AVC: Do you feel out of touch with your audience?
MJK: For the most part, I have no idea who those people are?especially when we're traveling through Europe. And it's not all our fault; it's a whole series of events. [You play] heavy music, and your record company, which has never owned an album anything like what you're doing, immediately markets you to the obvious stinky kid with the dreadlocks and the B.O. and the urine on his shoes because he's been sleeping in his own filth in a festival in the middle of the rain. They basically market right to that guy. And then you realize the only people showing up to your shows are those primates?these weird, cretin people? Then, let's say you're at a coffee shop, and you've got a friend sitting next to you, and you've been reading some Noam Chomsky, or you're reading The Onion, and you look over and see a bunch of kids [who] look like they could be made of cheese, because there are flies everywhere. And you go, "Hey, you want to go where they're going?" and everybody goes, "**** no." And they're wearing Tool shirts. Why would you want to go there? Why would anybody other than those kids wanna go see Tool if that's our representative in that area? So it ends up being a no-win situation. Of course, that's a completely extreme example.
AVC: Do you ever jump online to read fans' interpretations of your songs?
MJK: Oh, God, no.
AVC: It's amazing, the depth that people go into. The general idea seems to be that you're gradually revealing clues with each new album.
MJK: Isn't that great? They're playing it backwards, and they're like, "You've got to get a Slurpee, but only half-full, and when you're drinking the Slurpee, right at that last slurp, the rhythm of the slurp coincides with?" My God. Are you kidding me?
AVC: Some people think there are three tracks on 10,000 Days that supposedly form one hidden track that's the key to the whole album. It's as if people want to believe there's going to be some ultimate aesthetic payoff.
MJK: [Laughs.] We can barely decide whether we're going to do a baseball cap or a beanie. You know what I mean? Now, granted, if you subscribe to the whole spiritual, energetic level, when you get into that weird, meditative state? I'm trying to think of the word? Sufis? I don't remember?the whirling dervishes. When you get into that weird state, at some point, your body clicks out, and you have a weird out-of-body experience, and so you can tap into those things unconsciously. So if people are reading into those kind of things that basically had nothing to do with us, that are just us clicking in a moment and being true to that whirling-dervish process of emoting with each other, some of that stuff just might naturally, accidentally come out. But it's not in any way a product of our design.
Discussion Zen 5 Speculation (EPYC Turin and Strix Point/Granite Ridge - Ryzen 9000)
