THE AVOIDANT: HOW NORA MAE TURNED HEARTBREAK INTO HER BOLDEST WORK YET

WORDS RACHEL EDWARDS - PHOTOGRAPHY NESRIN DANAN - HMUA MARY KENDALL - STYLING JOURDAN KADOW - HANNAH HARRISON

When first listening to Nora Mae's latest track The Avoidant, set to be released at the end of June, the first thing that struck me was the playfulness in her voice. There's something refreshing about a heartbreak song that delivers lyrics like "you're fluent in the language of leaving things unsaid" without a hint of bitterness. Never mind 'the avoidant', I wanted to know how she held on to her sense of humour and composure after the end of a relationship like this.

Perhaps it helps when your grandmother is Eartha Kitt, the woman who famously laughed in the face of a reporter who dared to ask if she’d ever consider compromising for a man. During our zoom chat I couldn't help but think that Mae seemed to have inherited that same defiant spirit. A self proclaimed old soul, her sound resembles music pulled from the smoky backrooms of New York jazz bars and the dimly lit cafes of Paris. It makes sense that multiple tarot readers and spiritual healers have suggested she was a psychic in a past life.

The Avoidant is the first track of Mae's latest album Fin and captures the intensity of a push-pull relationship. It marks the end of one era and the beginning of another. When I ask what’s next, she laughs: "I'm so excited to never write about this again." Maybe that’s the secret - write about it until you can laugh about it. One thing is clear: while this chapter may be closing for Mae, she's really just getting started.

LISTEN TO NORA MAE

Rachel Edwards: Hey Nora, how are you?

Nora Mae: I'm good - so far so good! It's been gloomy in Los Angeles.

RE: We must have stolen the sun because we've had a heatwave!

NM: I was in London a month or two ago and it was a weird week where it was completely beautiful at the end of March.

RE: What were you doing in London?

NM: I was there to write. My publisher is based in London so I like to try and get out there a couple of times a year to work on more music. I work on a lot of my solo project in LA, but I have a lot of stuff that I've been working on for TV and movies. I love really cinematic music so that works well for me.

RE: Your music does sound theatrical! Growing up, were you a theatre kid?

NM: I was such a theatre kid. I did musical theatre a lot and then fell off a bit when I was a teen and rebelling against anything. I grew up right outside of New York City and my grandma worked in the city so I would go and see Broadway productions all the time. I actually loved the release of the Wicked film - the Broadway production is a very special one for me because it was one of the first ones that I ever saw and one of the first pieces of music that my grandma and I ever sang together. I thought that they did an incredible job with the film. I also loved how much it brought theatre and musical theatre into a mainstream lens.

RE: It's true, Wicked's got such a good storyline but a lot of people who aren't into theatre would have just written it off.

NM: I was already writing this while the film came out, but it definitely, even subconsciously, shaped the way that I started to then think about the album, I'm sure!

RE: (Laughs) 'Defying gravity' is just playing in the background of your dreams. I love your new track 'The Avoidant'. I think you're doing something that's quite different right now in the music industry. Is 'The Avoidant' about an avoidant person you dated or are you the avoidant?

NM: That is a great question. It is about an avoidant person that I dated. The whole album is a breakup album, but it tells the whole story. It's broken up into acts. Act one is focused on when we're in it and there's hope and excitement and potential. There are cracks showing, but we're still in the fantasy. And then act two is just completely devastating. But 'The Avoidant' sits right at the end of act one where things start peeking through and it becomes undeniable that dating somebody with those tendencies can contort the way in which you show up in relationships to try and prioritise somebody else's needs over your own.

RE: It can happen so easily and so subtly. Only with hindsight can you realise you neglected your own needs.

NM: And it's not necessarily manipulative or malicious. It's such a human dynamic for people to do that, to caretake and for one person to become the receiver and one person to become the giver. It's so natural. It's not supposed to be a diss track. It's very much about that realisation of '...oh, yeah' when the rose coloured glasses come off.

RE: Were you writing it while you were in the situation or was it afterwards with a bit of reflection?

NM: It was with a bit of reflection, but I think what happens a lot of times in relationships with avoidants is that they have a push pull dynamic, maybe they're on and off for a long time. I know mine certainly was. The relationship itself wasn't completely over when the song was written.

RE: I bet it helped you to process it. It's an energetic release, isn't it?

NM: Oh, absolutely, the whole album! Not all of it was written chronologically but I was writing throughout. There's a new wall that falls down with each song or revelation or realisation, and it's a next step in the process of the healing. It is a total release, it's completely therapeutic and cathartic to write. My sister, who's a therapist, used to always say that she was jealous of creators because when they are processing pain they have a place to put it. Even my ex used to always say he admired how much I would turn my pain into purpose.

