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John Darnielle has developed a bit of a cult status. As the leader and songwriter of the Mountain Goats, Darnielle has managed to become one of the most respected lyricists in music, causing fans to lean forward in anticipation of their personal favorite line. Over e-mail, John spilled his guts about his muses and the art of emotional distance.
Observer: Is Get Lonely autiobiographical, like The Sunset Tree?
JD: Well, sort of, but it's much more abstract - the stories generally aren't true. I never drowned myself, like the guy in "In Corolla", but emotionally it's coming from a place of real alienation. Weird to be talking about this kind of thing. The songs are stories, anyhow, springing from the disconnect you get when you start isolating too much.
Observer: Do you find any direct connection between the topics addressed on The Sunset Tree (abuse, tough childhoods, etc.) to those on Get Lonely (loneliness, adult relationships, etc.)?
JD: That's a good question! The ex-psych-nurse in me says "obviously, yes": what happens to you in a dysfunctional household has direct bearing on your ability to deal with other people. What's weird for me is that I used to by hypersocial, couldn't stand to be alone for even a night, and then something happened and now I'm not like that at all anymore. To find yourself feeling alone even when you're with people who you love: that's sort of one of the album's themes, and I think that's a feeling that certainly has its genesis in the sort of house where I was a kid.
Observer: A friend who I played the album for said that as sad as it can sound, there seemed to be a reflective sense of looking back at trouble, that there seemed to be a distance between events and narration. Would you say that this idea is accurate in regards to the way the songs were written?
JD: Maybe. It varies from song to song. I think I wrote "Cobra Tattoo" very very early in the morning when my wife was still asleep upstairs; that was a sort of I-am-right-there-with-the-narrator moment, that still of the early morning when the world seems to have buried itself. I know "Maybe Sprout Wings" is sort of that panic of wondering if you'll ever stop waking up and feeling kinda messed-up. But it'd be a little too goth-emo to not be a little reflective about it; who wants to hear a guy just plain wallowing?
Observer: On that note, do you find yourself most often writing while you're in the thick of things, or after there's been enough time to look at events and ideas objectively? JD: Oh, I've never written "in the thick of things"; I think it's an abysmal idea. People have this romantic notion that you'll express your feelings best if you "Say It Now!!!" But while that's true in life, it isn't in art. 'Cause who expresses his pain in rhyming couplets, or in clean pop tetrameters? Nobody! Anybody who tells you, "Yeah, this very structured song with a chorus is exactly what I was feeling," is a liar, and a base liar at that. Emotions don't have choruses. They barely even have words!
Observer: You mentioned working as a psychiatric nurse. Has that job had any effect on your life and your art?
JD: Just insofar as one meets a lot of people and learns some of the really old truths: that pain is universal, that nobody like to feel hurt, that there's an essential goodness in anyone no matter what they've done: that sort of thing.
Observer: The song "Dance Music," off of The Sunset Tree, seems to have struck a certain chord with people. Do you enjoy the idea that people might use your music as the kind of escape you talk about in the song? (Note: the song is about a boy turning dance music up loudly to block out the sound of his parents arguing.)
JD: Sure! I mean, it's a real honor, maybe the highest honor, to write something that might give somebody a moment of comfort on a sad day, even if that comfort amounts to just helping them go even deeper into that sad place, which is how I use music for comfort. This is gonna make me sound like The Man Who Lived On Emo Mountain, but my favorite music is stuff that makes me cry uncontrollably. After that, I like stuff that transports me: really spaced-techno, super-ice-cavern metal, well-realized instrumental stuff. If people get from my stuff what I get from that kind of stuff, I'm really, really happy about that!
Observer: Did making The Sunset Tree end up being therapeutic? What about the new album?
JD: A weird sort of therapy I think. It was just really upsetting and difficult to write and record. Peter (Hughes, bassist for The Mountain Goats) has talked in interviews about coming out of the shower in a hotel to find me on the floor with a notebook and my guitar sorta sobbing to myself, trying to hold it together. The new album, yes actually-I was able to sort of venture deeper into darker places I was sort of suppressing. But that's a by-product; I don't think people should use their own music for therapy. I think the first responsibility is to the listener.
Observer: How have you managed to stay so prolific? Any advice for young songwriters experiencing output trouble? How many songs do you write that the rest of us never end up hearing?
JD: I have written more songs people will never hear than I have released; one tries not to release the songs that are poor. If you're not writing good stuff, you sort of have a choice: stop writing for a while and come back to it , days, weeks, months later, or try to plow through. I think the former is the better choice.
Observer: You were an English major in college. Any books you've read recently that have really made an impact on you?
JD: I'm in the middle of a year's worth of only reading books by women, since most people's reading (mine included) tends to accidentally/thoughtlessly end up being pretty dominated by guys. I am late to the Virginia Woolf party I guess, but I read Orlando and To the Lighthouse recently and holy God, was she great. Read a Nadine Gordimer book too and liked it but it was awfully bleak - nothing wrong with bleak, and the writing was gorgeous, but it kind of sapped me. Right now I am reading The Women's History of the World.
Observer: Anyone who currently inspires you musically?
JD: Kaki King, Kaki King, Kaki King, Kaki King, and of course Kaki King.
Observer: In your online bio, you're quoted as saying "If you give people the right chemicals and enough time to themselves, they can permanently disable their internal regret mechanisms." Have you had the right chemicals and enough time, or is there anything you regret?
JD: That's a bio from two albums back. I keep meaning to write a new one for the mountain-goats.com site, but daily life gets in the way. That bio refers specifically to the characters and stories on We Shall All Be Healed. Naturally I think regret is pretty healthy-I dislike the rather popular idea that one should live one's life without regrets. What the hell can one write about, or share of value, if one regrets nothing? Animals don't have regrets, but I think humans must; only sociopaths don't regret having hurt people, and as you go through life you're bound to cause a few people pain. That said, I do think that the right chemicals can pretty much cut the regret wires.
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