PART 3 of 3

Sandall: "Various people have asked what your current interests in visual arts are: favorite artists, techniques etc." David: "I'm terrible at pulling out names out of the hat." Sandall: "Perhaps you could just talk generally about it. All through your career you had a strong interest in visual arts." David: "That interest remains. But I live in a fairly isolated area now. I don't have access to galleries and I don't see many shows anymore; nowhere near as much as I used to. And it seems far less important to me that I do have that contact now than when I was younger. But I still thoroughly enjoy what I do see. I still enjoy the physical act of painting and drawing, I still intimately take photographs.... I do thoroughly enjoy those activities... (struggles with words) Not a very interesting question", he says finally.

Sandall: "A question I suppose you might have not an easy answer for: Are you happy?" David laughs: "Good question. It depends how you define happiness Robert." Sandall: "Well how would you define it David?" David: "I would define it in terms of the amount of contentment I feel in my life and the degree to which I feel a relative peace of mind. That comes and goes all the time for me. And rightly so. I think if you are trying to develop in any way, on any chosen path, you have to spend periods of time where you're faced with certain aspects of your own self which are are very hard to confront, very hard to deal with. And on a spiritual path that is certainly true. So there can be moments of extreme blissful happiness and there can be moments of utter anguish and they can sometimes strangely coexist. So I am happy in my life. And I am happy in the goals that I've set myself. And I'm probably happier in my work than I've ever been. That sort of answer."

Sandall: "How about when you're working as a musician: What sort of frame of mind takes over there? Someone asks, do you have to deal with writer's block?" David: "No. I very rarely have trouble writing. Writing comes generally quite easy. But I don't force it. I don't have anxiety attacks about not having written a song for a year. It doesn't worry me. When there is something to be said I find the means of saying it. Generally the writing come very easy. It'll happen a piece will surface in a matter of hours. It's the arranging and the recording process which tends to take a lot longer. Sometimes unnecessarily so. Unless we talk about the instrumental work. That work has built up over a period of time. Very often created from a base of improvisation and slowly built upon. And then edited, de-constructed if you like, and then built again."
Sandall: "This must be quite a meticulous process. Is there no sense of frustration anguish in the recording process?" David: "Yes there can be an enormous frustration. Whether you're working alone or working with other musicians can often be an element of frustration. A frustration of finding what is necessary for a composition, of overcoming your own limitations as a performer, frustration with other musicians that can't seem to find their way into a composition and therefore can't give the performance that is relevant to the work. There is many frustrations. And there's whole bag full technical frustrations that come along with modern technology. But the reward's when a piece falls into place is tremendously exciting. That outweighs all other considerations; fortunately."

Q: "If you had to label your music, what would the label read?" David: "Well, I don't have to." Sandall: "Well you do now cause I got you here!" David: "No. It's impossible. It's undesirable. And that's why I have always embraced the generic category of pop music. Just file it under 'pop music', that's fine with me."
Sandall: "You don't feel there is any sense in which you, and other like-mined musicians that have cropped up on your albums, have, to some degree, defined a new space for popular music?"
David: "If we have no-one's put a name to it yet. All the better for it I think. I might worry me now if I see my work in a 'new age' category. It's such a non-sense! The category itself doesn't make sense to me."

Q: "Here's an even trickier question: What did you learn from your experience of artificial intoxication as a young man? Specifically the experiences with alcohol and cocaine?" David: "I don't remember. That period of my has just been... I mean, y'know, you understand the workings of intoxications Robert." Sandall: "Perhaps he need to have it explained to him." Both burst in laughter. Sandall: "But was there a complete break in lifestyle between being in, what was an internationally successful rock band Japan, and being a very different kind of solo artist David Sylvian?" David: "Only in terms of not being under the scrutiny of the media I suppose. That changed things quite a lot. But no, my demons are all internal. So I fought quite a battle with all matter of things and addictions. And it took a time to reach a point of maturity where I didn't need anything to lean on anymore in that respect."

