A Woman We Love
Zee Avi
In our January End of the World Issue, our Woman We Love was indie queen and artist Zee Avi. 2011 was a banner year for her, as she released her second album Ghostbird to praises, and went on her biggest tour yet. We sat down with the singer hours before her big show in KL, and observed what made this one tick. An excerpt:
BEFORE THE SHOW, 1.16 P.M.
“She’s not feeling well.” Rose, Zee’s manager for about two years, has bad news. And good news. “She’s been taking medicine, but she will be down soon.” It’s eight hours to her big show in K.L., the start of her “Homecoming Tour” that brings her across three Malaysian cities, and other venues in Singapore and Indonesia. You hope she’s got some kick-ass honey lemon tea in her suitcase.
I’m jotting questions down when I hear her. “Is that Jon?” She’s standing some ways back, and she takes off her sunglasses for a better look, like she saw a distant cousin she’s heard about in drunken Christmas parties. She’s got a mug of coffee in her hand, her lifeblood. Gowned in a rainbow sarung batik, and David’s standing next to her. Kiss, hugs, and David’s in the middle of telling us about Jalan Alor. You always want to hear first encounters with Jalan Alor.
“They ate so much. They came back, they were so full, they walked like this.” And she wobbles around like a pregnant lady, hands on stomach, cheeks puffed out. The band has just returned from Bali, from sereneness and nature, and into rush hour. As a memento, she has a henna inscription on her left arm, a quote in a cursive flourish. A grand reception of oneself. You can take the girl out of the island, but you can’t ...
The azan sounds in the distance. We’re sitting outside near the hotel swimming pool, and we’ve got a fruit platter, lattes, ciggies. She soaks the music of the Koran for a second, lets a mystical yonder wash over. “Lama tak dengar.” She’s back after a year of creating Ghostbird, her second album. She’s brought bandmates, a new tan, the sape, and a tour she can call her own.
“You know, the magic is all in the live shows. I mean, I don’t see myself as someone who has a synth pad. Well. Maybe in the future ...” She trails off, then rejoins her thoughts with a remix. “Dooooooohhhhh ...,” she drags the club sound for a few seconds, and then turns into a beatboxer, with a bass beat, fist over her mouth, now in her own world where “Bitter Heart” gets Kanye-d. “Can you imagine, me, Janelle Monae, Nicki Minaj? The three of us on the tightrope, three badass munchkins hanging out.” Segues into the lyrics of a hit, and I sit and admire a Monae.
Some people talk about ya / Like they know all about ya ...
“Can you see my nose? It’s deformed.” She leans forward, and we’re face-to-face. The nose is sunburnt, the skin is slightly peeling and a little coarse, but it doesn’t make her Harvey Dent, and I laugh. F*** Zooey. This is the true blue New Girl.
Where did the quote on your arm come from?
“It came to me in a dream.” Sometime in 2010, she says. She found herself inside a brick wall house, sitting on a velvet chair. And through the silence, she starts to hear this melody playing over an old school gramophone by the hand of God, unknown, yet familiar. “I was listening to a vinyl of what sounded like my third or fourth record.” She calls these “milestone dreams.” Carl Jung calls this “sticking to the image”, our deeper connection with specific symbols. I pay reverence by accidentally sneezing into our stubs, and suddenly, I’ve covered Zee Avi in a pile of ash, and it’s snowing in New York all over again, and she’s sick, and we’re hours to showtime, and Rose is not going to like this.
She squeals, and I apologise profusely. “Sarji ah sini!” She plays with the falling debris, brushes it off. “Ahh. I’m that guy too sometimes,” and because it’s not a first date, and klutzes of the world unite, she moves on to more important matters. “Over here, we have drah-gon-fruit, kih-wee fruit, pah-pai-ya,” and she does it in a mock French accent, rolling her tongue around the ‘r’s like a chef introducing his avant-garde version of ti-rah-misu.
She’s got an affinity for words. I ask her what’s her favourite quote. It’s from the book Unbearable Lightness of Being, Milan Kundera’s meditative fiction about four people and a dog during an oppressive period in history.
And what can life be worth if the first rehearsal for life is life itself?
“This is what it means to me.” She coughs a bit, clears the phlegm. “You can’t say, chemical A and B, if I mix it, I get this. There’s no experimentation with life. There’s no rehearsal with it, you have to live with the consequences, but you just have to play the best show ever. This is it.” So you go out, and give it your all, because being in the moment is the most important time of our lives. So you can understand why, sickness be damned, Zee Avi’s the luckiest girl in the world.
To read more about Zee - her process of writing her second album, and her thoughts on what happened with the Malaysian media on her first big trip back - pick up our January End of the World Issue. Words by Jon Chew. Photographs by Chin Too. Styling by Andrea Wong.
January 3rd, 2012