Devin Townsend: "I trust myself now" - Maximum Metal interview

Maximum Metal: So, then, when you say that you're on autopilot now more than ever before, it's autopilot in a good way where you're allowing yourself to be following intuition—

Devin: Shit, yeah. Totally. And instinct, and all these things. There were a lot of people who were never fortunate enough to get away from all of that; I've had a good support network and good friends. The end result of any experimentation that I do... I trust myself now. I know I'm not going to do a bunch of stupid shit. Well, I'm always going to do stupid shit, but the things I may have been tempted to do in the past — even though there's still temptation — I have no doubt that I'll make the right decision when the time comes. Making these four records was almost an exercise for me of learning to forgive and consequently trust my instincts. In the past, in trusting my instincts when I was drunk or high or whatever, I made a series of really stupid mistakes. At the time, I was like, "Oh, no, that was some mechanism in you. It's got nothing to do with your activities, you're just a bad person." And once you get rid of those things, you're like, "Nah, you're not a bad person; you're just high and being an idiot," right? The consequences of your past are always there. But now I think it's kind of funny when people are like, "Oh, you're the crazy guy," and I'm like [waves hand], "Yeah, OK...you got it, man." I think that you take the past and just run with it. But now when I write, I can say, "Oh, I guess we're going...there. Cool." I know what to do when we go there. And lyrics are doing...this. OK. If that's the part of the song going to these depths, or whatever, then I've got tons of things to draw on from that. more