John Maus - Interview (Episode 84) 

He's basically saying to be real and don't comply with the arbitrary rules of society. He's also saying being a good, genuine person is a rebellious act in itself.

I love how he knows his brain is on fire and apologizes as a preface, before they even get started. I love the dichotomy between the simplicity of his lyrics and the deep philosophical twists and turns talking to him off stage. Much like the dichotomy between the beautiful music he makes on the albums and the physical and borderline confrontational way it's delivered live. This guy could be spending the rest of his life in a Minnesota cabin transcribing Xenakis scores, but instead he just wants to write catchy pop tunes with simple lyrics. What a national treasure this guy is.

This dude seems more sincere than most musicians and people I come across. He is speaking in the now...his mind seems to be expanding as he talks.

The john maus of music

rodney mullen of music

Thank-you Maus for being different. Never shut up.

I love you john maus, you are my imaginary friend

Johnmau5

I wish more artists incorporated the holy sounds of Renaissance and Medieval modes.

If you want him to shut up then why would you watch one of his interviews? He's obviously gonna talk about ideas and philosophy if that's what he's into. How is that any worse than talking about trivial stuff? One of the most interesting interviews I have seen. I think it's cool he's excited about what he's doing, whether he's eccentric or not.

I wonder what that girl from Bennington looked like.

i feel like i would understand the secrets of the universe if only i could understand what the hell this guy is talking about

John's freedom is something I find very inspiring but hard to replicate

"It is the mark of an educated person to require as much certainty in a particular domain as the nature of the matter allows"- Aristotle That quote should tell you why he is communicating the way he is

Just started getting like "really" into this guy's music. Have heard and known about John for a while but never really took his music seriously until recently. After seeing this interview, my love and respect for him AND his music at the same time just quadrupled. The humor in his music is simply genius and not everyone is going to like or understand it. They don't know shit about outer space anyways.

with his music he makes a very important point to me. and that is: making pop music but with a serious approach. like when you listen to his music it feels like every chord is in it's right place every second has importance. he puts so much effort in his music and also in his performances. and that is something worthwile to spend a lifetime with

this man has swag

His music rules and he sounds like a smart dude to me. Be a good person and try at something.

You love yourself and everyone loves you. Never mind anyone that says the contrary. They mean nothing. The world around you means nothing without you. You are all that matters. Merry Christmas.

Just because it didn't make sense to you doesn't mean it doesn't make sense.

I'd like to attend his class

I can't tell if he's smart, insane or just playing a character

Had to come back

This guy is a genius, I love him, he´s a future legend

This man has suceeded in his quest.

I bet you people would never say any of your negative comments you write on youtube if you were talking right in front of him because you would not make sense

lmao. So true dude. I feel exactly the same.

does anybody know if he is single? :-)

