The Guardian has an interesting interview with Grimes, the Canadian musician who is right now touring Europe before headlining Make Music Pasadena in June.
Her last and third full-length album is entitled 'Visions’, and a lot can be explained by her strange habit to locked herself inside a room without food, sleep or company for three weeks!! This is what she told The Guardian about the experience:
‘Once you hit day nine, you start accessing some really crazy shit. You have no stimulation, so your subconscious starts filling in the blanks. I started to feel like I was channeling spirits. I was convinced my music was a gift from God. It was like I knew exactly what to do next, as if my songs were already written.’
Well, that is a very well-known technique, all mystics, prophets have done it, and why do you think that all religions are imposing a fasting period? Our brain needs constant food, and depraving it from sugar will make you see I-don’t-know-what. But the question is, does this kind of experience trigger creativity? Personally I only get terrible headaches when I don’t have food for a long time, but I have never had the courage (or the madness) to go to the vision-inducing level.
Grimes, real name Claire Boucher, seems to have plenty of creativity to begin with, she said she gave up on her education (she was studying neurobiology!) to follow her music ambitions, which wasn’t without problems (‘I've completely fucked my life. I don't live anywhere, I don't see my friends. You have to sacrifice a lot of things to do this. But the pay-off is this incredible freedom.’)
However, she seems to have a very precise idea on how to pursue her career, since it’s all about the visual representation you give about yourself as ‘everyone has a strong image and everyone is into branding’. This is how she justified it:
‘I used to think that focusing on the visual aspect was really vapid and ridiculous too, but I've come to realize it's actually one of the most powerful tools I have to work with. The way that you present yourself visually totally dictates your audience and everything that anyone thinks about you. What's the difference between Napoleon and everyone else? Napoleon had great image branding. When people think of Napoleon they're not thinking of the Egyptian campaign or whatever, they're thinking of his fucking hat and his fucking hand in his waistcoat.’
So could this explain why she recently teamed up with Montreal-based jeweler and sculptor Morgan Black to create these 'Grimes Pussy Rings' , some curious vaginal shape rings? Or may be it is another gift from God.