Interview with: Tegan Quin of Tegan & Sara, Pt. II

Tegan Quin @ Terminal 5, NYC, 10/6/08

Without further ado, here is the long-awaited second, and final, part of my interview with Tegan Quin:

Dese’Rae Stage, PopWreck(oning): Are there any other artistic mediums you use to express yourself?
Tegan Quin: Yeah, definitely. I mean, obviously, with the videos. We’re putting together a book. We’re definitely trying out different things and, you know, trying to be creative in different ways.
I think that, eventually, we’ll get to a point in our lives where we’ll wanna do something outside of that, like using the other side of our brains, as well. For now, we’re basically involved in every aspect of what we do, from the business side of things to the artistic side of things. We’re all over the map. I’m definitely not smoking pot in my bedroom writing music all day long expecting someone to get me out there. We’re working really hard to make this happen.
PW: That’s awesome. It’s totally what you need to do. It’s amazing to see the change. I’ve been listening to you guys since I was a kid—since my freshman year of college seven years ago.
TQ: It’s really important. I mean, just like everyone’s life, you don’t wanna get stuck. I think, oftentimes, you know, unlike our own lives, when we get into an artist, we want them to stay the same because we want them to remind us constantly of that place we were in when when we first attached to them. I think Sara and I have navigated that change in ourselves and our music with our audience pretty well.
There are obviously people that grow out of music and have grown out of us, but it seems, progressively, throughout the ten years that we’ve been making music professionally, we’ve continued to cultivate a really great relationship with our audience that, as we change, they change too. We grow with them and they’re able to accept our changes.
There are still enough key ingredients in our performance, in our ability to connect with our audience, that stay the same that, as our music grows and changes and the evolution of Tegan and Sara continues, we’re still recognizable to the audience we had ten years ago.

PW: Who have your musical influences been historically and who are they now? Have they changed much?
TQ: When we started making music, it was like the mid-nineties to late-nineties, so we were into that whole grunge movement and Bruce Springsteen and Neil Young and Bob Dylan and Ani DiFranco and Hayden. We were listening to a lot of that kind of music. As the years have gone by, I’ve gone further back into my past and music that I grew up with, like Cyndi Lauper and Sinead O’Connor and U2 and Dire Straits and Pink Floyd and all the stuff that I was listening to as a little kid. We were freakishly involved with music as kids, too. So, I think I went through that stage through the If It Was You/So Jealous era.
I think, nowadays, I’m influenced like everybody else. I’m obviously listening to a lot of indie rock and pop music and, you know, very into electronic music. When I was a teenager, we were really big into the electronic kind of bands, that kind of music scene and stuff. So, the last few years I’ve definitely gotten more interested in involving those elements in our music and listening to that kind of music. We’re contributing some songs to Tiesto’s new record and we’ve performed with him and I really think he’s great. You know, it’s an example of a type of music that isn’t necessarily obvious that we might listen to, but it’s definitely influential. The melodies and the harmonies and the structure of the songs and stuff—it’s all definitely very much something that we employ when we’re writing our own music.

PW: You have a lot of tattoos. I wanted know if you get the same question I do and how do you respond to it, and that question is: do you ever think about what you’ll look like when you’re 80?
TQ: [laughs] I figure that things are moving along so quickly and laser removal will advance so much that, if it’s really that terrible when I’m fifty, sixty, seventy or whatever, I’ll remove them. But I’ll tell you right now that the last thing I’m probably gonna be thinking about when I’m eighty is what my arms look like.
PW: Fuckin’ right. Thank you.
TQ: I’m not worried about it. Like I said, I figure by that point in time, things will have changed so much and advanced so much that it’ll probably be pretty easy to figure it out. I mean, there’s always sweaters.
PW: Yeah, I just think that’s gonna be the least of my worries.
TQ: Totally. It is absolutely gonna be the least of your worries. I mean, I would never tattoo my face, my hands, my feet—anything I couldn’t cover up.

