Diandra Interviews Vesper Wood: The Honesty of Art
Vesper Wood’s new album, Instar, sounds like a chameleon observing how many colors her skin change into. As her sounds zip across sonic spectrums to induce a hauntingly beautiful scape, Vesper voice flutters like a dark butterfly seeking light. From her observance of dark femininity to her challenges with fertility, Instar is the journey of a woman realizing her power as a human being. Thus, with delicacy, her vocal resound across songs to witness a truth I often say: your strengths can become your weaknesses and your weaknesses can become your strength. The key to deciphering which one is transitioning into the other is honesty, and, in our interview, Vesper Wood analyzes what is her truth.
Diandra: What are the differences you have seen in yourself, especially in creativity, as a solo artist versus as a person in a duo?
Vesper Wood: I am a bit faster at producing things, making creative decisions on my own, and the output is probably a lot more personal. I don’t know if those decisions are always the best ones though!
Diandra: You have described your new music as more introverted. Do you find yourself to be a shy person? Do you see music as a way to reveal your authentic self or your fantasy?
Vesper Wood: Yep, I’m a Pisces/ 4 on the Enneagram/ classic introvert. It took me a long time to realize that…I always used to think there was something wrong with me. Music is my code language – such a solace – it’s definitely a way for me to reveal my authentic self, or my emotional self, which is kind of intense and often not really suited for normal life. Music is a much more pure communication – it tells you about emotion through sound – and performance – I feel like I can be in the moment, in the emotion, and channel those feelings into something productive and transportative for other people, instead of something self destructive.
Diandra: What are the type of impressions and messages, you wish to leave with listeners?
Vesper Wood: I find so much refuge in music that expresses something honest, and many artists helped me get through difficult times growing up by making me feel less alone. I’d like to provide that for people too.
Diandra: What do you think your music reveals about love and how relationships have worked through your life?
Vesper Wood: A lot of disappointment! A feeling on abandonment and loneliness, that’s something I sit with a lot. I don’t know where it comes from, it’s just in me, it’s like an ancient feeling, maybe from another lifetime. But it’s played out a lot in the past in my relationships. I’m finally in a healthy relationship with a person with an incredible heart and sense of humor, and I’m able to understand myself better, so the feeling is getting in the way less. I can see it now with some perspective!
Diandra: Which of your new songs felt the most vulnerable to create, and how did it inspire you as a full, sole owner of your sound?
Vesper Wood: Most vulnerable to create – probably one called Chain of Heat, because it was super personal, and just covered some really painful territory for me, which was this feeling of being on the wrong and random side of nature. There was a while when things were not looking good for me in terms of having children and I took it really to heart. Against a lot of odds I got pregnant – a tremendous blessing. I wanted the end of the track to be an explosion of sound – to represent this thrashing out against the constraints of fate, and a release from the very tight, controlled, driving arpeggiated pattern that is the skeleton of the track.
Diandra: You have spoken about being terrible with social media but how it’s vital for new artists. What about social media both attracts and distances you from its platform?
Vesper Wood: I’m not sure much about it attracts me, to be honest. It is an exercise in making other people feel inferior in lots of ways: all this aspirational fake stuff you see on it. I also am not into the time-suck of it, or how it requires you to be self-promotional. I like to see people use it creatively and express themselves on it though.
Diandra: How do you keep your passion for music alive, despite the ups and downs of living as an artist and working through the industry?
Vesper Wood: Hm, it’s like I need it, to work through things, as an outlet, so it just stays alive. And of course every time I find some new music to get obsessed with, that fuels the flames, or the story of an interesting honest artist, or a new type of music, like Georgian plain-song or something.
Diandra: You have described your love for artists like, Cat Power and Lana Del Rey, because of their dark feminine style. Describe what “dark feminine” means to you.
Vesper Wood: It’s something about the power of women, maybe about their sexuality, that is a bit mysterious, and has a lot of gravity…something that we can own. It’s like the mystery of women, the inwardness of them, the allure of them. And dark because it can go to some pretty real and painful places. Women are so at the front of mortality, with their ability to create new life in their bodies.
Diandra: Your songs have been described as hymns to empower women. Who is one woman in your life that has guided and inspired you in relation to your womanhood?
Vesper Wood: One woman who has inspired me a lot is my older half sister Fielding. She’s got some magic to her. She’s very spiritually connected and she’s a kind and sensitive soul, super empathic. She’s struck out on an unconventional path, marrying a man in the Andes and following a really different kind of lifestyle, and she’s had a lot of strength to be true to herself in that way. She’s also really feminine, and not afraid of that. I think she’s marvelous. Lucky to have had her as a role model.
