claire rousay: a picnic bench in copenhagen
Photography: Felix Walworth
It’s late April and claire is coming to the end of her European tour.
Soundcheck has commenced upstairs for claire’s gig tonight and one of the supporting acts is currently howling into the mic. I’m waiting at the bottom of the stairs on the groundfloor, by the restaurant of this multipurpose venue situated in Copenhagen’s bohemian district of Nørrebro. I keep hearing the creaking of descending footsteps and I look up expectedly in the anticipation that it will be claire. But it never is she. Appearing moments later with a can of beer in hand and another in the pocket of her well-fitted Carhartt jacket, she explains that a phone call with her manager had delayed her.
“How's it been?” I ask as we walk to the casual corner of this dining space, equipped with couches, and away from the long tables presumably assembled for a private dinner party. “The European tour?”
“Ok,” claire says with a sigh, sitting down on a stool.
“Yeah?”
“Yeah, it's been something else.”
“Gruelling?”
“Yeah. It's certainly not a vacation. I think I realised that like two years ago. Touring isn't actually fun.”
“It's actually work.”
“It's legitimately work. It's like the hardest work I've ever done in my whole life.”
“Who said this is the best job in the world?” I ask mockingly.
“Yeah. I worked in a drycleaners for fucking five or six years, dry cleaning clothes and dealing with the worst people ever and like lifting super heavy bags full of dirty laundry and shit.” claire pauses.
“And that beats this?”
“Yeah. That was easier than this. Because at least you get to go home and detach from it.”
“Yeah.”
“I haven't had another job besides music in like two years, or like a year and a half or something.”
“Which is outrageous to think considering two years ago would have been the start of the pandemic.”
“I guess three years then. Shit.”
“So within that time, you've grown with the pandemic as opposed to faltering.”
“Yeah, totally —” claire ponders momentarily “— It's kind of interesting. I don't know. I feel very lucky. I haven't really processed that this is my actual job, which is crazy. It's insane that this is my job. My job is getting on social media and being like, 'Can someone please bring me a joint?'“
I laugh. “But I suppose the sentiment of your work has helped people through those past couple of years.”
“I mean, I hope so.”
“Well, it's helped me. I can give you that much.”
“Amazing. I never thought I'd be that artist.”
“But then is there a certain sense of responsibility now for everything that comes after?”
“Hmmm, yeah. That's what people have told me. I don't think it's that bad. I grew up super Christian. They had the whole thing where you have to be an example for the community or be an example for the church, so that pressure of upholding something — it's a very different thing now, but still being reliable in a certain way — I think has always been there. So it's not necessarily as difficult or jarring. It doesn't catch me off guard or anything, no.”
“Did you get sorted with the joint, by the way?” I ask.
“Not yet. I think it's going to happen after the show. I'm trading someone a guestlist spot and a record for it —” claire glances with a cheeky grin “— But I'm fucking stoked.”
I laugh. “How much did you have to bargain with them?”
“Not that much. They seemed pretty eager just to talk.”
“That's cool.”
“I haven't been sleeping at all.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. Not that I smoke up that much weed, but I haven't slept at all. So it's less of a party thing and more of me being, like, I need to.”
“Yeah, it's medical,” I jokingly suggest.
“Yes. That's definitely what it is,” claire says with a suggestive raise of her eyebrows.
“Back pains.”
“Exactly. From flying,” claire pleas.
“But you're in Dublin in two days?”
claire sips on her can of beer and nods as she tilts her head back.
“Maybe I could sort you out there.”
“I have a bunch of people in Dublin that are sorting me out, which is really nice.”
“I used to indulge in Dublin's finest and smoke, but it actually led to psychosis and a lot of intrusive thoughts.”
A mother kneels on the floor beside us as her baby rigidly crawls around us. The baby inevitably lets out a jarring cry, to which the mother is slow to abate, so we decide to move into the tepid outdoors via the side entrance where there is a wooden picnic table in the empty carpark for us to sit at. claire puts on her squared off sunglasses and places two 330ml cans of beer beside her, one open and one unopened.
“The best way, though,” I continue, “to overcome the intrusive thoughts is to just be deadly honest and open with them, because then you own the thought.”
