We move in and out of discussion on empathy, prison politics, the social currency of attacking one another, isolation, and making as much sense as we can of the current social climate. Abridged conversation below. Enjoy.

Night Gallery - One thing I was thinking about going into this conversation, and it’s something that I’ve thought about a lot with your music and art in particular is that you approach empathy from an interesting direction. Where most people would start with a platitude, you tend start with a person who might be considered the lowest common denominator in society. How, or why, did you start in that perspective?

Patrick Kindlon - You know what? Normally, I would accuse you of thinking about my work more than I think about it. However, I had a conversation pertaining to this recently, so I think I’m able to talk about it in a way that perhaps two weeks ago I wouldn’t have been.

I had a conversation with some somebody who kind of fit the model for well-intentioned lib, maybe, or a lib who believes that they’re leftist, but probably really kind of isn’t. But it was a well-intentioned person who had really strong opinions about social matters, right? And I want to be respectful to this person who was nice, but they were condescending, right? And I found myself in this bizarre position, whereI’m in this conversation representing a thing that I’m really not, which is kind of a working class person.

I am by virtue of the fact that I, you know, I run my own business. I do have to go to work. It’s not a quote unquote email job, although it is a little bit. I found myself in this strange place where I don’t see myself through that lens but I felt like in this conversation I was closer to the mark than than this individual was who was kind of make they were speaking in declarative sort of statements about the way things should be and I thought, “You know isn't there somebody you forgot to ask?” It occurred to me that maybe what you’re reading as empathy is just contrary, my like a small dick contrarian nature that I have.

NG: I’m thinking about your record Try Me. To me, that record, especially the interstitials where you have interviews, is deeply empathetic to someone who had been through so many things. I remember the first time I even listened to it, and I was like, "Whoa, whoa, whoa! How did we get here?”

PK: I don't know if you're familiar with the Rialto Report. It’s really fascinating. It’s a podcast that kind of covers the golden age of porn, but really the golden age of like sleaze theater, the golden age of like New York, San Francisco. It’s sort of you can’t call it counterculture necessarily, but that that sort of thing, porn theater stuff. and it ends up with a shocking, shocking amount of empathy, a really open heart. Ends up doing a lot of interviews. I recently gave them the other hour of material from that interview [from their record Try Me], and they've posted it. So anybody interested could check that out.

That interview was very moving for me personally, because the nature of the relationship. It's a person that I was sexually attracted to as a young person. So to try to to meet them on at level of adulthood and they are in their 50s and it's obviously it's no longer the same type of relationship. It’s not necessarily parasocial. I'm in the same room as this individual having a nice conversation, but also the point is to pull something out of her that it was largely unpleasant.

NG: It’s a harrowing interview because it starts off in this place of like troubled home and then it kind of goes into a place of like I’m a teenager, I don’t know what the fuck is going on. Up is down, left is right. I’m with rock stars. There are intense asides. It’s a crazy ride.

PK: I see as the story of a lesbian who did not have the social framework to to be out in the traditional way at that time or who could fully absorb what it was to be a lesbian. That's how I see it. And so in some ways, I told a story that I'm not qualified to tell. I'm not a lesbian woman, you know.

But I found her story very moving and very compelling. I'm really glad we did it. I listened to that record recently, and I was like, oh, I gotta re-record my vocals on this. Her part is is deeply touching but that's like you'd have to be a sociopath not to feel empathy for somebody who is telling you, looking you in your eye, and telling you something really genuinely terrible.

NG: I think that’s what makes Self Defense interesting. As a project, Self Defense doesn't really slot in to something neatly. I remember even when I found the band it was still End of a Year and you guys I guess were a punk band. But you weren't really punks. You guys were kind of just dudes.

PK: Chris, who who has been in the band since end of the year days, he was a jazz guy, sort of classical guitar guy. I remember we played ABC No Rio, and it was his first time in that sort of atmosphere. And he comes out into the what counts as a hallway there, and he goes “These guys are wild. They're talking about killing cops!” and I was like, “Yeah, you're gonna you're gonna run into a lot of it. That's gonna be a prevailing sentiment at the shows we play.”

But it's still largely guys who have really diverse interests, and for most of them, punk is a small part of it.

NG: I would say Self Defense exists in my mind, at least, and kind of the way I think about it, is just moments where this group of people, friends, whatever you want to call it, meet and say like, “We're gonna end up making some kind of output.” Then you all make the music. Then present it to the world as, “This is the output.”

PK: Yes, that's exactly what it is. And as we record a new record, I've been thinking about this a little bit. That's the joy of it. That's what's exciting and interesting for me. But I feel like the Mekons. You know what I mean?

NG: Totally. That’s a great comparison.

PK: Here’s the problem: Mekons are a fascinating band, only occasionally a good band. And I thought about that for a while the other day, and thought, what has more value? Is being interesting worth a damn for the outsider? I think about bands like Flipper. There’s people who claim to like listening to Flipper. You might find Flipper interesting.

You could go, you know, iconoclastic. You know, contravene the dominant paradigm of music at that time. Isn't that interesting? And everybody can go, yeah, that's so interesting. But is it? Do you feel anything? Then again, I don't know if my job is to make anybody feel anything, or if my job is to make myself feel something and feel fulfilled in that.

This is a navel gazing conversation, obviously, because you know, a guy who plays music for 200 people talking about legacies just sounds so fucking stupid. But you think about things that have impacted your life in meaningful ways. I get very sad when I think something is genius and under-acknowledged or ignored.

When I was a kid, that would thrill me. I would find the thing that I thought was under-acknowledged or ignored, and I would say, "Everybody, look at this! This is isn't this cool?” But now I listen to it and I go, "Yo, I don't know what this person's intent was but they labored in a type of obscurity when what they offer is worth so much more than their peers who achieve success, and I get sad, and I don't know if I don't know if I'm projecting because I don't think I feel that way. To be honest, I think I've accomplished more than I set out to.

