, including but not limited to mine and Anthony’s. The Confusion™ had ballooned to well beyond what was thought to be a rupturable extent. I found myself with neither resources nor personnel to continue post production, so the film sat idle as the world sat idle. I took to writing full time, treating it like a day job five days a week. Anthony holed up in a windowless room somewhere, composing ambient guitar tracks, learning new things about sound and space. 

In time the tension relented, and the world clawed at any normalcy in reach. Normalcy brought work and work brought resources. Resources rejuiced post production workflow. Somehow The Confusion™ had not exploded and killed us all. We were back. 

Work shot up and took me on the road again. Montana, Arizona, West Texas, the Dominican Republic, New Orleans, Chicago, in that order. Bad motels led to better hotels then back to worse motels to better hotels to fine hotels to an alarmingly luxurious hotel in Santo Domingo to a little rental house with bars on all the windows in a half built cinderblock neighborhood on the north shore we called Baghdad on account of its many bombed out qualities then back stateside to a damp hotel with an air vent that never shut off, an airbnb the size of a Hobbit hole in the Lower Garden District, a clean new high rise in the West Loop and finally a little hundred year old brick hotel on the Fox River, respectively. It was prison workouts and writing at the little desk always found in rented rooms, turning the tv on then turning it off, reminded immediately every time how there is absolutely nothing to see there. It was life on the road.

New Orleans saw a company shutdown in January, 2022. Number One on the callsheet came down with THE THING-19. I contracted THE THING-19 from Number One concurrent. Two paid weeks off in mandatory quar made for quiet time and long walks after the body aches flushed out. I wandered Magazine Street tuned in and zoned out, piping in hours of Anthony’s tracks which he’d been releasing with zero fanfare under the name Blood Of Light. When I asked him if I could try laying it under the film, another swift “Of course” came down the line, this time out of Atlanta, which was an enormous relief because by then I knew that I needed that too. 

The following is a conversation regarding how we feel about all of this. 

A Regular Guy With Regular Headphones

7/16/23

Saugus Cafe

Santa Clarita, CALIF.

ET: First things first. 

AC: Yeah, let’s see it. 

ET: Oh you know what? Put the regular headphones on. 

AC: I have regular headphones just like these and I was thinking about it this morning— how I’m just a regular guy with regular headphones. 

ET: Just a regular fuckin’ guy. 

Anthony puts on the regular headphones and watches the trailer for Laundry.

AC: What song is this?

ET: Heaven Is A Place On Earth slowed down. 

AC: Fuck yeah. 

ET: I was trying to put a piece of the score in but then I realized I could use any song I wanted.

AC: Absolutely. Very sick.

ET: Somebody convinced me I needed to make one and I think they were right. So we’ll see what happens.

AC: I like it. I like it a lot. 

ET: Thank you. It looks real enough. 

AC: I thought damn this is real. What a perfect song choice. 

ET: It’s brooding. So let’s talk about the score. As I understood it, when you started releasing Blood of Light online, that was all from one time. I know  you were doing a lot of it during quarantine. 

AC: All of the stuff that came out in 2020 and 2021 I recorded between January and May of 2020 in the pandemic. I stopped working for a while in January and that’s kind of when it started. Then the pandemic happened, so all I could do was be in the practice space. Later when I was in Atlanta, I would record shit and put it out immediately. 

ET: How would you do the cover art? On Microsoft paint or something?  

AC: I have this app on my phone. 

ET: I need that. And I need you to send me the Blood Of Light logo. 

AC: I actually have that. It was the only photo that was saved in my icloud when I lost my phone. 

ET: I need that. I haven’t made the sleeves yet, for the LPs. But I’m putting them together. I need to stop procrastinating. 

AC: There’s this app called Godaddy studio. 

ET: Godaddy studio. 

AC: Every graphic I’ve ever made I made on that app. 

Scrambled eggs, hash browns arrive.

ET: Nice, thank you. Heyyyy. 

AC: Godaddy studio. Everything I’ve ever made.

ET: Great for a content creator— That’s me, a content creator. Every time I have to do the dumbest little photoshop stuff, I have to google “Cheap photoshop” or “free photoshop” and then I can never find one that works. So i end up cobbling it together in Microsoft word or not Microsoft— Pages, I use Pages a lot. 

AC: That’s what I used to do until the pandemic and I realized I needed something else.

ET: You can get a lot done on your phone is something I’ve learned over the years. 

