how am i not myself?

always a nominee, never a winner

Prefacing this by excusing myself for incoherence because I’m coming off three concerts in a row (one in Germany, two in Austria); and am still running on NYC time which I’m not remotely fighting because after Friday’s show in Zurich I’m flying back.

Earlier this week I was copyediting my dear friend Sayori Radda’s interview of filmmaker and photographer Anton Corbijn (who recently just showed at the Kunsthalle here in Vienna). The interview took place on their shared birthday — his 70th, and respectively, her 33rd. Through doing this, I learned various fragments of Corbijn’s life and career which I found thrilling, such as him having David Bowie’s accidental death mask — produced for an Arcade Fire music video Corbijn directed; made because Bowie was too sick to make the trip in person, and he ended up sending what would end up being the last cast of his face. It makes me think, which of my photographs on my camera roll could be that for me, what screenshot of a FaceTime call, which selfie will have been my accidental death mask?

Anyway, what significantly resonated with me was a sentiment Corbijn shared in his closing answers, regarding a prize he’d been nominated for and lost. Now, I know I’m just a girl who loves relating everything back to myself and taking everything personally, and so on (Zizek voice) — call me Edmund Husserl the way I originate all meaning from the self and constitute all otherness by the self — but as someone that has several nominations under their belt and only one win (my music won an advertising award, so not even an actual music award) — yes, I’m fully aware they’re arbitrary for the most part — it just hit home. Corbijn ends it with “it’s just nice to have them, to be acknowledged, and they do help you fund art”. The jury told him they liked him a lot, but gave the prize to someone they felt could benefit from it better. I feel like I fall into neither category (jury favorite or crowd favorite). Yet they undeniably hold some significance, simply for the reason Corbijn mentioned, even if people who have won them love to tell you they don’t.

Corbijn also managed to talk about himself in a very deferential sort of way, which I respect. Or maybe he’s just 70 and so locked in with his self at this point. In music, I increasingly notice people seemingly very concerned with “sound” and how one has to “find it”, and it has to be this uniform, singular language, that exists throughout an entirety of an artist’s career, and so on. I find this trite, tiresome, limiting, and whatever, I’m just like having fun, ♪I’m just a showgirl that likes bikinis, blow up my life like German New Guinea♫. I end up more concerned with the a specific tone on an actual song. Yet maybe that’s the musical equivalent of Freud’s oral phase or whatever, and I’m just developmentally stunted. For when faced with having to describe myself, my sound, I just find myself telling the same old story over and over again, that I’ve been playing violin since I was three years old, I studied at the Conservatory of Vienna as a teenager, my trajectory with music professionally outside of classical began when I accepted an internship and then a subsequent full time position at Stones Throw Records with 19, etc. (The full bio is one online search away.) An answer that isn’t particularly satisfying to say, and the more I have to repeat myself, the more I begin to feel like Jude Law in I Heart Huckabees.

me playing Carnegie hall in 2001, my teenage university student ID at the Konservatorium

I just wonder how many more times I will have to talk about my life. My life, my origin story or whatever, these things will not change. Yes, I can choose to revise and copyedit my own history per se, but there are a few facts will always remain the same, unless I choose completely lie (which invariably, as only child that skipped a grade, I was no stranger to doing in my precocious, pre-pubescent years, and I discovered it to be not a very joyous — at least not in the long-term — past-time). I spent the last six years of my life studying philosophy amongst other things (I did a triple BEd in Philosophy, Psychology and English) and it’s left an indelible mark on me. Six years spent on manifold theories of the self and yet none have really made me wiser.

I find myself jealous, not in a despotic way but in a rather sad, self-pitying kind of way (far worse if you ask me, so pathetic!) of people who seem to have historically always had their “thing” and are doing it, whereas I seem to, throughout my life, just try everything out on a whim*, which yes, has gotten me this far, but where am I?

*I don’t think you can really claim whimsical unless you really are at the mercy of your every whim and desire. I am, and yes, it has put me in many a precarious situation.

Music has been the only constant, yet it’s taken on so many forms. It’s been with me my whole life but in such disparate, often contradictory settings. Perhaps it’s time to turn to a more deconstructive approach, defer meaning, Derrida-style or whatever, full anarcho mode, not only accept but reconcile myself with my objet petit a.

It’s also fun to find motifs in your life that exist outside of yourself, like rewatching a movie with some significant time apart (for me lately it was Bowie’s The Man Who Fell to Earth at the Metrograph last week or the James Dean statue at the Griffith Park Observatory in LA). If anyone’s made it this far I’d love to hear yours.

Myself in LA at 23, a photo I took of the James Dean statue on that same roll of film; followed by myself at the same statue at 33.

Signing off by letting you know I’m currently nominated for best pop album at the 2025 Libera Awards, taking place at Gotham Hall on June 9th.

Wish me luck!

PS. America tour starts on June 11th! Will you be coming?