Principles of Art

Tonight the Dorothy Heralds did an interview for the show Radio Literature on WORT here in Madison. The interview will broadcast this Thursday, September 28th at 7PM Central. For those of you not in the Madison area, you can listen via the Internet here For those of you who don't know, WORT is a community supported radio station here in Madison. No, not "Public Radio" in the PBS, "All Things Considered" sense. It's actually a non-profit, publicly owned radio station. You may be confused about why we'd be spotlighted on a show that focuses on "poetry, fiction, non-fiction and children's literature from Wisconsin". A fan of ours, Keenan, is one of the hosts. The tie-in is that Keenan, who is a writer himself, has a lot of ideas about how work in different disciplines not only influence each other, but how they work from the same universal principles.

He's also a friend and co-conspirator of Jess, a local filmmaker we're working with. Jess is producing (and directing and all that other stuff) a film and has asked us to contribute to the soundtrack. This has, of course, been very exciting for the band as we've always looked to film as one of our main inspirations. To finally be involved in the medium has been a bit of a dream come true for us.

During the interview, we talked about the growth of the band and how we write. One of the ideas that came out was that in the process of developing as an artist, you begin to trust your "instincts" shall we say. You're presented with an idea, or concept, and instead of working out a response, or "solution", by analyzing, you react in something of an emotional way. As time goes by, those responses become more appropriate and poignant. They become the "correct" responses, or the ones that make the whole greater than the sum of the parts. I can't help but think of this as the response to the touch of a lover. Instead of calculating a response, the response is immediate and "true". Almost in a Zen sense.