Dijon & GR

[Erik T. Burns]

https://www.vice.com/en/article/dijon-reveals-the-beloved-novel-that-caused-him-to-fall-into-a-psychosis/

Dijon Reveals the Beloved Novel That Caused Him to Fall Into a ‘Psychosis’

Dijon, who recently performed on ‘SNL’, says that a friend had to urge him
to stop reading Thomas Pynchon’s novel ‘Gravity’s Rainbow’.

While making his new album, Baby, singer/producer Dijon found inspiration
in Thomas Pynchon’s beloved postmodern novel Gravity’s Rainbow. However, he
had friends begging him to stop because it was causing him to spiral into
“psychosis.”

“I was having a really hard time with the record,” Dijon recently told
Pitchfork. “Like, psychosis-level s***.” One of his friends has to step in
and urge him to put the book down. At least for a while. “You shouldn’t do
that, it’s so paranoid,” Dijon remembered the friend telling him. “And he
wasn’t wrong.”

The singer went on to describe experiences driving home from studio
sessions, crying. He recalled listening to Anita Baker’s “Caught Up in the
Rapture” and feeling sadness over the thought that he couldn’t achieve that
level of art. “Music is so f***ed,” he contemplated, “and my music is so
bad.”

Elsewhere in the interview, Dijon opened up a bit about his production
process. “I love first-take s***,” he confessed. “You take all these
sources and try one pass of just muting s***, and then it’s like: ‘That
sounds good.’ Then we don’t touch it anymore. Once there was some sort of
inspired thesis behind what was happening, and I knew it didn’t sound like
much else, it was really more about completing the arc.”

Bon Iver’s Justin Vernon believed there was no way Dijon would “fail”
Pitchfork also spoke with Justin Vernon, founder of indie-rock band Bon
Iver. Vernon and Dijon are close friends. Dijon was struggling with his art
during the making of Baby, but his friend was very confident in him.
“There’s no way this guy’s going to fail,” Vernon recalled thinking to
himself. “He cares too much, and it has too much swagger.”

“What he’s doing is truly trying to reorganize the world in his vision,”
Vernon went on to say. “You could tell that he was struggling with trying
to find what it was, and it’s serious. When you’re working your whole life
on something, it gets pretty scary. Also, it’s like, he’s got the kid on
the way, he’s got this pressure. But it was never pressure to succeed. It
was pressure to make something good.”