These are Special Times

By Brendan Newnam. Originally appeared in Sound Collector, Issue 3.

David Berman is a writer who writes songs. On top of a gesso of indie-rock/country music Berman applies layers of snapshots and postcard messages creating portraits as distorted and accurate as convenience store mirrors. He manages to incite laughter, melancholy, and philosophical introspection through his quirky observations and keen linguistic manipulation. As an antidote to the recent swell of instrumental, ambient music, Berman’s songs are about words, chameleon-like, perfectly rendered words.

“Why do you write songs?”

I think if you really get down to the nitty gritty on why I write songs or anyone does, it’s pretty ugly. It probably has to do with wanting to be loved or desired for power, stuff like that. What’s a nicer answer is I don’t believe I do it for myself. In other words I don’t believe if I lived on a desert island that I would compose songs. I would maybe play the guitar to see how it sounds and stuff but when you take the exercise all the way to creating a song which is supposed to endure even when you’re not around, it’s obviously something you want to make its way to other people. So it has to do with your relationship to the world, i.e. other people. So I’m obviously giving something and asking for something.

“But you don’t feel the need to do this live. Touring doesn’t figure into this exchange.”

Right. Well. I haven’t been able to, number one, find a way in which I was adding anything by playing. I feel like 99% of what the songs are and will ever be in their definitive form is what happens when they’re recorded. And I’ve certainly seen bands where I feel like something was added to the music or I was given a new look at the music but all too often and I would suspect my live show to fall into this category, it just seems like it’s not even a reinterpretation of the songs, it’s just basically hearing the songs, maybe not even in their best form and then being able to see the people as they’re doing it. Which isn’t enough of a justification for me to disrupt the rhythms in my life by going on tour and it also doesn’t seem enough justification to ask people to pay money. I mean I’m real conscious of the fact of what you’re asking people to do. And I don’t feel at this point I’m asking people to do much. If someone has listened to the records before and they like them and they want to continue and see where the project is going, they are welcome to. I do feel that a lot of times that after someone had paid fifteen dollars or ten dollars for your CD, of the hard earned money that they’ve worked for and then you ask them to come and give you ten more dollars, and you’re not giving them anything additional, I just don’t feel comfortable with it. And I know it’s the personal choice of the fan and they obviously want it or think they want it but I sometimes feel like its just sort of a procedure people go through. I mean, as many times people ask why I don’t play live like other musicians and all. What I often might say is why don’t you answer the question, why do you play live and so many people can’t really tell you. They say ‘well you just do it you’re supposed to, it’s the thing that’s supposed to be done.’

“What rhythms of your life would be disrupted by touring? What do you do when you’re not recording music? I know you travel around a lot and occasionally write for the Minus Times and the Baffler.”

I move around a lot lately especially but mostly it’s just a lot of wasted time sitting around staring. A lot of wasted time, I probably sleep too much. It’s upsetting to me I’m not proud of it but I have an unlimited capacity for sleep. It just seemed like it’s happened in the last couple of years. Sometimes I’ll sleep for like four days maybe, I’ll get up for an hour and then go lie down again and get up for an hour twelve hours later and that will go on for like four days. I don’t really know why it happens and I’ve even gone to the doctor to see what’s wrong. I spend a lot of time… I don’t think I workout any problems in my sleep I have some of my most… a lot of clarity. It’s like with the touring question, I’m very protective of my time but I can’t say an outside party, if they could see what I do with my time, would see it as generative, but it somehow is, cause when I set myself to working I feel like I’m drawing on a lot of placidity or whatever I build up.

“Your writing is often fragmented and anecdotal. Is that how you go through life or how you perceive other people as going through their lives?”

Well, its hard to say I think people think more that way then they have in their past and I think that it would be hard to understand the mental patterns we’ll have if things go the way they are now it will be hard for us to understand how fractured our thinking can be. And it’s always a gambit, the way I write or the way others write if it seems fragmentary it may appear plain and forthright in the future I don’t know. The reception of John Ashberry’s writing is much different then it is today. There is something to be said for the fact that there is a lot more channel changing going on in people’s brains. I don’t think it’s something that… I don’t know why I do it, I don’t think like that, but I don’t really think that when anyone writes they are making a true mirror of how they think I think its more of an idealized form of how they think. So it’s a tendency and a shadow of how I might think.

“Why not write it in some other form other than music?”

There’s going to be a book, that should have been out by now but it’s been slowed down mostly because of me fiddling with it but it’s supposed to come out. I don’t think I would ever treat a book like an album, I would keep them very separate. Like when this book comes out it’s a book of fifty-five poems, and I would never release it on Drag City. I would never do that. I want to keep them separate. I don’t want it to be like a musician’s book. I want to keep them separate like on the book it doesn’t say anything about the Silver Jews in the liner notes.

“Who do you want to read it?”

