SAUL WILLIAMS
^10.07.03

How about first off give a little introduction, where you are from, grew up, school, family.

I am from Newburg NY, about an hour north of NYC . In high school I was an exchange student who went to Brazil. College, I went to Atlanta Morehouse College studied philosophy and drama, went to grad school at NYU studied acting, that's when I started writing poetry. My mom is a school teacher, my dad is a minister.

I started off writing rhymes wanting to be an MC when I was young. I kept that up through elementary school and through high school, but I stopped when I went to college. My senior year a friend and I started this magazine called Red Clay. I started writing little poems and essays for the magazine. When I went to grad school I was turned onto the poetry scene and started writing poetry.

You have done some film work too, such as Slam and K-Pax.....

We did Slam my third year of grad school. I was introduced to the director of Slam and he asked me to co-write the film idea he had. We wrote it over a course of nine months and shot it in nine days. That was a successful and beautiful experience. Something we knew all along was going to have the impact that it has had.

My backbone is in acting, so I have had a lot of offers come to me primarily to do bullshit that I wouldn't do. So when the good stuff comes along I will do, for instance K-PAX. I really liked the way that film was written.

I have more experience with acting than poetry, or training what have you. Sometimes I feel more comfortable referring to myself as an actor...not recently though, but in the past I have.

My first experiences with allowing energy to flow through you, which I experience when I write poetry, that came from acting. My first experience of losing oneself in a moment came from acting.

You have 3 books out, could you give a short description of each one?

7th Octave, the title comes from the idea of the octave scale, the oldest prayer known to human kind; do-ray-meme-fah-so-lah-si-doh. It correlates with each chakra energy centers in yr body. The 7th octave which is not "tee" but is "si." When the octave scale came to america they changed it to "tee" saying they had it already in the early octave, we can't have it twice. Which you can, it had meaning there. I was studying at the time a great deal of writing and style surrounding the work of Eastern Mystic by Gurdjieff. I was studying something called the Forth Way. You have heard it as Esoteric Christianity, its really just that when you get to the esoteric nature of any religion it ceases to be the religion. It just doesn't transcend to all of that. Anyway they talk a lot of the octave scale and connect it to society, the earth, planet. So the "si" is also connected to the sea as in the ocean. The ocean is very much connected to the moon, and the book has a lot to do with those symbols in that we are very much connected to matriarchal ideas and ideals. Moreso than anything I believe the 7th Octave has to do with the fact that I was writing to fill the void in what I was hearing and what I wanted to hear in hip-hop. So that the 7th Octave is definitely a collection of...I don't like this term but for simplicity reasons...hip-hop poetry. Poetry inspired by hip-hop.

Whereas SHE, you may not get any hip-hop influence out of it. It is more a book of catharsis, a book that chronicles an unraveling of a relationship. It goes through the process of self-recovery and self discovery. We realize that as we go through the greatest moments of intimacy and questioning vulnerability that those can also be the greatest moments of strength. So SHE is about transformation that comes about when you invest in being open or being vulnerable, finding yrself hurt or finding yrself stranded, realizing that it is not the end and that it can be something beautiful and amazing.

It still ties into the matriarchal scheme in that it deals with me trying to figure out how I can find my space in this relationship that I don't feel comfortable with. Knowing that part of the reason I don't feel comfortable is because this woman is claiming a greater aspect of herself. She is tuning into her maternal powers and I am feeling left out, but I know this is a natural thing. But what is there to prepare you for that as a man? So when you look at the title it symbolizes a man finding his root or his space in a greater matriarchal scheme

The newest book, said the shotgun to the head, began as an ode to Kali the Hindu goddess of destruction and creation, I had never heard of a deity that embodied destruction as well as creation. Usually we hear of God the creator and here we have the idea of God being a creator and destroyer and in this case female. It was amazing to me cause that's what I felt in the relationship beforehand in SHE, where she fucked me up, she destroyed me, but yet she created something new, which is beautiful.

I was talking to a friend of mine about the only way to experience a successful suicide is when you kill the ego. Seems to be also with the relationship. For example, my girlfriend doesn't like Radiohead, but....I like Radiohead. So I cant listen to Radiohead around her or she says "How can you listen to this shit? It's depressing." I understand how she can find it that way. But the process of understanding, that is beautiful. It kills me, it kills the ego, it kills the thing that says "It's my way or else."

Do you see those tiny deaths to yr ego slowly build the raising of yr consciousness?

Exactly. Learning how to let go. Learning how to surrender. Yet learning how to hold on and be steadfast to the truth. Learning how to let go of all else is the truth. Personality and ego, that's not truth. There is no truth in personality "I am this way, I am that way." All of it is bullshit. Anything that you put after "am" is bullshit. I am... that is truth.

said the shotgun to the head, began as an ode to Kali. Then 9-11 and it was really an ode to Kali, it was like wow....things have to be destroyed in order for things to be rebuilt. That was Malcolm X's thing when criticizing Martin Luther King Jr. You don't have evolution if you don't have bloodshed. He listed all the revolutions and based them all upon land....the Chinese Revolution...what was it based on?...land....how did it come about?....bloodshed. The French Revolution....what was it based on?....land.....how did it come about?....bloodshed. That's how evolution occurs.

So it started as an ode to Kali and it just blossomed. There were so many little things after 9-11. Learning what Kamikaze meant. You heard Peter Jennings talk about kamikazes. Do you know what kamikaze means? It means divine wind. It doesn't mean crazy airplane pilot on a suicide mission. So when they say kamikazes came and did this, it meant a divine wind came and did this.

