Photo credit: Matthew Spencer

Deleted Scenes is a regular feature in which we highlight interesting parts of interviews didn’t make the cut. In this installment, Aline Simone — singer/songwriter and author of the newly-released essay collection You Must Go and Win — talks about the musician’s life vs. motherhood, Doukhabors, and her struggle with “growing into the universal.” You can read the full interview here.

You released your latest album, [amazon_link id=”B004W9CG6G” target=”_blank” container=”” container_class=”” ]Make Your Own Danger[/amazon_link], along with your book back in June. But the album was completed awhile ago, right?

Oh my god, it was finished when I was a baby. Yeah, it was a finished a really long time ago. It’s been done for – it might even be three years. It’s something tragic. It’s been done for a tragically long period of time. What happened was, I really wanted to release them together, on the same day. But the book kept being pushed back, for reasons – once by the publisher, it was pushed back like six months. And then I got pregnant, and then I had to push it back. And so it just kind of — it kept getting pushed back. And I felt like the album was strong enough that I couldn’t just release the album and create another album that was good enough to release with the book, in that period of time. If I had had – if I knew originally what the timeline would be, and that the book would be delayed, I might have done it a different way and tried to create another album, and release [Make Your Own Danger] back when. But I also had to write the book, so, you know. It just was kind of a clusterfuck. That’s what happened.

I’m not happy with the fact that I sat on it for so long. It was like, so long overdue and my bandmates were totally making fun of me – I mean it was like, “the album,” in quotes. They were like, “Will ‘the album’ ever come out?” And I was like, “It will come out.” “Physically? In physical form? We can like, hold it in our hand and not just like, on the interweb?” And I’d just defend, vociferously, the notion that it would one day be released.

So, it’s sad. And I hope not to to that again. I mean, I’ve learned my lesson: do not hitch an album to your book. Because publishing is still very slow, and music has just become – it’s more and more accelerated. Your album leaks the day you put it out, if not before, so you might as well just poop it out as fast as you can.

In your last essay, it almost seemed like you were going to quit music. But I also read that essay as about growing up, or getting older. Because you mention that you wanted to have a baby at some point, and —

Yeah, it’s a thing. I mean, you reach a crossroads where it’s like, okay, if I’m going to be a childless, ambitious woman, the stakes are so much higher. You really – if you are someone who kind of wants to have a kid but can’t make that mesh with your career, and you just make that choice – “I choose career” – then you’re really raising the stakes in terms of, like – you kind of have to achieve your goal, or it’s really sad. It’s kind of a tragedy. I just decided I didn’t want to do that. I was like, I’d rather have a baby. I’d rather just have a happy baby and be happy. Like, my family’s awesome, my husband’s awesome, I really want to be a mom.

I looked at these other women, who I really admire; it’s just like, that is success: Cat Power, Neko Case, PJ Harvey. None of them have kids. And I don’t think it’s a coincidence. That’s what I bring up in that chapter, that I just don’t think it’s a coincidence. I think that they made that trade-off. They reached that crossroads and they made their choice. And on a much smaller indie level, I reached the crossroads too and I was like, I’m just going to be a mom. I don’t mean “just,” I mean I’m not going to give up being a mom to be PJ Harvey. Plus, PJ Harvey is such an awesome PJ Harvey, she can be PJ Harvey for me.

To follow up on another essay in the book, I also wanted to ask you about your Siberian friend, Konst.

Konst is here now, and he’s in LA. He’s a screen – he’s a director.

He is?

Yeah, he was directing – he actually got funding for his first short, now, and he’s shooting it in July. …. He’s still a very, very dear friend of mine. And he’s doing it, which is amazing because he like, moved here – he’s like 41, you know, and he moved here only a couple years ago, and English is his second language. He’s just like, awesome. He’s just like, rocking away. And he really is the way he is in book. He’s like, “I will be a Russian enema up their ass.”

I think I laughed the most at that essay – I read that chapter on a plane, and it was really, pretty embarrassing.

I like to hear that. But yeah, the things that come out of his mouth just are so amazing. I was – like the chapter with him, the Britney Spears chapter, “Growing Into the Universal,” which is mostly about him – I remember I was literally like, “Stop!” and I’d write down what he said. He’s an amazing storyteller himself, he’s a really smart guy. He deserves all the credit for his parts in the book because they really are as close to a direct narrative as possible. Like, his direct narrative.

And in the book, you’re working on a screenplay with him.

I was.

Did that happen?

No, I mean we had this – because, you know it’s part, like, what I say in the book about him. He’s got such a mainstream perspective. He’s this brilliant, intellectual guy but he wants to write The Bourne Supremacy. Is that what it’s called? The Bourne…?

Yeah, the Bourne movies.

