The Believer June/July
Music Issue Is Here.
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The following is from a conversation between Khaela Maricich, of the Blow, and
Miranda July, Khaela's old friend from Portland. This is one of the many funny,
smart, and interesting things in the June/July 2007 Music Issue of The
Believer, which also comes with a CD that has, along with exclusive tracks
from Sufjan Stevens, Lightning Bolt, and others, a remix (by Rory Phillips)
of the Blow's "Parentheses." Subscribe to The Believer now and these things
will be sent to your home immediately, in a little plastic bag.
I.
Ace Investigations.
MIRANDA JULY: We're drinking a tea which I didn't really tell you about. This tea that we're drinking, it's really special longevity tea, and so we're more or less going to live forever. It costs like nine dollars, to live forever.
KHAELA MARICICH: It's like 50 cents a year, or less.
MJ: I thought we would trace a little bit of your history for those who aren't as familiar with it as I am. Also, to be honest, there are some things that happened when I first met you that I don't understand at all, because we weren't very good friends. For example, Ace Investigations.
KM: (Laughs.) You never really understood it, huh?
MJ: No. So when I met you, in Olympia, because I was dating someone who lived in Olympia and I would come up from Portland and visit, I one time heard that the new thing that you really wanted to be a part of, if you were anyone, was Ace Investigations. And I wasn't quite sure, like I was never asked to be an investigator, or detective, or whatever, but I had deep respect for whatever it was they did.
KM: Well, that's funny, because Ace Investigations was an investigative agency. My friend started it, and the idea was that everyone is an investigator, everybody is always investigating something. And that's what's interesting about people, is what they're paying attention to, what they're investigating. So, really, anybody could be a part of our investigative agency if they wanted to. So, you were welcome to.
MJ: I wish I had realized that.
KM: We rented a space and had biweekly meetings, the idea being we would each have our own personal investigations and then manage this space so that we could give evidence of the investigations we made. Basically art shows. What's funny is I remember someone told me (whispers), "You know Miranda, who's been hanging around town? She said she was interested in being an agent." Which meant you got an agent name and an agent card.
MJ: Yeah, I wanted that card.
KM: And I remember seeing you at a concert—but I didn't know you at all—and you were standing there and I was like 21 at this point—
MJ: And I'm, like, what, 22?
KM: Yeah, maybe 21 and a half. And you were standing behind me when you had your really big white hair and wore the most mysterious clothes possible. I didn't understand what you thought you thought you were doing, with your awesome tights over your big shoes. I just didn't understand it. (Laughing.) So I turned around to you at a concert and was like, "Are you spying on me?" Like, giving a clue about Ace Investigations, and you said, "Well, if I was I wouldn't tell you." (Both laugh.) And then I was too scared to offer anything more about the membership card.
II.
"Keep away from the moon, it will fuck you up."
MJ: It took a little while, on both ends. Too many code words and not enough regular words. The first time I ever saw you play music was when you played your ukulele, at some show. It seemed so precarious—you know, girl comes out with a ukulele and you're like, uh-oh. This could be bad. But it was perfectly pop and emotional and precise and sort of efficient, you know? Not too long and not too short. I had completely misjudged the situation. Now I've learned to trust you, more or less. But you've kept that precariousness with you, and it seems to be part of what's really valuable about what you do. Was that called the Blow?
KM: No, that might have been just me, or it might have been called Get the Hell Out of the Way of the Volcano.
MJ: Get the Hell Out of the Way of the Volcano. In short form, that title would be the Blow, i.e., the blow that comes out of the volcano.
KM: Exactly.
MJ: And what do you think of as the Blow? Do you even think of it as something that only exists as music? What is the Blow?
KM: That's an interesting question. What's the Blow?
MJ: What's everything the Blow could be?
KM: Oh, God, what a challenge you're throwing down to me, Miranda! (Laughs.) That's what's so good about you, you're always asking what is the best possible thing this thing could be in the whole world, ever. It should be that, just pushing yourself to make it be that. And I'm kind of resting comfortably and not having to define it specifically, everything it could fantastically be. Well, the Blow was just me, for three releases. But also under that name, the Blow, I've done performances. The one that I'm really most proud of was "Blue Sky vs. Night Sky."
