Saul Williams - interview

MW: Welcome to Poland! Thank You once again for an amazing, mindblowing show. How are You feeling after Your first concert in our country?

SW: I feel good. During the show, I think about the sound and the WiFi - because I have a program that runs the images, and I want to sound right. It was good, I saw people were getting into it. 

MW: You travel A LOT. Your latest album, "MartyrLoserKing", was recorded on Haiti, in Senegal, Paris, New Orleans... How do these trips, contacts with other cultures influence You as an artist, Your music? 

SW: A lot. The name of the festival we're on right now is Different Sounds. All of these cultures have different sounds, they pay particularly different attention to melody and rhythm. I learned a lot by appreciating the other ways of hearing music. And of course it's not only that - it's also about looking at, contemplating everything in between - life, music, art, people, governance... All of these things - they help me make sense of my position in the world, but also the position of the world itself. It helps me keep the perspective of what happens in America versus what happens in Europe, Africa, Caribbean etc. It gives me something to ponder. And it gives me insight to the whole behavioral algorithm of humanity.

MW: Is this algorithm something You're trying to discover and present through Your music? 

SW: In a sense. I'm interested in rhythm. Algorithm, polyrhythm... All of these things are interesting to me. I'm interested in politics of the day, the music of the day, and the reflections of ourselves through culture and investigative understanding of what is happening. I process it all and turn it into stories and sounds. 

MW: You do all that using poetry... 

SW: Yeah, in a broadest sense. 

MW: So - in Your opinion, what's the importance, the "power" of poetry?

SW: The power of poetry lies in its streamlining the code and its decoding of our habits, choices and ideas. It gives a personal insight into an individual. And through that individual we see the world. And that world - it's either our own or reflection of our own. It sheds light - and light is where this whole planet comes from, it's an explosion. So much comes from the spectrum of light. Everything is different gradations of the spectrum of light. It makes me think - and it gives me ways of expressing something. To see that there's a lot of shit going on now, but there is also a lot of beauty - I think the outflow of humanity is conscious and real, but there are those - in position of power, the "gatekeepers" - who restrict our growth and progress for their profit. That restriction becomes war, penal codes, injustice, borders and boundaries, poverty - it's a construct. 

MW: So we need a "MartyrLoserKing" to protect us? 

SW: No - I can't ever say that I provide the answer. I notice the martyrs - those who give their life for a cause. These martyrs are whistleblowers, those people are women, those people are revolutionaries. The other side is when those people become soldiers and are fighting for the cause that is not necessarily their own, but it reflects some external structure which convinced them that it's worth fighting for. Many of these choices are erroneous. Many of them are dishonest and based on extraction and profiting from what we can get as a result of war - imperialism or whatnot. I see art and creativity as a way of communicating and connecting. Art connected people way before the WiFi did. And You see it - people listen to Bob Marley in different parts of the globe and understand him. His music speaks to them, they feel it. Art has a power. Maybe art is an alternative energy that can be used against the superstructures that are systemic and restrictive. 

MW: Let's go back to the past - how do You remember Your first entrance to the world of acting? 

SW: My introduction to acting was in theater. I started acting when I was 8, in my school. I played in "Julius Caesar" by Shakespeare, as Mark Antony. And even there You can find the questions I raise in my own work. That play affected me, the position that Marc Anthony was in, betrayal of a friend, the assassination of a leader etc. - all of these things, the question of honor, the question of power... At 8 years old due to that play I was given a chance to explore and travel. I was living in a small town outside New York City - but during the play suddenly I was a Roman! I had to imagine Rome, imagine something I didn't know. It forced me into sort of empathetic position - I had to study the character, think about what my character would do, the choices that he makes. I learned a lot through acting. It informs my view of the world and my position in the world. 

MW: Besides music, slam poetry, acting, You're also involved in creating a graphic novel about MartyrLoserKing - seems like there are just no limits to Your creativity...

