Interview: gavinroo538 - A Rush of Blood to the Head
We released the fourth episode of Outside the Lines: A Line Rider Podcast in late December, and then I got tied up with this year’s Top 10 Line Rider Tracks video and have only just now been able to release this interview in article form! In this one, Ava interviews gavinroo538, creator of A Rush of Blood to the Head, which was released back in December 2021. As always, this episode is also fully subtitled on the Line Rider Review YouTube channel. Enjoy!
AVA: Hello everyone! I’m Ava Hofmann, and this is Outside the Lines, a Line Rider podcast where I interview Line Rider creators and talk to them about the artistry behind their tracks.
gavinroo538 first started developing his boundary-breaking and highly symbolic style in Line Rider in 2017, when he asked his friend Arglin to post his tracks to their YouTube channel. Since then, Gavin has developed his own independent body of work which uses Line Rider as a medium for self-expression, creating a deeply personal landscape of psychological metaphors with which he has explored politics, identity, religion, and family. Equal parts cryptic and confrontational, Gavin’s Line Rider work takes each part of Line Rider and asks, “How can I make this say something meaningful?” And each time he asks, he manages to make Line Rider even more special and enriching for all of us.
Today I’ll be interviewing Gavin about A Rush of Blood to the Head, an hour-long behemoth of a track which was released late last year. A Rush of Blood to the Head is a complex, sprawling masterpiece, which uses the Coldplay album of the same name as a lens to chart Gavin’s attempts to understand himself and his place in the world around him. It’s a powerful and thoughtful piece of art which features Gavin at his angriest and most passionate, and, shockingly, despite its length, A Rush of Blood to the Head almost never runs out of new and surprising ideas. Unfortunately, because of copyright issues, this full-length album track is criminally underwatched. I would highly recommend you find it on Gavin’s YouTube channel and watch it for yourself.
AVA: Thank you for joining me, Gavin!
GAVIN: Thank you for letting me exist in the interview world!
AVA: In your own words, describe A Rush of Blood to the Head.
GAVIN: It’s definitely a lot! [laughter] It’s a 54-minute Line Rider film that syncs to the entire Coldplay album, “A Rush of Blood to the Head”.
AVA: What were you thinking about when you started it?
GAVIN: Well, before starting it - even before starting the Scientist collab - I always thought it would be cool to have my own Line Rider film, because, “Only one person has done this, and it’s a person that I admire a lot, so it would be cool if I did that too.” I wasn’t making a film to discover my own feelings or express myself, I just thought it would be cool to have my own Line Rider film! But with that mindset it obviously was never gonna happen. [laughter]
AVA: Right.
GAVIN: Back in 2018, I wanted to sync a Line Rider to the entirety of the album “Blurryface” by twenty one pilots. I wasn’t even 10 or 20 seconds in when I stopped, due to obvious reasons.
AVA: How did it go from sort of being, like, “Oh, it would be sort of cool,” to something that you really sat down and started working on?
GAVIN: Well, you might have noticed that in 2018 there were lots of tracks uploaded onto my channel, and then from 2019 to 2021 there were very few tracks. In 2018, one of my main goals when making tracks was trying to get into Rabid Squirrel’s Top 10, mostly because I idolized them and artists associated with them like it’s banky. So I’d think, “What tracks would Rabid and banky like?” [laughter] So I tried doing those types of tracks, because it would be cool to be in the Top 10.
Also I had this tiny bit of guilt that there was a chance that I might have been the one to ruin the old Line Rider Artists server, because I was talking about stuff and uploading tracks that weren’t about an artistic perspective. Back then I thought art was about drawings and scenery. I didn’t understand that art is, like, expressing yourself, and having a narrative - a theme - and it’s not just scenery. Soon after I joined the old Line Rider Artists server, Rabid announced that it was shutting down, and I thought, “Was I the one who made Rabid shut it down?” Also, I had known about Rabid’s tracks for so many years - ever since I was a child - so, I was like, “Holy crap, I am talking to this person! Whoa! That’s so cool!” I literally say that I called them my idol back in 2018, and I know that it’s very uncomfortable for somebody to call you their idol.
