Anne Clark: Something you told me

Stays in my head,

Circles above

Like a bird overhead.

Something we should have,

But never was said

Goes on in the hopes

Of the living instead.

Now all that is left

Is the saddest of songs.

Now all I can try

Is to right all the wrongs.

[cheering]

[music]

Through these city nightmares you'd walk with me,

And we'd talk of it with idealistic assurance

That it wouldn't tear us apart.

We'd keep our heads above the blackened water,

But there's no room for ideals in this mechanical place,

And you're gone now.

[music]

Do you think our desires still burn?

I guess it was desires that tore us apart.

There has to be passion,

There has to be passion,

A passion for living, surviving,

And that means detachment.

Everybody has a weapon to fight you with,

To beat you with when you are down.

There were too many defenses between us.

[music]

Doubting all the time,

Fearing all the time,

Doubting all the time,

Fearing all the time

That like these urban nightmares,

We'd blacken each other's skies.

[music]

When we passed the subways,

We tried to ignore our fate there

Of written threats on endless walls,

Unjustified crimes carried in stifled calls.

Would you walk with me now through this pouring rain?

It used to mingle with our tears,

Then dry the hopes that we left behind.

It rains even harder now.

We made so much money. I've never seen so much money in my life. More money than I'd ever earned, ever. We were there with this money, and of course, people will-- There's us two kids, we were 21 and 22, with this money, and of course, it's like a magnet. People said, "Oh, you need a manager to take care of this now. You need a tour manager to drive you and to make sure that you receive--" It's a big spider's web.

Unfortunately, that's when the problems began because we had a very good agreement with the record company guy that we split everything half and half, but when Sleeper in Metropolis became very successful, there wasn't any half and half anymore. He had the whole thing.

[music]

Because we were doing a very big tour and it meant buying lots of new equipment. At the time, it was just the time when all these samplers, sampling equipment, and these huge keyboards called emulators, which were like big tanks, the big floppy disk things, and he's, "Yes, you need two of these to go on tour," and it really was very expensive. During the tour, the guy disappeared with all the money. The keyboards weren't paid for. The two of us wasn't paid for. At the end of the tour, nothing had been paid for. Of course, everybody-- "Oh, it's the Anne Clark tour." Everybody came to me.

Uproar,

Riotous fury,

Furore.

[music]

I of the storm

Asking for more,

Calling for more,

Making the most.

Settle the score,

Make it stick,

Cut to the quick.

Armed with a fire,

Implore.

Wealth is another spelling of the law.

More,

Calling for more.

[music]

When I went to Virgin and I said, "Hey, you advised me to sign with this guy." I go into Virgin like, "I'm going to go to a lawyer." They said, "You go to a lawyer and we make sure you never, ever, ever work, ever again." It was really like, "Shit. I'm just writing a few songs and playing a few concerts. What is this all about?" It's really like a big sledgehammer. You see these old Hollywood movies where they say, "You'll never work again." I just went out of there absolutely shell-shocked. You want to destroy someone because they made a lot of money. Not only the money from the publishing but from the tour as well.

[music]

Vengeful flames

Laid at your door

Burn,

Burning the silence

That's cut to the core.

I of the storm.

More.

It just got to a point where I thought, "Right, I'm going to go completely mad. I'm going to go completely insane." It was just a big mess. Then I really stopped. I really stopped for a long time.

[music]

I just had the opportunity to go somewhere far away, in a very wild, natural environment, and just really forget the whole thing. It changed my life, completely changed my life. It was very special.

So quiet here.

So hushed and stilled.

So silent here.

Such longing calmed

And tempered here.

So quiet here.

My life in Norway is another book. I really did forget music. Not forget it, but it wasn't important, or it couldn't be important anymore. I did do lots of tactile living, really living, really just simple living.

Swirling shades of evening

Circling the light.

Last escaping traces of the day

Streak the sky,

Painting water light,

Blends warm

And breath of breeze,

And endless,

Endless

Reaching here.

So quiet here.

Slowly, the situation began to change. I met people and very slowly would start trying some ideas out, and it was like, "All right. this is what I began in the first place 10 years ago, whatever it was at that point to do this. To just make music and poetry. It was really a very good process.

So silent here.

Winding down

To stopping

Gently here.

When I write, it's mine. When it's written and I give it out, it belongs to everybody else. It's not really mine anymore. Or it's mine in one particular way, but it's each individual reader or listener's own in their own interpretation.

