Who are some of your favorite poets?
I love Bob Kaufman. I love the Beat poets. I love Ginsberg. Nicki Giovanni. I love Kathy Acker. I love Ranier Maria Rilke. I love Rimbaud. I was reading Leaves of Grass last tour. I like Walt Whitman. I will read goddamn near anything. I like a lot of poetry.
Do you write poetry that’s separate from the songs you write, or does all of your writing flow together as part of one process?
I don’t write for fun so much anymore. I need to. It needs to be a daily practice, like putting in a half-hour of meditation or going for a run. If you do something every day, then it becomes a habit. I should write. I’m not a writer. I am pretending to write. And it’s fun to pretend to write. And I wonder if I would get anywhere if I took it seriously. So it’s worth a try. I should start.
What’s your relationship to floral imagery? The flower in “Bells” and the orchid in “Interference Fits” and the rose in “Advance Upon the Real” all seem to represent varieties of individuality, yet I can’t help but think of impermanence and ideas about women as well. Is there something you’re hoping to crack open?
It’s actually sort of way simpler than that — my secret dream from childhood on is to be a florist! I’ve tried to get floral design internships twice in my hometown, but a lot of flower shops are family owned and operated and it’s very difficult to get hired with no previous experience. Hopefully when this band is done — so in like, two weeks — I can find a floral internship and clip thorns off roses until someone takes pity on me and teaches me the basics of arrangement. I can see myself living out my days that way. I’ve always felt very close to flowers because they’re part of my secret imaginary future fantasy life. It makes sense to use them as images when I talk about such personal, secretive things in my lyrics. If anybody reads this and wants to let me work at their flower shop, just get in touch.
I’ve lived for 26 years under the auspices of this monologue that I am obnoxious, I am unlikeable, I talk too much, I lie, I cheat, I steal, I am a shitty person, I’m not good, I’m not good, I’m not good, and I get really depressed.
Also, the way you refer to your body in “Work” and “Dig” is really interesting to me, like despite degrees of aggression, those moments feel like acts of reclaiming or purifying rather than destroying or escaping. Or, maybe it’s not about the body as such but about the cultural conditions that surround us and convince us to hate our bodies and the necessity of transcending those conditions?
I’ve hated my body for so long, for its appearance, its gender, illness, so both deeply personal things that were specific to my experience as well as things I realized later had been ingrained in me by culture and the media when I was growing up. I’m finally at a point in my life where I don’t think so much about destroying or escaping anymore, and so it’s interesting to explore other feelings I have about the conditions I find my body in — as something that misguided people might occasionally be attracted to, for instance.
I probably notice light more than anything else, as a theme that repeats itself, like light as such, or photography, which is a way to control light, or windows or stars.
That’s funny — I don’t even notice that stuff, and then I look back and I’m like, “Oh, I guess I do that a lot.”
I see narrative everywhere. The world doesn’t really work that way, but I’m a narrative person, and in order to justify what I’m doing now, there has to be a cogent narrative that I can trace back. I’m pretty delusional, and I’m not always completely in touch with reality, so if I can trace a path backwards and figure out how I got to where I am, maybe the room will not feel like it’s spinning for five minutes.
I was in a band with an ex-boyfriend who I’ve talked about a lot who was very notoriously a very abusive, bad-bad-bad person, and when I was in that band, I was writing abut what was happening to me at that moment, having to deal with him, and it was really sad for me, and we had a lyric in the first song off our record that was all about light. I guess I could look back at all the times I use the metaphors for light. These ideas come up a lot with me, and I don’t really know why. Now I’m going to think about it, and now I have to come up with an answer.
Photo credit: PJ Sykes
There’s one line in “Big Stars” about the moon in Taurus, so what’s your connection to astrology?
My ex and I used to talk about that a lot, and I was dealing with a moon in Taurus pattern when I was writing that song. That’s another bummer song about that month when we were working on the record and he tried to come back. I basically just took my diary actively day by day and put that into songs, and that’s what the record came to be. So that was a very real astrological occurrence. One of the other titles of the record was Gemini, which is his astrological sign, and there was a lot of stuff that didn’t make it onto the record that was kind of about that. Everything goes through a draft process with me. Not too much editing. Once I get things in order it might as well be set in stone.
