Watt on Joyce

MTF: I like the record so much partially because the lyrics are so open-ended. I'm a writer, so I pay attention to all the words. They're not open-ended in that way that Henry is -- you know, where Henry's all mad and he says "I hate the world that I think hates me" -- so you can plug your world into it. I was talking about the haiku thing a couple minutes ago. They're like really dense, and specific to you guys who wrote them, but to me, I can apply them to certain specific parts of my life as well, even though I'm not working in the factory. I've always liked that.

MW: We thought that was really intense about punk. We heard this from other punk bands, too. Yeah. "Serious as a heart attack, makes you feel this way." There's kind of an anger there, you know? You're not really claiming any one, but you're full of these sensations. What device can I measure? Obviously, Georgie's got a fuckin' device there doin' the measurin'. You know what I mean? The real world is bearing in on imagination, coming on each other. My words on that album, a big influence -- "Ulysses." I had just read Jim Joyce, "Ulysses," so -- in fact, when we're on that tour with Flag, we stay at Hank's ma's -- Hank's ma had a fucking concordance to it, of "Ulysses." She gave it to me when I found it. It's always weird to read the concordance, almost like a record review, eh? Instead of the real thing, you read about it. I remember reading it after, it was strange about this idea, it was sorta like the idea of the first Minutemen album with the Raymond painting, then making the words like it was a description. See, the way Minutemen lyrics were, it's supposed be like the thing that you're looking at, and the hilarity to that. Experiences, like the speil. So it seemed like Joyce -- my take on it was, obviously this man, woman, whoever the writer was, was allowed access to resources, Aristotle and Aquinas, there were all these references -- I re-read it again a couple of years ago. Last year I went to Bloomsday, the hundredth anniversary, June 16th, heavy day, it's a heavy book coverage. It seemed to me then, and still does now, that he was trying to write about everything. And in a way the Minutemen were trying to do the same. Never sat down and agreed to do this or anything, but it seems like we're trying to write about everything. The whole world, the history, the future, what can be, could be, would be, what might have been. So, we're overreaching, and this is the thing we get out of it - basically, the things about one fuckin' day! Guy goes to a funeral, takes a bath, beats off on the beach. You know, so like Minutemen, we were writing things, and therefore trying to like...We were obviously overreaching, so I felt a sympathetic chord, for some reason, these cats, whether we're talking about Joyce or talking about Pettibon, of course!

MTF: Is that why it's June 16th? That song?

MW: The instrumental in there! Yeah! It's totally for Bloomsday.

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posted at 2:18 AM