The actual writing itself often can be very strange and abstract in that I just feel that really something just comes through. I really love very precise and succinct poetry. I love a lot of haiku poetry, and well, Rilke, for example. He could say more in four, five, or six lines than maybe another poet would take pages and pages to write in, and that, I think, is wonderful. That's really such a fine achievement to do that. It goes back a little bit to this thing of communication where you can just take a few simple words, and really express a huge amount in them.

[music]

Speaker 1: [unintelligible 00:12:16] Okay?

Anne: That's beautiful.

Speaker 2: I saw an idea.

[music]

Anne: One, two. One, two, three, four. One, two. One, two. One, two, three, four.

Speaker 2: [unintelligible 00:12:45]

Anne: As a sleeper in metropolis,

You are insignificance.

Dreams become entangled in the system.

Environment moves over the sleeper:

Conditioned air

Conditions sedated breathing.

Stop it. You can come in, but just-- I mean, just really very--

Speaker 3: Who are you talking to?

Anne: Everybody, but just very slowly.

Speaker 3: Okay. I was waiting a little bit.

Anne: Then maybe it's too much which is just more of me hurrying the thing up.

Speaker 3: That's cool. It's ambient. All right, I'll give you a little bit.

Anne: Just very, very gradually. Slowly, slowly, slowly come in.

Speaker 2: Okay.

Anne: Just little bits.

Speaker 2: Take two.

Anne: As a sleeper in metropolis,

You are insignificance.

Dreams become entangled in the system.

Environment moves over the sleeper:

Conditioned air

Conditions sedated breathing.

The sensation of viscose sheets on naked flesh,

Soft--

[music]

Anne: It's five.

Speaker 3: You're at four. You started at four.

Anne: No, because we were counting together. We went three, four, five.

Speaker 3: Oh, really? I was counting. It's five.

Speaker 4: It's once

Speaker 3: Without drums and then he comes in.

Anne: Without you playing.

Speaker 4: Without me playing?

Speaker 3: Then four with.

Speaker 4: Then four times with the original beat, and then I--

Anne: Yes.

Speaker 4: [unintelligible 00:14:45]

Anne: Yes, let's try again.

Speaker 3: All right, from the top.

Anne: All right. From a very young age, I had a strong feeling of connection with Germany. I don't know why. I don't know where it came from. There's something about the land and the people and the culture that I feel really at home with and really love very much.

The poetry of Germany, the literature, the music, it's been so influential for many people, not just me.

[music]

Anne: Music:

Breathing of statues.

Perhaps:

Stillness of pictures.

You speech,

Where speeches end.

You time,

Vertically poised on the courses of vanishing hearts.

Feelings for what?

Oh, you transformation of feelings

Into audible landscape.

You stranger:

Music.

Space that's outgrown us,

Heart-space.

Innermost ours,

That passing our limits

Outsurges.

Holiest parting

Where waters within

Surrounds us

As practiced horizon,

As other side of air,

Pure,

Gigantic,

No longer lived in.

[music]

A translation conveys, hopefully, an essence of the original, but also creates something new. I just hope we show the respect due to real [unintelligible 00:17:24] poetry and meaning.

[music]

Oh right now we're lost

We're big clocks of brass glass wood

With hands swimming big blue waves

Crashing through seconds

Hours minutes spinning out of control

Dimly lit digits of time in space

Ringing out yet muted

The endless blackness of now of night of love

Sex dizzying into distant spirals of light

Lit solely licked slowly by thick splashes of white love

Liquid life liquid a flickering screen to see you

With pheromone to sense you

With pheromone to name you

With blinding burst head-splitting

Scream of no longer being matter

All colors merging no matter

Take me to the edge of time

Of breath, of life creating

Life playing with death

Dissolve me there at the edge.

I never feel more foreign or more alien than I do when I'm in London or, really, in a crowd of English people. I really feel very alienated in that, and that's a strange feeling when you've been born and grown up in a country.

This was my junior school, primary school.

Welcome to metropolis. Not only Fritz Lang had Metropolis.

Steve Jones: You dirty sod. You dirty old man.

Bill Grundy: Well keep going, Steve, keep going. Go on, you've got another five seconds. Say something outrageous.

Steve: You dirty bastard.

[music]

Bill: Go on again.

