Interview taken from HermAphrodite #1

“ The relationship between our visual imagery and our music is the

collision between the unstoppable force and the immovable object.”

Later in the evening, whilst watching the band, I ( immovable object ) am hit by a flying carrot ( unstoppable force ). And the Brighton Beach audience, who have grown used over the last few months to the conventional 3/4-piece sing-the-song-and-maybe-jump-about-a-bit guitar-bands, are hit by the unexpected.

To only hear David Devant and His Spirit Wife is to only ingest a small part of what they mean.

Yet to describe their stage presence to anyone unfamiliar with their live selves involves a good deal of gesticulation on your part towards many a blank / worried face. ( Before you finally give up, and just quietly tell them it involved a cheese grater...)

I asked The Vessel if he could explain their visuals to somebody who’s never seen them before…

“ They work like music - in films... When ‘magic-lantern’ and films started developing, films and magic-shows were in the same building, and they’d cross over...”

The original David Devant, with his partner John Maskelyne, unlike many other magicians of their day, presented their magic-shows in the forms of skits and short plays. By so doing, they were able to create thoroughly absorbing stage shows, for which their acts of magic became additional extras within a piece of true entertainment. Similarly, David Devant and his Spirit Wife are seeking to entertain - not distance - their audience, by putting on a stage-show rather than just a ten-song set...

“ It’s not providing a parallel, or a visual accompaniment, it’s a feeling, a punch-line. It’s more about a side-show, a spectacle, which leaves a sense of wonder. Little wonder as in ‘I wonder why he’s doing that’ or a big wonder...”

I think, given some of the things they show, it could be closer to panic.

“ I think little things can produce big feelings if they’re done right - inter-action. Like just a kettle boiling itself... We don’t really analyse what we do, but I think we instinctively know what will work in terms of the audience and us.”

“ We aim to constantly surprise - ourselves.”

I wanted to know how far being The Vessel took over his life, how it affected him.

I think it’s more than just a stage creation, it’s an extension to a certain side of his personality.

And, as The Vessel, he isn’t solely channelling David Devant...

“It’s not as straight-forward as that, no.”

There is more within his title than its defined meaning; the use and weight of language within the band does appear very important. Otherwise why have signs onstage...?

“I like words; like ‘moustaches’ works like a word because it makes people think - it has associations - and ‘vessel’ does too.”

But he does admit that;

“There is a part of me which is maybe channelling David Devant, but as he is like a performer as well, that’s part of me anyway.”

“Are you able to step out of it, are you ‘as the Vessel’ at the moment ?”

“Yeah, because part of being The Vessel is also being shaped by experience. And then, I’m going to be fired one day, and glazed. At the moment I’m being shaped like the audience, and all the experiences which I’ve had with the audience leave marks on me. Like maybe in the way I look or the way I act - it’s up to the audience what I become like. And then when I reach my peak, I can stay like that, like a pot, and all those marks will be there forever.”

“So there are no Blur/Bowie-style reinventions on the horizon for you then ?”

“Evolutions, yeah... But it won’t be ‘reinventions’ - it’ll be more like ‘I am a pot where you don’t notice the changes’, it’ll just slowly happen. Because I am quite different to what I was when I first started doing this. But that’s what I want to keep on doing. I don’t think the changes will be dramatic.”

“You’ve grown into this ?”

“Yeah, well I’ve been shaped, as I say, by the audience.”

“And how about the rest of them, are they all still exactly the same?”

“Um, well, like I say we’re all vessels, it’s just that I’ve called myself Vessel, and I try to exaggerate experience just because that’s what I want to do. But I think we’ve all grown into what we are now. We’re living out our subjective identity - you take that idea of what you are and you just go with it. And that’s what our names are all about.”

Which reminds me that the inscription FOZ is currently adorning the wall of one of the girl’s toilets.

I enquire whether that would that be anything to them.

The Vessel doesn’t think so, as their guitarist is called ‘FOZ?’. But...

“He is open-minded enough not to subscribe to the notions of ‘male’ and ‘female’ toilets.”

“ I think Brian Molko wears shoulder pads. But he can pull it off...”

Being The Vessel not only extends into the way in which one lives, but also into one’s wardrobe. As befits a band who place such importance on the visual and non-Roman aspects of life, a part of being The Vessel is looking right onstage, in clothing that others would not necessarily be drawn towards themselves. But that does work for David Devant and His Spirit Wife. Interesting suits, at the moment.

“ Is there anything which you wouldn’t go onstage dressed in ?”

( grins ) - “ A sheep outfit...”

Almost certainly a good thing ( both for him and the sake of the audience ).

“ ...It isn’t about our image. I am very vain at heart.”

“ And so you want to try and show yourself at your best...”

“ Yes.”

