Blemish - Ascent Magazine online version

excerpted from the print magazine…

My favorite David Sylvian song is called ?Fire in the Forest.? Recorded in 2003 for his most recent CD, Blemish, the song, just a voice singing over a humming guitar drone, has a gentle intensity that pulled me through a winter spent riding around on public transportation in the suburbs of Toronto. Phrases like ?there is always sunshine/behind the grey skies/ I will try to find it/ yes I will try? heard on headphones again and again in snowy darkness somehow showed a fragile determination to transcend the ego?s limits. The track itself is all the more moving for its place at the end of a record full of dark songs about spiritual struggle.

Blemish is not a word normally associated with spiritual practice, yet the record reflects Sylvian?s growing and deepening experience of sadhana, first with Mother Mira, then Shree Ma, with whom Sylvian and his family lived in California in the mid-1990s, and in recent years with Mata Amritanandamayi or Ammachi, as she?s affectionately known.

Sylvian grew up in a non-religious family in South London, England and formed the group Japan in 1974. The group went on to considerable success as glam/new romantic rockers, but broke up after releasing the marvelous Tin Drum (1981). Sylvian has pursued a solo career since. A master of material describing an existential spiritual struggle ? such as Tin Drum?s ?Ghosts? with its chorus, ?Just when I think I?m winning/ when I?ve broken every door/ the ghosts of my life/ blow wilder than before? ? Sylvian?s songs have taken on an increasingly explicit spiritual form after his move to America in the 1990s, where he still lives with his wife, singer Ingrid Chavez, and their children.

I met Sylvian in downtown Manhattan with his ten-year-old daughter, Amira. He speaks quietly, thoughtfully, precisely, while his daughter talks on a cellphone to her mother, or lounges, reading, generously tolerating us.

Marcus Boon A lot of people like to think that a spiritual narrative consists in going from darkness and suffering to peace and equanimity, but I think of your music, and in particular of Blemish, which is so much darker than the records that came before. It?s still a record about sadhana.

David Sylvian It?s darker than ever! But going through that experience of darkness at this point in my life was very different to before. First of all, there was a certain amount of objectivity, of being able to step back and say, all of this is just par for the course, it?s just part of the learning process, whatever comes out of this is just to strengthen me and help me to burn off whatever needs to be cleared away so that I can see things clearly.

And a lot of things that I couldn?t face in my life I could face in the studio environment. I would close that door and start working and open myself to whatever came through. And often it was very negative emotions. And I thought, well, I?ll just look straight at them, and more than that, I?ll take them even further than I feel them in my daily life, because I wanted to go as far with them as I possibly could. I felt very safe doing that. I felt that there was a strength inside of me that would allow me to pull back at the end of the day and be able to do away with those emotions. So I was pushing myself deeper and deeper into the negativity of the experience, wanting to know what that felt like, how does that surface and how do you give that a voice? It was a way of experiencing those experiences and giving them a new vocabulary that was pertinent for now.

MB Now, as in our time?

DS Yes. I was also feeling that all the familiar forms of popular song were no longer doing it for me. Even those evergreen artists that you go back to time and time again weren?t moving me anymore. The form had lost its potency; it had been exhausted. I was beginning to feel: what next, what do you do? And I felt that I personally had to find a new form for what I was experiencing. I feel it?s true of other arts, too: now is an important time to find vocabularies that are pertinent to our time.

Everything becomes a commodity. We?re told that if we understand someone?s taste in how they decorate their home, then we can probably guess what kind of music will go with that environment. Everything gets tied together in packages so we can all have what?s known as ?good taste.? We can dress well, we have good taste in our cultural environment, we can participate in it but without any commitment, no going out on a limb, always tapping into something that?s termed ?classic,? whether it?s a couch or a Marvin Gaye record.

But when we find something that challenges all of that in the culture, that?s when we discover who we are, and our response isn?t preconditioned. We don?t have the benefit of reading a review of this experience prior to having it. We have to comprehend it on our own terms, ask: ?Why did I feel so irritated when I was provoked in that way?? I want to have that kind of experience. The one that isn?t scripted. The one that will throw you into the deep end of an experience and you just have to work it out for yourself. There is no right or wrong response, only your true response. And that?s what I try to find in my work, that true response. It doesn?t necessarily make it that comfortable an experience to listen to, but that?s not the issue here. It?s just trying to find a means to grapple with what it means to be alive in the here and now, trying to find a vocabulary for it, trying to press the right buttons in me, and hopefully that will communicate to others.