Perfume Genius
I think the best mood for writing is a heavy feeling that's a little bit removed from you. Sometimes I feel very self-indulgent and bratty and ungrateful, and no good music comes out of that. But sometimes I can be really sad or have an excess of feeling yet somehow be able to see the big picture more.
Hymns have always sounded like sung spells to me. I never felt included in the magic of the God songs I heard growing up - I knew I was going to hell before anyone ever told me that I was. People found comfort in this all-knowing source, but I felt frightened and found out. I developed some weird and very dramatic complexes.
If I drink coffee, I have to turn the lights off and lay down. I can't handle it.
My favorite movie is 'Dogfight' with River Phoenix and Lili Taylor. The ending is kind of bittersweet but so real and moving and complicated.
To me, when something's really funny, there's, like, a wildness to it, and it's very close to the wildness of something potentially tragic or gross. It's all very close to each other when you have that extreme level of feeling.
I saw 'Predators.' That was pretty good, actually.
There's a book called 'You're Not a Stranger Here' by Adam Haslett - short stories, a lot of them are about mental illness and gay people - that classic combination. But they're really well-written, really powerful. It's pretty good.
iTunes is my favorite record store.
I think people are surprised that I'm not - I think people come up to talk to me, and they think I'm going to be really morose. And I am, but I do that by myself - no one wants to see that. It's not really a phoniness; I just kind of keep it to myself. So I think people are surprised when they come up to talk to me and I hug them.
I've had people tell me that I should just be sad and not joke around on Twitter, but they don't understand that joking and being deeply sad are very close to each other. I'll have a horrible memory that I find hysterical one day, and the next day I'll cry about it.
One of the things that 'Too Bright' refers to is how there's a lot of times where I see things that I could change that could make me more contented, but I usually just don't make those changes because they seem new and scary. I just stay where I'm at, even if I'm miserable, because I'm familiar with it.
I don't know if I could write a pop song without at least a little touch of bite in it, and it's usually not a bite that most people would want to sing.
I like to have fun! And everything that's good for you is not fun, and that bores me.
I am fierce, yes, but I'm serious about music.
I have a strange, not very traditional voice - I'm not Adele.
If I'm not writing, I can download a newer album everybody's making a fuss about. But when I'm writing, I keep myself in my own zone - I worry about listening to new music that'll inform me too much. I'm the kind of person who goes to another country and starts speaking in an accent after three days.
I really never want to try to be cool.
I like Feist's music because it's really smart, but it's really free and soulful at the same time. Sometimes you only get one or the other.
I don't think I wrote my first song until I was 25. And then everything I wrote ended up becoming my first album. I put my music online, and from that, things just happened.
For a while, I thought I would maybe be a writer. But with music, I was such a nerd; I was really obsessive about it. The problem was I couldn't really sing. I think one day I sang from a different part of my body, from my gut for the first time, and I was like, 'Oh! That's how you're supposed to do it.'
I do not work out regularly, but I do dance so much and jump around so much on stage, and I do it every day, so I feel like that's my exercise.
Blushes are fun. I like to do circles - like a Caravaggio painting almost, or Victorian looking.
For me, piano is just where I started; I know where to go with it.
My mom is always asking why can't I make something nice? Because I'll make paintings, say, and they're just really bloody and angsty. So I wrote 'Dark Parts' because I wanted to write something nice for her.
I wanna be bad sometimes - I wanna rip everything apart, -but it comes on less and less. Doing all this music stuff is very good for it.
I realise there are situations where I camp it up, make myself into a sort of novelty character to ease things along. Like, if I ever feel uncomfortable in a situation, I can just make myself into this funny Will-and-Grace-guest-star type of person, and maybe people will not pay attention to the deeper things going on.
I originally thought I'd grow up to be a woman. I didn't question that when I was little.
Sometimes I'm not into being a human.
The first record I bought was the 'Edward Scissorhands' soundtrack. I remember being really obsessed with the movie, and all the campiness sort of went over my head because I was so little - it's the same with 'Hairspray.' But I would listen to that soundtrack a lot.
I was really scared of the devil growing up: I was convinced I was going to be possessed.
When I first started making music, I wrote the lyrics first, but now, because the music has got kind of wilder, I've flipped it.
Good catsuits should have multiple zippers; they'll have a top and a bottom one.
I'm personally not a very contact-y person; I just let my phone die and don't turn it on for a couple of days.
I went off at a person who threw a plastic thing at one of my shows once. After I shamed them, I realised it was a little lipstick and felt bad for days.
I got very serious about micro-piglets and what it would be like to own them.
He was my biggest crush when I was 12, and it's never really stopped. I was on BenAffleck.com a lot growing up. I don't know why.
I like Costco. They got me to be an executive member, so I'm, like, a business class member. Somehow, I'm going to end up saving money or something. The thing is, I don't moderate very well, so I buy things that are supposed to be for a family or last for a week, but they never do.
I feel like my shows have always been a place where people can wear and be and seem however they want, and it's a heartening event.
I'm always 20 minutes ahead of myself in my head. But being present - it's beautiful when it happens.
I was a bad student. My teachers gave up trying to teach me how to read music.
I wasn't a hoarder, but I was on my way. I went to thrift stores and never didn't buy something. A lot of cat figurines, needlepoint, afghans. Grandma stuff, I suppose.
I've had people send messages that said, 'I'm sorry how I treated you in high school.' It was just through kindness. I still think of the world the same way I did growing up. When I got hurt, I decided that this is how people are. But the world is changing, and even those people have changed. And I have. I need to let go, too.
I keep making the music I do because I feel very purposeful about making things that would be helpful or quell some loneliness in people. I really needed that when I listened to music growing up and even now, so I don't mind that sense of duty.
There was one time I flagged every 'Brokeback Mountain' review on Netflix that was negative. I was, like, 'not helpful,' and I spent, like, an hour doing it, and I wrote a really serious review about it. It's hard for me not to get really sensitive. I don't brush things off like that very easily.
My kitchen witch hangs above the sink in my kitchen. Some people think it's specifically so that you don't burn food when you cook, but I like to think that it's warding off evil spirits and bad things in general.
I think it's fun to be superstitious. There's a drama in being superstitious. I'm like that in general. I have friends who don't believe in love or just think it's a chemical thing, and they don't believe in magic. I enjoy believing in all that stuff. It makes things seem more important than they are, like there's more to it.
Our house was cluttered with little charms, thoughtfully placed. There were all kinds of little things going on. Like, my mom made a lampshade out of a picture of our family, but if you look closely, there's a baby Jesus that she cut up and put just above all of us.
My mom is not religious, but she's a very spiritual, magical kind of lady. One time, when I was younger, my mom said she was a witch and that my grandmother was also a witch. It was late at night, and she was really sleepy, but I took it very seriously because I always wanted to go to Hogwarts.
I was watching a movie called 'Perfume.' The book is really good, but the movie is really bad. My friend was making fun of it. He kept calling this obese guy a perfume genius. When I started putting my songs up on MySpace, I didn't know what was going to happen. I actually didn't put much thought into a name and just quickly used Perfume Genius.
I don't know if I am a role model, but I've had young kids write to me. I try to write songs that I wish I would have heard when I was younger. It's kind of strange to think of yourself as a role model. That wouldn't be a bad job.