NG: You actually kind of have your foot in both types of ponds, really. Where you could argue that Self Defense is the more niche thing. But then you have Drug Church. You guys have done a lot with Drug Church. I remember when Drug Church started, and I thought, “Okay, Pat's doing a Seaweed style band. This is sick.” Now it's far beyond.

PK: Yeah, well, now it's my job, which is fucking insane to think about. I'll tell you, it is definitely sick. I really enjoy it. I mean, whenever the idea of being able to do a self-directed, creatively fulfilling thing at a juncture that you never anticipated, at a juncture in your life where really, if you're not very successful, you're supposed to put that aside and do it as a hobbyist pursuit. It's incredibly fulfilling.

I met an old man the other day, 82 year old man, and we talked for 20 minutes, and when it was getting close to his time. His hands were blue. I knew I looking at him. My father died not long ago. I knew that this fella was dealing with some heart problems. And when we parted, I said, "You know, it's nice talking. I hope I see you around. And he goes, "Maybe.” And the reason he's able to say maybe is is because he had 10 concussions, a bunch of injuries. He didn't expect to get to 82.

And that's largely how I feel about my music life. I didn't anticipate that when we started End of a Year later Self Defense. The type of music I was always drawn to was things that by necessity couldn't quote unquote succeed so it was never part of the plan to succeed. I wouldn't say I've succeeded, but just by being a band that can live off what what we do, that puts you in some category of success.

For people that hear read this, be clear, I have to do other things for money, but to even make music the majority of my income just strikes me as a real blessing that falls outside of what of what I was working for. Those guys that I was judging for being too careerist about music- it's unfair of me. Sometimes they do corny shit and I don't. It's not what I would do, but it works for them.

NG: There's a bit of kayfabe in everything. Especially in music and really in every creative field. A lot of people grow up in subculture. They grow up a punk and they have to be very punk. Then it actually becomes lame to be successful. Then it’s actually kind of better to be broke as long as you're with your friends.

Then there’s this thing where like the ceiling is not that high, so you can just be a punk forever if you never break the low barrier. Sure. But as you get older, you start to be like, "Oh shit! What is the shift here? Because if I'm doing this thing where the ceiling was this high, but I'm actually reaching out of it regularly, am I the bad guy?”

PK: I like Drug Church’s music and Drug Church’s music is able to make a living. I don't feel weird about that. The guy who likes, I don't know, whatever the next popular level up from us is, the guy who imprinted on Blink 182 and and whatever it is, that guy is just whatever language you want to use, living his dharma, and it just so happens that's very accessible. I guess what I'm saying is, it is a blessing to be genuinely interested in something that can also eke out. You can eke out a living doing something you love.

NG: Totally. It's an interesting thing to see Drug Church go high. Kind of circling back to that empathetic approach of people that you survey, because Drug Church songs are kind of the same people as Self Defense songs. Lyrically, in my mind, at least, it's still kind of these people who are like on the fringes of society.

Maybe they're a little weird. They might like blow up mailboxes with fireworks and blow off some fingers in the process. It's actually cool, at least for me, having known End of a Year and Self Defense first, to see those that similar subject matter point of view go Drug Church, which went way more mainstream. That's got to be somewhat of a successful feeling, at least as a writer.

PK: The part that I find really fascinating, confusing, whatever word we want to use, I think that my voice, for whatever it’s worth, not sonically, but my my writer’s voice is distinctly 30 plus but Drug Church has some really young fans. Kids in their early 20s will be at the shows and I'm obviously I'm happy. That's fascinating because I would have thought that this would be not relatable. Then you forget that there’s a certain segment of readers, listeners, viewers, etc. That want something that is literally relatable. They would prefer something that is two steps away from them.

NG: That was what was a big draw to me to End of a Year. A lot of times there would be songs that I would hear and think, “Oh, I kind of know someone like that. Not exactly that, but kind of like that.” And then, as End of a Year turned into Self Defense it became more of like these vignettes of people, or like I was looking at photographs but they weren't mine and I was making up stories. If that makes sense.

PK: Well, now okay. Now you have me thinking a little bit. I will own the empathy accusation in the respect that when I'm singing about other people, I'm clearly singing about myself.

The best part of Self Defense for me is when I'm on stage and a new meaning for a song hits me, I say new, but maybe it's unwrapping something. I'll be on stage and lyrics that I wrote somewhat stream of consciousness will strike me, and I'll go “ah!”. I don't know what that's worth, but it's fascinating to me.

NG: That could happen with any creative medium. Sometimes I'll look at a T-shirt I designed two years ago and be like, the fuck was I doing there? But then look again and be like like, ah!, what the fuck was I doing there?

PK: Mhm. I owe my wife a record for sure.

NG: I think we all owe our wives, fiancé, significant others some creative something.

PK: I don't even know if she wants to be written about, she's a very private person, but I feel like it is time for me to have a record about where my life is at right now, which is family-centered. The problem is that old habits are very hard to break. My family-centered songs still have this kind angle that they list towards. They're not as kind-hearted as I would hope. Because while I'm singing very fondly about my family, it's still weirdly in opposition to the rest of the world.

NG: The single that you guys just put out is kind of like that. I remember actually listening to it and digesting it a little bit weirdly to be honest with you. I was like, "Damn, the cover art is a you know person with a bag over their head, which you know, maybe in the Self Defense of seven years ago I would have been like, that tracks. Then you're singing about like having a nice life with your wife, and I was like, "Wait, your delivery is still the same cadence of I don't even know what you’d call it. It's somewhere between Lungfish and Swans, where it's wandering in this sort of shamanistic space. I'm not trying to glaze you either, but there's a conduit aspect to the way you perform and deliver.

PK: So the problem here, if there is a problem, is that the the single that you heard, there's five songs of exactly that feeling, right? Which to be clear, I love my family. What nice solace I take in my family and it's because I feel completely alienated from the rest of you.

