David Eliade Interview (Part 2)

Here is the second part of the David Eliade interview, the manager of Fucked Up. Click here for the start.

A: What is Wilsim Publogy?

D: Wilsim Publogy was an offshoot of Romanian Manicheanism, and the whole Gnosticism trip. It sees cosmology in the same way as the Gnostics, in that the universe, or the being, or whatever, is split into these two forces, “light” and “dark”, or what have you, but differs in that Publogy doesn’t see the forces as necessarily opposite, but the same. It’s more into dualism, more along the lines of Vedantic Hinduism, who thought in terms of the “non duality of duality”. The whole Kabbalist “two poles” idea where the opposing forces are actually just different expressions of the same thing.  We tried to be influenced by this when we were making “Hidden World”, and it shows up in songs like “Triumph of Life”, and “Two Snakes” and was the inspiration for the cover art. Actually, that’s another way Mircea comes back in, the quote we used from him in the record; “to be no longer conditions by a pair of opposites results in absolute freedom”. Especially in the world now where you’ve got your two political ideas, everyone has these strong feelings of wrong and right – we’re living in an age where the multitude has been slashed into these singular opposites where life is a series of choices between two opposites, and there are really only two ways of existing, you know “right” or “left”. It’s important I think to try and pull the crate back open, try to release these other ways of existing. And to do that we try to just take away the divisions and the opposites and just shine through Wilsim Publogy.

A: Is Wilsim Publogy about knowledge or does it also influence your (moral) behaviour in daily life?

D: It’s the knowledge we use to live. Publogy informs all of my decisions, it is my cosmology. It’s the thing I refer to when I need to make decisions. I see WP in everyone around me, I use it to evaluate other people, situations I find myself in. It is a doctrine for living to me.

A: Does it have any ritual practice?

D: Not ritual per se.

A: In ancient time people had tribal rituals to let go of suppressed emotions to reach a higher state of their inner self. In Indian philosophy there are yoga techniques aimed at escaping the limitation of the body to free the soul (atman) to reach a higher state (moksha or nirvana). Also according to modern psychiatrists like Wilhelm Reich, people will feel freer by getting rid of traumas through a combination of techniques involving feeling, breathing, punching, kicking and yelling. In some way these are all the ingredients, not only of a tribal dance, but also of a good punk show, and in particular a Fucked Up show, with kids moshing and sing-a-long. Do you see a Fucked Up show as a ritual for disillusioned kids in today’s society to let go their frustrations and maybe reach something higher?

D: Not so much. I think if that was the case you would see people getting a lot more emotional and uncontrollable at shows. Plus it isn’t so much disillusioned people at punk shows anymore for the most part, especially our shows.  It is an interesting idea though, and we used to try to unleash some of those feelings with sigils at gigs. People are too uptight, and a concert isn’t something you experience with your heart, now you use your brain.  Especially for young people, there are so many stressful things to worry about – how you look, what other people are thinking of you, fitting in, all those pressures, no one can really let lose.  Not enough drugs involved either! On the next tour we’re gonna bring along an orgasmotron to unleash the orgone energy in the room.

A: Are you into shamanism, magick or any other means of reaching a higher state of consciousness? If so, can you or anyone else in Fucked Up claim to have had any paranormal experiences?

D: The next Fucked Up record is entitled “The Chemistry of Common Life”, which refers to a mushroom textbook from a long time ago.  So check.  I’ve dabbled with magick on and off for several decades. I sometimes like to credit Fucked Up as being my servitor to access the minds of young people.  Not sure about the paranormal experience stuff, you would have to ask them!  I certainly never have seen anything I would call paranormal.

A: In the inlay of the Hidden World booklet is a text about the origin and harmony of the world: “Vibrations and hums the quantum sum where we’re from”. You do not have to explain quantum physics, but can you explain your general idea of balance in the cosmos?

