COLLAPSE BOARD

extracts from Conversations with Punx – 7. Exene Cervenka

Exene Cervenka is an American musician and artist. She has been the front woman for Los Angeles punk band X since 1977. Exene has also sung for Auntie Christ in the late ’90s and fronted The Original Sinners. She loves collage, and her collage work and journals were exhibited at Santa Monica Museum of Art as America The Beautiful. Exene has published a series of four books, including a collaboration with spoken word artist Lydia Lunch. In 2009 she was diagnosed with the inflammatory disease, multiple sclerosis. She continues to perform with X and record solo work. According to a statement released shortly after her diagnosis Exene commented, “My focus will certainly be on maintaining my health — many people remain strong and continue to live their lives as productively as they had before an MS diagnosis and I plan to be one of those people.”

What does it mean to be an artist?

EXENE CERVENKA: It means everything. It’s the most important thing in my life. It’s a connection to something that’s kind of unfathomable because I still don’t understand where creativity comes from or where a song comes from. I don’t understand how you can be walking down the street and then a line of poetry will come into your head when you’re not even trying to write. I love that process, that mystical process, so much that I just lie in wait for it. It’s like having another part of yourself, a second self.

Is there anything you’ve found over the years that you can do that helps you tap into that?

EC: I’ve tried what everyone else has tried. I’ve tried drugs and alcohol. I really don’t think drugs and alcohol make it any easier to tap into that. That’s been my conclusion as far as the easy way, the short cut into it. Not to say that I haven’t written stuff when I was in those states of mind. You tend to write more when you’re walking down the street or sitting around. You get these flashes, these fully form ideas and concepts that just pop into your head out of the blue. To me, that is more rewarding than trying by taking drugs or drinking. The closer you get to a natural source, like taking mushrooms or smoking pot, you would be more apt to creating because of the sort of substance, rather than alcohol or some kind of artificial substance.

The other way to tap into things is just having the time set aside every day to sit down and try to see if anything wants to come out. To sit down in front of a typewriter for five minutes and see if anything happens. One of the problems with being creative and being an artist though is that you could do things to tap into something that has worked a hundred times, but then one day it just doesn’t work again. You can be as disciplined as you want, but there is something way greater going on than discipline.

When you were growing up, what type of ideas did you have about creativity?

EC: I was born in 1956, so I grew up in the 60s. I was really young and impressionable. I wasn’t old enough to participate; as a teenager I was too young. I had a very naïve view of what creativity was; it was all based on who Jimi Hendrix was, and who Jim Morrison and Janis Joplin were, and who all these amazing people were. I didn’t understand it though; it was scary to me. It wasn’t until I got a little older that I was able to understand a little more about that. My ideas of art were based on overwhelming awe of people. I couldn’t quite understand what was going on in the 60s. It was so amazing but so confusing.

Another 2,300 words of this conversation can be found in a soon to be released issue #3 – Love, of the limited edition zine series, Conversations With Punx: A Spiritual Dialogue.

Photography: Annaliese Moyer

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 15th, 2011 at 8:19 pm. It is filed under Interviews and tagged with Auntie Christ, Bianca Valentino, Conversations With Punx, Exene Servenka, Lydia Lunch, The Original Sinners, X. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.