The Creative Influence of Literature's Alternative Outlook

04 July 2014, 09:00

(Cerebral Ballzy)

I remember the first time reading Catcher in the Rye and the impact it had on me creatively. Although it’s an obvious literary hallmark, it serves as a great example of how simple and concise presentation of an alternative outlook can be utterly compelling. I’m a sucker for the abject and downtrodden, for the misunderstood and befallen, for the people who find beauty in life’s piss stained corners and ill lit dwellings.

Debauchery and/ in subversive literature has always taken an effect on the band. The Beats and certain French poets have always found a way to present their marginalised existence’s in such a poetic, romantic way and i’ll always find interest in that. The interwoven connection in the life of say, a Jim Carroll or Burroughs, and their respective works, is so symbiotic and connected that you are literally flipping through days and instances of their lives with every turn of the page. It’s also apparent in some recordings (usually of the homemade analogue variety) that when listened to, it immediately takes you to not only the headspace of the artist but to the very room in which it actualised. I want our tunes to do that.

Jean Genet wrote his magnus opus from prison. A french street beggar sentenced to life for various “quality of life” offences pardoned by the likes of Cocteau and Sartre. It’s strange how beautiful that is to me. Beauty overrides atrocity in most cases. I’d like to create earnest beauty in this maniacal existence somehow like some of my favourite writers.

Genuine intent and a compelling angle to present, whether it be from the top like Salinger or from the gutter like Genet, will always ring true with the people that imbibe the presented work. These qualities are of of the upmost importance for me as I move forward creating, whether it be music or literature. Just don’t let the lifestyle take you before the work’s made.