AC: Yeah, man. I’ve made so much on my phone. That’s why losing my phone in Arizona was so detrimental to me because everything I’ve ever made was on there. I didn’t really care about it. I never updated my icloud.

ET: I’m not connected to the icloud, haven’t been in years. 

AC: Neither have I. 

ET: I can’t do it. I don’t trust it. 

AC: I don’t want my data here forever. Which I guess is one of those things where you light everything on fire and it’s really gone forever. That’s fuckin’…what happened. 

ET: I’m too much of a hoarder to do that. I keep everything. I have boxes and boxes. 

AC: I wish I kept everything. 

ET: Little scraps of paper, labels. It’s a blessing and a curse but I prefer the keeping everything and going through it eventually. 

AC: I wish I had physicals, for sure.

ET: You forget things sometimes and then you go back and you’re like oh this was an idea that was half baked or a shred of an idea you jotted down and put somewhere but then you go back to it and you realize oh there’s something here or this one thing works in this other thing, I can plug that in there. Sometimes it’s just nice to think about. 

AC: I’m hearing you. 

ET: This scramble’s doing incredible things. 

AC: A lot of the writing that was on my phone, poetry and shit. everything I’ve made on photoshop. That started on paper. 

ET: I don’t think I could physically write a poem on a phone. I couldn’t cross that at line. It just wouldn’t work for me, I don’t know. 

AC: It’s convenient. But I always end up writing everything by hand anyways. You know what I mean, so you put down a line and you remember it, you still write it down and you’re still seeing it. 

ET: I think in my head, I have this fantasy— and maybe it’s not a fantasy maybe it’s real— of something that happens between the idea in your head as it moves down your neck and shoulder into your arm, which I guess would still happen for a phone if that is in fact the thing that happens. 

AC: I think it’s kind of the same. 

ET: But there’s something that happens right here in between your wrist and the bottom of your ear. 

AC: The effort, the actual physical effort. 

ET: You know what? I lied. I wrote a poem on my phone the other day, a real short poem. I hadn’t written a poem in a long time but I was standing in the ocean eating a dill pickle and it came up and I had to get it down. My phone was the closest thing. 

AC: Wow. 

ET: Yeah, wow is right. It was a profound moment. 

AC: I wanted to go to the beach all weekend, I need to be in the fuckin’ water, man. It’s been years now since I’ve been to the beach. 

ET: Get your ass to the beach. Going back to the score, what did those occasions look like where you would sit down by yourself and start doing guitar loops? Were they different every time? 

AC: It’s different every time. That’s the experimental part and much of the reason I pushed it. Because I would make these loops and I would have no idea how I made any of them. 

ET: Yeah, yeah yeah yeah. 

AC: I would sit there in my practice studio, I would be there 12 hours a day, you know what I mean? Sometimes I would only be doing loops. I learned how to play my pedals differently. I learned how to do a lot of different shit. So now when I make loops, I’m conscious of knowing what I’m playing when I do them. Because all of that was a fluke, and all the riffs on it, they’re all improv. I would have a few riffs I wrote for the song but when I’m soloing or there’s tremolo picking, I just made it up. That’s the only reason I released it. I was like damn this is crazy. It felt almost like jazz. 

ET: Something happened and you were conscious enough to guide its happening. 

AC: And I was learning the process. It’s almost like composing now, the point I’m at. I can compile a shitload of riffs and I know how to make a piece of music and I know how to connect it. I can start and finish an album.

ET: You’re aware of what it is you’re doing and you have more control over it. But then there’s also that part where you don’t have control over it, right?

AC: You never really know if this two second riff you’re going to play is gonna fit or if it’s gonna fuck up your loop— that’s another thing. Loopers can be very temperamental so when you mix shit that’s off time or just off, you hear it in the loop. But in all of Blood Of Light, it’s very seamless. So many of the loops are so seamless. 

ET: Yeah, a lot of it is . 

AC: I learned how to control my loopers almost like playing turntables and playing my pedals and learning how to play feedback. I would just keep my guitar open and play the knobs on my pedals to get different sounds. I approached it like playing piano. I’d have to use my feet a lot, I’d have to use both my hands. I wouldn’t use picks. It’s just a thing i learned how to do without knowing I could do it. 

