rediscovered this excerpt from an interview with devendra banhart this morning in a magazine i like called Tokion...
I once had this homeless man living with me for two weeks; I just picked him up on the street. I was getting a cup of coffee and he just started talking to me about some films that I love, The Color of Pomegranates and Holy Mountain. I thought, This guy is rad, and I was like, “Do you want to come over and take a shower?” He was going to stay indefinitely, and one morning I said, “What did you dream last night, man?” And he said, “I don’t like when people ask me that question so casually. Like, ‘Who won the game?’ Something personal like that really needs to be respected.” He told me that before he goes to bed he says, “I’m here, dream psychopomp. You’re going to lead me to the dream. I’m open to whatever you have to share and show me.”
He told me saying this is really helpful, so I thought I would try it. I was going through a tough time, and the dream I had showed something to me that eased my pain and gave me some real true understanding about the situation. I felt wonderful when I woke up, and immediately I get a phone call from a friend of mine, and she says, “Is there someone strange that you don’t really know living in your house?” I told her yeah, and she says, “Well, they got to get out. I had a weird dream about someone living in your house, and they have to get out of there.”
Normally in a million years I would have never kicked the guy out because some fool had a dream, but because of what he told me—“respect the dream”—I had to tell him to leave. He basically kicked himself out by telling me to respect dreams. Really strange. It was painful because he had been living on the streets for thirteen years, and he wasn’t an alcoholic or drug addict or mentally unstable. It was just one day he decided to walk into the desert and surrender his will, so he left his girlfriend, his car, his job and his apartment and gave himself to the kismet of exterior forces. If someone drives up and says, “Get in,” he’ll get in. It’s an attempt to be in the present.
Did you explain to him why he had to go? Yeah, he understood.
He told you his rules, and you applied them to him. Love it! I’m not a skeptic but I question—it’s important. A skeptic is a bummer. They’re always bummed out. You want to know why and how things work, but you want to see the magic in these things. An explanation should never be an attempt to erase the magic. You can ask why the caterpillar turns into the butterfly, you can explain it, but there is still some element in there that is magic. It’s the crossroads between God and everything.
You’re an accomplished visual artist as well. If you have a feeling, thought or idea, do you know immediately which medium you are going to express it in? No, not really. It’s like some mantra will arise, and I need to express it somehow. Yesterday it was, “No Destruction, No Creation,” over and over again. I need to destroy something in order to create something. I need to destroy something that I’m doing to myself in order to be in a different place to create something—to have that new perspective. Without destruction, there is no perspective. Without creation, there is no growth, and creation is change. Those aren’t literally the lyrics to a song, and that’s not something that I know what it looks like. I don’t know exactly what the drawing is, and I don’t know exactly what the lyrics are to convey that, so the place it comes from is a faceless, soundless, odorless, colorless place. The origin is more ethereal.
and to tie it in with last night's post, here is a music video that Michel Gondry did for one of Banhart's songs...
"i'd like to sleep sleep sleep with you..."
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