L’RAIN
Astrophe speaks to L’Rain, Brooklyn based future soul artist, multi-instrumentalist AND curator about, creative ideation, the concept of womanhood, patriarchy and visual expression.
How does your work explore feminine power, and what intricate concepts within such do you touch upon? Why do you believe these are important to navigate, as both a means of self-expression and exclamation to the public?
I’m a woman, but femininity has always felt like something I never quite had access to, for many reasons, but to sum it all up; because of misogynoir. It’s something I’m coming/returning to now in an empowering way. I’m shy and struggle with dysmorphia, but it felt important to be on the cover of my album, and I explicitly wanted to try to lean into my femininity in ways that never feel especially available to me. I don’t know if I explore womanhood too much on the album, but it’s something I’m always thinking about. I’m deeply confused by and entranced by femininity, even as a cis woman. Gender can be a bit of a journey I guess.
Art serves as both a catharsis and a call-to-action. It’s a profound concept that something so deeply personal translated into a subjective art-form can resonate and expand social consciousness. How have you found your practice and/or identity to operate in subverting the patriarchy as a millennial woman?
For me, illegibility is a key mechanism of subversion. Patriarchy thrives on binaries, on categorisation, on hierarchy and that dovetails with capitalism. If something is well defined and neatly packaged and marketed it’s easy to co-opt, to pervert, to sell, to replicate. But the slippery spaces are the safest spaces to me: where I can be self-determined, be messy, to inhabit multiple truths. I insist on this in my music, and it feels like a slightly subversive practice to me.
How did you migrate into becoming an artist? What is your earliest memory of creating, your inspiration and how this translates into your aesthetic today?
I’ve probably always been an artist but it’s something that I’ve only just started to become comfortable recognising in myself. It honestly still feels like a dream and a luxury to call myself an artist, but I also know that art and artists are essential elements of life.
My earliest memories of making music revolve around writing songs and singing to myself to try to understand how my voice worked: what keys felt best, navigating vibrato, trying to sing with power and to sing softly. Just playing. I used to harmonize and sing my favorite r&b songs with my friends in the school yard. I really don’t even remember a time when music wasn’t a central part of my life. A lot of the music that influenced me as a kid continues to impact me now. My music is like a diary or an archive in that sense.
Can you tell us a little about your new album Fatigue?
Fatigue is first and foremost for me. It allows me space and time to think through the aspects of my life and my relationships with others that I want to put time and effort into evolving. It’s about regret, self-loathing, and doubt, along with the perseverance required to push through those low moments toward self-awareness and ultimately healing. Even though Fatigue is about and for myself primarily, I made it available to the public because I have a hunch that there are others that have experienced similar feelings and are on similar journeys. Without even needing to be super specific, I hope listeners can feel connected to the music immediately and urgently.
Aside from the aesthetic & sound, what makes an artwork compelling, as both a creator and a listener?
Ultimately the mystery of what makes art compelling is what keeps me coming back, both as a creator and a listener/viewer. There are “rules,” but they’re stretched to their limits, questioned, and broken down all the time. There’s no hard and fast formula, sometimes no real reason, nor adequate words. It all comes down to and is in service of, an uncapturable, ineffable feeling. That’s nothing short of magic. Though I try in certain ways to concretize that feeling through writing, through conversation, through research, through my curatorial work, nothing is more important than succumbing to it.
Can you recall an instance where you felt discouraged to the point of giving up? What was your thought process, what was the instance and what made you believe this? In return, what were the influences that transformed your approach to one of perseverance?
I’ll be honest that I am often filled with doubt. I am prone to feel imposter syndrome. I’ve gotten in my own way. I’ve almost scrapped both of my albums. All the times that I felt discouraged blur together because I’ve felt this way so often.
But I try to hold onto the reasons I started making music in the first place. I can’t control the public reception of my music. I can’t control other people period. I try to remind myself that I make my music for myself first and foremost. I zero in on my wants and needs. I take a nap and cry and come back. I distance myself from any expectations because I know in my heart that I’m doing okay if I’m doing right by myself, no matter what anyone else thinks.
Resilience is a word strongly concurrent with feminism. What does resilience mean to you in your personal life, mental health, artistic practice and role in society? In your opinion, how does one practice resilience and what are the most vital pressures to stand up to?
I’m realising that resilience is not always grand gestures, working the hardest, and feeling exhausted and burnt out. I’m trying to internalise a sense of resilience that incorporates rest, recuperation, and slowness. This doesn’t come naturally to me, but I think it’s crucial to happiness and survival. Audre Lorde’s notions of radical self-care are trendy now, which is a mixed blessing. I’m trying to dig deeper into what self-care looks like for myself, which means ignoring the buzz words and cheap fixes and asking myself real questions. What do I need to say no to, and what does that mean I can open myself up to instead? What kind of rest do I need: when and where? At a base level, being more attuned to my body, and both its needs and wants. It’s a process; I’m in the very beginning stages.
What is different about art that lets you communicate vulnerability as opposed to words? Which of your pieces are especially significant to you in this respect, and why?
I think the words are always a part of it for me. Their meaning, their rhythm and cadence, and the timbre are all fairly inseparable in my music.
How have boundaries imposed on you as a woman affected your self-concept and pursuit as an artist? What do you believe is important to communicate to aspiring artists?
I try not to define myself by other people’s conceptions of me, especially because I very much think of L’Rain as a self-determined project. I will only work with people that I respect, and that respect me. There’s no opportunity for boundaries to be set-up without my consent. Not that I can flip a switch and reverse the racist, sexist structures that rule the world, even though we all wish we could. But being an artist with a marginalised identity is no different from being a person with a marginalised identity. Through the years, I’ve gathered a lot of tools, and gotten a lot of inspiration and support from others to learn how to persist and thrive in a world that wasn’t really built for me. I, we, find a way.
With self-determination in mind, I actually don’t think it’s possible to be an aspiring artist. Making a career out of being an artist is a whole other thing, and I definitely am not in a position to give advice about that. All I know is: if you’re an artist, you’re an artist. There is no period of aspiration before you can call yourself an artist. Being an artist doesn’t have to look any one way: you don’t have to have to get the approval of any tastemaker or publication, or make any certain number of albums, or play any certain number of shows before you’re real. You can have a dayjob, you don’t have to give up your whole life. You don’t have to be ruthless and unkind. All the myths are untrue, and I wish I realized that sooner.