Earlier, I had a brief talk with Steven Kilbey.
RR: After Everything Now This. What's after this?
Steven: Detroit
RR: What about the horizon?
Steven: Horizon? Nervous breakdown. Fucking book it in. Try on our night off. [I couldn't tell if it was embittered, cynical, or both.]

Back to Marty, I decided to change the subject and ask him about After Everything Now This.
RR: This album has been written and recorded over three continents. How does the writing work within The Church?
Marty: It's a big jam session, you know. It's all that is--just a big jam session. The reason we still do what we do is because when we get into a room and jam, it just works.

RR: Flawlessly?
Marty: It just comes out, you know. We don't have to work too hard on it. There's a reason for sticking together and... [he seemed hesitant as if searching for the right word]...and we do and it's just like making love, you know. You should try making love and see what that's like. [I have, but thanks for the advice anyway, Marty.]
RR: If there's anything better than making love, God has kept it to himself! Marty: Look, it's all a metaphor for communication. [He repeated himself. Finally, he was beginning to open up.] And the whole point is to communicate and make something work. And if you communicate and make something work, then that's the reason to continue to do it, isn't it?

RR: What is it that you're trying to communicate then?
Marty: I don't care about what I communicate to people. [So much for lack of paradox in real life!] I don't care about what I communicate to people I create with. What the people get is irrelevant. As soon as you start caring about what people get, then you're in big trouble. Then you start designing yourself for somebody else. And what's that? That's nonsense. That's why relationships fail [emphatically and unstoppable now.] Because you start designing yourself for the other person instead of yourself. That's not the way to do it. You ought to do everything to be yourself without being selfish. That's the clever stuff

Maybe I'll sing instead.
Photo by Patrick Rose

RR: twenty-two years later, and sixteen records, has it been a good ride?
Marty: It doesn't seem like a ride! Ride [rather offended]! Is that the right word for it?

That was the end of that subject. He talked about a couple of records, including Ed Harcourt's, then...
Marty: You see, I believe reviews. When it says it's good, I know it's bad and when it says it's bad, I know it's good. [There was a reference there to Uncut's review of After Everything Now This, which wasn't received favorably.]
Marty talked for a while about magazines and reviews, but I wanted to steer him back to our previous topic.
RR: What is it that you want to communicate through The Church?
Marty: Nothing.
RR: Through yourself? Marty: Nothing at all!
RR: Through your guitar?
Marty: Nothing.
RR: Well, when is there something you want to communicate?
Marty: When somebody comes up to me and says, "I like that."
RR: I already said I like After Everything Now This?
Marty: Then, we've communicated.

My time with Marty was limited to that (and his explaining to me the new philosophy of Marty and the Art of Ambiguity). After the show at Chicago's House of Blues, Peter Koppes shed a little more light. "We dreamt we were going to affect people that way. We cannot stop, that's all."
-ea01
[edited by koolthing]