The Sounds She Collected is a newsletter about mixtapes and mixed emotions. Thanks for being part of this hive mind for empathetic, hopeful people.
Welcome, welcome! And happy MONTERO day! You’re reading a new interview series I’ve been cooking up for quite some time here, The Conversation.
Here’s how it started—I’ve been thinking a lot about how we introduce ourselves. Typically, the first thing asked at a party is, “What do you do?” However, what we do isn’t the essence of who we are.
In a traditional interview, we’re introduced to the human being first through their latest accomplishments, their art, or something they are doing. The Conversation spotlights creative, multifaceted humans and aims to become the alternative to the traditional interview format, making it into more than a limited exchange, but a lasting connection.
Where a bio often comes first in an interview, here, you get to know a human being via their answers—they share who they are before you learn what they do. I pose different questions to each interviewee, with the aim of going beyond the surface each time. Maybe you’ll see yourself in the answers of another or learn something completely new.
The goal? To foster connection and add to a sense of wonder and beauty in a fragmented world. For others to see themselves in someone else and not feel alone. To spark creativity and share in hope together. And of course, to provide a discourse around mixtapes and mixed emotions. This space is vulnerable, safe, and a two-way exchange between the interviewer and interviewee, the interviewee and the audience.
Introducing the first Conversation, with Emily Jane Powers.
Shall we get started?
If your creative process was a dish you cooked, what would it be and why?
The cooking process would be chaotic, a recipe based solely from memory and intuition. The flavor profile would be sweet and sour, with charred vegetables and edible flowers; it would be an acquired taste. It would have been eaten in one sitting in the 2000s, but these days the leftovers are sensibly portioned into mason jars between tomorrow’s lunch in the fridge and next week’s dinner in the freezer.
What’s the hardest thing you’ve ever done?
Artistically, the hardest thing I have to wrestle with is an overly-critical inner voice that is sometimes out to destroy me.
Tell us about a song that changed your life. How do you feel when you hear it?
Well, you're in your little room
And you're working on something good
But if it's really good
You're gonna need a bigger room
And when you're in the bigger room
You might not know what to do
You might have to think of how you got started
Sitting in your little room
This isn’t the best song by The White Stripes or my favorite song by any means, but it’s the song that has made the largest philosophical impact on my music. “Little Room” is on 2001’s White Blood Cells and is a sparse 50-second drums and vocals duet about thriving creativity in a “little room,” and the confusion and disillusionment that occurs when you move up into the “bigger room.”
The song spoke to my teenage DIY sensibilities and made me feel inspired to make big sounds with a small number of items.
What do you think is the salve for disconnection?
I’m still trying to figure this out for myself! I think about this on two levels: disconnection from oneself and disconnection from others. I think the former needs to be addressed first and is probably the most elusive.
When I feel disconnected from myself it's usually because there is too much outside noise getting in my head and creating a wall between my own self-created thoughts / feelings and those coming at me. (Which maybe is to assume I have free will in my thoughts? But I’m not sure humans do?)
It’s weird, as I’m writing this I’m wondering if disconnecting from the outside world is the salve for disconnection with oneself.
What’s something about the world that you think about often?
I often think about different events over time that have happened in a singular space. For example, I think about everyone that has ever lived in my apartment, how they furnished it and what kind of life they lived, and all the people that will come after me.
Richard McGuire wrote beautifully about this in his 2014 graphic novel Here, where he chronologized one space over the span of time on earth, mostly focusing on the corner of a house from the 1970s to 1990s. I was deeply moved by this book and wrote a song inspired by a panel in the book called “Mourning Light” from my 2018 album Restless.
When you hear “self-compassion,” what does this mean to you?
Patience, patience, patience.
Tell me about the moment you knew you were an artist.
I can’t pinpoint a particular moment, but as a kid I had the rudimentary idea that an artist “makes” things, either useful items or lovely objects. I always felt good making things because I could create my own world, which I guess could be the beginning of self-expression? I’m equally interested and find beauty in utilitarian and intangible sonic vibrations, and consider it all art.
I’ve always been drawn to artistic processes that had a technical aspect to them (the strings on the guitar had to be strung in a particular order for the tension of the guitar to work correctly, film had to be developed in the correct order with certain chemicals or else the negatives would be ruined), but where mistakes could be embraced and used (there’s an infinite amount of ways you can reverberate the springs on the guitar, an overexposed photograph can reveal just as much beauty as a perfectly balanced one).
What does transformation feel like to you?
Watching a figure drawing in slow motion.
What matters to you?
Fairness and justice.
What’s something you recently learned about yourself?
I am better when I ask for and accept help.
About Emily Jane Powers:
Over the course of a lengthy and shifting body of work, Emily Jane Powers’ music evolved from rough-edged bedroom pop into songwriting that was intricate and unyielding, reaching an apex of unvarnished expression with 2018’s Restless. Simultaneously lushly drawn and almost painfully raw, Restless was one of Powers’ most vulnerable statements, crafting an emotional environment that felt self-contained. There’s a change of course with the new album Isometry in terms of delivery, with familiar themes of mental health, loss, and memory being conveyed less with words and more through the inexhaustible possibilities of the guitar.
Heavy and beautiful, Isometry is one of the more unexpected chapters of Powers’ work, and one that weaves together anxiety, sorrow, joy, and abandon with staggering clarity. It’s a shift in her musical voice and priorities that somehow emerges even more direct, more fearless through its embrace of dazzling guitar arrangements and wordless impressions.