Raised within the unstable confines of my own mind—a place plagued with destructive weather patterns like Anxiety Storms, OCD Tornados, and Self-Doubtquakes—“Will Hagle” had it easier than most but still liked to complain about it. “Will Hagle,” it should be noted, is an idea that may or may not exist. It is me. My name. The name of the newsletter you’re reading. An ego.
The specific brain chemistry that resulted in “Will Hagle” led this ego to pursue the craft of writing, which essentially amounts to transmuting “Will Hagle”’s thoughts into a cohesive structure to be consumed and interpreted by other human brains and egos.
Lately “Will Hagle” has been writing profiles of artists who I’ve interviewed. My last several articles on Passion of the Weiss are all interviews. I’m on an interview kick, you might say.
I spoke with Dante Ross, one of the many people I interviewed for my Madvillainy book, about his must-read memoir Son of the City. My interview with B+ about Madvillain still seems to be one of the most-enjoyed interviews I’ve done. I talked to Fat Tony about his inspirational I Will Make A Baby in This Damn Economy. I talked to Bryson the Alien about his great 2023 album Kuma. I spoke with both members of Angry Blackmen, who have a great new album out called The Legend of ABM. I interviewed Fatboi Sharif about the romantic side of horror films, coinciding with the Valentine’s Day release of Something About Shirley. In this newsletter, I interviewed ain’t about me about spoken word and his album indigo sine wave.
Outside of POW and this newsletter, I also recently interviewed Steven Appleton—a Frogtown-based artist, ecological activist, and owner of the LA River Kayak Safari—about the importance of balancing ecological restoration with flood risk mitigation in the LA River. On Wednesday, I’m speaking with Peter Alagona, an environmental studies professor at UC-Santa Barbara, about his new book The Accidental Ecosystem. I have a few other interviews about urban wildlife lined up, because I might make a documentary or podcast series about it, just because the topic interests me.
I also am actually, legitimately, contractually, going to write a book about Midwest Emo (official announcement / details / excitement to come), so I will need to interview a bunch of people for that like I did the Madvillainy book.
But now I’m about to conduct the rarest, but most-needed interview, or interrogation, of all.
I’m sitting down with “Will Hagle,” AKA my ego, to talk about why he can’t stop interviewing people. Here’s the transcript:
Q: Why do you keep interviewing people?
A: I guess I just enjoy talking to interesting people.
I don’t know if I trust my subject. Often interviewees—especially those promoting products, like Will Hagle must be with his newsletter—speak in carefully-constructed PR jargon. All of the aforementioned subjects, with the exception of B+, spoke to me because they had a product to promote. I asked questions about those projects. No matter what the question is, a subject will often steer the conversation back whatever it is they’ve been working on, and want to discuss.
There has to be some other, probably egotistical reason, that I keep interviewing people. Like, I want to prove that I can get interesting information or conversations out of people. That I could be Joe Rogan or whatever famous interviewer you prefer instead of Joe Rogan, who I used as an example because he’s clearly the most popular podcaster, whether people like him or not.
Interviewing, of course, is more about the subject than the interviewer. The interview with B+ is one of the most enjoyed-interviews I’ve ever done not because I asked great questions, but because B+ is a fascinating person who took those questions and ranted. No one wants to read one of my interviews just because I was the one that interviewed them. They want to read it because they’re, like me, interested in the artist and want to hear what they have to say.
Even after interrogating myself, I still don’t have an answer to my own question. I don’t know why I keep interviewing. I do genuinely just want to talk to interesting people. I also want other people to read the interviews and enjoy them, thus feeding my own ego.
As media companies continue to collapse and The Blog Era appears to officially be dead, my innate contrarianness is also for some reason leading me to want to become a journalist. I always hated the idea of “journalism,” especially “music journalism,” which feels unnecessary. I pretentiously considered myself a “writer” or, when I wrote about music, a “music writer.” Now I have an evolved appreciation for “journalism,” even if I don’t necessarily understand what it means. But there’s something exciting and appealing about telling the stories of real people. Of letting people speak about themselves, their passions, and their art. Despite the negative impact that podcast overconsumption may ultimately have on all of us, there is something healing about tuning in to hear others speak, or reading it on a Blog in this post-Blog Era. At its most idealistic, an interview makes us feel closer and more connected, as humans, like writing does.
But interviewing people isn’t writing, so I’m not sure why I keep doing it at the expense of actually writing. I’ve even been struggling with putting together the initial writeups that preface each of my recent POW interviews. I either just paraphrase whatever the interviewee said and end up coming across too PR-y, or I can’t think of anything to write that would supplement the real reason people clicked on the article, which is to read whatever it is the interview subject had to say.
I can’t stop interviewing people, though. When I really investigate my brain, there’s likely some psychological reason beyond simple ego-feeding that’s driving me. I was a kid who everyone described as “shy” because “socially anxious” wasn’t as accepted of a term as it is now. I didn’t want to talk to any strangers, but as soon as I got home I wouldn’t shut my mouth. I did want to talk to people, I just got extremely anxious, to a debilitating degree, when I even thought about doing it.
Now that I’m an old man and I’ve gone through cognitive behavioral therapy and taken the painful steps toward quelling my never-ending anxiety brain, I’m much more comfortable talking to people. Interviewing gives me a comfortable way to do it. An interview is like a conversation, but it’s fabricated. I’m in control. We’re not really talking, we’re not really friends, we’re all here to promote something.
Which reminds me… You should subscribe to Will Hagle’s newsletter. Maybe I’ll interview some more cool people on here someday.
Anyways, I just wanted to acknowledge to you all that I’ve been questioning why I want to do so many interviews, while not-so-sneakily re-promoting all of the interviews I’ve done recently. I should probably have applied to some jobs instead of writing this newsletter, so that I could hopefully be on the other side of an interview I’d get really nervous for and fail.
If you have any insight into the psychology of interviewing feel free to let me know. Removing myself, I do feel like podcasts, tiktok, et. al have made the average person more likely to be “an interviewer,” and “interview-based content” more widespread and accessible. I wonder what that means for all of us, if anything, aside from the fact that we’re all having and tuning into more conversations, whether they’re PR fabricated or performance-driven or whatever.
And once again, I’d like to apologize for a subpar email newsletter with no conclusion. And once again, I’d like to thank you for reading. As much as I struggle with writing and editing and rewriting for other publications, I like to use this newsletter to just rant my thoughts about writing and music and podcasts in a CONVERSATIONAL TONE without any editing.
I might also start making some extra posts and not sending them to your emails, which will only happen max once per week. Maybe I’ll do some interviews.