March 13, 2024 • 33 mins
Minnie questions Liz Phair, singer/songwriter and indie rock pioneer. Liz shares her early dreams of being a visual artist, her initial reluctance to be in front of the camera, and Minnie and Liz spontaneously start writing a song during the recording.
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
I got such an angry letter from a Liz Fir
fan when you so kindly came and did backing.
Speaker 2 (00:07):
Vocals on So What one of my songs.
Speaker 1 (00:10):
One asked me to dance, and I got a letter
from a person going, don't advertise Liz Fair unless she's
going to actually be able to be heard in the mix.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
How dare you mix her down? How dare she be
a backing vocalist?
Speaker 1 (00:22):
How dare you, Mini Driver, use Liz Fair as you
have used you use her own?
Speaker 3 (00:27):
Oh God, and so you had on the other country.
Speaker 2 (00:31):
I moved to England.
Speaker 1 (00:34):
Hello, I'm Mini Driver. I've always loved Proust's questionnaire. It
was originally in nineteenth century parlor game, where players would
ask each other thirty five questions aimed at revealing the
other player's true nature. In asking different people the same
set of questions, you can make observations about which truths
appear to be universal.
Speaker 2 (00:55):
And it made me wonder, what if these questions were
just the jumping.
Speaker 1 (00:58):
Off point, what great day would be revealed if I
asked these questions as conversation starters. So I adapted Pru's
questionnaire and I wrote my own seven questions that I
personally think are pertinent to a person's story.
Speaker 4 (01:11):
They are when and where were you happiest? What is
the quality you like least about yourself? What relationship, real
or fictionalized, defines.
Speaker 2 (01:19):
Love for you?
Speaker 4 (01:20):
What question would you most like answered? What person, place,
or experience has shaped you the most? What would be
your last meal? And can you tell me something in
your life that's grown out of a personal disaster?
Speaker 2 (01:33):
And I've gathered a group.
Speaker 1 (01:34):
Of really remarkable people, ones that I am honored and
humbled to have had the chance to engage with. You
may not hear their answers to all seven of these questions.
We've whittled it down to which questions felt closest to
their experience or the most surprising, or created the most
fertile ground to connect. My guest today on many questions
(01:59):
is the recording artist Liz Fair.
Speaker 2 (02:02):
Liz is a unicorn.
Speaker 1 (02:04):
By that, I don't mean that she's mythic, because she's
one of the realist people I know.
Speaker 2 (02:09):
But she is rare and she carved out.
Speaker 1 (02:12):
Space for herself where she roamed wild and free, and
from what I can tell, still does. Liz was an
iconic force right out of the gate. From initial recordings
under the Girly Sounds banner. She was then signed and
she released her first album, Exile in Guyville, in nineteen
ninety three. And girls just weren't singing and writing the
(02:32):
songs I heard on that record. They were honest and factual,
blunt and sexual. I just thought she was the coolest
kind of feminist, and she still is. She and I
share a similar sort of doomish wisdom, where we think
everything good comes out of some kind of dead end,
constantly reimagining artistry and continuing to explore life outside the box.
(02:56):
I am thrilled that my good friend Liz agreed to
come on the show today.
Speaker 2 (03:05):
So, Liz Fair, where and when were you happiest?
Speaker 3 (03:09):
This is a dull answer, but it's when I'm on
vacation with friends and family. I love the feeling of
being suspended. I have a lot of trouble with rules
in society, although I'm also someone that appreciates order, so
it's a contradiction in me. But I really love taking
everyone I love out of context and being away where
(03:33):
you're outside of your norms, you're outside of your roles,
and you're together somewhere, and I feel a sense of
freedom there. And I don't think I ever feel more
like myself than when I'm on vacation, you know what
I mean, Like you just strip off all of society
and it just feels so good. So I think I'm
happiest and freest when I'm outside of the roles that
(03:57):
we're given, that we're scripted.
Speaker 1 (03:59):
That's pretty wild given that you like the bell Weather
rock and roller creating her own reality literally a one
woman show band, Like how does that fit in?
Speaker 3 (04:10):
Like what?
Speaker 1 (04:10):
Because it's so funny the way that you made it
sounds like it's kind of corporate the world that.
Speaker 2 (04:14):
You're escaping from.
Speaker 5 (04:16):
You know, all these rules and regulations, like when you're
on the stage.
Speaker 2 (04:21):
To do with your monitors down? What is it?
Speaker 3 (04:25):
No, it makes sense, it's all of it. If I'd
come up now, maybe it would have been. But I
feel like when I came up in the music business,
every step was convincing someone that I could do it,
or just taking the step and then they're like, what
are you doing? You took a step? What did you
take a step for? I'm walking here, I'm walking, you know,
(04:46):
And so like every step along the way felt like
a bravery test. Wow, you know, like a fight for
the right to be an art I know it sounds stupid,
but that's how I feel now.
Speaker 2 (05:02):
It doesn't sound stupid at all. It doesn't sound stupid
at all.
Speaker 1 (05:05):
The people that cut the path through the field, who
are up front with the machete so that everybody else
can travel down that pathway. Like I always feel like
you were one of those women. Thank you, I did that,
So no wonder you're tired and you want a bloody holiday.
And that's why right.
Speaker 3 (05:29):
Down you're always on alert for the tigers. You know,
you don't know what you're cutting into. And a lot
of times I know that in my career I've ruffled feathers.
Look my poor fans, are you know, haranguing you because
I haven't been positioned right? They also harangue me, you know,
if I haven't positioned myself correctly.
Speaker 1 (05:47):
So can I just tell you that it's so crazy
because like hearing you say that, like it makes me
want to punch something. The idea of like being positioned
right because for me.
Speaker 2 (05:58):
You are. I can't.
Speaker 1 (06:00):
It's important for all these female artists. If you hadn't
done that, they wouldn't exist. So but it's interesting that
you the way that you feel that you weren't positioned right.
I think you were positioned incredibly Like in my heart
and in so many millions of people's hearts, you are.
But I understand that of sort of hitting a wall
(06:22):
and going wow, they don't they don't get where I
want to take this next.
Speaker 3 (06:26):
Well, you went into music, and you wrote a book,
a beautiful book, a beautiful memoir.
Speaker 2 (06:30):
I've got to keep making.
Speaker 3 (06:32):
All of those things are things that no one gave
you permission to do. You just said, this is what's
in me, and this is what I'm going to do next.
And I would imagine some of your agents were a
little bit surprised at your musical detour.
Speaker 1 (06:47):
Possibly, yeah, I mean they definitely were like, well, that's
it for you, love, If you're going to move to
Hawaii just like lat music, goodbye, good bye.
Speaker 2 (06:58):
No one will remember you when you come back.
Speaker 1 (07:01):
And largely they were sort of right, but I think
theyde underestimated how much women are used to having to
insist on their space at the table, even if you've
left the table briefly for whatever your reasons are, mental health,
your soul, have a child, the fact that we can't
come back and go yeah, I'm going to sit back
down now.
Speaker 3 (07:21):
Which is interesting. And you talk about roles. I mean,
until I moved to Hollywood, until I knew artists like you,
I didn't realize that acting was just another facet of
their artistry, That everyone who's an actor is also an artist. Yeah,
and so there's so much more to them that, you know,
Hollywood doesn't have a use for just do that acting thing,
(07:44):
look more beautiful, keep acting these people, these large souls
getting put into small roles.
Speaker 1 (07:52):
Yeah, or if you fall into the trip, the implied
insistence on youth and beauty, and that if you don't
subscribe to that and end up looking this weird, homogenized
way that a lot of women look now from having
bowed to that pressure, it doesn't work then either, because
then in a way you're then punished for having given in.
