That's What She Said...

queer feminist musings with a side of cocktails.

[fckypym]

“Just fucking forgive yourself. Let go. That shit was never yours. It didn’t belong to you. The beauty and the talent and the hubris and the superiority - they were all someone else’s idea of you, and they felt so good for so long, you made them a part of your identity. It was all a fucking fiction, and you can just let it all go. It’s okay, really. Have a good cry, shake it off, and then forgive yourself.”

— Dear Coquette, “On Self-Worth and Acceptance”

[elijahwrites]

Mark Mothersbaugh Answers Elijah’s Questions

Portrait of Mr. Mothersbaugh by Ryan Schude.

Mark Mothersbaugh is the lead singer of the New Wave/Post Punk band Devo. He also scores movies and television shows. He’s written theme music for Pee-Wee’s Playhouse and Rugrats, while scoring music for The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou and Thor: Ragnarok. He is not only a musician, but also an artist and a sculptor. He’s made art like the “Roli Polis” sculptures, Self Portrait as Clown, and Fingerbot and the Boy (more on these below!).

I first found out about Mark Mothersbaugh at a young age when I watched Yo Gabba Gabba!, where his segment was Mark’s Magic Pictures. I started listening to Devo in the fourth grade and learning more about them during this pandemic we’re in. I think that it made me see them as more than just musicians. It made me see them as people who had an important message and wanted to share it. Their focus on spreading a message instead of making money made me like their music even more.

So here is my interview with Mark Mothersbaugh!

Photo of Mark Mothersbaugh performing with Devo by Bobbie Watson Whitaker.

Elijah Gomez: You’re working on music for tv/movies/video games, your art/sculptures and you travel for appearances. What’s your creative process? How do you keep track of all of your projects?

Mark Mothersbaugh: I work on overlapping projects, because that’s the way my mind works.  Sometimes music suggests a visual to me, and I walk across the hallway at my studio, and put it on paper.

I like working on/composing for film and tv and games because of the interaction with the other creators and artists that allow a composer to make an idea bigger than it was before I joined the project.  

I have a great team at Mutato that keeps me on target on each project, so we never miss any deadlines.

Freedom of Choice, 1980

EG: The name Devo means de-evolution and songs like “Space Junk” are about scary futures, but songs like “Whip It” and “That’s Pep” send motivating messages. Songs like that taught me that life isn’t just positive or negative, but it’s both. What did being part of something like Devo do to change your world view?

MM: Devo was created as an art movement originally, writing songs and performing was much more affordable in those days than making films or large art pieces, and so we gravitated that direction as a natural response.

Members of Devo, Brian Eno and David Bowie.

EG: Why were you and the other members of Devo resistant to Brian Eno’s ideas for “Q: Are We Not Men? A: We Are Devo!”?

MM: Maybe I’ve overstated our resistance a little too much in interviews:  Brian Eno, Corny Planck the engineer, and David Bowie all contributed artist material to the album. At that point in time, record companies were all angling for our attention. Managers were claiming that they represented us, and lots of outsiders all were looking for ways to get a piece of us before we had a chance to make our own public artist statement.

Brian Eno was and is a musical icon, a genius I think, and super supportive of us.  I thank our lucky stars he was willing to put up with us and help make that recording happen.

Pee Wee’s Playhouse Theme by Mark Mothersbaugh and Cyndi Lauper.

EG: You have written theme songs (Rugrats, Pee Wee’s Playhouse, Crash Bandicoot, the Sims series, Thor: Ragnarok, The Willoughby’s, and the Lego franchise) in different eras. What is it like creating music in all these different eras? What are your favorite and least favorite theme songs that you’ve written?

MM: I’ve enjoyed writing for film, games, and tv through the years, and technology has changed through the times and I’m always staying up to speed with all that stuff.

It’s been a fascinating experience.

As far as faves and least fave theme songs, it wouldn’t be fair to call the theme songs out that way.

My favorites change from day to day. I love early ones for different reasons than I like later ones, same with Devo songs.  

Sometimes I hear something I haven’t listened to in a few years, and I find a different meaning that wasn’t there originally for me. It’s ever evolving.

Untitled Roli Poli, Ink on ceramics, 2014

EG: What gave you inspiration for your Roli Polis? What are the Rolli Polis about? Do they speak?

MM: Roli Polis are kind of like minions of Booji Boys. They are trusting, loyal, and contain a part of my better side in them.  

