Although Grimes was the opener for Lana Del Rey for parts of her 2015 Endless Summer Tour, it doesn’t seem like the two would have much energy to be friends with one another in real life (especially since it’s always come across as though LDR has a Daddy-fueled crush on Elon Musk). Yet the two have been put together again thanks to an Interview magazine profile on Miss_Anthropocene herself (or whatever futuristic persona she wanted to embody that day). While the second half of the interview was conducted by Brit Marling, it was primarily the vacuous posing as “insightful” exchanges between Del Rey and Grimes that make one think of the type of conversations that go on in the paid for SoHo lofts of NYU students. That, or an NYU film student’s attempt at writing Richard Linklater-inspired dialogue.
The coronaries come early, with Grimes noting, “I actually think there was an earthquake yesterday. But earthquakes are fun. All natural disasters are fun in the abstract.” Del Rey is careful about agreeing, iterating the distinction, “Yes, in the abstract.” She then sort of passive aggressively belittles Grimes by asking, “I was thinking about your new album. I don’t know if I’m saying it right—is it Miss_Anthropocene?” Bitch, were you not briefed for the interview, do you not live in the world of pop culture? Grimes is a sport about it though, confirming that Del Rey is pronouncing it right before delving into the origins of how she came up with the concept behind the Gaia-flavored album. Naturally, her explanation sounds like a product of the college wake and bake as she remarks, “I’m really obsessed with polytheism. I love how the ancient Greeks or the ancient Egyptians lived in this weird anime world where there were just tons of gods that could be anything. It’s like every form of suffering had a representation. I wonder if it almost has a positive psychological effect… There’s a weird philosophical justification for all pain, and there’s an anthropomorphization of every form of pain. In our current society, we don’t even know how to talk about things. So my album’s about a modern demonology or a modern pantheon where every song is about a different way to suffer or a different way to die. If you think about it, god-making or god-designing just seems so fun. The idea of making the Goddess of Plastic seems so fun to me.” Yeah, super fun. Just like it would also be to any other uncensored in her comments white bia getting her million dollar tuition and lifestyle paid for in New York. Because it’s all about experimentation when you’ve got money to burn. There’s no need to worry about making mistakes or sounding like a pseudo-intellectual twat.
In fact, the more Grimes tries to come across as “scholarly” (which Del Rey only encourages with her own “brand”), the more faux-learned and pretentious she sounds. Case in point, “What’s interesting is that most novelists peak in their sixties. When I think about many of my favorite books, it’s mostly old-ass people who wrote them. My thought was, ‘Oh, I’ll just wait until I’m old and out of musical ideas, and then I’ll sit down and write a novel.’ I’ll be so much more physically lazy when I’m old, too, so I’ll probably be way happier to sit down for 12 hours a day.” Yes, exactly. Because writing a novel is such a goddamn cinch. And particularly will be in the era Grimes mentions wanting to write one in thanks to Natural Language Generation (all in keeping with her theories about AI surpassing humans).
And, despite her single-mindedness on the future, Grimes seems to feel that cliche so many NYU girls do in this climate of “realizing” men are shit by way of forcing her to be hyper-aware of her own female gender all the time. Thus, she comments, “On my last record, I was in this gender-neutral mindset. I was an asexual person. Fuck my sexuality. Fuck femininity. Fuck being a girl. I was having this weird reaction to society where I just hated my femaleness. It was like, to be a producer, I felt like I had to be a man.”
Well, men certainly have conversations as insipid as this one, so she’s on the right track. Building on her “thesis” about AI overtaking the music industry (a comment that caused a feud with Zola Jesus), she insisted to Del Rey, “This might be the most important time ever to make art, because this might be the last human art that anyone ever cares about.” Del Rey doesn’t seem as moved by the epiphany, likely to forever be sequestered in her L.A. home making analog music with Jack Antonoff. To that end, as though continuing to pass the blunt back and forth, the two broach on “the writing process,” of which Del Rey states, “If I could write in the middle of a crime scene, I probably would. Do you feel like you write when you’re in love?” Whoa, so heavy. And of course all white girls like to feign they thrive in a shithole environment until they actually get to one.
But maybe AI can change all of that, too. For, once again Grimes addresses it to Marling, who negates her theory of its superiority with: “Somebody was showing me a painting that was auctioned at Sotheby’s or Christie’s that was made by AI. When I looked at the painting, I felt that it was objectively good modern art. But on a level of meaning or depth, it didn’t resonate. Mark Rothko was painting those horizontal color fields, and an AI could imitate that, but I don’t think it could ever give you the feeling you have in a museum when you’re surrounded by huge Rothkos—that’s, for lack of a better word, holy. I don’t mean religious, I just mean something deep and unknowable.”
Not backing down on her, at this point, bizarre fetish for computers (is Elon Musk a cyborg she gets off on fucking?), she counters, “Computers will get there. A computer just needs to learn how to emulate hormones. Computers will learn how to feel everything we feel. They’ll be able to be better humans than us. They’ll be able to make more emotional art. They’ll be able to access that inaccessible thing.” Will they also be able to not sound like faux erudite fucktards smoking weed in a college dorm that’s actually a loft subsidized by one’s parents? One can only hope. And in that case, the future can’t come quickly enough.
