Henry Rollins new book of photographic essays: "Occupants"

Terrific interview with Henry Rollins on Advocate.com by Winston Gieseke. Rollins is famous for being the sexy frontman for the punk group Black Flag. He's also an extremely articulate spoken word artist, writer, photographer and LGBT ally.

Hoping to inspire positive action, the rocker-writer-actor-activist-spoken word poet has unleashed the visual fruits of these efforts in his first photo book, Occupants. Accompanying the images are essays in the former Black Flag front man’s unmistakably forthright and often angry voice.

Here is an excerpt from the interview. I encourage you to read the entire interview on Advocate.com.

One of the most pervasive themes I took from the book was resilience, which in a very different context is something the gay community is familiar with.
Yeah, you’d have to be.

But does having seen so much destruction in the world make something like the fight for marriage equality seem insignificant in scale?
No, it makes it part of a rich tapestry of what keeps me optimistic about humans. As deplorable as some of these locations have been, the upshot of all of it is, it makes me like people more. I see how heartbreakingly friendly these people can be and how they will always skew towards dignity, generosity, and compassion — even when their surroundings are abysmal. And that, to me, is marriage equality and civil rights for gay people in America.

You’ve been very vocal in your support.
I personally think all marriages are crazy, in that I would never be able to give half my record collection away just because of some stupid contract I signed, but I think Bill and Leon should be able to take that mad plunge if they see fit to do so. If you’re lucky enough to find someone that you wanted to make that wild promise with, who the hell is anyone to stop you? This is what the Founding Fathers — who Michele Bachmann says she loves so much but seems to know so little about — were strangling each other over in hot rooms in Philadelphia all those summers ago. This is what so many people took a musket ball in the face for. And this country should be the leader on all of that.