MUSIC INTERVIEW: MOBY
Richard Melville Hall Talks Life, The Universe & 'Wait For Me'
“Wait a second…we’re connecting you with Moby, Mr. Itier”…
What a nice way to start my day -- a little chat on the phone with musical maverick Moby. And to enter, for the next 20 minutes, the creative, brilliant mind of one of our most innovative and daring musicians of our time. His new album, Wait For Me, is to be released at the end of June - make sure to pre-order your copy, as you won’t regret jumping into this new Alice in Wonderland-like escapade. I always feel like the little white rabbit listening to Moby and falling deep down a hole of consciousness and organized madness...
Emmanuel Itier: It appears your new album is very much inspired by David Lynch and his films. Why is that?
Moby: I love David Lynch as a director, but there is a slight misunderstanding -- that the record wasn’t inspired by David Lynch’s movies but it was inspired by hearing him talk. I went one day to hear him speak at BAFTA, the English Academy of Film and Television, and he was talking about creativity and how creativity shouldn’t be judged by the marketplace and if it’s performing or not, revenue-wise. That’s what inspired me. But I do love his films, and for sure he is one of my favorite American film directors.
EI: Do you think there is a parallel between the process of creating films and music?
M: It’s a difficult thing to make generalizations because I think the creative process is different for different people. There is a big difference between the way I make records and other people make records. I don’t think everyone is having the same experience when they are involved in the creative process.
EI: Do you think your creative process is different today compared to last year or years before? Do you create the same way, or are there new levels of inspiration for your creative outlet to express itself?
M: Right now, the only thing that matters in my life is making music that I love and sometimes helping other people making music that they love. There was a period when I was signed to a major label and I felt like I had a certain level of pressure to make music that would be more commercially successful and play on the radio. Now I’m back at being an artist with no commercial pressure put on his creative process.
EI: I followed your advice, per the press letter sent to journalists, and listened to the album from start to finish without jumping from the sixth song to the first to the third and so on. By doing that, I really got to a place of inner peace, inner harmony with myself. Is it what you wanted to create -- an album that put you in peace with yourself, to help you reconnect with the self?
M: This is great if you got that feeling. We’re in 2009, and I don’t expect people to listen to the entire album in its order of songs, and they will probably shuffle it, but if I politely ask people to listen once to the album entirely from start to finish, they will. As far as the hope of the record, I’m not so sure. The way people respond to art is very subjective, and I might respond to an album in a different way than somebody else. There is no such thing as a right or wrong objective way to respond to such or such piece of art, but my hope is that people, at the end of listening to my album, will feel a sense of contentment, a sense of having been taken care of for the last 65 minutes.
EI: Why the title, "Wait For Me,” to represent the overall album?
M: To be totally honest, I don’t know! I was basically listening to all of the songs, and something about this particular title spoke to me -- maybe its simplicity. Also, I like that it’s unspecific and ambiguous. Sometimes it conjures up a sense of longing as well…
EI: Is it also about the feeling, almost the urge, that we need today to wait for each other, to reconnect with each other in the world of today…or am I being too much of a French intellectual?!
M: No, you’re not, and it’s the nice thing about people responding differently to the same piece of art. This why I love David Lynch’s movies so much, especially the last few ones, because they have so much ambiguity in them. So "Wait For Me" is truly open for interpretation…
EI: You have always been an activist in many areas of life. What are your hopes in today's world -- your views about our future?
M: The ending of the Republican era feels pretty good! The fact that we had eight years of Republican rules and now things are turning around completely... We have such a body of democratic ideals with our democratic President, Senate and House. In general, I’m feeling optimistic. But the environment is still in chaos, and we could end up under the water, so who knows? I’m trying not to get too depressed and anxious about global events we can’t really control. I have spent too much time in my life about things that are too big and out of reach, so I’m trying to re-focus on what is reachable, visible…
EI: Your music is a great visual inspiration. When are we going to see a movie directed by Moby?
M: I grew up in a family of visual artists -- my mother is a painter, my uncle is a photographer...but I chose music to express myself. Now I mix art forms. I take lots of photos and I draw a lot, but as far as being a filmmaker, I have no idea. I have no experience with it. Honestly, I wouldn’t know where to start…
EI: What’s coming up in the Moby Universe…?
