1. Billiards
A pool table is more than a Newtonian physics playground. The more time I spend on it, the more metaphysical it seems to get. Learning strategy, speed, stroke, english, etc. keeps my mind busy but there is something else that attracts me. It has to do with how plainly possibilities are laid out. Learning to read a table feels kinda like training for making good decisions in life. We’re all chasing the best version of our lives that we can conceive of. You can have hopes or you can have plans for your sequence of life events. I see this potential so clearly on a pool table. You know those moments when you feel like you are in the right place, thinking the right thoughts, knowing that everything is going as best it could? When there are no doubts, no second guesses? That feeling is what I’m after when I shoot pool.

2. Skateboards
These toys became my obsession, my identity, my self worth. They taught me about confidence, about gravity, and pain. Skateboarding taught me how to want something until you get it. My body will never be the same after what skateboarding has done to it but I would never take back a day of it. Well, maybe if I could choose a specific day…

3. Collage
Each piece of a collage has its own story, pulled from its own context. For whatever reason, these parts are chosen to be together. Maybe it’s texture or color, shape, etc. But for whatever reason, pieces are joined together in a way that pleases some unknown part of the maker. What really fascinates me is how collage can tell a story that no one meant to tell. Like a random poetry machine but directly visual. Similar to sample-based music where each unique sample has its own cultural baggage but as it’s placed into a new environment, it lives a new life. It seems to have something different to say.

4. Sewing
It’s not easy to find decent menswear in Omaha, Nebraska. I love the idea of thrifting but nothing I find ever fits me. That’s what led me to sew. I don’t make all my clothes but almost everything I wear has been altered in some way. I suppose I’m particular like that. Someday I’d like to find the time and equipment to make shoes. Designing them with a pen is fun, but you can’t wear them until they exist. Making something that you can hold in your hands or even wear; there’s nothing like the tactile feeling of holding something that wouldn’t exist if you hadn’t insisted it did.

The Faint’s first album in six years, ‘Doom Abuse’, is now available through SQE. Sample some of its tracks and other fan favorites below…