{"id":1591675,"date":"2024-04-05T07:00:00","date_gmt":"2024-04-05T07:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thecreativeindependent.com\/people\/musician-sarah-mary-chadwick-on-how-art-doesnt-change-your-past"},"modified":"2024-04-05T07:00:00","modified_gmt":"2024-04-05T07:00:00","slug":"musician-and-artist-sarah-mary-chadwick-on-how-art-doesnt-change-your-past-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/2024\/04\/05\/musician-and-artist-sarah-mary-chadwick-on-how-art-doesnt-change-your-past-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Musician and artist Sarah Mary Chadwick on how art doesn\u2019t change your past"},"content":{"rendered":"

The first time I encountered your music, the reason I clicked on it was because of the cover art, which was of one of your paintings. It depicts this humongous, grotesque, extremely tall woman with her hands submerged in the laps of two even more humongous, shirtless, extremely tall men. That image<\/a> has this sort of \u201cphone call home from the principal\u201d quality. Like, \u201cWe need to talk about what Sarah drew in class today.\u201d This isn\u2019t to say that it\u2019s juvenile, but that if a young person were to have made it, they might get in trouble or make people worried. Is your music ever a way of hinting that you need help?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n

You know what? Where I\u2019m at with therapy and shit at the moment, that actually makes perfect sense, because lately I\u2019ve been thinking about how I was really good at school, but got expelled from the boarding part, and I\u2019ve been wondering what was so different about those two environments that in one I was at the top of all this bullshit and basically excelling, while in the other I was in enough trouble that I got kicked out.<\/p>\n\n

I\u2019ve done heaps of work about when I was a really little child, but now I\u2019m thinking about my teenage years and how fucking weird it was and how no one really checked up on me or was like, \u201cOh, weird. She was at the top of these subjects and then in her last year of high school, she barely passed anything.\u201d No one noticed. On some level it probably literally is just about going back to that point and demanding attention.<\/span> It literally, probably is<\/i> that. No one, not even the principal, ever called my mum and mum never cared.<\/p>\n\n

Has your work ever, that you know of, offended people?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n

Definitely not to my face.<\/p>\n\n

There was a song my band used to play that was really mean, about this woman I know who\u2019s still around, and I don\u2019t like her. All of a sudden, she started acting unkind, like she<\/i> really didn\u2019t like me<\/i>, and part of me was like: \u201cOh, did someone tell her that song was about her?\u201d Because it\u2019s just really mean, this song, about how she\u2019s a boring girl who will one day make a boring wife, and I think it definitely got back to her.<\/p>\n\n

On my last record, Messages to God<\/a>,<\/i> there\u2019s this song<\/a> that goes: \u201cMy mum thought my first boyfriend looked just like Jesus.\u201d When I was playing that at the record launch, I realized that Sam, the guy that it\u2019s about, was at the show. So I stopped and I pointed it out to everyone. Like, \u201cOh, he\u2019s here!\u201d<\/p>\n\n

I think it\u2019s fun to play around with this stuff and no one seems to have gotten too angry, but maybe it\u2019s just because I\u2019m such an amazing person. I don\u2019t know.<\/p>\n\n

I was going through old messages, reading the things that I\u2019ve said to try to put my friends onto your music over the years, and one that made me laugh was: \u201cThis is like if somebody who\u2019s just been dragged behind a train for miles has to prop themselves up and deliver the final, triumphant number in a Broadway musical.\u201d Where does your knack for theatrics come from?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n

When I was younger, there was a period where I got a bit diverted into thinking that creativity was divine and that you had to wait for inspiration, but as I\u2019ve gotten older, I\u2019ve really leaned more into the idea of just being an entertainer.<\/span><\/p>\n\n

I like extravagant things and I like people that go big. I like Lars von Trier movies, things that get absolutely sick and almost beyond good taste. I like grandiosity, and I feel like if I talked more about it, it would very neatly fit into how people define \u2018camp.\u2019 I like being entertained and I like things that are funny and I like things that are fun.<\/span><\/p>\n\n

