In the fall of 2011, I visited Christopher Owens, the songwriter of the band, Girls, at his home in San Francisco. I'd played a show in town the previous night and in the morning, I woke, walked to Owens’ apartment near Golden Gate Park's panhandle, and met him in his garage, where he was washing the dirty laundry he'd accreted on Girls’ recent U.S. tour. Upstairs, he brewed us coffee and we spoke for several hours among his home library, stamp collection, and indoor plant garden, which, despite the neighborhood’s foggy microclimate, seemed to be in full flourish.
(This is my second interview with Owens. (The first was published by New York magazine.) Read an edited version of the below transcript at Bullett with photos of the band's recent Terminal 5 show by Sandy Kim.)
I. On Twitter and Persona
RS: As an artist, you have an outward persona. Your songs are personal, you appear in the press, and most artists these days use some form of social media. You also have a twitter account. How has this experience gone for you so far?
CO: It can get weird. Every once in a while you can see that someone or everybody, in general, has the completely wrong perception of you. And for me, my whole thing is just to be honest, and the idea is to have my outward persona be as true to real life. So it's frustrating when I feel I have to set the record straight. I've had a lot of frustrations with that. Maybe it wouldn't be such a big deal if somebody had a fabricated personality. They could say, okay, that's people's perception, now, how did I put that into this persona I'm building up? But when your goal is to present your actual self, then you realize that something's wrong. You want to set the record straight. But it's too difficult to control any of it. Things get away from you and before you know it, people have a perception they believe in. And they believe it so much. This is not just for me but for anybody. So when you have a platform to explain - you know, that's not how I really am - people, in their minds don't listen to you. They assume that you're trying to cover something up. They believe the thing they originally bought over your actual voice.
RS: Once you learn something, it's very difficult to replace that knowledge. Learning is easier than unlearning.
CO: That's just one thing I deal with.
RS: And trying to make people unlearn something is probably not wise, anyway.
CO: Right. People don't believe you anyway, and you're viewed as a backtracking person. So you figure out the best thing to do is to ignore those things. Instead of making your agenda to be frustrated with everyone, just carry on and, at some time, make a different point, which while hopefully cancel out the other point, the wrong idea. Getting on a platform and saying, "People don't have the right idea, blah blah blah" wouldn't be effective.
RS: And that perception of you can change, as well.
CO: People have short memory spans. Within five years, I'll manage to present a proper image and that wrong stuff will float away. But people like to think certain things. The things I don't like are the things people are excited to believe are true.
RS: Like what?
CO: Just my general image. The things I do.
RS: Is it more personality based? Like how you are? Or is it the factual things?
CO: The way I am. Factual things are vague at this point.
RS: Do you read much press about you?
CO: Yeah. It's sent to me. I'm a partner in my label, Turnstile. It's our management and label. And everything is done through email. So there are always these links. I'm always getting links. I've wondered if I should stop reading them, but I think I need to know what's going on, at this point. If something's wrong, I should change it. It's like the apple in the Garden of Eden. Even if you don't believe in God, that story is such a good joke. The joke's on you. God knew they'd eat that fruit. The computer's right there. How could you not look? Some big stars are all, " I don't read reviews." Well, great. That's because you don't have to. You take a vacation. Someone drives you to a movie set. Then you go record an album. Play a string of shows. You have 100 people working for you. You're above the common man's view of you, I guess.
RS: But didn't you just say that ignoring the press is the best approach...
CO: Yeah, but I don't want to be in the dark. Sometimes I do need to know that I should show people another side of myself. Show by example.
RS: It's a hard balance.
CO: Most of the press is very positive. So it's nice to know it's working. But this way of gauging your entire success from the computer - it used to be an entirely different thing. Print press. Radio play. Fan clubs. In the '70s, Freddie Mercury didn't sit on a computer and judge the entire pulse of his fandom. He probably got spreadsheets on radio play. Live shows were probably a little more special. You couldn't watch a video the next day. If you heard it was awesome, it was awesome. Now, from one show you could have two blog posts that are completely different - different pictures, different opinions. You choose what you what to believe. They curate these pictures and opinions. These are the things that will live on.
