Interview with Precious Child

Interview: Precious Child

With Song River

When Dark Rock meets Cinematic Soundscapes something otherworldly appears. Precious Child’s recent album, “Escape” is an auditory and visually present wrapped in an almost removed dysfunctional manner. An industrial art form as a cohesive project almost seems childlike in many ways… Alice would have called the music her own. It is a breath into Wonderland.

Song River: Would you describe the arts as chaos with an order?

Precious Child: I view the arts as a presentation of arbitrarily ordered chaos. The arts create the shape for our abstract experiences. I can’t fill a bucket up with my hate or heartbreak or mirth but I can play you a song or write a poem. When they connect, the impact of the arts is only vaguely quantifiable but in that connection, we receive an order. Confusion is an essential aspect of our nature and the arts provide us shape for our confusion, for our chaos.

SR: When you create do you ever feel like the end result is almost like your own child?

Precious Child: First of all, I will never have children. I am a genetic terminus. I live my life with a purpose and that purpose does not include breeding. I feel that my creations live outside of me. It is an eerie feeling. The energy from my art is sourced both personally and from those whom I resonate with. So, when I create, it is real and a reflection of myself in various ways. But. I feel my art is alive independently and I must serve it. What I end up serving is the connection that it has with people; that is the pièce de résistance.

SR: Viewing the state of where we are currently- in this 21st Century- a land of the tech/revolution. Do you see it has an enhancement or hindrance to your own work?

Precious Child: Technology is highly contextual. Technology is learned, transmitted, and deployed knowledge. Technology is also social agreements to conform to various standards. A knife is a technology. Sewing is a technology. The shape of a violin is a technology. The music itself is a technology, with the organization and codification of musical language around 440hz, tempos, keys, and so on.

Some people are romantic classicists, desiring adherence to “the old way”. Some people are neo-tech hungry, accepting and utilizing new technologies at will. Does technology enable art? Hmm. Without thinking about it too much I will say that technology enables art to communicate and connect better. Good art can exist within the context of my friend who views my painting with their bare eyes but tech can show it to thousands.

Personally, I am tech hungry. I’m a wild-minded individual with intense dreams. Before I embark on an artistic endeavor I often spend a while imagining the end result. Technology helps me attain those dreams. Honestly, the way I really got into music was first by singing, and then hearing synth music. I found out that I could just learn how to use that technology… and off I went.

SR: In order for the soul to be set free, does the way we perceive ourselves in the world of music and the arts need to take on liberality that may seem not too long ago had become somewhat stifled?

Precious Child: I think that it is the obligation of music and arts to fulfill and give shape to the aforementioned personal chaos. We look to music and the arts to help us understand ourselves. As society increasingly and hopefully becomes broader-minded the arts must move accordingly and push and provoke society to transcend. Transcendence itself is contextual. To be more. The arts must push people to be more, to create more, to desire more.

SR: I watched the video “Magic is Real” first as a film, then as a perspective prior to listening to the music. How deep did the magic moments unfurl themselves before you as you witnessed the collision of two becoming one… film and song?

Precious Child: Ah, we’re back to the separate entity. The video is a distinct work of art, sonic and visual combined. Editing the video was much like playing a song, being inside it, stretching it, little tears bleeding. I look for those moments and get the fuck out of their way when they occur.

SR: Together with the clip and the music certainly left a smile. It was inviting and warm. Magic. Do we seek to create our moments of magic or are we just missing them because we are too busy?

Precious Child: Moments of magic. Every moment is magical. We miss them not because we are too busy but because we lack faith and belief in our own incredible experience. You. Me. We are bags of star juice, wiggling about ephemerally with the incredibly accurate notion that we are the most important thing in the universe. We are indeed the most important thing in the universe because we are the universe. One tiny speck of the universe. One fragment of the hologram that when cut apart still reflects the entirety. Wait, isn’t existence itself magical? Our vision may fail to see this but magic is real as existence. It doesn’t matter if we see it or miss it; we can’t. We are magic.

SR: Talk to me about how the collaborative efforts came together with Neil Gaiman. How did the meet-up occur?

Precious Child: 8 billion people. How do I connect with anyone that matters? That’s more stars than I can see in the sky when I’m laying on the ground in Death Valley. That grand magic that is us, that’s how. Friends of friends of friends… Improbabilities piling up. Magic stepping in.

SR: Was there something already in the works or did he give a directive to what he wanted you to pull from?

Precious Child: I was told to have at it and come what may…

SR: There seems to be a certain amount of exploration is there not between the art currently?

Precious Child: Ha, ha! Right with my last album kinda being classic alternativeish. Well, my album before that was straight up industrial. I write a lot of different types of music. I understand that people may want a simple characterization for their own personal classification but my art is broad. If I had to sum it up in one phrase I’d call it “Pop Real.” Subscribe on YouTube or Spotify… there’s some surprising stuff coming out in 2016 and 2017.

SR: Are writers of great imagination fading do you feel into the stardust of the heavens?

Precious Child: Imagination. No. Imagination is partially a talent meaning you’re born with it, but it’s also a skill. One develops the ability to create spontaneously and rapidly and violently with sustained work and effort over time. Imagination is tied to dreaming and no matter how much people strive to iron-encase our dreams we will always dream. In dreams, we can always be free. In dreams, we are star dust.

SR: Reading over the song titles from your new album, Escape, each title within itself seems to be calling to childhood memories of magical times, is Escape really about what we as adults are longing to do? That is finding our way into our own self-love and appreciation that only comes through faith, trust, and hope?

Precious Child: Hey kids want to escape to. In America, they have the liberty to play and make believe and spend more time escaping. What are they escaping from? When I was young I played make believe to escape from the perceived as stupid destiny of adult life. I was aware that it sucked and was lame. Let us pretend, to go away.

My reality, it is my dreams as much as it is the physical reality of my star juice pod. If I dream am I escaping from myself? I say no. I say that I can’t escape, but rather I am changing and altering my reality via the act of dreaming, or perhaps of escaping.

I think that the dreams of my mind are as valid as the experiences of my flesh. I urge people to dream and Escape and create that which they believe is magical. Magic is real in all of your experiences; it just waits for you to define it as such.

SR: There is a darkness to most of what is created by Precious Child. Is that one happy moment found in the song “Magic is Real” the only moment of bliss for Alice as she steps through the Looking Glass?

Precious Child: First, thank you for the excellent questions! Now my response: Happy moments. We can’t have sadness without happiness and I suggest the opposite as well. The sun shines brightest after a thunderstorm. From my song Ten Stars on the forthcoming album titled “Precious Child”-

“I finally realized that there’s no difference between beauty and pain when you wake you’ll see my blood smeared across your sky… know that it’s my contribution to your shadow’s sunrise.”

I’ll end this with the statement:

“Unencumbered bliss is only attainable via embrace of the entirety of one’s self, namely that which has your name. Your Shadow.”