ET: You hear that in there too. There are movements that sound very considered and then there are parts that are chaotic. And ambient music— or loop based music is often so rhythmic it lulls you. There’s a mystery to that too, because you’re not using time signatures, you’re layering a certain way. Something that appealed to me about Blood Of Light was exactly that there is all the foundational material but then there’s pure chaos piled on top of it. Something that— and maybe it’s more that I suspected it— but that stood out to me when I was looking at laying some of these tracks into the film, there seemed to be a lot of the same feelings in the music as there are in the film— eh? Oh no. 

AC: What happened?

ET: A device has been added to my account. Oh that’s not good. 

AC: What account?

ET: My icloud. 

AC: We were just talking about that. 

ET: I hope this is not true. I’ll deal with that later. Anyway, I think there were a lot of the same feelings in the music that the characters were experiencing which I had a hard time pulling out on screen and I think the music supports where they’re at, which I kind of didn’t believe the first time I saw it because it worked so well. People always comment on it. They comment on the cinematography and the score, and in my mind those are the two strong suits. They work so well together. For a lot of the film, probably at least half the film, the score represents how the characters communicate with each other. There are shifts in the music when they’re trying to say something to each other, because they never speak. 

AC: I don’t even think I recognized music in movies until you showed me that. How much music can guide the space. You know what i mean? If you’re thinking about the movie and you’re just looking at it, it’s like damn this is just silence. But you bring in a score and you build a whole atmosphere. So even when I saw Laundry, I thought this makes me realize that what I feel is a visual thing. Because like you were saying, the emotions are dictated through the music as well. People comment about that the most.

ET: The atmosphere?

AC: How cinematic it is. I didn’t even really know what ambient music was when I started doing it. I didn't know that was a genre. I worked with a dude in Georgia and he would let me listen to Blood Of Light at the smoke shop we worked at, and he would always say the main character sounds like he’s going through this right now or he’s right here in the middle of a city and I’d be like what the fuck that’s literally where I was at when I recorded this shit. So when people kind of gravitated to emotional aspect of it, that’s when I realized okay this makes sense to people on a much grander scale. Because there’s no words, there’s no back beat, there’s no time signatures. It’s pleasant at times, but other times it does kind of crazy and loud. Learning how to control the beauty of it is kind of the whole process for me. Now I just wanted to be able to make beautiful shit and have the chaos be my younger days, my punk days. 

ET: There’s validity in both, and that’s probably a pretty good simile. You look at bands that start off with everything DIY, pure chaos, 90 second songs and a lot of them develop past that— not that you need to and not that the first form is a lesser form. But there is something to be said about adding complexity and skill and layers and usually we call that growth. It’s all worthwhile if it’s good, if it connects. And every phase is informed by the previous phase and as we continue to grow, it will be informed by these more developed sensibilities, whether emotional or cultural or personal. 

AC: That’s kind of a goal too, to make something that appeals to more people. As an artist, the people that like your shit, they watch you grow, they learn to grow with your music. You really like a band or an artist or a director, what you’re looking for is how are they doing better on the next go? What kind of things are they gonna throw at us now? 

ET: Nobody wants to see the same old same old, but sometimes we do. 

AC: But the artist learns how to layer up and do things better, do things differently or more efficiently. My biggest thing right now with taking time off music is figuring out what i’m going to do next. I still have to live my life, I still have to figure out what I’m going to do that’s going to challenge me. I don’t think I’m there quite yet. 

ET: I don’t think we ever get there. I think it’s always a part of the deal— and for some people it helps us understands ourselves and the world around us better and that’s why we do it. And hopefully we can connect that to someone else. Maybe we can make some of our livelihood out of it. 

AC: That’s the shit right there. I don’t care if I ever make money. I was thinking about this last night. I just would rather tour and play good shows and do memorable things. I still have to have a day job. 

ET: That’s where it’s at for a lot of people. And i think that’s simple and beautiful. It’s hard. Of course it’s hard. 

AC: Especially the older you get. 

ET: It’s hard. 

AC: It’s a lot of sacrifice. 

ET: You know, these guys with their synth bedroom projects who put a record out every four years? I think that’s incredible. What freedom. How lucky are they?

AC: I think the same thing. 

ET: People who paint. You can do that all the time in your free time. It’s kind of the dream. It’s always a dream. 

AC: That’s how people stay long term artists. You can’t really be doing it for anyone else or you won’t keep doing it. Because it won’t interest you anymore. 