Speaker 3 (08:13):
You've made yourself replaceable.
Speaker 1 (08:15):
Yeah, but I mean, you know, I feel like a
lot of people have felt that way about women aging anyway,
But I don't see women doing that. I see people
writing off ads about women doing that, But no one
I know does that. No woman I know over the
age of fifty is invisible. They are the vibrant, most
powerful versions of themselves.
Speaker 3 (08:34):
I know, I don't understand that. It's almost like fear mongering.
I'll always look up from an article. I'll be like,
do I I don't feel in.
Speaker 1 (08:41):
If they shout more at the articles that I read
about you know, women and aging and what it means
and aren't you worried about this? No, you're worried about it.
You're just getting the clickbait. And I suppose I did
click on it to read it.
Speaker 3 (08:55):
Well, you always want to know what are they saying.
There is a sense of our people to talking about this.
But I mean I watched my grandmother remarried twice after
the age of seventy. So I watched her date.
Speaker 2 (09:07):
I love that. Did she have a great time doing it?
Speaker 3 (09:11):
She did? And there was one that she became like
a teenager giggly at the tate. We're like, what's up
with winky? Look at her? She's like like, you know,
like this laugh. This personality comes out of your grandmother
that you've never seen before. So I think I had
a good role model in the sense that it ain't
over until it's over, and it's such a brief life anyway,
(09:34):
you know, why on earth are you limiting yourself in
these seventy two hundred years in any way, shape or form.
Speaker 1 (09:41):
Yeah, because you see it reflected back in the media,
and it's it's only like that if you say it
is like, the more I've thought about it, the more
I genuinely believe there is only the meaning that we
assign in this world, and it's what lives in the
same space. For me is you get what you say,
You get what you say you worth. I think you
have to tell the story that you want to live.
Speaker 2 (10:05):
You really do that activity.
Speaker 3 (10:07):
I have a great metaphor for this. At one point
in two thousand and three, two thousand and four, there
was a lot of money being poured into promoting me,
so I was everywhere I was like under Capitol Records,
and I was very visible, and so everywhere I went
there's this tension of if people recognized you. But I
realized something at my own shows that if I needed
(10:31):
to leave the venue or go meet someone and there's
a line of people outside my show waiting to see me,
if I walk like it's no big deal, Like I'm
just super casually walking back, nobody recognizes me. I can
walk past my own line casually strong. But if I
have like people around me that're like, okay, we got
(10:52):
to get her out of here, everybody notices. So I'm
literally creating my own reality by how I'm carrying myself
and how I see that situation, and it stuck with me.
How you carry yourself to a large degree does shape
how you experience it and what that means to you
later on, and how that sticks with you. So if
(11:16):
you want to be invisible as a woman, you can
carry yourself invisibly, or you can carry yourself loudly.
Speaker 1 (11:23):
Yeah, it's one of the things that bothers me most
about the way in which middle aged women they speak
about this invisibility.
Speaker 2 (11:29):
I bought into it.
Speaker 1 (11:30):
I was like, oh, yeah, that does happen, doesn't it.
And I was like, no, it doesn't. I remember calling
my mother really sad, one like genuinely profoundly depressed, and going,
I'm so sad.
Speaker 2 (11:40):
I don't know what to do. What do I do?
Speaker 1 (11:42):
And she was like, oh, put on some lipstick, be seen,
put your face on, act like it isn't what you
are saying is act like that and see what happens.
Speaker 2 (11:53):
I remember being so annoyed with her put on.
Speaker 1 (11:56):
Fucking red lipstick to act like I'm happy when I'm sad.
Speaker 3 (12:00):
It was completely right, though when they say it visible,
what they're really just saying is men are not going
to try to run you down and conquer that for
such that is.
Speaker 1 (12:09):
That is exactly that is exactly right.
Speaker 3 (12:11):
But I don't want to be run down and conquered
for sex anymore.
Speaker 2 (12:14):
So enough of that. Oh I'm sick of it. I'll
tell you what I've been I've been run over it anymore. Frankly,
it's you're right.
Speaker 1 (12:25):
It is to do with a woman's worth being enforced
and tethered to this idea of desirability.
Speaker 3 (12:33):
For sex specifically whatever.
Speaker 1 (12:35):
Man, If that's really what it comes down to, just
like where you want to go and have sex.
Speaker 2 (12:41):
Allow me to be invisible.
Speaker 1 (12:42):
Let me maintain my invisibility, and I'll get on and
do all the really interesting shit that doesn't involve, you know,
ten minutes of sex with you.
Speaker 3 (12:55):
Oh my god, thank you for putting such a fine
point on that.
Speaker 2 (12:59):
And now we can I'll tell you my visibility over
a swift turn with you.
Speaker 1 (13:08):
Love.
Speaker 3 (13:13):
The articles never explained that part of it.
Speaker 2 (13:15):
They never do. What is it we're going to be
seen by a swift ten minutes. I don't, I really don't.
I don't go and google Sally Rooney and see what
she's writing next. Thank you off?
Speaker 1 (13:35):
Oh God, what relationship, real or fictionalized?
Speaker 2 (13:53):
Defind love for you?
Speaker 3 (13:57):
Okay?
Speaker 2 (13:58):
Tell me.
Speaker 3 (13:59):
I never knew this. In my twenties and thirties, how
I felt in relationships was of paramount importance, and it
wasn't until I became a mother, and frankly, it took
fifteen years past that to really understand that if you
love a person, you want the best for them. You
(14:20):
want them to find their journey, you want them to
realize their potential. And that's the kind of love that
I think is the highest love. It's the best love.
It's the most rewarding love. It's really hard to find,
and it's really hard to give. But to love somebody
and to love yourself wanting the best for you and
(14:42):
wanting you to fulfill your highest potential, that's real love.
That's the kind of love that if you break up
and it's not right between you, you can still look
at the person and say, I admire this person. There
was a point at which a relationship was something that
fulfilled me, that I got something out of, and then
(15:03):
I morphed into someone that wants the best for the
other person and only wants to date someone that I
would feel that way about.
Speaker 4 (15:12):
Hmmm.
Speaker 1 (15:13):
So distill it to what defines love for you?
Speaker 3 (15:17):
A lack of selfishness, a keen interest and admiration and
feeling for a real connection that you can't put into words.
But that doesn't just consume, that doesn't just say, oh great,
when can we be together? What can we do? But
that listens to what they want to do, What are
(15:39):
you trying to do with your life? What are your dreams?
And then supporting that. I guess it's about only dating
people that you really already respect and admire as people individuals,
not meshing, not going to that full mesh that I
did in my twenties. Do you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 2 (15:58):
About, Like, yeah, full mesh for the birds?
Speaker 3 (16:01):
Well, I mean it was fine. Those are the epics
stories and the fights in the street and the like
ro Julia and the steaks or something. No, I'm not
into that.
Speaker 2 (16:11):
I'm too tired for that.
Speaker 1 (16:12):
But I also don't want I don't want ten minute sex.
But I also don't want that. I don't want I
don't want that screaming in the streets you to actualize.
Speaker 3 (16:21):
I want you to have what you want in life,
and I want to be there for the ride.
Speaker 1 (16:25):
But it's about respect, right, respect and recognition. And you're
right about liking who they are and that you support
that despite the compromise that it might be to your
own life, because you love them, because that's actually what
what love is.
Speaker 2 (16:39):
I think that's interesting.
Speaker 3 (16:41):
You want the best for them.
Speaker 2 (16:42):
Have you got that?
Speaker 3 (16:44):
No? And I remember a boyfriend telling me that that's
what it was, and I wanted to punch him. I
really did. I was like, take your Hallmark guard and
hit the road.
