Adapted from various Marvel Comics by various authors and artists Originally published 1963, Marvel Comics What its about Four years after the events of. Desmond Caine suffers from insomnia and spends his nights walking the streets. One night, he witnesses a murder, generating a strange chain of events in his life. Words like soul, tribalisation, disfranchised, reinforcing etc. And they may string them together in any order they wish. BRIAN Very good idea. They didnt say which words. In fact, we could use your lyric writing program combined with my patent lyric extender to make wonderfully meaningful webs of exotic and futuristic terms, which would then qualify us for a jointly held seat I always like a seat to be jointly held at the Sorbonne, where we could hang out with Derrida and other people I cant pronounce, let alone understand. DAVID Oh hallowed exotic synchronicityAndy and I are feeding your questions and my answers, in part anyway, into the Verbasiser. Within an hour after this session I will be sending you the fragmented version of our interview. Please extend any viable parts you so wish. This exercise may well be illustrative of much of that which you have been gabbing on about in your year end future round up. BRIAN This is a very promising direction, and much better than answering questions such as, What are your thoughts on Q magazine Meanwhile, there is one question which this man asketh which may be worth answering. Which is the least useful thing in you studio DAVID Bert Weedons Big Book Of Skiffle Chords. BRIAN I find that hard to understand, since this is a well known classic of modern musical thought, ranked alongside such worthy epistles as Derridas Writing And Difference. I had to mention that so that we got the word difference into the sausage making machine. DAVID This reminds me of a conversation I had with Keith Richards at the 1. Weedon convention. Keith said to me, Whats the difference between a Lonnie Donegan B side and a Derrida deconstruction Please supply punch line. BRIAN Lengthy pause for thought. There must be a great punch line to this question. Perhaps this is what the journalist could supply. The first joke linking skiffle and post structuralist philosophy. DAVID I would like to mention that Ron Athey the performance artist will commit an act of scarification on a friend and fellow artist in public on Thursday night here in NYC. What are we to make of this current move towards ritualisation It resembles in some aspects the body part art of the late 6. Could this be God pleasing in some way to appease and to ask for corrective measures to be applied to our fast fragmenting society BRIAN I wonder if they use anaesthetics, or is the pain a big part of it If it is, why is it This is not dissimilar from the now well entrenched popular movement towards tattooing and body art in general but I have a queer feeling about it. I think part of its message is, Look Art in general is that it doesnt that its a place where you can do things without life threatening consequences a simulator if you like. DAVID Tell that to Chris Burdon. BRIAN Burdon and others like him are definitely interesting artists, but as anecdotes or almost popular urban myths. I wonder if you actually have to do it Why not just say that you did it Wouldnt it have the same effect on the rest of the worldIf this isnt satisfactory, then it must be because the effect you wanted is the effect on yourself, not on the world at large. I favour the clever con artist who remains intact to the committed Fine Artist who ends up with his arms shot off or even worse in the case of that Austrian blockhead he would be Austrian, wouldnt he with his dick cut off. I mean this is so romantic, its ridiculous. The artist must suffer for his art. DAVID I suppose that would have been Hermann Nitsch or Rudolf Schwarzkogler or one of those guys. Its called the cutting edge, Brian. Enough of your queer feelings. Do you think Abba can ever be replacedBRIAN Sorry, Im having to do something else at the same time. What would we replace them with A large plastic gnome Something from a DIY storeIn fact, I like them more and more, which indicates that I am moving further and further from the dick cutting off consciousness of Viennese art towards the anodyne world of sweet universal harmony as espoused by the Scandinavians. DAVID I hate to sour your worldview, Brian, but you are not taking into consideration the Gothenburg castrationists. Every cloud has its silver stomach lining this is a known fact. Read your Kant. BRIAN You leave my Kant out of this. But now you mention it, werent Abba the founding members of the Gothenburg castrationists And isnt this how they acquired those sweet tunes to begin with DAVID You are quite right, Brian. In fact, they were initially known as Abbattoir. BRIAN Very good. A joke at last People might think were flippant reading this, so we should go on to some more serious subjects. Id hate people to think that we talked about abattoirs most of the time. Though I am fascinated by current abattoir throughput figures which have reduced considerably since all those animal rights people insisted that the animals had to be properly dead before being eaten. But anyway, lets look at this mans questions again. He asks me what does the future holdHow would I know Uncertainty is the answer, but the interesting possibility is that we all become comfortable with it. DAVID Our expectations of an ending of conclusion, Brian, learned from repeated story film narrative culture, gives us a completely unjustified set of expectations for life, Brian. Read my Kant. BRIAN For me, the big breakthrough is accepting that fade outs happen at both ends of whatever you are doing. I always liked records that faded up as well as down, so you felt that what you were hearing was part of a bigger and unknowable thing that existed somewhere out in the ether, but to which you couldnt have access. DAVID Sort of like a Rock God, Brian BRIAN Sort of like that. DAVID Could we possibly ponder the probability that popular music is, in fact, the most divisive form of music, contrary to the popular belief that if helps teach the world to sing with one voiceBRIAN Yes. Popular music is as much of a badge of allegiance AGAINST certain things as FOR them. Theres no point in thinking that an appreciation of a culture automatically qualifies you to empathise with its members, or will lead to your acceptance by them. But then, I think that what artists hope to do is to at least show you what other pictures of the world might be like. You, as listener or viewer, can then decide whether or not you want to inhabit those worlds. For instance, when you see a Rambo movie, you see a theory about how the world is constructed with, for example, clear patterns of good and evil, and unambiguous allegiances. Then you see a man, a real man, Rambo, dealing with that simple picture. Its a kind of diagram and if it fails because the diagram doesnt include enough detail. But at least you can then find out what level of detail other people are working on. By the way, I must say that I find this a very hard way to discuss ideas. Perhaps Im too used to my normal E mail system, where you get longer to respond. Perhaps also Im not usually in such a bloody hurry. I have to go to Innsbruck, land of chopped off willies, tomorrow, first thing. DAVID Im seriously hoping that we will finish before tomorrow, Brian. Tomorrow being the first day of the rest of your life Nietzsche, a few thoughts on Rambo, poor dunce hes less than within us, the brains talk, but the will to live is dead, and prayer cant travel so far these days.