John Maus "Fader" Interview Transcript (with redacted "uhs" and incomplete sentences) (Here we go.) (So, we're rolling.) (Are we?) (Are we rolling?) My name is John Maus and at the top I would like to say, because I've done a few video things now and I've seen them online, I just want to apologize from the outset if I'm coming into anybody's life uninvited. Like, you're walking in the grocery store and some clown face jumps out at you and you didn't invite it in. So if I'm springing on anybody right now, just turn it away, I'm sorry, I apologize that I came in. *Pure Rockets plays* A little bit about it...I've been working on it for a couple of years, it's not the kind of breakthrough I hoped it would be. It's more of a consummation of the ideas I've been working with for a while, kinda hoping it would be Maiorica or something. It's a good consummation. *Quantum Leap plays* I know it's a pretentious mouthful, but we must become the pitiless censors of ourselves. It comes from these theses on contemporary art that this philosopher wrote. I kind of liked him a lot for a long time, they really influenced me, I really was like "Yeah, right on" for a long time. But now, I can kind of see, having followed that for a while, where it exhausts. Where you can hit a wall abiding these things so militantly, and so maybe it needs to be supplemented with something else. Either way, it is the philosophy that guided the last ten years, so I thought I would use the title. In this world we live in, everything is encouraged and permitted and we're just encouraged to say nothing at all, keep saying nothing at all. Maybe that's what's happening. Maybe the way we can resist that is by really struggling to interrupt that by really speaking or something. Let's stop saying nothing at all, how about that? We start there and just try, I would claim to just raise it up a little bit towards a better picture or something. *Believer plays* That's the idea, if we just give over to the enjoyment in the community that we were lost. Art and thought are ruined. I don't think the advanced degree of all that, there's nothing too spectacular about that. It's just a way to avoid a day job for most of us, I think. Like art, music, these kind of things that's a true separate kind of trajectory then maybe language and philosophy and this kind of thing, I don't mean to sound cynical or anything, but I don't see a kind of language that has risen to the art of our time. To punk rock music. To genre films. I haven't seen a rigorous thought rise to that level yet and I'd like to see it. I'm often, I don't mean to again sound cynical, but I'm often kind of disappointed by the mainstream conversation, for lack of a better way of putting it. I feel like it falls short, it's a little bit behind. *Believer continues* But, what I'm trying to do is, like I'm always saying, something else than that. To me, by and large, it doesn't seem to say anything. It's this weird thing, it's this weird situation where there's like a handful of, in terms of representing the work within our situation, in the mechanisms available, like how you do that today, how we've shared the work with others, you have to throw your lot in a little bit in this whole regime that's a little bit unfair, I think. We're meant to be grateful that we can appear not even as we are, just as a bunch of little images next to each other with their little paragraph and then the rest of us are just anonymous. I think we ought to beat down this terrible, discursive regime, this state. We ought to, in the name of each other. I mean, it's so stupid, it's not a new idea, but perhaps that's for a reason, it's a good idea. *This Is The Beat plays* I like classical music and Renaissance music and Medieval music and baroque music, especially the Medieval and the Renaissance stuff. The kind of pre-tonal languages interest me, but there's separate languages from ours, of course. The task would be to try to make, if we owe it to these other languages, to try and make ours as radically expressive as some of the stuff that happens from those other situations. This suspicion that if pop music is its own kind of trajectory, like we have a lot of instruments at our disposal, a lot of these old synthesizers and stuff like that that could be remobilized today in really interesting ways. It's not a question of nostalgia or retro or something like that, it's a question of this moment right now, they speak. They afford something that an Apple plug-in just cant do. They offer something now to us that these other things don't and we should use them if the work necessitates them. *Streetlight plays* (Do you ever get overwhelmed by that desire to be all encompassing?) Yeah, absolutely, it's really hard. Just recently, I was in a car and I was listening to the radio, listening to one of these old pieces, and somebody next to me had headphones on and they were listening to Lexa(?) with the periodic beat and I could hear that in their ears and they were listening to that instead of the Beethoven. I would always want to avoid this kind of high and low nonsense that we're certainly beyond and look at them as disparate truths, as disparate procedures, and not try and judge the one by the other, but sometimes it's hard. They have lots of dimensions that we've completely gotten rid of, like the whole dimension of thematic development and the whole dimension of tonality, like, oh my god, you just modulated the E flat from C major, or the whole adventure from D minor to D major at the end of the whole symphony, or something like that, or C minor to C major and the fifth. Like it was an adventure, the conventions allowed everybody to kind of behold. We've just gotten rid of those dimensions, but I think that's also about what makes our language so interesting. *Streetlight continues* They'll trouble you. I would say that. That it's not a question. There's a lyric on this new album where I talk about human beings being in a locker. I wouldn't want anybody to think I'm talking about the Matrix pod or Plato's cave or something like that. That like we need to emancipate ourselves from a locker. No, we need to go deeper in the deeper caves. We're always inside the locker, it's not about freeing ourselves and appearing in the element of our pure presentation or something like that, it's about going in deeper.

I think thinking that he is eccentric is the mainstream thought he is disappointed with and that he says in his interview. He says having a Phd was just to avoid the daytime job and it's nothing special but I disbelieve that, he has a Phd because he has a Worthy insight worth hearing

Just saw him live. Damn is he cool and smart! JOHN FUCKING MAUS.

this dude and mark gonz would be best friends

if i-ve had money id get john maus, nardwaur , lazlo krasznahorkai, Slavoj Žižek and sam harris in the same room, a 10liter bottle of whiskey and a film crew.

John maus is a good man

"We're meant to be grateful that we can appear not even as we are." some of the truest words spoken

We should meet John....We would get on quite well..If I could get a word in....meh hehehh....

I didn't watch the whole thing but this guy has the THICKEST metaphysical wall of bulletproof lucite up I've ever seen

thats funny because he's not

any one know what some of his favorite books are?

He’s brilliant and inspiring - brightens my mood just listening to him talk :)

When you’re 8 and you forget to take your ADHD meds before school 😂

Why does he screams alle the time ? I nearly fell off my chair

on fire

John Maus the philosopher

Lack of civics education and the dumbing down of mostly the Proletariat are part of the problem with language and communication in this culture..more so now than ever!