Speaker 2 (16:53):
But he was right.
Speaker 1 (16:54):
I hate it when someone tells you something that's right
and then you know they were right, and then you
have to carry that around.
Speaker 3 (17:02):
Yeah it is. I don't have the relationship back, but
I took the advice.
Speaker 2 (17:07):
Then you profited from that.
Speaker 3 (17:09):
No do I have that now?
Speaker 5 (17:10):
No?
Speaker 3 (17:10):
I do not. It's very hard to find. But I
also don't trifle with possibles. If I don't feel deep
compulsion that this person is connecting with me, I think
of it as chakras. If they're not lighting up five
of those chakras at once. I'm not going to bother.
Speaker 1 (17:27):
Oh my god, that's so great. It's like a traffic
light system. That's fantastic. Yeah, I'm sorry, and there's all
three lights are going. We don't have anything happening. Yeah,
that makes it very practical. You have an internal traffic.
Speaker 3 (17:41):
And if you're friends, that can always change because you know,
you'll fall in love if it's not ten minutes, if
it's half an hour's eare and it's satisfying.
Speaker 2 (17:51):
Listen, I'm giving ten minutes. I'm giving ten.
Speaker 1 (17:53):
Minutes a bad app there's a good version of ten minutes.
It's just the people that are cooling women invisible over
the age of fifty, and not that people have a
good ten minute sex.
Speaker 2 (18:02):
Okay, that's the that's the fucking deal right there.
Speaker 1 (18:05):
But that fellow, But I'll take a good ten minutes.
Speaker 3 (18:10):
This is all the truth you need.
Speaker 1 (18:12):
I'll take a good ten minutes with my boyfriend any
day of the week.
Speaker 2 (18:14):
God damn right.
Speaker 3 (18:16):
Yeah, but he's also probably a forty five minute or
a ten minute or a five minute or and any
sort of thing.
Speaker 2 (18:23):
He's all the minutes. Indy, Oh, the minutes I need.
I think we should drive a song. He's old minutes.
Speaker 3 (18:35):
And we can even have parts of it. We're like
fifteen minutes now, you know, No, it's like twenty minutes.
Speaker 2 (18:42):
Now.
Speaker 5 (18:46):
Hi, my name's twenty minutes and I'm a mid point
in your day. Hi, my name's two minutes. I'm a
knee trembling in the kitchen.
Speaker 3 (18:58):
I'm your launch pray.
Speaker 1 (19:02):
It's Friday, Sunday afternoon.
Speaker 3 (19:12):
He's all minutes in the hour, so he's all a
minutes by me.
Speaker 2 (19:16):
Oh my godnes on a Tuesday. By the way, I'm
definitely writing the song. I'm going to send it to you.
Speaker 1 (19:27):
All right, Angel in your life, can you tell me
about something that has grown out of a personal disaster?
Speaker 3 (19:34):
The knee jerk reaction is everything's grown out of personal disaster.
Speaker 2 (19:37):
I like that.
Speaker 3 (19:39):
Correct way to say is I see personal disaster as opportunities.
Not at the moment, but I always keep that in
the back of my mind. So if you consider the
fact that I was adopted, I came right out of
a personal disaster into a pretty good situation. And you know,
(19:59):
though I I wanted to be a visual artist, the
personal disaster of me sort of having my I'm not
going to school anymore. I hate everything, I hate everyone.
That personal disaster wrote Guyville, and so then the personal
disaster of oh god, now it's my job to perform
on stage that personal disaster. Or when I was having
(20:22):
trouble with my record company, well, I have a college degree.
I could write a book, you know. So everything comes
out of a dead end. For me. Everything that I've
done that has really impressed me about myself has come
out of a dead end where something isn't working out.
(20:43):
And that may just be that I value those experiences
more because I overcame something. But personal disaster for me
equates with growth. So anytime I break something or someone
breaks me, even in the depths of it, and trust me,
I'm going to go hide in a cave for about
six months. It's just been my experience on life like
(21:03):
that is what happens. Necessity is the mother of invention.
That is the truism. But it's true, and it's extremely
useful in my life because otherwise there's no rhyme or
reason to what I've done in my life. Young people
should remember that exactly.
Speaker 1 (21:19):
It's just like wait a minute, just let it breathe
when it's really bad, give it a second.
Speaker 2 (21:29):
What person, place, or experience most altered your life.
Speaker 3 (21:32):
I'm so happy we have arrived at this question. Music,
music industry, music business, music fans, playing music, performing music.
You know, I got into this business to be recording
artists and never thought that I would have to perform
said music. And it has been something that I have
(21:53):
had to learn how to do, had to learn how
to love, had to get better at and it has
changed me so profoundly that it's hard to even explain.
But sometime around two thousand and five, I was a
new mom. I had a six year old and I
was teaching him about singing, and I realized that opening
(22:14):
my heart to be a better singer was not about technique.
For me, it was about not strangling my voice, not
feeling that shyness. It's always for me about letting you
see me, letting myself be vulnerable in front of people,
and the fact that given a choice, I would never
do that, and that because of my job. It's been
(22:38):
the work of my life. Has made me such a
better person in so many ways. It never lets me
totally put roots down because I'm always being asked can
you give more? Can you give something new of yourself?
Can you open up again? And that has shaped me
in ways that I'm deeply grateful for. Wow, because I
(23:01):
wouldn't have you wouldn't know. I would have been like
I would have been a know it all. I would
have sat back and been like, I don't do that.
But now I can never say I don't do that.
I don't know. Maybe I do do that. I don't know,
because the thing that I would least like to do
became my job.
Speaker 2 (23:17):
What did you think you were going to do?
Speaker 3 (23:19):
Sit back and make records, make art, make visual art?
Maybe right, anything behind the scenes, nothing in front of
the camera.
Speaker 2 (23:27):
Who made you go in front of the camera?
Speaker 3 (23:30):
People fans?
Speaker 1 (23:32):
When you made a record, you must have known that
you were going to have to go out and tour
that and promote it and get on stage.
Speaker 3 (23:37):
No. No, I was twenty six. I had fully prepared
and trained to be a visual artist. I had my
whole life set out. I knew I'd have a studio.
I fantasized about being like on the East Coast, you know,
and having the life of the house and then my
studio next to it. HM, that would be my fantasy.
Speaker 2 (23:57):
Wow, wow, but you anyway.
Speaker 3 (24:00):
I did it anyway, I mean not just anyway. I
did it and did it and did it, and like
I said, the biggest gift was the thing that I
wanted to avoid, and that lesson never left me. Now
I always know if something comes up and I'm like,
you know, she'll probably do it, and maybe I should,
maybe I shouldn't, but like I could, I could try.
Speaker 2 (24:22):
I love that. Yeah, I love that like I could.
My mother was like that till the very end.
Speaker 1 (24:29):
She was eighty four, and probably a month before she died,
she didn't know she was going to die.
Speaker 2 (24:34):
She'd started a new business because she.
Speaker 1 (24:38):
Was like, I love it because because I want to
and there's like a gap and because I can and
I'm doing it, and she did it, and that whole
notion of yeah, you see something that you can't do,
you go, yeah, but I could.
Speaker 2 (24:50):
I don't feel like doing that, Yeah, but I could.
I could do that. I love that that.
Speaker 1 (24:55):
There is only the limit that you put upon yourself.
That you say, that is andy invisible cloak that you.
Speaker 2 (25:01):
Put on yourself.
Speaker 1 (25:03):
There is only that sort of stifling of your thoughts.
