Crankinterviewoctober 2010

The following is an interview with Miles Pflanz, conducted by email over the months of September and October, 2010.
Reprinted with permission.

1. Do you love America?

Pragmatically speaking, no.
Fundamentally speaking, no.
Paradoxically speaking, yes.

2. how'd you first come to noise/performance art and how do you perceive yourself within those idioms today?

Lexicons of ancient yawning lawntenders. Oh my...

This shit was never new. I grew from a pod into a multiple limbed abler; trying on different layers of fur or tape, playing those transistors late at night because they reminded me of the sounds coming from my older brother's room-- they warmed things and kept the nightmares at bay because he was bigger and I was usually in the hospital. Once I got into bugs and lizards and creatures that only knew how to live, I adopted a few roles: science, biology, and book burning. College impounded these with cartographic treason. But it did provide tertiary sets of lips and teeth: I'd learned then on that society had a few angles.

Perceptually peaking, the talk of tongs and love keeps me horribly unable to release the sport in a fashion that'd not lay reigns to a histrionic meme. I know little about where things stood, stand, or grind heels. Clattering all around appears to be the only dish I can attest to, so throw your books away, lad, I've collected and collated enough for a veritable shrine! The compendium of learned screwball ascetics and all that not-very-Braxton-like jazz should be enough of a brigand for appraisal. Knowing the cons and confluences rinse affluence with effluence, it's best to regard these card houses with little to do with anything more than high brow toilet reads.

3. what is the perfect crime?

Nation-building.

4. how do you think the noise underground relates to previous (high culture) experiments in sound and performance? how do you think it relates to the practices/successes/failure of old avant gardes like the Futurists, Dadaists, Fluxus, etc?

Relatively speaking, the relativity is an ossified bucket, stuck on tandem rinse cyclical rotation, rotoring its gums at the gnash of precedents ignored, busily text messaging its next advent of notation through the glum veneer of peat and sickly white thoroughbred. Once a generation gets it right, another comes along and lays wear and tear without contextual footing, and then the whole thing goes bare-up -- and it's a lotta ass to contend with. See, we forget how pretty each autumn is. Instead, we glorify the past and make gibbons seem wiser than they really are. There's no dada anymore; no fluxus -- just a bunch of apes in bowler caps, caught on tape chatting on their lobster telephones. If the current bears would accept that maybe it's a nice symposium to simply stop reading, then we wouldn't have to waddle through another microcassette edition, another "seems-like-1995-all-over-again-moment", dig? The failed success of everything is dirt. All good rotors make acquisitions of oxidation, sedimentation, metamorphosis, and spend their quarters too quickly. But this is good. It's good to take the dirk and thrust a mile wide swathe in the heavily clothed lawn. While that's what sheep are for, the proverbial "zen" of the moment is stuck on hiatus, overly quaffed on hair-dentures and maybe, possibly, bestiality, or simply just the lack of appropriate mirrors angled throughout the room. But mind you, I enjoy the overly grotesque capitalizing on things no one really understands when it comes down to art. Let the good forest grab itself and let a good shake go down, dammit. There's no one tree, see?

5. as a countercultural figure, have you had any run-ins with conservative folk/the law?

Wearing the ghillie suit at concerts has held back most conserfatives. Tenderizing the emanation would seem to signify a more likely situation that would call for perhaps public flogging, pulling out the old wooden stocks, and maybe even a beheading or three, but understand, my friend, I'm a mere small potato, a fingerling, in their gestapo. While true, one of my roles is to simply counter things, the likelihood of rabble attaining knowledge of these incursions is highly unreal. Both sides, both strata, of the political compost, lack the eyes and ears and wings to barbecue us folk stars. Maybe if an endowment for the arts landed on my phallus, that inflatable limbaugh derision would accost and become aloft, but most people in most people's eyes, are ignored by all the other people. Try it sometime: walk through an interstate travel plaza and try to telepathize with your kin. Not working? No scheisse. Lest they appear on television, the cinema, or attain more stripes than Britney, the runs will streak only those who seek. And wearing a lotta camouflage helps too.

6. what record/movie/book always brings a tear to your eyes?

