HUO: [...] Do you have any regrets?

MS: Of course I do, I’m human.

HUO: Yeah, and can you talk about some?

MS: I wish that as a younger man I had embraced my imperfection and my vulnerability at an earlier age, to realise as I do now that my sensitivity is my superpower. I think hearing Greta Thunberg, of all people, speak about her autism as a superpower flipped my brain to realise that my vulnerability is not only the thing that makes my work to many people, I think, somewhat … attractive, but it also is, in essence, my superpower. It can be soul crushing, like, in terms of right now. It can be very difficult moving through the world when you process everything through your emotions. But it is in fact the part of me that I think makes me interesting as an artist and a creative.

HUO: It’s interesting to connect everything with this book from Duane Michals, the Questions Without Answers, because I also wanted to ask you about truth, and he has this question: What is Truth? When you were on stage during a headline set in Glastonbury 1999, you addressed the crowd saying, “You people are real people I can really tell that's the truth. I can feel you. I can hear you. I can smell you. I can taste you. I really really like it.” I kind of love that idea about the truth and real which you addressed, in the context of life, and now we are 25 years later, and that quote seems to be more relevant, life is more relevant than ever before. So I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about that, about truth, about what is real.

MS: So there’s two things there, I think most important, we are entering into an era with the advent of digital technology, AI and, of course, social media, where truth is challenged and questioned. We saw that in the 2024 election where alternative truths, if you may, were created to persuade or convince people that they should react and vote for something that is in fact exactly the opposite of what they need in their life, and truth is being challenged and it’s going to continue to be challenged, it’s going to get much worse. So that’s in fact a beautiful example of where we are with truth and I connected to the moment. I was thinking today of a song … I was thinking today of a phrase which is quite simple and in a way somewhat mundane in its simplicity: live for today. It's carpe diem, right, but there's a song from the 1960s that I grew up with but I didn’t think about it which is [sings] ‘Let’s Live for Today’, by The Grass Roots. I wrote a song years ago called ‘Live for Today’ and I had to look up the lyrics to it online because I don’t know if I had it written down anywhere, but I remember that it was Peter Bock, R.E.M’s former guitar player, it was one of his favourite lyrics I ever wrote. And it tells a beautiful story which is quite tragic actually, but it's about the intensity of life and the need to be present in the midst of it. In performance I would go into a trance state, so I have no recollection of what you just quoted me saying 25 years ago. I have no memory of saying that, but I can tell you right now that I would have been in such a trance state at that exact moment that there is no past, there is no future. I was exactly there. Present with that audience. Now, if I was being a Monday morning quarterback, I could look back and say I understood in the moment how important that performance was to R.E.M and their relevancy moving out of the twentieth and into the twenty-first century – that was being questioned and challenged. And so, I understood before I walked on stage that I had to turn in one of the great performances of my life and in fact, I believe I did. But one of the things that almost guarantees that is that I have no true recollection of it. I was talking to Courtney Love actually today about that show and about Hole and R.E.M performing at Glastonbury at the same time. I believe that was 99?

HUO: It was in 1999, you did a headline set at Glastonbury yeah.

MS: Yeah, we only ever headlined there. Which I’m proud of [laughs].

Excerpt from Middle Plane Issue No.10 (Autumn/Winter 2025). Read the full interview by ordering your copy here.

Photographer: Duane Michals