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[00:00:01.01 ]Alaska plays a huge role in our music.
I mean everybody knows how great the summers are.
Completely filled with light, plenty of activity. 24 hours a day.
Light, it fills your eyes, it fills your being.
And, then you get in to the darkness of the winter, which lasts quite a long time.
And, I get in to that, too. I get in to the total darkness, stay up all night in the darkness,
play in the dark.
We are a Goth, kind of a Death Rock band. But, it's a northern sound.
We tend to think, we put our own vibe on it. And, the Alaskan darkness, and all that
just adds to it.
Well, a lot of people say 'what does that mean?' or 'what do you sound like?'
I think it kind of got a bad wrap over the years, just because of people making
erroneous assumptions about what this really means. Snickering around,
saying, 'Oh, I'm a Goth' you know. And stuff like that, but you know what,
it's the same today as it always has been, in the sense that it's accepting of
pretty much anybody. I mean, you could be who you are, if you have Goth
interest and Goth style, then you're in it.
You know, we are Goth, but we're also so much more.
We have a lot of fun doing it, but it's also, there's a serious agenda behind
what we do. For us, Goth is with disability. It's associated with disability.
You know, it's a family affair. Let's put it that way.
Both myself and Ivy have 2 boys that experience autism.
Plus, we also have family members who experience developmental disabilities,
so, we have to look at that and say, well this is a family experience,
it's not just us and our dyslexia, or Ivy has synesthesia, which is, you know
she sees colors when she hears sounds. You know, so I'm imagining
there are all these different people out there in the world who have
different experiences, so we try to incorporate all those different things
in to how we approach making music.
You just be yourself when you're alone with your family,
when you're out in the world, you have a second persona, like an outside self,
and that is the one that has to respond to all these assumptions and things
about people, disability, music. You know, and that's why I think that having
disability so close to my heart and within my life has just been a great asset,
it's just been a creative force in a good way. You know, a very good way.
Well, I'm a freak. I'm what you'd consider a freak. I choose that.
I identify myself with the villian. I like the villian. You know why?
Along side the villian there is also the story of disability. If you look at all
the villians throughout history, they either have an eyepatch, or they have
you know, they're walking with a cane. Or, they've got a hunch on their back,
they're disabled. So, to me disability is family. I welcome being the villian,
I welcome looking like the villian and that's totally OK with me.
My inside, my feelings of who I am and my identity and how I want to be,
you know, I've created the way I want to be, and I feel like I'd be cheating
myself if I wasn't acting the way that I want to act, and being the person
that I want to be.
I think it's an identity. Even when I was young, I was never any different.
And so, we were always in to the weird stuff. Even as a family.
We would go sit there and try to bend spoons. You know, with our eyes.
So, I just think it's part of me. You know, I have always grown up with
a different shell around my family just because of the prescence of
disability and you know, being labeled different, just inherently through that
so, I think that somehow they went together for me. And, the shell and
the labels actually made me become stronger and more myself.
Maybe they're all things that are different. My brother thinks differently,
He says things differently, he does things differently, maybe there are
different energies in the world. Maybe a pyramid energy is real,
maybe you can bend a spoon with your mind. These are the little, the
early things that I would think about. And, I didn't see any difference between
that and regular life, and I still don't today.
We're an American family, we're a normal American family.
And, we have all this going on. With disability and the dark, and all these kind
of creepy, mysterious things. And, I think people also relate with disability.
So, I think there is an incredible link there between those two things.
And, I think it's beautiful.
You can't get much more Goth than that.