Interview

Lydia Ainsworth

Skype interview by Zofia Ciechowska
Photos shot by Van Robinson in New York City, USA

Our friendship with Lydia Ainsworth goes back to her making us Valencia orange cake on a hot summer day in 2013. Back then she pondered each track from Right From Real by walking back and forth across the Williamsburg Bridge. Fast-forward to winter 2015, Lydia greets us with the same sunny warmth. This time she’s preparing for her European tour, eluding FOMO and contemplating what lies ahead 

Lydia Ainsworth 1Apparently, in the future we’ll be living in pods in Venus’s deadly sulphuric gas atmosphere.

It’s sad that we would have to move to another planet, we should be taking care of our own.

They say space travel is in the not-too-distant future, but it’s still hard to fathom. Can you imagine a world where you’ll never have the need to meet people IRL?

I don’t really have many friends that I’ve never met in person. It’s been interesting for me to delve into Twitter and Facebook with the release of my album. I never used those for my music before and so many interesting artists and fans have reached out to me. I’m working with an animation artist who I emailed a long time ago. I didn’t hear from her for a while until she heard my song on the Arbutus website, realised it was me and immediately wrote back. We’re working on a music video for ‘White Shadows’. I met her for the first time in person the other night in Toronto. She brought beautiful hand-drawn sketches of every single frame.

‘I love music that reminds you that humanity hasn’t forgotten you, music that creates a spark of hope within you.’

I can’t imagine just collaborating online. For instance, this autumn I picked up a drummer, some string players and a sound guy in New York. We became very tight very quickly. So tight, that some of them will be coming with me on tour. Working out the live elements on the go has been great. In Montreal I had an artist make a set design for me which included a perch for his corn snake called Baguette. It was the most graceful thing.

Lydia Ainsworth 2What do you want people to experience when they hear your music?

My aim is to always create a feeling that will allow the listener to feel like they’re transcending the world around them. I love music that reminds you that humanity hasn’t forgotten you, music that creates a spark of hope within you. That is always at the centre of my work.

But what if we forget humankind? Like when we don’t think twice about applying filters on photos of ourselves? In the future do we risk forgetting what we’re really like?

Filters are a way of giving the average iPhone owner a little creativity. They are expressing a personal truth in those filters, a kind of fantasy that they felt internally at that given time and place. I wonder how long the selfie craze is going to last. I mean, it’s not something that is wholly new to us, it’s been happening long before the iPhone. I got a book of self-portraits recently and it’s so interesting to see how artists can express internal fantasies or realities through images of themselves. I think it comes from a deep need to be remembered.

Do you ever suffer from FOMO?

I actually just heard about FOMO – the irony! My sister told me about it, she’s a very social person, I’m more of a hermit. Maybe I experienced FOMO once, when I realised I didn’t know what FOMO was when everyone else seemed to.

Lydia Ainsworth 3

Lydia Ainsworth plays The Rest is Noise on 22 February at Muziekgebouw aan ‘t IJ in Amsterdam. The show is free for Subbacultcha members.