PW: Before you were able to make ends meet by playing music—I do assume there was a time—what sort of jobs did you guys have?
TQ: When I was in high school, both my dad and step-dad owned home building companies, so I worked on job sites a lot. My last year of high school, I worked in a coffee shop. When I graduated, the first six months that I was out of high school, we were making music, and I worked at a coffee shop again. I got a different job at a different coffee shop, but that’s it; that’s my employment history.
Sara did mostly the same. She worked at a music store for awhile and she worked in a cafeteria at the Calgary Zoo. We both, by the time we were basically three or four months out of high school, were making music, so we didn’t have to get real jobs.

PW: I think successful artists are intense by definition. I wanted to know if you found that people in your life have been scared away or spooked by that intensity.
TQ: You know, I think as I’ve gotten older, I’m definitely more aware of the energy that I have. Like, my ability to walk into a room—and I’m a people pleaser, but I’m also extremely gregarious and loud and extroverted and I know that I oftentimes can monopolize and take a lot of space and I have an ability to get a lot of attention on me.
I mean, I know how to stand in front of 2,000 people and keep their attention on me, so it’s not hard to do in a party atmosphere. So, I’ve learned how to contain that and not be so much.
I’ve also learned to be a little more comfortable with the idea that, just ’cause I’m not talking and I’m not entertaining, it doesn’t mean that anyone’s judging me or thinking, “What’s wrong with Tegan? What’s happening? Why isn’t she talking?” But I’m used to that.
I’m used to being quiet and people being like, “What’s wrong?” And me being like, “No, nothing’s wrong, I’m just trying to let it happen.” I definitely feel like that can be uncomfortable and, as an artist, I’m quite aware. I mean, I remember this one time I asked this girl who I’d been chasing for quite awhile why it was so hard. What was the problem? Wasn’t I great? Wasn’t I perfect? She sent me my schedule from my tour page on my MySpace and I was just like, “Okay, I get it.”
It’s difficult and I think I make up for that by being so intense. I put a lot into the relationships I have when I’m at home and, you know, it’s a lot. I’m aware of how big I can be sometimes. I was hanging out with some girls the other night who I’d just met and we had this whole big meeting and we got up from the table and we were walking outside and this one girl was like, “Oh my God, I can’t believe how small you are!”
I was like, “Oh!”
She was like, “I mean, I would have sworn you were the same size as me at the table.” I think that’s just an energy thing. So, I’m definitely cautious and careful about it, but I like my intensity. People who have no energy—I couldn’t be bothered to deal with them.
PW: Totally. Cool. I had to ask that question because people do that to me and I’m like, “Ah! I’m sorry I’m intense!”
TQ: No. Fuck it. Don’t be apologetic. It’s fine.

PW: Holla! Okay, last one. I feel like a lot of people who are in the public eye have trouble carrying on a normal life and I wanted to know how you make new friends or meet a new romantic interest when everyone knows who you are. Do you have to keep your guard up?
TQ: Yeah, of course. It’s not easy. I don’t mean that in a sob story way, kind of like, “Oh, it’s so hard,” but it is. You know, I meet people and I’ve been out of a serious relationship for two and a half years and dating the whole time, and it’s hard. You meet people and they do know who you are and you have to kinda just accept that, or you meet people and they’ve slept with half the people you know and you’re like, “Oh God, really?”
You’re not eighteen anymore, you’re not meeting somebody who’s never been with a girl, you’re not meeting someone who’s just out of high school and doesn’t know who you are. It’s really hard. With my age group and the people I’m interested in and the scene I hang out in, I mean, oftentimes I do feel a bit like a zebra being pranced around in a dance club. I don’t feel like people are able to come up and talk to me and be themselves with me because they either think that I’m going to be a certain way or they’re terrified of me and so they’re nervous and creepy and weird and then I’m like, “Ugh, get away from me.”
When it comes to making friends, it’s a little bit easier because I’m pretty good at being straightforward and being like, “Okay, you met me. Now it’s time to stop talking about me. Let’s talk about life.” So it’s a little bit easier, but yeah, I’ve been really lucky and blessed to have a lot of really great friends since high school. I meet a lot of really great people through other people I know, so it’s pretty great.
I think Sara and I—the one thing that has stayed consistent over the last ten years is that we’re still the same people we were then. We’re very charismatic and we’re very humble, good friends and we try to take as much time as we can for our friends and family. I think it’s pretty easy to attract good people when you’re putting that energy out there.

