A conversation about life, and living in the world, with one of the finest musicians of our time. Thanks to Michael McDermit, a full transcription of this audio interview can be found below.

TRANSCRIPTION

Ben Evans: I’m Ben Evans and you’re listening to Fogged Clarity. This evening, I’m pleased to be joined again by my friend, Will Oldham. Will acts in films under his own name and records and performs music under the name Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy. He lives and works in Louisville, Kentucky. Will, thanks for coming back to talk.

Will Oldham: Ben, thanks for asking me back into your conversational world.

BE: Absolutely. It’s a pleasure. So, you said something in our last talk, about two years ago, that I’ve been thinking a lot about lately as I continue to grow, change, and recognize patterns of potentially destructive thought in myself. You said, “There are ideas that used to be in my head that were a hell of a lot better than ideas that I’ve recently had in my head, and I could do well to spend some time and energy now getting back to those ideas that have been patiently waiting.” I wonder, in the time since you said that, if you’d been able to get back to those better ideas, and I’m curious what revelations, breakthroughs, or setbacks you’ve had lately in regard to your existential outlook?

WO: It’s funny, you know, anytime you get a chance to bump into somebody’s reality, you never know what you’re gonna find, and that includes our own realities. I was looking at photographs today of my mom’s house throughout our lives and mindsets were things I could not necessarily recognize. I could recognize people, but I don’t know who exactly those people were or when the photograph was taken. And I don’t know–I do–I imagine, a fair amount of returning to ideas, although that’s also–do you think that you’re the same person that you were twenty years ago in any way?

BE: I think the core has remained the same, but I think how I perceive that core–and myself as a human being and a participant in this world–has changed vastly.

WO: Do you think it’s healthier to recognize yourself from twenty years ago or healthier to not recognize yourself from twenty years ago or from when you were five years old or twelve years old?

BE: I think when I think of myself at that age, I was more intuitive and living more purely, and I think that’s all I can recognize about that. At five years old, that’s pre-pollution, pre-exposure to the chaos in a lot of senses. I can go back fifteen years and look at a poem I wrote and know that’s how I was thinking of those things then. Those are good markers, but I don’t think you have to take anything or give anything to an identification with a past self. It’s just that: a past self.

WO: It is. It’s a past self. Sometimes I wonder if I’m potentially too connected, that it’s too much of an unbroken chain. Or if I’m fooling myself in thinking that it even is.

BE: I’ve been thinking a lot about meta-cognition lately, and recognizing patterns. Right now in my life, I’ve got some of the darkness that’s creeping in again, and I know what it is, and I know what’s causing it, and I recognize it, and still it hurts. To me, that feels very much like the old Ben. The haunting is the same. I don’t want to recognize that again. I think we’re all unbroken chains, but I think we can choose to forget the already established links.

WO: When I meet folks who spent a significant amount of their childhood or youth or any other part of their life as, for example, fundamentalist Christians who are no longer or, at the present, aren’t, I wonder how much they recognize themselves.