Music Crush: My Brightest Obsession

Photo by Vinciane

Yes, again...I will not stop ranting, shouting or wittering on My Brightest Diamond, the best band in the universe, until every single one of you (yes, the whole 2 of you) tells me what they think about it. Shara Worden, lead singer, guitarist, composer & writer, is the beating heart of this shiny lyrical treasure. As mentionned previously, I had the chance, no, the privilege to meet and interview with this 5 feet-ish giant of a woman.

Early october, she performed a single (heartwrenching) show in Paris. Thanks to the kick-ass association I belong to (my buddies over at PopInGays), I was awarded 30 minutes with my own personal joy provider (nooo, not sexually, come ON, focus !). As petrified as I was to be in the presence of, well, my idol (let's face it, I'm musically in love with her), I still found in me the strength to open my little black notebook, turn on my phone/dishwasher/recorder and utter a few questions. To which she gracefully answered, in extended length, granting me while at it, with some of her special thundering laughter. Here, for your eyes only, is the uncensored full-length (and then some) Q&A with the magnificient Shara Worden.

Lez: Do you know if gays and lesbians love you?
Shara: I'm hoping for it, because then it's like you're a real diva..

L: Do you see yourself as a diva?
S: Well, I don't know but you always want to be awarded that !

L: So I take it you're happy to be back in Paris [last show was on her birthday]. It seems like there is something specific between you and French culture. Do you know why that is?
S: I feel there is a certain sensuality about French culture and a prioritization of beauty that I am drawn to. The music that I've been exposed to is often like looking through dark glass at something instead of looking at it like a straight photograph, it's more obscured, there like a shadow over it, or another layer. Certainly like Jean-Pierre Jeunet, his sense of humour and the sweetness that he'll find in someone, like a bubble. I guess I also romanticize it since I see the French culture from a distance and I don't know all the negative.

L: You're a bit [Edith] Piaf obsessed, who would you have turned to hadn't she existed?
S: Yeah who? Good question. As a composer I think Kurt Weil lives a little bit in the same world as she does. She's a kind of a bridge between the straight classical singer and the folk music singer, that gives music of the people. I love people who jump out of boxes and categories, that the ego really really loves to attach to performers. I love it when people really just refuse labels.

L: If you had to choose between classical/opera music and indie/pop music, which would it be?
S: I have chosen new music, so for me making something new and that is mine and being creative is the most important. I think the draw to classical music is because it is very much aware of its audience and has to play to their audience in a lot of ways. There is definitely an entertainment factor in classical music. To me there is something very pure about that kind of art for art's sake. But then, there's that as well in rock music ...
See, my favorite opera is Peléas et Mélisande by Debussy. It's a chamber piece that he never intended for the public. He intended it only to be for is friends because he thought people would be appalled by it. You know, they'll play it very infrequently at the Met. They'll do 6 shows and I'll sit through the 6 of them just crying, like [she mimic violent sobs] aaah it's soooo beauuutifuuul...

L: Is that what want people to feel like at your shows ?
S: I think but I don't know how to create that environment. What I know is how I feel so if I try to be in touch with myself and truly joyful or truly sad or just really in the present, with what's happening. Then again I don't really know when it is that someone's going to respond to something. Sometimes you don't what triggers emotions.

L: How are you going to transcribe the rich layered recording of the albums into a live performance, with a live band ?
S: Well tonight, it's just me and a string trio. No drums, no band. OK, the violinist also plays bass, he switches for 2 songs. And I started programming beats, for the solo tour, because I needed to push it up a bit. I'm certainly not a good drum programmer at all, but it serves the purpose. I'm not comfortable with it but I'm having a lot of fun.

L: Which one do you like better then, recording in a studio or performing live?
S: You know, right now, they're very equal for me. Before touring so much, it was really about the very internal process. But I really am finding that the music does very different things and I want to play very very different things than when I was by myself in my bedroom. In studio, you can create your dreams in a very isolated and controlled environment. I'm going to try bring recording and performing closer together. It's been a very interesting thing, this dichotomy.

L: So are you going to try different projects with My Brightest Diamond? Are you going to evolve towards differents things, like puppets or papier-maché ?
S: Oh yeah puppets ! [laughs] And papier-maché too, love it! I don't know how it's going to work yet but I'm really toying around with those ideas, like a puppet show and musical performance combined.

L: Have you ever considered drawing/writing/singing for kids?
S: I always gravitate towards children and children stores and all the operas that I love have got kids in them, you know like L'enfant et les sortilèges [by Maurice Ravel]. I think it's a place that I need. I think when you've suffered, sometimes it's easier to get in touch with your inner child and that childish joy. I think I have a hard time finding that as an adult. It's easier for me to connect with the joy that I had as a small person. Maybe, [she assumes a very melodramatic tone and posture] maybe I'll grow, as journey, on with this life. [cracks up laughing]

L: But do you still live in the same world as I do ? Because the records, especially A thousand Sharks Teeth, feel like they're in some kind of a bubble !
S: I think that those things are all in life and the songs just happen to be drawing them out. Because I'm actually so much in this world, for real! I think spirit is just as real as anything else. But it's so much easier for me to believe in the realm of imagination. The world operates so much around an ego framework that your values are based on what you do and who you are. It's all defined by the box in which I'd want to put you in, whether it's gender, age, status, sexual orientation. For an artist, it's how many people you can get in a venue and therefore have more clout or less clout. In the end, it's all very business oriented.

To relate that to the record and what it's all about, it all comes down to intimacy and relationships. It's abour feeling those places in yourself where you find a block within, that is vastly full of fear of being rejected. Yeah, that's it : if you were completely known, would you still be loved ? "Inside a boy", "Ice and the storm" and "Goodbye forever" are all about how can I be close and not be afraid of not being loved. It's something I bump into sometimes, and I think it's a very deep fear of human kind, really.

