People talk about how divided the world is, and I’m not sure I fully buy it. At the end of the day, most people are just living side by side, getting on, being nice to their neighbours. That’s the majority.
Then there’s a minority, a controlling minority, who twist and turn what people say and what’s said about people. I don’t know if having a mixed background gives me more perspective on that or not, because I think everyone has their own bias when it comes down to it. You see things through your own bubble, your own circle. What I do think is true is that right now everyone feels like they don’t want to add more fuel to the fire, so people are more careful and more hesitant about what they say. Which I find a bit strange.
That carefulness goes both ways, though. I think there’s more of an expectation now for people to speak out on things, and some people are pushing back against that. Someone might say I don’t want to engage with this, and then you think, well, why not? Shouldn’t that be the case in every industry, every workplace? But it’s not that simple for everybody. For some people, work is their whole environment; it’s their life, you can’t just leave it at the door at the end of the day.
At the moment I find I spend a lot more time reading things online than actually posting anything or speaking up myself. Sometimes social media just feels like adding fuel to the fire, and I wonder whether we’re really gaining anything from it. But then you come across something interesting, something new, and you absorb it anyway, so I don’t really know if it’s a good or a bad place. The information is out there, people are talking, people are discussing real things, and that’s good. But I don’t love social media. I’m aware that the people who already agree with something will see it and agree, and the people who don’t will just end up more polarised by it.
Why should you have to be nuanced about something you really shouldn’t need to be nuanced about?
It’s hard to actually be nuanced about anything online, and maybe you shouldn’t have to be in the first place. Why should you have to be nuanced about something you really shouldn’t need to be nuanced about? Maybe there needs to be another place to talk about these things. Or maybe there’s no place for it at all, and the answer is just to stop and think for a bit instead. Lately I haven’t really been promoting or campaigning for anything, because I haven’t really been online, and it’s been nice.
I think a lot of it comes down to how people educate themselves. You can’t educate yourself solely on social media, and you can’t educate yourself solely on the news either, or from one book. It’s a weird time to be living in.
It’s a bit the same with music. I think people are coming back to listening properly, to whole records again, but it’s also about habit. Even for me, something will come on and I’ll think, who’s controlling this algorithm? Not me. So it comes down to building better habits, being more conscious about what you let in. There’s so much music out there now that people find it hard to discover what they’d actually love, just because of how much there is. I don’t think that’s a bad thing in itself. I think it’s more that everything is booming all at once, and people don’t quite know what to do with that, so they put a playlist on and go for a walk instead.
You have to build your own stability
That’s the world I work in, of course. Being an artist is the only life I’ve really known, so I don’t know much outside of it. What I’ve realised as I’ve got older is that there isn’t much stability in it, and that’s what makes it fragile. You have to build your own stability, your own sense of purpose, just to keep going. Not everyone is going to be able to live off touring forever, so it comes down to the choices you make. If I chose to have a family, for instance, I don’t know how long I’d be able to support doing both, and that’s something I do think about.
Some of my friends are starting to have kids, so I know they’re thinking about these things too. I’ve noticed there’s often a delay, people saying I’m not ready yet, and then realising later, actually, that was a good time in life to start thinking about it. So maybe it’s better to think about it before you feel ready, rather than waiting until you do.
It’s not just my own life that feels that way, either. I had a thought the other day. I saw a bird, and then a plane took off, and my first reaction to the plane, right next to this lovely bird, was almost a kind of “eurgh.” But then I caught myself, because actually, I need the plane. I really need all of this. Everything in this world we’ve built. There’s so much we say is bad, so much we say we don’t want anymore, and yet I’m completely living in a time where I need all of it just to get by and live my life. It made me think about how fragile everything actually is, how we could lose any of it, or have to give it up, because of what we’re doing to the planet. That’s a sobering thing to think about. What would that actually look like, for any of us? I don’t really know.
I do think that when you have restrictions and limitations, you generally come up with better, stronger ideas. Maybe that’s the only way to look at any of it without it becoming too frightening.
This conversation took place on 11 June and has been edited and condensed for clarity and flow.
Nilüfer Yanya was part of this summer’s Meltdown, the world’s longest-running artist-curated music festival held at London’s Southbank Centre.
