I have had the great pleasure of getting to know M.I. Devine over the past decade. I respect him enormously as an artist and am lucky to call him my friend. Presented with the chance to interview him about his new record, I jumped at the opportunity. Dig it. -AK
: Hey Michael! I’m excited to dive straight in. Tell me a bit about Famous Letter Writer and how it fits into your larger body of work as an artist.
: Hey Adam! Thanks for asking. I can’t imagine a better place than AMAUTEUR to chat about this stuff. What I do has a lot to do with what you’re up to here, thinking about art and community and new ways of connecting.
So, I call Famous Letter Writer an art pop collective. I’ll unpack those three terms in two pictures real quick.
Art pop: I’m a writer, poet, lyricist, filmmaker, performer, and scholar. Famous Letter Writer — its music and short films — reflects that. It recovers in (I hope!) fresh ways some lessons from the mods, the Warhols, the dadaists, the original “mail” artist Ray Johnson. It says that pop is a living tradition.
BTW, here’s a picture of me at work:
Ok, ok, that’s Yves Klein: performer, happening guy, inventor of the color blue(!). But I like the image because it’s about faith, trying, defying, all that good stuff. And that’s what FLW explores: the individual alive now. Not not trying, as Miranda July once put it. Exploring, creating. Warhol as a child. Kids playing Minecraft, building churches.
This image is pop: it grabs us, it participates in the culture it wants to celebrate and critique, right? But, wait! There’s more!
This is an art pop collective. This is Famous Letter Writer. This is how it’s done, as you know. By building relationships. And that’s what we try to do, too. Art is not solitary — I’m turned always to tradition, the past, past forms, but also to others. And that exchange — that solidarity — is part of that. Beginning with my partner in time, Ru, but extending to filmmakers, musicians, so many people.
AK: I’ve always thought of you as a constructivist. The idea of building as a sacred collaborative act is a foundational and recurring theme in both your music and your poetry. Your work seeks to (re)define the physical, social and emotional architecture of love, art, community and family. Your partnership with Ru embodies this. Can you tell me about the first time you and Ru made music together, and about the journey from that moment to the formation of Famous Letter Writer?
MD: Wow, that’s beautiful. Emotional architecture. It puts me in mind of forms, you know — formalism in poetry, for example (and yes, I’m a formalist in poetry but always expanding what that means) — I’m definitely attracted to all of that. Why? Well, to answer: might I talk about this band Geese everyone digs, and for good reason?
I’m a lyrics guy, so here’s a line from “Au Pays du Cocaine”:
You can be free / And still come home.
That’s the impossible, crushing dream, right? To be both at once — to be I (free) and thou (relational); to be and be connected, too? Everyone asks what happens after liberalism, and I guess, I don’t know, Geese happens: art happens, forms that allow us room to be free but still be within the family of things (I think I’m citing a Mary Oliver re: geese at the end there lol). Anyway, I’m glad for Geese, glad that rock returns, glad for all art that allows us to be — and for me, that’s what the family is, we’re geese, we find our place in it, as a dad, a mom, as dada, as an individual — and I hope that our music traces that push and pull, the let it go of it all. Our songs like “Minecraft,” where kids seem to build our dystopian world. What else could I possibly be after if not something like that?
As for the first time we played, it involved an accordion and it didn’t go great! I think we played at the Pig 'n Whistle in Hollywood? We had to learn to build together, to be free but be at home. It takes time.
AK: To be honest, I don’t really know what is or is not formalism. Is it art wearing a suit? What is the opposite of formalism? That feels like the setup of a joke that would only play in very niche circles.
Is it fair to say that formalism is rooted in the shape and structure of things, less interested in (illusions of) total individualistic freedom and more interested in how we exist and self-identify within and in relation to systems?
If so, I’m a formalist too! It makes me think about Lev Vygotsky and his sociocultural theory of cognitive development: the idea that the site and source of knowledge is not within but between us. Your response makes me think we can be formalists in the shape of the lives we live and in how we interact with the world.
MD: “Not within but between” — that’s awesome. See, I’m clearly talking to an educator as well as an artist! And I know you are! I know, from your early work. You were dedicated to the idea of community creation in your film Good Funk, right? It seems like you were early on demoting Auteur (me), for what…? Amauteur? Love is in there (amo), but also a sense of play, creativity, us, community. (Sorry, I close-read everything! lol)
But, yeah, this demotion of the self, let’s call it, I think what happens is that other things come into focus: tradition, the limits and materiality of our medium, technique. We’re most ourselves when we’re least ourselves.