AVA: Right. [laughter]
GAVIN: I tried to replicate their style, mainly in my movement. I was in the community in 2018, when there were a lot of manuquirk tracks. When I started uploading tracks, I asked for criticism - I’d say, like, “Criticism is appreciated,” and people like Hanuman gave me criticism - and to this day I still do appreciate that, but it was very quirk-heavy. A lot of my tracks were, like, Rabid-style, but less artistic and more childish, and incorporated more quirk, I guess. I learned a lot about how to move Bosh back in 2018 - even before I joined the community I learned how to do a kramual by watching tutorials from Apple. So the Top 10 was one of my main goals when making tracks, and lo and behold, somehow I got in the Top 10 Line Rider Tracks of 2018, in 9th place with Kitchen Sink! And I was like, “Hooray! I accomplished that goal! …Now what?”
So, yeah - I lost a lot of motivation to work on tracks. Don’t get me wrong - I had, like, a bunch of ideas of songs that I could sync Line Rider to, but I just didn’t do the execution of making the track. So I went from, like, a dozen uploads in 2018, to only a few uploads, with a lot of them not being that grand or serious. I guess in 2019 I made Innuendo - looking back, I made it because I wanted to make a track that everyone would like. Back in 2018, I got a lot of criticisms - a few of my tracks were completely flatsled - like, “It’s too Rabid!” or, like, “it’s just plain old boring,” or, “the same old message”. Those are a few of the criticisms I remember. Also, Arglin released Bohemian Rhapsody in the beginning of 2019, and that got a ton of views, so I was like, “Hey, it would be cool if I had a few of those views too, with another Queen song,” though I knew it wouldn’t be as big as Bohemian Rhapsody, because the song “Innuendo” isn’t that big itself. I guess a lot of people did like Innuendo, but I definitely didn’t get in the Top 10 in 2019.
And then, 2020 happened, and COVID-19 hit, and I had lots of time to be at home by myself - learning about things, about the outside world, and about me. 2020 was also when I started the Scientist collab, because the one track I remember before starting the collab that was in reverse was Apple’s Here. When I saw that video, I was like, “Wow, seeing stuff in reverse is cool! I would love to do that.” And the music video for “The Scientist” is also in reverse, so I was like, “I can use that song!” But unfortunately I didn’t have a lot of ideas for cool things I could do in reverse, so I thought, “Hey, it would be cool for us to collab!” So I suggested it in the collab server, and the collab started, and I came up with the little story at the very end, with the couple.
Meanwhile, I’d been listening to the album “A Rush of Blood to the Head” a lot, and it reached the point where I had made my own fan-made concept story for the album - even though I’m pretty sure it didn’t have a concept to begin with - and I came up with the concept of the toxic relationship. I started coming up with ideas for a lot of the other songs on the album, like the bombastic Part 1, and the desert scenery in Part 6 - Daylight - while The Scientist was going on. Fun fact - I came up with the cave idea for Part 11 back in 2018. I wanted to sync a Line Rider to “Amsterdam”, and I had the cave idea, but I didn’t do it because I didn’t want to talk about a topic as heavy as suicide. I had these graphic ideas - it wasn’t all that fleshed out. I didn’t have the music visualizer idea for the very end. So I shelved that until 2020.
Anyway, I kept getting these ideas, and somewhere during that, the concept in my head started forming into, like, “Am I coming up with an idea for a Line Rider film? I think I am!” [laughter] I even did five seconds of Part 1 back in the middle of 2020, though I scrapped that because it didn’t look that good. And essentially, I was like, “Okay, I want to start this at the start of 2021, and have my goal be to have it uploaded before 2021 ends.” Looking back, it’s kind of mind-blowing that I got it uploaded right before 2021 ended. I didn’t start it at the beginning of 2021 - I started it in late November 2020 - but still! The fact that I got done before my own little deadline is baffling. [laughter]
AVA: And you worked on it completely in secret, right?