M: First, I’m putting out the record at the end of June, so for now it’s a heavy promotion. Then I’ll be touring for two-and-a-half months in Europe, and then hopefully I’ll be touring a little bit in the US and Canada...not sure about that because it seems I’m not as popular in the US as in Europe these days…
EI: Why is the US somewhat embracing you less than Europe?
M: The truth is I don’t know if people would come to my shows today in the US. My status is very strange. Lots of people don’t like me here. I sell more records in Europe than in the US. The only time I had success here was with the album, Play. I love my country, but sometimes I don’t feel like an American artist anymore.
EI: How do you explain that…?
M: I don’t want to criticize my own country too much because there has been so much great music and art coming out of the USA. But the eight years of the Bush administration were a bizarre celebration of ignorance, where we had a President where most people felt comfortable that he was not that smart! You look at the culture of these times, and truly, again, it was glorification of ignorance! I love Hip Hop, but lots of Hip Hop is really dumb. Granted, now we have a fantastic nerd as a President, so there is a resurgence of intelligence -- people are not ashamed of being intelligent anymore. But it seems like, for a long time, intelligence and academic skills were viewed with suspicion. People felt comfortable with only ignorant expression under the Bush administration, and this is not the type of world I want to live in. I even remember the sad fact of running polls when Kerry was running against Bush, and we found out that people didn’t like Kerry because he seemed too smart! And they liked Bush because he felt like a regular guy. People have higher standards to hire a plumber than they do to hire the President of the United States.
EI: Who is responsible for ignorance? Is it the people, or people feeding them fear and garbage?
M: I think it’s almost impossible to point fingers. It’s the products of a lots of variables, and most countries are similar to the United States. In any case, we should not put down our country more than another one. But here, what is incredible is that lots of Americans have a lot of hatred for academic and intellectual traditions. Maybe they are scared by the notion of “I don’t know.” They want certainties in their lives, but we now know that nothing is certain or constant or safe…
EI: It seems to me that Europe is the land of the “I think, therefore I am,” and we’re too lost in the gestation of our minds, and here it’s the land of “Just do it,” and we mostly crash in our speediness without second thoughts about actions, right?
M: Yes, actions and thoughts need to complete each other, to make one. I think things are finally getting better. For example, I live in New York, and it’s a very thoughtful city, and such are most main big cities in the US, like Los Angeles, San Francisco and so on. But the rest of America has a really strange fear of whatever is foreign and intellectual and coming from a different tradition. Another great thing about Europe is that you have countries pushed towards each other, so they have to accept each other and deal with each other. If you live in Belgium, it’s hard to ignore your neighbor who is a different country and just 20 feet away from you…
EI: So basically we need to refute the idea that “every man is an island” and that we are all citizens of the world…?
M: Right! From my perspective, I think when someone’s world view is based on fear and distrust, nothing too good can come from that. I see too many people in the USA looking at other countries with fear, and I think it’s so much healthier to look at other countries, traditions, cultures, and figure out what’s interesting about them but also understand what’s mundane about them. There is xenophobia (a dislike and/or fear of that which is unknown or different from oneself) and xenophilia (an affection for unknown objects or human beings), and it’s nice to land somewhere in between the two…
EI: We have drifted into talking about politics in the sense of the Greek meaning: politis, which means “for the city,” “for the people.” Do you think all art forms and everything else converge towards doing good politics?
M: We are all politicians. There is no such thing as a political vacuum. Even in dictatorships or an autocratic society, you have people trying to understand chaos theories and people trying to contribute at making better polities and legislation. Everybody is involved in the political process. There is no clear line between The Public and The Private -- we are all inter-dependent and connected…
EI: We’re all one, indeed. Final thought for today…?
M: My “final” thought would be: Be nice to yourself and be nice to people around you, and, as much as possible, practice open-mindedness and tolerance. Recognize the world is a very complicated place. Also, understand that everybody is in the exact same position -- everybody dies too soon, everyone experiences sadness, loss and regret, everyone wants to be loved, be respected, have a roof above their heads, some food on their plate and a good night's sleep. Whether that person is the President or someone working at Kinko’s or in a shoe factory in Malaysia -- at the end of the day, we all want the exact same things!
Moby's 'Wait For Me' is out now on Mute Records
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