The monastery walls let the monk forget the monk. That’s the point of ritual, of forms. Same thing for the poet facing the sonnet.
I write about this in “In Is Free,” a sort of a sad love song that sends up Yeats’ desire (in “Innisfree”) to be utterly alone.
“Minecraft” is probably the clearest meditation on form, making, community and world-building on the new record. It was inspired by my kids teasing me that they should be allowed to play the video game forever because they were, I guess, essentially rebuilding civilization (?). If I told them to wrap up playing, they’d say, hey! we’re building an art museum in here! Are we supposed to stop this cathedral? We can’t stop! It became a running joke — I was a philistine in the way of their creative practice.
The song is, well, it turns into a meditation on world-building, utopias, dystopias, Travis Scott and Astroworld, David Foster Wallace, a desire to be a child and make in a world that tears everything down. A lot is going on in there!
But, yeah:
We built a wall / Through the heart of it all.
That’s a sad image. But there’s something true about it, I think, to link back to your question! I think the record is a search for solidarity — that which is between us and connects us. A living matrix. Tradition. Love.
AK: I have always found that writing and making art help me both grasp and go beyond my personal perspective and experiences. I think I’m drawn to making movies because it is a tangible way to envision and practice community organizing. It’s all just getting people together and working towards a shared goal, right?
The director Matthew Rankin compared the filmmaking team to a collective brain: a network of individuals offering their skills and perspectives in service of something greater than the sum of its parts. That is accurate to my experience (or is, at least, the best-case scenario).
I’m really glad you brought up “Minecraft”. It’s my favorite song on your new record. Also, thanks for sharing with me the not-yet-released music video for it! It is such a clear and beautiful audio-visual distillation of the themes and ideas we have been discussing.
Would it be cool to informally premiere the video right here, right now?
MD: Ha. OMG LFGGGG (I’m trying to speak nonDe). Of course!
AK: Sweet! Here it is, folks. The brand new music video for “Minecraft” by Famous Letter Writer. Surprise world premiere!
It’s all there, all the stuff we’ve been investigating: art, pop, (de)construction of form, family, ritual, repetition, physical and emotional architecture, and the inseparable, symbiotic nature of these things in your work. To be honest, I don’t really wanna ask you about the video specifically because I think it speaks so well for itself. But I am curious to know what comes next for you, for the band, and specifically for the release of your new record.
MD: I guess I’ll add a coda here, like the coda in the film: the artist has to go to that place where everything is becoming, right? My son’s song plays backwards, this is the spiral, the return, a symbol for the album. I’d like to think that dada here means a new way to go home, a way to be free and go home (Geese!), a new way to recover our lives, to rebuild, even.
And I guess I want to simply keep open the question of Who Am I? And never settle for an answer: For us that means finding new forms, new collaborators, demoting the self, as we discussed.
What’s that look like — I have some essays coming out that are in this spirit: the first one, “Ordinary Time,” is a sort of auto-fictional account of a lot of this, love, marriage, the liturgy of family life. I wrote a book of them!
Meanwhile, Ru is working with a crew of young filmmakers on “Selfie,” a lead single that she sings and performs on Dadamama (thou), our next EP in Spring. It’s something totally different for us and special, I think. What will she create with them? Who knows?
Finally, I’ve just finished a new record that’s wildly lyrical to follow this one in late Spring-Summer: it’s a call-back to 90’s hip hop, maybe?, and it’s called Miracle Whip. It moves fast, lots of freestyle, super loose, and I sound maybe like someone else: “I is another,” as Rimbaud said. I know all of this might sound a bit much, a bit excessive even. I just remember what Frank O’Hara said, “I’m the least difficult of men. All I want is boundless love.” That’s not asking for a lot, right?
Famous Letter Writer’s new EP, Dadamama (i), will be released on December 8, and is available now for pre-order on Bandcamp.
AMAUTEUR is a production & distribution newslabel that makes, releases & writes about indie and nonDe (non-dependent) movies & music. Want to show your support? Send a few bucks via Tip Jar or Venmo. For contributions of $4 or more, share your email address in the comments (or DM me) and I’ll send you a code to rent my first feature, Good Funk, on Vimeo-On-Demand (or I can send a private YouTube link). Rock on!
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