That sounds that sounds like a love song, but from an unhealthy person,. Obviously in taking snapshots of your emotions through songs, you're only demonstrating a portion of of your inner life, but right now I'm listening to five songs, going “That's a lot of fucking songs about how alienated I am.”

You hear it in a certain number of Drug Church songs. I'm gonna interrupt myself here and say that I hate self-important band dudes telling you: “I have any insight into the human soul.” I'm just singing things that pop into my head. A lot of my music over the last 10 years has been about what I perceive to be the scam of community, right? Being part of subculture you see very acutely that our group dynamic, our sort of social scaffolding or whatever. It's just mania after mania.

NG: Yeah, absolutely. It's even more on display on Twitter. Yeah, maybe less so on Instagram, depending on where where you are.

PK: That sort of you know, cat eating its kittens sort of horror, the ugliness. The original name for this record was Rye Urgot and it's because there are some historians who think that that's what caused the witch trials. Is that it was a fungus, a mold in the rye that made people crazy. I think I'll probably use that title for something more appropriate in the future.

But that's sort of the forever sentiment of my life that I'm trying to expunge. You know I'm a happy person. I really am. But all you have to do is point me in the direction of whatever's going on, and I just wither. I look at it and I go, God, I hate how people can't have a discussion. Like we can't have a reasonable conversation about shit.

NG: That’s something I talk about that with my fiancé a lot. Where she'll lovingly be like, you know, you gripe a lot, and I'll be like, I do, but it's because, does it all need to be this hard?

PK: So, the idea that we can't, or rather that two things can't be true, that we are at this inflection point in sort of media consumption where we refuse to ever admit two things can be true, is dark.

It's okay to say, "Hey, I don't want somebody to use my doorknob as a fucking toilet paper”, but also also these these are people who I won't even say they've been failed by society. That sort of blame casting is is not worthwhile. These are people who there needs to be found a solution to this very obvious problem. Those two things can be said in the same breath. You can not lose your compassion while also saying, "I really don't need the diarrhea on my doorstep. And and the fact that we can't just the fact that that's that you in all conversations you have to engage fully with one end of it or the other, while never acknowledging that two things can be true, and that everything is a trade-off, and trying to find any sort of solution to real-world problems is going to require a an unpleasant examination of those trade-offs. I just think that's frustrating.

NG: It makes the world feel flat.

PK: There's a very severe version of OCD, where your intrusive thoughts can be of a, I forget what language they use for it, it's a depersonalizing nature. I forget what it is, but basically, you believe other people are automatons, and you're not. And people hear that and they go, "Oh no, that's schizophrenia.” No, OCD on the severe end, you can have this intrusive thought that other people are filled with hay, right? I feel like when you see the ugliness of what we call “discourse” right now, the your gut reaction is to view other people as bots. Your gut reaction is to is to disregard somebody as like, “Hey, you're a one note thinker, and I really can't engage with you.” And then, unfortunately, the more you do that, the more entrenched the problem becomes.

I don't have a solution, but I do feel that in my gut, the solution is not sloganeering. The solution is not flag waving. The solution is not growing enemies, where the point is always about the opposition to another. You know what? Let me put it like this. I thought about this a great deal. I have beliefs, but the only structured, intellectually rigorous, moral view I have is veganism, right? It's just made sense to me since it entered my life. It is something that I continue to believe.

NG: It's the empathy, dude.

PK: Maybe. But here's the thing. In service of that particular project, I would talk to literally anyone.

So, I've talked to a quail farmer for an awfully long time. I would sit with somebody that every everybody reading this would say is a reprehensible person, because my goal is not to turn them into a good person. My goal is a very narrow, you could call it political if you wanted to, a very narrow ideological thing, which is, “Hey, here's the thing I value. Can I can I get you to consider it in any way?” Then I'll let the next guy try to service your brain in whatever way he sees fit.

I would sit with the worst people on earth. I don't see myself as a political person at all, in in in either meaning of the word but I do admire people whose quote unquote politics is of a fully informed and passionate version where they'll sit with literally fucking anybody to say, “Hey, can I get you to consider this thing that matters to me? I know that there's a lot of daylight between our views on everything in this life, but I was hoping I could reach you on this.”

I'm pretty much socially on the outs with the current whatever we want to call it, the dominant paradigm, where you have to you're supposed to decide somebody is untouchable, and then you're not supposed to seek that person's allyship in any way. That's just not how I see the world. I see the world as, “Hey, can I get you? Can I get you to come two steps towards me on this thing that matters to me?” Maybe being married has strengthened this for me. My wife and I are very different people. We disagree about a number of things. So, even in my most intimate interpersonal relationship, there's a degree of “Hey, can we have an honest question or can we have an honest conversation about how I can incentivize you towards my way of thinking?” Then try to engage with a world where that's verboten in whatever way. You know what I mean? That you you get shouted down if you if there's any effort to to try to meet people on their level. It's very frustrating.

NG: I'm throwing around the word empathy here and there, but I actually think that in some ways you're probably just being a what would be considered a well-adjusted guy in a different world in a different timeline.

PK: So you nailed the thing that I think is important.

My father was a very imperfect man. I love my father very, very, much. I think it is genuinely strange that you can't see your father or mother in other human beings.

There's got to be someone in your life where, if I say you accept their flaws, you contextualize their flaws in the totality of who they are. Your mother might be a saint, but she's an imperfect person. So, I guess what I'm saying is, I find it so fucking crazy, genuinely, imagine me scratching my head like a like I'm a chimp at the zoo or something, like just confused. Where, if you can recognize that your mother, who is only your mother by, you know, the randomness of the cosmic juice, yet, when you go to to Subway and the mom behind the counter is too slow, you think “I hate this woman.” Or you see somebody saying something stupid, and instead of saying, "Yeah, my mom says stupid shit sometimes, and I still love her, you say, "Hey, that stupid shit you said, I can't wait to kill you over it.” I just find that crazy.