“I'm the same fucking way,” claire admits. “I have all the intrusive thoughts. Especially in social situations.”
“I recently met my brother's kid for the first time, and I'm just like, 'Yeah, I thought about dropping your baby on its head.'“
“Fuuuck. No!”
“Because then you own the thought.”
“Well yeah, and then if you do it, you can be like, 'See, I told you.'“ claire’s macabre humour elicits a healthy laugh from me.
“With us both having a Christian upbringing, it's funny how our method of dealing with our internal thoughts is via confessional.”
“Totally.”
“And it's weird how that's how we grew up coping with it: To share our thoughts with a strange man, essentially, and not our close ones.”
“Yeah, I mean, at least it's out.”
“Yeah.”
“I don't know. When I do bad stuff it's usually in public.”
“All out in the open.”
“Because you don't know anybody. So, I guess confessing to somebody that you don't know also helps. Do you know what I mean?”
“Yeah, yeah.”
“Because then, at least you did it. It's out there. But it won't haunt you in the same way.”
I nod in agreement, assuming a more relaxed position with my feet up on the bench, legs bent and cradled by my crossed arms.
“What struck me about your most recent release,” I say, “were the track titles. You have "everything perfect is already here" and there's a confidence and a dogma to it almost, and I don't know if when you name these it's internal or if you're projecting that out to people as reassurance.”
“No, it's definitely internal. I really don't like to tell people how to feel or how to relate to stuff,” claire confirms. “I was really stoked on it, but at the time. I made all the titles and I didn't change them and my life is totally imploding now. Like, my life right now is really fucking hard. Like, I'm going through a lot of shit in my personal life.”
I laugh, unsure if she is joking or not. I quickly decide that she isn’t, with no hint from her barely perceptible eyes behind her sunglasses to suggest there was any facetious intent.
“But it does feel like a mantra,” I say. “So is it something that you have to tell yourself to bring yourself back to serenity?”
“Less serenity and more just being open to new things, or open to the situation that's at hand.”
“But then in contrast with the title track, you have "i feel its foolish to care." Like I said, there's confidence with the first statement and then you see vulnerability and an unknowing with this one, I suppose.“
“Yeah, totally,” claire says. “I don't know. Just making so many judgements going forward and backwards in time seems so stupid.”
“Yeah.”
“Like, when you sit back and think about it, why would you make so many judgements about something that has already happened? It's over. It's not impacting the future anymore. Or, it could be, but you know what I mean? It's not actively fucking your life up anymore.”
“Yeah, fair.”
“Why would you ignore the moment you're in to think about the thing you have to do tomorrow?”
“But isn't it so annoying when you know the lesson that you were trying to be taught —”
“I mean, yeah. I don't observe it.”
“— But then you still don't know how to enact the lesson in your own life going forward.”
“I'm really, really, really trying to do that on this tour. Like really trying to actually be present and not just bitch about bookings or travel or something.”
I nod. “I was talking to this beautiful person that I only met over the weekend in Malmö. It was one of those relationships where you're with each other for 72 hours, but you still feel comfortable to open up.”
claire’s face lights up. “I love that shit.”
“It was great. At one point, she was referring to her relationships and how she was trying to address it and she knows that she's vulnerable and emotionally submissive. So I suggested that she was prone to being manipulated, to which she responded, "Yeah. But are you really being manipulated if you know you're being manipulated." And I don't know. I think so. But, at the same time, maybe if you know it, the onus is on you to be the better person, whereas if you don't know that you're getting manipulated, then it's on them to be the better person.”
“Yeah, I think so. I think anyone who is more aware of the situation is the one that should be taking charge.”
“Yeah?”
“Well, I don't know. Because I think being aware of the situation that you're in, the responsibility is on you because you have more control and the person with the most control is the person that is to blame when things go wrong.”
“Ok.”
“If that makes sense.”
“That makes perfect sense.”
“If you wanted to compare it to a smaller situation, if someone is driving a car and you're riding in the car and the car crashes, it's not your fault. You know what I mean?”
“But what if it was you talking in his ear that distracted them?”
“Well, see, then you have to reevaluate it.”