Photos by Dese’Rae Stage. More at flickr.

Tegan and Sara @ Terminal 5, NYC

It’s been a Tegan and Sara-filled couple of weeks for me, let me tell you. First, there was the interview (stay tuned for part two–it’s coming, I swear!); then, there was Austin City Limits; most recently, though, I got to shoot their second of two shows at Terminal 5. I don’t know if it was the particularly funny stage banter or the amazing set list, but I’d probably put this show in my all-time top ten. I’m sure it also helps that I got to hang out with them backstage post-show after interviewing Dallas Green of City and Colour, one of their openers.

Tegan and Sara, Terminal 5, 10/6/08

The ladies were on-point with their comedy and storytelling, and at one point told an anecdote about how their father used to wrap them in blankets, turn off the lights, and put on a record. The goal of the game was to see who could stay awake the longest–an ingenious way to get your kids to sleep! Sara, however, seemed a bit distressed after the fact, as if this was somehow negatively telling of their father’s parenting skills. I thought it was adorable, though, and plan to put this “game” to use someday.

The set spanned their entire discography, including the old school “Superstar,” which Tegan is known to hate playing, and rarer songs, “When I Get Up” and “Love Type Thing.” They even threw in their cover of Rihanna‘s “Umbrella,” which they’d stopped playing for a time. Check out the entire list below, with more photos to follow:

Set List:
Call It Off
Dark Come Soon
Like O Like H
Burn Your life Down
Walking With a Ghost
I Bet It Stung
Hop a Plane/Superstar
Give Chase
Relief Next To Me
Love Type Thing
When I Get Up/Umbrella
So Jealous
Nineteen
One Second
Not Tonight
Where Does The Good Go
Speak Slow
Living Room
The Con
//
The First
Fix You Up
Back In Your Head

Tegan Quin, Terminal 5, 10/6/08

Sara Quin, Terminal 5, 10/6/08

Tegan and Sara: website | myspace | interview with: Tegan

Photos: Dese’Rae Stage

Treasure Island Festival, Day Two

Day Two of Treasure Island saw more rock and less DJ’s which made the crowd significantly larger and happier.

If you haven’t heard of Vampire Weekend then you’ve probably been under a rock for the last year.  Due to a brilliant marketing plan and not much else, this band has catapulted onto the cover of Spin and performed on “Saturday Night Live” straight out of college.  After listening to their entire set, I can safely say that they have no memorable melodies, just a clean image and a great gimmick.  Truthfully they came off more like a teacher singing nursery rhymes than a rock band playing to 10,000.

On a side note I think it should be a rule that V-Necks and cardigans have no place in rock and roll unless you’re Jimmy Page.  What happened to rock bands that would beat you down and steal your girlfriend?

The Kills came out boozing and smoking and burned through their 45 minute set.  Even if you don’t understand what Allison Mosshart is saying, you’ll believe it because she puts everything she has into her performance.  Don’t let this two-piece fool you, they will pummel you and leave you wondering what happened to your innocence.

Okkervil River provided the most energetic set of the afternoon and frontman Will Sheff knows how to work a crowd.   With such diverse songwriting and musicanship, this band won’t be Austin’s best kept secret for much longer.

Fleet Foxes sound like every great band in your parents record collection and they have the look to match.   With the addition of J Tillman on drums their 3 part harmonies are what dreams are made of.