NG: There's basically a reward system around doing social damage. Right wing people have canceled each other. Left wing people have canceled each other. Right and left cancel each other. Everyone's doing some social destruction.

PK: I mean, here's the way to look at it: is prison pecking orders are often based on, okay, who's the green light victim? You find the person who, if they've got crimes against children, they're the green light victim. So, that is to say, in prison, conflict is the currency. So, if you can't find a child predator, you go to the guy that's got crimes against women. You know what I mean? And then you go, you can't find a guy with crimes against women. Very unlikely in prison, by the way. But then you go up the ladder a little bit. You find the guy who has got a snitch allegation against him, and that's the green light victim. And and I think if you look at it, if you look at prison as a microcosm of our of our lives outside of prison, and you look at that and you go, even if I have very extreme views, even if I share all the the anger and vitriol towards these people, I still have to look at this and go, “Yeah. That's not a healthy. That's not a healthy way to to frame a house.”

Imagine entering a new social space. Let's hope it's not prison. Let's say you move to Olympia, Washington. So there's a prevailing social climate. There's mores, other various norms that you're expected to adhere to. There's an existing social structure that you have to interject yourself into in whatever way, even if you're not looking to be terribly social, but you just need somebody to do your gutters. You know, I mean, whatever it is. Okay, so you're entering that, and you have to take inventory of who the approved targets are. That's unhealthy. I don't want to go through my life like that. I'm not an enlightened person. I'm sure anybody reading this can fucking attest to that. When I find myself judging somebody, it's actually pretty rare. But when I do, I have to remind myself that it's highly unlikely that that will feed my family.

NG: Yeah, there's there's no currency generated. There's no, there's no even resource derived.

PK: People have all sorts of different social theories about this, but I think in reality things will get quite a bit worse on the front of you know sort of socially cannibalizing each other because if you are a busy person concerned with feeding a family, it's unlikely that you will make the time to hurt strangers.

NG: If you're doing anything in your life that is constructive, to be destructive is actually to take away your momentum from the creative.

PK: So if we if we automate more, if we replace jobs in ways that where there's no other jobs, where there’s nothing to be pivoted into for that worker, you're going to have a lot of people who are what my wife refers to as Daily Mail comment people.

NG: If you remove the friction of economy, jobs creation, or just the idea of doing something for something, people when they are left with their thoughts and the permeating monoculture is if you destroy someone, you get social currency. I agree with what you're saying where if we automate away things and we make labor frictionless, the world is left with people with nothing to do but get pissed off at each other for perceived social currency. We have reverse fight clubs. It's actually you're no longer fighting outwardly against society. You're fighting inwardly at one another.

PK: There's people in this life who they have moral OCD. For them it is important that if you did something wrong, you learn, right? Or you're punished, or whatever kind whatever it is. I don't suffer that. I don't. As I try to let go of things, if I feel wronged, there's a couple fellas that I'm struggling to get past, but in time I will get past them. I don't want to be the person hanging on to grievances. However, there's a lot of people who feel great purpose in grievance, right?

NG: It's a hobby now.

PK: It’s a hobby. And I again, as we get closer to fewer jobs with purpose, as we get closer to sort of a chasm between people's expectations and their lives. There's a great number of people who have imprinted on things like the Kardashians at a young age, those things influence their expectations of their own lives in whatever small way, and then their lives are you know pretty mundane or you know financially not aligned. Yeah, and they and they suffer with that. It is a hard thing for them. Then you look at something like film Twitter.

NG: I can’t even read it anymore.

PK: Well, it's the it's the biggest chasm between expertise and achievement that I've ever seen in my life. What you encounter time and time again is somebody who has zero credentials. They might be very, very well read. They might be, you know, an autodidact type, or maybe they went to film school. Whatever it is, they have an impressive theoretical knowledge of a thing and think that they can talk with authority until they encounter somebody who has legitimate credits and then they fall apart because what is because theory doesn't hold up to reality.

I am a 10,000 hour expert in this very niche, stupid thing. I am a 10,000 hour expert. So when I had people, theorists jumping out at me, I was a little irritated. The thing I've done is is all scrutiny. Your ideas have never confronted scrutiny. And I, for anybody reading this, I have zero level of self-importance. I fucking bark on a stage. There is nothing about me that I think anybody should take under advisement, except on this thing that I've devoted the last 20 years of my life to.

In fact, it has been every day of my life for 20 years. So I am informed on this one very narrow subject. To have people attacking me who were ask aspiring music critics in 2026, aspiring. These are people who their dream was to make $20,000 doing music you're painting me as an empathetic person. This is a pathetic being to me.

NG: We we started in the light and we found your dark.

PK: If you're 21 and you're talking out of your ass, that's your job. That is your job.

But I'm dealing with like you know 35 year old with couple credits in in The Missoula Dispatch talking to me about music, and it was all I could do not to just grab them, put my halitosis fucking breath in their face, and be like, "Hey, you're are a worm, dog, you are like you're not invited to the table of people that actually do things.” I might be, I might be at the kids' table, and I'm fine with it. But literally, they barred the doors from you. You know what I mean?

NG: I do watch the critic-to-artist relationship often in music. The critic is always going through through the cycle of trying to be taken seriously, doing alright, and then doing something negative to the masses, end up in a Sisyphus-like situation and the boulder rolls back, they like squash themselves and they fall into obscurity or maybe they push it back up and it happens again, and it's kind of a beautiful relationship in a Greek tragedy way, but I cannot participate.

PK: I think a tragic orientation is: I want to influence culture.

NG: As soon as you set out to do it you can never do it. What’s the last thing we leave people with?

PK: You know, punk slogan style, kill the cop inside your head.

NG: There you go.

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NG: I don’t want to do this in a classic formal like “Why did you start making Art” way so I’m thinking the most interesting place to start is - when did you start making art in general, art with a lowercase A and where did you start and what was the first idea that came to you?