Do you know what disorientated means? Listen to what you say, dis-orient. It means turned away from the East. All these words and metaphors came to life during the time of 9-11. I don't even have to write poems, I can just tell it how it is. All the metaphors have come to life.

So said the shotgun to the head is a poetic deconstruction of all Western ideals and values that have allowed us to become disorientated as a people. Whether that be Christianity, Materialist consumption, patriarchy, all these things which may not find their roots in the West but have definitely found a very welcome home in the West.

said the shotgun to the head is simply a Trojan horse that is aimed at people to get them to raise questions, and to realize. One of the biggest things with me when growing up was there was a point where I would wanted to start questioning Christianity, where my father is a minister. I thought I was sinning if I questioned it. Not that my father ever said it but the impression that you get is "God is the father that is all you need to know." So I think we have that approach toward the government where its unamerican that we even ask questions. So it is to just encourage people and inspire them to raise questions.

You have to ask in order to find yr answers.

You have one full length out, you have an EP, have you been working on anything new?

Yes I am almost done.

Wow that is pretty quick for just having an EP earlier this year.

No not really. Amethyst Rock Star came out 2 years after I finished it. Yeah, imagine it if you heard it back in ‘99. That's when it was suppose to come out, it came out in October of 2001.

You are obviously extremely spiritual taking mixtures of Christianity, Buddhism, pantheism, where do you stand in a spiritual belief?

I believe it is important to have a spiritual practice. I believe very much in meditation and I am not apposed to any religion. For instance, my girlfriend is Hindu, my daughter and her mother and grandmother are Buddhists, my son he goes to a Christian church with his grandmother. They are all there, sometimes I feel like Abraham. I honor them all. I'm most rarely obviously Christianity mainly because I have been exposed to what happens when religion goes corporate. I am open to the truth. 

More so than anything in this generation we will learn that we do not need a middleman. It is really about having a practice of tuning out and tuning in. Drinking more water, taking deeper breaths, meditation is essential. I belief that this can really be the thing to help society blossom. Not any certain kind of meditation, just sitting down, breathing, focusing on yr breath, trying to still all yr thoughts. You may witness some reaction, you may not even know how to recognize it. The process of gaining awareness beyond primary colors is better achieved with closed eyes.

K-PAX is about life from other planets and beyond. The song "Ohm" even talks about this. What is yr take on space?

My daughters name is Saturn. I am open to it. My son's name is Xely, which means keep an open mind. Our definition of life is based on our experiences life, which inhibits our understanding of it. Thus if we are looking for life in the way we experience it on other planets, I doubt we will ever find it. But as for higher consciousness or other consciousness on other planets, of course there would have to be. Every fucking thing that attempts to put it into prospects of green men in spaceships that's all foolish. I don't know what to expect out there, but it is cool.

The EP had a strong political stand, a protest against the war. What is yr present position now months later?

Same. Although I saw Bush's speech at the UN, and I know what it is he is saying. I think people on the left are foolish if they think the people on the right are stupid or naive. They have their agenda and they don't necessarily think in the evil demonic way we think that they must. My views are that it is in our hands. In america it is in our hands.

The idea of burning off karma, you can burn off karma. The idea that you require karma from other lifetimes. When you are born into something this lifetime it is because you needed to learn something. Meditation helps you burn off karma. Certain things help you burn off karma. Certain relationships, you meet yr soulmate. You may go through hell with that person, but it helps you burn off karma so you learn the lessons. America needs to burn off some karma. We have killed a lot of people, we are responsible for a lot of shit, especially for being such a young country.

Consciousness is evolving at a steady progressive rate. In this country and across the world, we could skip a bunch of possible occurrences by waking up and living accordingly, becoming responsible by minding our impact, something that a lot of companies are starting to do. About half of us are halfway there, and the other half does not care. They don't get it, doesn't effect them...make money,make money.

Do you think all the apathetic people will be a roadblock or do you think we will work our way around them?

I don't think apathy is going to be a problem. It is getting interesting, I mean now you have Schwarzenegger, and people are starting to care. Apathy started dying with Bush. Apathy is not the problem, confusion is going to be the problem. Not knowing which way is best. The Tao says, "Can you wait for the monk to settle before you take the step?" Right now I don't know which way is best. If Hillary ran for office I'd vote for her. If she doesn't I don't know who I am going to vote for. I mean I can vote for Nader, but he wont win, and that will just fuck up the other votes. Beyond voting is even more confusion. But apathy, no I don't see apathy as a problem.

Who are some of yr inspiring modern musicians, authors, or films lately?

Does this include language? I don't know. I really like the new Outkast.

What would you think would be the single most goal you would like to achieve as an artist? Or is that always changing? Do yr goals develop with yr life or do you have a certain direction in which you go?

The Tao says, "The Tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao." Losing and finding yrself, that is the bliss I get on stage. Self realization beyond the point of being able to manifest the actual thing as I envisioned it. "This song sounds exactly the way it did as in my head." Same with poetry, "This poem came out exactly." I wrote this song "Black Stacy," I wanted to write this song for months. I wrote it about two weeks ago. It took me a couple months to write it, I never tried before, but the day I tried it came. It was almost as if I could have died that day, I did it.

The goal is just to be able to manifest what you envision.

www.saulwilliams.com

(interview: travis lawrence w/ jeremy rouse)
(photos: promotional courtesy, live:travis lawrence)