( “ And not as a sheep...” )

As yet, though they do have a certain devoted following, The Vessel has not seen any clones of himself coming to the gigs. I don’t think he had actually considered the idea as an actuality.

I think his audience are respected too highly as individuals for it to become a preoccupation. And also...

“I think people realise that looking exactly like us is not what it’s about. It’s just about overcoming embarrassment, because embarrassment is trivial compared to ( pauses, realises smiling ) life I s’pose. It’s just an aesthetic decision. It’s also part of just non-Roman way of thinking. ”

It must also be noted however that being onstage is a whole different world - you can get away with more, before people start to wonder - and its limitations are not as tightly defined.

Like you wouldn’t wear your ‘going-out’ clothing to go shopping.

“The more famous that you get, are you the more likely to go down to the shops as you would appear onstage, just LIVE it more and more...?”

“Yeah, that is a logistical problem... ( trails off.... ) I’d like to be so famous that maybe I didn’t need to go to the shops, or that there weren’t shops. It’s all hypothetical really...”

“Would there be any way that you wouldn’t want to get changed before you get onstage - to sort of separate the you that’s up there to the you that’s down here...” ( physically, on a stool before the stage in the Cockpit; spiritually out of role ).

“It’s getting more like that, I’m down here because I’ve been swimming you see. ( And as such is without wig. ) I don’t live in that kind of state which I’d like to live in all the time which is hyper-reality... where I still have to do what’s appropriate now and then. I couldn’t wear a glamorous tight-fitting outfit to the swimming-pool, because I think that that would be taking it too far; I still live partly in ‘la vie trivial’ where I think ‘ooh, no, I can’t do that.’’

But The Vessel’s self-imposed limitations on ‘abnormal’ behaviour are far shifted from those of the ‘average’ member of society.

( Ooh, d’you know, there are still some people out there who think nail varnish on a ‘bloke’ strange ! Lawks ! Fancy... )

I admire The Vessel’s nail varnish. Spectacular black glitter gloss, now sadly chipping.

And although he thought he’d gone to the swimming pool dressed moderately, it was only when The Vessel saw the attendant struggling to come to terms with his nails that he realised that such a small thing, so automatic to him, ( whether the colour matched that of his new swimming trunks or no, ) could also be classed as odd by others.

But he isn’t deliberately trying to freak people out.

“ No, no. I haven’t set out to do that. Some of the make-up that I’ve worn onstage recently ( he searches for the suitable wording... ) it apparently looks a little strange...”

“ Describe ? Is this like ‘Kiss’, or just glitter and eyeliner...?”

( grinning happily ) - “ No, just dark around the eyes. It’s very natural to me to do it

“ So it’s not that you’re thinking ‘Oh, this is weird, this’ll freak them out...”

“...but maybe deep inside me there is someone that’s doing that and I’m not aware of it.”

However, by the time The Vessel & I have finished our conversation, he has decided to defy swimming-pool convention, and twist people’s perceptions just a little bit more than they were expecting over a quiet hour at the baths...

“The next time I go swimming I will wear my wig.”

But then if you lose it, that would be horrible, because it would just float away...

“... and it would interrupt someone swimming up and down...”

You could get a little motor for it, you could just set it off - you wouldn’t even have to go in, you could just send your wig off and see if it overtakes people.

I like this idea. You could use it to test whether such an action would break others’ concentration. The Vessel pauses, and gives the prospect serious thought.

“ No that’s silly.”

In this, he isn’t just testing out the extremes to which he can push the existence of The Vessel.

He’s also trying to push against the mentality of the up-and-down lengths type people... The ones content to do the same thing, repeatedly; making a chore out of what could be fun.

“ It’s only recently that I discovered that that’s what people do.”

There’s a pause.

“ It’s terrible isn’t it; when you look like an adult, you can no longer use the Ball Pool in children’s play areas, and when you go swimming you are forced by convention, expectation and those guiding ropes to swim lengths.”

Another pause.

“ But that, you see is Roman, isn’t it...”

It’s not fair...

“ ... and that is a very good analogy for what the band means to music. We are not lappers, we’re not up-and-down swimmers... I just like to splash about with no particular logic to it. But that is a very real thing, isn’t it, those people swimming up and down. It’s not really hurting them when you get in their way, you’re just interrupting what they’ve got in their head, which is ‘I must go up and down. ( contentedly ) A swimming pool is a very nice analogy. Just with all of us swimming around in the pool, and some people just going up and down. And they do get Roman haircuts, as they swim up and down, cos it plasters it to their head.”

So then. David Devant and His Spirit Wife are here not to confuse, but to share and entertain.

Encourage a non-Roman way of existence.

And disrupt the up-and-down swimmers.

Nice...

“And remember. This is all done by Kindness.”

Last revised: 13/05/03