Speaker 3 (25:06):
They're fragile, you know, they can be shattered. I love
that chapter. But may I talk about your memoiral like
that chapter about your mom passing. There was brutal parts
about it, but the eloquence with which you described the
love you have for her and how she was determined
the Duchess, I mean, like, it's just that was such
(25:28):
a satisfying and beautiful chapter to explain a daughter's love.
And it was complicated, and it was filled with so
much stuff, and there were things you wouldn't even try
to put into words, you know, the way you would
sit by her, and how quickly you were rousable from
your sleep, the way you had been when your son
(25:51):
was so young, Like that just meant a lot to
me as my parents are getting older, and just thank you.
It meant a lot to me. And I think that
you have a very powerful way of opening up private
experiences to a very broad encompassing lens. That's so it's
(26:12):
really thank.
Speaker 2 (26:12):
You, Thank you so much, thank you.
Speaker 1 (26:15):
It's just an exploration, as you know, it's.
Speaker 2 (26:17):
Just like go on a journey.
Speaker 3 (26:19):
That's a hard relationship to define, and you did it
so beautifully without defining it.
Speaker 2 (26:24):
Thank you.
Speaker 3 (26:25):
She sounds like she was a very formative love.
Speaker 1 (26:28):
She was always slightly out of reach, like I could
never quite get her, and then obviously death has been
the ultimate.
Speaker 2 (26:35):
Oh my god, she got away. I never quite. But
that's that you.
Speaker 3 (26:41):
Wrote a song about you.
Speaker 1 (26:43):
And what she like, what she inspired because there was
no the idea of her being an arrival point. That
that has been like rocket fuel in my life to
keep exploring. And it's not about not being satisfied, but
staying curious about how do we keep feeling in this
(27:04):
world that's so hard?
Speaker 2 (27:07):
How do you keep.
Speaker 1 (27:07):
Having fragile feelings and experiences. She taught me how to
do that because it's what she did, and she went
out chasing whatever came next in a way.
Speaker 3 (27:16):
Always Yeah, yeah, I respect that so much. I mean,
starting a business while you're on your deathbed, that's something
I'd like.
Speaker 1 (27:25):
To do, Yeah, totally, whilst also watching the football and
telling us all what we needed to do.
Speaker 2 (27:29):
Yeah. No, she was immense, amazing, she was immense.
Speaker 3 (27:33):
That's what you gave word to Our mothers are immense.
They are immense, and that's what you cant you.
Speaker 1 (27:40):
Thank you, Thomy, thank you so much. All right, I
better ask you the next question otherwise, well, next question,
what is the quality you like least about yourself.
Speaker 3 (28:04):
I thought about this for a long time. There's a
lot of qualities I don't like about myself, but the
most I think troublesome to my The way I want
to come across is impatience. I am impatient. It's very
hard for me to slow it down and let things
unfold if I think I know where they're going, and
(28:28):
I miss a lot. I miss people by doing that,
I miss letting them unfold.
Speaker 2 (28:35):
Hmmm.
Speaker 3 (28:35):
So I like that least about myself.
Speaker 4 (28:37):
Hmmm.
Speaker 1 (28:38):
Do you take steps to I don't know have self
correct is the right word, because that that all sounds
a bit like you need a writing crop.
Speaker 3 (28:46):
What do you I do? I could use it.
Speaker 2 (28:50):
I need to whip myself.
Speaker 3 (28:56):
Listening. I practice listening, as we were talking about before
with my career, trying to always step where no one
has given me permission to step. That can create a
you kind of a not pushing us, but like a
I hear no, but I'm seeing you know maybe that
kind of like let's try this. So letting things happen
(29:19):
to me, letting myself go through things without speeding it
up or escaping it.
Speaker 2 (29:24):
That makes sense, Yeah, totally.
Speaker 1 (29:26):
I mean I think a lot of it is wrapped
up with like again having to be the herald of
your own work. Like also, you weren't in a band
like it was you, like that's how you presented yourself,
and you're writing all the songs, so there had to
be probably quite a lot of people that needed to
be tuned out who were telling you what to do.
(29:49):
It's interesting, though, a really useful tool then becomes something
that as we evolve, it's like, oh, that thing that
served me so well, then perhaps that part of me
has to evolve so that now it actually does listen,
now that it's not a survival technique.
Speaker 2 (30:04):
Not listening, that's it.
Speaker 3 (30:06):
You've just encapsulated perfectly growing up because whatever characteristics you
had in childhood, they were adaptive. You're doing the best
in the environment that you had, and this is how
you made it through whatever you were going through. And
if you're lucky enough to get control of your life
to some extent, you can look at those things. Since
(30:27):
for so much of my life I just kept going.
It worked before, just keep going, and it wasn't until
my forties I think that I stopped and said, yeah,
but the same problems keep popping up, like the same
failures keep happening. And so I had to kind of
pull apart as we do our psychology and look at
(30:50):
it and think about what if I changed my mind
and I approach everything that way. Now I'm going to
change myself before I'm going to change anyone else.
Speaker 2 (31:02):
That's so good. I got to try and do that more.
Speaker 3 (31:05):
It's hard. I don't succeed all the time, believe me,
It's just what I try to do.
Speaker 1 (31:09):
It is interesting, though, when one realizes, you know, we've
all had to learn how to actually be kinder to ourselves.
As my friend Emma said one day, yeah, but are
you being too kind to yourself?
Speaker 2 (31:23):
Do you not need to be a little bit tougher
with yourself?
Speaker 1 (31:26):
I was like, and she's absolutely correct.
Speaker 2 (31:31):
Now and now I think about.
Speaker 1 (31:32):
Being the common denominator in all my shit. And even
though I used to beat myself with that, then I
kind of forgave myself completely and let myself off the hook.
And the weird thing is that there's this whole part
I just never evolved because it was like, look, either
you have never found the middle way of going It's
okay for this fallibility and this shit, but just let
it remind you in a more robust way as opposed
(31:53):
to I'm either going to pretend it's not there and
like love myself and it's not about me, it's about them,
beat myself like that. There's somewhere in the middle. I
think that's actually what middle age is, is that you
find the fucking middle path. Everyone's so busy talking about
your wrinkles, they don't realize it.
Speaker 2 (32:09):
It's actually quite sweet.
Speaker 1 (32:11):
I'm not living in a quite such a polarized way
with yourself.
Speaker 3 (32:17):
The extreme. Yeah, it's easy to shift into the extreme,
like go go go that way, go go go this way.
Speaker 1 (32:24):
That was my twenties and thirties right there.
Speaker 2 (32:27):
That's it. That's my next book. It's just going to
be that.
Speaker 1 (32:29):
It's just going to say that's fair.
Speaker 2 (32:35):
Wrote my next book.
Speaker 1 (32:36):
That's what it.
Speaker 2 (32:37):
Don't be called by many driving.
Speaker 3 (32:42):
I love you Mini, thank you so much for this,
and thank you for your memoir. It was very personally meaningful.
Speaker 2 (32:48):
To thank you so so much.
Speaker 1 (32:50):
Angel, really really really and also really hope to see you.
Speaker 2 (32:53):
Back in California.
Speaker 3 (32:54):
Let's do it.
Speaker 2 (32:55):
I mean allor right, Angel, Hi, take care of yourself.
Speaker 1 (33:04):
We'll see Sue See Sue, Hi Love Bye. Mini Questions
is hosted and written by Me, Mini Driver Executive produced
by Me and Aaron Kaufman, with production support from Jennifer Bassett,
Zoey Denkler and Ali Perry.
Speaker 2 (33:21):
The theme music is also by.
Speaker 1 (33:23):
Me and additional music by Aaron Kaufman. Special thanks to
Jim Nikolay Addison, O'Day, Henry Driver, Lisa Castella, a, Nick Oppenheim, A,
Nick Muller and Annette wolf A w kPr, Will Pearson,
Nicki Etoor, Morgan Levoy and mangesh Had Tiggadore
I got such an angry letter from a Liz Fir
fan when you so kindly came and did backing.