Steve: You dirty fucker.

[laughter]

Bill: What a clever boy.

Steve: What a fucking rotter.

Bill: Well, that's it for tonight.

Anne: It was in the newspapers the next day that people have been so outraged they'd smashed their TVs and this group, the Sex Pistols were corrupting the whole country and the whole generation, but it was too late because millions of kids had watched it on TV. The next day everybody cut their hair off and dyed their hair bright blue or bright red and made clothes out of plastic bags and safety pins. It was just like a wave of just total change that happened. It was really incredible to be in that as a 16-year-old kid.

This pub here on the corner here, this was one of the big punk stop, all the bands would play here. Generation X, The Damned, Siouxsie and the Banshees in there.

Well, I just thought, yes, life can be very different and creativity can be very different because up until that point, I'd wanted to be an actress, and a writer, and a performer. I wanted to write books of poetry, but if you didn't come from a background of having been at the school or that school or reached this academic level, there's no way your poems were going to be published or books were going to be published. This whole movement just said it doesn't matter. It does not matter if you're not educated with this or with that, or if you can't play this, just make music, just write.

[music]

Every day as heaven

Moves further and further away,

Familiar blue eyes I once knew

Turn a colder shade of grey.

Every day is heaven

Moves further and further away,

Familiar words we used to share

Seem so difficult to say.

And I am alone

In a world of cold flesh, cold steel, cold stone.

I close up like a clam

And shut the world out with the slam of a door

To shut out all the fighting, all the hatred, all the war.

You just cannot stay calm

When your soul screams less

But something always wants more.

What for?

[music]

It was sort of shoplifting, taking things out of the shop, we would shop-put, and we would take our books and fanzine and place them in the store because they didn't want to sell them. They didn't want to do a distribution with us, of course, because we weren't part of the mainstream or the main thing. We would put our books in there and take a few as payment for it seemed like a good balance. Of course, the shops and the police didn't think it was quite balanced. That was the way things were very anarchic.

[music]

Every day as heaven

Moves further and further away,

Familiar blue eyes I once knew

Turn a colder shade of grey.

Every day as heaven

Moves further and further away,

Familiar words we used to share

Are impossible to say.

Every day,

Every day

Heaven is moving further and further away.

[music]

Thanks to punk rock, really, a new wave really, because if it hadn't been for that, I think I wouldn't have had a chance. I don't think.

[music]

Every day,

Every day

Heaven is moving further and further away.

[music]

Voice GPS: You have reached your destination.

Anne: This was my [unintelligible 00:25:06], now left unmanaged. They need to cut the hedge. What the hell?

My whole ambition for as long as I could remember was to get out of this awful environment in this violent, angry, crazy house you own. As early as I could, I was off and out and doing things and I knew I wanted to do something creative, which in itself amongst working-class people is a very suspicious thing a lot of the time anyway, and that if you start talking about books and art and the ballet and classical music, it's like, "Well, what the hell are you, where the hell are you think you're going?"

I didn't want to live in Croydon. I did not want to live in this shithole place where they were building these ugly buildings just 10 meters from-- I couldn't even look out the window without looking at this thing and where people were really, I didn't want to live there. I wanted to live in a nice part of London, but I could never afford to do that. I know that when I said that to the richer kids that I didn't go to school with, they were really like, "Oh, no, no, no, no, you stay."

Yes, look at that. That's great. Do that. [chuckles] If there was one inspiration for Sleeper in Metropolis, people often ask me, what inspired these songs? I can't always give an exact answer, but really, I think this building played a big part in inspiring Sleeper in Metropolis. I remember sitting in my room and writing the text very clearly.

[music]

I went to the administrators of the theater there and asked them, "Please, can we put on some kind of new wave alternative events here?" They were very frightened, saying, "We don't want punk rockers in our theater speeding everywhere and--" The theater was always under threat of closure because they couldn't get enough public and enough enthusiasm from the wonderful population of Croydon. The punk and new wave wasn't just music, it was comedy, theater, dance, poetry, everything, everything exploded.

Eventually after lots of persuading, because I used to work around the corner there. That used to be Bonaparte Records shop somewhere over there, where I also worked. I would be in there every day saying, "Please, may we now put on some new wave bands or some--" They said, "No, no, no, no." Then eventually, I wore them down a bit and they said, "Okay, we try it." It was a great success. The time was right.