If we ever get them their own tv show, we could find out if they speak.  

Self-Portrait as Clown, Screen print of painted collage, 1987

EG: Personally, I’m afraid of clowns, but I really like the postcard of you as a clown. Why did you make a self-portrait of yourself as a clown in Self-Portrait as Clown?

MM: It was a self-denigrating self-portrait that came up in time again when we were assembling the Myopia exhibition catalog.

I painted the image around 1975-77?  

Next it was revived in a limited edition silk screen print that I made in the 1980’s.

I think it represents the process of growing up and realizing some things you thought/opinions you had when you were age 17, you just don’t feel the same about those same things at age 28.

Fingerbot and the Boy, Woven Nylon Fibers, 2009

EG: In Fingerbot and the Boy, Fingerbot has no face, and I think he and the Boy are making first contact with their fingers. What is the meaning behind their interaction?

MM: I like Fingerbot because it is sort of the naive self connecting with wisdom and experience.

1964—Monument to the Conquerors of Space, 2012

EG: Living through the protest and shootings at Kent State were a part of the inspiration for Devo and the concept of de-evolution. I’m living through a pandemic and the Black Lives Matter protests. You expressed your feelings through music and art, and I’m getting to express mine through writing and art. There are similarities, because we both used words and creativity to communicate, but how did you keep your creative process together during those troubling times?

MM: I needed to turn to my creative process after the shootings, because the other Devos and myself were confused by what had happened.

We realized de-evolution was real, and we wanted to talk about it through our art.

EG: This is a similar time of trouble to when Devo started. I feel like some of the messages are still important today. Are there any plans for future Devo albums about this time? If not, are you making any solo music about this time?

MM: Never say never for future Devo albums, I write music for myself - not just for Hollywood - on a regular basis, and I’ve enjoyed putting out limited releases through the years.  

I’ve been encouraged to organize and release more of the approximately 50 albums worth of material I have written for my own enjoyment, but that means facing the other way - instead of continuing to forge ahead.

Ping Island/Lightning Strike Rescue Op

EG: I recently watched The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou (directed by Wes Anderson), and I really liked it. What was your favorite song that you made for the movie? Mine was Attack On Ping Island.

MM: I have to say, I enjoyed writing Attack on Ping Island. By that point in our relationship, Wes was coming into my studio before he had the script finished, and we talked about what the outdated music equipment on the boat would be, and how it would sound.

So we (Wes and I) went down to the basement at Mutato Muzika, and pulled out an old 1970’s era Oberheim TVS 1 synth from Devo archives, and it sounded just right.

I remember when I had live orchestral players in my studio, recording Attack On Ping Island, and right before we recorded it, Wes walked into the room with the players and instructed them to “play like you’re a synthesizer”, which I thought was awesome.

Club DEVO Catalog - Surplus 1980

While I am inspired by Mr. Mothersbaugh, I don’t believe in idols, but I’m impressed by his ability to multitask and his unparalleled level of creativity.

Thank you Mr. Mothersbaugh and Jennifer Shipman @ Mutato Studios for the interview. I hope that you all enjoyed this interview as much as I enjoyed working on it!

Fin.

[happifying-things]

[animatedamerican]

what an excellent kaiju

[ruffboi-mags]

Very polite, attempts to leave trees and fences intact. 10/10, would be invaded by again.

[julesofnature]

“Things are not getting worse, they are getting uncovered. We must hold each other tight and continue to pull back the veil.”

— Adrienne Maree Brown

[jacobwren]

“There is something that circulates in many radical movements and spaces, draining away their transformative potential. Anyone who has frequented these spaces has felt it. Many (including us) have actively participated in it, spread it, and been hurt by it. It nurtures rigidity, mistrust, and anxiety precisely where we are supposed to feel most alive. It compels us to search ourselves and others ruthlessly for flaws and inconsistencies. It crushes experimentation and curiosity. It is hostile to difference, complexity, and nuance. Or it is the most complex, the most nuanced, and everyone else is simplistic and stupid. Radicalism becomes an ideal, and everyone becomes deficient in comparison. The anxious posturing, the vigilant search for mistakes and limitations, the hostility that crushes a hesitant new idea, the way that critique becomes a reflex, the sense that things are urgent yet pointless, the circulation of the latest article tearing apart bad habits and behaviors, the way shaming others becomes comfortable, the ceaseless generation of necessities and duties, the sense of feeling guilty about one’s own fear and loneliness, the clash of political views that requires a winner and a loser, the performance of anti-oppressive language, the way that some stare at the floor or look at the door. We know these tendencies intimately. We have seen them circulating and felt them pass through us.”