GAVIN: That I did! [laughter] Although I did throw out a few hints - near the end of finishing my film, I asked on the collab server if I could re-upload The Scientist with the new usernames, and I got the go-ahead from Arglin - little did they know that I was asking because they were gonna be a part of my film! [laughter] And when the Alive collab first started - I guess people outside of the collab server don’t know what that is, but - I was saying, “The reason I haven’t been working on the Alive collab is because I’m working on my own project and stuff.” Little did they know! [laughter]
Anyways, I started becoming more in touch with my own feelings - I think my first track that actually came from my own feelings was Level of Concern in 2020, which was about COVID-19, saying, like, “Hey! Wear a mask! Stay safe! Stay home!” and I really wanted people to stay home! [laughter] I think that’s pretty much how A Rush of Blood to the Head started.
AVA: You just charted out this story of, “I want to do this thing because it would be cool,” or “I want to impress people around me,” and then it started to become more about expressing yourself, and you started making tracks for yourself, right?
GAVIN: Yeah.
AVA: I think that’s really clear in A Rush of Blood to the Head. You said, at first you just viewed art as, like, it’s just drawings - it’s just scenery - so, how did you go from that to start using scenery as a form of personal expression?
GAVIN: I want to talk about my track …is this it?, because it’s the first track where I talked about my own actual feelings on things - an abstract depiction of how I made the tracks back then, and how I view them now, and why I made those tracks. You can see it in the lyrics, where I’ve written out, “Can’t you see I’m trying? I don’t even like it.” I have a tendency of trying to subvert tropes of Line Rider, and in …is this it? I try to do a lot of trope subversion - the laziest lyric video, the laziest quirk you’ve ever seen, and the laziest manuals. I even tried to make fun of the animated lyrics at the end of …is this it?. I guess I just wanted to say, in …is this it?, “The stuff that I did back in the past - I’m not doing that sort of stuff anymore. I’m trying to move in some sort of new direction.” And I made it while I was working on my film, as some sort of side project - hinting at what you could expect for my tracks in the future. I also released Prospekt’s March/Poppyfields - the first minute is rushed, and there are ideas that weren’t that well-executed, but it comes from my own feelings. It ain’t the best, but I am glad that I made it and released it.
Anyway, back to my film. I think the first instance of actually going into my own real feelings was in Part 3. I literally put, “This is where it really starts!” [laughter] and then, “Behold! My mindscape!” There’s drawings that I did while making the movement, and stuff that I added later because I was afraid that it was gonna lag, but fortunately it didn’t - especially since I got a new laptop during the making of the film. I intentionally tried to talk about stuff in the Line Rider community - asking, “Why would people make tracks? For attention? For discovering themselves? Trying to fit in?” and stuff like, “Spin! Spin! Switch! Manual!”
AVA: Right - that moment’s interesting because it sounds like some of the advice you get sometimes from a manuquirk perspective - and you’re thinking about community in all this.
GAVIN: Yeah, and what comes after Part 3? The Scientist. During, like, the process of the Scientist collab, I was kind of disappointed in the other collaborators - like, I said try to come up with ways to show things that look cool in reverse, and they just kept doing manuquirk and stuff - and that doesn’t look cool just because it’s reversed, there’s nothing mind-bending about it. I was like, “Oh, come on.” But I think I stopped being disappointed in the collaborators after thinking about the lyrics, and how it actually fits with disappointment and stuff - like, “Nobody said it was easy.”
AVA: Right.
GAVIN: And the song is literally called “The Scientist” - and people usually think about techniques as, like, science. And when I focused on that, The Scientist changed to, like, trying to work out feelings, but you don’t know how. The fact that it came after Part 3 was somewhat coincidental, but it works so well.