SW: Oh, I'm sure there are limits. There are things I can't do. I'm doing the graphic novel, but I'm not drawing it! All of these things You've mentioned fall under the heading of "creative expression". I primarily express myself through performance and writing - for me even writing is a sort of performance. I see the page as a way of looking at the stage. Words on the page - I connect with them the same way one might look at placing lights over the stage or blocking the play. It's all related to the process of writing and performance. Writing for the graphic novel is essentially like writing a script or a screenplay, whereas I'm working with extraordinary illustrators helping me visualize an idea. What's new to me in it is taking my ability, the idea of storytelling and character to a different level so to speak. I've written books of poetry, but I'm not upheld to the idea of a character, even though many of my books do explore this idea. I'm influenced by poets like Fernando Pessoa, who embodied many characters. All of that relates to my love of theater, but there's also something that's just me.

MW: I'm also curious - how did You meet and connect with Trent Reznor? 

SW: He asked me to tour with him. I met him because he reached out to my people years ago and asked if I'd be willing to tour with him. I met him on the first night of an European tour I was invited to be on. That night I saw him watching the show from the side of the stage. Then I watched his show from the side, after the show he came to our dressing room and asked if I would be interested in collaborating with him on anything. I played him some of the demos I was working on - that later became "NiggyTardust".

MW: For me it's so amazing that You're able to work with artists from so many different genres - Trent Reznor, Serj Tankian, The Mars Volta... And then go back to boom bap hip-hop, like on the latest Torae album. 

SW: My background's really hip hop though. Hip-hop is the music that informed my understanding, my appreciation of music. My music is very beat-driven. There was a moment where I got really tired of beats that I was hearing and I started making music as a way of playing around with them. Primarily because I was listening to a lot of stuff from a lot of different places, and I was interested in different ways of approaching rhythm - really from the young age, because I studied in Brazil, and the rhythms there are completely different. And then growing up in New York, during the birth of hip-hop, was extraordinary. It was great, being exposed to different worlds, different sounds. 

MW: Can You tell us a little bit more about Your new project, "Neptune Frost"? 

SW: "Neptune Frost" is the film side of "MartyrLoserKing". Neptune Frost is the name of the "meta-protagonist". The graphic novel tells a story of the coltan miner, who becomes a part of the hacking collective. But the real hacker of that collective is Neptune Frost. She is intersex (she identifies as a woman), who runs away from Uganda, where she was afraid of not being able to be herself. When she crosses a certain boundary, she steps into herself. When she does that, her and the coltan miner - MartyrLoserKing - they both have a visit in their dream by an avatar. The avatar essentially explains to them - using the stars - what binary coding is.

I always conceived of graphic novel as a musical. I never conceived of it as "a book that came with the album". I knew there will be three albums connected with that. It really just reflects my creative process. I really don't write without recording music. I do both at the same time. Sometimes words come, sometimes sounds come. If I play with sounds a while, eventually I come back to words, and vice versa. What I really wanted to do was to make a musical for theater, and I wanted to act in it. But the more I got into the story, the more I fell in love with all the aspects of creating the music, the story, the characters, this world... And then I just wanted to direct it. I met producers who encouraged me to make it a film instead of a play - in fact, at some point it clicked that that's actually what I wanted to do. I grew up loving musical theater, both on stage and in film. I grew up exposed to it, in New York, Broadway, and the whole politics in music. I saw a play called "Sarafina!" on Broadway, with exiled South Africans. It was political as hell, musical and it was extraordinary. It really changed my life, when I saw it when I was like 13. I wanted to make something like that. All of the plays I saw made me want to move into that realm. So I was moving into that direction for a long time - it was inevitable.

MW: Do You have any other projects You're working on besides "Neptune Frost"? 

SW: The graphic novel comes out in 2019, I'm handing the final draft in September. Right now I'm mixing the second album of the trilogy. But I also have some other projects on the side, I just finished a libretto for an opera about gentrification. It's gonna be on Barbicon Theatre in London. L.A. Philharmonic is the producer of it in Brooklyn Academy of Music. I've worked with a composer Ted Hearne and director Patricia McGregor. Besides that, there's a lot of music collaborations - I do them all the time. 

MW: Do You have any words for Your fans in Poland and in Eastern Europe? 

SW: Invite me back! It's good to be here. I've become more interested in this part of Europe, about everything that happened here during the First and the Second World War. Exploring places like Poland always interested me. I have to come back, because I'm only here for a day now.

MW: Thank You very much!