Penelope: I feel like it can start in several ways. Sometimes it comes out just playing around in Danbro [the band’s Brooklyn rehearsal space] and then taking it from there. Other times Nora and I will bring in the beginning of something that we’ve already written. But even if we’re bringing in a song we’ve written independently, it’s with the understanding that it has to be completely exploded and reassembled. Everyone has to equally shape it in order for it to feel like it’s become a full song.

There’s a lot more space on this record, both sonically and in the songwriting. How did you arrive at this evolution of your sound? Did you foresee it happening?

Gigi: I mean, I feel like it wasn’t “intentional.” We knew we wanted clean guitar on this record. That was a major thing we wanted to play with in terms of new sounds on record. And then lyrically, I at least feel like there was a realization of, “Oh my god, when we are embracing minimalism, the vocals feel so much more intimate and it feels a lot more natural to write a personal song.” Lyrics and vocal melodies took on a new quality on this record because of the space, and the arrangements that we were writing naturally encouraged us to do that with the vocals.

I remember reading something about you staying away from writing personal songs in the past. What do you think has led you to write more intimate songs?

Nora: Dude, your twenties.

Penelope: I was in high school when we were writing the first record. I didn’t have love to write about at that time because I was a kid. It’s just about experiencing shit and connecting with music. When I moved here, I began connecting with music lyrically in a way that I never did as a teenager. As a teenager, it was just about energy and noise. In college I was like, “It’s so beautiful to hear Al Green sing about love and feel that that articulates how I feel.”

Do you think that there’s a change that has occurred in the songs parallel to the change of living in New York?

Gigi: They coincide because of the time we moved to New York in our lives. Anywhere we would’ve been from 18 to 22, we would’ve gone through these things. But there is a uniqueness to it because of the isolation and loneliness that comes with being in a huge city and not feeling like you are not completely on your feet.

You still have a community in Chicago, which I’m assuming was influential in the process of making the first record. Do you feel like you have a community in New York, and did that impact these new songs in their genesis?

Gigi: While we were writing these songs, I don’t know if we felt we had it. But recently we have felt much more like we have community. In the first few years of living here, you’re meeting so many people and you have no idea how to decipher what a person is in your life. So there’s a bit of a distance from community in what we wrote.

As students and young people living in New York, how is your process integrated into your everyday life?

Penelope: Since starting college, songwriting has become a moment to pause and reflect. I often felt overwhelmed while writing this record, especially with writing personal lyrics and writing something that you feel suits the way you’re feeling. It is a really rewarding relationship to form with your creative work, where you can help yourself feel seen through making something. You can put your finger on your own feelings.

It’s not just one moment, but can you recall being able to recognize your creative priorities changing?

Gigi: It wasn’t like we sat down and said, “It’s time to switch things up, guys.”

Nora: There were totally phases during the writing process. “Sport Meets Sound” was a moment where we kind of felt like we understood where we wanted to go. At some point when we were recording demos, we started using a bunch of percussion or a glockenspiel, and that was another solidification.

Gigi: Then we knew Cate [Le Bon] was going to do it.

Nora: And there’s a point in the studio when you’re listening back to what you’ve made…

Gigi: …Realizing what your record sounds like.

Penelope: As you write and start to chip away at this thing, it feels disconnected for a long time and you have no idea how the pieces fit together. And then you start to reference yourself as you keep writing it and you’re like, “I want to write something that sounds like this song on our own record.” That’s when the threads started to cross a little bit. I remember heading into the studio with Cate, feeling like I knew there was something cohesive, but it hadn’t fully been stitched together. And we knew that the studio was a way that we wanted to do that, so we came in with these songs not completely finished.

Nora and Gigi: Which we’ve never done.

How much consideration did you put into live arrangements while writing this record, especially as a three-piece where functionality can either be a creative tool or a barrier?

Penelope: We always see the trio as a creative tool. Even in the songs that feel most exploded in the studio, there is still a trio at the core that can play these songs. And we realized that again recently, when we came back to try and figure out these live arrangements. It ended up naturally staying true, because it’s so important to maintain the trio in every sense.

Gigi: These songs can exist in many different ways and still be songs. For example, [playing live] we’re not having violins, but we’ll still try to fill the space because these are the same songs.

You’ve spoken about your collaboration with Cate Le Bon as more open and conversational than former experiences. How did collaborating in this way challenge what you knew about your process?

Penelope: Once we had decided that we wanted to work with her, we knew we were signing ourselves up for a completely different experience because she wasn’t the kind of producer you hire when you’re like, “Okay, just press record and we’ll do the rest.” You don’t bring her in for that. You bring her in to push you and to be another perspective on the thing—which we were excited about, but it also made us nervous. We had these songs that we knew could be exploded in the studio and really benefit from that, but we didn’t know how to do it at all.

Gigi: It wasn’t challenging in the way of being “super hard.” It all felt very natural, but Cate was an outside force that we had never let in like that before. She instilled us with a certain level of confidence that we could not have gotten by ourselves. Specifically, adding synth on “Julie” is something that we would’ve probably been afraid of if there wasn’t somebody we really respect and look up to saying, “No, this is the coolest choice you guys could make. And it sounds great.”

Is there anything that she would say in the studio that stuck with you or anything she implored you to consider?

Penelope: Embracing the scrappiness.

Nora: Because we told her we were worried that this record would come across too clean cut, too polished.

Gigi: She expanded my mind at one point when I was stuck thinking, “Fuck, what would the Velvet Underground have done in this situation?” She was like, “Heroin. You cannot compare yourself to that because it’s not you.” From that moment, I dropped the idea that we need to be our influences, that we need to think about what our influences might do. We are ourselves right now, in the studio. That was a sentiment we kept throughout the process of the record: being more self-referential.

How have you dealt with being compared to other artists, especially ones that you look up to? How has that changed coming from a distinct DIY scene to now being an established act on a historic record label?

