Damian Weinkrantz

nom de guerre: the secret knock

Getting interested in sub-culture when I was young also fed into this because back in the day the only way you could find out about bands or interesting ideas and the people behind them was to read zines. God, I feel like a geezer, but uh, this was, dare I say it, "all before the internet" and you had to rely on radio and zines to clue you in. Later, after I graduated high school, I had an idea to do a zine of just pure interviews with regular people, just conversations. This idea sprung mainly from my allergy to this strange celebrity worship in mass culture. Sure there's something interesting about people who are rich and famous but when I'm reading about where George Clooney's motorcycle gets parked... it's more than too much. This idea got scrapped after an argument with an ex-girlfriend (she thought the idea was kind of lame). I naturally enjoy talking to people, so oftentimes after first meeting someone I can pry a few things out of them. When I started formally interviewing people again I would listen back to the tapes and find that I was talking more than the person I was talking to. It was more conversations than interviews...

2. Who do you interview and how?
For the most part I know the person I'm interviewing. I'm familiar with them or their work, or even the context of their work, which is why I am interviewing them in the first place, because I admire them and want others to get interested. At the same time, because I like them I get really nervous that my questions will seem extremely geeky or inappropriate, and no one wants to feel this way in front of people you really like. You know? It's like falling on your face in front of the hot girl. There's also a weird balance of what you want to know, what you think someone else would/should want to know, and when to ask the obvious questions. Find out how other people within the same field are interviewed and then see what works and what's missing. I'd say to always ask the questions you are interested in knowing the answers to.

3. After all this interviewing do you feel ready to be interviewed yourself?
I don't know anyone who doesn't fantasize about being interviewed, so, but, yes: I walk around and interview myself. I wouldn't do it if someone else would interview me, but so far when I have been interviewed it's been for very specific reasons. As far as deserving to be interviewed, I mean...(stirs the air with hand)

4. What is the secret knock up to these days? And doing next?
The secret knock will be playing a few shows, maybe recording to make at least an ep by summer's end. The secret knock zine should be out relatively soon, but I've said that for three straight months so who really knows?

5. Is "the secret knock" a helpful name for organizing things, or is it just an excuse for doing things Damian Weinkrantz might rather not?
Strangely, I've always had an alter ego, since maybe the age of twelve. I think this corresponds to, roughly, the same time I stopped reading comic books. So maybe all that dual secret identity stuff really rubbed off on me. The name secret knock is, maybe I dare say: it's a brand name. It's a way of saying: this is all of the things I have done/am doing without directly getting Damian Weinkrantz wrapped up in it, without getting preconceptions or tainted opinions of/from either Damian Weinkrantz or vice versa the secret knock onto DW. Sometimes I catch myself talking about the secret knock as if he was not me, you know- "you'd really like him." And when I've performed as SK for the most part I've worn a mask or some such disguise so it isn't me playing music or messing up and so I don't really get worried about how it's going to come off, because... it's this other character.

As far as who/what the secret knock is- I really feel like the identity of the secret knock is terribly fractured. The secret knock in written form is aggressive, jerky, cocky - and unrepentantly so. In performance/music form he's really sensitive, emotional, easily and almost constantly heartbroken (I always say the secret knock sings about love, lust and loss). In video it's just a corporate logo ("this was a secret knock video"),and in painting its just the messy and cheap stuff, the pseudo folk art stuff that I feel would be better associated with the brand rather than me, the person.

6. Do you think you are more reluctant to be as abrasive when there is a body attached to you? Is that why the zines are aggressive and the singing not?
The presence of the body is important. After performing someone can approach me and discuss, comment in person, interact. If someone reads the secret knock then, since I provide contact information, they can get in touch with me the same way I introduced myself to them, through writing. There's also two diffracting ideas between the text and the singing. The text is confessional, almost an exorcism, blatantly pathetic. The singing becomes endearing because it's about the pathetic, but it also has other concerns; catchiness, performance, emotive qualities, etc.

7. Has the SK gotten you girls?
It's never, unfortunately, gotten me girls. God I wish it did, but it always cements someone's interest in me. I'll usually spring something secret knock on someone just-at-the-point where I think I've won them over to liking me, and then I've either got them in my web or they are lost...

8. Girls you like?
Girls I like: This woman at work but I can't tell if I actually like her or if I just made too many jokes and now I just feel like I have to start liking her. This other girl who looks a lot better without all the makeup she wore when I first met her. This girl who works at the Whole Foods. This girl I worked with one night, but really it was only because she was so different than anyone I'd ever really met (she was so boring and uninspired to be un-boring. She just didn't care and somehow that was really attractive to me.) This girl who walks her dog when I walk from the bus to work. She's cute and she always says hi to me. This girl at the show I played over the weekend, she had a 'boyfriend in a band' who was idiotically ignoring her all night, and she was so pretty it was a crime. Of course, I still really, really like Kathleen. No I mean I really love her and I've more than likely murdered the prospect of ever having a decent relationship with anyone, simply because I'm too hung up on her and will make comparisons to her with everyone new that I meet. Is this the kind of list you wanted or was question 8 really like question 7A?

go on with interview
music - comics
go home