ARTIST SPOTLIGHT The Childlike Empress

The Childlike Empress is a multidimensional artist creating dynamic work focusing on mental health, sexuality, fluidity and healing from trauma. They grew up in NYC, but currently reside in Pittsburgh where they have been working on their music, visual art and many other projects. They released their debut album “Take Care of Yourself” last year on their birthday. The album can be found on all streaming services.

This informal interview with Pittsburgh-based musician, The Childlike Empress, was conducted by Zoë Fieldman, Ayu Suryawan, and Callie Wohlgemuth on June 27th, 2020. This text is adapted from the full conversation, which is available at opencallmag.weebly.com.

Re: your spotify bio talking about how this album deals with a situation that caused you to have to leave your home, where do you look for home now and what does it mean to you?

Yeah, I love that question. I think home for me is myself… home for a lot of my life, I felt like I was always trying to escape what was home, so it never felt like home because it was unstable, it was toxic, it was unhealthy. I never referred to myself as being homeless because I always had a place to lay my head, but it was very chaotic. I feel like that phase really made me make a home out of myself. Home is wherever you feel most loved and where you feel comfortable being vulnerable and where you feel comfortable resting your head and not feeling scared of someone stealing your shit or harming you. And where you feel like you can truly be yourself without filter. That feeling of love and acceptance and and safety is a big thing for me because I feel like so many of us, especially young queer people and a lot of young people in general, grow up with their house not feeling like home to them. It’s really beautiful to be able to grow up a little bit and find that.

Based on your social media presence, it appears like you have a very strong sense of identity, what has your journey looked and felt like to get you to this place? Are you your final form or are you still evolving?

I feel like so much of my identity has always been there. However, I definitely have changed a lot in my life. But I really only found Self love once I hit my rock bottom at the hands of somebody else.

What do you do to take care of yourself in order to facilitate healthy growth? What prevents you from self care or do you have any advice for people who may feel guilty for participating in acts of self care?

Be mindful of energy suckers, I call them vampires. Be mindful of energy vampires, because there are people who suck you dry of all your goodness until you have nothing left but bitterness because you gave everything to everyone. I’m still working through it, it’s a fine balance between giving and helping others, and just being really into yourself. Like really seeing yourself as a romantic partner. Get to know yourself and make sure you like yourself. This is especially something that quarantine is bringing up for a lot of people, like people can’t sit with themselves. They can’t stand themselves. If you can’t stand yourself then how are you moving in your relationships? There’s no shame in loving yourself. There’s no shame in being good to yourself at all.

Talk to us a little bit more about your spirituality and your witchcraft.

I feel like so many young people, especially afab people, were little witches from the start, like making potions in the yard and just doing weird little things. I look back, and I was totally fucking casting spells. I’ve always known that witchcraft was in my blood. I’m a second generation immigrant and there’s absolutely witchcraft on both sides of my family, but through colonialism, both sides of

my family were heavily assimilated so I don’t have a direct tie with my family’s witchcraft.

Magic is literally energy. We all believe in energy. We’re all little vibrating particles of energy that we can see. We all believe in Newton’s laws and things like that, it’s really the same thing, because word is vibration. It’s a vibration of energy, so there’s so much power and strength in word.

I do a lot of kitchen magic and a lot of sex magic. I think witchcraft is more accessible than people realize. Some people claim it a little too hard, without doing the work. But I do believe anyone can do it, and I don’t think it needs to always be some big dramatic thing. I think, by default, people are magic. And I think we owe it to ourselves to really embrace that fact. One of the biggest things wrong with society is that not enough people like to believe that they’re powerful. But also, there are people who are in power like the government, politicians, and all that. Those people have power in a capitalist society and the patriarchy, but that to me is false power. My witchcraft is very personal, it’s a combination of my cultures. As I’m trying to learn more about my cultures, it’s just what sits right in my spirit at the moment. Witchcraft is working towards a goal, but also it’s a balance between striving towards something and letting go.

Have your spiritual practices influenced your art and music? In what ways?

Oh, for sure. I feel like all of my songs are spells. My album was my healing process for sure. That was my way of getting over what happened to me in that relationship. And it’s weird because I’ve been having a hard time writing music and I feel like it’s because I’m in a good place right now. I have no heartbreak.

Speaking more on your influences, what are your musical inspirations? How do they manifest in this album?