AVA: You sort of reappropriated this kind of disappointing collab, and made it about that disappointment.
I think The Scientist, and also Part 3, is a good way to get into a question about politics in your Line Rider work. For me, A Rush of Blood to the Head remains your most explicitly political and confrontational track. In one of those pieces of text that fly past Bosh in Part 3 we see the phrase “gavinroo538 vs society”. And throughout the track, A Rush of Blood to the Head takes a stand against violence, war, hate, and toxic masculinity. What is the role of politics and the political in your tracks?
GAVIN: Well, the reason why I wrote “gavinroo538 vs society” is because - if you read my sunshowers review, I did talk about it a little bit - from September to December 2021, I started college at Brigham Young University Idaho (BYUI). I was born Mormon - I was part of that Church - and over time my beliefs in the Church started to dwindle more and more, as I discovered more about the world and my own values. I didn’t really have any faith in the Church, I just was going through the motions of, like, being the best Mormon you can be so you can get back to the highest heaven, I guess. But as I learned more about stuff like LGBTQ issues, and talked to people more - like, meeting people like Arglin, who I knew was definitely queer, and researching things about sexism and racism in the world, and learning more and more about my own Church history. For example, before 1978, black people weren’t allowed to get the priesthood.
AVA: There’s a deeply racist history of the Mormon Church.
GAVIN: Yeah - and I think the Church is sexist to this day, and it’s definitely queerphobic. Only men can be an Apostle, a Prophet, or like a general authority. People like the “Prophet” get paid - the women don’t. None of them do.
But anyway, back to “gavinroo538 vs society” and why I made it. My faith was in this limbo - like, I don’t know if I believe in the Church or not. One time, before I left for BYUI, I even told my mom that there was a big chance I might leave the Church in the future. During the first semester, I was living with roommates who were some of the most conservative, toxic-masculine people I’ve met. A lot of people I know online would hate living there, and hate going to BYUI in general. Being in this environment - being the only person even mildly left-leaning - it’s not safe, and I just have this anger towards them - I just feel like it’s me against them. That’s why I wrote “gavinroo538 vs society” - because I had this anger. During those months, I learned stuff that I’d never learned about before - the Church never told these things to members - and in pretty much all of the process of the film, I was having these questions about Christianity and religion. I show the symbols of the pride flag, the transgender symbol, anti-gun, the Black Lives Matter symbol, even plurality. I even wrote down the words, “gender”, “sexuality”, and, “God? Science? Both? I don’t know!” and, “If God created everything, who created God?” and then, “Should I worry? Stop!” I even did a little tiny hidden thing in the last part of the lyrics where Bosh is offsled - “God give me style, and give me grace” - it has the dividing lines trope - like, the two lines converge - and you can see that the dividing line is segmented. I guess I wanted to try to symbolize, “Is the grace even real? I don’t know!” I did that story stuff a lot in Part 3.
And Part 10 symbolizes toxic masculinity - I made Part 10 during the first semester of BYUI. It’s very dark! I mean, also Part 11, but Part 10 is just angrily dark, while Part 11 is just depressingly dark. But I guess I sort of hint at it in the ending of Part 8 - I tried to bring back the couple that were featured in Part 4 - The Scientist - and tried to expand upon their story, like, “Hey, the man in this relationship is not okay!” [laughter]
AVA: Right.
GAVIN: I guess it comes from me being a guy, I guess, and experiencing toxic masculinity from others. I even wrote a paper during the first semester about how the phrase “man up” is very toxic.
AVA: Yeah.
[begin cw: discussion of suicide]
GAVIN: I wasn’t really thinking about it, like, “Alright! This part is about toxic masculinity!” - it just came out unintentionally, with war, and violence, and these fires - and reached the point, at the end of Part 10, where we see the man on the bridge with the rope - which you see in Part 4 on the tree, holding the tire swing - thinking about suicide - not trying to talk about your own feelings and get help, just thinking that you did all these bad things, and you think that the only way you can forgive others and yourself is to take your own life. I’ve never been suicidal myself, I just think a lot about these things, and do a lot of research about why people kill themselves, and how they’re feeling, and their actions before taking their own life.