Anyone know which song hes doing at 1:00?

Im lost were the quesrions begin and end XD love this guy

What an intense fucking guy

nice interview

I really don't think he's on drugs. He must be ADHD/asbergers/Manic etc. etc. Wonderful to listen to him none the less.

@flowerdoodle you honestly don't think that a lot of autistic people make excellent academics? Bloody 'ell

Did the interviewer even ask a question ?

It's like and MDE sketch

YEAH AGAIN!!!!!! COOOOLLEEEGEEEEE I WANT TO GO TO GRADUATE SCHOOL ILL LEARN THIS

I wanna be this coked up

@claus4 yes, we asked our questions off camera. it was my choice in producing the video to leave them out-- keep it as free flowing as his thoughts appear to occur.

@cleborptheretard great words

Let's stop saying nothing at all!

Breaking those silences is so hard! Thank you for talking! I will try better!

@TEACHYOUTEEWHY panasonic p2, canon 60d, RCA 1981 RCA VHS camcorder. the VHS is very temperamental-- power wise and lighting wise. it would have been featured more had glasslands not been so dark.

You didn’t have to apologize for shit bruh

genius, his mannerisms are the archetype of a true fucking genius, never heard his music before, was interested in seeing what kind of person he is, awfully brilliant.

this guy real as fawkes

.... I don't know.

Hey muy bueno! Soy de Buenos Aires, Argentina. Muchas gracias!

He's brilliant...He is how I feel daily...

He talks like Dennis Hopper in "Apocalypse Now": "You can't land on a fraction man...."

John Maus makes me excited about right now.

@germanhaircut This IS The Beat

@pasheko152 he didnt say. i didnt ask because he purposefully left it unsaid... although, from what he talks about and the record title, i have my opinion.

i actually have no clue what he's talking about

his music is amazing

is this his act? good music and funny performance

What does he mean by "saying something"?

Actions speak louder than words. Ineffability n shit!

@ihatekhomeini I can see he's obviously educated and a thinking man, albeit somewhat scattered and smothered! I also realize this is probably his "on" persona (one cultivated through the years) and that he probably amplifies this for effect. I personally find this display irritating and would not want to hang out with him if he was ALWAYS this amped up and "engaged." If it isn't an act, then I feel for the poor lad: it must be utterly exhausting for his friends, family and himself.

He's plain mad...genius?

@shinyalbert not really. sorry. just paying you a compliment but i guess it came off smarmy and dickish. again my apologies

He does communicate his ideas to others. He's communicated his ideas to more people than you ever will because you've done nothing. You'll never do anything either. You'll just go about your entire life dismissing anyone who sounds more successful and intelligent than you as "pseudo-intellectual". You'll die and no one will have relished in your music or your words as they have with John Maus.

I luv John Maus sm

You need to take into consideration what I meant when I was speaking about communicating ideas. I think I made it fairly clear that I was referring to communication of ideas in an academic sense rather than in a musical, poetic or artistic sense. This man teaches a college course in Political Science at a university in Hawaii. The fact that you like his music, as I do too, is completely irrelevant to my initial statement. Everything else you said was just an ad hominem attack on me.

@germanhaircut i believe its off the new record coming out.

@flowerdoodle oh cmon we all want our entertainers to be eccentric:)

@BacteriaNY Guess how happy i am that RU-vid brought back the Thumbs Down?!

shout out to jim joe

thanks for a lengthy interview & random clown face lol! nice work you guys :)

so. fucking. rad.

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wat

@ihatekhomeini wikipedia said that he only started his PhD this year...

@flowerdoodle i thought you were being sarcastic....ok. Thanks.

So much impact. He’s so inspiring.

What type of Camera were you guys using?

am ha

As John Maus said in this video, "you can hit a wall following things [ideas] so militantly." Take a minute to relate that statement to yourself, that is, if you are self-aware. To me, it seems you are the embodiment of the Condescending Intellectual, so you may not be self-aware of your own existence.

Did the interviewer even ask a question ?

john maus should hear newwaver(from melbourne)

Whats the song at 5:42 ??

@shinyalbert And you have a beautiful face...

@shinyalbert I know autistics can be extremely bright and knowledgeable about certain subjects, so yes, they would lend itself to this line of work I suppose. I was more referring to the rigors and social demands involved with applying and interviewing for such a position. Though credentials are everything, I suppose. I agree that there is the "nutty professor" archetype that seems to be acceptable.