Kira Puru

Interview by Madeleine Dore

Kira Puru: performer, photographer, visual artist, DJ and vocal powerhouse

Full transcript

“Don’t feel guilty about needing to regenerate. The world’s really overwhelming, and balance is important in any aspect of anyone’s life, so if you’re feeling burnt out, take some time.”
– Kira Puru

Madeleine Dore: Every strength we perceive in ourselves, or that others perceive in us, has a flip side that feels more like a weakness. Often it’s our traits that make us extraordinary that can actually make us feel most ordinary, and vice versa, creating this internal contradiction.

For me, there is an overlap between my deep-rooted laziness and my ambitious over-achiever side. I’m good at planning and drafting goals and making lists of everything I want to do, but my inherent laziness means I often resist taking that first step.

The ambitious over-achiever, the perceived strength by maybe societal standards, never ceases to come up with things for me to do, but this can easily become a weakness, as my mind deludes me to thinking it’s all achievable. And I berate myself when it turns out it’s not.

This is important for growth and pushing myself creatively, this striving. But it’s not so helpful for being realistic and avoiding a feeling of overwhelm or for feeling guilty when I don’t get everything on my too ambitious list complete.

The laziness, so the perceived weakness, provides a helpful wake-up call in many ways. It helps me adjust my expectations and remind myself that I’m only human, and that you need both ebb and the flow.

So I suppose, for me, it’s about learning how to accept these two sides of myself and seeing what kind of wonderful things can be cultivated from there. Maybe, between laziness and ambition, is patience, reflection, and steadiness.

Figuring out our contradictions and squaring off those sides of ourselves can take years, decades. When we do accept or reveal them, that’s really when we connect with ourselves and other people.

Isn’t that what we’re all looking for when we’re either meeting someone new or getting to know somebody? We are most fascinated by someone’s flaws, and maybe even most comforted.

This weeks’ guest certainly makes it easy to connect and adore her wonderful contradictions, and she puts them front row and centre in her Twitter bio. Performer, photographer, visual artist, DJ, and vocal powerhouse, Kira Puru describes herself as an opinionated imposter. In that very summation, she’s exploring the fickleness of confidence, and also the humbleness of learning to be wrong.

In this conversation, we talk about mental health, navigating the logistics of living through a pandemic, and sometimes just needing to curl up like an armadillo, living yourself leeway to be overwhelmed, balancing the artist and the political, frugality, mistakes, and that tension between leaning towards chaos and leaning into routine.

So, to begin, here’s Kira Pura on how she is today.

Kira Puru: I’m okay today. I’ve had really big ups and downs in recent times just because of the state of the world, and also I’m just about to put a single out, so every day is wildly different, but I’m quite good today.

MD: What would usually contribute to a good day? Is it just waking up on the right side of the bed?

KP: Yeah, generally. I suffer from a lot of anxiety, which I’m sure we’ll talk about it during this conversation, but that affects your sleep, if you have a good or bad night’s sleep, that can always affect how you feel in the morning. I don’t know, just some days feel better than others, but this morning I got up early, I’ve had some coffee, I’ve done some work, so I’m feeling pretty good.

MD: There are so many factors. Obviously what’s going on in the world is affecting everybody so differently and, as someone who is a performer, I’m sure there’s been so many unexpected bumps. So what’s been going on for you? How’s it been impacting your days?

KP: Well, at first I think it was the logistics of what was going on in the world and how we were going to navigate that very much, like taking precedence at the start of all this forming because day by day we’d have shows that were either cancelled or tentatively looking like they might be cancelled, and then shifted, so it was just management of logistics at the start.

But then it seemed like we were going to be cooped up for some time and we didn’t have any certain idea of how long this was going on, I think once the logistic things faded away, it was more like the day-to-day impact that was influencing me specifically. Looking down the barrel of releasing an album and just having to promote that and still trying to creatively toss things around and finish that project, it’s just been a strange time.

I don’t feel altogether super inspired. I feel a little bit overwhelmed, a little bit scared, and obviously there are people who are getting sick and dying, so I’m trying to be sensitive to that. I’ve had some friends who have been diagnosed with COVID, I’ve got a mum who’s got not amazing lung capacity, so I’m fearful for her health.