Pretty much everything!
Tearing through everything brings it all to a standstill: a veritable mountain, adjunct prosthesis, capillaries pumping hood ornaments, and James Stewart. I shit you knots, the best time ever was with a pocket "van dam"... there it was, laid tight against the skin, foil taped to either vein, and voila! Once starting in on a hefty walk, the swish of corduroys activated an electrolytic circuit! FUCK, I KNOW, RIGHT? Pleasure knew no bounds thereafter. Ducts would swell and smell of salt, my urine wouldn't discharge with regularity, and the arms grew teats where the elbow met the ulna, creating a diaspora of pain, smirks, and high-fiving leaflets. One more view of that movie and I was game, man.

7. were if NASA to ask, what would you include in a space craft/capsule for other intelligent lifeforms to discover (book, art object, music, etc)?

I'd ask NASA to include a small clear plastic ziploc baggie, containing one single, tiny grain of salt.

8. is there a political/civic purpose you attach to DIY America? Is there an ideal for this culture that you think has not been met?

No.
The carp and sock-puppets we ascribe to inhabit only begets the best of worst appeals for delayed obsolescence. Like that maneuver where the pawn falls deeper into the pitfalls of his own chagrin, the portents are pretty much staid, laid, and goners. True, idyllic corners can come from the wrested rooster wings (and assuredly taste well with a fine shimmer of oil, pinot noir, and thumb drives), but an old man once said that money was the real goal, and so, what being there a heaven and all, it's best to burn down the dreadhair domes and sincere lil' enclaves, allowing the arteries to affix themselves to a thematic ending proper, festooning these commies with the glow of pink, store-bought cartoonish clothing, and compel them to dance all night at some beleaguering festival with lotsa dope and techno, with the commonality mantra that THIS is freedom. In other words? Let it fry. But meanwhile, there are tomes and diet islands we can all run to, if willing to be ignored. The plight of politico and civic service is the gamut for talkshows, meaning, you're just gonna attract flies. The ideal for the runaway culture is failure: the constitution and stamina to stammer through obsolescence, and ceasing to be adolescent in thinking planetary knees can be salved by getting hippie and black flag about it. Once the groin pains end, the shimmer will arise again, but mind you, she's a legacy that will die like a gull-plucked crustacean.

9. what is the least amount of money it would take for you to bite off mike tyson's ear?

If you don't know where your Mike has been, then I strongly urge against any ear biting. Exchanging kisses for capitalism is akin to requesting the once elegant, now elderly golden retriever you're housesitting to not emit noxious odors or trail brown spots on the finely coifed shag. I'd rather take a mouthful of flatulence than fuck with a hapless aberrance with a penchant for cartilage.

10. given that yr music and performance contains comedic elements unusual within the noise world, how'd you come to use humor in yr work and what are yr thoughts on humor in music in general?

Humor is not really a gifted glib, nor a gibe at the dull aplomb of endless wall-noise cassettes, but it does help buffer the soapy cosmetic of "keeping it real". Were for it not for endorphin response in my own pawing the catalogs full of slick girl jean ads (can't have sass without a lil' ass), there'd be no clamor to rev. Other words? Penis. Damn funny. Not a holocaust. Besides, try and wrestle a giggleless missive without a holly jolly hug and tug. Try and not imagine a sixteen ton Python ending to the worst noise event you'd ever witnessed. It's in the bones to build a home, do some more banking, and feel that the stucco is there to identify, edify, and be the end-all endocrine, but that's just the prescription pill and orifice doing the belief mantra and envelope drone. Silly conservative it is to strive to just have a white walled room to put your pouts up for the brief fifteen minutes and have it better than all the whiles and wiles of beguiling yourself towards other conclusions.

I came to humor and quickly as it went. While it's in the bones to build a home, do some more banking, and feel that the stucco is there to identify, edify, and be the end-all endocrine, but that's just the prescription pill and orifice doing the belief mantra and envelope drone. Silly conservative it is to strive to just have a white walled room to put your pouts up for the brief fifteen minutes and have it better than all the whiles and wiles of beguiling yourself towards other conclusions. Whoops?

11. how did you become a cardboard fish? was there ever any consideration of becoming, say, a cardboard tank or tobacco field?

Cardboard is this wonderfully ubiquitous material that, like most consumers, can be manipulated into almost any form. I don't limit my exercises to just this material, mind you. There are innumerable discards from civilization to peruse, and for some reason these always make for reusable reintegration. As to how I became anything, the passage of time becomes us all; becoming is a smooch that a nice lady gives you in passing complement. Cardboard fits the prototype for temporary housing of ideas. Were if I to aspire to a coffee table book, surely steel and iron would be a gesture for better permanence, but try becoming an iron sturgeon and take that overseas in your backpack for a month of shows.

