A Conversation With Maximum Love Timeline interviewed by Brooke AKA DJ late august
Image Credit: Alexandria Riesberg
A conversation with Brooke aka DJ late august and Alex and Dan of Maximum Love Timeline about the musical world they've created , being DIY, IRL and the portal that opens up at shows to love and connection for all.
Brooke: I do think Maximum Love Timeline is a whole world and performance, it’s more than just the music. But I did want to ask you guys, what is the world of Maximum Love Timeline to you, and what does it mean to y'all?
Alex: I guess I’ll tell the story of how I first came up with it. I was very anxiously spiraling about the idea of manifesting, and I was trying to really think about what do I want to manifest? And I didn’t know. So I was like, what do I really, really, really, really want more than anything else? If I could only pick one thing in this life to have, what would it be? And I was like, well I guess love, so I wrote Maximum Love Timeline on my pants. I want to live and embody the one timeline that is defined by a maximum experience of love for myself. And so then it became a system of rules and a structure for my life that could inform my decisions. Now it's like a religious project. It is my religion and a way of life, a philosophy, and a party - with every set, I have this theme of opening up this portal together to the Maximum Love Timeline and the idea is that it’s like opening up a portal in everyone's hearts that they can come back to whenever they want. That's what I love about having this huge band and this immersive experience, with the puppets and there's a lot of crowd participation. So we are trying to bring people onto this wavelength in ways that they can hopefully take with them outside of the party.
Brooke: So beautiful.
Alex: Thank you. What do you think Dan?
Dan: To me, especially from the musical direction standpoint, it's like a return to the simplicity of childhood - a lot of the songs have a nursery-rhyme element to it, in that they are often teaching moments and a lot of the lyrical content is very narrative and direct. Of course, it employs poetic devices like metaphor and allegory, stuff like that. It’s like we’re talking to the class, we’re trying to bring everybody in on this journey of portaling to the Maximum Love Timeline as mentioned. Yeah, to me it's a way to think about playing live music differently. I’ve played in a lot of traditional rock bands and group bands, stuff like that, and it's like - okay, what if we actually tried to make people feel joyous, and involved, and don’t think about it like a typical concert, but think about it sort of, taking some ideas from live theater and from wellness practice. I guess, maybe, people tend to get different types of joy out of and meet people there. So, yeah, I think that for me it's kind of a journey back into my own childish wonder and, of course, all that is informed, or mapped out, by this idea of trying to highlight the course of love, as Alex sort of put it. And sort of navigate those waters, we have so many philosophical discussions as we navigate those waters thematically. For instance, whenever we talk about lyrics that include any darker themes. At first, maybe Alex would’ve been like, actually we don’t want to bring that up because it’s a bad thing, and we want to talk about love. But then we started to think about how to incorporate that into the idea of Maximum Love.
Alex: It is loving to sit with people in their darkness.
Brooke: 100%, you have to. If not, the love is sort of hollow because life encapsulates all of the things. We can't leave any of them out.
Alex: Yeah, that’s so true.
Dan: Yeah, Maximum Love Timeline really is an artistic process. It’s a medium in itself that's just different in certain ways from typical bands or other live experiences. I like it a lot for that reason.
Brooke: It’s so cool. I feel like I’ve really experienced that at the shows. I go through a whole journey and I can really see how this idea of bringing in the audience to open them up to living life in a more loving way goes really hand in hand with having these songs that have these teaching moments and nursery rhyme sensibilities, just to kind of get the ideas in peoples heads. Do y’all feel like artists have an obligation to open that space for their viewers? Like, thinking of new ways of living or a more free way of living?
Alex: Yeah, absolutely. This has been the hot take I’ve been developing lately, I think that all art is good. Not all art necessarily needs to have a platform, but I think that everybody should just express themselves through art. It’s just a way of life - everybody should just do it. I do think that that is what interests me about art. That's what drives me to be an artist is to try to create this change and open up people's way of thinking. For me, the medium is trying to open up people's minds to a certain emotional experience and form of connection, and I’m using many different physical mediums to get there.
Brooke: Mhm, mhm.
Alex: Which I think is true for a lot of artists. I think that's kind of like, a pretty core artistic goal and experience is trying to reach through the ether into somebody else's inner world and do something to it.
Dan: I think that, actually, it should be about ultimately the viewer or the person who is experiencing the art learning more about themselves and about whatever that means, learning about themselves, learning about their class, just forming more consciousness. I don't know about the responsibility of the artist, but sort of the explicit endgame of art is something that should be kept in mind when you’re creating art is that we need to - I don't know, we’re trying to develop a sense of consciousness and for us, that consciousness is what are we doing on this earth, what are we doing here if we’re not trying to make the world a better place and experience joy, and love, and try to think outside of the normal cage of commercialization and capitalism?
Brooke: But you’re creating this really sick environment that has a whole other goal that I think it is very much achieving. You guys are throwing parties.