Every day is a bit of a rollercoaster, but for me, in terms of work, I’ve just tried to focus on creative stuff as much as possible, and also just give myself the leeway to be feeling overwhelmed on any given day, or just to relax if things are not coming to me so naturally, or just focus on really tiny things like cleaning, or drawing, or doing jigsaw puzzles, or making a cup of tea.

I’m just trying to take each moment as it comes and not make myself feel any particular way about not being massively constructive at any time, you know? 

MD: Oh, that’s such a really lovely way to put it, if we can get to that point where we’re a little bit gentler with ourselves if we need to be. I’m wondering how this might link back to other periods throughout your creative career, where you might have had those periods of uninspiration or “low output”, or those things that make us feel like we might be stuck in a rut, and whether there’s been some lessons from those experiences that you’ve started to apply? Because it sounds like your inching closer to that process of actually accepting wherever you’re at, which takes a long time.

KP: Absolutely, and I think for any artist that’s dedicated to being creative long-term, you just come to accept that those waves are going to come and go all the time. I’ve accepted that the flow of inspiration is going to evolve every day, and I’m probably always going to be facing some sort of challenge when it comes to feeling motivated or just having any kind of consistency with output.

Relating to what I was just saying about being a bit gentler with yourself, I definitely had to remind myself of that in the past, especially because I’m hypercritical of my work, and I think a lot of artists are the same, particularly when you’re writing alone or creating alone. You look at the things that you’re making and think, is this any good? What am I trying to say? Have I already said this before? Is this relevant? What is this for? Who’s it for? Who wants to see this? 

There’s all these questions that go through your head and it’s a constant balance of being able to be critical enough to feel comfort in the fact that your work is passing through enough filters that, when it finally reaches the world, that it’s going to be of quality and of a certain standard that you feel proud of. But, at the same time, not throwing so many of those filers in your own way that they become obstacles and they prevent you from releasing anything at all.

As somebody who has struggled with anxiety and depression and who is a very intensely critical self-talk, that’s something that I’ve always had. It’s sort of like this spectre behind me that follows me everywhere. I guess every day is different, but you learn that creativity is a lot easier and the flow is a lot stronger and more playful when you don’t give too much of a mind to those voices, or give them so much space that you’re second-guessing yourself at every point.

MD: Yeah, it actually reminds me of your Twitter bio, which is ‘opinionated imposter’. Those two things, obviously, are a little bit of a dichotomy, but in a way they complement each other because you need the opinionated confidence to step outside the imposter feelings, but you also need the imposter feelings to maybe bring that sense of self-awareness. They oddly complement each other, but what is behind it for you?

KP: I think I put a Tweet out one day that people just did not agree with, and I was just struggling with this idea that people feel, especially on Twitter itself because it’s such an intense platform and, I don’t know, it’s so funny how on the internet, people just go out and say whatever the hell they feel like at any given time, and that always seems to rile people up. Particularly on Twitter, which I find hilarious because that’s why everyone’s there, so just be opinionated.

But for me, I guess I was kind of toying around those ideas that you were talking about. Like I never know about anything 100%. I’m just having my own strong opinions and reactions to things as they come up, and I don’t always feel entitled in my access to my own career even, or my opinions. I’m not even sure if I’m in the place to voice my opinion on any particular day. I’m always second-guessing myself, but also I realise the importance of speaking out and weighing in on a conversation, and how valid are your opinions even, if you don’t throw them in the ring and come to the floor and have a discussion?

I’ve always been someone who really enjoys heated discussion and debate, and I feel like that’s why I really love Twitter and just the thoughts behind that. That bio was just me basically saying that yes, I’ve got opinions, but I don’t even know if I’m entitled to them.

MD: It’s really quite humbling when opinion can be such currency. You said in a previous interview that, “More than being right, it’s important to understand how to be wrong.” How have you learned to be wrong?

KP: I guess you can’t ever really speak for other people’s experiences, so when you’re weighing in on a topic, especially one that affects people in different ways, your opinion really isn’t the be-all-and-end-all and only ever really pertains to you and your experience, so I think you’ve got to understand that things affect people differently, people’s stories are vastly different from each other, and everybody’s entitled to have their imposition on it, even if it’s something that you wildly don’t agree with.

It’s really important to show up and engage in conversation when you have the energy to, but if somebody tells you that you’re wrong or that there’s consequences to the way that you’ve behaved or something that you’ve said, it’s really important to learn how to process that and to make space for other people as well. I think that’s how progress happens, is listening to everybody’s opinions and stories and finding out a way that we can bring them together without [inaudible 12:40] any one voice down.