My friend gave me my banjo and I wrote the album, like I wrote the album very quickly. I’m constantly learning. I do want to know more about all of my instruments. The music really just came from a place of sitting with my instruments and finding something that felt good in my spirit and the words started coming out. There’s absolutely artists that influence me, I can barely even begin to name them, especially because I want to make so many different kinds of music. But, I really feel like this album specifically came from myself.

When you envision someone listening to your music, what do you see?

It came out on my birthday, which is in late October; I’m a Scorpio. And then a lot of people were like, ‘I am so happy!’ This album is like the perfect spooky season

album, especially somewhere north east, where it gets very gray and cold and kind of melancholy. I feel like a lot of the album is about transitioning and things like that. I envision somebody smoking a J on their porch and the rain falling. It’s definitely an album for solitude, for sure. An album for sitting and introversion and probably smoking some weed.

While this album came out last fall, the song ACAB clearly is in direct conversation with issues that are just now starting to get a new wave of attention. Both then and now how has such movements like BLM influenced your relationship with your art.

The way that things are moving right now it’s like, I’m not gonna say it stunted my art because it almost places blame, but it almost makes me feel selfish creating any art that isn’t directly tied to this. I’m not gonna say it’s our duty, but I think that Black art will always be important. It will always be up to us to continue making art because I don’t believe that this is the end of the world. I think this is the end of a world that never served really anyone except for mainly white men.

It’s a war on all sides, and I really feel like the only people that can guarantee that this world gets to keep going is definitely Black and Indigenous people. It’s up to white people to be ending racism. So I think that Black people should continue to be joyous and continue to find solace in things like art and music. I think that we need to keep being storytellers. I think we need to keep capturing our greatness. I feel blessed to feel safe and to feel healthy, but I’d be lying if I wasn’t still nervous, like every single fucking day. I do want to keep making art that makes me feel safe and, you know, perhaps, does the same thing as the album and can make other people feel held in some way.

What is your relationship with the word community?

Community such a big word. It gets thrown around so much, but I feel like strong communities with open communication are really important. We should be looking out for our physical neighbors, especially if you’re living in a gentrified neighborhood and you’re contributing to gentrification.

What you really see is just so much transphobia and homophobia in the Black community, even Black people being like, ‘why are you destroying businesses?’ I’m just like, you clearly don’t get it. It’s a very long line of brainwashing and assimilation that people do to fit into this world. I almost don’t even blame them. That transphobia and homophobia… and like assimilation to whiteness is all a product of colonialism. Before we were ever invaded by European people, trans people were held in super high regard, they were seen as holy. And the violence against trans people, especially Black trans women. It’s a really dark thing. It’s

hard to know that the future is in community, when I feel like my own community can’t even get it together. It’s hard, but it makes me that much more thankful for community to see sex workers, to see queer people, to see trans people taking care of each other and showing up for each other, but we need more people to show up.

When you picture the future, what do you see as your utopia? Can you picture one?

We’re all so accepting of this nihilistic standpoint that the world is going to end in some disgusting fiery apocalypse versus Zombies or like the Ice Age. We’re so willing to accept that extreme of doom and chaos and death and never being able to rebuild. We put so much energy into that. But why can’t we put that energy into projecting joyful images of ourselves into the future?

For me, utopia… And it’s hard to not see it as a super cyber like Cyborg thing, but, I want to have a homestead, I want to have a sizable chunk of land that is, yes, for me, but I would also like to be able to house not only my friends and my family, but to create a large network and village of mainly Black and Indigenous POC. Mostly queer people and mostly femmes. We would just practice radical caretaking and protection. Only taking what is appropriate from hens and from bees and from the earth because when I’m working with nature and witchcraft, I always ask for permission.

I want to have a fucking queer Black farm. I want to raise my babies with my friends, I want to raise animals, not for slaughter and like grow all of my own food and make and have a whole apothecary, and on my land. To know that my deepest desire for myself and my future’s so many other people’s goals as well, that’s what’s keeping me going right now. Because I want to just fucking tuck my head into the sand, just like wait until the world is burning. But as long as we’re focusing energy into the negative outcomes, that’s where we’re going to go. Our thoughts are power, the things that we choose to believe in are powerful, so I think we need to be thinking about utopia. For some people utopia is heaven and getting to the afterlife. But I’m like, no, I want that now. I deserve that in this lifetime.