John Darnielle on creativity, capitalism, jam bands
“It’s so powerful that you want to ascribe this thing we call genius—which is a total myth! The genius is present in the work, it’s not present in the person. Ever. I don’t think we’ll ever be free of that because the work is conveyed by people.”
“It’s two people who understand one another’s ideas. Two is different than three. I’m not a numerology guy, but I do think groups have distinct numerical identities. Two people are very different from three people, three people are different from four. But two is different from everything else; duality is its own thing.”
“and the other thing is I think my antipathy towards jam bands was entirely misplaced. It was what I call cultural positioning. When people hate on Phish, most of those people have never listened to Phish, ever. They just know they don’t like the way they look on stage. I have lost all patience for that way of thinking. I do not care what a musician looks like, what he’s wearing; I’m embarrassed I’ve ever cared about that. I get it, Bob Weir—I’m a big Dead fan, like I said—if you look at pictures of Bob Weir in 1978 on stage, he is wearing shorts and a tank top every time, playing his guitar, and he looks hilarious (laughter). There’s no buts about it! It’s a pretty funny vibe. But I don’t give a shit! That no longer informs the way I listen to music at all.
A lot of people who hate on Dream Theater haven’t really sat down and listened to a Dream Theater record. When people are hating on them, Dream Theater stands in for a bunch of stylistic values that people think they oppose. I don’t have anything to do with that kind of discourse anymore. I’ve really gotten to a point of thinking of music in terms of whether it’s interesting, whether the music itself sounds like there’s something creative going on in there.”
“When you say capitalism, I think the issue is technology. I lean anarchist, though I wouldn’t call myself one. Anarchist ideology informs me, and I think that technology displaces habits that we formed as animals. They were good habits, they helped us a lot. Technology makes a lot of things easier—you can’t argue with the good effects of technology. One can argue the internet is bad, but what about the distribution of food? The distribution of food is good. Capitalism is to blame for making that a shitty thing (laughter). It cuts off like 25% of the world because they don’t have the money to pay for it. But the actual ability to get food across the country because of refrigeration—these things are all good. You can’t argue with refrigeration (laughter).
The victims of the industrial age are oral tradition, and community.”