Spiritualized brought their near epic arrangements that either make you cry or make you wonder if someone slipped something into your Kool-Aid.  After a long hiatus, Jason Pierce hasn’t lost a step and the new material sounded great.

Tegan and Sara’s sound translated well to the festival setting since everyone in the audience adored them.  They’re in the midst of writing a new album so they stuck to their released material which had the crowd in the palm of their hand throughout.

The Raconteurs are better than your favorite rock band (unless they’re QOTSA), just make it easy on yourself and come to grips with it.  You may ask why but the answers are simple; they dress better, play guitar better and write better songs.  The two headed songwriting monster that is Jack White and Brendan Benson are backed by an air tight rhythm section in Jack Lawrence and Patrick Keeler and they play straight up no frills rock and roll. White seemed more interested in playing the keys rather than guitar which allowed their set to dynamically breath.  They leaned heavily on their new album The Consolers of the Lonely and found time to fit in a couple guitar solos…remember those?

Interview with: Tegan Quin of Tegan & Sara, Pt. I

I recently got the [lucky] chance to chat with Tegan Quin of the Canadian pop duo, Tegan and Sara. As a long-time fan, the pressure was on NOT to a). come off as a total fan girl, and b). give the same, tired interview. This didn’t end up being much of a challenge at all, as Tegan and I cultivated a rapport straight off the bat. We talked about artists the twins have worked with, politics, and how to navigate the hurdles of being famous. In fact, we talked for so long that her publicist blew up both of our phones for the last fifteen minutes of our conversation, something neither of us realized was going on until after the fact because neither of us answered our beeps. Oops. Here’s part one:

Dese’Rae Stage, PopWreck(oning): The “Call It Off” video just came out. I like that the newer videos seem conceptually really simple, but they use a lot of colors and patterns.
Tegan Quin: Yeah. Sara really likes to do complicated videos and you get treatments from people and they give you these huge concept videos. Our songs are so short, it’s tough to stuff that in. I feel like it’s a waste to spend $100,000 on a video. The director who did this video, Angela Kendall, she also did The Making of ‘The Con’ and put together the It’s Not Fun. Don’t Do It! DVD we put together a couple of years ago. She’s amazing and a really good friend of mine. The whole day she kept spazzing about the smallest things and I kept being like, “Nobody’s gonna see it, it’s only gonna get played on YouTube. No one’s even seen a video on television in ten years.” I kind of think that is really how we feel. We still feel like videos are art and we make videos because they’re part of our catalog; they’re part of something we see as another way to explain and project what we were thinking and feeling when we were making the record. But, I mean, when it comes down to it, how much do we need to spend on that? The first video we did for this record was like $75,000, which is nearly as much as we spent on the record. And it’s like, for what? Does it really sell records? I don’t think it does. I think it’s cool. I think maybe it helps to create an image for a band, but I’m not sure for a band like us, it helps our record. So I love the “Call It Off” video because it was simple and inexpensive and it looks great and we got to help out Angela Kendall, who’s an amazing director and does great videos.

Photos: Autumn de Wilde

PW: You guys got to work with one of my heroes, Autumn de Wilde [a photographer known for her work with Elliott Smith, Rilo Kiley, Beck, and the Raconteurs, among others]. Tell me about that.
TQ: Autumn’s amazing. It’s very rarely we work with female photographers. They just hardly ever shoot us, for whatever reason. It’s like, female producers and engineers, there’s just not a lot of them–or at least, up in that world. It was amazing. When we found out about Autumn, I mean, obviously I recognized a million of her photos, but we met her probably like six or seven years ago the first time and a million times since then. Chris Walla [guitar, Death Cab for Cutie] is also friends with her, and when we were in Portland making the record, we were talking about, “Oh, we gotta do the art work soon. We gotta do photos.” Chris was like, “You should use Autumn,” and we were like, “Yeah, fuck, we’ve never had an opportunity to use her.”
He was like, “Oh, yeah I’ll call her and get her to fly up here and we can shoot photos at my house.” I was like, “That’d be great,” so we called her up and a week later she showed up and shot the photos and was amazing. She’s so tall and we’re like midgets, so she basically sat on the floor and shot us all day, which was hilarious. She’s amazing, her daughter’s amazing. They’re really tall and talented. I can’t wait to work with her again. I love that she only shoots with film, which is obviously an expensive way to shoot in this day and age, but she’s so good it’s not like it’s a waste. And we got so many photos—we got 20 times the photos we usually get from a photo shoot, so it was incredible.

