BLACK CURRANT MAG
SINISTER PREDICTIONS BY
SQUID
Sometimes wisdom and answers can be found in very simple things. Like a piece of paper, stained with, what it appears, random blotches of ink. Like a squid just squeezed some out, just because he could – maybe he was inspired.
The Rorschach ink test is what psychologists call a projective test. Invited in the 1920’s with the basic idea of that when a person is shown an ambiguous, meaningless image (in this case an ink stain) the mind will work hard at imposing meaning on the image. That meaning is generated by the mind. By asking the person to tell you what they see in the inkblots, they are actually telling you about themselves, and how they project meaning onto the real world.
We got three band members from Squid to predict their futures, based on this inky test. To keep this experiment totally scientifically neutral and objective, we edited out their names.
Hi Squid, do you guys know what a Rorschach test is?
“Isn’t that with the ink splatters that they use in shows about murderers?” one of them starts.
BAND MEMBER #1
“I see kind of a bunny-rabbit face. It is an evil kind of Donnie Darko rabbit. Maybe this is telling us to be weary of music industry executives that are out to take advantage of us.”
BAND MEMBER #2
“I see a wolf in there. One mirrored one, so actually two. On top you can see the ears and the nose coming out either sides. So wolves looking out to either side, which could mean a wolf in sheep’s clothing perhaps.”
BAND MEMBER #3
“I see a bowel on the bottom. Like your insides. On the top something other evil and on the outside grim reapers. So basically I am seeing death… To be slightly cheesy I can also spot a nice path on the inside of the image, that we need to walk carefully because of we walk on the outside death will eat us. Eaten by wolves.”
That is quite an all-around evil image, are you guys ok?
2:
“Maybe we are cautious. We are all cautious people.”
1:
“Well, I am especially cautious about psychology,” he laughs. “I don’t believe that images can have an inherit meaning behind them at all, sorry. This is not just my brain but everything that I have learned and has influenced my life that is making me see a certain thing in this image. Maybe it says more about my surroundings than about me. I saw a lot of images in my children’s books. Also I have to say that wolves, for me, are not necessarily a bad thing, they are beautiful creatures. Darker things can be beautiful.”
3:
“My mom has a reoccurring dream about wolves. She looked it up in a dream journal and apparently it means something like an attack, so maybe we should be careful. Jesus Christ, I am sorry that I am so dark. Maybe I should stop now.”
So what is the conclusion you can draw about your bands future, based on your own interpretation of this test?
2:
“We are a self-analytic band by nature, we are all just like that. The precaution that comes with personalities like that may look dark but is actually very smart. By analyzing ourselves we may decide not to go down some paths but it will ultimately lead us to even greater things instead. That is the joy of it.”
3:
“Even though we’ve been on tour so much, we have also had a lot of time to reflect. You also have got to be able to think about others, about the ones around you, to put yourself in a context of what you expect for yourself. If we would only went around thinking about ourselves and our music all the time it wouldn’t be good. So maybe my conclusion about this squid-ink spot is that I don’t want to think too much about myself and we should all also be concerned with what is around us. That will be good for the band as well since it will make us good people.”
1:
“Be wary, but there is also some good stuff coming. I can also see a bell in there which always starts ringing when something new and excited comes along, like an alarm to stay awake and be ready for all the goodness at every time.”
To close off on a lighter note – just to be curious: we guess your band is not called after this Rorschach test?
They all start to laugh, after pulling some serious straight faces for the last 20 minutes. “Can we all tell you our own stories? Just like the rest of this talk?” – I agree, just for once, to let them.
1:
“I was fourteen and it was my birthday, I went out for a meal with my family to a tapas restaurant. I ordered calamari as we were sat at a long small table, kind of like the last supper. And it turned out that night, it was almost really the last supper for my fourteen year old me, because I almost chocked on a piece of calamari and died that night. I was in the middle of the table and my mom was at the other side and she couldn’t get to me at all. It was the most frightening night of my life.”
2:
“When I was 18, we all moved to Brighton. Obviously Brighton is a sea town and we went swimming in the first week. It was after quite a fun night out, after a few drinks, at two in the morning. We had an amazing time until we swam into a school of fish that we recognized as squid. It was amazing because we’ve never seen them so close to the shore. It was very dreamy. I still don’t know if it was the alcohol or that it really happened.”
3:
“I think the squid is a fascinating animal. Everybody knows it in a different way. For some of us they are merely food, like calamari, but for others, like fisherman hundreds of years ago, colossal squids where monsters that terrorized their ships. They were the scariest and at the same time most misunderstood animals of their time, and they still are. They have many layers and I have always had a fondness of them. Squid are not just food, they are beautiful and full of ink. Remember that please.”
Catch Squid at London Calling festival in Paradiso on the 25th of October, and while you’re there, come dance to the tunes of the BLACK CURRANT dj-team after midnight in Paradiso’s small room.
PHOTOGRAPHY BY KELLY ALEXANDRE