Discussed: Graffiti, cave paintings, pencil, paper, pinky finger, COST and REVs, common materials, turning away, getting in line, rules, comics, noise, naming, attachments, meditation, eigengrau, Providence, New York, Marseilles, prostitutes, taxi drivers, pride, fear, critical injury, receipts, etc.
Energy moves through common materials. Metal components, switches, diodes. Potentiometer, mechanical pencil. Paper, 8.5x11, white. A rock, a scribble, a shape. Blank until considered, played with, posed, and named.
Formative years: New England, Massachussets, Rhode Island, Boston, Providence, Olneyville.
Associations: Fort Thunder, Forcefield, Bug Sized Mind, Lightning Bolt, Chippendale, Brinkman. Paper Radio, Paper Rodeo, Mish Mash Mush, Lazy Magnet, White Mice, Landed, Mindflayer, etc. Some of these names evoke a frenzied, neon maximalism, candy raver palette, cartoons, LSD. CF seems to represent another side of this coin. His comics speak the measured language of slow-burn manga, cinematic wanderer, tabletop RPG.
Print artifacts: Powr Mastrs (series), William Softkey and the Purple Spider, Sediment, Mere, Pierrot Alterations, Lowtide (series), Norden Bombsite, A Distant Table, Flowers of the Con- vict, Blue Swimmer #1, etc.
Musical aliases, present and past: Universal Cell Unlock, Overpass, Mark Lord, Kites, Brown Recluse Alpha, etc. Group affiliations: Dynasty, Hexmorb, Daily Life, Pool, etc. See also: Unskilled Labor, Clean Sweep.
Raw, immediate, crude childlike; meticulous, baroque, precise: CF plays the tendencies off of one another, like notes. Harmonies and dissonances stir and sting.
Loners and tinkerers move through settings outside of time. Technology, magic, the elements, humor, wisdom, beauty, cruelty. Sacred and profane, both. Psychedelia comes on subtly, grinning. Pacing is key. The pages take their time; they show us how to read them.
Is this where you draw and practice?
Yeah. I practice at home, too. This is the 3D, the image zone. A lot of the music gear is at my house, which is copious, involved, and mostly handmade. But I record and draw here. And now I copy, print, and print with the receipt printer here. I just got this light table, so I’m going to silkscreen here, too. That’s the idea.
It’s nice that you’ve got a window.
A window and walls that go all the way up. That’s all I need. It’s literally a cube, a 10x10 cube.
Do you have a regimen when it comes to drawing or sound?
Usually it’s more just what’s on the table. Deadlines, set goals. Some things have to happen. Or maybe I’m in some other kind of fragile state where I would be doing nothing – I can’t work on the major project, I feel terrible. So I do something. You know what I mean?
Like if you’d been working on a book, maybe you’d make music that day instead?
Or maybe just draw in a different way, using a different tool that creates completely different results and has a different point of departure, as far as the rules and goals.
Do you impose a lot of rules on yourself?
Yes. Categorically, with everything.
With life?
I used to have a lot of rules for life, and then I let them all dissolve. There was a lot of turbulence because of that experiment. Now maybe I’m gathering them back up or something. You move faster with less attachments. So if you’re all alone and you have no money and you have no friends – I’m not saying it’s like this now, but there have been times – you can move very quickly through a story or something, because you’re living for it and it’s all you have. The more involved you become in life, even just trying to cook a good meal or something, it’s taking you away from your job, [from] something you have to do or you get sick. But, at the same time, [the job] is not a healthy thing in and of itself; it’s like a function. Dealing with unanswerable questions, trying to survive spiritually. At the very least you just have some difficult pastime. Nobody can really take that away from you. Yeah, I do this until I die, and I’m happy about it. And I can’t go back, and I’m not sorry that I’m happy about it. This is it.
There was a period where I had a lot of questions about what I was doing, so I broke all these rules, and then I answered the questions.
How long ago was it?
2011 to around 2016. And then many years of trying to find another way, to find something I could live with.
Do you have an example of what breaking a rule might be?
Drinking a lot, smoking tons of weed, not using a mechanical pencil. Using pens, conventional pencils – sharpener pencils, with different line widths so you can do shading and stuff. Mechanical pencil is all I’ve ever used, and only one size. And for a long time only one physical pencil, for over a decade. I still have it, but it fell apart. I got an identical one and used that for many years. It was a big struggle to start using the one I’m using now, but I think it was a good switch. I’ve used the same brand of eraser since I was 21. Same exact tools. And 8.5x11, which is what I drew in when I was a child. With something so boring, something magic happens. You don’t think about it. You’re not distracted by, “What conditioner should I use today? What color are the drapes?” Nothing.
