Transcript from Online - 001 ‘DOGBREATH’
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[Narration]
[You know, there was a dog burning]
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[in the alley last night.]
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[Somebody set a dog on fire.]
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[The fire department had to come]
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[and put it out.]
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[It stunk up the whole neighborhood.]
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[MG] Matthew Genitempo, I'm from Houston originally, but currently residing in San Antonio, Texas.
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[Narration]
[This is a love song about our government]
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[It’s called ‘Death to You’]
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[music]
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[CST]
What is Dogbreath?
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[MG]
I don’t really know, uh-
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I guess you could say it's about,
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stray youth.
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It's about adolescence.
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It's about suburban malaise.
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It's about enduring the heat in Tucson.
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One of the kids called,
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Tucson, Los Angeles after the apocalypse.
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That's one thing that I just could not, shake,
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and I kept thinking about that.
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The behind the scenes of this work
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was like a reinvestigation into my own musical history.
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When 2020 happened
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a lot of people were kind of taking stock and, you know, reevaluating things
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and a lot of that, for me was going back and trying to understand,
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the music that made me, me,
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and kind of filling in blanks and
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kind of blind spots and listening to bands
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that I knew were around at the time, but I had missed.
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So there was so much musical discovery
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and rediscovery going on during this time.
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Back then, it was
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it was difficult to get access to certain types of music or just to,
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you know, the discovery process was a lot more difficult.
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So, uh-
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you relied a lot on friends and
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friends older brothers to kinda usher you into
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you know, more interesting realms of music.
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You know, I remember staying up really late
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with my brother watching ‘120 Minutes’ , because that was a way to find new music,
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and then I remember looking at the liner notes, of the CDs that I had and
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looking at the bands that they thanked to try to go
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find them.
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Yeah, I don't know, it was, it was,
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it truly felt like a hunt, which was,
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I think really valuable.
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Is having everything accessible all the time
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serving us?
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Because a lot of the things that,
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you know, made me, me, is because I didn't have access to something
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or I learned something the incorrect way.
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Like all of that stuff kind of,
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I think, helps you build up
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these idiosyncrasies that make you, you.
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Lke you might have learned to, I don't know, like,
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hold a G chord the wrong way, or you learn how to do something-
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someone taught you how to do something incorrectly,
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but then you adapt and it kind of becomes yours.
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And I think about that a lot with like with photography too, it's like
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I have these pictures that kind of hang around in the back of my head.
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And usually when I, I pull the book out
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and go look at the photograph that's been hanging around in my head,
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it's usually not as good as it is in the back of my head.
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So if these things are kind of hanging around the back of my head
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and they're not, you know, I don't have access to them,
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I can kind of let the residual nature of that kind of
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make its way into my practice.
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Does that make sense?
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Yeah, totally-
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and like, the distance kind of creates its own filter where,
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you know, your memory of the thing is actually what sticks with you,
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and then when you go back and reference it,
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maybe it changes the way that you perceive it.
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But yeah,
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the distance creates a different, feeling.
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How do you think running has shaped
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like the way that you do work, and how did it shape this project?
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You know, running has been,
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it's been the only other consistent thing
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in my life besides photography.
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And I mean, actually, even more consistent
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because I run every day, and I don’t, I don't make pictures every day.
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I try to spend some-
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I try to spend some time every day with photographs,
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or with, like, my work or art in general.
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It's really taught me a lot more about,
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my own
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artistic practice, than I ever thought it would.
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I, I think early on, I had,
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the idea that,
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creative practice is some sort of, like, magical thing
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that just kind of comes down and strikes you,
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whenever it feels like it, or maybe that,
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some people are chosen and some people aren’t.
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But I
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don't think that's the case anymore.
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Just because
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running has taught me that,
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showing up is the most important thing,
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you know, consistently doing it
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and working hard at it.
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Running is good
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realistically, maybe like 5 to 10% of the time.
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The rest of the time it's not great.
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But the 5 to 10% that is great is really, really great.
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Yeah.
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You know, and the margins for photography are even smaller,
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like I would say that like 99% of
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the pictures that I make are god awful.
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but the ones that really work,
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really, really work and make the bad parts worth it, you know.
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I don't always want to
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go into the studio and mess with pictures,
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and I don't always want to go out and make pictures
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or work on painting.
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I don't like to get started.
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And the same thing happens with running.
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Like, I just don't I don't like putting my shoes
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on in the morning.
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I don't like the first mile.
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It takes me a little while to get warmed up, but once I get going,
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I'm really happy that I'm out there and I can clip into some something that
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I can only get to if I just start.
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So if I can, I can keep that same way of thinking and apply it
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towards, you know, making pictures or showing up at the studio.
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I don't know, it just always works.
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And not treating it like it's this,
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you know, kind of this
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amorphous thing that I have to wait to find me.
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I can just show up and start working, and I'll usually find it some way, you know?
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Yeah, absolutely-
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and sometimes I show up to the studio, and I go through stuff,
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and I'm looking through work, and
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I end up leaving the studio frustrated, more frustrated than when I went in,
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because I have more problems to sort out as far as the work, but,
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I'm always happy that that's there, you know, like that,
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that I have at least identified a problem that I have to sort out.
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[CST]
Right,
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and it's like identifying steps too
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you don't know what the next step is until you identify what it is,
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and the only way to do that is to consistently go at it.
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[MG]
Show up, yeah-