[music]

As a sleeper in metropolis,

You are insignificance.

Dreams become entangled in the system.

Environment moves over the sleeper:

Conditioned air

Conditions sedated breathing.

The sensation of viscose sheets on naked flesh,

Soft and warm

But lonesome in the blackened ocean of night.

Confined in the helpless safety of desires and dreams,

We fight our insignificance.

The harder we fight,

The higher the wall.

[music]

Before I really did anything musical, I just was collecting sounds. I guess you would call it sampling before there was really sampling. Just recording found sounds on my tape machines, various tape machines, great big Revox, and carrying that around. It was a slow evolution from just atmospheres to real musical compositions. Then I started to work with David Harrow and Vini Reilly on two very separate sides of an album in those old days when you had side one and side two of albums.

The one idea was to develop a very electronic, well, pre-computer but synth bass sound. The second side of the album was to have this more traditional guitar sound but also using lots of effects and filters and different things. So with both musicians, really, I developed two very separate identities on the one album, the Changing Places album.

Outside the cancerous city spreads

Like an illness,

Its symptoms

In cars that cruise to inevitable destinations

Tailed by the silent spotlights

Of society-created paranoia.

We would just, on the old synths, the old analog synths, create arpeggios, which then became sequences and these repetitive patterns. Then just to-- Why not put a dance rhythm or a real up-tempo rhythm underneath it? It just evolved by layers, really, of this sequenced minimal music. We didn't think of it as techno or dance music, it was just electronic ideas that we were playing with. Instead of just having a drumbeat, why not put a low keyboard note under the drumbeat as well? There were just occasionally pieces where you think, "Oh, this is really something quite unique or different." It really stands out. I think Sleeper in Metropolis and Our Darkness, apparently, were two that we were correct about thinking about that.

Love is dead in metropolis.

All contact through glove or partition.

What a waste.

The city,

A wasting disease.

[music]

My first live performance was at Richard Strange's Cabaret Futura in the West End in London. That was amazing. He just invited anybody, very much a bit like the Warehouse Theater thing, where he invited musicians, writers, dancers, comedians to come and perform for 20 minutes, half an hour each, and then the next one, the next thing, and so it was really mixed. I just went there with tapes, tapes of lots of noise and sounds and my poems. I went to a friend who was a dancer, and he did his stuff and I did my stuff. That's how it all began.

[music]

With every hour making minutes,

Am I outside my life or in it?

And all this music

That's making waves within it,

Can I find one song to sing it?

[music]

All the words I've strung like beads,

All the words that stung like bees to bring it

A little fruit, a hue or two, a sign of something

Or someone that I knew.

And this life feels like so many different lives

I'm falling through.

[music]

Night,

Dizzy night.

I can't recognize the cycle of the years,

The source of all my fear,

The source that led me here.

Your boys' cologne, your beer,

The presence of our fathers ever near,

Sacred secrets you whisper in my ear.

[music]

All this tonight,

As you move closer to me,

Your light will eclipse and will absorb

The darkness that confounds my foolish all.

Place harmony where there has been discord.

[music]

Writing's always been a need, for sure. I think that goes back very far to my childhood and my home situation where communication through talking and verbal contact really wasn't a great option or wasn't the smoothest of options. Therefore, writing things down, I could create that clearness with language.

[drumbeats]

Words are pictures, really. For me, anyway. I don't use a dry or intellectual or academic language, really. I use a very emotional language and evocative language, I hope, that conjures up images for people.

[music]

Autumn leaves that collect weight in the ashes of summer

Are cracked and broken by my intruding step.

Foreign thoughts that invade my questioning

Of death's cold, cold waiting.

No bait will deter the ancient stalker

Whose color I'm not sure of,

Who's walked between this park

And with icy fingers, prepared this morbid corridor of bracken

To take my steps closer there all the time.

Then your fingers, hard and comforting,

Write softly through my hair

All that we're afraid of in each other,

All that may die between us without death to take the blame.

To play games so unprepared,

To dance around fires unguarded.

Tears become blood of sorrow,

And my pulse keeps time so badly with the tune you play to me.

My steps down streets that remain unchanged but change so many

Will just vanish like yesterday.

"Don't think dark thoughts," you tell me,

Yet all our fate waits prepared in darkness.

And my hand will fumble for the door

Whose handle is too high for me,

Whose wood is from those mighty trees,

The trees that lay down their leaves so recklessly.