MJ: I loved that performance more than anything.
KH: Since people didn't really know me back then, I could just get up and start singing as a girl who just was playing guitar. Which I'm really not great at, so it didn't seem like it was going to be anything very impressive.
MJ: Like you with the ukulele.
KH: But now I was performing as a character, I was playing this show as if I was an 18-year-old girl who was caught up in a boyfriend that she wasn't super into.
MJ: I remember you coming onstage and saying, very nervously, "This song is for my boyfriend."
KH: And then it continues and it becomes clear that she's actually in love with a girl she'd been with at camp, she's staggered by an experience that happened with her.
MJ: Did the experience have to do with the moon? I remember there was this message—oh, I get shivers thinking about it—there's a recorded message that is played backwards, but you sing it.
KM: I can explain that. It's actually a story that I experienced, which is why I feel like it was really easy to tell in the show. Just the experience of, through the grounding of holding somebody's hand, a girl that I met at one point, really experiencing the vastness of what it is to live and exist and look at everything which is—I'm not even really able to communicate that in words right now in the interview because it sounds—I mean, you can't get that into words. In the performance the girl gets home from camp and tries to talk to her mom about it, about what she'd heard—for the first time she'd looked at the sky and really heard it—but her mom is just like, "You can't talk about it. We don't want to talk about that. Don't talk about it."
So the girl's waiting for her mom to tell her more about why she's not supposed to talk about it, and in the investigation of trying to figure out what is wrong about talking about that thing that she heard—she tape-records her mom, and then is trying to hear—there must be some secret message in what her mom's been saying—so she plays the tape backwards—
MJ: And you perform this, you somehow made the exact sound with your mouth of a tape being played backwards—
KH: And backwards, the mom is saying, "Keep away from the moon, it will fuck you up, it will fuck you up." The mom knows all about the vastness of the sky and she is terrified of it. That is really the only place in my life I kind of felt like I was ever actually standing in front of people talking about the weirdness, just of living. That was the Blow. So I did that, and I just played songs and shows and experiments of different kinds of ways of performing and sharing that in front of people.
And then I decided to just try making a couple of pop records because it reaches a lot of people, and you can talk to a lot more than just people who like janky low-fi indie music performance. So the last two records of the Blow has been me and Jona, and in the future I don't know what. Jona's mom played "Parentheses" at her wedding.
MJ: So you know I drive around and listen to the new record, Paper Television, all the time. It's really amazing being your good friend and then hearing you sing about these things that we talk about sometimes—you know, all my friends should make albums for me to drive around to. And you know, I can't sing at all. You've never heard me sing, really.
KM: Once.
MJ: OK, but I sing along to you, Khaela. While I'm driving.
KM: Ooh!
MJ: One thing I sing along to is that part—I think it's essentially from the point of view of a shit, more or less, passing through a body. What song is that on?
KM: "Babay."
MJ: It's that part where you sing, "I will always be around." It's so valiant, like a cry out into the night, "I will always be around! I am that big!" And then a moment later, sadly, in retrospect, "because I thought I would always be around." The realization of impermanence.
KM: And I'm straining my voice on that part, too, to sing it. I was singing a little bit out of my key. I think it's in my range now, now that I've recorded this record—because I've stretched my range a little—but it's like, "I will always be," and my voice kind of cracks because I'm not quite there yet.
MJ: Yeah, I love that.
KM: As we recorded it, and as I wrote it, I felt really sad, and at the end of the day, when Jona was playing the beats he'd made and I was singing the thing, I was like, "It's sad, isn't it, Jona? Listen, listen how sad." It felt like it'd gotten it into my hand, though. It was better to have the sad in my hand than running and not being able to catch it.
MJ: Yeah, I know. That's often the place that I'm making things from, like, I can't stand to feel this way. At least if I can have it in my hands, it's like being sad, but with money.
KM: Or the sad is money.
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OTHER McSWEENEY'S FEATURES:
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The Believer June/July Music Issue Is Here
Accounts of My More Notable Childhood Street Fights, Written Not by Me but by Totally Unbiased Eyewitnesses By Eric Feezell
A Letter From My Journal Re: "Hectic" By Adam Lefton
My Package By Colin McEnroe
Please Take By Jason Roeder
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