“Participating in the arts, as an observer or creating it, can be a way to touch and heal and recontextualize and bolster and imagine and be excited by and to be let loose which, for someone whose very self is at odds with the world around them, can be the literal difference between life and death. It is important for the well-being of all people but I think it may have a slightly more significant place for LGBTQIA+ people or for any group or individual who faces an excess of scrutiny, bigotry, violence, or ostracization for who they are. It is a place to turn negative experience and negative feeling into something other than oppression or pain.” – Jamie Stewart, Xiu Xiu
+ + + + +
JAMIE STEWART x LOGAN LYNN
for DotGay Blog (2021)
(Interview posted at OhHey.gay and LoganLynnMusic.com)
#XiuXiu
(Photo by Jeremy Lange)
In the spring of 2017 I had the chance to sit down with Mitski to talk about music, self-care, and what was happening in her life at the time as she transitioned from being an IYKYK indie artist to being very well known across the globe. During that conversation she said a bunch of thoughtful, incredibly tender things, but this part has always stuck with me:
“I think the most important process for understanding the world and what’s going on in yourself is to name things. We name streets, flowers, people, experiences, identities – we need to name a thing in order to make sense of it. I think songwriting is another naming process, where you give a name to a big muck inside you, or at least a little part of the big muck, in order to feel like you know it, and know where to put it. So I could say that writing songs has been a gateway to a deeper understanding of myself, but I actually think songwriting has given me a much simpler understanding of myself, in that all these messy, dark, unknowable things can be named, and become 3-minute songs to put on an iPhone instead of stirring in the big goop of the mind.”
+ + + + +
MITSKI x LOGAN LYNN
“Naming The Big Muck Inside You”
Read our chat in full HERE.