Yeah, I’ve never seen any of them but he loves them. He wants to make Catwoman 8 — that’s his dream. He’s like, “Argh, if only I could make Catwoman 8.” And I’m like, my sensibility is much quirkier. And so we love each other, and we so much respect each other’s talents, but when we try to collaborate there’s that clash. Because he really has a mainstream sensibility, and I really have, like, a deeply quirky sensibility. And basically, I mean, if you’re trying to write a mainstream movie, you do have to purge a lot of the quirkiness. You’re trying to appeal to a very broad cross-section of the population. And so I take the blame for our script not working out. I think I just could not beat myself into submission. I just couldn’t go there with him.

You couldn’t grow quite that far into the universal.

No, I couldn’t quite grow that far. But I’m inching, I’m inching slowly toward the universal. But at a very slow rate. I mean, I think this book is, I mean, as universal as I get. I don’t know, like I know it wouldn’t appeal to everyone. It didn’t seem to really appeal to readers of Elle magazine, for example, which is pretty universal. But this was a very universal effort on my part. This is like the high-water mark on my progress towards the universal. I’m afraid it will only sink after that – I’ll look back on it from below sea level. I’ll look up at it from underwater with my scuba mask on: “That was the high-water mark.”

You hadn’t written anything except for songs before you were approached by an editor at Farrar, Strauss & Giroux to write this book. What was the process like for writing it?

[My editor] thought it would be better to start with – or, to try a fictionalized memoir. In part, I think it was because of all the trouble with memoirs, lately. The James Frey and the Margaret Seltzer and the Three Cups of Deceit, that whole thing. Especially because – this was a few years ago, when those scandals were more fresh. I don’t think they were eager to sign another, like, memoirish book. So he asked me to fictionalize it. And I just found that really hard —  it was like, “write about your life, only with lies.” You know?

I didn’t know how to do that, and my effort at doing that wasn’t very successful. He wasn’t in love with the result, and neither was I. But he did like the parts of it that were true, so he gave me free range to just give a crack at writing a non-fiction essay. And I just sat down and very quickly wrote pretty much what turned out to be the first ten pages of the first chapter. And he really liked that, and I got my book deal based on that. There was no proposal, there was no anything else but those ten pages. I think he just needed to be convinced that I had a voice, and then he said, “okay!” So, you know? “Write a bunch of essays.” It was kind of magical.

Okay, lastly — I really wanted to ask you about the Doukhobors

Doukhobors, right. [Ed. Note: Simone pronounces it like dukh-o-bors, while I’ve just pronounced it “dook-a-bores”]. I think the Canadians pronounce it really flat, just like “dook-a-bores”, without any accent.

Yeah, my dad is from Saskatchewan.

Oh, yeah!

And he knew all about the Doukhobors. I just happened to mention it to him while I was reading your essay about them, and he was like, “oh, the Doukhobors!”

It’s so weird. Everyone in Canada knows about the Doukhobors, and no one here does.

Yeah, he had all these stories about them. Like, that they used to burn their houses down to protest taxes, and strip naked and stand by the side of the road. You would drive by and see a naked family standing in front of a burning house.

Yeah, it’s so fascinating. Nudity was like – it’s so fascinating, it’s such a fascinating story. And honestly if I had that skill of like, non-fiction writing in that way – books have already been written about their nakedness and their house burning. And I wish I could have brought it to life in a new way. I considered it, because the stories are amazing. And one of those three guys that met me at the airport was from one of the villages where they did that – that was only the most radical of the Doukhobors.

To be honest, I stayed away from those stories, I didn’t mention them because the Doukhobors are really sensitive about being depicted – about being defined by their most radical element. And since I actually met them and hung out with them, and spent days with them, and it was such a sore point with them that they’re always – I mean imagine, it’s like as if the Russians were like, Oh, they’re crazy, and they bang their shoe on the table –

I was wondering about that, because that was all my Dad could remember about them. And I asked him, “Are they still protesting in the nude?” I couldn’t imagine that they’re still so extreme. Especially because in your essay, they seemed very sweet.

They were very sweet. And I tried to mention these weird things – I mean, those who know the Doukhobors, those who know them, know that stuff. And the few little bits I mention about meeting them in the book – that they’re pacifists, that they protested the Japanese internment in Canada, their vegetarianism – they’re like Quakers, you know? There was a very small percentage of them that did that stuff.

And I knew it would be so fucking funny if I mentioned it, but I just couldn’t, because I didn’t want to be exploiting that same thing. I did make fun of the Skoptsy, because they’re all gone. So I was like, all bets are off, I’m going to make fun of these crazy people.

Well, I’m glad I asked you about this, because my dad only had the sensationalist story.

There’s a lot more to the Doukhobors!


 
 
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