MD: Yeah, I guess circling back to when you’re describing potentially where different ruts might stem from. You mentioned that you’ve really got to tap into whether you’ve got the energy for it, but then how do you balance that if you’re feeling pushed into it?

KP: It’s hard. It’s hard. You never really know, and I’m quite impulsive when it comes to weighing my opinion. But you just don’t know. I love making music, I love practising my craft, I love just playing and making things, and a lot of days I wish that my existence in the pop music game and the Australian music industry in general wasn’t political, but it just is because of my background, who I am, and what I believe in, and I’m quite privileged in the fact that I have the energy to speak up.

I feel passionately enough, and I’ve got enough people looking at me that it could make some difference at some point, so if you’ve got that privilege, I feel pretty passionately about using it. Of course I don’t judge people that don’t, but I do feel a certain amount of responsibility, so I guess in terms of push, I do feel pressured to weigh in and do what I can with my voice, but also there’s days when I just want to have fun and make art and just be a person making pop music.

MD: Yeah, and that’s what you do beautifully. Finding those spaces for ourselves, I think especially at the moment where so many of us are isolated, how do we create those spaces to let go? Are you conscious of trying to do things in your day at the moment that do bring that freedom? Or is it difficult to actually find that?

KP: It’s difficult for me at the moment, and I think that’s because I’ve taken the change quite hard. It’s quite overwhelming for me. I think because I like to obsessively acquire information, so I’m constantly online looking at what’s going on, who’s doing what, what the numbers are, what decisions each government is making, and I found that information overload quite overwhelming to the point where I think I’ve just been trying to focus on feeling well, mentally and physically, and that’s taking up quite a lot of my day at the moment.

But I hope that I’m going to get to a point soon where I can contribute to the broader community or find ways in myself to access that. But at the moment, I’m sort of in a survival phase. I’m definitely someone who curls up like an armadillo when shit gets real and doesn’t really reach out. I’m hoping that I get to that point really soon though because I’ve got a lot of friends and family that I’d like to be able to offer support to, but at the moment I’m in a bit of a survival phase.

MD: I think we do need to have that curl up moment in order to restore, even if it takes a really long time, to get to the point where we can be there. 

With the single coming up, or the release of the single coming up, how does that feel? Or how are you approaching performing during these times? There’s a lot of people giving away work for free, for example, just to connect with their audience, but that also feels like it might not be accessible for everyone. So how are you balancing that element?

KP: At the moment, yeah. I’m really taking everything very easy. I’m trying to play music and sing and create as frequently as possible on a daily basis. I’ve got a couple of projects that I’m working on and, of course, the single is coming out, so I think I’m really just trying to focus on the things at hand.

It’s been really incredible to watch artists around me in the local community who are just doing the most. They’re out there playing shows and connecting with people. Music is really important in times like this. I think a lot of people look to the arts for solace and comfort and just to feel a little less alone when they feel under attack, and I think the role that artists and musicians play in these times is really valuable, especially when we’re already so generous and our art is often so undervalued. I think it’s so incredible to watch other members of the community just rise to that challenge, and I think that’s really amazing.

I personally feel like we should be mindful of the ways in which we share our art and the ways that we teach people what value that holds, but of course I think that’s each individual artist’s choice to make in the time. And, like I said, it’s been pretty brilliant watching everyone step up.

MD: It’s also great to hear that you’re making every day, or aiming for that even in your curl up phase, what is your relationship between routine and creating? Is it usually something that you have a consistent schedule for or is it a bit more fluid?

KP: I’m sort of [inaudible 18:22] floating to full-blown chaos generally in my life. I’m not amazing at routine. But I do respond really well to routine when I can finally wrestle myself into some sort of semblance of a routine. That does really work for me.

MD: That’s the tension, isn’t it? It’s like I know it’s good, but I struggle to this point. I know it would create a great ballast, but to get to that point is tricky. So tell us about that. How do you both know that it’s good for you, but exist in chaos?

KP: It’s a constant battle. I really like being able to be in the moment and be as present in that as I can, and that means that if I have a long lost friend from out of town who’s come to visit, I can just say yeah, I’m going to put this off until tomorrow, or if I feel like playing the guitar and writing a song right now, I’m just going to do that. So I really enjoy that freedom.