EOD: Okay, as an adult or as a kid?

NG: You know, if one leads to the other, let’s go for both.

EOD: I would say like if you count adults as being, let’s say high school when your frontal lobe is beginning to sort of congeal into something non-jelly. I was always the kid who could draw the thing that you needed, whether that’s like a disgusting pornography type thing, or the picture of the teacher that makes them grotesque, or something like that. I was always the kid who could do that. I only took two art classes in high school because I felt like I went to a high school to where those talents and that sort of thing was for a person that you were really ashamed of. I don’t know how to explain it. My senior year of high school, I was compelled like the art teachers like “Eric, you are so good. And everybody else is not that good, but like Eric, your art is interesting because you’re an interesting person. Just take a free class with me. We’ll have a blast. You can do whatever you want.”

During that class, I got I I remember she’s like, “So what do you want to do?” And I was like, “I don’t know. What’s everybody else doing?” She’s like, “They’re just drawing, they’re doing object drawings and sort of setting up flowers and doing it” and I’m like, “Yeah, but that’s the exact reason I didn’t take one of these glasses. It’s because I don’t want to do that. Cause you want them to make it exactly like it looks.” And I hate that. It’s not that I hate photorealistic art. It’s just not what I was ever into. And I remember she’s like, “Well, how about you just do one and you do it how you want to do it?”

Then I do remember having an aha moment where I was doing a pineapple and I just did it in a weird way. I remember this teacher coming over and being like, “Eric, this is incredible.” Because it was fucked up and funny and angular and the shading was all wrong in a lot of it. I mean a pineapple is very hard to draw but like sure, yeah, yeah. And so like there was no way I was ever going to draw it right. And I think that is probably the number one moment that clicked. And then during college, maybe the back half of my college career, we started throwing some like not shows but parties at my house. And I started just doing funny things to put up on campus or hand out to my friends. Then once I definitely got out of college and I realized that I was allowed to throw house shows at my house or something like that. Like lots of people were doing that all through college. I just never realized I was allowed to do it for whatever that means.

And then I started doing lots of flyers when I lived in Charlotte, North Carolina and was embedded in the DIY scene there. I think maybe that’s where I was just like, “Damn, I can be good at this.”

You know you know how life goes. You put stuff away for a little bit and then when my first child was born fourteen years ago, you’re stuck inside a lot. yeah. And I remember I went to the Pygmalion’s [an old art supply store] and I just bought a handful of art pads and I was like, “Well if I’m gonna be stuck inside, I wanna make the most of my time.” And started just doing dumb shit then. I just kept expanding and expanding and expanding.

NG: When I met you I had no idea you were making art. I knew you as the A&R guy. I never realized that you had this other identity making art. I don’t think I actually saw your work until I lived in Chicago and had moved away from Bloomington. I saw an Instagram post and it was one of the drawings in the book actually and I was kind of doing my own doodles at the time, and I think we had probably seen each other’s doodles, and I was like wait, like Eric’s are really interesting. There’s something happening over there. At the time I didn’t have the language to talk about anything creative the way I do now. But it was interesting because I was so into the little figures and that the art was kind of spiritual.

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EOD: What year did you move?

NG: I think I left when I was twenty-six, or maybe twenty-seven. I can’t remember. So that would have been twenty sixteen, twenty seventeen.

EOD: Yeah, I think that’s when it started getting good. I had a show put on by the people that used to run Rainbow [Bakery]. They asked me to do a show and right before they asked me, like right before, I began to get divorced and so the show kind of became about something funny about my divorce over time. And it was just like these little creatures and little shapes and these sort of like humanoid little things. You know man, this is like what’s really hard to explain. It’s like I think I had a handful of like my art heroes, which were very basic bitch sort of shit at that point. Like my god, like Picasso. You know what I mean? Like just the most basic stuff. The things that I really loved in that era were all like nineties, early two thousand comic book artists like Mark Bell or whatever. And so those were my real rap, those were my those are my art heroes. Only like from that moment, like you mark that moment in twenty fifteen. I would say I began an advanced self education in fine art or whatever you will call it. Here’s the thing about being a divorced dad even if you have kids — you have a lot of free time. You have a lot of free time to get to know the art world you’re on your computer a lot, man, you’re lonely, and so it was like loneliness has its benefits.

And I would say that was like where I just began to learn. When I was playing in bands, I remember finding Arthur Russell — I found Arthur Russell early — I would say earlier than the average bear because I worked in a record store and we got those things in before most people. But when I heard his voice, I was like, “Oh shit. This person sings like I sing, you know” And I felt like in that same moment finding Gustin, for instance, I was like, “This person sings like I sing”, you know, like or has some eye like that relates to how I would draw a human hand or a eyeball or whatever the fuck. I found my guys along the way.

NG: This is funny though because I think I have an interesting POV on watching your art evolve, right? And it’s interesting that you’re saying that like a lot of this stuff stewed out of having like a lot of time and going through divorce because I think the two themes that I’ve seen as a line throughout your work since I’ve been consuming it - it’s three things for me: It’s this sort of suburban perspective to a degree, but not suburbia with roundabouts and little things. It’s suburban living through an interesting, Midwestern perspective. Then there’s this sort of acidic warp to this everyman life, it’s kind of like tweaky, it’s got some funk to it. And then there’s this like intimacy to it too, were you there it’s almost like private moments where there’s like breasts and like vaginas and dicks, but they’re not necessarily erotic, but they’re like examined. And those three themes kind of just follow through. And then there’s America. You have this look at America as like a spiritual entity that pervades down into the other three things.

EOD: Well, I think they’re just like every person. The same things are on my mind: sex and not having sex and the thinking about sex too much and being conscious that you’re thinking about sex too much. I also consider myself someone who is desperate to find spirituality.

I wish I could be a religious or spiritual person in some way. Like I long for it. But I probably did too many drugs as a youth to be able to actually go the distance in some way because there’s always because you do too many drugs and you get the double think and or the triple think in your mind. And then you’re always like it’s this triple questioning thing.

