VNV Nation: And I think maybe there's a lot of people out there who like VNV and who like AFI who’d maybe like to be the fly on the wall at a conversation because it really is truly, we just let ourselves go and we talk. And I really, really like that in him because it’s very rare that you meet somebody who’s that able to structure their words and what have you in to a way that they speak to the people who listen to their music. I’m not saying that about myself, I’m not, I don’t think I’m fantastic or far from it, but I do the best I can. But yes, like what I say, you know, with AFI, the people out there, they hear their message and they feel this togetherness from it. They’ve all met each other through the show, they found friends who are like them. I know stories, there's a guy in Germany who was a loner, he had no friends, really, he spent all his time at home, didn’t want to go out, lived with him mum, lovely guy. Went to a concert because he heard VNV, loved it and went to a concert and met loads of other people like him. He became a really outgoing, productive person like he felt purpose in his life, he was organizing VNV events, he was going to concerts and it helped him develop. I mean he started to do other things in his life and it really, really brought him forward. That, his mother told me this, and I used to say why, when did this happen? I mean when I describe it back to people what our music does, it’s because I’m reflecting the words that people say to us, I don’t know what it is in our music that does that, I really cannot put my finger on that, but I don’t want to. I would exploit it, it’s like nobody should ever know the best quality in themselves, every woman should be aware that her beauty is her mysticism, it’s the secret part of her that nobody knows, it’s this fragile beauty that's been… the aspects. It’s not a weakness, it’s this, there's this mystical element to every woman, there's this secret element, this quintessential element that women should never be aware of, like a man should never be aware of his own… I’m not saying…
Star: Why not? Why can’t we know who we are?
VNV Nation: No, no, it’s not about not knowing who you are, it’s this quality about a person. Have you ever known a person where you say, I made a sweeping statement which if you wrote that down it would probably sound really sexist and wrong, which is not how I want to come across. Have you ever met a person whose best quality is something that he or she will never know, and you go…
Star: All the time.
VNV Nation: Right, and you don’t want them to know it because…
Star: I always want them to know it, and that's my problem, I always try and impress upon them what it is that makes them so amazing so they know, just so that they know there's something about them that’s…
VNV Nation: Let them continue all day who they are without trying.
Star: And they’ll figure it out?
VNV Nation: Well they don’t need to figure it out because it’s what makes them… it’s like, it’s what makes them great. It’s like telling someone I love you because you're so cute, you have this cute little smile and everything, and they start using it to get things, do you get what I mean? Humans always have a…
Star: Well, then that shows what kind of person they are, you should expect they would be greater than that.
VNV Nation: We’re humans at the end of the day and we still have our faults. And I think those who are unaware of these little lovely elements within themselves, there is this sense of… I mean maybe it’s a male imagined thing, but I think I know this from so many women, they would say the exact same thing, and then I probably have more women as friends than I have males. But you cannot really put a number on that, it’s fifty/fifty I would say. But there are qualities of both genders that make,… that distinguish each gender, I think, which are far beyond the regular things that a sociologist would write. But there's this quintessential beauty, these secret elements that a man or a woman even sees in another woman, that should never be exploited. And these are… I don’t know how I even got on to this. The same thing goes for… I’m trying to backtrack, scrub this whole section.
Star: Anytime I can jump to a new question…
VNV Nation: Scrub this whole section.
Star: No, it’s awesome, I’m glad we got here. So, we got to this by talking about the crowds and connecting with people. As the audiences get bigger, because rumor has it you guys were the highest paid act in the business or whatever…
VNV Nation: That's crap.
Star: Is it?
VNV Nation: There's a lot of crap stories about us, there's perceptions that we’re selling millions of albums, we’re this huge corporate thing, but there's a massive gap between us and the next biggest selling artist. We are just floating around the top of it, I guess, somewhere, but that's not a huge number.