12. could you describe the process by which you come up with costumes/props and how that fits in with the sound element of yr performances?

Cheap discards are portentous as previously intoned. Lighter, faster, durable, portable. Don'tcha forgo the sneaky surprises, either! Hidden deliciousness inside the mind or the trousers or the sound; something up the sleeves. See, puns and boners or gender-bends always stir things up -- not that this is a personal fiction, but fact remains as compulsory as a calendar would belie the day-by-day. Like the penis, it's funny to try and fuck oneself without actually going through the surgical procedure. Convergences compound the nutrition count when adding the dual pole that self acknowledgment confounds the man, the fish, or a shitty duct taped costume -- intertwining these transistors and transcending crosswinds adds something more than mere duality. While trinities are forays into pope meals and cardinal hats, the jiggling belly of visual distortion whencesoever abuses the sonic notion, thereby becoming mated, sometimes obligatory, sometimes organic, and fourthly, juxtaposed.

Orgiastically would be a good word for the process by which you'd have me come up with fitting the leder hosen into a scant carpal or dearth splay of engorged yet undercovered patinas, toppled boulders, or balloon-like mammalian sorts, covered in not-quite hair, and toothless as they proboscis her nostrils along mazes of crushed velvety coffee comlinks, turning dentin into adrenaline, which is a terrible way of construing the euphemism for hanging around a Sharpie marker too long. And speaking of which, I have a bulletin board that also aids the process, reminding me that clean desks and uncluttered sweeps of multiple medium has no flow, no show, and no imperative to imply the contrariwise of not acting out one's scribbles! So you can see that delta were if you aloft: to-fro mad dashes from one end of the studio to the other; fortunate none to bother because I live in a barn, in the woods, all the while yelling at that fucking NPR station while I solder.

13. one of my favorite parts about yr performances are the lectures, as well as the casual talking that frequently occurs during a set. could you give me a quick lecture about the casual talking and a casual talk about the lectures for our readers?

Well, not really. I can't simply come up with this stuff. It's a level of playing that minds no matter nor abducts small helpless animals. If you take the whole gestalt or "kunst", pry it down a few lines on the prey-by-prey, you'll find that really tiny gestures of air and articulation find their meaning in the ill-fitting pants. Remember those jeans ads? If one were to abide by the "larger picture" i.e., panacea, then only this one form would be conveyed. All the hiccups and whispers that enshroud the day with their fears, tickles, and shivs, well? They'd go ignored, and you'd end up with just the mere big picture. Nobody wants that, really. Nobody likes to be told what is or isn't a message. People are funny that way. They eat small animals, drive yellow jeeps, and comb occasionally. I've taken to combing after a 25 year interlude. Now I'm worried less about the stuff that I find in the comb, rather, find it particularly fascinating. It's like pooping or cooking. Or taking a walk. Little elements bind their gasps with flappy tents, tenants to the process, applicants, bankers, forest management types, all combers and cops that help the junction flow more clearly. Take time, one day, to allow this for yourself. You'll find the tangents can tell a better parable than all your late nights hanging out with actual literature that's well written and has all the ingredients of opus.

14. what celebrity/public figure would you most enjoy to dress up in yr costumes and have perform yr entire act for you?

James Hetfield from Metallica.

15. yr contact mics are notoriously awesome. what about contact mics/the amplification of small sound appeals to you?

You rake things, sweep things, or use the tiny brass disc as a livingroom newscenter piece. I'm surprised that not many people have "picked up" on this. The very real multiplicity of piezo electronics is effervescent to me: it's a speaker, it's a vibraphone, it's a stethoscope. The pling plungs and wispy rasps of tiny object have this notoriously fascinating quality, harkening back to instincts developed in maybe that of a primordial cat or batlike creature, having discovered some form of delicious treat under a rock, clicking or singing on its own lonesome high right before the predator gleefully lunges and munches the bug or mouse into paté. Finding the hidden scrunches inside objects is rather akin to this closeted development. And plus, we adults have so retarded our own giddy socialism with that aforementioned "big picture" I was going off about. Instead, we try and bungle our way through parties by being polite, resisting the urge to play with our zippers or fondle buttons. I remember being scolded one time for chasing a cave cricket that had wandered into a restaurant. I was simply trying to rescue the little guy before a human heel made better work of it. That, and katydids. Exoskeletons are really badass things: clattering with their rosin-soft feet and antennae, begging tenfold to be amplified-- piezos turn these into austere occasions.