Speaker 2 (00:07):
Vocals on So What one of my songs.
Speaker 1 (00:10):
One asked me to dance, and I got a letter
from a person going, don't advertise Liz Fair unless she's
going to actually be able to be heard in the mix.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
How dare you mix her down? How dare she be
a backing vocalist?
Speaker 1 (00:22):
How dare you, Mini Driver, use Liz Fair as you
have used you use her own?
Speaker 3 (00:27):
Oh God, and so you had on the other country.
Speaker 2 (00:31):
I moved to England.
Speaker 1 (00:34):
Hello, I'm Mini Driver. I've always loved Proust's questionnaire. It
was originally in nineteenth century parlor game, where players would
ask each other thirty five questions aimed at revealing the
other player's true nature. In asking different people the same
set of questions, you can make observations about which truths
appear to be universal.
Speaker 2 (00:55):
And it made me wonder, what if these questions were
just the jumping.
Speaker 1 (00:58):
Off point, what great day would be revealed if I
asked these questions as conversation starters. So I adapted Pru's
questionnaire and I wrote my own seven questions that I
personally think are pertinent to a person's story.
Speaker 4 (01:11):
They are when and where were you happiest? What is
the quality you like least about yourself? What relationship, real
or fictionalized, defines.
Speaker 2 (01:19):
Love for you?
Speaker 4 (01:20):
What question would you most like answered? What person, place,
or experience has shaped you the most? What would be
your last meal? And can you tell me something in
your life that's grown out of a personal disaster?
Speaker 2 (01:33):
And I've gathered a group.
Speaker 1 (01:34):
Of really remarkable people, ones that I am honored and
humbled to have had the chance to engage with. You
may not hear their answers to all seven of these questions.
We've whittled it down to which questions felt closest to
their experience or the most surprising, or created the most
fertile ground to connect. My guest today on many questions
(01:59):
is the recording artist Liz Fair.
Speaker 2 (02:02):
Liz is a unicorn.
Speaker 1 (02:04):
By that, I don't mean that she's mythic, because she's
one of the realist people I know.
Speaker 2 (02:09):
But she is rare and she carved out.
Speaker 1 (02:12):
Space for herself where she roamed wild and free, and
from what I can tell, still does. Liz was an
iconic force right out of the gate. From initial recordings
under the Girly Sounds banner. She was then signed and
she released her first album, Exile in Guyville, in nineteen
ninety three. And girls just weren't singing and writing the
(02:32):
songs I heard on that record. They were honest and factual,
blunt and sexual. I just thought she was the coolest
kind of feminist, and she still is. She and I
share a similar sort of doomish wisdom, where we think
everything good comes out of some kind of dead end,
constantly reimagining artistry and continuing to explore life outside the box.
(02:56):
I am thrilled that my good friend Liz agreed to
come on the show today.
Speaker 2 (03:05):
So, Liz Fair, where and when were you happiest?
Speaker 3 (03:09):
This is a dull answer, but it's when I'm on
vacation with friends and family. I love the feeling of
being suspended. I have a lot of trouble with rules
in society, although I'm also someone that appreciates order, so
it's a contradiction in me. But I really love taking
everyone I love out of context and being away where
(03:33):
you're outside of your norms, you're outside of your roles,
and you're together somewhere, and I feel a sense of
freedom there. And I don't think I ever feel more
like myself than when I'm on vacation, you know what
I mean, Like you just strip off all of society
and it just feels so good. So I think I'm
happiest and freest when I'm outside of the roles that
(03:57):
we're given, that we're scripted.
Speaker 1 (03:59):
That's pretty wild given that you like the bell Weather
rock and roller creating her own reality literally a one
woman show band, Like how does that fit in?
Speaker 3 (04:10):
Like what?
Speaker 1 (04:10):
Because it's so funny the way that you made it
sounds like it's kind of corporate the world that.
Speaker 2 (04:14):
You're escaping from.
Speaker 5 (04:16):
You know, all these rules and regulations, like when you're
on the stage.
Speaker 2 (04:21):
To do with your monitors down? What is it?
Speaker 3 (04:25):
No, it makes sense, it's all of it. If I'd
come up now, maybe it would have been. But I
feel like when I came up in the music business,
every step was convincing someone that I could do it,
or just taking the step and then they're like, what
are you doing? You took a step? What did you
take a step for? I'm walking here, I'm walking, you know,
(04:46):
And so like every step along the way felt like
a bravery test. Wow, you know, like a fight for
the right to be an art I know it sounds stupid,
but that's how I feel now.
Speaker 2 (05:02):
It doesn't sound stupid at all. It doesn't sound stupid
at all.
Speaker 1 (05:05):
The people that cut the path through the field, who
are up front with the machete so that everybody else
can travel down that pathway. Like I always feel like
you were one of those women. Thank you, I did that,
So no wonder you're tired and you want a bloody holiday.
And that's why right.
Speaker 3 (05:29):
Down you're always on alert for the tigers. You know,
you don't know what you're cutting into. And a lot
of times I know that in my career I've ruffled feathers.
Look my poor fans, are you know, haranguing you because
I haven't been positioned right? They also harangue me, you know,
if I haven't positioned myself correctly.
Speaker 1 (05:47):
So can I just tell you that it's so crazy
because like hearing you say that, like it makes me
want to punch something. The idea of like being positioned
right because for me.
Speaker 2 (05:58):
You are. I can't.
Speaker 1 (06:00):
It's important for all these female artists. If you hadn't
done that, they wouldn't exist. So but it's interesting that
you the way that you feel that you weren't positioned right.
I think you were positioned incredibly Like in my heart
and in so many millions of people's hearts, you are.
But I understand that of sort of hitting a wall
(06:22):
and going wow, they don't they don't get where I
want to take this next.
Speaker 3 (06:26):
Well, you went into music, and you wrote a book,
a beautiful book, a beautiful memoir.
Speaker 2 (06:30):
I've got to keep making.
Speaker 3 (06:32):
All of those things are things that no one gave
you permission to do. You just said, this is what's
in me, and this is what I'm going to do next.
And I would imagine some of your agents were a
little bit surprised at your musical detour.
Speaker 1 (06:47):
Possibly, yeah, I mean they definitely were like, well, that's
it for you, love, If you're going to move to
Hawaii just like lat music, goodbye, good bye.
Speaker 2 (06:58):
No one will remember you when you come back.
Speaker 1 (07:01):
And largely they were sort of right, but I think
theyde underestimated how much women are used to having to
insist on their space at the table, even if you've
left the table briefly for whatever your reasons are, mental health,
your soul, have a child, the fact that we can't
come back and go yeah, I'm going to sit back
down now.
Speaker 3 (07:21):
Which is interesting. And you talk about roles. I mean,
until I moved to Hollywood, until I knew artists like you,
I didn't realize that acting was just another facet of
their artistry, That everyone who's an actor is also an artist. Yeah,
and so there's so much more to them that, you know,
Hollywood doesn't have a use for just do that acting thing,
(07:44):
look more beautiful, keep acting these people, these large souls
getting put into small roles.
Speaker 1 (07:52):
Yeah, or if you fall into the trip, the implied
insistence on youth and beauty, and that if you don't
subscribe to that and end up looking this weird, homogenized
way that a lot of women look now from having
bowed to that pressure, it doesn't work then either, because
then in a way you're then punished for having given in.
Speaker 3 (08:13):
You've made yourself replaceable.