I do think about the American project all the time and where it’s going and what it is. Every generation thinks it’s gonna see the end of the world. It’s like it’s been a thing for hundreds of years but at some point in time, one of those generations is gonna be right. That idea has become cleaner and cleaner to see. And I feel like those three things I just mentioned are what I’m trying to like, maybe incorporate sometimes.

Those are the things that are always just kind of stirring in the back of my brain and the things that are fun for me to draw. You know, John from Ulyssa, like you’ve seen some of his shit, and it’s like I don’t know where his shit comes from, you know, it’s just shapes he sees in cement that he’ll just trace and then that becomes a thing and he puts some color around it, it becomes a thing. It’s like that’s not really my vibe. My thing is I wanna kinda make little movies or something like that you can see in one frame and it’s like, well, I feel like I’m just watching a movie by looking at this thing.

I do try to poke fun at or see what’s interesting about desire, like unending the modern desire. I’m hungry - I’ll have one more slice, or I’ll have one more drink, or I’ll get tugged off one more time by someone. I think I’m trying to say something about that sometimes.

I only see it after all the stuff is done and I’m like, okay, there it is. You know, like it at the moment it’s really like whatever they say, the rapper blackout in the booth type situation. I really do feel like I am blacking out in the booth.

NG: The shards of the American Project I would say is a really good frame of reference for your work. The work isn’t inherently political. I would say there are moments where it references a political thing, but it is not political in its nature. I do think that the plays of desire and politics are duly hand in hand.

So when you’re looking for these moments that you’re eventually articulating through your work, are you specifically tuning into certain things that you want to suggest to people? Or are you simply saying “this is something I thought about - JFK’s head getting blasted through with a laser beam.”

EOD: Well the JFK thing is funny in that I just was on summer vacation drawing in my little notepad. I just started doing this car and I was like, okay, let’s make it the top down in this car. Who do I put in the back of this car? Okay, let’s make it, you know Jacqueline Onassis then where’s that shot gonna be coming from? I was like, let’s go straight down in a funny way. And I kinda did. I was like, whoa, that’s actually a great idea. Let’s put a pin in that Eric and keep it for whatever. And so later in the fall of whatever that year was, we were coming up on the an you know, whatever anniversary, I was thinking about it again, I was like, ooh, we should pull that one out.

NG: I’m looking I’m looking at all of the art of yours that I own on my wall and I do have the painting of Earth going into a black hole which I do feel it does kind of bend backwards towards what we’re talking about.

EOD: That was also like, you know, let’s think back on that. Fall twenty twenty four, right? Fall twenty twenty four. Election day is approaching. And man, I was reading the tea leaves. I know we’re on the edge of entering another tricky era. And so I think I was also putting a lot of that sort of whatever ennui or whatever you would call it, sort of into those things into the work. I would probably have felt the same were the two different candidates. You know what I mean? I feel like as a project, it’s sort of like we’re sort of circling the toilet at this point which is an exciting time because you gotta end something before something new starts.

And so it’s not even like I just despise the current administration, which I do, but it’s not even just that.

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NG: I think there’s also this sort of like there’s this playful trickster role in your art too and it’s a space that you occupy very naturally. You’re like looking in these zones of friction for these things and you’re wanting to engage with them in this playful way.

Are you purposefully always trying to be playful with it or is there ever a period where you’re like, maybe I want to be serious? Should your art ever be serious? It’s a funny question to ask an artist.

EOD: You know, I have this book that is like any art book for people who make really beautiful art. And I look at it sometimes and I’m like, damn, this is just pure. This is a good example - a Georgia O’Keefe watercolor book. Her watercolors are so fucking gorgeous. And they’re just gorgeous for gorgeous sake. You know? God. Damn. It’s just like, “could I ever just do that and be at peace without it being something clever or without having a little story behind it?” I look at it and I get insanely jealous.

I do think there are some things I do in this book [Can of Whoopass] that are in fact very pretty and you can just sit with them and they aren’t comics or illustrations or whatever.

It’s funny you asked this question, is what I’m getting to, there was a point maybe two days ago or three days ago where I was just like, “I think I’m just gonna have to start painting pretty stuff because I don’t know how many more jokes I have left in the tank. I got no more jokes. So I might as well just start painting Coors cans beautifully.

NG: I have a very privileged perspective in this situation where I’ve got to see the work evolve throughout its public life basically, right? The book does have these moments where you’re stopping with the jokes and making something beautiful.

There are three particular pieces that I think of in reference to this, but the one that jumps out at me is the topless woman holding all the fruit and food on a platter. That to me is my favorite piece you’ve done. This is what it’s like when he pursues beauty. It’s power powerful ‘cause the colors pop and they’re they’re raw. It’s sexy which goes back to the original point of you being focused on desire. And it has food, which is gluttonous. There’s like this fun play of like all the sins. You make sins beautiful which is also funny.

Then there’s the Tibetan Book of the Dead painting, that giant ass piece, that is just so cool. I love that one. I don’t even know how I begin to describe the third - it’s more of just like it’s almost Jackson Pollock-like. It goes into a place of raw human inertia.

EOD: I mean the first one — on my birthday I ask for two things. I don’t eat desserts. So on my birthday I got two things. I got a salade niçoise. My wife always makes a salade niçoise and then she makes banana pudding. That photo is of a salade niçoise.

What you can’t see is that she was six and a half months pregnant in that photo where she’s holding the salad. We were really just hanging out and she was really topless. And I was like, Mary, you gotta hold this. Let me get a photo real quick. And just took a quick photo of her, you with like big, you know, you get engorged when you’re pregnant. I was just like, I cannot believe what I’m looking at right now.