RS: The internet as an archive is so different than previous archives of press. Who knows how long it'll be around…
CO: Very different. A band like Nirvana, if you were to watch their rise on the internet… It's very easy to watch a youtube clip of a show and think, "That was fine." But back then, there was not that way of knowing. People said, "That was the greatest show I've ever seen" and in your mind, you think, "I have to see this."
RS: How does twitter connect with all of this?
CO: We're all losing our privacy. I chose to use twitter because I wanted to talk to specific people and specific friends. Most singers of bands use their bands names on twitter. I don't. I never discuss anything about my band on twitter, except maybe a few times. But very quickly fans started to find my twitter. I wasn't going to block it. I don't think I should be allowed to use twitter unless I'm willing to let people to look at it - that is, if they're on twitter. If they're not on Twitter, I find it kind of offensive when they read it and want to weigh in on it. The things I say on twitter are responses to reading Twitter all day. To look at Twitter out of context is unfair. But yeah, you start to think how you want to portray yourself - that's true - and I made an early decision never to be negative and to never to talk about the band, to never respond to questions about the band. I get about 100 @'s a day about the band, but I don't respond.
RS: Why are you so set on keeping the band and yourself separate?
CO: I don't want it to be about the band. It's about me and talking to my friends. It's obnoxious for my friends who do know me, if my feed is boasting or setting records straight or talking about details of songs. The whole point for me is to stay in touch with friends. But now, when Father, Son, Holy Ghost became more successful than the first record, then there were certain people who have taken my twitter and quoted it on blog. To me, that's inaccurate and annoying. I may leave twitter if it continues.
RS: This way you're talking is interesting. This idea of separation. Because, take someone like Joni Mitchell. She is very present in her songs. You feel like you know her when you hear them. And you, too, are very present in Girls songs. And you openly discuss yourself in band-related interviews. But here, with twitter, you draw a line in the sand. Why there?
CO: It gets out of hand. I would lose my mind. I have friends in bands and all they ever do is re-tweet praise. It's just not what I want twitter to be. I don't want to toot my own horn. Interviewers ask me questions, I answer them. But twitter would be me, on my own accord, saying, "Look how smart I was to write that." Fans could write in and say, "I love this song" and I could say, "thank you very much." And that's it. It's obnoxious. I want people who know me in real life…I mean, it's all real life, I know that. But you know what I mean: people who I'm close with. I just follow a few people. Very few celebrities. I want to keep it about making good records and having a good career.
II. On Mental Illness and Art
RS: Do you write poetry?
CO: Yeah. I do and I don't think I'm very good at it but I do it anyway because it's fun. I don't think other people would really - I don't think they'd be like "ooh" and praise me. I think the only way in the future people might say, "These are nice, simple poems" and enjoy them is if they like me as a songwriter and say, "His poems are okay, too." They're very simple and it seems like the weirder they are, the more people like them. But mine are very - they rhyme. They're like children's poems. I started posting them on twitter but I realized pretty soon that it doesn't work.
RS: Have any poems turned into songs?
CO: There have been a couple. They're very similar to the songs. Very simple. You know the songs. I don't think they're bad. I think there are some poems that are very good. I think they have to be presented very light-heartedly. I wouldn't want them presented as poems, even. I wouldn't want them to be reviewed or criticized. I'd want them to be available to be for free. But it's like everything we've been discussing. Same with songs and tweeting. At what point do you become afraid or start listening to people criticizing you? Often times, they're right. "Oh great, you're so smart." It's like making fun of a handicapped person. We all know that artists - whether you're a writer or anything - it's a form of mental illness. Not always, of course, but a lot of the time. I used to be friends with an artist who would say, "Painting is the last legal form of insanity that's allowed in society." I know what he's saying. You can't go hack somebody up because you want to know how it feels, but you can paint a picture. Ultimately, it's the same thing: wanting to discover feelings. Criminals say the say things as artists. I'm angry at the world and this how I get at an idea. People write songs for this reason. If you read Kurt Cobain's diaries - the guy's crazy. He has mental problems and so do I.
RS: Would you describe most artists you know in this way?
