It takes about an hour earlier than Griffiths mentions his reward kink. He’s pleased with it—it’s a “little cunty” in any case. I’m curious the place it got here from—a “fats child” who moved faculties regularly, an older sister “a lot smarter,” and being horrible at sports activities is certainly character-building. In “Pale Blue Dot”, he sings, “I simply wish to be cherished the entire time.” There’s humour in his confession, sincerity too: “I feared being reviewed and judged to the extent that it most likely affected my songwriting. At occasions I’d write solely when it comes to what I believed others wished to listen to till I realised how poisonous and toxic that’s, after which veered fully away from it,” he considers. “Then I began writing what made me snigger or what made me really feel.”
In some methods, the album marks a brand new chapter for Griffiths: “This album is a little bit of a signifier in a turning level in my life. I can depart all of the judgment and concern and anxiousness about that on this album—after which shifting on to be some fucking carefree monk within the Himalayas sooner or later.”
Life within the Himalayas is a pleasant thought, however for now, Griffiths is in his room making TikToks and attempting to keep away from his display screen time. Because the album delves deeply into web anxiousness—playfully critiquing it whereas additionally capturing the existential dread that pervades fashionable life—I’m curious how he’s navigating the web world. “I really feel like fucking grandpa Simpson waving his fist within the sky,” he laughs, although he notes the positives, like the way it’s fostered neighborhood and launched him to different songwriters. However he additionally sees a extra sinister aspect: “The worst half is when the large cash machine comes trawling after you and asks you to maintain doing this till failure. Do that again and again till we have now reaped your harvest […] It is turning into ephemeral experiences that we by no means flow into again to. It is like we’re experiencing time as a really straight line by which we by no means actually come again to the issues we loved quarter-hour in the past.”
In Ghosts Of My Life (“The Gradual Cancellation Of The Future”), Fisher explores Derrida’s idea of “hauntology,” – the place up to date tradition is haunted by the misplaced futures that have been as soon as imagined however by no means realised. He argues that, within the present period, society is trapped in a loop of recycling previous cultural kinds; we have now stopped with the ability to give you one thing definitively new. “I discovered that fucking fascinating and terrifying,” says Griffiths, having drawn on each Fisher and Frost’s The Street Not Taken, a mediation on what might have been. “I actually tried to tear some hope out of that concept,” he provides.
The longer term is unsure, and possibly that’s okay too. As a substitute, Griffiths is searching for solace within the current. “For those who can think about your self sooner or later, what does it appear like in case you’ve made some unhealthy choices up to now, or in case you’ve made some errors?” he poses. “What are the butterfly results of that? I assume anxiousness is type of the haunting of the long run.
“I hope individuals get the humour. I hope individuals get the melodrama, and I hope individuals really feel one thing. [..] I assume that is our purpose to make one thing that is a bit more infinite, just a little extra lengthy lasting, as a result of in any other case we’re simply confronted with every little thing that is so momentary nowadays.”
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