The way I see it: artists on politics
Does art make a difference?
Art participates. I don't know if it makes a difference. It's another way of participating in the evolving collective consciousness.
Does money corrupt an artist?
Money introduces different kinds of opportunities for an artist. I don't see it as necessarily a corrupting force, but it does change terms: it changes things.
Is your work for the many or the few?
That's not really for me to decide. There are so many reasons why something gets picked up or adopted by a small or large group of people. It's not just about the intention of the work but a window of opportunity in culture that would allow the work to see the light of day. I don't have any sense of addressing a particular audience. For me, it's more open-ended; it's like throwing a dream up into the air and seeing what happens.
Which artist do you most admire?
On the cover of my album The Crying Light is one of my heroes, Kazuo Ohno. He's one of the founders of butoh dance and has this moving way of embodying his spirit-muse. He steps on to the stage and the spirit of his mother or his child aspect just emerges from his heart and compels him to dance. Or he dreams about a flamingo bursting from his chest, or his arms, as the veins of a fish full of cold blood. I studied butoh in my early twenties and I find myself still exploring some of these ideas in my music today.
Which artist do you least admire?
What a terrible question! Oh, Shakespeare.
If you were world leader, what would be your first law?
Switch every person in a position of political or corporate power with a person of the opposite sex.
Who would be your top advisers?
I'd call an international conference of mothers, ask them how they're feeling about things, and maybe we could put some muscle behind supporting their vision of how they'd like things to be. Recently, I've been thinking that maybe we have three main archetypes within us: the father, the mother and the child. It's a question of which ones we employ to help us navigate the problems we face.
I feel that in a lot of cultures the masculine archetype has forgotten that his primary purpose is to serve and protect the childlike and feminine aspects inside himself, and instead he is holding them hostage. He needs to find his humility and fall back into the service of the feminine.
What would you legalise?
Being a free woman. And in so many parts of the world being transgender or gay is still punishable by death. You have to legalise self-expression.
Who would you banish?
I would banish the kind of capitalism that leaves manufacturers and vendors unaccountable for the waste they produce. It's easy in the west to want to have your cake and eat it. It's so seductive, I'm still under its spell. I'm grappling with it, I haven't found any solutions.
What are the rules you live by?
Taking planes - that's just burning a hole in my mind. As a touring artist, I'm still taking planes to get to gigs and it feels problematic. Do I stop travelling? The amount of flying that it takes to tour is making me feel bad.