Speaker 1 (08:15):
Yeah, but I mean, you know, I feel like a
lot of people have felt that way about women aging anyway,
But I don't see women doing that. I see people
writing off ads about women doing that, But no one
I know does that. No woman I know over the
age of fifty is invisible. They are the vibrant, most
powerful versions of themselves.
Speaker 3 (08:34):
I know, I don't understand that. It's almost like fear mongering.
I'll always look up from an article. I'll be like,
do I I don't feel in.
Speaker 1 (08:41):
If they shout more at the articles that I read
about you know, women and aging and what it means
and aren't you worried about this? No, you're worried about it.
You're just getting the clickbait. And I suppose I did
click on it to read it.
Speaker 3 (08:55):
Well, you always want to know what are they saying.
There is a sense of our people to talking about this.
But I mean I watched my grandmother remarried twice after
the age of seventy. So I watched her date.
Speaker 2 (09:07):
I love that. Did she have a great time doing it?
Speaker 3 (09:11):
She did? And there was one that she became like
a teenager giggly at the tate. We're like, what's up
with winky? Look at her? She's like like, you know,
like this laugh. This personality comes out of your grandmother
that you've never seen before. So I think I had
a good role model in the sense that it ain't
over until it's over, and it's such a brief life anyway,
(09:34):
you know, why on earth are you limiting yourself in
these seventy two hundred years in any way, shape or form.
Speaker 1 (09:41):
Yeah, because you see it reflected back in the media,
and it's it's only like that if you say it
is like, the more I've thought about it, the more
I genuinely believe there is only the meaning that we
assign in this world, and it's what lives in the
same space. For me is you get what you say,
You get what you say you worth. I think you
have to tell the story that you want to live.
Speaker 2 (10:05):
You really do that activity.
Speaker 3 (10:07):
I have a great metaphor for this. At one point
in two thousand and three, two thousand and four, there
was a lot of money being poured into promoting me,
so I was everywhere I was like under Capitol Records,
and I was very visible, and so everywhere I went
there's this tension of if people recognized you. But I
realized something at my own shows that if I needed
(10:31):
to leave the venue or go meet someone and there's
a line of people outside my show waiting to see me,
if I walk like it's no big deal, Like I'm
just super casually walking back, nobody recognizes me. I can
walk past my own line casually strong. But if I
have like people around me that're like, okay, we got
(10:52):
to get her out of here, everybody notices. So I'm
literally creating my own reality by how I'm carrying myself
and how I see that situation, and it stuck with me.
How you carry yourself to a large degree does shape
how you experience it and what that means to you
later on, and how that sticks with you. So if
(11:16):
you want to be invisible as a woman, you can
carry yourself invisibly, or you can carry yourself loudly.
Speaker 1 (11:23):
Yeah, it's one of the things that bothers me most
about the way in which middle aged women they speak
about this invisibility.
Speaker 2 (11:29):
I bought into it.
Speaker 1 (11:30):
I was like, oh, yeah, that does happen, doesn't it.
And I was like, no, it doesn't. I remember calling
my mother really sad, one like genuinely profoundly depressed, and going,
I'm so sad.
Speaker 2 (11:40):
I don't know what to do. What do I do?
Speaker 1 (11:42):
And she was like, oh, put on some lipstick, be seen,
put your face on, act like it isn't what you
are saying is act like that and see what happens.
Speaker 2 (11:53):
I remember being so annoyed with her put on.
Speaker 1 (11:56):
Fucking red lipstick to act like I'm happy when I'm sad.
Speaker 3 (12:00):
It was completely right, though when they say it visible,
what they're really just saying is men are not going
to try to run you down and conquer that for
such that is.
Speaker 1 (12:09):
That is exactly that is exactly right.
Speaker 3 (12:11):
But I don't want to be run down and conquered
for sex anymore.
Speaker 2 (12:14):
So enough of that. Oh I'm sick of it. I'll
tell you what I've been I've been run over it anymore. Frankly,
it's you're right.
Speaker 1 (12:25):
It is to do with a woman's worth being enforced
and tethered to this idea of desirability.
Speaker 3 (12:33):
For sex specifically whatever.
Speaker 1 (12:35):
Man, If that's really what it comes down to, just
like where you want to go and have sex.
Speaker 2 (12:41):
Allow me to be invisible.
Speaker 1 (12:42):
Let me maintain my invisibility, and I'll get on and
do all the really interesting shit that doesn't involve, you know,
ten minutes of sex with you.
Speaker 3 (12:55):
Oh my god, thank you for putting such a fine
point on that.
Speaker 2 (12:59):
And now we can I'll tell you my visibility over
a swift turn with you.
Speaker 1 (13:08):
Love.
Speaker 3 (13:13):
The articles never explained that part of it.
Speaker 2 (13:15):
They never do. What is it we're going to be
seen by a swift ten minutes. I don't, I really don't.
I don't go and google Sally Rooney and see what
she's writing next. Thank you off?
Speaker 1 (13:35):
Oh God, what relationship, real or fictionalized?
Speaker 2 (13:53):
Defind love for you?
Speaker 3 (13:57):
Okay?
Speaker 2 (13:58):
Tell me.
Speaker 3 (13:59):
I never knew this. In my twenties and thirties, how
I felt in relationships was of paramount importance, and it
wasn't until I became a mother, and frankly, it took
fifteen years past that to really understand that if you
love a person, you want the best for them. You
(14:20):
want them to find their journey, you want them to
realize their potential. And that's the kind of love that
I think is the highest love. It's the best love.
It's the most rewarding love. It's really hard to find,
and it's really hard to give. But to love somebody
and to love yourself wanting the best for you and
(14:42):
wanting you to fulfill your highest potential, that's real love.
That's the kind of love that if you break up
and it's not right between you, you can still look
at the person and say, I admire this person. There
was a point at which a relationship was something that
fulfilled me, that I got something out of, and then
(15:03):
I morphed into someone that wants the best for the
other person and only wants to date someone that I
would feel that way about.
Speaker 4 (15:12):
Hmmm.
Speaker 1 (15:13):
So distill it to what defines love for you?
Speaker 3 (15:17):
A lack of selfishness, a keen interest and admiration and
feeling for a real connection that you can't put into words.
But that doesn't just consume, that doesn't just say, oh great,
when can we be together? What can we do? But
that listens to what they want to do, What are
(15:39):
you trying to do with your life? What are your dreams?
And then supporting that. I guess it's about only dating
people that you really already respect and admire as people individuals,
not meshing, not going to that full mesh that I
did in my twenties. Do you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 2 (15:58):
About, Like, yeah, full mesh for the birds?
Speaker 3 (16:01):
Well, I mean it was fine. Those are the epics
stories and the fights in the street and the like
ro Julia and the steaks or something. No, I'm not
into that.
Speaker 2 (16:11):
I'm too tired for that.
Speaker 1 (16:12):
But I also don't want I don't want ten minute sex.
But I also don't want that. I don't want I
don't want that screaming in the streets you to actualize.
Speaker 3 (16:21):
I want you to have what you want in life,
and I want to be there for the ride.
Speaker 1 (16:25):
But it's about respect, right, respect and recognition. And you're
right about liking who they are and that you support
that despite the compromise that it might be to your
own life, because you love them, because that's actually what
what love is.
Speaker 2 (16:39):
I think that's interesting.
Speaker 3 (16:41):
You want the best for them.
Speaker 2 (16:42):
Have you got that?
Speaker 3 (16:44):
No? And I remember a boyfriend telling me that that's
what it was, and I wanted to punch him. I
really did. I was like, take your Hallmark guard and
hit the road.
Speaker 2 (16:53):
But he was right.
Speaker 1 (16:54):
I hate it when someone tells you something that's right
and then you know they were right, and then you
have to carry that around.
