"All we know of heroines is what we read
Sometimes we burn sometimes we bleed."  ("Curses," Dead Inside)

Nicole: Actually, "Curses" was the last track we did for the record. About three-quarters of the way through I listened to all the rough mixes. Since I was only expecting do three tracks, I never really expected to hear it as a whole album. Once Anton heard "Victim" he said, "I really can't put anyone else on the album with you. I want you to do the whole record." I honestly didn't know how to do that. Conceptually, I didn't know how to put a record together. I didn't know what to do after "Victim." Anton gave me the track for "Curses" and there was this element of sharks in the water. I told him there was something about sharks and blood and blood in the water and being oblivious to what is happening--what sort of tracks and traces and clues you leave around. Sometimes he would give me a track of music and I would put on my headphones and just sit down and write the story because that's the way I often work.

I listen to musical scores because there are no words and they are so sweeping and epic. I did it sort of reverse to the way people write scores. They usually have the movie and write the score around it. I had the music and then I had to write the move; I had to write what the characters were seeing and doing. That's the way Dead Inside really happened. I think there were only one or two tracks that I used texts that had already been written.

On "Curses" I could hear two or three parallel stories going on--they were sort of complete from beginning to end--and I needed to figure out which direction to go in. I said to Anton one afternoon in the studio, "Just give a sign. Just give me a word and that will tell me which story to go on. One of those clues will connect with one of those stories." He thought for a long time and then said, "Menstrual blood." It so clearly fit in. I knew it would.

"Love is like crying like writing like dying"  ("You are Never Ready" Blood Sugar and Dead Inside)

Nicole: "...you've got to do it alone." [smiles] It's sort of self-explanatory, don't you think?

"You may have fallen in love with an angel and wondered why you could never banish the melancholy light from their eyes."

Nicole: This sort of reminds me of John. John is terribly melancholic. I respect that about him. He's not a very masculine boy. He's very in touch with his feminine side. Actually, I always say that he is a girl trapped in boy skin. It's one of the things that I really adore about him. And he is terribly melancholic. That's why I dedicated Blood Sugar to him--to him and my mom.

"There's a crack in everything. That's how the light get in."  ("Anthem," Leonard Cohen)

Nicole: Absolutely. These are really good fortune cookies.

[laughs] That one may have been. I have no recollection of where that came from. It may just be an orphan line that ended up in my notebook.

Nicole: It goes back to the idea of bad reality/good anecdote. That out of the difficult thing comes that moment of clarity about something else. I think the pieces that I'm happiest with--the ones that mean the most to me--are the ones that came out of the most difficult situations. The fact that the poems don't reveal themselves to me at the time means that they still mean something to me even when I perform them years later.

I'm still understanding these pieces; they're still interesting to me. They're different to me every night and, as long as they keep unfolding in me, there's something new for the audience. One of the things I like the most about being able to publish and record and perform is that someone may have read one of my pieces and have an interpretation of it there on the page, and when they hear it, they go, "Oh my god, I had no idea." There are sound tricks on a lot of the poems that you don't get when you see them on the page. I love the idea that someone who has heard these poems and has a vision of the character is going to read "Fifteen, She Learns," for example, and go, "I had no idea that it all rhymes." Some of the rhymes are so hidden--so conversational.

I love that there are different meanings for different mediums. It's important to me that there are channels that I can color. I don't want people to think that they know everything about the character the first time they read or hear the poem. I love for them to keep revealing themselves. Like a Kate Bush record.

I do feel from some of the characters that I benefit from being able to wear their skin for awhile. I do think I use elements of them when I'm challenged by something. What would she do? What would that person do? It's a device--I sort of hate using that term "device"--it's a way of accessing something that I otherwise don't feel that I really own. I think if you put on something it changes how you feel, like a woman putting on high heels versus sneakers. I think being able to wear the subject's skin sometimes helps me develop a muscle--an ability--that I don't otherwise have.

What is strange to me is that I don't normally feel that I have that once the performance or the recording is over. People who have connected with that particular piece think that is how I am all the time. I couldn't be the voice of "Victim" all the time. You couldn't function. I can't be as strong as the girl in "Fifteen, She Learns" all the time. Even though that is one of my favorite poems to perform because she is so mighty. She's so dear to my heart. I've learned something from all of them; I've learned that they are all in me in some way. I can tap into them when I need them, at the point when I'm under attack or the most debilitated. I feel that I can borrow off them sometimes. Maybe that's why they are there.

On the Web:
Nicole Blackman

Inside Earpollution:
Nicole Blackman live review (8/4/2000)
Recoil Liquid album review

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