When I made it, I always sent my art to my business partner John. We’re just like in a constant like art conversation. He and I and other people’s art and our own art. Whenever he’s halfway through a piece he sends it to me and I just comment vice versa. And I remember being in my garage at my house and sending him that photo of Mary and he was like, “Bro, this is like real painting.” He’s like, “You’re really painting right now. The way you’re doing the little light on the things and on the things” I was like, “Yeah, I guess you’re right.”

You know, you don’t even notice when you’re doing it. You’re just making decisions as quick as your brain and the paint will allow you to make the decisions. That’s the fun part and the frustrating part about paint. I was coming from more of a pencil background, you can go as fast as you want, but you have to like you have to take a breath, you have to sit down and watch for a second and then get back to it. You have to really let it go. That was one point in time where I was like I nailed it.

Tibetan Book of the Dead is one of my favorite things I ever did. Yeah. Only because I really finished the whole thing and it was plain blue and John walked into the room the next day or something and I was like, what would you do to it? And he literally, this is no shit. This is John fucking Williamson, my partner in crime. We shared our studio. He picked up something very heavy and he heaved it straight through that fucking painting. That’s why you look in the middle you can tell it’s been like it’s exploded and I put it all back together.

Then in that process when I was painting it back together, I mean, this is wild shit. I’d had this relationship prior to meeting Mary that ended badly. I still had a couple of her pieces of art hanging around, little things. I started painting the Tibetan Book of the Dead an I would just paste them in. I’d paint the blue over the top of that. Or like my son’s art, I would just paint onto that and I painted it it into the Book of the Dead. So on that gigantic piece there are fifteen other little drawings and sketches and pieces of paper just that you cannot see. They’re all fucking painted in there. It’s funny. It’s like all hidden away.

Then the other one is like truly I had this painting that I had a great idea for, kind of an angel painting. It was on this gold thing, and then I fucked it up and I got so mad at it, I just started to scratch away and when I started scratching away. I just kept scratching until I was like, okay, this is the best thing I’ve ever fucking done. It’s still down in my basement to this day, man. No one will ever buy it. It’s yours actually.

NG: It’s such a unique piece because the times where you like to stray away from I don’t want to say to you ‘cause it’s all you, right, but like there are certain times where you stray away from some of the more central themes and they go through this exploration and they’re so different.

EOD: I think it happens now more than it did. I mean, I well , what’s crazy is like let’s say the year 2015 or whatever it was, it’s like I could sit down, blank piece of paper, have an idea of painting Earl Sweatshirt. And I would just do a pretty good Earl Sweatshirt. Done. Next. I thought that’s how you were supposed to do it for a long time.

I realized how much you’re allowed to paint over something and then do it again on top of the thing and then do it again and then scratch it down to nothing and really work the paper to oblivion. I would say from then I think it was like 2019 actually, I would say from then to now, that’s like that is a part of the process.

NG: What about your work feels like under-explored to you? Thematically, not technique wise, because technique I feel like you find along the way. Desire’s there, but what’s after desire?

EOD: What a question. What a question. What’s after desire?

I think I mentioned it earlier, but there is a painting that did not make this book that’s something. So when John moved to Bloomington, he and I would share a studio in the SC [Secretly Canadian] office late at night. We would just go in at like eleven o’clock and hang out, sometimes not painting, sometimes painting, until like three AM or four AM.

And one time I remember I was like I was like “John shut the fuck up. I’m trying to be a spiritual artist over here.” And he cracked up and wrote that down. But I did keep it in mind. It’s like a spiritual artist because it’s kind of funny because it’s like saying I’m not a real artist. I’m kind of an artist in spirit. I do think when I go downstairs [to my studio] on that next day or two days later from like after a session or two, or look at going through this book, it’s like I really do have these moments like, damn, I tapped into something that it’s kind of the things you don’t know are there, which it which can’t be described any other way than the spirit or something spiritual.

I’m trying to think of a good way to put it. But you know it’s not in that off-crimped sort of way or something to where it’s like, this is like vibrating spirituality in front of me. But I do feel like I can see myself achieving that. And that might only be because I am me. I don’t know if other people can get there because they’re not me, you know?

I think that is why you, myself, Amanda, people like John or people like Tyler who run the gallery [Kiosk], it’s what’s so enlivening. Even though we’re not saying all those sorts of things all the time, because it can’t be coombayah all the fucking time. But what’s enlivening about it is like you’re like you feel like other people are seeing that a little bit. Or getting wisps of it or like little tiny tickles of it or something. That’s what makes it that’s what makes it all work.

I think it comes off as a little goofy joke, clever guy art. It is trying to go from point A to point B as fast as my mind will let me. Only the next day or two days after do I’m like, that feels pretty mystical to me or something. Like this is a good painting because it makes me laugh, but also I know that I was wrestling with my angels or something like that at that moment. You know?

NG: That’s an interesting way to frame around that because like one thing I’ve noticed and it kind of goes back to you know this idea of collapse of the American project is it seems like people in general are looking for a new mythology in some way and they’re not quite sure what it is. People are looking for any moments or figments of mythology to sort of recontextualize the quote unquote new American experience.

That theme even pervades a little bit even into the Ulyssa work where there’s like David Michael Moore and these sounds that are spiritual in a way, but they’re not spiritually religious but more to the heart of what a thing is.

EOD: Keep talking.

NG: It’s hard because these are things that if you use too many descriptions for them, you kind of muddy the idea of what they are, which I think is what you were kind of angling at where if you say too much about the vibration, it kind of might accidentally misclassify it.

It’s why people like David Lynch movies, because there’s this hum of everything is a bit unnatural, even though it appears a certain ordinary way. Things are also spiritual in that same way too, where a Waffle House at four AM in fucking Missouri that no one knows with a certain fog and a certain light and a certai hue to everything, and you can hear like a tiny hum of bugs, that gets a little bit like ethereal.

EOD: And then someone plays the Waffle House song. And then jukebox and you’re just like, damn, we were all getting spiritual.

NG: Exactly.

EOD: Then you’re like, that person actually just upped the ante.