Speaker 3 (17:02):
Yeah it is. I don't have the relationship back, but
I took the advice.
Speaker 2 (17:07):
Then you profited from that.
Speaker 3 (17:09):
No do I have that now?
Speaker 5 (17:10):
No?
Speaker 3 (17:10):
I do not. It's very hard to find. But I
also don't trifle with possibles. If I don't feel deep
compulsion that this person is connecting with me, I think
of it as chakras. If they're not lighting up five
of those chakras at once. I'm not going to bother.
Speaker 1 (17:27):
Oh my god, that's so great. It's like a traffic
light system. That's fantastic. Yeah, I'm sorry, and there's all
three lights are going. We don't have anything happening. Yeah,
that makes it very practical. You have an internal traffic.
Speaker 3 (17:41):
And if you're friends, that can always change because you know,
you'll fall in love if it's not ten minutes, if
it's half an hour's eare and it's satisfying.
Speaker 2 (17:51):
Listen, I'm giving ten minutes. I'm giving ten.
Speaker 1 (17:53):
Minutes a bad app there's a good version of ten minutes.
It's just the people that are cooling women invisible over
the age of fifty, and not that people have a
good ten minute sex.
Speaker 2 (18:02):
Okay, that's the that's the fucking deal right there.
Speaker 1 (18:05):
But that fellow, But I'll take a good ten minutes.
Speaker 3 (18:10):
This is all the truth you need.
Speaker 1 (18:12):
I'll take a good ten minutes with my boyfriend any
day of the week.
Speaker 2 (18:14):
God damn right.
Speaker 3 (18:16):
Yeah, but he's also probably a forty five minute or
a ten minute or a five minute or and any
sort of thing.
Speaker 2 (18:23):
He's all the minutes. Indy, Oh, the minutes I need.
I think we should drive a song. He's old minutes.
Speaker 3 (18:35):
And we can even have parts of it. We're like
fifteen minutes now, you know, No, it's like twenty minutes.
Speaker 2 (18:42):
Now.
Speaker 5 (18:46):
Hi, my name's twenty minutes and I'm a mid point
in your day. Hi, my name's two minutes. I'm a
knee trembling in the kitchen.
Speaker 3 (18:58):
I'm your launch pray.
Speaker 1 (19:02):
It's Friday, Sunday afternoon.
Speaker 3 (19:12):
He's all minutes in the hour, so he's all a
minutes by me.
Speaker 2 (19:16):
Oh my godnes on a Tuesday. By the way, I'm
definitely writing the song. I'm going to send it to you.
Speaker 1 (19:27):
All right, Angel in your life, can you tell me
about something that has grown out of a personal disaster?
Speaker 3 (19:34):
The knee jerk reaction is everything's grown out of personal disaster.
Speaker 2 (19:37):
I like that.
Speaker 3 (19:39):
Correct way to say is I see personal disaster as opportunities.
Not at the moment, but I always keep that in
the back of my mind. So if you consider the
fact that I was adopted, I came right out of
a personal disaster into a pretty good situation. And you know,
(19:59):
though I I wanted to be a visual artist, the
personal disaster of me sort of having my I'm not
going to school anymore. I hate everything, I hate everyone.
That personal disaster wrote Guyville, and so then the personal
disaster of oh god, now it's my job to perform
on stage that personal disaster. Or when I was having
(20:22):
trouble with my record company, well, I have a college degree.
I could write a book, you know. So everything comes
out of a dead end. For me. Everything that I've
done that has really impressed me about myself has come
out of a dead end where something isn't working out.
(20:43):
And that may just be that I value those experiences
more because I overcame something. But personal disaster for me
equates with growth. So anytime I break something or someone
breaks me, even in the depths of it, and trust me,
I'm going to go hide in a cave for about
six months. It's just been my experience on life like
(21:03):
that is what happens. Necessity is the mother of invention.
That is the truism. But it's true, and it's extremely
useful in my life because otherwise there's no rhyme or
reason to what I've done in my life. Young people
should remember that exactly.
Speaker 1 (21:19):
It's just like wait a minute, just let it breathe
when it's really bad, give it a second.
Speaker 2 (21:29):
What person, place, or experience most altered your life.
Speaker 3 (21:32):
I'm so happy we have arrived at this question. Music,
music industry, music business, music fans, playing music, performing music.
You know, I got into this business to be recording
artists and never thought that I would have to perform
said music. And it has been something that I have
(21:53):
had to learn how to do, had to learn how
to love, had to get better at and it has
changed me so profoundly that it's hard to even explain.
But sometime around two thousand and five, I was a
new mom. I had a six year old and I
was teaching him about singing, and I realized that opening
(22:14):
my heart to be a better singer was not about technique.
For me, it was about not strangling my voice, not
feeling that shyness. It's always for me about letting you
see me, letting myself be vulnerable in front of people,
and the fact that given a choice, I would never
do that, and that because of my job. It's been
(22:38):
the work of my life. Has made me such a
better person in so many ways. It never lets me
totally put roots down because I'm always being asked can
you give more? Can you give something new of yourself?
Can you open up again? And that has shaped me
in ways that I'm deeply grateful for. Wow, because I
(23:01):
wouldn't have you wouldn't know. I would have been like
I would have been a know it all. I would
have sat back and been like, I don't do that.
But now I can never say I don't do that.
I don't know. Maybe I do do that. I don't know,
because the thing that I would least like to do
became my job.
Speaker 2 (23:17):
What did you think you were going to do?
Speaker 3 (23:19):
Sit back and make records, make art, make visual art?
Maybe right, anything behind the scenes, nothing in front of
the camera.
Speaker 2 (23:27):
Who made you go in front of the camera?
Speaker 3 (23:30):
People fans?
Speaker 1 (23:32):
When you made a record, you must have known that
you were going to have to go out and tour
that and promote it and get on stage.
Speaker 3 (23:37):
No. No, I was twenty six. I had fully prepared
and trained to be a visual artist. I had my
whole life set out. I knew I'd have a studio.
I fantasized about being like on the East Coast, you know,
and having the life of the house and then my
studio next to it. HM, that would be my fantasy.
Speaker 2 (23:57):
Wow, wow, but you anyway.
Speaker 3 (24:00):
I did it anyway, I mean not just anyway. I
did it and did it and did it, and like
I said, the biggest gift was the thing that I
wanted to avoid, and that lesson never left me. Now
I always know if something comes up and I'm like,
you know, she'll probably do it, and maybe I should,
maybe I shouldn't, but like I could, I could try.
Speaker 2 (24:22):
I love that. Yeah, I love that like I could.
My mother was like that till the very end.
Speaker 1 (24:29):
She was eighty four, and probably a month before she died,
she didn't know she was going to die.
Speaker 2 (24:34):
She'd started a new business because she.
Speaker 1 (24:38):
Was like, I love it because because I want to
and there's like a gap and because I can and
I'm doing it, and she did it, and that whole
notion of yeah, you see something that you can't do,
you go, yeah, but I could.
Speaker 2 (24:50):
I don't feel like doing that, Yeah, but I could.
I could do that. I love that that.
Speaker 1 (24:55):
There is only the limit that you put upon yourself.
That you say, that is andy invisible cloak that you.
Speaker 2 (25:01):
Put on yourself.
Speaker 1 (25:03):
There is only that sort of stifling of your thoughts.
Speaker 3 (25:06):
They're fragile, you know, they can be shattered. I love
that chapter. But may I talk about your memoiral like
that chapter about your mom passing. There was brutal parts
about it, but the eloquence with which you described the
love you have for her and how she was determined
the Duchess, I mean, like, it's just that was such
(25:28):
a satisfying and beautiful chapter to explain a daughter's love.
