Interview:2007/05/12 Red Carpet Grave

The Heirophant delves into the creation process of Manson's life changing LP, EAT ME, DRINK ME, exploring both his personal and artistic transformation over the last year. Our third exclusive interview finds new life emerging from The Red Carpet Grave.

In 2005, you mentioned Tim writing around 20 songs. Was earlier material scrapped altogether as by-products of false-starts, or has much of it survived from the initial 20-or-so recorded tracks in the 11 which eventually became the album? Is the dildo still slapping a leather sofa on the album somewhere, for instance? Will those other tracks ever see the light of day?

As a matter of fact that song does exist and I had a hard time narrowing the record down to eleven songs, but I was in a position where I had some new, unbelievably strong inspiration and fire lit under me to really focus my point and what I wanted to say as a person and as an artist into music. I felt like it would really be diluted by putting it into too many places.

The songs that are on the record are the songs that were decided upon as focal points for me and I did not make any attempts to complete what was created musically on any of the songs. I was in the process of where for the year that I struggled to get to the point where I could actually write again and could actually get through what was wrong with me mentally and personally. I was unable to really come to a point of completion that I would consider any of the other things that we were working on finished or even "songs" that are defined by having music and lyrics and vocals.

The music that Tim and I were creating still exists and still could exist, but it's always hard to go back when you're making things. I had to really decide on cutting away the weaker parts in my life personally and artistically. It's a hard sacrifice because there is music that could have been completed and could exist as b-sides or soundtrack songs. The songs that still remain and were in the incubation process I think deserve to be more than that. There is more music; another album's worth. I don't think it's something that I would avoid now the way I would have in the past.

In the past I've created things that are centered so much around a theme that I've carved for myself to work around. This record revolves more around my transformation as a person and not thinking so much about the bigger, conscious picture. It's letting the unconscious picture be the focus, which is essentially unfocused. There are two songs that could have made their way onto the record that I think are enough to base more music around at the very least.

Based on what has been seen of the new album's imagery and the sound of the songs we've heard thus far, it seems that EAT ME, DRINK ME is not entirely built on the same foundation as the Celebritarian movement you discussed last year. What events and ideas shaped the new album and how does it tie in with Celebritarianism, if at all?

I think that it's me realizing that the person who needed to hear the philosophy or the drive of what I wanted Celebritarianism to be was me more than anyone else. I didn't realize that I was trying to put my frustrations and my personal life and my mind into art, into cinema, instead of into music because I didn't realize I was running from myself.

A song like The Red Carpet Grave I think became the point where I suddenly defined to myself that I was in a problem personally and emotionally that was everything I was trying to project into an art movement. Celebritarianism faltered as an ideal for me last year. This record happened instead. In a sense, this record is the best artistic thing that I could offer to represent Celebritarian ideology. It's about proving that the idea of fame, the idea of artist, has to have something to really offer in a world where it's been stripped from any of its power or mystery. Anyone can have fame, so it has no value. Anyone can have notoriety, anyone can say what they want. People have mixed empowerment with entitlement. The fact that you can say whatever you like about anyone in any situation with the internet or the way the world has changed with reality television. It's not a license to entitlement. It doesn't mean that everyone has to listen to what you say. It's easy to be affected.

If I spent my everyday life like I had many years ago reading people's opinions about what I do, it would affect me greatly as an artist – whether it was a criticism or adulation. I'm not saying just because print media is something that's more qualified necessarily doesn't mean I listen to that more than something on the internet. I had to realize that I was crippled ultimately as a person and as an artist. I had started to separate the two in a way that I never realized and never wanted to. I can now objectively look back at marriage and falling prey to this convention. I was expected to be "normal" in the sense that people define normal.

I was expected to not work to justify my dedication to someone else. I was expected to show my love in a way that I didn't know at the time is impossible for me. I know now that isn't really the way I can show it the best. If I want to say I love somebody, I should be able to show that. I don't think there's any stronger way to show that than writing a song or painting a picture. I realized that's my way of expressing who I am. I came close to being artistically and as a person, dead. That's what made me realize that I had to look at the rest of the world and people's opinion on my art in a different way.

I'm not afraid to read what people say or don't want to know. I just feel that is really the death of art when you allow people and the pressure of people's expectations or demands to change what you do artistically. It's the difference between being a waiter and being a chef. If you're giving people what they ask for versus giving people what you know they want. It's a big difference.

I see now that I was unable to do that in my personal life. I wasn't able to make the one person I thought I was dedicated to for the rest of my life be affected by anything I did artistically. I didn't realize that it was as tied to my complete personality. I needed to go back to being me. I realized that I like being a rock star and I like being a singer. I hadn't lived up to my capabilities. I feel almost to the point of shame or embarrassment that I was that close to giving up what I know now that I can do the best. I can bring all of the things that I bring into cinema and painting into music.