I’m sure that various members of my professional team are frustrated with the way that I just decide to do or not do things on a whim, but I enjoy the space that gives me mentally to feel not guilty about output. But like I said, I really do feel like I respond to routine when I can wrestle myself into one, so it’s a daily balance.

Waking up, I usually would say about seven, but lately I’ve been waking up at five and being completely awake for an hour or so and then going back to sleep. It’s hard for me to have routine around sleep because I have a lot of anxiety, which prevents me from sleeping, so I just go with it. At the moment, I wake up for an hour or two at about five in the morning and then I have another sort of morning nap.

MD: I love a morning nap

KP: And then I wake up and go for a morning walk or a bike ride around nine-ish and then start my day when I get home after that.

MD: For a while you worked full-time at a tech start-up. Are you still doing any of that, or when did that wrap up?

KP: I parted ways with that role mid last year I think, and that was really just because, thankfully, my music work was getting to be so demanding that I wasn’t really doing either very well, my day job or my creative work, so that was a really hard decision to make, but I felt like it was more important to me, to focus on something that I was personally invested in.

MD: What was hard about making that decision? It seems like everybody’s dream to just leap into the full-time career in music.

KP: Yeah, money is the main reason why we do that because, unfortunately, working in music full-time doesn’t give you a full-time wage for a long time. You have to really be slogging it away for quite some time until you can earn a reasonable wage from what we do, and so there’s definitely always a period where your work is so demanding that it’s hard to focus on anything but that.

But at the same time you need to pay your bills and feed yourself and buy musical equipment and do all the things, like travel, that’s associated with the job, so it’s hard for financial reasons. But also I happened to love that job at the time, and it was somewhat creative. I like doing a lot of things that are not necessarily music-related, and so part of me was wanting to feed into those aspects of my life as well.

Also there’s no real guarantee with what we do. You can have really great success for a year or two, but that doesn’t give you any kind of reliable security blanket in terms of the rest of your life, what that looks like. So sometimes you have to toy with the idea that maybe you need a Plan B. So there’s all those things going on when you’re working full-time.

MD: Yeah, definitely. I’m wondering how you did it for so long? Having the full-time job and your music career, and, as you mentioned, these other pursuits like writing and photography. I think so many people are in this position, where there is the Plan B, or the day job, to support the creative career because the creative career can be so precarious in many of the industries. So how would you make time for all of it? Or what were the sacrifices?

KP: It was really gruelling, and I think I pushed it to the absolute limit in terms of what I was personally capable of. There’s lots of aspects about that time of my life. I was working full-time for probably about a year and that whole time my career was quite demanding, and I was touring a lot. I was also in a relationship with somebody who I was living with and, like you said, I was also a photographer at the time, so it was gruelling and I overcommitted myself. My day job, my creative work, my relationship, every aspect of my life suffered for that over-commitment, I think.

But I was just trying to put myself in a financial position where I could take some time off work and really focus on creative stuff. It’s such a hard juggle and I think all emerging artists would understand that battle. It’s really tough. 

And I think the things that you sacrifice when you’re physically committing to that degree is personal health. So your mental health, your physical health, just even catching up with friends and family, all of that stuff. It’s the most disposable, or at least seems the most disposable in the moment, and so you sacrifice all these things that really feed your heart and your soul, and to be able to show up physically to make money and to kick your career off, and it’s really tough.

You also don’t feel very inspired when you’re super busy. It’s hard to feel playful and creative when you’re working a 40-hour week in a day job and then touring three days a week.

MD: Yeah, gosh. It would feel like a hamster wheel. It is hard, as you say, because it’s almost like a personal responsibility to not burn out, or at least the pressure anyway, but then, on the other hand, if you don’t do all these things, how are you meant to “make it” if you can’t support yourself financially and keep putting out creative work? How do you get to the point where you can focus on your creative work? It feels like a double-edged sword, I guess.

KP: Very much so, and I think that’s why mental health statistically, for people that work in the arts, is so poor. I think we’re under a lot of pressure to somehow figure out this mystery way that we can become financially stable while also working so relentlessly for free and for opportunities. It’s hard. It’s hard to build a business. Anyone who’s building a small business will tell you it’s extremely hard, let alone having to work another complete job at the same time.