D: Well it’s the Wilsim Publogy trip again – we just feel the constant hum of unification throughout the cosmos. That piece (“Looking for Life”) is about seeing the cosmos as one massive conduit for creating life. One of the quantum realities deals with the idea that maybe when you turn your back there’s nothing behind it, that the physical reality we’re surrounded by is manifested inside our heads, rather than outside it. So if there is no human consciousness that manifests the universe?  It’s this nice one-sided romanticized view we decided to run with – there is a picture by Kubin we used on the Year of the Dog 12″ that shows Satan ejaculating humanity onto earth, and its sort of the same view – the 14 billions years of space was the preparation for the consciousness that would be able to bask in the glory.  That text is trying to follow the evolution of life through time and into the future.  We like to see the balance in the cosmos as just that, a cradle for life. How there is the pattern of self-replication, at every level, that manage this constant recycling of materials to keep pushing life and existence into the future.

A: Are there any final misunderstandings about David Eliade you want to eliminate?

D: That I don’t exist!

Kubin: Satan ejaculating over earth

David Eliade Interview (Part I)

At the end  of 2007 my friend Aisling Blissett did an interview with the mysterious manager of the band Fucked Up, David Eliade. David Eliade was  credited on their releases around that time as the mastermind behind the band. Not soon after the interview was published Fucked Up stopped crediting Mr. Eliade on their releases. At the same time Fucked Up dropped their own pseudonyms and shifted in a more direct and open approach to the outside world, which came with increased mainstream penetration and critical acclaim.  It is unknown if David Eliade was still involved in the band, still there were hints with a Christmas single in 2007. And then in 2011 he was back in the spotlights whenFucked Up released David Comes To Life. An epic rock opera of 4 parts which tells the love story of a girl named Veronica with no one else than David Eliade himself.

The interview was pusblished in Jagged Visions zine #1 and part of it also appeared on the Fucked Up blog. Check here the first part.

Aisling Blissett: You are mainly known as the manager of Fucked Up. The band describes you as their main inspiration. How would you describe yourself?

David Eliade: I’m just a normal guy who takes abnormal interests.

A: I would like to get to know David Eliade, the person, a bit better. Can you tell something about your daily routine? Where do you live? What music do you listen to?

D: Well, I have a full time job, and that keeps me quite busy at home. I do that and enjoy it. I won’t say what I do, but I can say that I work in film, under my real name. Besides that I’m also running an international crime brainwashing media collection agency. These days I have a fairly conventional lifestyle.  I enjoy drinking – I collect wines, like drinking chocolate the old way.  I’m one of those old hapless grown up hippies from a bygone age still trying to make the new age happen, but now it’s by inserting things subtly into my work, and trying to control punk bands!  I try to listen to “Ascension” by Coltrane once a week.

A: Do you get a lot of demo’s of bands looking for a manager?

D: Haha no. No one knows how to get in touch with me.  I’m not a manager, I’m an artist.

A: Are you related to the Romanian philosopher and writer Mircea Eliade?

D: Well, the “Eliade” part of my name is a pseudonym, and absolutely it’s taken from Mircea.  The plan with Fucked Up has never been to waste words – we try to pill as many meanings into each word as we can, so that no word on the paper is wasted.  It’s also the rule to use fake names as much as possible, partly for the same reason, but also for anonymity, so we can walk away from it when we are finished without the residue.

A: When was the first time you came in contact with FU and how did the collaboration develop?

D: I don’t have a lot of time to spread myself around, but I have people planted in various places to keep and eye on things for me. Octavio hangs out in the underbelly and caught the band at a show in New York a few years ago breaking up a fight that had started while they were playing. We sat down together that night and things just developed from there, we understood each other and wanted to move towards the same sort of future. They kept calling me Bruce Wayne!

A: I know Bruce Wayne, but who is Octavio? What is his role within Fucked Up?

