On Indifference

From an interview with Mark E. Smith, published in The Wire May, 1999:


Tony Herrington: [Refering to the works of Phillip K Dick] He was very interested in trying to decipher the present by layering it with past and future events, which has been a theme in a lot of your work.


Mark E Smith: Pre-cog he used to call it. That's happened to me so many times. I've had a dream, or think I've seen something in the paper about an event, and six months later I'll see it. It's weird. You won't believe this, but I remember the last time we toured Yugoslavia, I said to the band: something's going to happen here. They said, why, it's lovely? But I could feel it. I could feel it. I could bloody. . . I could virtually see it, in the audience, above the audience. I'd come off stage, and say, it's fucking weird that audience. I'd never been frightened by an audience, you know? They go, no, it's great, the birds are lovely and all that. And it was, they're better dressed than us. Every time I went out I got in trouble with the police or a soldier, every fucking time. I got stopped; I got chased by soldiers once. I thought: there's something going on here, I don't like it, you know what I mean. I'd be talking to somebody and think they were crying. They weren't. [Laughs] It's weird isn't it? I don't like that too much. I don't have that so much now. It used to shit me up when I was a teenager. Somethings are better you don't know; don't want to know. Don't want to forecast or hear about. Maybe those kind of things only feel strange because they've been suppressed or they are not discussed. Maybe they are not that strange. That's right. Maybe people should be a bit more aware of it.