AVA: Toxic masculinity is definitely a huge factor in suicide rates of men. There’s a culture of not reaching out for help - violent suicide is at a higher rate in men.
GAVIN: Yeah, I tried to show that. I wasn’t trying to say, “Suicide happens towards men because of toxic masculinity,” I just liked showing the consequences of toxic masculinity towards yourself and others. I guess I could have showed the noose in at least a few more frames, instead of a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it moment, but I still wasn’t that comfortable talking about suicide. At least, until No Surprises!
[end cw: discussion of suicide]
AVA: A Rush of Blood to the Head explores several tough and emotionally uncomfortable themes - as we’ve been talking about - like abusive and violent thinking, suicidal thoughts, and general despair - as you highlighted. Frequently, you use your Line Rider tracks as spaces for you to explore some of your own darkest emotions or experiences, like in midnight. and No Surprises. Something that is always really striking to me about these tracks is the way that you use Bosh’s movement to explore a kind of metaphorical emotional space. There’s the struggling, claustrophobic movement in Amsterdam, while at the door… - which is also exploring similar emotions - its movement is a lot more frantic, and trying to escape. What is your approach to movement in Line Rider, and how does that relate to the way you explore emotion in your tracks?
GAVIN: Well, I think it comes back to how Rabid Squirrel influenced my movement a lot. You can see it in tracks like This Will Destroy You, Formula, and Ruby Falls - a lot of it is purely movement, and when there are visuals they’re very minimalist. I just love seeing how Bosh expresses themself in the movement - not stuff like visuals, lyrics - even though I use them too, of course. But yeah - even way back in 2018 when I wasn’t talking about my own feelings, I tried to express the meaning of the lyrics in the movement in tracks like Taxi Cab and Carry On. And I still do this today. I learned how to control Bosh’s movement with flings, kramuals, 10-point cannons, and singularities early on - so I pretty much know how to control Bosh. I mean, not to the point of gigaquirk, but enough for me to know how to do movements that I want to showcase. And when you look at Bosh, when doing a lot of movement - this is gonna sound weird, but I brought this up in my shitpost called The Suffering of Bosh. Like, Bosh has suffered through a lot, with flings, and singularities, and two feature films - which is now three. And, of course, I ended it with the Dame Da Ne meme, because I was making a shitpost - but if Bosh was actually alive, how would they feel? And what could go on in their mind, when they’re doing these weird movements? And then, as I discovered more about myself, I wanted to put all my own feelings, and struggles into expressing that Bosh is struggling.
AVA: It’s this interesting moment of empathy where you’re looking at Bosh, and you’re thinking, “How would they feel?” and then you’re taking that, and putting your own emotions into it.
GAVIN: Yeah - I guess I tried to focus more on Bosh’s movement in my later tracks - especially stuff like at the door…, midnight., and that one part in No Surprises, where there’s a bunch of quirky movement happening in this dark space. It’s just Bosh in the dark, flailing around - kramuals, singularities - while this soothing song is happening. Most of it is flatsled, and then there’s this one part that has a lot of quirk lines that are hidden.
AVA: Yeah - instead of about the lines, it’s about Bosh’s body.
