"Just as an example of how a song comes together around here, the song "Promise Of Water" is comprised of various reactions to watching television, taking in the world as it exists hallucinated in the media, watching the Iraq war unfold, the gore, the stupidity, the absolute stunning tragedy of it, but the simultaneous unreality of it to us, the receivers of these images and information - the violence and brutality being in a way the expression of our passivity - since we accept it - but not actually experienced by us except in the abstract, viewed on a screen, not real to most of us but just the unfortunate few that are actually there fighting, many of their bodies shredded by fire and steel, and Iraqis themselves slaughtering each other in huge unknown numbers, lives ruined, a whole country devastated, and we "watch" this - the only way we experience anything of it at all - along with, I don't know what else, Star Search, car commercials, images of the devastation in New Orleans, bodies bloated in the streets, eaten by dogs - and again our abject passivity. Paris Hilton, America's Favorite Internet Predator, whatever, and it all blends together and smears our faces with slime, and I feel like I'm personally infected, that this stuff is in my blood, and my mind is not my own.Then, I was listening repeatedly to Nina Simone's version of "Hollis Brown," which is just devastating and beautiful and unapproachable, and I started playing guitar to it, and it gradually changed into the basic chord and rhythm of "Promise of Water" but instead of singing about a destitute farmer who kills his family and himself in desperation, I sang about the goddamn TV - ha ha! Oh well..."
-M Gira
"Just as an example of how a song comes together around here, the song "Promise Of Water" is comprised of various reactions to watching television, taking in the world as it exists hallucinated in the media, watching the Iraq war unfold, the gore, the stupidity, the absolute stunning tragedy of it, but the simultaneous unreality of it to us, the receivers of these images and information - the violence and brutality being in a way the expression of our passivity - since we accept it - but not actually experienced by us except in the abstract, viewed on a screen, not real to most of us but just the unfortunate few that are actually there fighting, many of their bodies shredded by fire and steel, and Iraqis themselves slaughtering each other in huge unknown numbers, lives ruined, a whole country devastated, and we "watch" this - the only way we experience anything of it at all - along with, I don't know what else, Star Search, car commercials, images of the devastation in New Orleans, bodies bloated in the streets, eaten by dogs - and again our abject passivity. Paris Hilton, America's Favorite Internet Predator, whatever, and it all blends together and smears our faces with slime, and I feel like I'm personally infected, that this stuff is in my blood, and my mind is not my own.Then, I was listening repeatedly to Nina Simone's version of "Hollis Brown," which is just devastating and beautiful and unapproachable, and I started playing guitar to it, and it gradually changed into the basic chord and rhythm of "Promise of Water" but instead of singing about a destitute farmer who kills his family and himself in desperation, I sang about the goddamn TV - ha ha! Oh well..." -M Gira
http://www.junkmedia.org/index.php?i=2150