Gigi: It was my New Year’s resolution to stop comparing myself to other people. At a point you really do have to shut it off. Because it’s only going to fuel you in the directions that aren’t true to you.

Penelope: I don’t feel like I compare Horsegirl to other people because I love the two of them, and if they’re on board with this, we feed off of each other’s confidence. After so much time playing together, I’m just like, “We make what we make.” I can’t make something that someone else makes. This is genuine coming from us, and that is enough for me. Knowing your own lane a little bit and feeling okay with other people doing their own thing and you doing your own thing. That’s how I feel coming up with Lifeguard, admiring them so much but knowing I could never be in a band that sounds like them. But when other people compare us to other people, that gets hard for me, because you make your own thing and you think you’re so in your own lane.

Gigi: It’s always just other people making sense of it to themselves.

The band has such strong aesthetics both visually and sonically. How do you balance that with emotional catharsis in the process of making the record?

Gigi: The form is the content. The medium is the message.

Penelope: In embracing pop structure and songwriting on this record, there were moments where it took time to embrace the structure of a classic song, and not feeling how we did as teenagers. [As teenagers] we had this intuition to always be weird, always be weird, always be weird. On this record, we felt very confident about having an emotional song, just presenting it acoustically. That was a moment of being like, “These are the feelings of the song. We don’t need to bury it in this avant-garde kind of thing.” There are other songs where a cool arrangement reflects the emotions of the song, and there’s balance in that, but it takes confidence to be critical.

What does the band’s creative process look like on tour? Does it even exist?

Gigi: We definitely do not write songs when we’re on tour. It comes from trying out songs, playing a song we wrote night after night after night. Through that, you realize there is something you may want to do differently. There are songs we have not toured on that we’re going to be touring on, and I sense that we’re going to have our own realizations through that in ways that are exciting.

Nora: When you’re touring songs, you naturally fall into the way that you play them every night. You don’t even realize that the part has changed, and then it comes time to record, and that is just the part.

Gigi: Watching the moments that people react to is really special because it’s the type of stuff you just don’t picture at all when you’re writing… And with putting so much space in our songs, that is something you must endure as an audience. It’s really scary to not fill up all the space. But now we have people [who] will come to our shows and listen attentively, hopefully to the songs we write that have all this quietness in it.

Speaking of quietness, how do you all deal with dry spells?

Nora: “Dry” has a bad connotation, but the pause that occurred when we weren’t writing stuff all the time led us to our second record’s sound. If we just started writing right after writing Versions of Modern Performance, it wouldn’t have felt so much like it’s a new thing and wouldn’t have felt as… conclusive.

Penelope: When we weren’t writing, I’d forget that we were in a band a little bit, and just feel like I’m with my bros. We were able to discover the band anew after some time and think, “What does it even sound like when we play together?” It felt different because we had gone through all this change together, but we were closer than ever as friends. Preserving that joy is important. So, if you can approach the dry spell like that, instead of just frustration, frustration, frustration, then you can come out with something new when you rediscover your craft.

When it comes to creative decisions as a band, do you see yourselves as a unit or as three individuals? How do you work through conflict within that?

Gigi: When we were making our first record, I felt inseparable from Penelope and Nora. What we thought, what we were listening to, as a unit. Even the way we dressed used to be a lot more similar to each other. In these past few years, music aside, we have all come into ourselves both on our own and with each other.

Penelope: As we get older, we have to accept the fact that we are three individuals, working together on something that will always be insanely collective because we grew up together and discovered our connection to music together… That’s what it feels like with Nora and I bringing personal lyrics to the table. It’s like, “I’m asking you guys to play this thing with me that is about my life”—to write a song together that reflects this experience that we’ve been seeing each other through.

Gigi: Speaking as the non-lyric writer, even if a song is about something that Nora went through or something Penelope went through, I was there.

Lastly, how have you experienced failure and how do you define it?

Gigi: Maybe we’ve had periods of failing ourselves in terms of getting too wrapped up in it, in a way of reading comments, trying to see everything that’s online about ourselves. This time we’ve been adamant about not reading press, for the sanity of each other and preservation of our friendship.

Penelope: It’s an evolving relationship for all of us, ahead of this next tour. We will have never played these songs before and now we’re going to be on a huge stage. It’s really hard to feel like you fucked up something like that… But I don’t know if I would call that a failure, it’s just the reality of being a musician.

Gigi: Also, the reality of being split between two things cultivates a relationship with failure, in terms of not being able to give myself completely to the band because I am going to school, or not being able to be completely invested in school because I have the band.

Penelope: It can be hard to cut yourself a break because we really, really care about this band with every ounce of our beings. The way I try to ease myself is by reminding myself that I’m in it for the long haul and every little mistake can’t feel like the end of the world, otherwise this is not sustainable. Acknowledging that it’s important to care, but it’s not going to go perfectly all the time… It’s just going to be a long life.

Nora: Progress is not linear.

Penelope: Nora always says that at the best time to me.

This content originally appeared on The Creative Independent and was authored by Kali Flanagan.

Feelings, whoa, oh, oh, feelings

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Allen Forrest.

I find it easier. It’s almost difficult to turn that part of my brain off because, for me, writing music is therapeutic. It’s like journaling. It’s a part of my day that I enjoy and it helps me process and feel things. So, I think, both that and my love of hip-hop. I feel like a lot of hip-hop artists just release whenever they want to release. That allowed me to go, “Instead of maybe hoarding songs that are about a moment in time for four or five years until it’s the right time to release them, what if I started releasing music that sort of, I don’t know, related to or spoke to the times that they were about?” That’s why I write music so fast, because I want the music to feel like it is reflective of the time that it was written.

Do you find that music you’ve released a few years ago, you don’t really relate to as much anymore? Or does it kind of change in relatability for you?

Honestly, I try to write open-ended or write in such a way that, hopefully, me 10 years from now revisiting a song I wrote today will have something to learn from it. The shows that we’re playing right now, we play music from pretty much every one of my albums. It’s just sort of a whole… like a retrospective, in a sense. And I just connect to it all. They were all written from real places that I can sort of pinpoint where I was when I had the idea for each one. I have a relationship with my songs in that I write to help myself process and help myself grow, and I want that to continue long after a song is finished. I want to be able to find goodness in it way after it’s been out.

