Interpreting E.E. Cummings (Interview)

When I was a teen, I hung out with a lot of poets, and I was actually probably the only, sort of, one of the few musicians, and I was reading tons of poetry, and when people get drunk, they would scream poetry at each other and try to top each other or whatever.

So I've always been like a monkstet you know, I never felt like: "Oh, I wanna sing this" you know, guess I don't have that collector's kind of, you know, I don't go to, like, art exhibitions and go "Oh, I wanna own this, this, this" It's not like shopping for me, you know, but it's something very very different with E.E. Cummings and I actually didn't know he existеd 'till three or four years ago.

And I'm not sure what it is, I think it's probably a mixture of thе fact that I feel like I can add something, or I feel I got something to give, and these words sometimes feel like they're these poems are more to be sung than to be read, they just so alive, just the rhythm in them and stuff.

And maybe it's also that, with words, because I'm not really a poet, and I can just about find words to things, to emotions that are huge, they're more like neon [?], but when it comes to the subtle stuff, maybe it's not my forte, you know. And he is just so good with those kind of euphoric silent situations, it's fun to sing about these things, but it's really hard to put words to, so it's probably a combination of, of these things.

I literally read this "Sonnets - Unrealities", and the first time I read it, I wanted to sing it. And I think I actually sung it, I read it once through, got my dictaphone, sung it, the first time, just like, straight on, and we used that dictaphone recording to record the choir on top of, and they actually, and they did the arrangement on top of that and everything, so it was just like a one-take thing.

And then later on the record, actually on the record, we did sing it all together again just to get the live experience in it.