Sandall: "Someone asks about Dobro tracks. Wanting to know how many Dobro tracks have been recorded and is it likely to happen that more Dobro tracks get released?" David: "It's unlikely to happen. What happened was: I was recording with Bill Frisell in Seattle and the end of the two days session he still had to be sitting out in the studio with Dobro on lap and I just asked him to improvise a number of pieces for me just that I could respond to in time when I had time. He did that. I think there were six in all. None of them lasting more than two minutes. I responded to the first and that appeared on 'dead bees' and then I took a good look at the remaining five and had a bash at the ones that seemed most promising. I don't really think I'll go back to the ones that didn't hold much promise for a vocal contribution."

Sylvian: "I never felt that the outtakes that appear on this this album are sub-standard in any way. They were just out of context or I didn't have time to complete them. But they are strong as much of the other material that I was recording at that moment in time. 'Ride' is as strong as, if not stronger than, just about anything on 'Secrets of the Beehive' for example. So I had no concerns about going back and fishing these out; it was actually a pleasure to bring them to completion. But there isn't a whole lot of material lying in the vaults. There may be a few live show recorded but on a whole there isn't an excessive amount of material available for Virgin to unearth in the years to come."

Q: "What are your views on Napster?" David: "Can I not have opinion on it?" Sandall: "Yes of course, but it must be unusual to be in your position..." David: "You know these things are still working themselves out. I don't think it's worth getting all excited about what's currently happening on the internet; the current infringements of copyrights. Until the dust is settled it's really not worth getting too worked up about it. It's for the industry and the individuals involved in Napster to come to an agreement of sorts. Do I think that my work should be available for free on the internet? No, because I would be able to make the work and I would no longer be able to make a living. So that would be the end of the work that people a currently pirating. Which doesn't make any sense. If people are enjoying the work: 'Please, buy a copy!'. Because it means I can make another, y'know. The people that are actually doing the exchanging are fairly innocent, I believe, in what they're doing. All they're doing is exchanging the music they love with friends of the whole. We've all made compile tapes of our favorite music and handed it to our friends. It's just an extension of that but it has just got to the point where that sound reproduction is so good that you needn't go out and buy the original copy anymore. That is something that has to be resolved. It doesn't light a fire under me at present in terms of getting anxious or worried about what the future holds. Sandall: "And have ever you spent any time on the Napster website yourself?" David: "Never."

Q: "David, where see do you see yourself in the future?" Long pause. David: "I tend not to look ahead that far. I dearly live within the future that is right before me. Which is settling into my new home, creating a working environment and selling into writing some new material. I worked on 'Dead Bees' for a long time... and I am very keen to get back to writing again.
Sandall: "When you say 'get back to writing'... presumably you could get back to writing almost any time." David: "No, that's not the case because on the side of the environment in which to work I can't isolate from the other concerns in my life. So I need time and space. When I got a sense of that it's going to be afforded me, then I will allow certain ideas to become more concrete in mind. And there'll come a point when I feel ready to try to give those ideas form. So, yes of course you could sit down and write at any point. But I don't find this a necessary exercise. I want to write with a purpose to create a complete body of work at one period of time." Sandall: "And do you have to wait patiently for that sense to come upon you?" David: "Well, the period leading up to the writing is often the most enjoyable part because the ideas haven't been given form yet. So there's all this wonderful possibilities attached to it. It can go in any directions, it can bring so many elements together. When you sit down you begin to narrow down the fields somewhere. It becomes exciting in another way, because suddenly you begin to see something concrete taking shape. But I'm not in a rush to get to that point other than actually working again and the enjoyment of that process."

Sandall: "So 'no rush' means a new David Sylvian album in the year 2000 and.... 1, 2, 3, 4, 5." David: "Yes. I wouldn't want to work with any given time frame." Sandall: "Okay, we hate to build up onto false hopes. Anyway David, thanks very much for that. It's been very interesting, very enjoyable. Thanks to everyone who sent in questions. I'm sorry we couldn't answer all of them but I think we covered most of the areas that you asked about. Thanks for watching."

THE END.

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