What was your earliest musical memory and how did that shape you?

Earliest musical memory was probably listening to Genesis with my dad as a kid, or my dad would put something on the record player. He’s a lyrics guy, so he likes to break down lyrics and be like, “I like this song because it says this.” And so when I was a kid, I would just basically sit at my dad’s feet while he told me about all his favorite songs and bands. I say a lot that I’m a fan of music.

Genuinely, I approach being a musician as a fan would, in a sense, of like, “Sick. I can’t wait to listen to songs,” and I just happened to be making the songs. I think, because my earliest moments in music were just about listening and processing and enjoying, I still find that’s my goal with music, is to just really let it, I don’t know, just let it be itself and not overthink it.

You mentioned that your dad was very into lyrics. Did that help shape how you approached music? And was that also encouraged for you as an art form growing up?

Yeah, definitely. My dad being such an active listener to music, it definitely turned me into the person and fan that I am. To this day, I’ll put on a record, and I’ll sit on the floor, and I’ll cross my legs, and I’ll just listen. I can be entertained and encapsulated by music really easily. The influence that my dad’s fandom has had on my music-making and the way I love music is just like, it’s just down to when you see a show, when you see me side stage at a friend’s concert, you’re just watching someone who loves… I just love songs, and I just love being able to listen to music and to make it. It all starts with just being a listener.

When did you first start writing songs or knowing you wanted to be a musician?

I started writing songs when I was a kid, probably 10 or 11. That’s when I got my first guitar. My parents were very supportive of it as an outlet, but they’re like, “Obviously, this is not a job. This is something you do when you get home from being a doctor.”

I spent a lot of time as a kid… We weren’t allowed to watch TV Monday through Friday, so I would do my homework, and then I would play music. I would just play guitar. I would write. My parents were really encouraging of that just in the sense of like, I played sports and I did other stuff, but in terms of focus, like a hobby that I focused on and really sunk my teeth into, making music and writing music was the first thing that they saw me stick with. Growing up, my parents were like, “Yeah, if you want to play, we’ll help you buy your first guitar. We’ll help you do whatever you need because we can tell that you love it.”

Was there a specific moment for you where it kind of clicked that, “This isn’t just a hobby,” or that you convinced them, “This is more than just that?”

They have to have that wake up call every few years. One of the first times I got invited to play a festival in Liverpool, and I brought my parents with me, them seeing me perform live to a room full of people made them go, “Oh.”

Especially with the internet, most of what my parents knew about my career was like, “Oh, look at our child playing guitar in front of their phone for work.” I think for them to be at a show and to see people interact with the music and to see me play music was really, really eye-opening for them. And then random things, like they heard me on NPR. One of my songs was on, This Is Us. They have little touchdown moments where they go, “Oh, this is work. She’s working.”

You mentioned a little bit about the internet, and I am pretty sure you grew up maybe in the late ’90s, early 2000s. I’m wondering if there were any artists specifically you stumbled upon yourself and that helped you realize you wanted to be a musician?

I’ve always had relatively older taste. I was a big Bob Marley fan growing up. My dad was a Bob Marley fan, but I gravitated to Bob Marley’s music in a way that I didn’t gravitate to a lot of other stuff that my dad, that anybody showed me. I honestly think it was because it was like this guy with locs and smoking a bunch of weed, singing about sitting outside with his friends in a better world. For me, I just feel like Bob Marley is one of those people. Bob Marley, Nina Simone… I’m trying to think of contemporaries. Janelle Monáe is a person I find myself inspired by. The people who just seem to be like, “I’m going to be myself and also make music.”

The cool thing about growing up with the internet is if I heard, I don’t know, like [an] Uncle Kracker song on the radio, or if I heard “Little Wing” by Jimi Hendrix, I could go to Google and be like, “I heard this song with these words.” I could find it and sort of immerse myself in that person’s story. That’s something I still do today. I heard a cover of “Blues Run the Game” yesterday, and I spent the rest of the day researching the guy who covered it just because.

How do you typically start the process of creating a song?

It just depends on the situation. Sometimes, I do the co-writing thing where you sort of have a writing appointment with someone else. I go at like 11:00 AM and we write until we have something. Because it becomes such a part of my processing in my day-to-day, if I feel inspired by something, I’ll just grab my notebook and just write it down, or grab my phone. I tend to do music and lyrics at the same time, so I’ll literally just hash it out.

For me, it’s almost like music is a language in which my brain sort of speaks and thinks. Yesterday, I got off stage and immediately went to write something really quick because I couldn’t stop thinking about it. I just try to keep an openness to whenever I feel that sense of inspiration, whether that’s setting a time and being like, “I’m going to write,” or making space in a busy moment to just let my brain express itself.

It can definitely take a little bit. I finished a new record a couple weeks ago, and I produced it all myself. A lot of times, when I’m writing something, I sort of hear everything all at once. I hear drums, guitar, all that different stuff like that. The challenge that I went through making something myself from scratch was sort of knowing, one, when to stop, and two, knowing what type of clothes that the song actually wants to wear versus my brain just being its crazy creative self. I sort of have been trying to find this balance of letting the mind go wild, but also finding ways to harness that in a way that feels usable.

You’ve spoken about your relationship with religion changing from growing up to now, both in interviews and through songs, including your one, “Questions, Chaos, and Faith,” from earlier this year. Has that impacted the way you approach music, if at all?

I’m always going to have a spiritual view of music. To me, I feel like what you put on, the type of music you can put on can set your mood. I make music for people who, if, at some point, they want something slightly encouraging to listen to on their way to work or if they want to hear a friend say, “Hey, I get that life is shitty, too.” That’s sort of what my music provides for people.