MD: Well, given that it’s that double-edged sword, looking back, do you see any other way? Or would you do it all over again because that is the only way?

KP: It’s really hard to say. I’m really proud of where I’m at now and I’ve put a lot of work in to get here. I can’t say how things would’ve looked if I made slightly different choices along the way but looking at the specific choices that I had made, I can’t be sure that all of them are great. I did go through a long bout of terrible mental health and my relationship at the time absolutely was decimated by my choices to over-commit, so it’s hard to say.

I would definitely preach the importance of looking after your mental and physical health above needing to pay the rent and learning to be more frugal, and also learning to be a little bit more patient in your professional life. Both of those things are valuable.

MD: Patience and frugality. How do you be frugal? Any money-saving tips, Kira?

KP: I’m so awful at it. I just realised I’m giving all this advice that I myself do not take, but I’m a bougie bitch. I love fancy wine and dinners out, and I’m terrible at saving, so I don’t really think I could give a lot of advice on how to be more frugal. It’s tough.

MD: I find that having a tracker is good, for accountability.

KP: A tracker?

MD: Yeah, like I know exactly what’s coming in and out, and that transparency just for myself creates that level of anxiety enough to second guess if I go for the bougie dinner. But that’s one approach.

KP: Do you have an app?

MD: No, I just have a very big Google spreadsheet.

KP: Wow. That just totally overwhelms me. I’m allergic to spreadsheets.

MD: Yeah, that can’t be helped then, if it’s an allergy.

KP: I could probably take some advice from you on how to be frugal, to be honest.

MD: It’s a shame that we have to be.

KP: I think we shouldn’t have to be, and that’s the thing. I think there’s a lot of work that could be done in the realms of appreciating art and artists that allow maybe a little bit more leeway for people who are practising art and really contributing to the creative community, so that they don’t necessarily have to work several jobs to be able to survive.

MD: Yeah, exactly. Otherwise it’s back to that personal blame. Like are you buying your coffee out? Like that’s meant to make the whole difference for the systemic issues.

KP: Yeah, totally.

MD: You were talking a bit about choices before, and I’m always interested in how careers overall unfold and how choices might have impacted or not. I was interested to see that you moved from Melbourne to Newcastle, and you decided to put music to the side? But then coming here, obviously things turned out differently. I was wondering how much you think planning a career has to do with where you end up and how much is actually just being in a certain space?

KP: I think it’s really important to have a plan. I think it feels really good to work towards a goal and, just in terms of professional focus, I think there’s a lot of value there. It also helps you compartmentalise everything in your head, when you know what you’re working for and what several steps it takes to get to that point, and how you can adjust and navigate what’s going on and you can’t [inaudible 29:48] to get to there.

I think that’s really important and it just makes everything a little simpler and less confusing. But I don’t think you can rely on a plan of being successful in the traditional sense in music particularly because things just happen and things change, and there’s many aspects of the climate that are unpredictable, so you’ve got to learn to adapt.

You can’t guarantee that if you work X amount of hours to make a song or put a song out or to do a tour or whatever that it’s going to have some sort of predictable result, so I think it’s good to have a plan but don’t rely so hard on that plan that, if it doesn’t come to fruition, you’re going to be disappointed or confused.

MD: Yeah, it comes back to that patience then, doesn’t it?

KP: Yeah, and just adaptability is important and just learning to go with the flow. I think having a good understanding of what your priorities are really helps you navigate this world because, for some people, it’s not about response and, for them, the reward is in creating the work itself, having new network opportunities, or meeting new collaborators, or just meeting personal goals in terms of your own skill and ability to create or just output, like creating albums, or something that people feel rewarded by. So I think knowing what it is that gives you the feeling you’re after and why you’re doing it is important because you know then to not count on industry accolades of a gauge of whether or not you’re successful, if that’s not your thing.

MD: What’s your thing? What do you think your measure has come to be?

KP: I’m really out to feel accomplished and to feel satisfied in my abilities, so what motivates me at the moment is just writing good songs and being able to sit back and listen to them and think that’s amazing and I love that song. I’m really into collaborating at the moment because I get to access other people’s bags of tricks and dig in there and be like how do you do this? Or even just watching someone in full [inaudible 32:13] and learning how they attack different situations. 

I’m obsessed with confidence at the moment. I feel like that is something that I have a wavering relationship with, and I really adore watching wildly confident people in the studio. It fascinates me because I just have never really been blessed with confidence like that, so I’m really obsessed with acquiring that and having it.

