That makes a lot of sense. Do you think you have healthier methods of processing the conversations or criticisms, being a creative person in the public eye now?
Maybe not yet. I’m working on it. [Laughs.] I’ve tried doing the whole just don’t look at it thing, but it’s just guaranteed that at the very worst moment, when I’m the most vulnerable, or the most looking for someone to tell me that I’m as much of a loser as I sometimes think I am, that’s the moment when I’m going to look at it. Although one thing I do sometimes is to google a picture of the journalist, because it then reminds you that they’re just a person. Sometimes it can feel like this judgment is coming down from God when you see it attached to the name of a big publication, but when you think about it differently, you realize, Oh, it’s just a person. They’re an educated person, a smart person, and they’re probably right about a lot of stuff. But it is also just a person, and there are other people who might feel differently.
Totally. I love the title of the album, too. Where did that come from? Were you thinking about the “chaos angel” as a kind of archetype or character that runs through the album?
Well, I was working on the film Wildcat about the life of Flannery O’Connor. And there’s a letter from Flannery O’Connor that we steal from—with permission—as dialogue in the film. It’s about how she used to punch at her guardian angel, and whirl around, and try to fight it off. And that really struck me. And I thought about how we all do that. Whether you want to call it your guardian angel, or your instincts, or your true self, your best self, your soul, your spirit, whatever… There’s a voice in all of our heads that is trying to give us good advice, that says, “Don’t read the reviews,” that says, “I think you should go home, nothing good happens after 2 a.m.,” that says, “Tell the truth.” And sometimes we really resist it, and fight it off. And even worse than that, sometimes the voice itself is sick, and instead of delivering you good advice, it’s been injured or hurt or confused, or something bad has happened to you, and your voice isn’t giving you good advice anymore. It’s saying, “Don’t eat that burger, no one will love you if you gain weight.” It’s saying, “Don’t tell the truth, no one will love you if they know who you really are.” I was thinking about that a lot, because I wanted to heal my own inner voice and make sure I could trust it. You want to feel like you can trust your own instincts, right? And so the record is kind of personifying that inner voice, and I gave her the name of the chaos angel, which is inspired by Christian imagery, but injected with a lot of my exposure to Buddhist and Hindu gods and goddesses from my maternal grandfather. So I thought about this character of the chaos angel who was raised to be an angel of love, and then she goes down to earth and tries to be one—but it’s really hard. Instead of love, there’s craziness and chaos and destruction, and then she hates herself, because she feels like that wasn’t what she came to do. But after a while, she realizes that chaos is the necessary ingredient for change, which is the necessary ingredient for love. Sometimes she’ll bring chaos or stress, but that’s okay, because it’s a necessary thing to get to the part where there’s love, you know? That’s the very long and convoluted story of the chaos angel!