Other people would give us like dancing and goofing off. The hope that I have as an artist and as a person is that my music shapes other people’s lives in the same way that music shapes mine. In the same way that maybe religion can provide comfort or guidance, and again, I’m not like a cult leader or a weirdo, but I want people to be able to go, “I don’t have to go to church, but I can feel something inspiring,” or “I can think about god,” or “I can think about doubt.”

There are people who make music for shaking ass, and I make music for stoners at 3:00 AM who are talking about whether they believe in god or not. What I like about my music is that I’ve been able to hold on to the spirituality of it and sort of harness it into something that feels more honest. It’s something that feels real, that doesn’t feel like it’s maybe prescribed by a religion or something.

One of your other songs that I was personally very struck by was “Trying.” I’m wondering, as a musician, is there ever sort of a fear of being too vulnerable or too open? Or do you think it helps build a community of those who relate to what you’re singing about?

It helps build a community. I think that, if anything, it may hinder the heights to which I may scale, because I don’t think people want to think about their problems that bad. But there’s a value. When someone’s vulnerable in front of me, I feel like it opens me up to be like, “Oh, I can be vulnerable, too.” That is sort of the service I offer as a rock star. You’re going to come to a show and you’re going to see someone be human in front of you for 90 minutes. Truly, that’s literally, I think, all that I offer as a musician.

It can be scary to be vulnerable, but I’ve seen such great value come from me being vulnerable in all these different types of room with different types of people and having people sort of process their own vulnerability and their own openness, and also how they relate to people different than them in the world.

What is one piece of advice that has stuck with you, and what’s something you also wish you had been told about making music?

Jason Isbell told me once that it’s my name on the sign. Essentially what he’s saying is like, you have a band and you have a team, but at the end of the day, they represent you. I think it’s different than maybe The Doors or The Beatles where it was all of them together. They were all in it together. For me, it’s like I have a band, but the shows are my shows. And finding a balance. If I could go back and be in a band at the time of like the Grateful Dead, I think that would be my peak. That’s probably when I would thrive the most.

What do you hope listeners will take away from your new music?

That they are not alone in feeling like the world has become a little bit more confusing to navigate, or just, period, that they’re not alone. I think I bring a sort of simple everyman thing to the table with my songs. This next collection of songs, honestly, is written from the perspective of someone who hates their job a lot. And I think everybody can relate to that. Life is hard and I make music for people who feel the difficulty of that.

This content originally appeared on The Creative Independent and was authored by Lexi Lane.

Last week a House of Commons justice committee hearing instigated by Liberal MP Anthony Housefather heard from a half dozen students about how difficult life has become as their peers criticize Israel’s holocaust in Gaza. As the Grind’s Dave Gray-Donald pointed out, the media ignored that three of the students who testified previously held positions in Israel lobby organizations. But focusing only on those paid to promote a foreign state ignores the depth of the problem.

The problem begins when two and three-year olds are indoctrinated into worshiping a far-away apartheid state. The daycare and preschool at the Miles Nadal Jewish Community Centre in Toronto
has Israeli flags on the wall and describes “Israel as a Source and Resource”.

From daycare to summer camp to kindergarten, many young Jews are conditioned to be “terrified” by those opposing genocide. At a number of private elementary schools, they paint the kids’ faces with Israel’s colours on special occasions and regularly sing the national anthem of one of the most violent states in history. At Montréal’s Hebrew Academy Israeli emissaries lead five- and six-year-olds in “fun IDF programs”. Photos of Israeli soldiers and IDF emblems are common and schools also show movies that celebrate the Israeli military and have students send gifts to IDF bases.

Beyond instilling an emotional attachment towards the Israeli military, the kids are radicalized into fundraising for colonial land theft. Schools distribute Jewish National Fund Blue Boxes as part of “educating Jewish youth and involving them in these efforts in order to foster their Zionistic spirit and inspire their support for the State of Israel. For many Jews, the Blue Box is bound up with childhood memories from home and the traditional contributions they made in kindergarten and grade school.” Blue Boxes raise funds for the explicitly racist JNF, which has played an important role in the colonization of Palestine. A number of Montreal Jewish schools have also recently brought grade three and fours to “JNF Day” events that show maps of Israel that include the illegally occupied West Bank.

At Tuesday’s Israel Independence Day rally in Montreal hundreds, maybe a thousand, students were bused in from private schools. The DJ belted out different school names as the kids danced, waived Israeli flags and knocked beach balls around.

In a sign of what’s being taught at the schools, the Montreal Gazette reported on a student yelling “fuck off” as their bus passed by the Palestine counter demonstration. An hour later, at a cafe a few blocks away, a large group of 16- and 17-year-olds sat down next to me with Israeli flags draped over their shoulders. When I asked how they felt about the 15,000 Palestinian children killed one joked about liking to eat 15,000 of the ice creams he was consuming.

As the kids grow older, the indoctrination becomes more intense and sophisticated. At Toronto’s TanenbaumCHAT all grade 12s were recently given a copy of the Special Envoy for Combating Antisemitism and the Delegitimization of Israel Noa Tishby’s book Israel: A Simple Guide to the Most Misunderstood Country on Earth. They also entice students to join the IDF. Former Israeli soldiers visit and school alumni sometimes speak to the teenagers from their IDF bases. Hebrew Academy, TanenbaumCHAT and others also celebrate those who join the Israeli military.

Is it surprising that kids who have endured this indoctrination feel threatened by criticism of Israel? For many, university may be their first sustained interaction with anti-Zionism (or even non-Jews).

One certainly can have sympathy for young people who have been brought up in a fantasyland in which Israel is the “only democracy in the Middle East” and a place where settlers made an empty land “bloom”. They’ve been told over and over the IDF is “most moral army in the world” and “there’s no such thing as Palestinians”. We should pity those who have been sheltered from the real world in which billions around the world perceive Israel as a settler colonial state engaged in an ongoing genocide against millions of displaced people.

Something must be done to help them. What can we do to prevent the shock of entering the real world when they attend university? Require changes in the curriculum? Demand historical honesty?