I think I’d want it to be as many different kinds of people as possible. It’s excited to me that yes some people who just listen to music might be reading this book of poems and it might be the first book of poetry they have picked up voluntarily in their whole life. But on the other hand I’d like also people whose main interest is poetry and who know about the predecessors and come from the complete opposite direction.

“It seems to me that many people whose main interest is music, get from your music what they used to get from literature. ”

Well people don’t read much anymore, that’s true. Yeah, it’s a basic fact, if I’m taking advantage of that, I probably am, I mean I think a lot of people … well there is something that is just sort of irresistible about the fact that in pop music or rock music or folk music, that content wise the territory has been so unexplored. So if you have a want to do so there is plenty to write about. There just aren’t that many examples of people who really want to push it. Not only is it too crowded out there for that, and it’s also exciting, I mean I never understand when people talk about the ending of things. The end of the novel, of the end of rock music and stuff like that, I always sort of feel whether through crossbreeding or whatever, there’s still a million things to do.

“Your lyrics often seem audio-voyeuristic, meaning they seem like they’ve been written by listening instead of watching. Is this the case and if so is it a perversion?”

Am I the audio-voyeur? Well, I think that’s sensory confusion. Yes there is some voyeuristic tendencies to the writing but I’m seeing what I’m writing and not hearing it. It’s only when it gets to you that it’s an auditory experience. I’m seeing all the pictures pretty clearly the way I envision them and I don’t even hear myself transmitting it really until it’s all done. As far as it being a perversion? That’s a tough question. You could say that all writing is a perversion in the sense that, why with so much life around you and this world around you, do you feel the need to create a parallel or subworld. And if it’s a perversion, it’s kind of like a power thing a genesis thing, not the band. It’s creation but probably the way I do it is knitting little shards from life, so probably I am taking.

“Do you like Aerosmith and if so why?”

That’s a good question. I have a funny relationship with Aerosmith. I don’t like them as much as I feel like I should. There is a certain category of bands that don’t turn me in but I don’t blame the band, I think it’s something missing in me. I kind of like the eighties ballads or the late eighties ballads they had in their come back. I was never a big fan. It’s stuff like, Walk This Way and their big radio hits that are kind of overplayed so when I turn them on I can’t hear them. I can just hear my experience of the song. You know how there is that certain category of song like certain Beatles songs and Respect by Aretha Franklin or Satisfaction that when you hear them you can’t hear them anymore. Part of my problem with Aerosmith is that I could never figure out if they were really dark or not, and I like to know that about a band. I like bands that are dark and I like bands that aren’t and I could never figure out if they were. (Discussion about sadness and television, Charlie Rose’s penchant for lascivious answering machine messages, brutality and Jerry Springer) removed by editor.

“Back to the TV thing. “I saw BB King on General Hospital” is one of my favorite lines of yours.”

Yeah! That’s one of my favorites too. And that line to me, although very funny, makes me really sad and makes me think about why BB King had to be there and where was your narrator when he watched it. TV in the daytime, there is something so sad about that. My mom is right now watching something real sad. It’s Celine Dion’s special “These are Special Times” the Thanksgiving special. And I was trying to explain to her tonight why I hate Celine Dion but I didn’t get anywhere. I just have to give up trying to make her understand. Her favorite musicians are Celine Dion, Michael Bolton, and Yanni and I was trying to explain to her what was wrong and I got caught. I’ve been driving her car all week and there was this cassette with some piano music and I really liked it. I thought it was real nice and I popped it out and nothing was written on it so I just kept listening to it. It was real pretty and eventually I asked her what it was and she told me it was Yanni. I wasn’t embarrassed that I liked it because I just had to take it as empirical fact, but I was embarrassed that I wouldn’t listen to it after that. I was ashamed of myself that I wouldn’t let myself listen to something I liked knowing it was Yanni.

“Sure, the cultural hang-ups.”

It’s pathetic.

“Would you want a Thanksgiving Special? Are you comfortable with your status on the cultural radar would you prefer to be a larger blip or a smaller blip? Or are you not a blip at all?”

Well everybody’s a blip so I’ll say I’m a blip.

“Do you want to be on MTV?”

Well I’ve never wanted to make a video and you have to do that first and I hate MTV and consider it almost satanic, but I’ll tell you I have another thing I feel guilty about. About two weeks ago on MTV news as they were going to commercial, they flashed up some records that had just been released. They flashed up R Kelly for a few seconds then the Silver Jews and then the George Michael record. I was really mad at myself because I got off on it.

“That’s to be expected.”

I should be truer to my beliefs.

“What song?”

Smith and Jones

“Is that your single?”

No. There is only a single in England, but I have to tell you after a few recordings I thought we finally got our records to sound really produced and that we were studio savvy but you could really hear the drop off from the R Kelly song to the Silver Jews song and back to the George Michael song. It really put it all in perspective for me.