Are you a theatrical person in real life?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n

As much as I\u2019m really candid in a lot of ways, I\u2019ve always been a bit funny about controlling my own narrative. I don\u2019t like people knowing my business unless it comes from me. In that way, I try not to be a dramatic person in my life, but I think that most people I know would probably laugh in my face if they heard me say that. Actually, I ran into an old friend the other day at my art exhibition, and he asked me how I was doing. I was like, \u201cOh, there\u2019s nothing really going on. I\u2019m good.\u201d And he said, \u201cOh, you\u2019ve retired, have you?\u201d<\/p>\n\n

What do you think about when other<\/i> people act dramatically, when people make scenes?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n

It\u2019s taken me a long time to get to a place where I\u2019m not trying to figure out why other people might not be so interested in acting out their emotions or living their lives in an honest way. When I was young, it frustrated me if someone wouldn\u2019t admit things or talk about what was going on.<\/p>\n\n

So do I like it when people make a scene? I think yes\u2014but probably, actually, unequivocally yes.<\/span> I\u2019m trying to think if there are any exceptions, and I\u2019m like: \u201cNo, no. I would love to watch that person make a scene.\u201d<\/p>\n\n

I know so little about the part of the world where you\u2019re from that I had to Google, \u201cWhat do you call Australia and New Zealand together?\u201d How do you refer to them as a unit?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n

Is it \u201cAustralasia?\u201d<\/p>\n\n

I think it\u2019s \u201cOceania?\u201d I\u2019m still not sure. There are so many celebrities, whether it\u2019s in Hollywood or music, who are these sort of crypto-Australians. You know their work first and then later you find out that they\u2019re Australian. What do you make of that?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n

I was listening to Marc Maron the other day and he was interviewing Joel Edgerton<\/a> or whatever his name is, and he was like, \u201cAh, there\u2019s just something in the water down there in Australia,\u201d in reference to people like Kylie Minogue, Naomi Watts, Nicole Kidman or Margot Robbie. There is definitely something idiosyncratic about Australia, and New Zealand in particular, that is not accurately represented in terms of who becomes famous from those places.<\/p>\n\n

Yes, there are<\/i> Australian exports that do well in America, but they are very much carbon copies of each other physically. I feel like Melanie Lynskey<\/a> is quite an accurate New Zealand export. As I see it represented in interviews or even in her acting, her character is like someone that, if you\u2019re in New Zealand, you might run into someone like that at the shops.<\/p>\n\n

Yesterday while I was writing these questions, this song by Julio Iglesias came on, an English language song called \u201cMoonlight Lady,\u201d and his delivery was just so totally loaded with his thick Spanish accent. I love it. One thing that I love about your music is that your Kiwi accent is always there, jutting out at odd angles. Could you choose to not sing this way?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n

Yes, I think it\u2019s absolutely a choice and it really frustrates me that people don\u2019t choose their own voices.<\/p>\n\n

Once, I was playing in France\u2014this was with my band Batrider<\/a> in my 20s\u2014and there was a French band that sang in an American accent, and I remember asking them about it afterwards. They were like, \u201cOh, we sing in English because French is in triplets and English is in iambic pentameter, and so it\u2019s easier to sing with rock music.\u201d At the time I thought it made sense, but in reality I think they just really wanted to be famous. I think that was a bit of bullshit.<\/p>\n\n

In Australia in particular, I really don\u2019t like when people sing all in an American accent and then always do their Os in Australian, so a word like \u201chome\u201d will really leap out. I can understand the desire to make your work palatable, and therefore more marketable. But to me, especially when the songs are already personal, it\u2019s just kind of an odd point at which to depersonalize what you do.<\/span><\/p>\n\n

