Poet Billy Lamont : Q&A

Billy Lamont is another quality street poet we highlighted in our latest issue. We thought we’d share more info from an interview we did with him here. Check it out:

How long have you been doing spoken word performances?
My first performance that featured me and that wasn't an open mike was in 1988 in Greenwich Village, Manhattan. It was in a loft at a dinner for homeless people. From the beginning the heart of my poetry was to give people hope, encourage dignity, uphold life, bring Jesus to street people, to outside of society artists and intellectuals and to everyone who would listen attempting to share myself within my art in a pure and interesting (innovative?) way.

What kind of music do you like to work with?
All kinds of music inspires me. lots of all kinds of electronic music right now. also folk music, punk rock, alternative indie music, classic rock, blues, reggae, jazz and classical music. anything good. I love playing with all sorts of people because after I get done joining them on stage I have a new rhythm or approach to my poetry in my head and I go home and write something new that I wouldn't have thought of before. Everytime I play with musicians I feel I give part of my art to them and take part of the collaborative experience with me. That is why I play with so many different people and that is where my new "billy lamont with the peculiar people" CD theme came from. Just kind of playing with friends and inspirations. I just like making postmodern sacred art with a redemptive quality. By the way the theme for the CD is about how God uses ordinary people. He finds potential in us that sometimes we don't even know that's there and he uses it for His glory and to redeem us and reform our world.

What's your background with Circle of Dust, etc?
I mentioned Circle Of Dust at Cornerstone because my new CD, billy lamont with the peculiar people is a return to electronic music for me and I thought my connection with that early industrial electronic music pioneer band (I think the first Christian Industrial band ever if I am not mistaken) would be something I had in common with the audience and would be good as part of my hello to them.

I remember creating and experimenting with Clay Scott of Circle Of Dust, pre-Circle of Dust (as his heavy metal band Immortal was coming to an end and also my band Walk On Water; I was forming an industrial band made up of Christians; He had just become interested in electronic music when he saw the band Painted Orange perform at a Christian Festival) in his basement with guitarist Billy Poulos. I remember thinking wow we really have something here. We were making innovative electronic industrial influenced music in 1991 which included Poulos' Cocteau Twins/The Cure-like guitar sound (sometimes Hendrix-like) and my Proverbs-like poetry over Scott's dark Industrial soundscape. At that time it was rare to have guitar in industrial music, my use of poetry and delivery was unique and there wasn't any Christian Industrial music. To tell you the truth I have never heard anything like it since. We split as friends when Scott wanted to include more heavy metal in his music and sign with the Christian label REX Records as Circle Of Dust and Poulos and I (I also wanted to focus on my new poetry book opportunity) wanted us to get a secular record deal as relevant Christian's with alternative music sort of like U2 did. I remember Billy Poulos "The Toxic Bannana" and I sitting in my apartment in those days when we first met and turning on Clay Scott to all kinds of electronic music including what are now some of his biggest influences like Skinny Puppy. Ironically Clay Scott (then Scott Albert) would later influence a lot of his influences back. I remember having a nice conversation with Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails at an MTV party and he told me that he had a Circle Of Dust t-shirt. We did a recording in that period and Clay even thanked me and used some of my equipment on Circle Of Dust's first record. Clay Scott is a great artist. You have to get his new band Celldweller's CD. You can visit the celldweller.com website.

Some Billy Lamont brief Bio information: I am a follower of Jesus Christ who has toured with the Lollapalooza tour many times including last summer doing poetry combined with activism, have performed on MTV and Much Music Television, have done book signings across the country due to the sucess of my first book of poems "The Gallery Of Light" distributed by Ingram, have a new book of poetry "strobe light generation" on the way and a newly released CD/chapbook (at Cornerstone) entitled billy lamont with the peculiar people that is a benefit for The Father Of Christian Rock Larry Norman's Emergency Healthcare (My close friend who was backing me by having me open shows for him and we had also begun making a CD for his Solid Rock Records label when his health failed.) My first CD/EP entitled, Into The 21st Century included a collaboration with Mike Peters from The Alarm and an appearance by the late Allen Ginsberg reciting from his legendary poem "Howl." That CD was a benefit for Teen Challenge.

What's your take on the line "...Jesus and his WIFE, the Holy Spirit..."
What are your thoughts on the theological ramifications of that line?
It's interesting that you are asking about this poem "protest: a declaration" today because I wrote it on my birthday (today) in 1996. It was a quiet/lonely? birthday and I sat in the park by myself in my hometown of Babylon when I wrote this. The line you are asking about is actually the only line in the poem that I didn't write. I'm actually quoting Bono from U2 from a song he wrote "In The Name Of The Father" from the movie of the same name which will be footnoted in my new book. I have only quoted someone else in my poetry a few times. What this line is to me is a poetic explanation of the intimacy that exits in the Holy Trinity. Together with the lines before it and after it, it is an artistic illustration of the oneness within the Holy Trinity and us as believers.