MD: What have you learned about observing it? Where do you think it comes from?

KP: I personally think there’s sometimes a lot of naivety or just lack of self-awareness that could play a part in confidence. Or maybe not self-awareness, but self-analysis. You’ve got to learn to flick that switch off that causes you to look inward and worry about who you are and what your contribution is, what you look like, what you sound like, and I think if you can relax on that, it allows you to focus more on the task at hand and care less about what it is you’re doing or what you’re saying and being okay with making mistakes. I think that plays an important part as well.

MD: Yeah, you once said that the best way to find out who you are is to make a bunch of mistakes, so I was wondering, can you recall what those mistakes are?

KP: Oh, I’ve made so many. I’ve made so many. I think talking too much is a mistake. I think you can learn a lot by listening and just stopping to soak in what other people are saying and doing around you. Often people are giving you feedback in indirect ways without telling you that they’re giving you feedback, and it’s important to give that enough space to think in if people are subtly trying to tell you that you’re being overbearing or you’re not working hard enough or you’re working too hard or you’re being too critical. 

I think if you can learn to make space for feedback that’s more indirect, that’s really important. I think I ignored my mental health status for a long time, and tried to self-medicate with various other things, including over-working as well as booze and whatever.

I don’t know. I’ve made so many mistakes in my life. I’ve made terrible music. I’ve made some terrible songs in my time as well. I don’t know, just making mistakes and learning to be comfortable with them, learning what you didn’t like about them, learning who you are in them. Mistakes can really teach you a lot.

MD: Yeah. What I find so fascinating about hearing what people consider to be their own mistakes is that, to other people, they’re so undetectable and only you really are intimately aware of how you’ve screwed up because, on the outside, it just looks like you’ve got it all down pat.

KP: Yeah, well that’s really comforting to hear. I think it’s important though to talk about mistakes, especially in our world. We’re always doing these glamorous photoshoots and releasing songs and social media is set up for us to make it look like our lives are just blessed and easy and glamorous and we get all these free things, and I think it’s really important to talk about the ways in which we’ve all fucked up because that’s real. 

We’re just human people that are learning along the way and have no idea at times what we’re doing or what the outcome is going to be, so I’m glad to see that some people think I’ve got my shit together, but it’s absolutely not the truth and I feel really passionately about people knowing that.

MD: Yeah, it is important to share. I guess, back to that wrestle that you have with your own routine, how do you think that you might mess up day-to-day? What’s your biggest distraction? Or is there anything that you’re putting off at the moment, or not doing?

KP: Yeah, I think I could try harder to have an actual routine and, I don’t know, at the moment, anxiety is just playing such a massive role in my life. I am anxious about everything, so I think I could learn to manage that a little better. I’m in therapy and I’m exercise every day and I’m trying to make stuff every day, but I still feel really bombarded by my personal anxiety on a moment-to-moment basis. So I think learning to manage that better will help me be able to find a routine that sticks and be able to create things with a greater consistency, I guess.

MD: Well, let me know when you find it. That work consistency, I have a lot of trouble with consistency.

KP: Yeah, same.

MD: I don’t know if it exists.

KP: You’re probably right. Like real consistency probably doesn’t exist because we’re evolving people and our capability to do things and what we even want to do in the first place changes all the time, so it’s a balance between letting things flow naturally and organically and embracing that inevitable light chaos, as well as wrangling it in when you can just to keep a state of function in your life.

MD: It must be hard though. As you say, if there’s that ever-present feeling of anxiety, I wonder, has anything worked previously? Or how do you describe that feeling for you? Because I feel like anxiety, even in itself, can feel really confusing. How do you know whether you have anxiety or you’re a human being facing uncertainty? Can you describe it for us?

KP: Yeah. For me, it’s just a hyper-awareness of things, like I’m aware of things in the room that are imperfect that I need to clean or tidy or straighten, I’m aware of the amount of emails that I haven’t answered back to, I’m aware of how many hours there are in the day to do however many tasks I’ve set myself, I’m aware of all the text messages and phone calls I need to make.