PW: I was on a bus yesterday, on the way to shoot Melissa Ferrick in Philadelphia. I finished up A Wolf at the Table and I was sitting there sobbing.
TQ: It’s an incredible book.
PW: I wanted to know if you were a fan of Augusten’s [Burroughs] prior to doing the first Spin Liner Notes event with him.
TQ: Yeah, absolutely. Well, the reason why I had agreed to write the song—I mean, I would have probably done it anyway. I mean, I’m a slut, I’ll do anything, but I was a huge fan and Sara was like, “You should take this one,” so I got the e-mail before Christmas asking if I was interested in writing a song for his book. I was like, “Absolutely.” It was also a selfish thing because I got to read the book three months before it came out. So, I read it a couple times and wrote the song and it was really difficult because I’ve never really written about anything but myself. We started e-mailing afterwards. He was really moved by the song. He’s fascinating. His books are identical to the way he is in person and e-mail. He’s not emulating anything other than himself, so it was incredible to finally meet him after six months of communicating via e-mail and text–to actually be able to sit there and have a conversation with him and then to share a stage with him for an hour and a half. He was so funny and it was really amazing, so yeah, I was a huge fan. I owned all of his books and I’ve read them a million times. I think he’s so funny and an incredible visual writer. It was great to meet him. Yay!
PW: He’s totally one of my favorites. Love him.
TQ: Me too.

PW: I know you had a side project. Are you still doing that?
TQ: I am, yeah. I started sending songs that I hadn’t used that weren’t really Tegan and Sara-like to this guy, Hunter Bergen, who plays bass in AFI a couple years ago. Since then, we’ve collaborated on probably another ten or fifteen songs and we’ve talked a lot over the past year about what to do with them. You know, should we put them out? Should we tour? Should we sell them to other people? Should we give them away? Should we put them on MySpace? What do we do with them? We’re still deciding. We had some preliminary talks with some bands. We’re thinking about being more like a writing team, but eventually all the songs will see the light of day. I’m not sure in what form or who will be singing them. They’ll definitely get out there. It’s nice to work out songs and do stuff with someone else. I’ve been making music with Sara for 14 years, so it’s nice to vent in another form and I’m also emotionally less attached to the songs. I feel like I’m learning a lot while writing with someone else because I’m able to take feedback and criticism in a way that I can’t with my own music.

PW: That totally makes sense. So, I read something about a new album next year?
TQ: Yeah. Two or three times during the demo-ing process, we make a CD with lyrics and send it out to this collective of people whose opinions we really appreciate. They give great feedback and we try to eliminate excess [tracks] that we don’t think are gonna make it to the next stage and we kind of move forward ten songs or whatever and start writing again. So, we just did that last night–made the list and burned the CDs and sent them out. We’re gonna tour and get some feedback and start writing again. My goal is to make a record next spring. We’ll have the summer to get the video made and the press done and the pictures taken and put a record out right away in September. We’ll start touring and not do the long lead-up. I don’t think that’s necessary for a band our size anymore, you know? We’re not Mariah Carey. We don’t need six months to lead up to a record and get singles out there and try and get a million downloads on iTunes. We just need to get new music out there and keep trying, so hopefully everyone will be hearing new Tegan and Sara by next summer.
PW: That is awesome and fast and I love it.
TQ: Yeah. I mean, I’m projecting, but once you get past September, it’s really hard to release a record, so we’re gonna try to do it really quick and I think that’ll be possible because after this US tour, we’re pretty much done.