Alex: Thank you, it's so good to hear that. I think that's something I've thought about a lot. Gathering people and how deeply important that is in the fabric of creating civilization and changing our lives, ya know, the different ways in which we bring people together. So I try to design parties with that thing in mind. What is the effect that I want to happen, and how can I thoughtfully curate everything to be that way from starting with the language that I use to invite people. There's just so many little things that go into creating an emotional experience, and that's so much about what the Maximum Love Timeline experience is too. I want it to be an IRL experience of connection that people come to that they actually feel like they’re apart of something and they can hopefully make friends, and feel held, and have fun, and joy, and dance, and not just be like you’re going to an overstimulating loud environment, feeling awkward and not talking to anybody, watching somebody doing their thing and leaving. Trying to forge connections between people is so huge.
Brooke: Do you feel like the puppetry of it and the crowd participating are tools that you use to help facilitate that connection?
Alex: Yeah, absolutely. With having a huge band, the puppets are so helpful because always, at the last minute, I’m giving jobs to people like “Can you hold this and come out during this song?”. I think that really helps, it's really good to have people feel like they're not just watching you do your thing, that they are also a part of it. I love that aspect of making it truly collaborative. And then audience participation is really key. My favorite audience participation thing that we’ve been doing is, before the show starts I’ve been going around to people and inviting them to write a wish on a leaf I put onto clothespins and clip it to the tree. Then, during the tree song we go around with it, and I tell everybody that they take a wish off of the tree that wasn’t their own, and they are now responsible for that wish and they have to choose what to do with it. That’s been so cool, I love that, so everyone leaves with a wish, or people afterwards will talk to me about the wish they received and sometimes it's very synchronous and resonant. I see people post pictures of their leaves, or even wearing them clipped to their clothes for the rest of the night. I love that as a way of actually giving something to everybody that they’re walking away with and keeping a little piece of it, that has somehow the energy and comes from somebody else from the crowd, making an unexpected connection. And singing together - that's the other big crowd participation is the first song, starting off with everybody singing together. It's cool to hear anybody singing back with us in a sweet, joined voice I think is really sacred.
Brooke: For sure, that is really sweet.
Dan: I think that we try to do things that involve people who can jump in. For instance, some of our songs are purposefully made simple enough so that anyone who plays any instrument can play along. We’ve been making binders of our songs so we can give them to people, we’ll host these events where people can come over, we make food and play music and stuff, just trying to make it really, really easy for people to join in at every facet of it. And as far as throwing parties and creating physical environments, that's been a huge priority for us because the internet is great, but everything is so optimized for a global marketplace digitally. You go online, you have to go through crazy mediations of giant corporate technologies like Facebook Or Instagram, and your video has to be one minute long and 4k, like brand optimization, etcetera, and it literally has nothing to do with the actual mechanics of having people together, or the actual joy we’re trying to illicit. It’s all about these urbane, random standards. I’ve been super frustrated that historically the music industry, trying to get streams versus trying to get people to listen to your music, it's two different things.
Brooke: Yes, that makes a lot of sense.
Dan: So, placing emphasis on actual in-person, being there, and creating that sense of community - the reason we continue to pursue it so strongly is we get so much really strong feedback about it. It's just not a thing that people are getting in their lives. Like, a sense of community, a sense of a safe place where you can enjoy music and dance and say what you feel, or whatever.
Brooke: Yeah, I really feel like y’all do create that space cuz’ your shows are so whimsical and earnest and really sweet, and I just feel like they feel like a really safe place to feel whatever is coming up and dance and move around.
Alex: I love that. I’m glad. That makes me so happy to hear because that really is what it's all about - you said something there that made me think about things being easy so that everybody can jump in, it being approachable. I feel like that's so key to my thing because I’m not a super talented musician, I don’t have a lot of technical knowledge, but that's not the point of it. The point of it is that it’s kind of DIY. Music is something I've recently started doing. I didn't grow up doing it. I don't have years of experience, I haven't mastered any instruments or anything. I'm just figuring it out as I go and having the audacity to put myself out there and do it, and I really want people to come away ideally with the feeling they could do it too. That's what I like about the puppets, they're so DIY and hot glued together similarly. I've had a lot of shows afterwards where people afterwards have been like “I wanna make puppets now!” and I’m like, yes!, that’s my favorite reaction to a show is other people being like, your show made me think that I wanna do this too. And you can! Yes, so I think approachability and wanting to give inspiration - the idea that anybody can be an artist. I just one day decided to try to write some songs and start a band and now we’re here.
Brooke: Yeah, it just takes that commitment and devotion to it.
Alex: Yeah, exactly.
Brooke: Yeah, DIY is the best. It's just the coolest shit ever.
Alex: My new tagline for our band is DIY-IRL-ILY.
Brooke: Do you guys have any plans or visions for Maximum Love Timeline in the future?
Alex: We’ve been talking about wanting to do a full fledged puppet musical. We kind of did with the puppet pest in Bushwick a couple years ago, but we were really inspired at the New Orleans Puppet Fest and I really wanna make a film out of it and make an actually tighter musical, Maximum Love Timeline biblical genesis origin story.
Dan: We have about an album's worth of material that we have in various states of demo and in-recording, and we’re kind of trying to figure out how we want to put that out and record it.
Alex: That's the most imminent thing.
Dan: Make some music videos, stuff like that.
Brooke: Hell yeah, just continuing to get it out there. I would love to have your music physically. It would be so sick.
Alex: Yes! It’s coming.
Brooke: Sweet, well thank you guys so much for sharing so much! It’s so cool to hear.
