Talk:Justin Marler

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[edit] Becoming a Monk?

Is there anyone w/ a source that proves he really did leave to become a monk? It's always seemed like the stuff of legend to me. Frank 21:17, 22 March 2006 (UTC)

Yes, he did become a monk, specifically a Russian Orthodox Christian monk. On the Sabians website (when it existed) there was an interview about that. Even better go to [[1]], click on the "words" icon, and from there scroll to the very bottom of the page and click on "News Archives." From there, click on page 10 and search for "Sleep." There you will find an interview conducted by Stephen O'Malley of Matt Pike and Marler (separate interviews). Justin explains his entire story of becoming a monk. Yeah, those are crazy instructions but O'Malley's page doesn't allow direct linking. I posted the interview below so you don't have to jump through all those hoops. Sprintabm 04:39, 2 September 2006 (UTC)

Monk John (formerly Justin) of SLEEP:

I am curious to know how you found this place in the world that you are in now? When I was in Sleep and we were playing shows and recording I was going through hell. I would cut myself with razor blades at night and cry and pound my breast trying to grapple with the question, "Why in the world do I exist?" At that point, on the third day of recording our first CD I went home to my apartment and I had this screaming headache and I wanted to kill myself basically, so I just cried out if there is anybody there help me before I die. So I sold my guitar and went to Israel just trying to find something. I don't know what. And I spent a month there just walking around and talking to people and meeting people and didn't find what I was looking for. Then when I got home, to my hometown in northern California, I ran into an old monk and he invited me to go to an old monastery and I never left. It just answered all of those questions that I had. It was interesting because it articulated everything that I believed up to that point. I didn't agree with organized religion for one, and two, I didn't believe what these Christian believed- that if you are not Christian you are going to hell and all this nine yards that goes with it. Then I went to a monastery they didn't have all of these beliefs. I studied on my own in the monastery. I studied biology because I wanted to see this whole idea of us being evolved from a monkey. I wanted to see what it is. What is the bottom line, the whole truth behind that question. Number two, about the other religions in the world. I studied Buddhism and just, not totally in depth, but on my own level, these other religions and looked back at Orthodoxy and realized that it reflected what I had sort of been crying out for my whole life. I just never left the monastery.

Why did you pick Israel? From the punk scene in Berkeley I knew this girl whose family is from Israel, just north of Tel-Aviv, and she said why don't you go to Israel. I was talking of getting out of the country before I ended up hurting myself or someone else, and I thought it was an interesting idea. I just sort of went there. I had thought about going to Germany and getting involved in punk bands there, but just choose Israel instead. When I was in Israel I spent my last bit of money on getting a boat to Greece that was going to Germany. After about four days on the boat I ran out of money and was hungry and didn't have any food. The boat ended up in Greece and I decided that if I ended up in Germany I was going to get involved in the same thing and was going to end up totally miserable. It was not going to help me. So what I ended up doing was staying on the boat- being a stowaway actually- wondering where the boat was going to go, and I was really hungry by that point, and we ended up seeing land. It was Israel again. So I got off the boat and stayed in Haifa a while and before I left I got a tattoo of a Russian Orthodox cross on my arm, before I knew what it was. While I was in Haifa some Russian girls saw it and were blown away because you don't see that. They asked me if I was Russian Orthodox, but I didn't even know what they meant, so I said no, and later on when I went to the front of the monastery cloister it was shocking but it made sense to me. The reason why I got the cross tattooed on me was a form of protection because I was living in the ghettoes in Oakland. Lots of gunfire outside my window. Chaos and prostitution and I was going crazy. I just choose this cross out of the blue.

So you left Sleep after the first CD then? Yeah. Right after we were done with the first CD I left and I got letters in the monastery saying we just signed with Earache and we're getting $12,000 each. Do you want to come back? It was pretty alluring, but at that point it was either I stay and live, or I go and die. It was really life or death. I don't know how else to put it. I just couldn't do it. I was sort of a key member because I was a songwriter. When I left they were sort of struggling to write songs other then that last album that came out- what was it called? It had the big circle on the cover...

