Colin Self on Queer Ghosts and the Shadow Work Behind Their New Album
Colin Self’s latest album is a dialogue between worlds, past and present, seen and unseen. Rooted in conversations with the dead and guided by the cryptic language of Polari, the record embraces grief, exile, and self-discovery through sound, puppetry, and prayer. In this interview, Self unpacks the spiritual and artistic forces that shaped the album, from tulpamancy to dollmaking, and teases a theatrical live show that blurs the line between ritual and performance. How did conversations with lost souls shape this album? The process began with a conversation with Asher Hartman, a kind of spiritual guidance counselor I go to when embarking upon a big creative project. I usually ask Asher who/what a project is for, who in the spirit world is involved or guiding me, and any other material or thematic information. He told me that – as a community organizer, this record would really be for the dead community, both friends and strangers, which coincidentally I had already begun a process of writing songs in Polari to queer ghosts and transcestors. What drew you to singing in Polari, and what do you hope it conveys? I was interested in Polari as a kind of shadow world – and a good example of a sociality and vernacular that could only survive in the shadows. It was born out of a time of analog encryption – a “can’t” is a language that hides inside of another language – and it’s a vocabulary that revolves around illegalities; queer sex, gender deviance, anti-police sentiments – it feels more necessary than ever to revisit the politics of social encryption under totalitarian fascist regime looking to destroy queer and trans communities. “…a “can’t” is a language that hides inside of another language – and it’s a vocabulary that revolves around illegalities; queer sex, gender deviance, anti-police sentiments…” – Colin Self How does this album’s fluidity reflect your artistic evolution? I wanted to wander with this record. It felt important for me to return to wonder, curiosity, and playfulness as a much more solitary practice, to affirm the obscure, the obtuse, the smallness and grittiness of the world of puppetry and the patina of these things I make. There is a perpetual push from the world toward professionalization and improvement, and I had to give myself this record as a chance to resist that and to see what kind of growth and change could exist within a non-linear path of music and sound. You worked in solitude on this record, but with guidance from unseen voices. How did this process differ from your previous collaborations with artists like Holly Herndon and Lyra Pramuk? You know they actually were both involved to varying degrees helping to encourage me along my solitary path – sometimes providing a vocal effects chain or words of encouragement. The whole practice of tulpamancy was really about making music with my own shadow – the parts of myself that are abject or challenging. Shadow work is no joke! But also prayer – asking for guidance from angels, deceased friends, amongst living ones – was all deeply interwoven. You recently dropped ‘Losing Faith,’ the final of a series of music videos for the album in collaboration with Bobbi Salvör Menuez. This one also includes animations by Aidan Alexis Koch, can you tell us about the process of this project? It was a very non-linear process. I’ve known Bobbi and Aidan for such a long time. Some ideas and images stretch back several years before the record was even finished – the symbolism of the hands and gloves, inter-dimensional communication, etc. I shot the video with Bobbi, and then Aidan and I discussed some ideas with Bobbi that turned into animation, and then I went back in and wove them all together. I forgot I am a great video editor! What inspired the concept of the ‘tulpamancer’ in the lead single? I am the tulpamancer in the song, singing to/with my shadow. It’s a dialogical sequence about overcoming self-doubt, fear, anxiety. “And what would it take to harness the fear that negates the process, something about myself i know that i cant help” was a very real part of making this album… trusting myself and coming out on the other side through the waves of doubt! How does dollmaking connect to your music? So much of this record was about connecting to my younger and older self, and puppetry was something I had pursued as a teenager, but abandoned for many years. However, I came back to it really during the pandemic lockdown. I felt so moved and shaped by the physical minutia of doll-making, the spiritual aspect to creating dolls in reverence to loved ones lost (something I learned from Greer Lankton), and I wanted to pull that into the record, so a lot of the percussion sounds are actually puppets being moved around, bent, shaped, etc. How did grief, exile, and meditation shape this record? It was the river I had to travel down to finish the record. I think we are all in a perpetual state of processing grief and loss – a process of lost and found… and meditation has been such a deep guiding force for this album in its many forms and iterations. The voice continues to really be at the center of it all, the kind of ribbon running through from the beginning to the end. “I think we are all in a perpetual state of processing grief and loss” – Colin Self What can we expect from the live show? It’s a Colin Self production, so we have theatrical elements and puppets, and I am working with local ensembles wherever I go. My cousin Peter Johnson Bowling is helping me deconstruct these songs and do some raw, unplugged versions. Each stage will become a temporary set to be a shrine, to build and play together, sometimes in respite and sometimes in levity. Watch “Losing Self” below: Photography by Isaac Emmons @archie.nyc