This whole band is pretty knee-jerk. Most of our songs are recorded in one take. What you hear is literally what we’re doing. We don’t care if it sounds bad. We just want to get it out and move on, so everything is very much happening while it’s happening. Including the lyrics.
This feels hyperbolic to actually say out loud, but I’ve always felt almost spiritual about Perfect Pussy. I’ve listened to the demo and the record throughout my own negative experiences, and I’ve been able to transcend and transform them.
That’s real. That’s pretty much what it is for me too. It’s very spiritual. I’m an extremely spiritual person. It’s definitely a transformative thing for me, and that’s why I had to stop reading what people had to say about it, because it’s not for other people. If people are having reactions to it, that’s wonderful. I want them to have those reactions. I’m honored that they’re aware of my existence. But, I’ve had the last two months to remember where I came from, which is to use this band as a huge point of catharsis and to use this band to deal with the things I feel and the problems I have in my life, and that is the point of this band, and that is what I’m getting back to. So, having that spirituality behind it, having a spiritual model to work and build around, that’s really important to me — the idea of catharsis when we play, for everyone, really. We’re all very emotionally attuned , and that’s a lot of where the music comes from — whatever we need to do individually to reach that catharsis. The guys are doing what they need to do, and I’m doing what I need to do, and hopefully we all start and stop at the same time.
Then I find out so and so is that guy I know about whose wife left him because he was emotionally abusive. So and so is in a band that used to heil hitler on stage. So and so is the singer of a band called Rape Whistle. These are the men that are fighting me tooth and nail. They want to rip me apart because I threatened their precious little status quo and outed them.
It’s amazing how such intensely individual experiences can all work so cohesively.
I’m really proud of the guys. They really care, very genuinely. And they’re all so damn talented. It’s a nice band to be in. I can trust everyone in this band to write good music and to not be jerks, and that’s hard to find, especially with a bunch of dudes.
Do you think we’ll ever reach a point where it’s not so outlandish for a band to stand for something?
There’s a reason that it’s so outlandish, and I think that’s because our culture is dominated by people who benefit directly from keeping a status quo maintained. I think that being willing to speak out is only going to become a dominant trend when the people that are currently in positions of power are removed from the system of power. I think the politics of oppression are terribly real, and I think the music industry, and music in general, is dominated by young white dudes who don’t need to have political thoughts, because the systems of oppression that affect them are not the same as those that affect other people. I think until the people in power are removed from positions of power, it’s always going to be considered an oddity. If your music is in any way political as it relates to your immediate experience, you’re marked as a political band whether you want to be or not. Until the status quo changes, that’s not going to change, and that’s fucked up.
But, on the plus side, because I do try to see the positive in everything, it makes it easier for us to find each other. All you have to do is look around, and you can see other marginalized people working actively in the arts, and you can find people to have communion with. And that’s really important.
Do you think there’s a way to dismantle the current system of power within the music industry? Perhaps by insisting upon and cultivating that sense of communion among people who speak out about marginalization?
I think people who legitimately speak out against marginalization automatically find each other, but that conversation remains distinctly separate from the music industry at large, which has a disappointing recent history of highlighting artists who speak out on behalf of causes that don’t actually have anything to do with their lives. People who are out there discussing the actual issues that affect their everyday survival develop their own systems of empowerment and it usually manifests in mutual support and community — and out of necessity, it generally involves consciously not including the people who oppress them. The real work is in dismantling that part of the spectacle — the image people buy into that makes them feel like they’re doing good, and right now that takes the form of pop stars who are trying to gain cred by talking about how it’s just so very OK to be yourself, when they’re never experienced any of that very real, very violent oppression themselves and shouldn’t be appropriating people’s struggles. Get the fuck out of the way and make room for people who have actual lived experience.
It’s 2014, it’s time to check your place in society and step aside to make room for people to tell the truth. That’s the only way to dismantle systems of power — by listening to people who speak truth to power.
[Top photo: PJ Sykes]