And it was complicated, and it was filled with so
much stuff, and there were things you wouldn't even try
to put into words, you know, the way you would
sit by her, and how quickly you were rousable from
your sleep, the way you had been when your son
(25:51):
was so young, Like that just meant a lot to
me as my parents are getting older, and just thank you.
It meant a lot to me. And I think that
you have a very powerful way of opening up private
experiences to a very broad encompassing lens. That's so it's
(26:12):
really thank.
Speaker 2 (26:12):
You, Thank you so much, thank you.
Speaker 1 (26:15):
It's just an exploration, as you know, it's.
Speaker 2 (26:17):
Just like go on a journey.
Speaker 3 (26:19):
That's a hard relationship to define, and you did it
so beautifully without defining it.
Speaker 2 (26:24):
Thank you.
Speaker 3 (26:25):
She sounds like she was a very formative love.
Speaker 1 (26:28):
She was always slightly out of reach, like I could
never quite get her, and then obviously death has been
the ultimate.
Speaker 2 (26:35):
Oh my god, she got away. I never quite. But
that's that you.
Speaker 3 (26:41):
Wrote a song about you.
Speaker 1 (26:43):
And what she like, what she inspired because there was
no the idea of her being an arrival point. That
that has been like rocket fuel in my life to
keep exploring. And it's not about not being satisfied, but
staying curious about how do we keep feeling in this
(27:04):
world that's so hard?
Speaker 2 (27:07):
How do you keep.
Speaker 1 (27:07):
Having fragile feelings and experiences. She taught me how to
do that because it's what she did, and she went
out chasing whatever came next in a way.
Speaker 3 (27:16):
Always Yeah, yeah, I respect that so much. I mean,
starting a business while you're on your deathbed, that's something
I'd like.
Speaker 1 (27:25):
To do, Yeah, totally, whilst also watching the football and
telling us all what we needed to do.
Speaker 2 (27:29):
Yeah. No, she was immense, amazing, she was immense.
Speaker 3 (27:33):
That's what you gave word to Our mothers are immense.
They are immense, and that's what you cant you.
Speaker 1 (27:40):
Thank you, Thomy, thank you so much. All right, I
better ask you the next question otherwise, well, next question,
what is the quality you like least about yourself.
Speaker 3 (28:04):
I thought about this for a long time. There's a
lot of qualities I don't like about myself, but the
most I think troublesome to my The way I want
to come across is impatience. I am impatient. It's very
hard for me to slow it down and let things
unfold if I think I know where they're going, and
(28:28):
I miss a lot. I miss people by doing that,
I miss letting them unfold.
Speaker 2 (28:35):
Hmmm.
Speaker 3 (28:35):
So I like that least about myself.
Speaker 4 (28:37):
Hmmm.
Speaker 1 (28:38):
Do you take steps to I don't know have self
correct is the right word, because that that all sounds
a bit like you need a writing crop.
Speaker 3 (28:46):
What do you I do? I could use it.
Speaker 2 (28:50):
I need to whip myself.
Speaker 3 (28:56):
Listening. I practice listening, as we were talking about before
with my career, trying to always step where no one
has given me permission to step. That can create a
you kind of a not pushing us, but like a
I hear no, but I'm seeing you know maybe that
kind of like let's try this. So letting things happen
(29:19):
to me, letting myself go through things without speeding it
up or escaping it.
Speaker 2 (29:24):
That makes sense, Yeah, totally.
Speaker 1 (29:26):
I mean I think a lot of it is wrapped
up with like again having to be the herald of
your own work. Like also, you weren't in a band
like it was you, like that's how you presented yourself,
and you're writing all the songs, so there had to
be probably quite a lot of people that needed to
be tuned out who were telling you what to do.
(29:49):
It's interesting, though, a really useful tool then becomes something
that as we evolve, it's like, oh, that thing that
served me so well, then perhaps that part of me
has to evolve so that now it actually does listen,
now that it's not a survival technique.
Speaker 2 (30:04):
Not listening, that's it.
Speaker 3 (30:06):
You've just encapsulated perfectly growing up because whatever characteristics you
had in childhood, they were adaptive. You're doing the best
in the environment that you had, and this is how
you made it through whatever you were going through. And
if you're lucky enough to get control of your life
to some extent, you can look at those things. Since
(30:27):
for so much of my life I just kept going.
It worked before, just keep going, and it wasn't until
my forties I think that I stopped and said, yeah,
but the same problems keep popping up, like the same
failures keep happening. And so I had to kind of
pull apart as we do our psychology and look at
(30:50):
it and think about what if I changed my mind
and I approach everything that way. Now I'm going to
change myself before I'm going to change anyone else.
Speaker 2 (31:02):
That's so good. I got to try and do that more.
Speaker 3 (31:05):
It's hard. I don't succeed all the time, believe me,
It's just what I try to do.
Speaker 1 (31:09):
It is interesting, though, when one realizes, you know, we've
all had to learn how to actually be kinder to ourselves.
As my friend Emma said one day, yeah, but are
you being too kind to yourself?
Speaker 2 (31:23):
Do you not need to be a little bit tougher
with yourself?
Speaker 1 (31:26):
I was like, and she's absolutely correct.
Speaker 2 (31:31):
Now and now I think about.
Speaker 1 (31:32):
Being the common denominator in all my shit. And even
though I used to beat myself with that, then I
kind of forgave myself completely and let myself off the hook.
And the weird thing is that there's this whole part
I just never evolved because it was like, look, either
you have never found the middle way of going It's
okay for this fallibility and this shit, but just let
it remind you in a more robust way as opposed
(31:53):
to I'm either going to pretend it's not there and
like love myself and it's not about me, it's about them,
beat myself like that. There's somewhere in the middle. I
think that's actually what middle age is, is that you
find the fucking middle path. Everyone's so busy talking about
your wrinkles, they don't realize it.
Speaker 2 (32:09):
It's actually quite sweet.
Speaker 1 (32:11):
I'm not living in a quite such a polarized way
with yourself.
Speaker 3 (32:17):
The extreme. Yeah, it's easy to shift into the extreme,
like go go go that way, go go go this way.
Speaker 1 (32:24):
That was my twenties and thirties right there.
Speaker 2 (32:27):
That's it. That's my next book. It's just going to
be that.
Speaker 1 (32:29):
It's just going to say that's fair.
Speaker 2 (32:35):
Wrote my next book.
Speaker 1 (32:36):
That's what it.
Speaker 2 (32:37):
Don't be called by many driving.
Speaker 3 (32:42):
I love you Mini, thank you so much for this,
and thank you for your memoir. It was very personally meaningful.
Speaker 2 (32:48):
To thank you so so much.
Speaker 1 (32:50):
Angel, really really really and also really hope to see you.
Speaker 2 (32:53):
Back in California.
Speaker 3 (32:54):
Let's do it.
Speaker 2 (32:55):
I mean allor right, Angel, Hi, take care of yourself.
Speaker 1 (33:04):
We'll see Sue See Sue, Hi Love Bye. Mini Questions
is hosted and written by Me, Mini Driver Executive produced
by Me and Aaron Kaufman, with production support from Jennifer Bassett,
Zoey Denkler and Ali Perry.
Speaker 2 (33:21):
The theme music is also by.
Speaker 1 (33:23):
Me and additional music by Aaron Kaufman. Special thanks to
Jim Nikolay Addison, O'Day, Henry Driver, Lisa Castella, a, Nick Oppenheim, A,
Nick Muller and Annette wolf A w kPr, Will Pearson,
Nicki Etoor, Morgan Levoy and mangesh Had Tiggadore
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