It's Depeche Mode, the band, Depeche Mode. That's who I want to talk about. In particular,

the Depeche Mode song, Blasphemous Rumors, arguably one of the most Depeche Mode Modi of all the songs in the Depeche Mode catalog.

I don't want to start any blasphemous rumors, it goes, but I think that God has a sick sense of

humor, and when I die, I expect to find him laughing. Laughing, British. And Rumors is spelled with with a you because, you know, England.

The idea here is that some of the situations we humans find ourselves in are so absurd and

ridiculous that it seems like they must have been designed as part of a prank by God, an impractical joker's kind of affair.

The lyrics to that song, by the way, just a bucket of triggers.

So proceed with caution.

Now, here's something likewise absurd and kind of funny, but you won't laugh out loud.

To make art, an artist often needs to be in touch with a kind of funny, but you won't laugh out loud. To make art, an artist often needs to be in touch with a kind of human frailty and vulnerability, right?

But to exist in the profession of the arts in our society, that artist needs tremendous toughness and almost invulnerability, solid, thick armor.

Like we say to the artist, okay, great, make us some beautiful art, please.

And also, by the way, a lot of other people want to make art as well.

So the competition will be fierce and hardly anybody wants to pay you for it anymore,

but you also need those fierce competitors to be your friends, as well as your closest rivals.

Good luck. You're doomed. Good luck. That's how it's set up in art. That's why God is laughing

in the song by Depeche Mode. And I'll put away Depeche Mode,

because that's not what this podcast is. It's DePresh Mode. I'm John Moe. I'm glad you're here.

We're going to talk about art today, and we'll talk to an artist. And also, and this is important,

in a sense we're all artists in that we all make

stuff. We all try to make sense of our world. We all try to interpret it back to ourselves and

others, sometimes in the form of a painting or a song, sometimes in the form of a conversation

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