Who am I and what do I do?

[imomus]

This Flasher video interview explains.



Summary: I'm a modern male incarnation of the storytelling Persian queen Scheherezade. With teeth like an Irish navvy.

Comments

[lord-whimsy.livejournal.com]

This is a great piece for you, I think. Bravo, young man.

didn't notice the teeth

[zzberlin.livejournal.com]

hey momus, I usually won't watch vid clips, but this clip found me at the right moment, so,,,

This self-description is apt: "a humourous but always cavilling critic" who likes interstitial points and supports theft

I agree with many of your remarks, especially that (my paraphrase), making art, as we move forward, will not be about money; it will be about propagating one's ideas. If you can do that well, you won't need money any more

Re: didn't notice the teeth

[lord-whimsy.livejournal.com]

Nick may be a bit self-conscious about them, but I think his teeth are beautiful; they bring to mind the teeth of an antique Pierrot marionette. They suit him.

[electricwitch.livejournal.com]

Jesus Christ! You look like Olivia Newton John in an eyepatch.

don't get me started on teeth

[zzberlin.livejournal.com]

My current dental hygiene routine has five steps: flossing, brushing, gum pick, rinse, scrape tongue

Scraping one's tongue actually does nothing for the teeth, so I'll drop that one from this list. But I still have four things I'm supposed to do to my teeth, twice a day

The last time I was at the dentist, he wanted me to do MORE. Now I'm supposed to rinse with this colored liquid to see what spots I've missed after brushing, and then REBRUSH

Has the dental establishment gone crazy? I'd just as soon lose the fuckers and eat yogurt and soup the rest of my days than spend that much time narcissizing my teeth!!

I do make a half-hearted attempt to take care of my teeth because my parents scraped and saved money for my sister's and my orthodontia. But I wonder if we aren't losing our perspective when the medical professionals expect us to spend 40 minutes daily coddling babying our teeth. I just don't give that much of a shit

[kumakouji.livejournal.com]

I have a couple of questions.

1) if youre Scottish, why do you speak in Received Pronounciation? I'm making a guess it's because you moved to London at an early age but I could be wrong.

2) You say music is dying; why do you feel like this? What was different before?

3) Why do you feel no real connection to Britain?

4) (bit of a novelty question) Seeing as you discuss the idea of identity... if you had to pick one of your songs to represent who you are (I'm talking Momus theme tune here) which one would you choose?

Re: don't get me started on teeth

[lord-whimsy.livejournal.com]

My own teeth have taken more abuse than neglect: sheared eye teeth thanks to pole vaulting and an ill-considered leap from a hot air balloon; bicuspid root canal from a hard knock while aboard a badly rocking dive boat; a cappped front tooth due to a childhood fall from atop a swing set, replaced a few times thanks to irate family members, etc.

Re: don't get me started on teeth

[kumakouji.livejournal.com]

"Scraping one's tongue actually does nothing for the teeth"

It's to improve your breath.

Scrape that funky tongue!

[(Anonymous)]

Here's a direct link if you prefer to avoid crashy browser plugins (http://flasherx.com/videos/momus.mov).

[imomus.livejournal.com]

1) if youre Scottish, why do you speak in Received Pronounciation? I'm making a guess it's because you moved to London at an early age but I could be wrong.

I wouldn't quite call it RP. But it's close to Standard English. I'd say it's down to a combination of things. I had a more regional accent when I was a kid, but lost it as my parents lost theirs -- a combination of teaching English as a foreign language (my dad's job), education at a private school in a notoriously Anglo Scottish town (Edinburgh Academy, the same kind of school Tony Blair was educated in -- he also doesn't sound very Scottish). And, of course, the fact that I haven't lived in Scotland since 1984, and that I live mostly amongst non-native English speakers.