PW: Speaking of, I noticed that the second New York show is the Amnesty International ‘Small Places Tour’.
TQ: Yeah.
PW: I have no idea what that is.
TQ: I don’t know what it is either, but— (laughs)
PW: Hey, at least you’re honest.
TQ: …but obviously you know what Amnesty International does and the Small Places Tour–I mean, I’m not exactly sure if there’s some specific thing about it. We just approved it a couple days ago. Basically, they just take a cut of the money and put it towards Amnesty International. They take artists from all over the place. It’s not like a tour with two bands going out and touring the US. They’re gonna get tons and tons and tons of artists all over the world in different venues to contribute a percentage of their merchandise or the ticket from the show to Amnesty International. So the tour is kind of like a play on that. It’s not actually a tour, it’s just a whole bunch of artists on their own tours contributing. We’re gonna contribute our profits from the second night’s merchandise to the tour.
PW: Cool. Good deal.
TQ: Yeah, it’s gonna be great.

PW: This song has actually come up a couple of times with a couple of different artists I’ve interviewed. I’ve seen five or six bands cover it at this point, but I wanted to know why you decided to cover “Umbrella.” It seems like a lot of my friends are like, “Fuck that song, it sucks,” but honestly, it’s one of the only pop songs I can think of right now with a positive message.
TQ: It’s a great song. I love the production. I love that kind of music. It’s something we would never do, so I really appreciate it. You know, from a completely different perspective, just hearing it. Riri [Rihanna] is so hot and when we were covering it, no one had really covered it yet, so we weren’t doing it to be ironic or for any reason other than we thought it was great. It wasn’t a huge song yet. It was big, but not huge. It hadn’t taken over the world yet. I just thought it was a great song. First of all, I think she’s a really good role model. She’s smart and intelligent and has a huge part in what she does. I love that she plays with her sexuality and she’s not a a traditional hot pop star female with the long hair and big boobs and, you know, she kinda dresses like a tomboy from time to time. She really plays with this kind of lesbian look with the short pixie hair cut and the tattoos. I just think it’s really cute and fun and hot and I think it’s a great song, so that’s why we were doing it. Then it got to the point where people were calling for it before we’d even started playing and I was like, “We gotta stop playing that song.”

PW: So, do you guys write everyday as a practice?
TQ: I like to play music as much as possible. Some days, like today, I won’t get to and I definitely feel like it’s an addiction. Sometimes I forget that I’m not just writing songs to write songs, that I need to put a record together and they need to be the best songs I’ve ever written and I need to stop pushing them out so quickly and let them sit inside and gather speed and stuff.
But yeah, Sara really likes to write and blog and get out there and we definitely have a million different ways and forums to do that. When we go out this fall, we’re going to shoot another show like we did before when we were making the record and touring (Backstage Bilingual and Trailer Talk). We’re gonna do a political show while we’re out. We’ll shoot a backstage show about the elections in Canada and the US which are both coming up, obviously, and they’re huge, huge topics of conversation in our world and we’re both obsessed. So, we’re gonna do that. We’re always trying to do stuff to get ourselves out there. I think we’re more than just a band. We’re at this point where we’re personalities in our own little world—at least in our heads. We’re gonna work on a book for the new year and continue writing the record so there’s definitely a schedule of writing, working, talking, music-making.

