Veera: What’s up?

Ville: Nothing special really. I’ve been busy. I’d say 7+ [on a scale of 4 to 10].

Veera: You have said that the lyrics of the new album are more sexual than before. You’ve also been sober for the past few years. Does this mean that sobriety has affected your libido?

Ville: No… Now I’m starting to think about naughty things… No. It doesn’t affect my libido in any way. It’s not a more sexual album than any of the previous ones. I think the word I used was ‘horny’. Horniness in my vocabulary usually means right now … and sweat … and now. Not wistfully looking back to how much fun we had in the sack. It’s more about wanting to get in the sack right now. It’s not more sexual, maybe more lustful. But it’s hard to say, lust means so many different things to people.

Veera: You’re a pretty mysterious man, and people don’t know much about you even though they read articles about you. How do you spend your everyday life?

Ville: Like people normally do, opening their eyes and making a cup of coffee. 

I wake up and do something. Something to do with music. Then on Saturdays I watch TV and eat tofu ice cream because dairy products are bad for you.

Veera: You’re not being serious…

Ville: About tofu ice cream or dairy products or what?

Veera: About your weekend activities.

Ville: I’m usually doing gigs or away from home. But I do eat tofu ice cream occasionally, it’s good.

Veera: So have you been completely sober and for how long?

Ville: Completely sober? I think I have eaten some chocolates that have some alcohol in the filling and then in restaurants it’s sometimes hard to ask whether the sauce has wine in it or stuff like that. But I haven’t drunk alcohol with the intention of getting drunk. And I haven’t used any other intoxicants. Except caffeine and tobacco, they do count as intoxicants. But yes… What was the question?

Veera: So have you stopped hanging out in bars altogether? Or if you’re having a night out with your friends, do you take part in that?

Ville: I don’t have many friends, and I don’t go out. Not hanging out in bars anymore doesn’t have to do with me not drinking anymore but with the fact that you can’t smoke there anymore. Bars smell bad now and they’re ugh and I don’t want to hang there anymore. It’d be fun to go to a corner bar to read the paper or whatever and drink some coffee and smoke, but you can’t do that anymore. You can say that I quit drinking because you can’t smoke anymore. The two things went hand in hand. Now I just spend time at home where I can smoke.

Veera: How have you filled that time? Is it just by reading and hanging at home? 

Ville: With music, pretty much. It’s hard to say how I have filled my time because functional alcoholism is possible. You can do a lot of things while being a little drunk.

Veera: What kind of big questions have you been pondering on lately?

Ville: Big questions? Smoking laws. The economy of England/the English language. 

What else? About how Barack Obama is accused of not having done anything. I have speculated about that on many occasions. It’s interesting. If you think that there’s a country where there was slavery about 160 years ago… It doesn’t matter how much he gets done because all the intentions are good. And the fact that such a big country has a black president has such huge symbolic and liberating value. Except that the pope should have been black too, but I hear that there were so many people in Africa to be converted that it was better to take this German guy. These are the kinds of things I’ve been thinking about. I don’t know if they are big ones. They’re big to me.

Veera: What are you going to do now? The record and the tour will be keeping you busy, but on your free time?

Ville: Before May 8, I have maybe 4 or 5 days off. Meaning days when I’m home. I’ll try to see my mom and dad, that would be nice. I think I should do laundry. And I have a laptop that’s a bit old and I’d like to get a new one, but they’re kind of expensive. 

This kind of stuff, getting my home studio in order a bit. But I haven’t vacuumed in like seven months, I guess you can call it immunotherapy.