ET: With making a movie, you need so many people involved that ultimately— I wouldn’t even, I mean, sure I made a short film and sure I have ownership over it because my decisions were the lion’s share of decisions made. But that’s pretty rare. If you do something else, five or ten other people have all the decision making power and it becomes pretty impossible to look at anything as yours, I think. And yes some people do and everyone has a different relationship with their work but I have a really hard time looking at what I do in the world of film as being wholly mine. Again, Laundry being the exception because resource-wise it was mostly mine and so I didn’t have anyone to answer to. but I’m aware that should this trajectory continue, I’m not going to be able to do that. Other people come in and they say you have to do it this way or that way and that’s just part of the deal. That’s how the business is. 

AC: It’s like being in a band. It’s the same thing, exact same thing. That’s why I do Blood Of Light. When you do it by yourself no one can fuckin’ tell me what I’m doing should be different or is not good or it would be better if I did it this way or that way. Well that’s just like your opinion, man. You know what i mean?

ET: I do. 

AC: Doing it by yourself you see how much more challenging it is too. You don’t have different perspectives. You don’t have anyone telling you how to shift the process or shift your perspective. It’s all on you. So when you do those things you have more limitations if you choose to think about it that way. 

ET: Limits aren’t bad though. 

*The too loud sound of a butter knife scraping jam onto wheat toast punctuates the recording.*

AC: And limits aren’t bad. 

ET: In many ways I think limits are a resource themselves because they’re something that makes you think about what you're doing in a way you never would have. That brakeman at the rail becomes a resource, not a hindrance. It’s a hindrance if you let it be a hindrance. 

AC: You’ve gotta be able to welcome the change. 

ET: And if you care so much more about your idea— and it may be a good idea, sure. But if you care more about that than the end result, you’ll get completely derailed when the brakeman of somebody else’s money comes in and says “Do it this way.”

AC: Absolutely. 

ET: I think it’s great that you have Blood Of Light, and that you’re still doing it and refining it. 

AC: It’s not completely accessible yet but one day it will be. 

ET: What do you mean by accessible? Crisp? More polished?

AC: Relatable on a bigger scope, for people who listen to music. I look at it like: I want to write this symphony and all people can listen to a symphony and say “I know what this is.” I’d like to get it to that point but have it still be minimal, still doing everything on a small scale like I do. Just making it bigger and more accessible. It’ll be a lot of refining. Being an artist and a musician you have ways to show yourself you’re getting better. You always can look back at something and think look how much I grew between releases. Right now i’m open to people telling me what to do, but in a year when I’m working on a project no one better tell me shit. 

ET: I know the tracks we used in the film were recorded in voice notes but has that been everything so far?

AC: I did two Blood Of Light records not that way. 

ET: How’d you record those?

AC: My roommate in Atlanta had an interface. It’s still not a great way to record but I made it sound better than voice notes. 

ET: You probably get more dynamic range.

AC: You get a lot more of the tone. I wish when I listened to it I remember how much better it sounded when I was playing it. But I still like it all, as lo fi as it is. It still has an appeal as sound. 

ET: I think so too. Something that stands out to me is there are a lot of people who slow themselves down by having sometimes too high of standards to the point where they will not even try something that they don’t think will turn out a certain way, or the way they want it to be. They won’t make a film unless they have all of the stuff they may or may not actually need for it. There’s the flip side of that too where some people should wait until they have more resources and it can be hard to find that balance. I think something that is really great about Blood Of Light is that it’s exactly what you said— it sounds a certain way and it could be bigger but it still sounds the way it should sound in its present lo-fi iteration. It hangs in that balance.

AC: And you wouldn’t think about it if you didn’t know. When you know I recorded it super shitty, I think you’d have a certain, maybe a little bit of a deeper appreciation. I still had to make it good. I still had to play well, even if i wasn’t recording it well. 

ET: It’s a moment trapped in amber and sure, it would be nice to see— say there’s an entire bird trapped in amber—  it’s nice to see the bird. Even though it would be cooler to see the bird fly around. It’s the same bird. Which would be a lot of amber, but stranger things have happened. It’s like those early Mountain Goats where it’s just John Darnielle and a four track Tascam tape recorder and all the sounds are so airy and he’s just in a regular room somewhere but the songs are great songs. Certain mediums probably lend themselves to a stripped back approach better than others but I think ambient music has proven itself to be one of those. 

