If you have the unique privilege of knowing me personally, and since you're reading this then you definitely do, you're probably well aware of my keen admiration for Grimes, real name Claire Boucher, probably also known by several names on her home planet which are unpronounceable to our species. You'll also most likely be aware of her recent masterwork of an album, Visions, which is fantastic and brilliant and I adore it about as much as any human can adore a sound. Ever since I heard Oblivion, a song with which I'm struggling to find any fault or a minute of the day not to play it, and watched the equally great video of her dancing around and being awesome, her existence has become the focus of somewhat of an intense fascination of mine. Erm, not... an obsession, but maybe a little bit of an obsession. I guess since everyone's been going on uncreatively about 'celebrity culture' for the past decade or so, having a weird infatuation with someone I've never met who actually has an undeniable talent overload is probably a good thing, and is reason enough to write a babbling blog post about how great I think she is. Welcome to the musician jackoffathon that is my life. Welcome to my personal Claire Boucher apotheosis.
From what I've heard spilling out Grimes' mouth, she truly lives in a world of her own. You can tell from the ten thousand interviews with her - which is still not enough, by the way - that she adores music and art and feeling and thought and those teeny tiny glimpses of her forays into spirituality. Her spirit animal is a Hyena, although that may now be up for debate. In a world that is, for better or for worse, infested with cynicism, hearing this sparkly-eyed artsy magic that runs through her brain makes me feel all lovely inside. As an aspiring creative wanker, it's refreshing to listen to someone talk with such stratospheric heights of artistic temperament and not want to puke violently. I acknowledge that there's plenty of pomposity around these days, but anything with even the slightest touch of creative thought or a genuine attempt at being unconventional is immediately mocked, dismissed as pretentious or leads to the use of that abominable H-word. You know who you are. But Grimes manages to avoid it all. She's as mad as a sack of serial killers, and she has that eccentric wardrobe and hair colour that changes with the waning of the moon, but yet this persona of hers never seems false, it never seems like too much. Her lust for the bizarre and the sublime rings completely true.
The Genesis video, for instance, was described by Grimes herself as a smorgasbord (paraphrasing here) of pretty much everything she likes and the little things she's attracted to. The python, the escalade, the medieval weaponry, and this Brooke Candy individual - I find it understandably praiseworthy that she decided to just collect the various elements she finds interesting for whatever reason and stick them in a video on the basis that they are awesome. And I seem to like what she likes, except for maybe the elaborate dress sense; but then again, who doesn't love huge medieval weaponry? Whatever your reactions to the video may be, and if those reactions are negative then you are simply wrong, it's a celebration of all the fantastical shit that's going on inside her head and no one else's. Or, if you promise you won't be sarcastic about it, it's like a leak springing out of her own soul. And it's a soul that I adore peering into now and then. Her music may appeal to me on an ineffably personal level, but I fully believe that Grimes is, objectively, a figure of massively commendable interest. In directing her own videos, drawing her own distinctive and striking artwork, wearing and saying whatever the fuck she wants, and of course working with real laborious intensity over her outstanding music, Grimes is a figure who's completely her own person; an individual down to the last molecule in her magnificent little body. She's got real integrity, which is in many ways the most laudable trait of all. She's an inspiration to me, and a blazing roman candle of an inspiration at that.
Okay, okay, so she's absolutely adorable as well, although I'm sure that's not the adjective she'd love to be most associated with, but it's a beauty that stems from her quintessence. You know, from the fact that she is, at the very heart of it, cool as fuck. And she crafts danceable, evocative, densely layered, endlessly playable and enchanting music that I'm going to listen to and love until the end of time. At the time of writing I, sadly, have not seen her play live, and since missing her brief show in Brighton last year, the chance is getting slimmer and slimmer that I'll be able to see her in the city of cities again as her prestige is growing quickly, but there's no doubt that next time she plays in the Devil's arsehole that is London, I'll be there weeping with joy in the audience like a wee girl. Until that day comes, the few gems of genuine brilliance that have developed out of her extraordinarily beautiful mind will have to tide me over for the meantime. And even after the meantime. And probably for the rest of my life. And for the rest of your life, too. Shit, after all, she's only young. She can only get more brilliant, and best of all, she appears to be pretty sellout-proof (And I hope I never have to regret saying that). There should be a lot more awesome shit to come, and I'm waiting with an almost religious zeal for whatever it may be. Now fuck off and get listening.
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