My light remains flickering in autumn,

And musky smoke from blazing bonfires

Will rise like incense from the funeral pyre

In preparation.

[music]

[camera shutter sound]

Thank you.

Speaker 5: We have the video [unintelligible 00:38:22] the cover.

[crosstalk]

[music]

Anne: We're living in this age where everything is fake and cheap and pretend. I take my cheap flight to come to be able to record my album. I take photos that maybe aren't quite as they were originally. What to do about it? I don't know. We have many discussions about this. I have a big conflict about many of these things. I think my audience know me well enough to know that, "Yes, well, we know that the Photoshop has been at work there a little bit," but it's part of how things are now.

[camera rolling sound]

What comes next? I'm very curious what we have to do for the next shot.

Speaker 6: [unintelligible 00:39:12]

Speaker 7: The next is completely naked. [laughs]

Anne: I thought it might be. [laughs]

[music]

Life on Mars.

A stairway to the stars.

Cheap flights, fast food, flash cars.

Worlds collide, states divide.

Choose your side, landslides.

Third rock from the sun, it's only just begun

For you and me and everyone.

[music]

Anne: For some reason, I ended up at school here in this quite nice area. When we felt like doing something else, we would skip school. We would meet up here, the boys and the girls, in the church out here. It was really a wonderful escape from Croydon. So quiet.

[music]

This is where I spent the best part of my schooling I think. Next to doing these social studies classes that I did at school which was very lucky for me in that about once every three weeks, we would have to go and help out at one of the psychiatric hospitals.

Speaker 2: Turn around when possible.

[music]

Anne: So much destruction. In the Victorian period, they built these huge asylums where they would put the mentally ill, the very troubled and disturbed, but also people that maybe did something a bit naughty or young girls got pregnant out of marriage or maybe a kid who stole a loaf of bread or something. They would put them in these institutions and then they were left there.

[music]

It's really prime estate. Very valuable land here I think. Yes, the whole building is gone. "Here, upon these ghostly shadows of men and women, there are no smiles. Singly, they mingle with the greyness of the walls and at strange angles, they travel on to nowhere. Each a nucleus of sadness and despair. Small or no conversation passes their cigarette-stained lips. They sit, the lonely ones. Sitting eternally in institutions that have become their eyes, that have become their arms, their legs. They are empty now. Just shells moving back and forth upon a shore of some uncharted beach. Up steep green hills, they linger. Like the darkest thoughts that push themselves into your mind, you cannot question them. For they will not answer you. They are our deepest fears."

I found it one of the most beneficial parts of my whole education, really, to come here and really meet these people as a teenager and talk to them and hear their stories. Some of them had been here 60, 70 years for things that nowadays we wouldn't even really take notice of and had become completely institutionalized. Then, again, you had whole sections of what was a massive complex, a massive hospital that was high security with very dangerous people. It was a incredible world to be introduced to really. It made such an impression on me that when I left school, as well as working in the record shop down in Croydon, I also took a job here as an assistant at the hospital for some months, but unfortunately, the whole system became totally run down.

The care became totally run down and there were huge issues of abuse towards the patients, the people here. I personally saw it first hand as well. Abuse, physical violence against people. Well, I reported it, and as is often the case in these situations, if you report something like that, everybody closes ranks, as they say, and make life rather difficult for you, but I found it really unacceptable and so I left. That's the end of it. That's the end of Cane Hill Hospital and all its life. They carried through it. Where are all the crazy people now? I don't know. Where are they? Running the country probably. [chuckles]

[music]

The only sounds heard are oil-hungry nations

Blood-thirsty threats of immediate action

Should the hold on resources ever be threatened

There can be no excuses, no justification

No heads turned away from their situation

The price of our silence will be their annihilation

Beyond the marked borders

beyond strategic lines

The dust turning red

the winds carrying cries

And all around the world

The world closes its eyes

[music]

Thank you, it's a great help.