When you paint a picture, it's very cut and dry. Someone can say "I like it" or "I don't like it"—art is that simple. With music and entertainment, a lot of the time it's based on "Well, I like it, but I don't like him" or "I like him, but I don't like this." I had always used music, in a strange way, to define myself as a person, but I had done it as an armor or barrier. This record really defines me as a person because I had just let things out that normally I didn't know were supposed to go into songwriting.

In as much detail as you're comfortable with, could you describe the events of Christmas of last year? Specifically, what exactly took place from 6:00 to 6:19 that morning as is referenced in If I Was Your Vampire?

Honestly, I think that the song details it the best, but to be specific… The stories that have been told in fractures throughout the media about knives against the heart and things of that nature – are all true, but they're true in a different sense. Christmas Eve was a very different experience for me. I had a makeshift Christmas tree – and I'm not one for holidays to begin with. There were no Christmas presents under the tree. I myself was unable to even go out of the house. I didn't leave the house from the middle of November until after my birthday in January.

Christmas became a little bit more like one of those really sappy movies where people show their emotional side for Christmas presents. I had to break into pieces my concept of family which is what I feel holidays are all about. My parents had driven cross-country from Ohio to be with me, but they hadn't arrived yet at Christmas. My relationship had dissolved. To be specific, my cats, which to me were like children beyond what most would understand. I'm not a person that is able to relate in a lot of ways to any living creature, but my cats were something I was very attached to and maybe the only people that weren't able to judge me because they can't speak.

6am is when I got the phone call that I knew – without getting specific – I got the phone call that was kind of the final breaking point in my marriage. I was faced with the concept that I would never see my cats again and dealing with the emotional break between someone you've been with for such a long time. Ultimately, I did get Lily back. To this day, I just want to say that I never changed my feelings about Dita. I refuse to hate or blame her for any of the things that she said to me personally. Forget about what's in the press. The reality of the situation is the polar opposite. Relationships are always like that. Everyone should know that there will always be two sides to something.

I've been unwilling to go to the press. I refused to respond when I received divorce papers on my birthday, which was a little difficult. The way that I react, the way that I operate with the media, and the way that my temper and personality is defined… I think it should say a lot to her and should say a lot in general about how I felt about the relationship. I did not use my greatest attempt to try to destroy her, retaliate, or say anything mean because that's not how I felt.

I think that it's a casualty of a misunderstanding about personalities. I assumed that somebody else was more like me than they really were. It doesn't mean that two people love each other any less. It just means that it's easy to project ideas onto other people and it's not anywhere as simple as me deciding I liked somebody more than her. I literally, if you did the math, was alone more in the year I was married than in the seven years that I knew her. I technically was alone, by myself, for more than half of the marriage. It was something that I was unprepared to be.

If I believed in psychiatry, I think I would be best defined as a borderline personality. I don't believe in psychiatry, but psychology is something I spent most of last year studying when I was writing about Lewis Carroll. It's a sad situation that I don't have an answer for, but maybe I should be thankful. If I wasn't forced to be alone, I would not have faced the fact that I was running away from my own personality and fears.

I was forced to redefine myself. That's why it goes without saying, it's beyond the cliché or melodrama when I say that this record saved me. I'm not the type of person that's going to complain about a past relationship and "this is my statement about it." It was never a statement about anything. This record was me writing to find a way to redefine myself. It's about me rising from the fire that is my life now and it's not me complaining. I'm not a complainer. I got to the point where I had that fearlessness that I assumed I already had in music. I proved to the world that I can't be destroyed, but I found that I could be destroyed in a simple way that vampire mythology has illustrated. The human heart, emotions, those are my weaknesses.

Being me is like anybody. That's the hard part. Making art is the way you deal with it. I've always chosen to make art in the hardest way. I've always avoided the obvious and things that fit best. I picked things that fit me right this time. Living is the hard part. Not to complain about it; that's for anyone. I've created something that made me stronger. I've gone through the transformations that I talked about on Holy Wood more than I realized I needed to on this record.

I met with Jodorowsky in Paris and he read my tarot again. He also identifies with cannibal symbolism and he said to me this record was me trying to be human. It was the opposite of the Christ metaphor where a man became a symbol that people devoured symbolically. I am a symbol that has no human definition that decided to become human by getting married and had no way to define myself. This record became my ascension instead of my fall. He said angels and devils are the same essentially. He told me that this record was the philosopher's stone, which I believe to be true. This is the result of the alchemy that I didn't realize I had to accomplish. This isn't choosing it as a theme; it's living it. You probably need to be blind to these concepts to really accomplish them.

Nothing on this record is a theme; it's not anything I picked to talk about. It's what was right for me, what I needed to say. When I go back – the record is still so new to me – I look at it and I realize certain lines I that I say – I realize now how obvious they are to me now than they were when I wrote them. I truly allowed the unconscious part of my mind to dominate the conscious part of my mind and it worked in a way that I've never experienced before.