Parliament should investigate what can be done to save these students from feeling frightened by social justice activists opposing genocide.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Yves Engler.

It’s a stock phrase frequently used by Chinese officials and state media to criticize speech or actions by outsiders that Beijing disapproves of. 

But now it could be turned against the Chinese people themselves.

Under a proposed amendment to the Public Security Administration Law, wearing the wrong T-shirt or complaining about China online could lead to a fine of up to 5,000 yuan (US$680) or 15 days in jail.

The law doesn't specify what kind of acts might do such a thing, but does warn that "denying the deeds" of revolutionary heroes and martyrs or defacing their public memorials would count. 

China already has in place laws banning insults to revolutionary heroes and martyrs, as well as to the national anthem, its soldiers and police force.

"The wearing in public places ... of clothing and symbols that damage the spirit of the Chinese nation, or that hurt the feelings of the Chinese people," could land perpetrators with up to 10 days in detention and fines of up to 5,000 yuan, according to draft amendments currently open for public consultation and viewable on the website of the National People’s Congress.

"Items or remarks that contain sentiments about the Chinese nation," will also be banned, as will "producing, disseminating or publicizing products that are detrimental to the spirit of the Chinese nation or harmful to it."

‘Can we criticize football?’

Online comments took aim at the lack of specifics in the draft, wondering if "watching anime," "riding a roller-coaster," or "wearing a suit and tie" would count as violations of the law.

"Can we still criticize Chinese football in future?" one wanted to know. “So Chinese people should just all wear Mao suits now,” said another.

"If [someone] wearing clothes hurts your feelings, then you're just too fragile," commented another, while one social media user quipped: "Take one bit of KFC and I'll report you!"

Others worried that praising any other country could amount to hurting the feelings of the Chinese people, or nation.

"This will probably be used to label people traitors or rebels," said one comment, although some pro-government comments said the law could help fight "infiltration," a current preoccupation of the ruling Chinese Communist Party.

Touchy topics

Taiwan-based Chinese dissident Gong Yujian said the amendments tie in with the Chinese government's reaction to the release of wastewater from Japan's damaged Fukushima nuclear power station, and that actions linked to three places – Japan, the United States and Taiwan – are the most likely to trigger accusations under the law, if passed.

For example, in 2022 sports brand Li-Ning apologized after some of its fashion designs were likened to Japanese military uniforms.

"When it comes to who hurts the feelings of the Chinese people most, Japan is in top place, the United States is second, and Taiwan is in third place," Gong said. 

"These [proposed] rules continue to incite nationalistic sentiment in China, as well as placing strict controls on people's clothing, food, housing, and transportation methods," he said. 

"It proves once and for all that China under the totalitarian rule of Xi Jinping is heading pell-mell into another Cultural Revolution, the end result of which will be zero freedom for the Chinese people,” he said.

Room for ambiguity

The proposed amendments come in the wake of recent legislation targeting foreign entities and individuals in China that includes recent amendments to the Counterespionage Law, and a Foreign Relations Law.

Wu Se-Chih of Taiwan's Cross-Strait Policy Association said the rules seem to be part of the same political campaign by the government.

"They want to cut off any connection between what the Chinese Communist Party identifies as hostile foreign forces and the Chinese people," Wu said. "It is somewhat related to the anti-Japanese populist sentiment triggered by the recent discharge of nuclear wastewater by Japan."

He said there was plenty of room for ambiguity and doubt in the new rules, and the extent to which they would be implemented, if passed.

"Is Chinese national pride destroyed just by wearing clothing referencing Japanese, American or other foreign cultures, or by eating in Japanese restaurants, or by driving American, European or Japanese cars?" Wu said.

"If they replace liking foreign cultures with anti-Japanese or anti-U.S. sentiment, won't that harm [China's] foreign relations? And wouldn't that also hurt the feelings of the Chinese people?" he said.

Wu said he believes the insistence on whipping up nationalistic sentiment is linked to authoritarian and totalitarian rule, and also acts as a distraction from China's current economic woes.

Translated by Luisetta Mudie. Edited by Malcolm Foster.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Hsia Hsiao-hwa for RFA Mandarin.

It’s a stock phrase frequently used by Chinese officials and state media to criticize speech or actions by outsiders that Beijing disapproves of. 

But now it could be turned against the Chinese people themselves.

Under a proposed amendment to the Public Security Administration Law, wearing the wrong T-shirt or complaining about China online could lead to a fine of up to 5,000 yuan (US$680) or 15 days in jail.

The law doesn't specify what kind of acts might do such a thing, but does warn that "denying the deeds" of revolutionary heroes and martyrs or defacing their public memorials would count. 

China already has in place laws banning insults to revolutionary heroes and martyrs, as well as to the national anthem, its soldiers and police force.

"The wearing in public places ... of clothing and symbols that damage the spirit of the Chinese nation, or that hurt the feelings of the Chinese people," could land perpetrators with up to 10 days in detention and fines of up to 5,000 yuan, according to draft amendments currently open for public consultation and viewable on the website of the National People’s Congress.

"Items or remarks that contain sentiments about the Chinese nation," will also be banned, as will "producing, disseminating or publicizing products that are detrimental to the spirit of the Chinese nation or harmful to it."

‘Can we criticize football?’

Online comments took aim at the lack of specifics in the draft, wondering if "watching anime," "riding a roller-coaster," or "wearing a suit and tie" would count as violations of the law.

"Can we still criticize Chinese football in future?" one wanted to know. “So Chinese people should just all wear Mao suits now,” said another.

"If [someone] wearing clothes hurts your feelings, then you're just too fragile," commented another, while one social media user quipped: "Take one bit of KFC and I'll report you!"

Others worried that praising any other country could amount to hurting the feelings of the Chinese people, or nation.

"This will probably be used to label people traitors or rebels," said one comment, although some pro-government comments said the law could help fight "infiltration," a current preoccupation of the ruling Chinese Communist Party.