[music]

[crowd cheering]

[music]

I am not yet born; O hear me

Let not the bloodsucking bats or the rats or the stoats

Or the club-footed ghoul come near me

I am not yet born, console me

I fear that the human race may with tall walls wall me

With strong drugs dope me, with wise lies lure me

On black racks rack me, in blood-baths roll me

I am not yet born; provide me with water to dandle me

Grass to grow for me, trees to talk To me

Sky to sing to me

Birds and a white light in the back of my mind to guide me

I am not yet born; O fill me

With strength against those who would freeze my humanity

Would turn me into a lethal automaton

Would make me a cog in a machine

A thing with one face, a thing

And against all those who would dissipate my entirety

Let them not make me a stone and let them not spill me

Otherwise kill me

[applause]

[crowd cheering]

I was with a friend of mine, he is a dancer and very gay, and very extravagant and very extrovert. We were walking along the road together and these guys in the car came around and started really jeering at him. Screaming at the car, "Look at this queer guy. Let's get him, let's beat him up. Let's do this," and he said, "Oh, just ignore them." I lost my temper a little bit and told them to fuck off or whatever and blah, blah, blah.

Then they came around again and this time, their girlfriends in the back said, "Just get out and get him." It was like, wow. They all leapt out of the car and attacked him. Four guys or something, three guys onto this one guy, my friend. I was on the top of the-- It was a big fight going on in the street. He was pretty badly beaten up. Both of us were. Fortunately, some people came along and broke it up, but just this violence that came from people because somebody dares to be a little bit, I don't know, special, different, walking down the street a little bit too whatever.

[music]

So this is where the future lies,

In a beer gut belly,

In an open fly.

Brilcremed, acrylic, mindless boys

Punching, kicking, making noise.

From the cradle to the city streets,

They spill out their aggression,

Punching what they don't understand

And stopping all forms of expression.

Teaching each other to be men

By spewing in the streets

Now I know just what to do

To make my man complete.

Against the power of their misguidance,

We must learn to fight

To be just what we want to be,

Morning, noon and night.

Night is for the hunters

And the hunted are you and me.

Hunted for just having

Some form of identity

Night is for the hunters

And the hunted are you and me

Hunted for just having

Some individuality.

In the early '90s, when the Wall came down, and we were doing concerts, and there were all the kids there in their new wave gear. The very right-wing guys stormed one of the concerts there and came into the concert and attacked a whole lot of the kids there. Fortunately, we had a big tour bus and put as many of them in the tour bus as we could and drove them to the hotel, but just this intolerance, this violent intolerance in people that can't accept difference or things that are different, so they attack it.

[music]

I don't need your god.

I don't need your eternal, paternal god.

Don't need no reassuringly protective

Good and evil in perspective god.

Don't need no imported, distorted, inflated, updated holy roller

save-your-soul, or anaesthetizingly opiate god.

One very good thing that my father really demanded was that there would be no religion in the house, none at all. It wasn't an issue. It wasn't discussed and it wasn't encouraged, but the Irish family thought that my mother had married the devil by marrying a Protestant. It was just really unbelievable. The attitude that still prevailed, that still lived on in people's minds is so crazy. Fortunately, I was pretty sheltered from that. I never went to any religious school, but, in a way, then it made me, as I was growing up, more curious about religion.

Don't need no "All creatures that on earth do dwell; be good or you go to hell" god.

I'm so spiritually-oriented but so anti-religion. I'm so intolerant of its intolerance, if that makes sense. It is so wrong to inflict your religious beliefs on other people. It's nothing to do with ethics or morals. You don't have to have a god to be a good or a moral person. This blind, violent, destructive core of religion, I don't get it. I don't get it and I don't want it. I don't want it near anybody that I care about either.

[music]

No Bibles, no Mahayanas, instant dharma gods

Don't need no spiritual suicide, prefrontal lobotomizing god

Don't need no stoic, sexless, antiseptic god

Don't need no neon crucifix

No crusade, no burqa, or kabbalah

No camels or needles or papal decrees

No mail-order icons, Qurans or mandalas.

No Meher Babas.

No imams or ayatollahs.

No Sharia.

No Opus Dei.

No Dianetics.

No tarot or beads.

No devadasi.

Don't need no immortal, invisible "God's only wise."

Don't need no televised, circumcised, incessant, incandescent gods

I don't need your gods

I need human beings

The earth and the stars

I need some kind of love

I need you

[music]

[crowd cheering]

Darkness and glory rejoicingly blending

Earth rising to heaven and heaven descending

Man's spirit away from its drear dungeon sending

[music]

When I was a 16-year-old punk rocker, I never thought I would be playing semi-classical concerts in churches. It's a wonderful evolution or development.