At the start of this question you mentioned Bevibel and Bevibel’s movement techniques, and how it’s really influenced you. In many ways, A Rush of Blood to the Head feels like a thoughtful revisiting or remixing of Rabid Squirrel’s This Will Destroy You, and many of the syncing techniques that Rabid pioneered. A Rush of Blood to the Head sort of pulls its favorite things from This Will Destroy You, reinterprets them, and then adds your own creative expansions and flourishes on top - you sort of sprinkle a little Gavin on. [laughter] And the result is a track which feels like it’s in a thoughtful dialogue with This Will Destroy You - looking back at the past, while trying to piece together a future. Using Line Rider as a commentary on Line Rider is really common in your work. We talked about …is this it? earlier, which is doing a similar thing where it’s talking about your emotions and it’s talking about Line Rider - or something like Old Friends - these function as reflections on your relationship to the Line Rider community. How did This Will Destroy You, and the Line Rider community as a whole, influence A Rush of Blood to the Head, and what do you think is the value in using Line Rider to comment on Line Rider itself?
GAVIN: I mean, you can obviously tell that This Will Destroy You is a huge inspiration. I mean, it’s a film - and I took a few things out of it too - This Will Destroy You is virtually all flatsled, and I tried to do Part 1 as mostly flatsled with a few singularities. I guess I wanted to show that you can be dramatic and bombastic with just flatsled. I tried to make only one manual, and that was when the Place showed up. When I first did that, I mostly wanted to do a tiny bit of foreshadowing of how Part 2 is mostly manuals. It is interesting to look back and see how Bosh’s first manual was when the Place first showed up. I mean, after Part 1 I did a lot of manuals.
AVA: Yeah - it sort of steadily gets more complex until The Scientist, when you have full-on quirk.
GAVIN: A lot of things get complex - I gathered up those ideas, that I talked about earlier, and came up with this idea and that idea and tried to combine them together. It does result in, like, going from this idea to the next, but it’s, like, just being me, I guess? I want to bring up Jade’s Roundup review of the film, because I feel like Jade’s review is the one that captured what A Rush of Blood to the Head was all about. She basically summarized it as, like, it’s about me! And that’s pretty much it - like, sure, there’s the concept of the couple, and all these symbols and stuff, and the animation -all this all-over-the-place stuff - but you can summarize it as, A Rush of Blood to the Head is about gavinroo538, and his “mindscape”! [laughter]
AVA: I want readers to know that every time Gavin says “mindscape”, he points at his head with both of his hands! [laughter]
GAVIN: I mean, there’s a reason I left the title of the album in the title of the film itself. “A Rush of Blood to the Head” - you can search up what that is, and you can see the connections.
Before I joined the Line Rider Artists Collective, for the longest time I felt like an outsider of the community. I wasn’t part of the LRAC, and I wasn’t doing all the quirk stuff everyone else was doing. I mean, I literally do art in Line Rider Advanced. I’m definitely not part of the binary when it comes to that. I’m non-binary when it comes to Line Rider! [laughter] That’s why I sometimes call myself a “Line Rider monster” - it first started when Rabid was talking about the history of Line Rider in Slovenia - they commented, “Artists vs Gamers”. I was like, “I don’t fit into those two!” And how, like, Artists use .com, and Gamers use LRA, and the Artists make emotional tracks, and the Gamers do quirk tracks, and, like - “I use LRA! I try to make art! How do I fit into this? I’m a monster!” [laughter] That’s why if you look at my Twitter profile, you can see “self-proclaimed Line Rider monster”.
But yeah - seeing both sides of the community - the “Gamers” and the “Artists” - and being part of both, while at the same time being part of neither, gives me a perspective of these different genres and styles and why people make them. It felt too divided. Now it’s converging - but back then it felt divided, and it just felt like I was in the middle of it - Gamers, Artists, and then me in the middle. But seeing all these perspectives makes me feel like talking about my own feelings about the divide. And it comes back to wanting to subvert tropes in Line Rider - seeing these trends - like, the Artists tend to do flatsled, and the Gamers do quirk. I showed that in …is this it?, and bits of A Rush of Blood to the Head. I feel like being an outsider, but also witnessing a lot of the community divide, was good for me to give out my own outsider perspective on things - being part of the community for quite a while, but at the same time not feeling like I’m in the community. I wanted to talk about my own perspective on the Line Rider community, even back then with some of my older tracks.
