On Sunday night I was putting my clothes away and realised Virgin had been out for almost a year. I decided something had to be done about that.
To be honest I haven’t really known how to talk about Virgin since it came out. I’d thought I was accustomed and even a bit desensitised to marketing and commodifying my feelings at this point in my life, but sharing Virgin felt raw and exposing in a new way.* I interviewed poorly, couldn’t write here, haven’t posted much. I think I needed to just be quiet for a while. It also makes sense to me that such physical work would resist being trapped with language. But some time has passed, and I wanna try to find the words.
Making an album is an absurd act. The self absorption and belief required make you tough to be around. You disappear completely into your own world, always sort of muttering, constantly on the edge of a breakthrough. The work is really bad for a long time, you’re have to live in the wrongness and hack your way out. Sometimes the discomfort and mundanity are hard to see past, but every single day making Virgin was a total gift. I had the sense that I was setting myself free, building a holy site. I laid each layer with utmost care.
I was trying to heal myself of a brief but long gestating eating disorder. I had recently deleted Myfitnesspal. The week we started what would become Shapeshifter and What Was That I was working on believing that breakfast wasn’t a negotiation. I made myself drink a smoothie every morning, went to work when I wanted to run away, kept trying, one foot in front of the other.
I was going through a breakup. Instead of hotels I stayed in the spare beds and on the couches of many friends. The care these women showed me through this time is a huge reason Virgin exists. In 2024 one of these friends looked me in the eye and said evenly, you seem to fall into this intense depression about the album every time you get your period. Some months after that I was diagnosed with PMDD.
I wore a pair of men’s jeans and a black zip hoodie every day, no matter the weather. My acne was a thick beard going down my neck. I felt monstrous and sacred. I borrowed a bike and felt myself spreading out, slipping in, awake to the millions of subtle codes being sent and received around the city and the energy of it all collecting above our heads.
I concentrated on singing to myself the way I needed to be sung to. Gradually I put music and language to old stories I had been scared to tell. I purged them out of me and felt lighter. Living in these songs had an incantatory effect. I felt myself change.
Brat came out, a weather system of fearlessness and fragility. My nascent stage was suddenly, shockingly external. I had to really look at my shit and stay open. Charli kept me close and gave me the perfect amount of space, that takes real care. My faith in music as a social technology was restored. At the parties and festivals I smoked and sang and felt like part of the human race.
We took the X-rays that would become the album art on March 2nd, 2025. When it was time for me to be scanned I felt insane, off the map, at a medical facility in my both my grandmothers’ jewellery conducting some kind of seance or exorcism. The old fears rose up. I was sure the machine would reveal an ugliness and wrongness that went all the way to the bone. Eric sensed what was happening for me as we set up the first shot. He touched my hand, said softly, it will be perfect, it’s a picture of you, any way you are today is perfect and right.
I’ve talked about how I tried to love Virgin all the way through, not just when it was a saleable product. I was struck over and over during the process by moments of deep beauty when we were just stumbling onto something or going completely in the wrong direction. Last year we played around with making an album worth of these skeleton versions, cool composites of a few different versions. But on Sunday night, I realised true X-rays of Virgin would be realer, funnier, more revealing of crookedness and slant, less about where we ended up than celebratory of the way of travelling, the repetitions, the acne, the journey. Like Eric said, truly you is beautiful. It’s how I’m trying to live.
https://untitled.stream/library/project/s9vE9MvCjdHzXc1QKkxEw
Thank you, as always, for making room in your lives for any facet of my art project. It’s a true honour to be received by you. Have fun with this, hope you enjoy digging around. I can’t wait to see you this summer.
Love you so much
Exxxxxxxxx
PS. Gonna toss this all up on my friends’ new platform Lume when it launches.. will tell you more soon
*At some point I googled ‘burnout symptoms’. I am on an ssri now and am feeling much better.
(source: received this email)
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