I made this page and put a great interview with Brandon Boyd I found, just in case the page with the actual interview disappears someday.
Interview with Brandon Boyd of Incubus
By Sirona Knight and Michael Starwyn
The Incubus in Greek mythology is the dream lover, which has in time taken on undeserved negative aspects. Actually, Incubus stems from the word "incubi," meaning to incubate. This is more in the sense of an idea or pattern incubating until coming to fruition. Originally an incubi was a guide who took people on their vision quests, which often meant going into a cave and incubating. The band Incubus has begun to live up to their name in the sense that with their new album, "Make Yourself," has taken off, and their recent appearances on the Sno-Core tour, have shown that there is a movement of discontent once again incubating in this country. The following is an interview with lead singer, Brandon Boyd, where he talks about his spirituality, his creative process, and his sense of rebellion.
How have you taken the name Incubus in a spiritual sense?
We have taken on the name with the sounds and ideas we have created. In my own experience, certain parts from songs I enjoy come in a pleasant way to invade me in my sleep. In this way, I'll wake up singing a song or have a dream about a great piece of art I saw that I loved or haunted me. In this sense of the word, you can say we have truly taken on the name, Incubus.
Do you practice lucid dreaming?
Actually yes, my mom taught me when I was very young. I believe she read Carlos Castinada. I used to have nightmares when I was a child, and I'd wake up and go into her and say what do I do I'm scared and this and that. She always stressed enjoying your dreams. So she told me that if I was ever at a point in my dream where I wasn't enjoying it, that I was to look at my hands and snap my fingers, and the third time I snapped my fingers I would wake up. When you're a child, you think, oh yeah, I can do that. I would have certain reoccurring dreams, and when I wasn't enjoying them, I would look at my hands, snap my fingers three times, and literally open my eyes. So that was how it started.
So you knew you could have an effect on your dreams at that point?
I became manipulative in good sense, in that I would create small flying machines and fly around the city in my dreams.
Astraling, It's like a natural talent, particularly with kids.
Yes, I think it is too, but you can forget when you become an adult. You think of it as childhood imagination or playtime, and something you can't carry with you.
How does spirituality play into your creative process? Do you follow a particular tradition or are you eclectic?
I'm mostly eclectic.
What is your opinion of God and Goddess?
For the past eight years I've been leaning more towards the Goddess. The energy I have experienced has definitely been feminine at its core. At the same time though, I've come to the conclusion that by putting a type of sex on it, one way or the other, you limit the energy. At this point, it, stressing the word "it," is far beyond my capability.
How does it feel when you tap into it?
It almost can't be described. I've had conversations with it, I've dreamt about it, I've felt it when I've been thoroughly enveloped in a painting, and when I'm creating something. At these points I feel I'm very in touch with it.
Like when you're merged into the process?
Exactly, I feel like, by me creating something in the creative process, that I am as close to it as I can get. I am in a sense emulating what it does. I am tapping into a place in you that is unexplored, and very dangerous, but I think essential to the creative life of an artist.
As Oscar Wilde said, "The world will be our immortality." Through the art, you create your immortality. Do you see music as your way to move through life and perhaps become immortal, which interestingly was the name of your first record company?
Music has always been my back door to life. It is important for people to find something that excites them. I like the concept that if you do what excites you, you will be rewarded generously, whatever form reward takes, which is not necessarily money. It could be spiritual fulfillment or whatever is important to you. I think there exists a back door for everyone, and it's going to be very different depending on what they've experienced in their life.
How has your musical and artistic vision changed since you started out as a band?
We started playing together when we were 15, and the first time together, we wrote a couple of songs. For the most part we've gotten better at the process which has become more focused more than anything. We've come to understand how we write music as a band, for better or worse. Now, when we go to write, it's much less like pulling teeth and more like an ecstatic creative experience. There was time when it was difficult because we agreed from the start that the band was going to be democracy, and that all five opinions were going to be included. This can be very difficult when you're doing something creative. We've come to terms with that, and have learned to do it successfully.
How does this process work on an energetic level?
It's all about exciting each other, and presenting the ideas at the right time. Music has to be written while people are still excited about a particular melodic or rhythmic sequence. The idea doesn't come out the same if we're not really excited about it.
Is your music a way for you to develop and grow as a person?
Definitely, writing the lyrics to the songs is a form of therapy for me. I write because I feel it's the only way that I can get out some of my feelings and thoughts, and be able to put them into motion in the music. This has taken the music to a different level for me. By being able to sing these same lyrics every night, it's like I'm reaffirming some of my beliefs on a nightly basis to myself.
It's like a personal ritual at that point.
Yes, my creative and personal come together as one, and I do it every night and have fun with it.
Your music, and the music of the other bands on the Sno-Core tour, have underpinnings of discontent much like some of the music of the Sixties. How do you view this correlation?
I wasn't alive in the Sixties, but looking back at it from a more objective point of view, one of the reasons it didn't work back then is because the majority of the people that got into it did so for the aesthetic reasons. Then what they were protesting against caught wind of how hip it was to be that way, and starting exploring the marketing potential. The majority of the people bought into the marketing campaigns of the corporate people they were preaching against. The danger of the same thing happening again is definitely here today. We're doing this for the very same reason--to rebel against that system. Art and creation as opposed to slowly killing yourself. This is at least, why I am doing this. It would be amazing if some of the people listening to the music shared some of the same ideas, but I know unfortunately that some of the people are there to be part of the scene. They want to feel like they are a part of something. It's great to want to be part of something, but it's a different thing completely to believe wholly in some type of movement, and to give everything for that something. I think it's possible that a lot of the kids are too young to understand this.
I agree. So at this point, what do you think is going to happen?
Truthfully, I don't know. We are at a point in history though where if we don't do something soon, it's all going to boil over. This probably sounds like one of things someone would have said in the Sixties, but here we are forty years later and forty years closer.
Your music seems to blend the Sixties together with the Punk movement of the Seventies and Eighties?
I think the two are one and the same. The Punk movement and the Hippie movement are all part of the counter culture. This is an over used term, but I and some of the other bands on the Sno-Core tour such as System Of The Down, harbor a Punk philosophy, but we are all Hippies at heart and believe in peace and love. We all believe in rebellion, and for myself, I know spiritual rebellion is at the core of what I do. It is rebellion against the things I see each day that are slowly destroying this society. We are very fortunate to live in this country, but at the same time, the reason the forces are so much more destructive here is because they are faceless. They are always underlying, but none-the-less there. We learn to tune them out and pretend they don't exist, which is why things don't.
