NAU NUA: NINA VIOLET

Light particles

When someone sings We’ll be alright one could easily think it’s just a too naive song, but the deep strenght of the poetry of Nina Violet goes beyond all these simple thoughts. “Our legs are only hurting us for now, we’ll be alright” . Then, one realizes that life is partly beautiful because it hurts, because its end is unknown in time but it always has the face of death. Now is the only thing we have, the past doesn't exist anymore, and the songs of Nina Violet make us feel more conscious of it. Nina Violet presents her second album, precisely titled We’ll be alright (2011). And definitely we will, because her songs have a renewing effect in case the listener has the mind open enough to listen some truths. She has collaborated with Willy Mason and shared stage with Radiohead, Beth Orton or Elvis Perkins, and gives us an honest poetry full of vital images that hurt because of its love. And all that with an enormous musical talent, arranging all the string instruments we could imagine, and a voice that moves you to new places.

We’ll be alright?

Yes.

In that song you sing “we run and hide and stay alive for love”. From what do you hide?

Well, in the first scene we have aching legs and circling planes, so I think our doomed lovers are hiding from real or symbolic institutional danger in their post-apocalyptic environment, military violence as a metaphor for the judgement of the status quo.

The first song you present in the festival is Everything comes apart. “The finish is the start”. How do you feel with the ephemeral condition of life?

I find the circling of all things a comfort rather than a threat in a world where we are erroneously assigning security and permanence to things like houses and cars. To remind oneself of the impermanence of all things is to reveal the moment and know our blessings.

The second one is Fill the well up from the same album. “Look up to the moon I saw night in a cup” . How much night there is in your well?

The visual sequence I am trying to impress on the listener is this: A girl at the bottom of the well finally looks up. Her apathy begins to loosen it's grip with more in her view than just herself. She sees the starlight as liquid pouring down into her dungeon and it floats her back to the top, where her scratched skin and awoken heart hurt more but are made beautiful by their aliveness. She is full like the well where she was once captive in emptiness. My personal well is usually pretty full, so that I can see over the top. Most of the time I drink starlight from it instead of sitting in it, but we all have or emptinesses sometimes.

When I heard the first notes from the song When you’re broken I thought it was one of the most hopeful of the album. Then its lyrics confirmed that feeling. How important is your music for you?

I have played music all my life and it has given me another voice, as has writing poetry. To combine the two with such an effect gives me purpose and direction. It defines me, sometimes to my detriment, as no one is one-dimensional, and it releases me from myself. It gives me language beyond words.

One of your latest released songs is We’ll be warm, we’ll got each other, definitely powerful, with a harder and more electric sound. All that electric energy in the song, where does it come from?

I had one of the roughest, coldest winters of my life that year, and it made me want to play loud. I wrote that song years ago but never recorded it in a way that was gritty enough for the lyrics, and I thought that if I had that aggression in me I aught to try it again.

Returning to the album, the Sewing song. Do you have a lot of things to sew in your life?

I do. Real and symbolic. Everything comes apart, you see. That song contains concise directions for loading thread into my mother's old singer sewing machine.

I give you some white clouds, a blank sky, some blues and watercolours. What would you do?

Put the sun in, just peeking out and sending rays down to earth, put a stamp on it and mail it to an old friend.

The lyrics have a main role in your songs. Do you write poetry? What writers have influenced you?

I do write poetry. I wrote poetry before I wrote songs, starting around age 10. I had a tumultuous childhood to reckon with, I was an outcast at school, and I had a lot to sort out in my young mind. I read things like Sylvia Plath and Emily Dickinson, Pablo Neruda, anything a kid could find to stretch their imagination and freak themselves out. I was bored at school and had an easy time with tests and things, I got myself in lots of trouble until I fed my mind and soul better, and was able to extract things from myself to see them clearly.

Your mind is a good to place to hide?

Well, I think what we usually hide from ARE our minds, and we twist this around so as not to have to take responsibility for ourselves. It's easier to blame what we can see.

One of your songs is called The wake of the ship. Imagine a naked ship, how would you dress it?

I would paint it's name " The Merry Sea", I would cover it in flower petals like a parade float, and send it into the universe so my old fishing friend could catch space fish with light particles as bait and cook them for his friend-souls on a cooling star with a cast-iron frying pan

NINA VIOLET VIDEOS here

An interview by Juan Carlos Romero

Nina Violet website www.ninaviolet.bandcamp.com

Photo courtesy of Nina Violet