As a matter of fact that song does exist and I had a hard time narrowing the record down to eleven songs, but I was in a position where I had some new, unbelievably strong inspiration and fire lit under me to really focus my point and what I wanted to say as a person and as an artist into music. I felt like it would really be diluted by putting it into too many places.
The songs that are on the record are the songs that were decided upon as focal points for me and I did not make any attempts to complete what was created musically on any of the songs. I was in the process of where for the year that I struggled to get to the point where I could actually write again and could actually get through what was wrong with me mentally and personally. I was unable to really come to a point of completion that I would consider any of the other things that we were working on finished or even "songs" that are defined by having music and lyrics and vocals.
The music that Tim and I were creating still exists and still could exist, but it's always hard to go back when you're making things. I had to really decide on cutting away the weaker parts in my life personally and artistically. It's a hard sacrifice because there is music that could have been completed and could exist as b-sides or soundtrack songs. The songs that still remain and were in the incubation process I think deserve to be more than that. There is more music; another album's worth. I don't think it's something that I would avoid now the way I would have in the past.
In the past I've created things that are centered so much around a theme that I've carved for myself to work around. This record revolves more around my transformation as a person and not thinking so much about the bigger, conscious picture. It's letting the unconscious picture be the focus, which is essentially unfocused. There are two songs that could have made their way onto the record that I think are enough to base more music around at the very least.
Based on what has been seen of the new album's imagery and the sound of the songs we've heard thus far, it seems that EAT ME, DRINK ME is not entirely built on the same foundation as the Celebritarian movement you discussed last year. What events and ideas shaped the new album and how does it tie in with Celebritarianism, if at all?
I think that it’s me realizing that the person who needed to hear the philosophy or the drive of what I wanted Celebritarianism to be was me more than anyone else. I didn’t realize that I was trying to put my frustrations and my personal life and my mind into art, into cinema, instead of into music because I didn’t realize I was running from myself.
A song like The Red Carpet Grave I think became the point where I suddenly defined to myself that I was in a problem personally and emotionally that was everything I was trying to project into an art movement. Celebritarianism faltered as an ideal for me last year. This record happened instead. In a sense, this record is the best artistic thing that I could offer to represent Celebritarian ideology. It’s about proving that the idea of fame, the idea of artist, has to have something to really offer in a world where it’s been stripped from any of its power or mystery. Anyone can have fame, so it has no value. Anyone can have notoriety, anyone can say what they want. People have mixed empowerment with entitlement. The fact that you can say whatever you like about anyone in any situation with the internet or the way the world has changed with reality television. It’s not a license to entitlement. It doesn’t mean that everyone has to listen to what you say. It’s easy to be affected.
If I spent my everyday life like I had many years ago reading people’s opinions about what I do, it would affect me greatly as an artist – whether it was a criticism or adulation. I’m not saying just because print media is something that’s more qualified necessarily doesn’t mean I listen to that more than something on the internet. I had to realize that I was crippled ultimately as a person and as an artist. I had started to separate the two in a way that I never realized and never wanted to. I can now objectively look back at marriage and falling prey to this convention. I was expected to be “normal” in the sense that people define normal.