AC: At the end of the day what you’re expressing is tonality. You want to listen to something that’s timeless and nice. You can listen to it over and over again and you can stay interested because there will be changes. You get to involve yourself in time passing, and you get to hear someone build something. That’s another way ambient is becoming more like a classical time piece. It’s not pop music. It’s not rap music. 

ET: It’s no longer experimental music like it was in the 70s and 80s when you had these guys like Steve Reich and Terry Riley.

AC: It’s not that different. At the time it was. What you want from the artist is to give you something where you’re like oh they’re experimenting with sound and recording like William Basinski. 

ET: He found it. 

AC: He found it and he fucked it up and that’s cool. 

ET: I think you’re right. There were those guys who used to be kind of wildcattin’ around doin’ things that all the up tight old school guys looked down on who have now become their own school of modern composition, and themselves modern composers. They’re all just a bunch of fucking weirdos. But they’re to be respected.

AC: Look at them now. They’re so influential. 

ET: They’re revered. 

AC: I listen to it now and I think of course everyone hated this thirty years ago. Like this is insane. But here I am listening to it thirty years later. They changed the game, these dudes. That’s one thing that kind of kept me going with Blood Of Light. It was: this makes sense. I don’t know what i’m doing. But i’m making something. I’m challenging myself. And then you find out these guys, someone like John Cage— they’re modern composers. That’s what I want. That’s my vision for myself, for people to say that dude’s a composer. Not a guitar player or a singer.

ET: We talk about ambient in a certain way - there’s a tone, or an emotion of the moment. It’s like this little piece of time. That’s one of the more interesting things about it, because it is so tonal and almost immediately emotional if someone connects with it. You can look at it like you look at any cultural artifact, like it’s a reflection of its time, of an age. And I think when you look at enough things from a certain time, you start to see the fullness of the age. You start to understand okay this is what things were like in the 70s— the nihilism, the frustration. You get a picture of a time and a place and it helps to understand the present because so much of our lives are founded in these past chapters. I think there’s a lot of that in Blood Of Light— a lot of people feel this way right now, a lot of people feel frustrated, a lot of people feel longing.

AC: Longing, confusion, pain.

ET: Everybody’s confused. Our generation is constantly confused. And I think a lot of that— and some of it’s negative sure but you can’t ignore it— that’s what has always stood out to me about Blood Of Light. 

AC: I appreciate that. I think the same thing. That’s why we like writers and directors. When you read a piece of work, that informs you about the environment, about society, how it felt to be. You don’t get that in a history book. We know what was going on. But now here we are getting to witness someone’s experience of that. 

ET: And if we’re lucky, we see some good ideas that inform our flawed ideas. That’s very grand. By no means am I saying that that’s something I do, but that’s what you hope to do. 

AC: That’s the connection in itself. 

ET: What a success if you’re able to do that. 

AC: I hope it would influence people in the way these other people are influencing me. 

ET: You’ll never know. None of us will ever know. But I think, going back to what you said, you look at what you do a certain way and you have to be satisfied with that— this is also how I look at the work that I do. I was thinking about this on the drive here— you’re going to make something, and you’re going to know why you think it’s good and why it is in fact good, because you understand the form and you understand what it is you’re doing. But a lot of people are going to watch it or listen to it and say “This sucks.” and they’re just wrong. And that’s okay. And a lot of people are going to come to a piece of music or a film or a book expecting or wanting something out of it they don’t get and they’re going to say “This sucks.”

AC: I use this analogy all the time— who goes to the Picasso museum and says This guy uses orange. I fuckin’ hate orange. This guy sucks.” Just cause you don’t like orange, that doesn’t mean anything. 

ET: It doesn’t mean anything. 

AC: I’m a hater on shit all the time and my opinion doesn’t matter. 

ET: As long as you can look at what you did and say “This is what i was trying to do. I pulled it off. I’m happy with it and I’m gonna put it wherever it makes sense to be.” For some people that’s putting it nowhere. For some people that’s putting it in theaters or on the billboard top 100. But as long as you can look at the thing you made and say “I did what I wanted here. I would do it differently again obviously because everyone would but this work exists as a piece of a moment and that moment is a part of me and now it’s floating around in the world and anyone is welcome to come and experience it the way they want to” That’s all that you can do. And until you get to that place where you can say “This is where I want it to be”, then you just have to keep changing it until you decide it’s done. Then you say this table has four legs and a top and you can put a cup of coffee on it and it’s not gonna fall over. It’s done. 