[music]

You have to be always drunk. That's all there is to it—it's the only way. So as not to feel the horrible burden of time that breaks your back and bends you to the earth, you have to be always drunk.

But on what? Wine, poetry, nature, virtue, as you wish. But be drunk.

And if sometimes, on the steps of a palace or on the green grass of a ditch, in the mournful solitude of your room, you wake again, drunkenness already diminishing or gone, ask the wind, the wave, the star, the bird, the clock, everything that is flying, everything that is singing, everything that is speaking, ask what time it is and wind, wave, star, bird, clock will answer you: "It is time to be drunk! So as not to be the martyred slaves of time, be drunk, be continually drunk!" My parents were, and still, to some degree remain a bit of a mystery to me in a way. I don't think I'll ever know exactly who they were completely. My mother really was the core of the household. Her moods and her behavior really dictated how the day, the week, whatever, would proceed. There was a lot of violence in the house, really, physical and emotional violence, which was very difficult.

These are very personal things to talk about. I'm not even sure if it's right to be talking about them openly, publicly. Neither of them are here anymore, and they can't defend themselves or answer themselves, but yes, and as I grew up, I did question and challenge her about that, but maybe there was something that should be looked, and that, of course, only added more fury to her already internal fire that was constantly burning and looking for something to explode with.

She was a very explosive character. I can only assume that something happened, or that there was a huge frustration or something that couldn't be resolved on. Maybe there was something medically, psychologically, physically even, I don't know, something that caused her behavior, but that which made life very, very difficult for the rest of us in the house. Not just in the house but for the neighbors and for more distant relatives. She had an energy that was just unbelievable. Unfortunately, it was a very negative energy. In fact, if that whole energy had been channeled positively, I think she could have achieved amazing things, but that's not how it went.

There would be great fights, there would be wonderful fights in the house. It would start off with me and my brother, and then my brother and my mom, and then me, my mom and my brother, and then my dad would come in, and my brother and my dad and everyone, until the neighbors call the police. The police would come and break it up sometimes. It was complete madness.

[music]

They'll kiss you quick

And squeeze you slowly

Fall asleep

Then get up and go

Thanks very much

I'll see you sometime

Oh, you say

Ah, the pleasure's all mine

Fire, earth, air, and water

We all line up

Like cattle

To the slaughter

Give me love

Give me affection

Heterosexual, homosexual

An endless selection

I'm completely open to myself to people. It's the person that I'm attracted to. Yes, I would say that I'm open to all genders, all three genders, male, female, and in-between.

[music]

When people love each other, whether it's a man and a woman, two women, two men, how can it be wrong?

Getting harder

Getting easier

Getting harder

Getting easier

Getting harder

Getting easier

Getting harder

Getting easier

Getting harder

Getting easier

Getting harder

Getting easier

Getting harder

Getting easier

Oh, make it harder

And harder

And harder

And harder

And harder

And harder

And harder

And harder

And easier

And easier

And easier

And easier

And harder

Make it harder

Make it easier

To keep you close to me

To keep you deep in me

To keep you close to me

To keep you deep in me

Make it harder

Make it easier

Well, the thing is, in my family, sex of any kind, whether it was with a man or boy or girl, it was sinful, whatever. That was sex, period. It was not acceptable. One thing that was very important for me very early on and very personal to me is that I realized through sexuality that there is a way of being with people and being intimate with people and being physically in contact with people doesn't involve violence, and that was really quite a very important discovery for me.

Sex, I guess, or making love or whatever you want to call it is that-- Because my experience of contact with people-- I thought that there was never any sexual abuse at all in the family, but physical contact for me usually meant violence. To be with someone, to be with people physically in a gentle way, that was really so liberating for me and so wonderful. I think maybe that's what set me on my wild and very open sexuality, perhaps.

[music]

The good life out of each on the placards

Doesn't hide away the truth of the broken down facades

The buildings burn, the streets on fire

Every muscle, every nerve stretched to reach for somewhere higher

Feel me now

Will you remain, place your trust

Turn ideas into motion before our mechanisms rust

Will you hold me tight with arms, with words, in your comfort keep me warm

I beg refuge in your shelter as I fly into the storm

Take me

Take me

Take me now

Take me now

[music]

Band Mate 1: [hums]

[music]

Band Mate 2: Yes, they won't keep it, won't keep it.

Band Mate 3: All right.

Band Mate 2: Please, we want to keep it.