— carla bergman & Nick Montgomery, Joyful Militancy

[becuzitisbitter]

The notion of hospitality is not just about welcoming guests; it connotes a sensibility of trust based on people’s sense of their capacity to face the world together. Being held in this way also enables people to be open to strangers: not simply ‘tolerant’ but capable of of open-ended encounters, generosity, and curiosity. To encounter a stranger and be open to difference in this way is not at all the same as tolerance. Liberal tolerance treats individuals as atomized entities who are required to put up with each other, with the state as a universal arbiter. Hospitality starts not from rights-bearing individuals but from a sensuous and lively world, composed through common notions that have evolved to sustain joy or conviviality. To be ‘hosted’ is to be allowed to encounter a world, to be invited into it. For the same reason, it is not individuals who are trusting; there is no self-inclosed individual who ‘chooses’ to trust but bundles of relationships in which the capacity for trust is activated and drawn out of people.

Joyful Militancy

[notsoterriblymisanthropic]

“A paradox of joy is that it can’t be described fully; it is always embodied differently, as different struggles open up more space for people to change and be changed. In fact, to grip it, to nail it down, to claim to represent it fully would be to turn it into a dead image divorced from its lively unfolding. The way to participate in joyful transformation is through immersion in it, which is impossible if one is always standing back, evaluating, or attempting to control things.”

— Nick Montgomery and carla bergman, Joyful Militancy: Building Thriving Resistance in Toxic Times

[saintjoan]

“…Longing, of course, becomes its own object, the way that desire can make anything into a god.”

— Mark Doty, excerpt of The Death of Antinous

[soracities]

““Longing,” says the poet Robert Hass, “because desire is full of endless distances.” Blue is the color of longing for the distances you never arrive in, for the blue world.”

— Rebecca Solnit, A Field Guide to Getting Lost

[soracities]

“Leave the door open for the unknown, the door into the dark. That’s where the most important things come from, where you yourself came from, and where you will go.”

— Rebecca Solnit, from “Open Door”, A Field Guide to Getting Lost

[memoryslandscape-deactivated202]

“The self is a patchwork of the felt and the unfelt, of presences and absences, of navigable channels around the walled-off numbnesses. Perhaps it’s impossible for anyone short of an enlightened being to carry the weight of all suffering, even to recognize and embrace it, but we make ourselves large or small, here or there, in our empathies.”

—

Rebecca Solnit, from “Wound,” The Faraway Nearby (Penguin Books, 2013)

[anenlighteningellipsis]

“grief and hope can coexist.”

— Rebecca Solnit, reminding me of an essential truth, from the Forward to the Third Edition, Hope in the Dark: Untold Histories, Wild Possibilities

[bunlly]

“You must learn one thing: the world was made to be free in. Give up all the other worlds except the one to which you belong. Sometimes it takes darkness and the sweet confinement of your aloneness to learn Anything or anyone that does not bring you alive is too small for you.”

— David Whyte

[endless-unfolding]

Enough. These few words are enough. If not these words, this breath. If not this breath, this sitting here.

This opening to life we have refused again and again until now.

Until now.

—David Whyte, “Enough” from Where Many Rivers Meet (Many Rivers Press, 1990)

[abiding-in-peace]

“The ultimate touchstone of friendship is not improvement, neither of the self nor of the other: the ultimate touchstone is witness, the privilege of having been seen by someone and the equal privilege of being granted the sight of the essence of another, to have walked with them and to have believed in them, and sometimes just to have accompanied them for however brief a span, on a journey impossible to accomplish alone.”

—

David Whyte

FRIENDSHIP:

[dichosyvida]

“A library is a focal point, a sacred place to a community; and its sacredness is its accessibility, its publicness. It’s everybody’s place.”

— Ursula Le Guin

[probablyasocialecologist]

“Home, imagined, comes to be. It is real, realer than any other place, but you can’t get to it unless your people show you how to imagine it—whoever your people are. They may not be your relatives. They may never have spoken your language. They may have been dead for a thousand years. They may be nothing but words printed on paper, ghosts of voices, shadows of minds. But they can guide you home.”

— Ursula Le Guin, Words Are My Matter: Writings About Life and Books 2000-2016