My interview with artist, Matt Mullican

Read it in the Sept issue of The Believer

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An excerpt from my conversation with Cat Power

In the summer before the release of her ebullient ninth album, Sun, and not long after her publicly scrutinized breakup with longtime boyfriend, actor Giovanni Ribisi, I spoke with Chan Marshall, the 40-year-old, Georgia-born songwriter who performs under the name Cat Power. When I initially called at noon, she didn’t answer. A few minutes later, she responded with a text: “Sorry JUST WOKE UP gimme 2 minutes to get off the crapper, get my dog outside, press the coffee button & we’re on!! Or can we do that all together on the phone?” I told her she could call me when she was ready, and she did, five minutes later.

During the hour-long interview, she held an eight-minute conversation with her godson, ate a bowl of Honey Puffs cereal, and belted a soulful verse from Nina Simone’s version of “Funkier than a Mosquito’s Tweeter,” which she describes as “one of the greatest pieces of audio I’ve ever heard in my life.” The whole interaction felt intimate and unburdened by the usual social niceties that can slow conversations to a mumbling drag. Marshall talked while she chewed, spoke in several character voices, and freely discussed her mental breakdown and her difficulties with live performances, which, fueled by her past struggles with alcohol, have been notoriously unpredictable. This kind of uninhibited talk might be surprising in another context, but not with Marshall. You can hear the same raw, loose energy in the cracks of her singing and the cinematic peaks and valleys of her songwriting. It’s what Cat Power is known for: she doesn’t hold back. - Ross Simonini

Do you write regularly?

I used to write stories when I was in middle school. I wrote stories, and then I started painting, and then I wanted to be a war photographer, and then I started to play music. But I started to write a book when I was about 24, a true story, and then I started writing another book when I was in Malibu, when an ex broke up with me and I lost my marbles.

When you say you lost your marbles…

I’ve been misdiagnosed due to stuff from the past that I was keeping secret. Well, not keeping secret but—it’s amazing when you open up to your friends, what you can learn about them and yourself. A lot of people have doctors and shrinks who they can really open up to on a regular basis, which I’m not into, because I don’t want to dwell on shit, you know? I think good things come when you’re actually communicating with someone back and forth, and you share interests and ideas. But I’m not into analysis. I think it fits a certain personality type who needs that kind of attention, or who struggles with self-awareness, or needs to feel like someone gives a shit.

Why were you misdiagnosed?

Due to the stress from death and insufferable loss. It was a gargantuan loss, a big, extreme, can’t-make-it-through, monumental loss that gives you pain that’s so hard core you feel like you can’t count, can’t spell—that kind of shit. So I’ve been misdiagnosed several times by several doctors, and I just lost faith in them, just like I have with religion.

With all of psychiatry?

Because of analysis and Freud and Jung, and the society they created as the identity of psychiatry. It’s just inappropriate to make all these students go to university and push all of this shit—all these control tactics—onto people. It feels like governmental control or something, like racial profiling. They’re similar ballgames to me, and I don’t appreciate the criminality of psychology. 

Read the full piece at Bullett

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