NG: I feel like these are things that you’re kind of capturing. There’s also another piece in the book that I really love too, it’s a happy piece because I’m a fan of it, but also for the technique of it, the 3-6 Mafia piece is very fun to me. It’s fun and jubilant.

EOD: Mystic Styles is a very important record for me. I think back, I don’t think I got into it when it was coming out. I think it was probably two years later or three years later, like ‘cause I certainly wasn’t in high school. Maybe you came out when I was in high school. I don’t know, I’m trying to think. It was one of those records where I didn’t know you were allowed to rap like this. I felt like rap was a radio thing for me, aside from the only other thing I can think about at the time is like 36 Chambers. Those are the two records I was like, I didn’t know you were allowed to do it this way.

I also just think of rap as it has become part of America. It’s actually one of the most important parts. It’s our modern jazz and our modern avant-garde. Like I think about Duwap Kane or xaviersobased. I challenge you to find more avant-garde music than some of that shit.

NG: It’s a constant dance in the avant-garde, play for desire, and being as raw and urgent of a human as you can be.

EOD: My therapist was like, you know, “Who’s taking care of Eric?” You know, he’s saying all very common things, you know? I’m like, well, I’m good on this and this and this. But the thing we really ended up at is just like I’m not very good at demanding my own time. I’ll give myself one hour to do the thing that should be sacred. The thing that should take five hours to do. I grind myself into a one hour window to really rock with it. And sometimes I think that works to my benefit. That’s where a lot of the Ulyssa writing comes from.

It’s like, damn, I haven’t I have an hour to write this thing. What do I really think about? And it’s just - Say it all, man. Say it all in one sentence. Sometimes it works to my benefit, but it’s interesting in that way. I don’t know.

I was hanging with my stepdad yesterday for Easter and we were playing baseball with my son, my nephew and it was cold as fuck. I was playing outfield with my dad to catch the homers because they wanted to bat into the wind to let the wind carry their balls as far as they could. He goes, “I read the back of your book.” And I was like, “What? How did you even see it?” He goes, “Someone sent it to me.” I like, “Wow, what? What’s up?” It had to be incomprehensible to him.

And he goes, “It kind of reminds me of George Saunders.” But I was like, “what?” That was funny as fuck to me. Now I’m like man, I was actually trying to be more like Walt Whitman. I always try to be like Walt Whitman. But Walt Whitman who’s seen Spike Jones movies or something. Just let it ride.

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It’s my longest running creative endeavor and the one I am the most grateful for. In many ways it’s a solidifying year for the project; I know how I want to design and what makes me happy, what’s stimulating, what’s boring, what does and doesn’t work, and I feel confident calling myself a designer, a title that in any year prior to this one I would have shied away from for fear for of stealing some unknown credential.

If I do a rough calculation as accurately as possible I could say that over 25,000 Night Gallery items exist in the world in some way, shape, or form. I’ve sent items to every continent except Antarctica. I’ve been bad at design and gotten better at design. I’ve designed for local bands, big ones, and Nike. I’ve gotten to design for artists that I think are heroes and artists that I didn’t know and came to love. I’ve had good clients and bad clients. I’ve made friends and I’ve made people mad. I went from not knowing anything about running a business to knowing enough to give other people some pretty good advice.

Night Gallery has changed my life for the better in an unquantifiable amount of ways. There are few things that bring me as much joy as the random messages I get about someone loving a shirt, their connection to the subject, or some other anecdote. For me it’s made the world a bit smaller, a bit more intimate. I live in Manhattan and I am surrounded by people but often they feel like faces I’m pushing and walking past. I enjoy the brushes with sincerity that come with this project. I might even thrive on them when I need hope that the world is alright. It’s easy to self-humble when people ask about Night Gallery and say “I’m just a shirt guy” which is something I’ve often repeated in a tongue-in-cheek way for the last five years. This year though I found myself growing a little bit tired of reducing myself to that title even as a joke. I’ve published nine books. I’ve made hundreds of designs. I am, and this is more to say it to myself and have it documented, quite proud of what I’ve built here.

There is connection. There are people who recognize the work in public and make new friends. There are artists who want to work with me. There is business to be done. There are friends to be made. I say it often and it might sound woo-woo to anyone who doesn’t know me, but that is magic.

I feel fortunate enough to have had few bad experiences with this project. The worst thing that’s happened is being stiffed by a client or two. At the end of the day — who cares? It would have been nice to have the money, sure, but losing money twice in five years is not a catastrophe. I’ve had so few things in my life have such little negativity associated as this project. I write that and then find my mind drifting to “remember dude, it’s just shirts” but it is and it isn’t. It’s creative freedom, some sense of community, some orientation in the chaos that happens in the world and a place I can go to and provoke feeling for myself and others. I would hope that anyone with a creative practice feels this way though I understand if some don’t.

When I think about what this is and what it’s supposed to become I have the sincere hope that the future allows me to bring in more like-minded and passionate people. I would love for Night Gallery to evolve even more in the next five years. I think it would be a blast for it to be unrecognizable from its earlier iterations when it turns ten. I couldn’t even conceptualize what that means at this moment and I don’t want to. The blessing of this project is that it exists in time as a moment of my creative and human evolution. It’s possible that in five years I won’t be selling shirts at all. Maybe it’ll be solely publishing. Maybe it’ll be selling paintings. It’s hard for me to know because I don’t know who I’ll be. I find that incredibly liberating.

None of this is afforded without the community that has rallied around and continues to rally around Night Gallery. There are people who have every item I’ve ever made. That’s surreal to me. There are new people who enter the Night Gallery all the time. Some people go. It’s all good — the door is open if you want to come back. When I started this it felt strange to me that people would be so passionate about t-shirts. Five years in I realize it’s not really about t-shirts and it’s not even really about design. It’s really the same as it is with anything — people looking for anything they can feel connected to.

Thank you, sincerely, for five years of Night Gallery.