Holy Mountain? It just sort of fell apart. I had to quit. We played a couple of concerts and I had some weird things happen. I felt that the music that I was trying to express myself, what was going on inside, all the music that was supposed to be helping me was harming me. Because I had all of that anger and frustration and flat out evil bottled up inside me. The problem was that I was letting it out on a bunch of other young people. And at our concerts we had some pretty crazy things happen due to the energy that we would let develop. I wasn't too proud of that. I knew the music had an effect on the people and that was pretty crazy.

It seems to me that would have been more applicable during the Asbestos Death days and then as it went into 'Holy Mountain' you were reconciling things within yourself? It's true. But we were still grappling.

How did you decide to do this book, Youth Of The Apocalypse? I was sitting up here in this monastery on Spruce Island, Alaska, and we live way out in the woods where there is no electricity or phones and I decided I wanted to write an article for Death Of The World dealing with a lot of the issues young people are dealing with. That article grew into a huge thing like that. After writing it we had some editors edit it. Then we wanted to send it off to see if it would be publishable. Our own press wanted to publish it and it all happened in about a month and a half. It went so fast. So now the fruit that is coming out of that is that Penguin Books contacted us and asked us to write another book. But, instead of being so direct and uncompromising it is more of an allegory, or fiction, based on actual experiences.

And you will be writing that? It's already done. It's on their desk being reviewed.

Will that benefit the monastery? It could, but I don't want it to. I want it to going into helping more young people instead of going to the monastery, if we see anything from it at all.

And how would it do that? In the way of trying to get the message out there that there is hope in a hopeless world. Kind of the same thing as Death Of The World. It sounds kind of like we are pushing religion because that is the context that it comes out of, that's what we know, and that's what we live. But, religion is between the soul and God. Our first thing is to say that there is a hope. I just got a call from a kid in Canada that is just falling apart without some fulcrum or focal point. He just wanted to hear a sane voice that things will be okay. And from there there is a God. I don't care how much people say there is not a God or God is dead. He's not. He's alive. That one crucial point of the existence of whether there is a God or not is actually the dividing factor in people's souls as to whether there is a reason to live or not. It really is. No matter how much modern man kicks against that idea, that principle, it is necessary for human existence. At least from my experience of dealing with people, especially young people.

I think I would agree to an extent because "God" is a universal image and is ancient, arcane. Yes, it's ancient. Every ancient society has always had that fundamental foundation in life. They didn't exist without it. I have never heard of a pre-historical culture that had no God. It just didn't exist.

They might have had more than one, or different facets of one, but they do have it. What will this book be called? The Scream For Silence.

I think the sort of proselytizing which is fundamental to Western Christianity is not present in the eastern form of Christianity. Is that what was the appeal to you- the lack of pushing the faith? If I was proselytized to I never would have become Orthodox. Because when it is forced upon you it doesn't work. When it is laid out in front of you like cards on a table then the human being can actually have a free role, rather than having it pushed upon you. I don't want to proselytize. I will never compromise that at all. When dealing with people you deal with the base, even before God, you start with morality. I am not a fan of proselytizing.

I see a lot of comparisons between the idea of what is expressed in the book and magazine- the endless sorrow and misery and death- and certain genres of punk rock. Was that your audience? Since I came out of the punk movement a lot of it comes out of it, of course, but that philosophy is pervasive in all groups and all social cliques. It's intrinsic. It's in its blood. This nihilism and frustration at the state of the world and so on. I think it is there with all young people.

So you think that people lose that outlook after a certain stage in their life or do they see things in a different light? There are several different ways I have seen things go. I had a friend who just went to the grave, shot himself in the head. Some people are able to become superficial, and through that superficiality weasel their way out of it and live a superficial existence, which is internally frustrating. I have seen people come out of it that way and then I have seen people sincerely trying to understand. They will read and study and search for an answer or meaning. That is not necessarily a religion, but standing for something that is absolutely true, even against the world. That will pull them out too, because there is a meaning to that. Like Martin Luther King said, " If you don't have anything to die for then life is not worth living."

Is there anything you miss? To be honest with you, the one temptation has been the want to play loud and angry and depressing music and enter into that whole realm again. But it has no appeal to me anymore, because there is no need to play that kind of music and to enter that state anymore. The playing of music and live concerts- that is the one thing if anything that would drive me away.

But you do still make music don't you? Yes, but it's acoustic music. I am more at peace with it because I can express myself with it.

Do you play with other people up there? Yeah, I like playing with other people. I like playing on the top of a mountain and just talking and playing.