PW: I wanted to know, because you guys do spend a lot of time in the US, how the current political climate affects you.
TQ: It’s terrifying. The idea of John McCain and Sarah Palin getting in makes me rethink my whole life. I’m just kind of like, “Can we really go down to the states and tour another four years with a government who’s fundamentally against who we are as people?” That’s really tough for me. It used to bother me, but now it’s actually affecting me.
Emotionally, I feel really upset—panicky, almost. We just dissolved Parliament in Canada and they’re calling a new election. It’s so confusing. The show, I swear, the political show we shoot this fall, should be called, “You Think Your System’s Confusing, Imagine What Ours is Like.” It’s so difficult, the way it’s set up. It’s just so confusing. I’ve lived here 28 years and I feel like I don’t understand what’s going on. I’m like, “You can dissolve Parliament?” Anyway, the US, comparatively–I feel like, no matter what happens, the way our government is set up is really different. In America, it’s a popularity contest and it’s literally left or right and it’s really hard for me to swallow. It’s hard for me to understand. I just can’t imagine over the last few years, how on earth you guys would collectively come together and allow them to run the country. It’s so horrifying to me, it makes me sick to my stomach. I can’t imagine why a gun loving, anti-gay, anti-choice—I just don’t understand how it’s happened. It seems like a nightmare to me. It just feels like time is going by so quickly. I just feel so upset and like I wanna go smack the Democrats around and be like, “Hurry up, get it together! What’s happening?” I just feel so upset about it, so I definitely feel like there’s gonna be a lot of venting on-stage. But who am I venting to? I’m preaching to the converted. I say that, but I was just in New York and I was venting on-stage and went off about how I wanted to sleep with Sarah Palin, like, you know, antagonizing. This girl came up afterwards and was giving me a piece of her mind, ripping me a new one about how she was a Repulican and how I didn’t understand and blah, blah, blah, and I was thinking–this is a 25 year old girl at a Tegan and Augusten Burroughs show in a book store raising money for an AIDS organization. It was like, “Who are you? Why are you at our show?” So I say that I’m preaching to the converted, but I’m not. And obviously, with the way that our fans are, after every show there are a million YouTube videos, so I’m hoping that we can make as much change as we possibly can with what power we have. We put the Rock the Vote widget up on our MySpace page and they were saying that, out of all the bands that did it, more people came from our page to register to vote than anywhere else. So I know we have a really progressive, alternative, excitable young audience, but I think that they actually do have a lot of power, so we’re definitely gonna try and use that voice as much as we can in the next couple of months to inspire people to wake up. I thought people were awake and then I was in New York when they announced Sarah Palin. I was just like, “Oh, God.” Like, “Oh no, this is going to be so stupid. ” This whole thing is awful.
PW: That woman is terrifying.
TQ: Terrifying, terrifying. The confidence and the patronizing attitude and the whole thing is so insane. My mind is blown. I’m having a hard time articulating what it is that bothers me more. So horrifying.
PW: I feel the same way. I’m a gay woman and I’m terrified to live in my own country.
TQ: Yeah, absolutely. You should be. Everyone should be. I was watching John McCain on The View when he was talking about how they were going to elect people to the Supreme Court who were going to follow the Constitution as it was written and Whoopi [Goldberg] was like, “Can you say that again? Should I be worried? We amended the constitution for a reason. Are we going to have slavery again? Am I gonna be a slave?” People should be that outraged that he’s saying that. It is unfathomable that we would be taking steps backwards at this point in America. We’re already so backwards, how can we go any further? We’re like, two steps away from going back to slavery, it’s true. I just don’t understand. At the same time, you have Barbara Walters being like, “How many houses do you really own?” And I’m like, “Yeah, Americans are stupid.” Barbara Walters is an example of the complacency and the obsession with fame and fortune, rather than someone’s actual belief system and what that actually means on the whole, in comparison to the way the rest of the world is run. What Americans claim to hate so much is exactly what they are. It’s incredible to me. So anyway, blah, blah, blah.
PW: I totally agree with you. I’m gonna change the subject, though.
TQ: Dear God, I could talk forever about it.

Stay tuned!

Note: The views expressed herein are those of the author and artist being interviewed and not necessarily those of the publication or record label which they represent.