Touchy topics

Taiwan-based Chinese dissident Gong Yujian said the amendments tie in with the Chinese government's reaction to the release of wastewater from Japan's damaged Fukushima nuclear power station, and that actions linked to three places – Japan, the United States and Taiwan – are the most likely to trigger accusations under the law, if passed.

For example, in 2022 sports brand Li-Ning apologized after some of its fashion designs were likened to Japanese military uniforms.

"When it comes to who hurts the feelings of the Chinese people most, Japan is in top place, the United States is second, and Taiwan is in third place," Gong said. 

"These [proposed] rules continue to incite nationalistic sentiment in China, as well as placing strict controls on people's clothing, food, housing, and transportation methods," he said. 

"It proves once and for all that China under the totalitarian rule of Xi Jinping is heading pell-mell into another Cultural Revolution, the end result of which will be zero freedom for the Chinese people,” he said.

Room for ambiguity

The proposed amendments come in the wake of recent legislation targeting foreign entities and individuals in China that includes recent amendments to the Counterespionage Law, and a Foreign Relations Law.

Wu Se-Chih of Taiwan's Cross-Strait Policy Association said the rules seem to be part of the same political campaign by the government.

"They want to cut off any connection between what the Chinese Communist Party identifies as hostile foreign forces and the Chinese people," Wu said. "It is somewhat related to the anti-Japanese populist sentiment triggered by the recent discharge of nuclear wastewater by Japan."

He said there was plenty of room for ambiguity and doubt in the new rules, and the extent to which they would be implemented, if passed.

"Is Chinese national pride destroyed just by wearing clothing referencing Japanese, American or other foreign cultures, or by eating in Japanese restaurants, or by driving American, European or Japanese cars?" Wu said.

"If they replace liking foreign cultures with anti-Japanese or anti-U.S. sentiment, won't that harm [China's] foreign relations? And wouldn't that also hurt the feelings of the Chinese people?" he said.

Wu said he believes the insistence on whipping up nationalistic sentiment is linked to authoritarian and totalitarian rule, and also acts as a distraction from China's current economic woes.

Translated by Luisetta Mudie. Edited by Malcolm Foster.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Hsia Hsiao-hwa for RFA Mandarin.

Namewee had earlier announced his 16-city "Big Bird" world tour would kick off in Taipei in April, and 15 of those bookings have now been confirmed – with the exception of Hong Kong.

"I wasn't approved for Hong Kong," he told Radio Free Asia on Wednesday. "I don't know why -- it may be due to [political] pressure, because I have had gigs there before, and this time I'm suddenly not allowed."

"It's a bit unfair, but mostly to the people of Hong Kong," he said, pointing out that the ruling Chinese Communist Party had promised life in Hong Kong would remain unchanged for 50 years following the former British colony's 1997 handover to Chinese rule.

"It's not been 50 years yet, so why are there some concerts that aren't allowed?"

Namewee, the stage name for Huang Mingzhi, said the democratic island of Taiwan, which China has vowed to bring under its control, by force if necessary, was the easiest stop on his tour to book by far.

"Taipei was the freest of the stops on my tour to apply for, and not too much trouble," Namewee said. "Some other places even requested my song lyrics in advance for review of all performed content in advance, but there was nothing like that in Taiwan."

Namewee has been banned from China after he recorded a pop duet in October 2021 with Australia's Kimberly Chen titled "Fragile," which took aim at the country's army of nationalistic "Little Pink" commentators and trolls.

In the official video for "Fragile," which had garnered around 67 million views on YouTube by Wednesday, he and Chen sing repeated apologies to a dancing panda, who lives in a hobbit-style house and waves a flag bearing the online insult "NMSL," frequently used by Little Pinks to wish death on the mothers of those they believe have insulted China or hurt the feelings of its people.

China frequently demands apologies from companies and celebrities if they use sensitive words not in line with Communist Party propaganda, including the idea that Taiwan is a sovereign country that has no interest in being invaded or ruled by its larger neighbor.

‘Seditious books’

The rapper's Hong Kong ban came as national security police arrested two people on Monday for "possession of seditious books."

Two men aged 38 and 50 were arrested on Monday and are being held for questioning, government broadcaster Radio Television Hong Kong reported.

"Books seized in the operation are suspected of inciting hatred or contempt of the central and [Hong Kong] governments and the judiciary," the report quoted officers as saying.

The Times newspaper said the pair were found in possession of copies of books from children's series Sheep Village, whose authors were jailed for 19 months apiece under a colonial-era law for conspiracy to print, publish, distribute, display and/or reproduce seditious publications in September 2022 that had been mailed to Hong Kong from the U.K.

Lorie Lai, Melody Yeung, Sidney Ng, Samuel Chan and Fong Tsz-ho – all in their 20s – were members of the General Union of Hong Kong Speech Therapists, which has since disbanded alongside other civil society groups facing investigation by national security police.

Their children's picture book series depicts sheep trying to defend their village from wolves, a storyline that was deemed to glorify the 2019 protests and "incite hatred" against the authorities.

Resurrected law

In the sweeping colonial-era legislation under which the charges were brought, sedition is defined as any words that generate "hatred, contempt or dissatisfaction" with the government, or "encourage disaffection."

The law was passed under British rule in 1938, and is widely regarded as illiberal and anti-free speech. However, by the turn of the century, it had lain dormant on the statute books for decades, until being resurrected for use against opposition politicians, activists, and participants in the 2019 protest movement.

Eric Lai, visiting researcher at the Dickson Poon School of Law of King's College London, said an increasing number of national security cases are now relying on tip-offs to a national security reporting hotline, which received hundreds of thousands of reports last year alone.

"The government is willing to rely on the national security reporting hotline to enforce this law, as well as on the police," Lai said. "Police said they had received more than 400,000 national security reports [last year]."

"Such an atmosphere will definitely make people in Hong Kong think twice about what publications they own," he said.