I think, for women, it\u2019s different because there\u2019s less latitude for having what\u2019s defined as a conventionally \u2018good\u2019 singing voice. No one would ever say that Neil Young has a bad voice, but he has a very strange voice. Whereas with women, you have to sound like Adele, or else you kind of can\u2019t sing.<\/span><\/p>\n\n

I read somewhere that you don\u2019t believe in such a thing as the \u201cperfect\u201d vocal take. As a result, your records are often charged with whatever was going through your voice at one particular moment, and there hasn\u2019t been too much of an attempt to sand that down. How do you decide when something is done?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n

I tend to work with a deadline. I work a lot with the prospect of being embarrassed if I\u2019m not prepared. I\u2019ll pick a time when I have to be done by, and I tell myself I can use my time however I like, but there is going to be a point at which I\u2019ll have to sit down with someone and show them what I\u2019ve gotten up to. It\u2019s up to me if it\u2019s enough or not.<\/span><\/p>\n\n

In another interview, you said that as a kid, you were a really prolific reader. Were you reading fiction?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n

I read so many books, but I also read some things obsessively, over and over again.<\/p>\n\n

I made this record that\u2019s just me and a pipe organ that\u2019s called The Queen Who Stole The Sky<\/a><\/i>. I took the title from a children\u2019s book<\/a> about a really demanding queen who kept asking for more and more and more from the king, and then her last request was that she wanted a dress made out of the sky, so then he pulls down the sky and then the world\u2019s kind of fucked.<\/p>\n\n

One book in particular, a young adult novel called The Poetry Girl<\/a><\/i> <\/a>by a New Zealand writer Beverley Dunlop, was about a young girl in New Zealand who read poetry like Tennyson and Keats to escape her life on the farm while her parents were fighting, which in retrospect was literally just like my life. It\u2019s only occurring to me now\u2014how that literally was my life.<\/p>\n\n

That book looms so large in my psyche. There\u2019s a line in one of my songs that goes, \u201cSometimes I wanna clench my fists \/ leave red crescent moons in my palms,\u201d because that\u2019s something the girl in the book does. All those funny books that I read then really do play into my creative process now.<\/span><\/p>\n\n

When you give creative expression to painful memories, is that a way of clinging to them, or are you unburdening yourself by finding a way to set them down?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n

It might be neither.<\/p>\n\n

Growing up, I only had one brother, so there were very few witnesses around to validate my recollection of things. I rehash the past in my work\u2014I keep repeating things and repeating things and repeating things\u2014because, on some level, I really don\u2019t know if it\u2019s true or not.<\/span><\/p>\n\n

The word \u201ccatharsis\u201d gets thrown around a lot when people write about my music and I don\u2019t agree with that at all. It\u2019s difficult for me to think of something that achieves actual catharsis. Actually, I feel like catharsis is this almost pretend idea\u2014something totally made-up. I don\u2019t think there is ever one process or one experience that you can have that would completely relieve you of something.<\/span><\/p>\n\n

Obviously, people\u2019s experiences of having a family are far from universal or uniform, but almost everyone has a family of origin. Yet, popular music is almost exclusively fixated on romantic entanglements, rather than the ones we might have with, say, parents or siblings. Why do you think that is?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n

I think that there\u2019s something kind of inherently gauche or embarrassing about talking about your family. I remember when I was maybe twenty, being at a bar with my then-girlfriend who was twenty-five, and eavesdropping on this much older woman as she went on about her family troubles. We were like, \u201cOh my god, if I am still going on about my parents when I am that age, just literally kill me.\u201d And then of course, I\u2019m forty-one now and still more or less knee-deep in it.<\/p>\n\n

I can\u2019t help but answer this through a psychoanalytic perspective, which would say that in addressing our lovers, in real life or in art, we are<\/i> addressing our parents, too. For example, my reaction to something that my partner Simon says has to go through a filter of me thinking Simon\u2019s not my dad, Simon\u2019s not my mum. But on some level, I am<\/i> talking to them. I\u2019ve come to think that romantic relationships are not a placeholder, but are themselves an analysis: this constant \u201ctrying to figure out who exactly you\u2019re talking to\u201d kind of thing.<\/span><\/p>\n\n