16. crank sturgeon is nearing a twentieth anniversary correct? any chance of a crank sturgeon army forming to battle the kiss army/real armies?

Correct in the twentieth nearing, but it'd be an oh-god moment to chance you the dream of clones, drones, and shipments to foreign lands to be mossed and leaded into fabrication or merchandise. Please let there only be one Crank, and let him slip slide away, well away, way the frig and fowl and fug away from the froth of army and cult celebrity t-shirt half breed. It's certainly nice to be alive however. In this light, I've worn a crank sturgeon t-shirt now and again. When asked what's the meaning of the shirt, I always answer in the third person, gushing geysers like an oleiferous prepubertal with this special ten step eye-glazing formula I now market. Eye creams are all the rage!

17. in my town they are building a mosque that has somehow become a concern for national security. what buildings do you wish were never built?

All of Ayn Rand's monumental heaps of excrement.

18. you've managed to be one hell of a productive person for a long stretch of time. got any advice for weirdoes aspiring to grandeur?

That's really nice of you to say! At this juncture, all this soap has still been pretty funny. You go to wash sometimes and come back with that less-than-fresh feeling; and some days this is like a bout, or a dash of gout maybe? Yep, endocrine again. Not the panacea-thing, but pituitary. Orange, or even a little jaundiced. And like a double gauged repeater, where endless scrubbings do little to shave or get you to that "Artaud" sort of "place"; (I know, I know) how maddening it is, to try and lift and toss the same caber for the same Scots and the same clan and the same binary bivalve lot. For shits, I'd suggest trying a few other cyclic procedures, I mean, you can't actually clean a clam without killing it, right? If however, you really gotta go, then hell, follow thy bliss, proud sage! But in such bequest, I'll offer the following travails:

-All the beers attest to little, however. Watch the suds, guys and gals and in-betweens. Foam should come from vigorous rubbing, like Max Ernst used to do with his "frottage" exercises. It's better to have calluses than a habit trail of irony and bloated forty-something discourses on hops, inability to maintain erections under said duress, and casting aspersions on fellow sapiens when you fall down in a mire of classless tact, gin blossoming countenances, and less fancier embolisms. In other words, there are better ways to be killed.

-Mind others! This piddle is a relinquishing of yours, mine, and ample punctuation. Don't sheepishly tail the length through the legs, as this will hoop you towards a recent doom, but in balance, it's nice to know the cheques won't suffer from rubber and will adhere to oneself and one's loved ones like a bit of amber, all pie-eyed, readying for spreading, sort of like Nutella, but minus the sodium bicarbonate. Too much alkali sends the breath and halitosis into a frenzy of "oi's" and that's not very Beuys of you. Not to nationalize things, but it's good to respect. All living things.

-That said, like an interesting Catholic artist I knew who used to wear antlers and plug speaker cones into wall sockets once stated triumphantly: "try not masturbating". Acknowledging that this is about as loaded as a Boston precinct's allegory on why some lofty boy-touchers ought to be spayed, in a different hue, the guy had a point, and it'd be microcephalic to take mean of his allegiance for piousness with fouling the lives of others. Now and again, I think about this when plugging things into wall sockets.

-The final travail? Heck, it doesn't matter. Try and absorb like a sponge, but don't not forget to write about actual non-stuff. Blogs and the elucidations from people on sabbatical with their wretched stare-banks that have never seen nor heard word from the grace and physiognomy of where two feet can take 'em, well... these pour through the sieve with poignant tell-all's about nothing; which apparently knowing nothing is parenthetically (something) these days? I say if it gets you laid, great!

19. what is the worst injury in sports history according to your imagination?

My imagination is porous with what injuriousness the soles can spare with their parting gasses; and on the account and tribune of hundreds of tiny classified ads, whirring their showcasing sales on portals, would-be-jousting tournaments, the streets of Pamplona, and civic unrest untested as litmus for entertainment for some subversive cause, namely the NBC network, these gallant ramparts are rampant with an ideologue paralleling jockey briefs too close to home. But like I said, if it gets you spayed, great!

20. what sound gives you the most inspiration?

Yours.











(eyes used for tooth support)