The clock just struck 11pm on a cold and quiet spring night in the beautiful city of St. Paul, Minnesota. I sat in my back porch and listened as the wind howled through the cracks in the window pane and just out of the corner of my eye I saw it, it was the darkness. It comes here every night, and lately it stops by in the morning as well. This time I was lucky enough to snag an hour of her time for an interview.
Kai: How have you been? It’s been a few days since you’ve visited!
The Darkness: I’ve been well! Sometimes I have the wherewithal to stay away but don’t fret, I’ll always find a time to come back when you least expect it.
That's Awesome, we’re happy to have you! What brings you to this industry and what keeps you coming back?
The darkness is all I’ve ever known. Not only is it a fundamental part of who I am, it’s what I am. It’s all encapsulating. I didn’t ask for this life, it became me at a very early year, before I could do anything about it. I have no choice but to return every once in a while.
Wow! How have you kept it up all these years? How do you retain your notoriety in the industry?
Well, there’s always demand. Some recognize me as a feeling of hopelessness or loneliness, an empty, sinking feeling. Sometimes I’m a nostalgic feeling. I show up when you drive past your childhood home and you're flooded with memories or when you’re just sitting outside, alone with your own thoughts. It’s happy and it’s sad, it’s nostalgic and it’s dark. I’ll never go away long enough for you to forget.
That sounds exhausting! Do you ever get tired of all this hullabaloo?
Somehow, I don’t. Like I said before, every now and then I’ll go away for a little while but I always come back because you always remember me. Sometimes it will be a few days and sometimes it can even be over a week. But I always come back because you secretly like it. You like ruminating, don’t you?
I thought I was asking the questions here! I guess I like it enough to do it pretty frequently. What do you like to do in your free time?
I don’t really “like” doing anything. I don’t dislike doing things either. I usually sit, sometimes I lay, then I just watch. I watch anything that's put in front of me. It could be my favorite movie or paint drying. I feel the same either way.
What is your favorite movie?
Contact (1997)
Good choice! What do you love about it?
I like how the main character is publicly shamed at the end and made to feel like an idiot, I like that a lot. I think that she kind of is an idiot, to be honest. I like how it's really just about idiots who are changing the world. I'll tell you what I don't like, I don't like how they made a two and a half hour movie just for the metaphor to be Jodie Foster as Jesus. I don't like that. But I like how raw and real Jodie Foster is, and the more I live the more I see a lot of myself in her.
Do you not believe Jodie Foster is Jesus?
It's not that I don't believe Jodie Foster is Jesus, rather I think that it's missing the point that we're all Jesus and I think that's a little lazy. I don't need to go in a little wormhole to think of myself as having discovered something major and worth sharing with the world without evidence, and I think everybody feels that way. Most people think it's religion, though.
Matthew mcconughey is a total smoke show in that one! Do you have any favorite 90’s heartthrobs?
Well we'd be remiss if we didn't mention Keanu Reeves. I think he had the body, he had the hair, he had the face. There were no other heartthrobs in the 90’s who I think offered us such a wide diversity of work while simultaneously making a star turn and also his greatest strength being not just his beauty, but his ability to play to the camera. You know, I think there’s lots of beautiful boys out there in movies, especially in the 90’s.
Do any of them inspire you?
No, and I wasn’t done.
Oh, sorry. Keep going.
You can't really deny the classics, right? Like I think that it depends on what you think of as a heartthrob, you know? But I'd say Tom Cruise was still a heartthrob back then. The ultimate heartthrob I think it's got to be either him or Brad Pitt. I was kind of thinking Brad Pitt, he's definitely 90’s. My personal favorite is Keanu, but when it comes down to the brass taxes of it all, when you go tangible beauty for relative fame, talent and success, you can't top Brad Pitt when you analyze the game from this point of view. Now am I jealous of him? No. But I think it’s gotta be Brad.
Do you have any inspirations in general?
That's a great question. Before the darkness, there was dim. And I thought, what if we made that darker?
What did that feel like?
Dim? Dim was powerful. I got to meet him once, we met at the light spectrum award show. Very nice guy. You know, it was strange. I can't imagine what it would be like thinking I was the darkness only to find out that it can go darker. But he was kind of the first to do it in this industry so I’d be a fool not to mention him… I think I was really inspired… What am I playing with? I think there's someone's gum here. Is this your gum? Are you fucking with me? This isn't your..
It might be my gum, sorry.
Oh, that’s okay. You know, I mean, outside of dim, you gotta look at some of the other greats you see around the world, you don't get to be the darkness without taking it all in. Obviously Jesus Christ. Obviously Babe Ruth, the great Bambino. But at the end of the day I think the only thing that really inspires me is not seeing myself in the world. I don't think anyone's ever done it like me and I'm not afraid to say it. So to say that I'm inspired by other people and not inspired by the vision that I want to see in the world feels misleading. I don't know. That's what inspires me.
What is your creative process like?
Well, it always starts with sitting down and whatever anyone’s thinking about, I think how can we go darker? Sometimes that means pushing yourself to an uncomfortable place, artistically or even emotionally, because you think I've maxed on how dark I can make even the simplest things, like there's no way it can get worse than the things that have already happened. But if you really think about it, before me nobody was hopping on it. We push the limits there, I'm always thinking about what's next. How can we make it something that’s so dark, how do we make it pitch?
What is your darkest fear?
My darkest fear is everything being true. Everything they say about me, the good and the bad. Everything I think about, even my worst thoughts. All the lies I’ve told, all the people I’ve pretended to be. Deep down I know there’s at least some truth to most of it. Never say never, everything is within reality and that's what scares me. If it's all true, if it can happen then it will happen.
How do you cope with that?
I don’t. I just think about it, sometimes it helps to hear a story. How have you been?
I’ve never been better! I see the beauty in everything. Do you?
I do now.
Well, thank you so much for joining us, the darkness, We always love having you.
Yeah, it was a pleasure! I love what you guys do with sparkle. I'd like to think that you're taking the light and making it dark.