“Did it again last night, turned into an animal”
From “Howlin’ At The Moon” by Mod Sun
For most of my life, the world seemed to fit pretty clearly into a simple dichotomy. There were vampires and there were humans. There were vampires who only could come out at night and humans who could exist in the day. The vampires were otherworldly beautiful and scary, had extraordinary powers, but one of their weaknesses was that if they were in the sunlight they would burn to a cinder. And the humans were rather ordinary – quite contented in their ignorance as they went about the routine of their lives – but could enjoy the pleasures of sunlight.
But then I was introduced to Wesley Snipes’ character, Blade, from the 1998 movie by the same name. Standing in the midst of bloody vampires, one yells out “Come on daywalker!” Daywalker? I’d never heard of such a thing. And soon Blade was majestically slicing and dicing up a horde of previously partying vampires with ease. I soon discover that Blade is half vampire half human and, thus, has the power of a vampire but can also walk around during the day unscathed.
Now that is an awesome undead life!
At one point earlier in my life, I felt like I was experiencing something akin to the dichotomy between “vampire” and “human.” My lifestyle had become “vampyric,” particularly on the weekends. I would routinely go out and drink all night then stay inside the next day to recover. The sunlight would hurt and I’d avoid it. I also stayed away from people until I felt well enough to re-emerge into the darkness again the following night. I look back on these times fondly, although in retrospect the lifestyle was not particularly healthy. And as time went on, I noticed I felt less and less inclined to see or enjoy the light of day. In fact, days felt dreary and boring as I would eagerly anticipate the nights and whatever adventure might await.
But as I got a lot older, I decided that I had a choice – continue on this course or cut back on drinking and night life to have a healthier and more “normal” life during the day. And many of us feel that this is a tough decision to make. We don’t want to lose all of the excitement and energy of the night, and yet we want to create and build a healthy and sustainable life during the day.
I talked with musician Mod Sun on the Hardcore Humanism Podcast about this dilemma and about his new album Internet Killed the Rockstar. And I soon recognized that Mod also wanted to reject the vampyric lifestyle that’s often expected of a rock star and was looking to build a healthier and more sustainable life as an artist. But he still wanted to feel and command the power and thrill of the night. He, in effect, is building his new life as a daywalker.
Mod’s path to becoming a daywalker started with recognizing the cautionary tale of the “27 Club.” Membership in the 27 Club involves two criteria – being an influential artist and dying at the age of 27. Members include legends in music such as Jim Morrison, Jimi Hendrix and Kurt Cobain. And the 27 Club represents a great temptation and paradox – to dive so deeply into one’s creativity that the individual becomes immortal as they die young. “I am deeply submerged, and very much so from a young, young age, into the whole idea of the 27 Club … It almost goes all the way back to like the Van Gogh syndrome and all that,” Mod told me. “…There’s a really big disservice to people like Jim Morrison, who is a brilliant, brilliant fucking poet, you know, super intelligent person. And then Oliver Stone makes a movie where he becomes a demigod and all you see of him is this dude, no shirt, leather pants, standing on cars on Sunset Boulevard … And that was my idea of a rock star.”
During our conversation, Mod talked about being particularly influenced by author Jack Kerouac in how he views the world and his art. Paraphrasing Kerouac in On the Road, Mod recalled, “He said the only people that interest me in this world are the ones that are mad to live … I’m not talking angry. I’m talking like, literally really fucking wanting to understand life.”
And Mod’s initial interpretation of this approach to life and art was that if you truly aspired to be an artist, you needed to embrace and push that madness to unhealthy limits. And for many artists in the 27 Club, that meant heavy drug use. “Everything screams that if you tone down, your art will suffer … More than anything, it’s artists and self-sabotaging because the self-sabotaging, the ‘heart break’ leads to your biggest love song,” Mod said. “…A lot of that ideology screams take drugs!”
Upon further consideration, however, Mod decided to take the long view and live out his own version of the true spirit of rebellion that many of his heroes had embarked on. “It was very scary to think about putting my art second and putting my future first,” he explained. “And it was that moment where I really had to consider myself standing there in the future and looking at myself and being like, ‘Dude, I personally don’t think that anyone that died in the 27 Club wanted to die at 27.’”
And in true rebel fashion, Mod took the risk of rejecting the lifestyle expectations that were placed on him as an artist. “It’s a human condition to think that these torturing things create the best art. And it’s a stigma that I would love to be a part of – who knows if you can ever break something that’s been created,” Mod said. “But I like to think that there’s a reinvention of the rock star that needs to be done right fucking now. And that’s what I would like to be a part of if we’re going to talk about re-evolution is like the re-evolution of a rock star…”
As Mod incorporated sobriety, exercise, sleep and a daily routine into his life, he experienced a high that surpassed the high he felt when on drugs. “One of the most powerful feelings that maybe we can understand as human beings is discipline. It far, it has far exceeded any f*cking drug I’ve taken to feel good about myself. To give yourself some type of discipline to do something – a routine, a thing that you are going to do when you don’t want to do it,” he said. “For me, I can just use a simple example of running… and it made me feel so powerful dude. And it made me like I said, it just gave me that high that I was always searching for with the drugs, you know, that whole like, dude, I feel really good. Isn’t that what it is that we’re looking for? It’s really not the f*cking rush for the first 15 minutes after you take a bump of cocaine.”
As part of his healthier lifestyle, Mod shifted from moving with the moon to moving with the sun and experienced benefits to his well-being and art that he hadn’t expected. “I found out there’s a really great sun energy, which I didn’t experience,” Mod explained. “And maybe it doesn’t work the same for everybody. But when I started moving with the sun…you can look at me within the last two years and see everything on the forefront of me change in front of your eyes. From the way I look, from the way my body is looking, from the twinkle, the shine in my eye. Everything is changed by moving with the sun. I think it’s a very f*cking different thing that happens to you when you decide to work during the day as an artist. Obviously, like people that have like a nine to five job would sit there and be like, ‘Oh, you work during the day, fucking real weird.’ As an artist, it’s very different to be making a song at 9am – it just is it’s very fucking different place to be. And I made my whole new album like that from the hours of 9am to 3pm. In the afternoon, there was no songs made when the sun was down, specifically because that was the energy I was carrying into it.”
And as Mod continues to chart his own unique path and channel the energy of the sun, I say welcome to the light, Daywalker.