It’s just like a hyper-awareness of things in the state that they are and the state that they could be in, which is like levels of perfectionism and obsessive nature generally, so that’s how I personally experience it. But you’re right. Anxiety can touch us all in varying ways and sometimes I find anxiety really helpful, in that it helps me [inaudible 38:59] what I’m doing or put safeguards in place when I’m entering a room or when I’m going into a situation that might be challenging, or whatever. That kind of awareness, that anxiety helps me as well.

So it’s not something that I completely shun, it’s just something that I’m conscious of being aware of and managing as well as I can.

MD: Yeah, that’s so well put. It is more about managing, I guess. I guess that’s where it comes back to routine, but having that exercise every day, if that’s helpful. Is there anything else that you find helpful routine-wise? You’ve mentioned that you find it really difficult to sleep with anxiety, so I guess what does your evening look like? Either when you’re getting it right or when you’re getting it wrong.

KP: It all kind of looks the same, to be honest. I found this sleep meditation and it’s really helped me. It does meditation and hypnosis, and the hypnosis one’s are wild and I’m always asleep in like ten minutes.

Evenings, I take it really slow. I like to ramp up my mornings really slow and then taper off really slow in the evening, but I’m a real night person, I like to be up till midnight sometimes and I think my brain feels more comfortable and creative in the evenings, so often I’ll be chatting to people or making things or watching something. I’m up in the evenings, I like that.

If I’m having a particularly hard time sleeping, I’ll listen to a hypnosis or a meditation or something and try and wind down. When I was having a really good sleep routine, I was reading a lot in the evenings and getting off my phone, so I’d like to venture back to that at some point soon because that really helped me blank screen time.

MD: Yes. Yes, it’s so simple, but why is it so hard? I go through these periods of maybe a week or two where my phone doesn’t come into my bedroom, and then somehow it just sneaks back in.

KP: Yeah, habits like that are hard to kick. We’re in a hard place and time at the moment with technology, especially because we’re all trying to be connected. It’s hard to really kick the tech habit because we’re all feeling so distant from each other, as well as feeling so overwhelmed, so it’s real hard.

I’m feeling pretty strongly about it though. I’ve really got to kick the screen time habit. It’s not good.

MD: Well, how are you finding the distance? You mentioned you really like to be talking to people and connecting in the evening and so on. How are you finding that shift to having to do that remotely?

KP: I’m getting less and less social over time, and to be honest, like I said, just being a bit of an armadillo and just rolling up and keeping a really low profile, so I have a long list of friends that I’m yet to catch up with. So it wasn’t a super hard transition for me because I was keeping equally low [inaudible 42:09] to isolation. 

It’ll be more difficult for me going into the second month of isolation because I’m now ready to see my friends and I’ve had enough recuperation time and I just want to hang out and blow off some steam and do fun things, so I’ll see how it goes. I’m okay at the minute, but I think, because I’m someone who naturally spends a lot of time alone and doesn’t really love power socialising, I think I’m all right, but that’s probably going to change.

MD: Yeah, exactly, it’s like there’s different phases we all have to go through. Loving the alone time and the lack of FOMO, but then who knows how it will impact us emotionally a few more months in? So what do you like to do in your alone time? Do you have any guilty pleasures or shows that you enjoy? Favourite snacks?

KP: Oh my god, I am a snack queen. I love a snack. I’m obsessed with garlic dip at the moment because I keep telling myself that if I eat garlic, my immunity’s going to be bubbling over and I’m going to be immune to everything, so I’ve been obsessed with garlic dip.

MD: What would you have with the garlic dip?

KP: I have it on a corn rice cracker thing, like a corn thin type situation. The garlic dip, some thinly sliced tomato, maybe some rocket, maybe some cheese if you’re feeling wild. Oh my god, pickles, I love pickles. Pickles and cheese? What a combo.

MD: Yum. I’ve been having apple slices with cheese. Mersey Valley cheese.

KP: Yum. Oh, yes, yes.

MD: Delicious. It seems like you’re pretty good at doing the work, creating the work. That’s kind of where you can enter a space of flow, but are there these things that you do, or turn to, when you are procrastinating?

KP: Yes, well, I like to commit myself to various things at any one time so that when I’m procrastinating one thing, I can do something else. I’m really loving use Photoshop as a procrastination tool at the moment, so I’ve been designing my own merch and I’ve now picked up a couple of jobs for other people. And redoing my website, and all that kind of stuff. That’s all stuff that I’ve been doing while I’ve been procrastinating my own personal work.