AC: It’s done. 

ET: And if somebody wants to sit at that table? Fantastic. 

AC: Or buy it? Even better. I think the same thing. Knowing you can’t control where it goes but you have to do it anyways. You have to do it. 

ET: Yes. 

AC: There’s no putting it away forever. There’s none of that. You have to just work around it and that’s what makes you an artist. 

ET: We disagree about this and we can argue about that another time, but I think some people are just stuck having to do the thing. And if they don’t do the thing, they’ll lose their minds or inflict harm on themselves or others.

AC: That’s how I think about Pete Kowalsky. I don’t think anyone ever refers to him as an artist. I don’t think he would like it if you were like oh you’re an artist. But he’s this creative musician, this lyricist, this writer, this nihilist ethical being. But no one ever calls him an artist even though that’s exactly what he’s doing. 

ET: And that’s okay. 

AC: And I started noticing that about people recently. Not everyone who does the same thing is the same kind of artist or the same kind of person. 

ET: Going back to the expectations thing— I think when people start employing that term, they put all these expectations pertaining to the idea of an artist onto themselves and others, and everybody has a different set of expectations and definitions as to what that is. For some people I think there are very negative connotations. They give people license to be a certain way when they shouldn’t be or they’ll shrug harmful behaviors off and say “oh well, I’m an artist.” I think there are a lot of unhealthy ideas about what it is to be “an artist” nowadays and I would just as soon prefer to leave the term alone. 

AC: I didn’t start calling myself that until recently. I understand people think that about me as well. But I don’t like saying “I’m a musician” or “I’m a writer.”

ET: It took me forever to call myself a writer. 

AC: Yeah. I’ve never liked saying that because again there’s that connotation to it where you’re saying it to someone who may not understand that there’s no ego behind it. 

ET: And another thing too— I’ve lived in Los Angeles for 17 years and I’ve met a thousand people who say they’re writers and when you ask to see what they’ve done there’s absolutely nothing. 

AC: I don’t get it. 

ET: And it’s really hard for me to rectify that idea of a writer with the reality of a writer. But at a certain point you have to look at yourself and say “This is a thing that I do and it’s a part of my personality and identity and there’s no sense in hiding it anymore.” The goal is to have as humble of an approach as possible to calling yourself anything, whether it’s a sales manager or a licensed driver. Some things are just facts, but some things are projections. And I think that’s the thing— to avoid projecting. Which is why I hesitate to call myself an artist. Because also too, only when the age has past can judgement be made. If somebody wants to look back in a hundred years and call my work something, they can call it whatever they like and I don’t care. If somebody’s looking at my work a hundred years from now that’s good enough for me. 

AC: That’s the dream. If in a hundred years people know about what I put out into the world, that’s successful. That’s what it comes down to. That’s cool. 

ET: I put that trailer online and 23 people watched it, which is a tiny number, but I saw that and I thought there are 23 people who saw this trailer who had not seen it yesterday. And I felt this silly thrill. Twenty people watched this 90 second trailer for this short film they’re probably never gonna watch. But I thought that’s great. That’s 23 people. I’m proud of it. 

AC: Absolutely. I think that all the time— if one of my bands gets something posted by some music site and 5000 people hear it. 

ET: Amazing. 

AC: Five thousand? That’s more people than i’ll ever play a show to. 

ET: That’s a crazy number. Lotta newspaper journalists a hundred years ago wouldn’t have been read by 5000 people. Crazy. 

AC: I like that I can see stats of my music being listened to in Germany or South Africa. Or in another state, or Russia. It’s like— this hits all over the world. 

ET: It hits with Putin. 

AC: People are hearing this shit wherever, however. you couldn’t get that 20 years ago. 

ET: Of course more is better, but a few is great. 

AC: A little goes a long way these days. 

ET: We look at what we do and say “this isn’t for everybody. Fantastic. I hope I can find the people it’s for.” That’s the goal. 

AC: That’s the goal. 

ET: I don’t think I’ve ever had Tobasco sauce hit as hard as this Tobasco sauce hit this morning. 

AC: Is it burning?

ET: No in a good way, in a bangers way. Not to change the subject, but I haven’t used Tobasco sauce in probably ten years. 

AC: I haven’t used Tobasco sauce in a minute. Dude I can’t believe how long it’s been since i’ve been here. 

ET: It’s the same old quaint joint. 

AC: Same old fuckin’ place.