CO: Yeah. They're people having trouble accepting the way you're forced to behave in the world because of rules from hundreds or thousands of years of other people's decisions. You have no choice. Sure, you can make small decisions, but that's frustrating. You're expected to behave like everyone else. People make art because they have a hard time. Some people can be fulfilled by modern life, but other people have to say, "Me over here, I'm unsatisfied" or "I don't understand why my parents are divorced" or "I'm not fine being a part of this machine."
RS: I often think that all the art I love is really just a way of saying, "It's okay to think that way."
CO: Right. My favorite books are the one's where I'm underlining parts and I feel like I would've said that myself. Those are my favorites. Not even the ones where things are presented as new ideas. My favorites are like, "And then I didn't feel like getting out of bed that day, but I did anyway, to go to the farmer's market." It's affirming. Makes you feel less alone. One of the biggest problems in life is that you have to deal with the difficult thing that we are all a part of the herd - that's reality - but we don't want to just feel like we're part of the herd. At that same time, being an individual can feel lonely, too. So it's this balance that has to happen: you need to feel unique but also a part of society. It's difficult to admit that you're part of a system. Nobody wanted to accept communism. Americans were disgusted by that idea. Not being an individual. But when you do achieve that, when you become a movie star, next thing you know, you're Marlon Brando saying, "And I didn't have a friend in the world."
And the fact that people only go and shoot up high schools up every once in a while is actually amazing to me. It says a lot for evolution that people's chemical balances are okay. I've never had any real violent crimes happen to me. I've been mugged once. I've been beat up by punks at shows. Whatever. But, in general, I don't have bars on my windows. There are millions of people and none of them come crashing through my windows. It could be so easy. There are very violent criminals out there and people do this on their own. They don't do it out of fear of God or fear of the police. All the criminals are aware of God and the police and they know they can get around it. That's extreme, but nobody even goes and slashes everybody's tires. And you could.
And it's not just America. Of all the places I've lived, there seem to be good structures here. Japan is famous for having this great functional society. Scandanavia is considered this model society. And still, you have many great artists and writers from these places who are saying they don't feel a part of their society. So it's the world over.
RS: Supposedly, we're much less violent now than in the history of civilization.
CO: When I was younger my parents took me to volunteer in Slovenia. I could talk for hours about the work from the Yugoslavian wars. It was nothing short of horrifying. The reality of wars is horrifying. And you have Iraq and Sudan and, of course, in my mind, I'm thinking it's shocking and disgusting and I can't believe this is going on nowadays. And that's all true. But a thousand years ago, every country had their own little war, some little country they were torturing. And farther back, the Chinese and the Mongols were just riding across the plains massacring people. And that was normal. Things are getting better.
III. On War and Gossip
RS: How old were you when you were in Slovenia?
CO: 15.
RS: What were you doing there?
CO: We lived in Slovenia because that's where the war ended first. It was the safest place. It borders Croatia and Bosnia, which were still having a lot of trouble from the Serbs, who were bombing and killing them all. Everybody decided they wanted to be an independent country, and the Serbs thought, well, we'll just take Bosnia and we might as well take Croatia, too. Slovenia, though, got enough money right away from neighboring countries like Italy and Austria because they didn't want wars on their borders. And Slovenia was able to pay off Serbia, just to leave them alone, which was fine by them. The Serbs wanted the coasts and took the money from Slovenia and just committed ethnic cleansing and atrocities in these two other countries. So we lived in Slovenia. We'd receive goods from people who shipped them to us from Western Europe and we'd drive into Croatia and Bosnia and go into refugee homes, hospitals, refugee camps, with thousands of tents, where 80-year-olds and 2-year-olds were living together in small little tents. Any horrible conditions you can imagine. There were homes for teenage girls had been raped and become pregnant from soldiers. We went to dozens of these hospitals. Soldiers with limbs blown off and paralyzed - that's what war is. It was really traumatizing. So when you see that and then you hear about bombing in whatever place you don't have to deal with today - Afghanistan - it's easy for me to imagine what's actually happening. The disgusting thing is you have to admit to yourself that, yeah, it's being done in more civil ways and it happens a lot less. That's not an excuse to accept war. It's the only positive thing you can say is to look at history and know, at least we're not doing what we used to do.