I love cleaning and organising things. What else? I just dug out my omnichord. It’s like an electric [inaudible 44:40] basically. But it’s real fun to play, so I’ve been playing that, taking photos. There’s lots of things. I’m kind of just trying to play music when I’m procrastinating at the moment because that’s probably the most rewarding.

MD: Sounds like you can just pick up a lot of different things, be it photography or designing your own merch or writing music. I don’t know whether it comes back to confidence or not, or whether it’s just experimenting, but how do you pursue so many different creative outlets?

KP: Honestly, it came from necessity because I was often very poor, and I just had to make money. So it was like yeah, I can design that poster for you and me just completely packing it, knowing that I have no idea how to do that, but just bluffing my way into jobs left, right, and centre, taking my friends press photos and designing merch and stuff. You just have to learn to be a jack-of-all-trades, especially when you’re running your own business because you don’t have enough money to pay someone to write my bio or take my picture or do any of these things, so I’m going to just have to figure it out.

So I think necessity has really helped me grow those skills, but now procrastination has picked up where necessity left off, and when I’m trying to avoid something, I just do something else.

MD: Well, it sounds like it’s productive procrastination, not that it needs to be, but it sounds like it. For me, it’s usually just starring at the wall, but I think that has its own place, as well.

KP: Oh, I do my fair share of scrolling and eating snacks and watching terrible TV as well. I’m definitely not a saint and I’m not always constructive. I’m really great at being lazy as well. 

MD: Yeah, there’s definitely a merit to being lazy, I think.

KP: Yeah. I think you need time to incubate and to ruminate. It’s hard when your work is creative because you don’t always feel creative. I feel like it’s really important to have off time as well, to allow those stores to regenerate. You can’t always be putting stuff out.

MD: I think that’s been a beautiful thread throughout this whole conversation from you, this idea of just trying not to judge or feel guilty about if you are curled up or whether you are in a spot of laziness or a spot of procrastination. It’s actually just about being a bit kinder.

I don’t know, if someone came up to you feeling guilty about the lack of output at the moment, what would you try to remind them of?

KP: I’d probably just say that you’re capable of whatever you want to put your mind to, so if you’re feeling uninspired, do things that inspire you. Have time off, hang out with friends, watch some of your favourite movies, listen to your favourite album, and don’t feel guilty about needing to regenerate. The world is really overwhelming and balance is important in any aspect of anyone’s life, so if you’re feeling burnt out, take some time and then you’ll want to go again, so it’s just about acknowledging the ebb and flow of life in general, and how the dynamics of the work that you’re in, or the way that the world is, and just kind of observe and make note of the things that you need to improve on, and putting those improvements into play when you have the time and the energy.

MD: Speaking with Kira really reiterated this idea of being gentle and kind to ourselves, whether we’re curling up like an armadillo or in the midst of creative flow. I think many of us know this and know that there is this natural ebb and flow, but can still berate ourselves for not being more productive or perfectly routined, or maybe feel embarrassed about our inconsistencies.

Kira herself actually had a little confession.

KP: I don’t know, I mean, I feel embarrassed that everyone’s going to know that I have no routine, and I’m just living a completely chaotic life.

MD: Well, if it’s any comfort, I don’t think I’ve interviewed a single soul who actually has a routine. Again, I think we just need to dismantle this idea of routine, actually, because I just don’t think we have it. For me, I make these plans and these beautiful routines, but I don’t stick to them.

KP: Oh my god, if I had a dollar for every time I’ve promised myself that I’m going to keep to a routine or any kind of structure, I’d be richer than I am as a musician. I just can’t. I also don’t think that the guilt that comes with not being able to complete a task in a certain way or by a certain time, or whatever, it’s not worth living your life like that. I don’t want to feel the shame and guilt for not being able to complete things on time. I just like to open it up and be a little bit more fluid in my life. I think we can all benefit from being a little bit more relaxed.

MD: As I told Kira, rarely does anyone actually have a routine. We might have plans of one, or something momentarily for a part of our lives, or a cluster of habits, but to be perfectly consistent is at odds with how our daily lives unfold. Of course there are exceptions, but most of the time most people are a little bit wobbly, a little inconsistent, a little embarrassed and wishing to be more routined, despite the constraints of being human getting in the way.

So I take great comfort in that. In that everyone is wobbly, inconsistent, human, and I hope you do too.