dumbstruck with the sweetness of being

“A lot of the writing about my music is done through a lens of straight-up sexism and, in other cases, just a coding of feminising of things,” she says. “I’ve ranted about this in the past, so I don’t want to go into it too much again. But there’s a quality I might share with…” She goes silent for a few moments. “I’m trying to think of a male musician I’ve ever been compared to. Like early, early days: Devendra Banhart. He and I had some aesthetic similarities: the music was pulling in some ways to a similar place. But where for him people would use words like ‘eccentric’ or ‘psychedelic’ and for me they’d use ‘fairytales’ and ‘unicorns’. “It’s an infantilising thing that happens,” she goes on. “The language is minimising and narrowing of possible narrative depth. It’s the opposite of delving, really. But this is ancient history. I’ve not paid as much attention as I used to, because it was so disturbing to me when I was younger.”

Cultures of domination rely on the cultivation of fear as a way to ensure obedience. In our society we make much of love and say little about fear. Yet we are all terribly afraid most of the time. As a culture we are obsessed with the notion of safety. Yet we do not question why we live in states of extreme anxiety and dread. Fear is the primary force upholding structures of domination. It promotes the desire for separation, the desire not to be known. When we are taught that safety lies always with sameness, then difference, of any kind, will appear as a threat. When we choose to love we choose to move against fear—against alienation and separation. The choice to love is a choice to connect—to find ourselves in the other.