Current affairs commentator Gary Tsang said the denial of Namewee's application was definitely linked to the ongoing crackdown under the national security law imposed by Beijing in the wake of the 2019 protest movement.

"This sends a very clear signal that national security is now the top priority in all areas, since the national security law took effect," Tsang told Radio Free Asia. "There are now very tight controls in place from the Hong Kong government on publications, and on art and literary circles."

"If the government feels that your political stance and overall line are different from its own, you won't be given a platform," he said. 

‘Be cautious of you are a fragile pink’

Current affairs commentator Sang Pu said Namewee was given permission to perform in Macau, which has a similar national security law, but that Hong Kong was likely trying harder in the wake of the 2019 protest movement to show that it is toeing the Communist Party line.

"It's like a kind of global social credit system for artists," Sang said. "If you don't get enough points to pass the test, then they get rid of you."

"This makes it more likely that artists ... will express their loyalty to Xi Jinping, if they know what's good for them," he said.

The video for "Fragile" starts with a message: "Warning: Be cautious if you are a fragile pink.” The camera focuses on baskets of cotton, in a reference to Uyghur forced labor in the northwestern region of Xinjiang, and teddy bears resembling Winnie the Pooh, a satirical reference to President Xi Jinping that has now been banned from China's tightly controlled internet.

"You never want to listen to people, but just launch constant counterattacks," Namewee sings. "I'm not quite sure how I've offended you."

"You always think the world is your enemy."

"Sorry that I hurt your feelings," he sings with a Taiwanese singer amid the sound of breaking glass. "I hear the sound of fragile self-esteem breaking into 1,000 pieces."

Translated by Luisetta Mudie. Edited by Malcolm Foster.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Chen Zifei and Lee Yuk Yue for RFA Cantonese.

I either try to power through or pray.

So by powering through you keep writing even if everything’s coming out poorly, then edit it later?

Exactly. Most of the time if I just keep writing, even if it’s stressful and feels bad, because my feelings aren’t always trustworthy in relation to what’s happening on the page.

The Novelist is a full-length novel that takes place over the span of a few hours. How did you manage the time dilation, and why did you make the choice to do so?

I read Nicholson Baker and Thomas Bernhard, and their books took place over the course of a short period of time. I realized if I did that, I could go anywhere I wanted and include a bunch of different rants and so on. I think in terms of making it fun to read or making it readable, I realized that his thwarted desire to write was a good plot device to keep the momentum going. Like, he kept wanting to write and was unable to write and he kept getting distracted. So that’s always lingering in the background, sort of propelling the narrative forward. And in terms of the time dilation, I think I was trying to pay really close attention to what actually happened when I was using the computer and getting distracted. And so it made sense to get into the minutia of the various activities that take place in the morning.

I also think when I was focusing on the concrete actions and concrete sentences, even things like navigating the internet, scrolling and clicking and stuff like this, it helped. Because I thought since there’s not really that much of a plot, there would be a risk of it feeling stagnant or too abstract. A lot of the concrete actions and the active sentences help to still make the book feel…I keep using the word active, but active.

Speaking of the online distractions, your protagonist spends a good deal of time on social media. How would you define his relationship with it? How would you define your own?

I think for him, he has these ideas of himself as some kind of writer, or he oscillates between positioning himself, in his head at least, above the lit world or other writers. But then when he logs into social media and is actually confronted with other people in the form of tweets or Facebook posts or whatever, he shrinks into himself and either feels bad about himself or starts shitting on other people. And so I think it serves the role, especially since the whole book takes place where he’s basically just in front of the computer, of him being confronted with other people and having an uncomfortable experience with that.

I definitely get distracted by it, too. And I think part of the impetus for the novel was just me trying to find a way to make that feel productive, where it was almost like, okay, well, I’m not going to be able to overcome this compulsive clicking and scrolling because I’ve tried different ways and I can’t really do it. And so maybe instead I can try and incorporate that into the work itself so it’s at least sort of generative. But now that I’m not working on a novel that takes place mostly on the internet, it feels much more egregious and difficult, because I’m still just clicking all the time. Now it’s harder to justify.

It felt very real to the experience of just automatically opening an app and being like, wait, what?

That’s almost totally my experience. It was fun to try and watch myself and pay attention to what’s actually going on when I get sucked in. Because it really does feel like getting sucked in; it doesn’t feel like I’m choosing to do it.

What’s the most surprising thing you’ve learned from writing and/or being around other writers?

I think one of the most surprising things that I’ve learned from writing is how full of shit that I am a lot of the time. I think a lot of the impetus to write for me comes from a sort of reactionary place. The first thing I wrote in The Novelist was the rant against his friend, Eric. And at the time I really thought I was just sort of owning this person and self-righteously proving a point or something. And then when I went back to read it, I was like, oh, wow, this is really ugly and kind of frantic and pathetic almost. And it always feels surprising.

I know that I have blind spots and I know that there are dark crevices of my consciousness, but it’s always surprising to see it on the page and be like, Oh, wow. I was totally coping here, or like, Oh, wow. I was totally just indulging the kind of ugly impulse, which happens. It happened with the novel I’m working on now, too.

And then the most surprising thing I’ve learned about being around other writers is maybe that a lot of them don’t seem to actually write much and are more concerned with things like social dynamics or politics or other things other than writing.

I’ve always hated that.

When I was younger, I always bristled when people would describe themselves as writers. And that’s partly why the title, I think, is so tongue in cheek. It’s like, “I’m a novelist,” or like, “I’m working on my novel.” I’ve always felt like there was something kind of cringe about parading that around as some kind of identity or a way in which you unironically perceive yourself. Even though, of course, I am a writer and I did write a novel, so it’s not inaccurate. But I hate the social game of it. It’s always shocking when I hear other writers talk and they’re totally abreast of everything that’s going on in literature and what this person said in this interview, and can you believe this person got this much money for this? It always just sounds so pathetic.

The Novelist celebrates change and is critical of those who are unwilling to put in the work. In what ways can we change positively?

