On tour, people know that if they ever ask me what I want to eat, I will always say Asian food. I’m becoming a stereotype, but it’s what I want to eat. I want to eat rice.
Sometimes when I perform, and it’s obvious the audience is just there to party, or if I feel a wall between me and the audience, I get existential about it.
What I have a problem with is when it becomes another form of tokenization, of shrinking me into a symbol instead of a multilayered, female Asian artist.
It’s nice to know there’s a big world with many perspectives. I tend to get so stuck in my own small world easily, and going out into the world reminds me that I’m not the center of the world – in a good way.
Pop artists work really hard, and they might not work for the same things that indie artists do, but they’re still musicians, and they’re still making art.
I wanted to take up guitar because playing piano is a little harder. Carrying a keyboard around is harder, and finding a real piano is much harder, and I wanted to play live more, so I figured a guitar would be easier to carry around.
When someone is a musician – trying to make a living off being a public figure – it’s really easy for people to see me as a face on a screen that doesn’t have a personal life.