The other pieces are very much about death. Someone extremely close to me died and so half the record is about that. I think the music is discussing these very tangible, very real things, very real world physical, every day kind of things and music is a way for me of processing that. In a way, this record has been a catharsis and a way of helping me let go. It's like a therapy, it's a way of reaching for that. I believe spirit is so much bigger and wider and limitless, and that's why music expresses how we are or not just our bodies. It's an endless search. I'll let you know when I find something ! [booming laughter that I wish I could put down in words]

I think that's what music and art tap into, that thing that is somehow greater than ourselves. That's what I love in a show, the feeling that you feel suddenly more connected to the world than ever, you suddenly feel like *huge sigh*, this thing just happened.. I think performing is about accessing that place more me.

L: Have you noticed different reactions to your music, depending on where you are?
S: I guess I noticed it more on this last tour. I guess what I'm about to say is that the stereotypes I had have been complitely obliterated, which is really cool. The Italians, the other times I'd been playing, have been singing along like crazy. It was a singalong fest! Spanish culture is kind of very verbally expressive too. And ironically, the last show we played in Milan was like, total silence. And there was a lot of head cocking too. I hope it was more a "my God this is so beautiful I'm goind to die" than "I'm sooo bored" kinda way...It must be because of the back up string line-up !

[At this point, a production guy enters the room for a second to check on us. Like I was going to rape her, or propose or something. Politely taking my cue, I then told Shara I wouldn't be bothering her much longer. To which she replied ]

S: Oh no, please, don't! This is like the easiest interview I've ever had in my life! [Can you feel me gloat ?]. All this time, I feel I've gotten to say how I actually feel instead of doing backflips to meet a certain objective, which is really exhauting! In a lot of interviews, they ask me questions, like, "would you have My Brightest Diamond land?" and I'm like wooooo ok I'll do this. But I'm really jumping through someone elses hoops and 90% of interviews are like that. You have to learn how to be a politician, learn how to sort of side questions you don't want to answer and to not look like an idiot...But you, you're easy ! [no, not in that sense ! And gloating again]

L: So is avoiding or dodging questions something you do easily ?
S: No, I hate it ! But a lot of interviews tend to be formated. Here, I just talked for 30 minutes and haven't given you 2 minutes sound bites or clean answers. Which is what most interviewers are looking for.

L: One last question: do you have a My Brightest Diamond ringtone ? Do you see them as some kind of a sell out?
S: I don't but my husband [alas] does ! I really like the "Music Box" one. I think it was my idea actually! I sort of sold out for the other two. I think that the fact that people download records is undeniable. I am doing music with my life and it's not easy. To me, ringtones is something that's fun, it doesn't seem like too much of a compromise to me, in that if this is something that people are going to download for 99 cents. I'm still trying to figure out how to live. I want to do music with my life and my husband tours with me. We work real hard. For me, taking an add for an oil company is not something I'm going to do, but I did take a perfume commercial... I think it's Eau de Jeune or something... Ethically, I should have looked up, like, if they do animal testing, because that's something I care about. At the same time, I decided to do it because I unfortunately needed to. I do have to live ! I think that now is a time where we have to be creative, like at the merch table and on tour. I feel what people want now is to feel connected and buying a record, they don't associate that with having a personnal experience anymore. So from the business side of things, we're all asking ourselves "how are we going to do this" ?

I also need to figure out how to make money, when someone like me, when i find out what my budget is going to be, goes like:[she gets all frantic]"oh cool! Now, I can get a bubble maker, I can add another string player or a sound man...". But wait. I don't want to sound ungrateful or anything, because everything in life is hard work, I know that. But I also want to grow and it's sort of what life gives you. I have friends that have become huge superstars but they're really unhappy and are super super sad [think Sufjan Stevens, maybe. Just a wild guess]. They have people that come to their show who are loud and really disrespectful to their really beautiful songs. It's a lot of hard work, for a really long time, that all comes down to that. It's sad. Sometimes you work towards what you think you want and in the end it doesn't look like what you thought you'd be getting. I'm trying to be grateful and not panic about, you know, [in a shivering voice] "how are we gonna do this"?

L: Are you on the verge of panicking? Because you certainly don't look like it!
S: I have been. I've been touring for the past year and it's really tiring, being in a different place everytime. My relationships have all changed, my friends have really had to adapt to me a lot. I've lost many friends over it, which is intense. And that's ok but again it's a hard lifestyle. And on the body too. But in europe we get this amaaazing food, so it's all good. That's another stereotype. Except in the UK. The food is terrible in the UK.

Again, I think it's an oldschool punk idea that art shouldn't be used for any commercial purposes. I think that's amazing, because I don't believe music should be made for the purpose of commerciality. I'm not trying to get into a car commercial but that model of music, the one where you go: "Here, I made a record. Would you buy this thing that I made?" This model has just evaporated. So then how are you gonna live? Where does the source of income come from? It's touring, merchandise or a perfume commercial ! I guess it's ok, as long as I don't compromise what I do for it. And minor keys don't really sell anyways so... But I would take another commercial. Or maybe write for one, and that's a totally different story! We'll see where I'm at, next time I'm in Paris !


And that was it. 45 minutes during which my time stopped and I though "Hmm. I love my life. Yay me". After which, the sweet, doe-eyed Shara, seing that I was sort of crippled (remember? Single-shouldered) kindly offered to save me a seat in the front front row. Humble, funny, generous, gentle. Genius.

Because I can't post the audio here (it's mine. MINE ! My preeecious), to get an idea of her insane and communicative laughter, watch this, until the very end.

#16.3-My Brightest Diamond-Hymne...
envoyé par lablogotheque

More amazing MBD photos by Vinciane here.