C O U N T E R P R E S S

Calling it political is a kind of classification—but that’s what comes to my mind when I think of deciding not to accept the manipulation of your values and choices by corporations. There’s a huge tendency to regard wealth as the primary evidence of success. You’re successful if you’re published by the largest publishers. You’re successful if you wear expensive designer clothes—even having the damn name of the designer featured as a major component of the design. You become an advertisement for them in order to have the status that comes with showing you can afford their stuff. Wouldn’t you call it political to say that you reject that? That you’ll dress in a way that bypasses them, you’ll publish stuff in a way that bypasses them, that in every facet of your life you’ll refuse to be shepherded by these people whose only interest is to make money from you? You’re saying, “I want to make work that I think is interesting rather than take the path of least resistance and surrender to a system.”

I put my heart into the new EP, I hope someone likes it. I wanted the tunes to be anti-bullying tunes that could maybe help someone to believe in themselves, to not be afraid, and to not give up, and to know that someone out there cares and is looking out for them.

Madness need not be all breakdown. It may also be break-through. It is potentially liberation and renewal as well as enslavement and existential death.

if 1% of the population controls most of the disposable wealth, what we call “the market” reflects what they think is useful or important, not anybody else.