RS: Have you ever protested against the war in Iraq?
CO: I went to a lot of the protests at the beginning. When the war started, the first thing America did was protest, and it did nothing. I lived in Texas at the time and even there, hundreds and thousands of people were protesting. Whole cities were shut down. But it did nothing. The '60s were just radicals but these protests were everyone. "Please don't bomb" for a week. Everyone saying it. And it didn't matter. Bombings happened as scheduled. Here goes "Shock and Awe." Disgusting names like that. It was so disheartening. I have no answers.
RS: Do these experiences make their way into songs?
CO: Yeah. I don't write protest songs but even in songs about girls and stuff, there will be lines. Maybe something about my generation.
RS: What don't you put in the songs? You're so open about so much but are there secrets you purposefully keep?
CO: I have tons of secrets. People like to think they know me but there are lots of things I will never disclose. And that's forever. Then there are tons of things people don't bother to ask, or things I don't advertise. There's commentary on the war in the last two records, but no one asks about it.
RS: Where do you draw your line for secrecy?
CO: Things that involve other people. I don't air other people's dirty laundry. I can think of five things off the top of my head that people would love to hear about. But I won't say them because they involve people I respect a lot.
RS: Because it would turn into gossip?
CO: Yeah. Well, they are things that are significant. A lot of people like to say that our first record was so much about a break up. Why? Well, there are ways I could explain why it was such a big deal. It's just not my place to expose people, even if it would make listeners understand the music more. It's fine.
RS: Is gossip bad?
CO: No. I love gossip. It's when people don't treat it as gossip, when gossip becomes gospel.
RS: Nice aphorism.
CO: I read gossip magazines. I visit Perez Hilton everyday. What's bad about it is when people don't see it for what it is. But gossip's all fun. It's never going to stop. It depends how venomous it is.
RS: And what about when it's pointed at you?
CO: It's already started a little bit. There was a specific thing that was presented recently and it was blown out of proportion and because of the way blogs work, it was recycled and presented as fact, after just a day or two. The initial post, I literally laughed at it. My friends and I looked at it and we laughed. But then a couple days later, when significant blogs were reposting it as news, that's when it got annoying. But I feel like, if I had read that blog or magazine, or if I worked there, I'd be able to look at that information and say, "I don't know how true that is," but people didn't do that. It doesn't matter. A week from now, nobody will be talking about it, I guess.
RS: Was it negative?
CO: I said something negative about two people at once. It was an aside but, without me thinking too much, it became a negative comment about this person. So right away, I said to them -
RS: On twitter?
CO: Yeah, I said to them, on twitter, it wasn't directed at you, it was directed at another person. And that was it. It wasn't embarrassing for me so much as it was embarrassing for all of us.
RS: There is that immediacy to twitter. People used to have an emotion, write a poem, revise it, publish it, have it be released months or years later. Now you have an emotion, you tweet it, it's reached the end of the publication cycle.
CO: That's what's good about it.
RS: Are you going to censor yourself now?
CO: That's the bad thing about what people did. Now I think, "Well, I'm dealing with some idiots here." That's what I didn't like about what this gossip said. It's attacking what's good about twitter. It's encouraging people to not be honest and open on twitter. Twitter is about being in the moment. Again, it's this "making fun of handicap people" idea: there are plenty of times I've looked at my writing, my songs and thought, it's all insane. It's very self-absorbed, and I wonder if I should be in school or out helping people or doing something better with myself.
RS: I think most artists ask that question.
CO: The way I help myself through the question is I remind myself that I have problems and this is how I deal with them. But it's so easy to pick on an artist. Taking advantage of a tweet is just that. We shouldn't do that. The arts are very important. Not that twitter is the arts. But taking shots at me like that aren't necessary.
RS: All this talk of the outward self seems shallow on one level, but on another level, many artists have made their life a work of art. Life as art. Personality as art.
CO: It's something people refer to as an old fashioned trend, like old Hollywood. Fake lives. In ways, you're sacrificing yourself to make a person that you wish you were. And I think that's beautiful. Vicariously forcing yourself to become a better person. The people who end up doing that are often the most vulnerable. Michael Jackson, for instance. Even down to the way he looked. He was an art project his whole life.