The weird thing is that I had a London accent in Edinburgh when I was about 10. I just sort of affected it to sound cosmopolitan, I think. But I was at a boarding school at the time, and everyone's parents were living in Nigeria, working for Shell or something. So accents blurred and blended. It's just... globalisation, really. I think our family got globalized about 20 years ahead of schedule. Even as a child, my life was jets, and nothing seemed more natural than for my dad to be taking jobs all over the world. Diplomatic or academic ostings in Athens or Montreal or wherever.

2) You say music is dying; why do you feel like this? What was different before?

Cos basically I can remember a time when music carried into the mainstream the values of a counterculture that was really going to change the world. I remember the 60s and 70s. Music was a popular artform that got on mainstream TV but seemed to come from somewhere else entirely. Planet Sex, or Planet Freakout, or whatever. It was like a liberal secular religion, something worth giving your life to, dying for (even if that was just becoming Dionysus and choking on your own vomit). But music has lost that mission -- or, rather, succeeded too well -- and fragmented and tribalized, and become incapable of changing anything. Dionysus now works for Virgin Airlines. All that desublimation turned out to be super-repressive. What might change the world is robots, the internet, genetic engineering, and time-based media. Well, all except time-based media, actually.

3) Why do you feel no real connection to Britain?

Because it became clear to me that, with my values, I could only survive in Britain as a "sacrificial dandy", an aesthete you kicked, an embittered satirist or a super-marginal eccentric. My values are at odds with the values of Britain, especially post-Thatcherite Britain. You just have to look at TV or the big-selling UK newspapers or magazines to see what those values are.

I do retain some Britishness, though. I listen to Sherlock Holmes stories every day on Radio 7 (http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbc7/listenagain/).

4) (bit of a novelty question) Seeing as you discuss the idea of identity... if you had to pick one of your songs to represent who you are (I'm talking Momus theme tune here) which one would you choose?

Any one song would be a lie, a freak statistic. Put them all together and you get something more 3D. A sum of lies which, together, tell some kind of truth. It's a join-the-dots drawing with about 300 points. But you have to remember, too, that most songs are dialogues with an invisible partner. Maybe it's "Britain", maybe "the Lover", maybe a writer like Yukio Mishima or a songwriter like Serge Gainsbourg. So together they're a bunch of relationships with mentors, significant others, alive and dead. And of course with "God" and the audience.

[niddrie-edge.livejournal.com]

cheers..mind you even that didnt work..sound only..is it a firefox thing?

[niddrie-edge.livejournal.com]

From 2009 the school (Edinburgh Academy) will be co-educational for all ages.
I also turned up a reference to Rational Records who were based quite close to the school. I was browsing nostalgically for references to The Delmontes who are on LTM (fka Le Temps Modernes) label with Ludus.
http://www.ltmpub.freeserve.co.uk/delmontesbio.html
http://www.ltmpub.freeserve.co.uk/ltmhome.html

When I descended upon Hamilton Row in 1978 with my saved up paper round money to meet some girls and go to a Punishment of Luxury gig I noticed what can only be described as a "Stockbridge Accent."

The "Islington of the North" indeed.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

It was just going co-ed when I was there. I think we had 6 girls and 600 boys, which no doubt influenced my opinion that women are rare fabulous legendary creatures, not quite real. Like unicorns.

Rational was Alan Campbell's label, no? He lived on Howe Street, and may do still.

I think you mean Henderson Row, not Hamilton!

Stockbridge (which I used to think was called Stopbridge) was the backdrop to my childhood, but it all happened behind the fence that separated our bit (Lord Moray's Pleasure Gardens) from theirs (and "they" were thugs on drugs who'd spray your tits silver on the way to the brothel on Danube Street).

That scary stuff all happened beyond the Grecian temple on the Water of Leith -- the temple to St Cecilia, which actually plays a part in the Josef K Chance Meeting video (http://youtube.com/watch?v=J6fgY0tC5d8). You can imagine how exciting it was to get outside that fence and actually be in a band with -- gasp! -- working class people! (Though of course Malcolm's dad was the dean of New College up on the Mound. Not exactly Niddrie-edgy!)