AVA: How do you feel about A Rush of Blood to the Head now that it’s out in the world? How do you make sense of it as a piece of art that you’ve actually made, and finished?
GAVIN: Well, I feel like it’s a stepping stone of the art I do right now - …is this it? was a stepping stone, Prospekt’s March was a stepping stone, and Level of Concern was a stepping stone. It’s a big stepping stone - I mean, it’s 54 minutes. But looking back, I am definitely proud that I got it out before my own deadline! But discovering more about things about myself - those are also stepping stones.
In the beginning of April of this year, I was reading more about the problematic history of the Church that I was a part of, and during the middle of the night, it hit me - and I started bawling my eyes out, and I realized I’d completely lost faith towards the Church - feeling betrayed, and scared of what would happen to me in the future - with this feeling of no-faith in a church that I was a part of for pretty much my whole life.
AVA: Right.
GAVIN: I guess that was a big stepping stone for the stuff I make, when it comes to religion and stuff. I was making stuff about religion before, but it was more questioning. But afterwards I was just feeling this betrayal, and sadness, and also just anger and hatred. A week after, I pretty much stopped being Christian. And I became agnostic - but right now I feel like I’m agnostic atheist. I pretty much stopped praying to “Heavenly Father” a week after losing my faith. I was still praying for one week, because it was a habit of mine to pray before bed, but I pretty much stopped after thinking about, “Why am I still doing this? Why am I still praying? What’s the point of believing in this stuff when I don’t believe in my own Church anymore?” like, “Why would God let me down this much, if he’s supposed to love us so much that it’s unimaginable? Why would he do this to me?” So I stopped praying, and stopped believing in God, and stopped believing in Christianity.
It influenced a lot of my tracks after that, starting with No Surprises. I started No Surprises in January. I had the idea during the making of my film, but I took a break from working on it, because my ideas weren’t all that formed yet. But after that faith-loss, I started getting a new perspective on what I could do with No Surprises. I started working on it, and adding hidden Mormon symbolism - like, when the lyrics said, “Bring down the government,” I tried to show one of the Mormon temples, and Bosh just pouncing on it. It’s all hidden in the scribbles - but I knew that it existed when making it. And I also showed the Portland Oregon Mormon Temple when the lyric, “Such a pretty house” showed up. I put in all this hidden religious imagery in my tracks - all this betrayal and stuff, and this sadness. But I didn’t want to show that I didn’t believe in the Church, because I was kind of nervous that my parents would find it.
AVA: Right.
GAVIN: I think the next track that had a hidden religious meaning was at the door…. And I did do, like, the emotions that I witnessed with the quirk community. Bevibel talked about it in their video essay for I Can’t Ride These Lines Without You - about how usually the first tracks quirkers do that show emotion are talking about mental illness and their own experiences with it. I tried to convey that in my track, more apparently than my own religious meaning of wanting to leave the Church, and knowing that one day I’ll make it out. Over time, I became less afraid, hoping that my parents won’t see the tracks that had religious symbols, and I started to be more explicit about my feelings of religion, with the first explicit one being midnight. - dealing with faith in God that turned to fear over time.
AVA: Right.
GAVIN: During making it, I said that I lost all faith in Christianity - faith in God. I guess I wanted the perspective during that limbo period of 2021 to early ’22, before it hit me that I lost my faith. It’s in this perspective of myself, still thinking that there might be a God, but not actually knowing. To quote the lyrics, “Where the hell are you hiding?”
AVA: Right.
GAVIN: Going back to the question, these experiences were like stepping stones - A Rush of Blood to the Head was a huge one, along with, like, religion, and learning about politics, research, Reckoner, and I guess Nude - with topics of how society, especially the Christian population, views sexuality.
AVA: What do you hope for from the future - both in terms of Line Rider, and in terms of your life, and the world?