Anna: No, let's just skip the whole thing.

Band Mate 2: No. [crosstalk]

[music]

Anne: We were writing more and touring more. Everything is much more together, and we're playing them much more live kind of format where the musicians are playing together as much as possible just to keep that real kind of energy, that we have life. It's very important for me for the album. You can't completely reproduce that, but you can try as hard as possible.

[music]

I love spontaneous work and doing things. To be perfectly honest with you, my favorite recordings of all these tracks are the ones we did in the rehearsal studios. We have very bad recordings made on deck players or by console, whatever. Very badly recorded, but yes, they really capture the essence of the song, and you can't repeat that. You can get technically-beautiful sound, but you don't always get the real passion of the moment, the creative moment.

[music]

I hear one thing from one element and one thing from completely another element. Maybe the two of them wouldn't come together, but I'd like to bring them together. That's the thing I really like to do. That's what I think sometimes a lot of people can't understand how can you work with so many different kinds of musicians, but for me, that is what's so exciting. It's like you put them all in a small room together, stand back and see what happens.

I have no idea. It just drains every bit of energy and it's really messing my head up.

Speaker 3: Yes, I know what you mean.

Anne: I'm glad it's not just me.

Speaker 4: I've just remarked it also.

Anne: I don't know. Maybe we should just do it as soon as I get home today. We need to have a little meeting about this. It's awful to be working like this. I don't know how to fix it.

I've got these guys, I think, pretty much under control. Of course, you also have to allow them to-- Because people have great ideas. They're great musicians, so they will come up with wonderful ideas. You have to allow them to try them. It's just knowing that point of where to say, "Okay, stop," or, "Okay, let's try something." Being the only woman amongst all this lot, it's not always so easy, but they're very good people. It's not so bad.

[music]

Speaker 5: [unintelligible 01:11:14]

Anne: The whole life feeling's there [crosstalk].

Speaker 5: It sounds really-- It's really open. It's [crosstalk]

Anne: You've done it. You've done it.

Something you told me

Stays in my head

Circles above

Like a bird overhead.

Something we should have,

But never was said

Goes on in the hopes

Of the living instead.

Now all that is left

Is the saddest of songs

Now all I can try

Is to right all the wrongs

[music]

All that is left

Is the saddest of songs

All I can try

Is to right all the wrongs

I cannot go

To where you have gone

Yet you were the place

That I came from

It's very personal, in a way, because it covers the death of both of my parents, really. When he died, I just thought, "What is the point of writing?" and I couldn't write for a long, long time. I just stopped. Then bizarrely, when my mother died, I couldn't stop writing. It immediately came up, all of this material to write.

Something you told me

Stays in my head

Circles above

Like a bird overhead.

Something we should have

But never was said

Goes on in the hopes

Of the living instead

I think so physically and genetically and whatever linked with someone and loving them even if the relationship with them is completely insane and completely unfulfilled in a way. She still had such a huge impact on my life. Her loss was enormous. Perhaps even more because it was so troubled. It was a farewell letter to her, really, or for her to know that regardless of all the complications and difficulties, yes, there was still this love that existed.

I watch the stars

And know that you're there

The space in the place

At the foot of the stair

The light falling now

On the arm of the chair.

The warm reaching sun

The chill evening air

If only we could do

If only we'd dare

To fill every void

With love and with care

Now all that is left

Is the saddest of songs

Now all I can try

Is to right all the wrongs

[music]

Being very happy in life, you are living. That's being alive and living and experiencing the moment. I don't really tend to need to write about that. If I have a difficulty or a problem that I can't really resolve, then writing and music help ease that, help make it easier.

[music]

When we passed the subways, we tried to ignore our fate there

Of written threats on endless walls

Unjustified crimes carried in stifled calls

Would you walk with me now through this pouring rain

It used to mingle with our tears

Then dry with the hopes that we left behind.

It rains even harder now.

[music]

I just want to say something that I feel, that I mean, that I care about, and not just say these empty words. I hope that they have some kind of meaning for me and for other people. There is no great message, it's just me trying to find my way through life.

[music]

I know if I could

I would take myself up high

Upon a belly-round hill

Orbit of Earth arched bare under a blue black sky

And on lifting up my head

And opening my eyes

Be rained upon by a million stars of lights

Each one a gift of your love's life.

[music]

[01:20:46] [END OF AUDIO]