I think on the one hand it’s tempting to say things like, “We can become more loving. We can become more tolerant. We can become more generous,” or whatever. And that’s all true, but I think that the way change happens is through concrete decisions that are embodied in one’s own life. I think a lot of the time people have the temptation to try and change the world or change something in politics or something like that. And it’s very easy for emotions like envy or resentment or hatred to sneak in because you’re not holding yourself accountable and you’re not having to manifest these things in your own life. And for me, a lot of the positive change that has happened in my life or in people’s lives around me starts with adopting a sense of personal responsibility, where it’s like, it’s not other people’s job to change, it’s my job to change.

And I think that’s simultaneously empowering but also realistic because change spreads. Good change spreads out from the individual as opposed to this top-down imposition. And I think there’s momentum involved in that. It’s like, if I choose to accept responsibility for something and I want the world to be a more loving place, I take it upon myself to become more loving. Then that can spread out to my friends and my family and so on, in an authentic and dynamic, living way. It’s also an endless pursuit. I can always be working on something like that, because it’s not like I’m going to fully eradicate these things within myself.

But the moment I start pointing fingers and blaming others or absolving myself of responsibility, I can immediately start scapegoating other people or becoming hateful or envious or resentful. And I can use a kind of metanarrative to self-justify terrible interpersonal relations. And so I think for me, it starts with responsibility and then it snowballs from there. And you see these people that for decades just become increasingly sour and bitter, and they have all the “right opinions,” but they don’t actually help anyone. Change occurs gradually over time through concrete actions.

Your choice to include a character named Jordan Castro in the novel interested me, especially because the narrator never meets him. What do you think of their relationship, and does it remind you of any real life dynamics?

That character sort of emerged; I didn’t plan it. In some ways, the Jordan Castro character is just a model for the narrator. He’s someone who’s a successful novelist, whereas the narrator is not. He’s someone who has a life-affirming worldview, whereas the narrator’s sort of struggling back and forth between attempting to have one, but not really having one.

The Jordan Castro character is so far away from the narrator that he can use him as a model without all the personal baggage he has with his friends on social media. I’ve noticed for myself that when I’m learning something new, especially something that is foreign to my current understanding of the world, or even the current way that I perceive myself, I almost have to take on this perspective like I’m imitating it in order to really understand it.

The narrator finds himself imitating Jordan Castro’s language, even. I mean, it’s common to read something or listen to someone talk then find yourself imitating their speech patterns. A lot of the way we learn is acquisitive in this way where it’s like we’re not only learning what someone thinks but also almost adopting who they are in some sense. It’s imitative, you know? And so the book deals with imitation and I think that’s just another way in which positive change can occur, through the process of learning from another person.

And for me, there was definitely a period of time in 2016 to maybe 2018 where I was encountering these shitstorms on Twitter, or I would see a person’s name constantly associated with someone who you should hate or whatever, and I would engage directly with the people’s work. I started reading and watching stuff from other corners of culture that I was previously unfamiliar with. And so there was also that anxiety where it’s like, I know I’m not supposed to be liking this person’s thing, but also finding myself attracted to it and seeing that some of it made a lot of sense.

There’s something frantic and false about the way people in online crowds try to enforce a kind of brutally incurious attitude toward people they perceive as their ideological enemies. I’ve always been interested in thinking things through and reading widely and coming to my own conclusions. It occurred to me a long time ago that when I was a kid, I was really, really involved in radical left-wing politics, but I knew absolutely nothing of what other people thought. So I was like, I’ll just spend some time reading this stuff. And come to find out, they’re not these boogeyman monsters! And I think that process, which is really the process of actually learning, is important.

Your novel made many salient points on cancel culture. What’s your take?

My take is that it’s bad. On the one hand you hear people say it doesn’t exist, but then those same people will say it’s good. I care a lot about literature, art, free expression, and the ability of art to exist in this space that isn’t clean or clear. I think ideology often, whether it’s right-wing or left-wing, sort of wants to map the world in this really clean, binary, easily understandable way, as if graphed.

My favorite art honors the complexity and the beauty, but also the darkness, of human experience, as cringe as that sounds. And I think this sick attempt by ideologues to censor art creates a culture of uniformity, and it also assumes art can be boiled down into bullet points. They read with a red pen and say, “Well, does this check off these boxes?” I’m not interested in that at all.

But I would never use the term “cancel culture.” There’s the normy conservative pundit way of talking about it where they’re just like, “Cancel culture’s out of control.” And I don’t exactly feel that way either.

If you get stuck on that, you can just become an evil twin of your enemy, where you just complain, feel resentful, and so on. I’ve seen so many people be like, “As a white man, you can’t get published.” And it’s like, I’ve seen rejection letters from major houses to friends of mine, who’ve won awards and who have been published in major presses that say things like, “We don’t need another book by a white man right now.” I’ve literally seen that. And I’ve heard people talk like that behind closed doors, too. So I know it’s real. But instead of complaining or becoming resentful, I wrote the best novel I could and hoped it’d work out. And it is working out, so maybe I defeated cancel culture.

What advice would you give to writers who are just starting out?

Read a lot. Keep writing. A lot of people only write for a little while and then quit, but just keep doing it. Find a few writers that you really, really like and figure out why you like them. Look at their sentences, look at what they’re doing, and imitate them.

When I was younger, I liked Bret Easton Ellis a lot, and I remember watching an interview with him where he talked about how he basically just copied Joan Didion. He was like, “You only need one or two writers that you really, really like in order to become a writer.” And then when I read Joan Didion, especially Play It as It Lays, I was like, oh my god, Bret Easton Ellis totally took this from Joan Didion! I’ve had that experience so many times where I’ve read someone then read who they’re influenced by and it makes so much sense. It’s a great way to learn.

I was at an event with this writer, Sam Riviere. He’s an academic who studies imitation. He was talking about the common advice in workshops of: find your voice. He said, “I don’t even know what that would mean.” I don’t either.

This content originally appeared on The Creative Independent and was authored by Shy Watson.