D: Octavio in the Henchman. If I’m the wise, genteel and sort of sedated over-arching complex, Octavio represents the wild uncontrollable urge within the band. He’s been a friend of mine for a while, I found him at a very bad place and tried to clean him up a little, but not, let’s say to a clinical or sterile extent. The band met him through me, and was interested in him coming on board as my counterpart, because you know how they are interested in duality and symmetry.  You no doubt understand the depths that can be involved in producing a hardcore punk band, and there are levels that need to be dealt with in Fucked Up that not even I was prepared to deal with.  It isn’t a part of the underworld that I had any experience – when I was in those trenches they were coloured in a different way, if you know what I mean. Octavio comes from the future, he is part of the present – he knows how to fight in this world. Whereas I feel like for them I can be the light they turn on in the dark, Octavio is like the black mask we put on when we need to become dark.

A: Most of Fucked Up lyrics are written by Pink Eyes and Marbles. Have you had any input in writing these lyrics and choosing the subjects they deal with?

D: Yes, I show them things; try to explain true ways of presenting information. We sort of conceived the ideas for the first album together and I left them to put it all together as a final piece. There are things I added at the end.

A: Given that the band has a DIY punk background, do you ever have arguments with the band members about the musical and commercial directions the band should take?

D: At first we argued. I tried to explain their greater influence and potential. This I guess is always the way – artists often need to be shown the way and have their art put in a greater context. I try not to interfere too much in the musical aspects of the group, because that isn’t my strong point, but I do show them things there too. I mean I try not to be too heavy handed in any aspect of the group because I want them to be able to stand behind everything they’ve done as their own, but I am a part of the group and do have an influence.

A: You designed the logo of Fucked Up. Where did you get your inspiration for the artwork and what are your favourite logos?

D: I think the most powerful logos are the ones you can’t even tell are logos. Logos can be more than symbols, in that they can be the primary meanings behind those symbols. Money, fame, compassion, greed – these things that drive you are the logos I’m interested in. I mean, you know the game we play – we are into the symbols you can’t see, but that can see you. A logo is like the traffic signal for your brain, it’s the red or green pulse that controls your flow through life.

A: Do you see Fucked Up as a “Gesamtkunstwerk” or just a band? And in what extent do you see them as a contemporary manifestation of Dada or neo-Dada movements?

D: Well we’re starting to work on the David Comes to Life LP, which will try to incorporate more than just music into the presentation. We want to package it as a memory stick so that it can incorporate an album worth of music, the play, the documentary, the musical, the movie, you know the whole deal.  Soon I think media will be presented more along the lines of size rather than style – instead of buying an LP’s worth of music from your favourite band, you’ll buy a gigabyte’s worth, so we’re trying to get with that. It’s the whole indie-vertical-integration American Apparel style that is really taking, now you’ve got record companies that are getting into publishing and management, it’s like this disaster style economics where everyone is sensing this foreboding doom and trying to scoop up as much as they can before the bottom falls out. But ultimately Fucked Up is just a band. We tried to reference surrealism with Baiting the Public, but none of that kind of art really matters anymore, things are too reversed to be able to make any sort of meaningful impact.

A: The theme of the Year of the Pig is exploitation and violence against women, using the murder of 26 prostitutes in Canada by farmer Robert Prickton as its main subject. In an online published statement, you placed the case in a bigger context, and condemned today’s morality on sexism based on guilt and sin, but if you could, how would you explain to the victims why this horrible crime happened to them?

D: You can’t.  You can say, “your’s was a crime of disenfranchisement”, but it’s not even that simple.  Why did it happen to them as individuals?  They were in the wrong place at the wrong time – the wrong place being part of an industry that receives no protection and legislation, the wrong time being while prostitution is still a profession that is looked down upon and cast aside. We took steps to make sure the song wasn’t about targeting Pickton specifically, because there is no lesson there. Sure, there are murderers in society, but what does it mean for that society when one of them is able to systematically pick off dozens of similarly employed disenfranchised women off the streets, for years?  The Pickton case is about so much more than just one fucked up deranged farmer.

Second part coming soon. What happened with the memory stick?