Your last album was called Messages to God<\/a><\/i>, the one before that was called Me and Ennui are Friends, Baby<\/a><\/i>, and the one before that was called Please Daddy<\/a><\/i>. A lot of your projects seem like they were conceived as a form of direct address to just one person. I\u2019m also thinking, at the opposite extreme, of this hilarious aside from your song \u201cMakin\u2019 it Work\u201d<\/a> where you sing, \u201cI\u2019m talking now to anyone!\u201d What draws you to this form? Why let the listener know who they were intended for?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n

I definitely don\u2019t write songs with the intention of impressing someone, nor do I write things with the intention of sending someone messages through the ether.<\/span> When I was younger, and I wanted to hook up with someone, I would\u2014but you have to do that!<\/p>\n\n

The record that I made that\u2019s coming out this year might be my favorite one so far. It\u2019s really sparse, and I feel like there might be a lot of space for someone else to do more with it. The record\u2019s finished, so I don\u2019t mean this in the production sense, but that I can\u2019t stop thinking what it would be like if someone else wanted to sing it. It\u2019s almost like giving away your favorite jacket. You\u2019ve worn it to as many things as you can. It\u2019s yours, but it\u2019s now for<\/i> somebody else. It\u2019s not that you don\u2019t like it, but that it might be someone else\u2019s turn to have it. You have total affection and respect for it, but your interest in it is just kind of complete.
\n
\nI have to put blinders on to the fact that the things I\u2019ve made are out there\u2014and people can do whatever they want with them<\/span>\u2014because if I really cared about that, I just wouldn\u2019t do it at all.<\/p>\n\n

\n\n

Sarah Mary Chadwick recommends five young adult books to get you through life if your family sux:
<\/b><\/b><\/p>\n\n

The Poetry Girl<\/a><\/i> by Beverly Dunlop\u2014A lonesome, intelligent twelve-year-old girl finds solace from familial tumult in poetry.
<\/p>\n\n

Tripswitch<\/a><\/i> by Gaelyn Gordon\u2014Another classic YA novel from New Zealand. Three girls must discover their magical powers to thwart the schemes of their malevolent aunt.
<\/p>\n\n

The entire Sweet Valley High<\/a><\/i> series, created by Francine Pascal\u2014 What better refuge from the turmoil of rural, alcoholic New Zealand during the 1980s farming crisis than the sunny sanctuary of Sweet Valley, California!
<\/p>\n\n

Scarlett<\/a><\/i> by Alexandra Ripley\u2014 The appropriately maligned but compulsively read (by me) sequel to Gone With The Wind<\/i>. My father was Maori, so I should\u2019ve been more concerned with how racist the times described are, but with Vivian Leigh\u2019s face in mind, I was too blinded by Scarlett O\u2019Hara\u2019s bloody-mindedness, her doggedness, to care.
<\/p>\n\n

George\u2019s Marvellous Medicine<\/a><\/i>by Roald Dahl\u2014 As a kid, I would spit in my Dad\u2019s wines in lieu of poisoning him. This book spoke to me on a profound level.
<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

This post was originally published on The Creative Independent<\/a>. <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The first time I encountered your music, the reason I clicked on it was because of the cover art, which was of one of your paintings. It depicts this humongous, grotesque, extremely tall woman with her hands submerged in the laps of two even more humongous, shirtless, extremely tall men. That image has this sort of \u201cphone call home from the principal\u201d quality. Like, \u201cWe need to talk about what Sarah drew in class today.\u201d This isn\u2019t to say that it\u2019s juvenile, but that if a young person were to have made it, they might get in trouble or make people worried. Is your music ever a way of hinting that you need help?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":34009,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[346],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1591675"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/34009"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1591675"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1591675\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1591972,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1591675\/revisions\/1591972"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1591675"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1591675"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1591675"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}