RS: He addressed everything he could.
CO: He was trying so badly to be a beautiful person. Regardless of what he was like, he was trying to present a person who cared about the world, to help people. Those types of people are so vulnerable because everyone wants to find the hole, the chink in the armor. And people are excited when they find out that people are weak or phony. They shouldn't be shocked. Jackson even says that his heroes were those old fashion hollywood types - Fred Astaire, Elizabeth Taylor. You almost have to hate who are are. I have to be better. I have to be better. The easiest thing in the world to do is become lazy.
I spent a lot of time around a guy who had this perfect public image. He spent so much time keeping it up, but in reality, he was a maniac. Image was everything - the way his business was perceived, all of it. And this is typical, of course - in the suburbs or wherever. But I knew this guy extremely well and I knew he wasn't that image at all. At first I had very mixed feelings about that, but over time I've come to appreciate the effort he made to leave behind this person who was better than himself. But there's another way to do that. You can shoot for that same legacy in a very genuine way. Both are commendable. Any time someone tries to better themselves is commendable. But, you know, the people who do this the best are the ones where we don't even realize it.
IV. On Drugs and Horror
RS: You've also been pretty honest about drug use.
CO: Talking honestly about drug use in history has been a good things. The people that have done so have done good things, I think. I mean, it's like closet homosexuals. If you're behaving as if it's bad, then it will always be viewed that way. That's what perpetuates the power and the stigma it has. And the appeal. You're doing something so crazy. You might as well come out and be happy. Maybe if everyone did that, there wouldn't be so much stigma about drugs. Talk about the things that society places a stigma upon. If people talked about it more, it would lose its power. The reality is that it's not that glamorous. Maybe teenagers would do it less.
RS: Do you think teenagers shouldn't do drugs?
CO: I don't know, I don't know if I have any business saying what people can do. I think there's a way of using drugs for a long time and it can be fine and constructive and okay. But I don't think most people can handle that. I have only a handful of friends who have been through this experience with me. You wouldn't even know that they're heavy drug users. It doesn't affect their success in life. But I only have a few friends like that. Most of the people I know who have problems with drugs - they can't control it. It's a bad thing
RS: Do you think it's possible for drugs not to be a problem?
CO: I think at some point it will become a problem. But I think even the people who end up having it not be a problem have to come out of it being a problem. It's a school of hard knocks thing. Just out of my experience, the people who can use drugs in a non-dramatic kind of way, as an effective tool, something that helps them get through life - they can only do that after they've learned the hard way.
RS: When you say, "effective," what do you mean by that?
CO: Drugs have obvious ways that they affect your body and mind. It's why they're prescribed There are times when they're the best thing for you. People can find out what drug is right for them and how it can help them. But this is very dangerous stuff. You can spend a few years trying to figure that out and never get there and maybe ruin your life doing it, so I can't say it's worth it. Or, say drugs were something that you got into as a teenager and it's always a good thing, never a problem - that wouldn't be any fun. So part of the whole experience is the risk. Going through the horror. But I just don't know there's any way to walk into casual drug use and have a great time. Maybe the only good thing I can say is, there is a way you find out what's good for you and still be functional and responsible and healthy.
RS: Is addiction real for you?
CO: Yes.
RS: In your experience, are drugs addictive or do people have addictive personalities? Or both?
CO: The people. Drugs are just one way it manifests itself. Some people have it with soft drinks. Or twitter. Or having to watch television for an hour after work. It's silly how many things there are. Or you get addicted to the way you deal with life in your head. Addiction is just part of being a human being. Some people have more addictive personalities than others. Some people don't need patterns, I guess. These people who need structure and get mad at you if you throw a little paper on the floor - that's an addiction. I see people fall apart when their relationship falls apart. They're addicted to that relationship. People are addicted to pets. Life is a big buffet. People pick the things they want and when they don't have it, they get upset.
RS: Are you an addictive person?
CO: To be honest, I try and stay ahead of it. When I see something becoming addictive, I try and change things up. I keep things fresh, because otherwise you grow older faster. Keep it fresh. If you're depressed, try walking home a different way. It really works.
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