I was discussing this line with my friend/writer Joshua Lickter the other day after opening a show for the guys from Burlap To Cashmere at Josh's church. Joshua was mentioning that there is a current heretical teaching (made extra popular by the Davinci Code, Madonna, and now even Britney Spears) that the Holy Spirit is a manifestation of the sacred feminine. This traces itself back to the ancient Jewish Kabbalah cults, and their veneration of "Lady Wisdom." I do not believe these false teachings which are deceiving many and bringing death instead of life to many good people's lives.

I know that The Holy Bible refers to the church as the wife of Christ, not the Holy Spirit. Perhaps I should change these lines of poetry from "in Jah, Jesus Christ and His wife The Holy Spirit, we are one, in body, sight, spirit and light" to "in Jah, in Jesus with The Holy Spirit bearing witness, we are one, in body, sight, spirit and light. I take great care in being as theologically correct as possible in my poetry. As one of my new poems "spiritual orphans" state's I try to "balance the pure theological with the alive mystical."

I didn't realize that the "Jesus and His wife The Holy Spirit" line could be disturbing to believers. I apologize for this and hope I didn't hurt or confuse anyone with this line. It was written to uplift and stir believers and also to draw unbelievers.

If you want to go even deeper about this line, I did think that perhaps good conversation would be opened with women who are deceived by false doctrines such as mother earth, God as a woman, mary as mother of God at the time I wrote it. I was aware of a lot of hurt woman that were finding it hard to identify with a male Trinity (God is above sex anyway, don't you think?) I was reading a brilliant book about U2 by Bill Flannagan entitled At The End Of The World at the time and it says in there that U2 many times in their art write so you can substitute The Holy Spirit for a woman's name in their songs. For example instead of "She moves in mysteriuos ways" you could substitute "The Holy Spirit moves in mysterious ways." Also it says in that book when Bono wrote the "His wife The Holy Spirit" line that he thought it would be helpful for women and that one of the names for The Holy Spirit in scripture (not all of them but one of them) if you trace the language to its roots is a feminine word for The Holy Spirit. It could be translated "breasted feminine comforting Spirit" in that scripture.

I researched this a bit: in bill flanagan's book u2 at the end of the world on page 379 it has the line from bono's song "in the name of the father." it is "In the name of the Father and his wife the spirit." so i must have used this idea in my "protest: a declaration" poem but didn't directly quote bono's line. the book goes on to say "Bono likes to emphasize the idea of The Holy Spirit as feminine. He claims the Hebrew word for God meant "breasted one." I should find out what word he is talking about. Quoting a quote that quotes a quote can get me into trouble and definitely is not good theology. Best to use as direct a source as possible.

Questioning my line "in Jesus Christ and His wife The Holy Spirit" and examining myself further and discussing this with a few close friends like Josh Lickter i feel "At the end of the day I make no apologies for what I say in my poetry. I try to say things in a different way in the hope that it will provide me an opportunity for discussion, which is what this interview is doing. Which is also what I love about live performances and hanging out with people afterwards. The exchanging of ideas; we must be able to think for ourselves, to have original thoughts. I love the quote by Einstein that "imagination is better than knowledge." I want to encourage Christians to think critically and not just take things at face value. The fact this line stirred so many questions is a really good thing. But I also realize that I am responsible for and have to be prepared to give good answers filled with the truth of God!"

Perhaps I could reword this line like this:
“Recently, I discussed this very same line with my friend, writer and theology student Joshua Lickter, the other day after opening a show for the guys from Burlap To Cashmere...”

Another quick note/idea about "protest: a declaration" I purposely put in the lines about "we feel the pain and persecution of our women, the gays and the lesbian" as a way to outreach and empathize with these hurt groups of people that have had a lot of hate crimes and oppression in the name of God. I remenber that at that time and still now a lot of the emerging poetic voices were for women's rights and gay's rights. So I wanted to outreach a hand to them and love them to perhaps start a conversation with them and to not exclude them from what I was doing. At the same time I know that women are going too far at times with rights due to being hurt and that homosexuality is wrong. It was trying to handle these issues with dignity for these people because there just was so much hate being directed towards these people and a lot of the times it was done by Christians. These Christians have their own sins and issues and sometimes are really greedy. But getting rich at the expense of others seems to be an acceptable sin in America so no one talks about it.

I guess I need to be careful with my statements on homosexulity right now also because gay marriage has become such a big issue. It is sometimes a challenge to balance holiness with loving people in art.

For booking, rates or more information- Contact:
The Other Perspective Management
general:(631) 981-4780
fax: (631) 376-0180
e-mail: thepoet4u@aol.com
website: www.billylamont.com
mail: PO Box 284, Northport, NY 11768

thanks. hope this is helpful. it certainly was to me.

love and life in Jesus,
billy lammont

© 2004, HM Magazine

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