I am not a musician

[zzberlin.livejournal.com]

<< But music has lost that mission -- or, rather, succeeded too well -- and fragmented and tribalized, and become incapable of changing anything >>

Right. I think the influence of music is in submission, but that it will come back, after a lull. Maybe ten years from now(?) someone will do something weird and wacky, and we'll all start hearing the message in the music again

<< What might change the world is robots, the internet, genetic engineering, and time-based media. Well, all except time-based media, actually >>

Time-based media being music and video? Anything that depends on sequential consumption? Is a series of images, presented on one page, time-based?

I like speed. I like consuming with my eyes because it's faster than consuming with my ears. But I think we'll get sick of consuming art fast, and then flip back to more meditative consumption. It's all cyclical, and right now we're on the visual, fast part of the cycle, but we will learn the limitations of speed and then want the slow stuff again

"Give us a few melodies, will ya dearie!"

[pay-option07.livejournal.com]

A crippled starship is compelled to make landfall on a remote colony world, where the locals refuse to allow the crew to disembark except under the strictest control. What terrible secret are they hiding?

Is this sort like parochial school in Tony Blair's world?

[fishwithissues.livejournal.com]

What might change the world is robots, the internet, genetic engineering, and time-based media. Well, all except time-based media, actually.

Ha! That revision-y sentence bit is one sure-interesting way to talk about the state of video right now!

Also I wanted to say that I really liked this video, your thoughts and the editing. It's very classy with the continuous sound edits but fade-in fade-out video edits--a surprisingly weird effect. I'd be interested to see the raw footage, especially the part where you start talking about how there's an aggressive side to your art that is perhaps very American. It kinda felt like that thought gets cut off.

Taxes

[(Anonymous)]

Dear Momus:

Just watched your interview - great stuff while watching I wondered

do you pay taxes? and if so where?

The reason I ask is that i'm a global person too and much like you my parents were business folk who traveled around world - jets were my home - and having grownup from Chile to Mexico to Japan to Brasil to America to Spain to Japan etc and now I'm back in South American a citizen of Bermuda (my father is bermudian - and like you have no attachment at all to the island other than my passport)

And i just filed taxes and paid money to the US Government, to the Chilean Government where I live sometimes.

My point is do you pay taxes? As a global person taxes seem so old world, part of un-globalized world? Maybe as an artist you don't make enough? Surely Wired must pay you something? Do you pay to German Government? What about the US?

What do you think?

tap o lauriston no more

[niddrie-edge.livejournal.com]

Mm what melting pots!
To think I fell down the mews from the Oxford Bar to the Gloucester Hotel passing your salubrious locale.
St Bernards Well is the temple? With the statue of Hygeia?
http://www.megalithic.co.uk/article.php?sid=10580

Interesting TV show on here tonight called Menace of The Masses. How the art elite brought difficulty into modernism to alienate what Yeats called the photographic eye of the masses.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbcfour/documentaries/features/menace-masses.shtml

Re: don't get me started on teeth

[cheapsurrealist.livejournal.com]

pole vaulting and an ill-considered leap from a hot air balloon

You're quite the adventurous dandy!

[(Anonymous)]

. . . parking ticket.
-John FF

[cheapsurrealist.livejournal.com]

Nice widescreen hi def well lit good sounding video. It's going to be hard to go back to YouTube.

Oh and you were good too.

[deadbatteries.livejournal.com]

this was a nice interview. i also think your teeth suit you.

i couldn't stop staring at that plant-thing on the television screen.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Did no-one spot the rabbit? He becomes suddenly evident at one point, chewing tobacco smugly in the background.

[deadbatteries.livejournal.com]

oh, under your computer monitor? I'm afraid it's a little dark for me to see (or perhaps this is beause I'm too accustomed to the noisy prattlings of my pet rats), but he does look rather fuzzy and adorable.

...Unless you're tricking me and that's a bunny slipper I'm seeing.

I feel very strongly about this.

[evxanadu.livejournal.com]

http://andyoudontstop.blogspot.com/