atom tm interview for 06:00am

06am Why is it a hard world the world we are living in?

Is it???

06am Why do we constantly repeat the same mistakes? Have you made mistakes that helped you learn?

We are making the same mistakes over and over, because they are built in. For the very same reasons we have written "user's manuals" such a the bible, the koran, basically any religious writing and as well philosophical texts. Those texts nothing else but show us the possible mistakes and deliver guidelines of how to prevent them. I do take those writings very seriously because of the same reason.

As for own mistakes, yes, of course, one makes them all the time, sometimes knowing, sometimes not knowing, on all levels.

06am Do you believe that what would be enough to make the world better is a bit more discipline?

I think that discipline is just one part, but, yes, absolutely I believe that it's an important element of human life. Discipline itself would not make things better per se, and needs to be accompanied by other things to balance it.

06am What makes us undisciplined?

Entropy.

06am How did you come to become an artist/musician?

By accident actually…and to a certain degree by destiny. It would be too long to list here, but there were plenty of events that, now looking back at it, pretty much let me take the path towards music. One event, and this may sound almost insignificant reading it, and most probably it seemed insignificant in the very moment i lived it was, when i hear a drum machine sounding on the radio for example. up until that point i had only heard real drums, and so was i interested in playing real drums at that time. i perfectly remember the moment i heard an artificial beat and it struck me that that was, what i wanted to be able to do myself.

06am What is your idea of happiness?

Be here now, don't want anything, don't do anything.

06am What is revolution for you?

Revolution comes with a certain amount of  aggression i think, and it happens when a system is saturated by the wrong elements or conditions. As opposite to "evolution", a situation where a system can still be "fixed" or made better, a revolution to a big degree is something like the only way out of a rotten situation. by that meaning, it has to take everything by its roots and tear it out, revolve it. for the very same reason there has been no revolution in art, but just evolution. those who claim to have revolutionized art where most clever salesmen, nothing else.

06am What is the role of art? Why do we have it/do it for? Why should it exist?

art shows us, that we are in fact human beings. that we are evolved, have culture and on top of all that, leisure for something that lays outside the sphere of functionality (such as science, technology, etc.). It exists, because human beings are spiritual beings and art connects them with their spirituality, in the sense as it transmits something that, in our usual manners of living our lives, can not be felt, understood or expressed. art shows us the mysterious, the visionary and everything that lays beyond dull explanations, mainly installed by some sort of alpha-male in order to make life easier for him or his clan.

06am Are there people that have influenced you? Is there a person that has influenced you more than any one else?

i think it's no high philosophy to state that everything, may it be human or inhuman, subject or object, does influence you…may it be good or bad. in that sense i can certainly connect certain things of who i am to certain experiences with certain people. who smaller how big those influences are, may be hard, or impossible to tell. there are of course key figures, books i read, music i heard, but it would be unfair to those i do not list, to write down a series of names right now, since this series of names may be arbitrary…who knows?

06am What is/was your father's occupation?

I'm coming from a working class background and my father was craftsman.

06am A real author thrives in an environment of absolute freedom or of social and economic pressure?

hard to say. i guess it's both. there are so called artists that have the luxury to have no social or economic pressure at all, yet, in most cases, their art seems unimportant or even bad. then there are others, who have made extraordinary things in total isolation…and as well there is the opposite: artists driven by economic success who have made great things…and very bad things. as for myself, i believe in absolute freedom, which is in fact something i have a continuous interest in achieving. if i look back at my life until now, almost all important decisions i took where driven by obtaining freedom, mainly through cutting off elements of my life of which i had the feeling they would restrict that freedom.

06am Have you made any sense from the fact that man has the need to invent notions such as that of God and address to them?

it makes actually quite a lot of sense, that in a world of which we have no clue about at all, we tend to refer to higher entities, gods, and so on in order to make it livable. fact is, that we are living in a grid of explanations, a construct we have invented to make our world manageable, bearable and livable. only the ignorant or the stupid believe that those constructs are actually the real thing, the others know that beyond those constructs lays the unimaginable, the infinite, the total void and that we are totally unable to get the slightest grasp of it. it is wise to praise that void, however you may name it!

06am Do you consider yourself a talented person?

yes.

06am Where did you grow up?

I grew up in Frankfurt/Main.

06am Do you believe that places influence our thinking?

Obviously they do! way beyond the usual "social" component, which is obviously an influence to everybody and strongly connected to the place everybody lives, i think that we are not the same if we exist in other places. "matter" and our physical body, such as our non-physical body is only understood in a very shallow way and we don't really know what happens to us, once we move.

06am What book (books) do you read these days?

Karl Marx "The Capital".

06am Is life a matter of endurance?

oh, absolutely! without endurance, entropy wins…ideas fall apart, such as houses, bodies, cultures, empires…

06am Does silence have sound?

As by the definition of the word "silence", it doesn't.

06am Does negative critique bother you?

Not at all. I don't consume or read press, and this includes articles about my work as well. Apart from that, I even think that positive critique could be even more bothering, like for example being loved by someone who completely misunderstands your work. I think that that's really a reason to be bothered about. However, I don't consider information coming from those sources valid enough to take them seriously on any level. interestingly, just the last couple of days i was going through my press archive, since i am uploading everything to my new website "atom-tm.com" (and so will be the press!)…in fact, my daughter is scanning the articles for me, and i format them and prepare them for the upload…well, i couldn't avoid to go through some press articles from 1990/91 just some days ago and really had to laugh about it! so much nonsense, both, from myself and the journalist!

06am What matters more, choices or influences?

is there a difference between the two…aren't they just the very same thing?

06am What does one loses when she/he grows up?

Innocence, no doubt!

06am Would you like to send us an image, of you or of something else, that best describes your current state of mind so that we post it along with your answers?