Arca

I've never written a happy love song. ”

A mother isn't someone who does it on purpose; mothers are who they are, and just by existing, they affect the way other people negotiate with the environment and with themselves. ”

I have a very healthy dose of scepticism towards what identity is and what personas are, maybe because of my life journey. Identity is something so malleable. ”

It's not about living my life as a boy or a girl - but I'm also not trans - it's just that one day, you wake up feeling masculine, and one day, you wake up feeling feminine. The flickering in between those two states is what's most fertile for me. ”

When I work with other people, I have to try to make their vision happen. With my own, I don't think about it. The music has its own kind of agency. ”

Arthur Russell is very important to me on many levels, and when I read Tim Lawrence's biography on him, 'Hold on to Your Dreams,' one of the things I took away was: first thought, best thought. I live by that when I make my own music. ”

With song titles, I try to keep a healthy sense of humor while saying something at the same time. ”

As a kid, I spent a lot of my mental energy hiding who I was and attempting to fit in. ”

Internally, we have so many different parts, both positive and negative. And if you force them together, a spark comes out. ”

When I was young, I put on performances for my family and my parents where I would dance like a woman, singing a really exaggerated woman's vocal in front of my whole family. ”