GAVIN: Well, for Line Rider, I just hope that people will be less afraid of experimenting - like, showing their own emotions about things. Even if it might not look that good at first - don’t be afraid about doing it. It’s kinda heading in this direction already, but I hope that more people will be less afraid of wanting to show their own emotion - it doesn’t have to be the main thing you do, just don’t be afraid of doing it if you want to do it.
Stuff like Ray - before Ray’s output Instantflare was very anti-flatsled, quirk elitist - no offense to Instantflare, you’re awesome now! But I love how they became, like, not afraid of putting their emotions through tracks, even if it has to be on a different channel.
AVA: Ray is a great example. We need more of that!
GAVIN: Yeah - don’t be afraid, kids! [laughter] And adults!
AVA: What are you hoping for?
GAVIN: For my own life in general?
AVA: Yeah, let’s go there! Let’s do it!
GAVIN: [laughter] Okay, yeah. I want to transfer out of BYUI, and resign from the Mormon Church. I’m hoping to do that after the semester that’s going on right now, and hopefully before April, when the next semester starts. I just hope that I can finally stop being technically-Mormon, and be... Gavin. [laughter] Like, actual Gavin - not Mormon version of Gavin [laughter] that was before learning all these things. I just hope I learn about myself more and more - I’m still discovering things about me to this day, and hopefully I learn more and more in a safer environment. I mean - live the life I want to live, and all that.
AVA: Absolutely.
GAVIN: I guess I’m not exactly sure what sort of job… or if I’m gonna have a wife, or kids… The Mormon Church expects the members to have a family, with a lot of kids, and I’m just looking at it, like, “Sheesh!”
AVA: Yeah.
GAVIN: I mean, it would be cool to have a wife, and my own kids, that I can teach about the stuff I learned, but it is some work. I do know that!
AVA: At the very least, you are not gonna want a Mormon family.
GAVIN: Yeah, I definitely don’t want a Mormon family. [laughter] And I’m not the most social person, so I’m not the best at, like, winning a girlfriend, I guess. [laughter] Not the best phrasing, but whatever. [laughter]
AVA: No, that’s not great phrasing.
GAVIN: Yeah - I don’t want it to be a goal, of, like, “winning!”
AVA: Right, right.
GAVIN: All right! Moving on!
AVA: You were just saying it’s hard - especially when you’re stuck in the environment that you’re in - to find someone you connect to.
GAVIN: Yeah. [laughter]
AVA: Well, I think maybe this is where we end it, unless you have any other thoughts.
GAVIN: I mean, don’t be afraid to pause on my tracks - there are a lot of hidden stuff that I put into there.
AVA: Yeah - if you haven’t ever, I would definitely recommend you pause and look around on Gavin’s tracks - he hides shit everywhere!
GAVIN: I’ll let people start the race of finding all the hidden stuff in at the door…. There’s this little tiny edit in post-production. I mean, besides the ending where it’s obvious, there’s another post-production thing. Try to find it! Go!
AVA: Well, you heard it here first, folks - there’s a hidden message in at the door…, involving post-production.
GAVIN: Well, it’s less a message, and more of a tiny thing I wanted to do, just because I feel like it.
AVA: Regardless, here at Outside the Lines we have some hard-hitting journalism - there are secrets hidden in Gavin’s tracks. [laughter]
All right. Gavin, thank you for coming onto the podcast, it was great having you. I wish you all the best with your life, all your endeavors, and I hope you get out of that fucking Church. [laughter] Fuck them. Fuck the Mormon Church. The official stance of Outside the Lines Podcast is fuck the Mormon Church!
GAVIN: Yeah! Anti-religion! Let’s go! [laughter] Don’t worry - if you’re Christian, but not, like, pushy about it, you’re a-okay.
AVA: I don’t want to be, uh, not inclusive - but also, I don’t like that cult shit. Not into that cult shit.
GAVIN: Yeah, we know what we’re talking about.
This interview was conducted on November 10, 2022. It has been edited for concision and clarity.
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