Pigeon Spins Featuring an Interview with Konrad Kinard

Konrad Kinard - War Is Family (Surviving the Cold War and the Unraveling of an Imagined America)

"'War is Family' speaks of an ever-present and constant war. The Cold War and Vietnam were rammed down our throats daily. War became the only 'family member' that survived. It was a media war that ripped us all apart, killing my real family and dividing friends. Nuclear annihilation was not a fantasy. It hung over our heads from the moment we were born. We trained for it. We expected it. It colored our decisions. Nihilism pervaded our thinking because we did not expect to live to adulthood. We were children."

Interview with Konrad Kinard

(•)> How did growing up in Texas during the height of the Cold War shape your earliest understanding of fear, identity, and family?

Growing up in Texas, a highly militarised state, at the time rather gungho. Between my father and my best friend's father was a constant yelling match. My father wanted to survive while the neighbour felt that if the missiles were launched from the USSR he would stand in the front yard and shake his fist in defiance. So, it was emotionally driven and there was little filtering of the dark truths about nuclear war. We lived in prosperous times but were all afraid, passed from the parents to the kids. A constant terror campaign upon a society that convinced itself this was freedom.

(•)> What does the phrase “War is Family” mean to you personally, and how did it become the emotional core of this project?

War , from the daily television reports from Walter Cronkite about the progress of the Vietnam war to the Air Raid siren tests and the futile techniques of hiding your head under your hands or under your school desk, to the military style Dog Tags we ordered with our name and address. War infiltrated our daily lives , we took it on vacation with us.

The stress of helplessness that our parents felt created a destructive tension and panic that reflected that of society and the government at large. This created such tensions and rifts that I believe that the Cold War essentially ripped the family apart, and the War as above became the War literally in the family... No one had words for this I assume that terror is terror in all cases. And it destroys the nuclear family ( pun intended) and the social cohesion...

(•)> How did the presence of your father’s bomb shelter influence your childhood sense of safety—or lack thereof?

I guess I felt good about the bomb shelter being there. At least we have a destination. But I would imagine being I there and reemerging after the bombs. Knowing that there would be nothing left. I haunted me but also to deal with it I would dive into distractions. I played in it, created a music recording studio in it for a while.. I often sat in complete silence and darkness, sleeping in what felt a bit womblike, absolutely quiet. So it was both the symbol of death and the symbol of protection and life.

(•)> In what ways did witnessing Vietnam War footage during family dinners shape your understanding of media and violence?

I never really thought about it until I was an adult. I just ate. The war for a while was far away. Slightly.  just wallpaper until the draft began to affect the people that I knew. But before that , though horrifying, it was normal. I was 7 to 12 years old or so. When I got to New York, in my 20's  it hit me that this worm was in my head with visions of death was there. The visions of soldiers dying on film, up close. I remember wondering how anyone could film someone dying and not help.. The idea of doing this began then with an installation that I still may make one day.

(•)> How do you translate lifelong feelings of dread, grief, and societal tension into sound and performance?

This happened on its own. The songs began to come out in New York, the first one being written in 1983 and was not used in this album. Then there was one every couple of years  for a while. The first was grief about what was lost to fear and a hope that it would end, when I wrote the last songs in 2019, there was nothing specific but I was working through the loss of my father so I thought a lot about him and his life. So there was an attempt to speak about things that we never confronted during his lifetime. I realised that there was a theme running through these songs from 1983 – 2019. My son came home from school one day expressing fear that Putin was going to attack and that nuclear war was imminent. Both of my kids were in fear of dying from the climate. from war, from Vaccinating or not vaccinating, and then there was the pandemic. So I wrote the text in about a week. I wanted to leave a letter to my children. We have lived under similar threats before.

(•)> Why do you feel that America has never fully acknowledged the psychological impact of growing up under nuclear threat?

Money, Power, and immaturity from the highest levels. The US continues in a fever dream fuelled by prosperity. The Cold War was about control of a population. Since then, crisis after crisis achieves this stasis as an ongoing malaise. Maybe, it  also comes from the population. A kind of survivor's guilt that is too big to assimilate.

(•)> How has the evolution from Cold War terror to modern terrorism influenced the themes in War Is Family?

The last song 'Sun Rises' is specifically about that. The song is the coming of full circle for the piece. First it reaches back to the beginning of the Nuclear Era.  It starts with describing Hiroshima's Ground Zero and then the rebirth of Hiroshima and therefore the Japanese people. Then it describes Ground Zero of the World Trade Centers. The latter seems to have not been reborn organically but as propaganda and did not usher in new understanding )

I believe that the essential purpose of the Cold War has just updated. Along with the 24 hour news channels, serial terror events often with episodic marketing names. People grow weary of one form of being prodded. I think of the song by Peter Gabriel a lot ' Shock The Monkey' ( though I know it is not the original meaning of that song). But the more you torture an animal or a population with  abstracted threats that cannot be confronted, they give up. But they also become immune to the torture. So switch up the torture. I wonder who the terrorists are. I think they are in our screens.

(•)> What sonic elements or techniques do you use to create the “sonic paintings” of your memories and fears?

The whole sound environment is a memory of sitting in my room late at night, window open, its hot, but with a light rain. I could hear the freight trains' whistles and the clatter of the wheels on the tracks in the distance.  Trains that took many minutes to pass. It was a sense of aloneness and a rhythm of comfort. I just tried to create a sound bed that would bring the audience there.It's just telling stories before sleep with the intervention of the radio . There is a little filtering in places that are triggered by simple gating to make aural events a more surreal  but there is no control over much. It rolls as it wants. So the normal stuff, too, like crickets, locusts, ants the like. The sound was ever-present then in the night.

For the music it varies, but this thing was intended to be performed on acoustic instruments , but I like old studio techniques like reverse reverb used tastefully, and some samples to accent or expand a rhythm for a melody. Within a rather structured song, I like to try to create systems that unexpectedly erupt , mutating the sound. These systems are not controlled by me after they are setup. You may also notice a little extreme vocal tuning in the song' Red Ant Hill' that is used to create tension and a sense of detachment. For the record, I despise vocal pitch correction in principle, unless it, somehow, subverts the vocal and/or the melody.

(•)> How did your years in New York, Berlin, and Leeds further develop your artistic language for expressing trauma and cultural critique?

It seems that places like New York are often about trauma from taking the subway to surviving the cost of living. But in New York I was lucky to be surrounded by some of the best artists in their field. Thinkers who forcefully pushed their perceptions. Less about entertainment and more about the artistic drive to communicate but with little compromise. The Theatrical life in Downtown NY , the music coming out at that  time, the poets that I spent time with I the coffee shops or bars. It intimidated me and eventually taught to find a voice for myself.  I also spent years in Berlin when I quit music for a series of years and produced others.

Leeds, I guess , being much less intense, has given me time to live and be with my children, who are  best teachers. So Leeds has had time to assimilate. As I hit the last part of my life I suppose that is normal.

(•)> What do you hope audiences discuss, confront, or reconsider after experiencing War Is Family?

I hope that this is taken simply as a story. Any good story, in my opinion, doesn't force perceptions or messages. But for people of my generation, maybe to know  that they are not alone in what they experienced. And for the younger ones, like my kids, that life tends to go on no matter what. Though it's important to be aware, don't be obsessed with things that you can't control. And give love. 

(•)> That's all, Folks! Check out Konrad Kinard on the Pigeon Spins Playlist