Usually I have a radio set up so that when I come in I don’t have to think about music. I just hit on, and it’s usually the classical station or the jazz station. The less obstructions, the better. Like Gary Panter’s sketchbooks – he draws them all out of order, he just opens to any blank page and draws. It’s one less obstruction to drawing. That way, if he’s seeing something in that moment he just opens it, he’s there. He’s not even finding the place or being distracted by what he already drew, just jumping. That’s really inspiring.
Hotel rooms are inspiring. Completely empty. They don’t imply anything, so anything is possible. It seems like it’s exactly what you want, but there’s nothing there.
I feel that way about waiting rooms.
Right. 8.5 x11 is like that. It’s no big deal. But at the same time it could be a suicide note, or a valentine, whatever. A child’s perfect drawing.
So you have these rules, but I’m also curious about the other side, the one that’s opposed to the rules. What function does abandon, or play, serve in your work?
Whimsy? [Laughs]
Sure. The other side of the rules. Do you improvise, for instance?
Oh yeah. It couldn’t exist without that. But it’s a combination. It can start in so many different ways. Sometimes I’ll see something when I’m out during the day, and I get an idea for a drawing from it. It could be a hole in the ground, or some normal construction equipment or something. Or a tree, or a person walking a dog. Whatever. Later that day, I’ll draw it from memory. I haven’t ever let myself use photo references until this book that I’m working on right now.
When it comes to being crude or whimsical, or breaking the rules or wanting to be bad or something, drawing is essentially... A cartoon, a little scribble of graffiti, it might be childish, but at the same time it’s hard to get rid of. It’s a Puck, or a demon. There’s power in it , and it’s indestructible, and it’s always available to you. If you’re in jail, or you’re waiting, the tools are very common. That really appeals to me.
It appealed to me as a reader when I was a kid, too – knowing that this thing that had taken over my life and enchanted me and brought me to this other place, that it was all done by a person with a pencil and paper. It just seemed too good not to follow up on.
It’s a good place to bring stuff out. It’s pure. You can really be a brat. [Laughs] Or you can be really fancy, too, if you want. It’s all just sitting there, and I want it all to be in there. I want to admit it all.
It sounds like there’s an element of surrender to it.
Yeah, yeah. To nature. And to endlessness. The only problem is getting through, applying all the stuff. The stream is just so big. Anywhere you stick your head down you’re gonna find one, if you’re at it all the time, if you’re really doing your job. So things happen pretty quickly, I think. I forgot what you asked.
I asked about surrender. Relinquishing control.
Right, right. With music it’s more about setting up processes, creating situations, building circuits that are like these farms. There’s flora and fauna and systems that regulate each other. You add some fertilizer, whatever. There’s a poison river you have to take care of. Or you introduce it and suddenly kill everything. It’s a living thing. You’re creating what people now often call “generative synthesis.” It’s like a reptile brain feeding back on itself. You’re creating the situation, watching it, recording it – almost as phenomena. And then later you carve parts out of it, eradicate huge sections of it. Make something you feel is charged. And the statement comes from that. Enough tracks like that build up, and a statement emerges and becomes clear, and that becomes a release. Before that it’s still sort of this private wash. Things are getting worn, but they have to cook for a while. They don’t just pop out – “this is cool!” – cut a slab, put it on a scale. The rougher something is, the longer I hang onto it before releasing it. I wanna be sure I really like it.
You alluded to graffiti. Did you ever get into it?
Yeah, yeah. I was always really interested in it, but I lived in the middle of nowhere. The town I grew up in had a population of 2,000. It was almost entirely farms. Graffiti in that context is really funny, but incredibly exciting. Then moving to the city was like, wow, I can really go bomb. I can do this if I want to. At one point I lived by these train yards, on the third floor. Just beyond my window there was a huge drop-down, and you could see the whole train yard. I could monitor it from my room, and I could go and paint and be home in ten minutes to watch the train leave. It was really, really fun, but it was never as serious as some of the people we know. To be good at that, like anything else, you have to sacrifice everything for it, just go crazy for it, and it’s all you think about. Like Wombat or something. Wombat is everywhere in New York right now. Really cool, outstanding style... But yeah, I used to dress like a dork to go do it. I would put on Dockers and loafers and a tucked-in button down shirt and comb my hair. Put everything in a tote bag or something, something that looks like I go to MIT, and then just go crazy. It worked!