RE: It's interesting because listening to the song before even talking to you, I was thinking that whilst it is a heartbreak song, there's also a playfulness and confidence in it. It feels like you've taken your power back. How did you reach that point? What advice would you give to someone who's also going through something similar?

NM: I was just having this conversation with a friend two days ago, because they are just starting to talk to somebody with potential, with interest. And there were already kind of early signs of some avoidance. I was like "let me tell you everything..."

RE: (Laughs) Let me play you this album real quick...

NM: Let's quickly walk you through what you're going to experience, because I know it very well! I think in general my biggest piece of advice is to only ever hold responsibility for your own source of validation and love and self-worth. You should always be the partner that you're looking for before searching for the partner that will fill that hole or that void. I didn't realise that - in that relationship I was probably subconsciously searching for him to validate pieces of me, my childhood trauma. I was subconsciously putting so much pressure on him to make me feel whole. And if you don't feel whole in a relationship, you're going to continue to use somebody else as a crutch, which means that the relationship and the other person just has way more control over you and how you treat yourself than they ever should.

RE: And then it's very easy to lose yourself, isn't it? I think that's what's so devastating when it ends because you don't just lose the person, you realise that you've lost yourself as well.

NM: Completely. So walking into a relationship already feeling like a whole person, knowing if I lose this relationship it would be okay because I'm confident enough to know that I love me and I love what I've created. Somebody else should just add to it and be a partner, but they shouldn't complete me. We shouldn't be two halves. We're great partners but not because I require them to do something for me or vice versa. Falling in love with potential is equally as big of a fantasy as falling in love with somebody who does not feel the same way about you at all. They're both fantasy. I had to learn that, and it's really hard to walk away. The album carries the realisation that love is not always enough, even when there are moments that feel like it could be.

RE: You're very wise. You could also be a therapist!

NM: Thank you. My first two years of college I was studying to be a psychology major. I wanted to be a therapist as backup plan because although my mom was like "you can be whatever you want" and my grandmother was an actress and singer, my dad is a lawyer from Long Island who was telling me to follow a lucrative career. My degree was a bit of a compromise. If I wasn't making music I would help people through therapy and spirituality.

RE: I was laughing at my friend for using chat GPT as a therapist and then I found myself doing it. I fell into the trap!

NM: It kind of works. I love my therapist, but anytime that I don't have an appointment scheduled and I need just a little quick talk me down Chat GPT is there.

RE: And then it's like, "you've reached your daily limit". I'm like, "wait, you're not a friend that I can just keep talking to?!". I forget!

NM: I know, A.I is really getting too smart. At least as a musician I do feel a little safe because some of the A.I songs I've heard are really bad. It is scarily smart though.

RE: I feel like your music does have that kind of like dimly lit bar in New York feel, very old school. Would you say you're an old soul?

NM: One hundred percent. It was the first thing my mom said to my dad when I was born. She looked at me and she was like "she has been here before. I know it". I've been told that many times by many people. I'm a very spiritual person too so I completely believe in all of this and I've gone to a bunch of readers, psychics and tarot readers and almost every single time they've said "you do what I do in a past life".

I think in terms of music, sonically I am very much drawn to 50s and 60s Europe and New York. The dimly lit like jazz bar, whiskey lounge where it's smoky and kind of underground. Even in LA, I am constantly seeking out places that feel like Europe because that's where I feel the most at home. I would love to do past life regression. I read this book that I would highly recommend called 'Many Lives, Many Masters' by Dr. Brian Weiss. It completely changed my view on mortality and the people in our lives and karmic circles and past life links. It's really fascinating.

RE: Okay, I'm going to look this up because I love this kind of thing as well. What was it like growing up with Eartha Kitt as your grandma?

NM: It was so fun. As a kid, you don't really know fame, I just was like "that's my grandma". I was already such a creative kid and I loved music, I loved theatre, I loved movies. The fact that I got to travel with her and watch her perform and be on Broadway was amazing. She also knew that that I loved music and entertainment. I got to see a lot of things growing up that unlocked this belief that it was possible and I think when you grow up seeing the access to it, it just doesn't feel so far away. I think a lot of people grow up and look at the film or entertainment industry as this kind of golden egg that's hard to access. It still has been hard to access, even with that, but I just knew that it was possible. It instilled this belief.

RE: What age were you when you started to sing?

NM: Oh my God. I think my first theatre camp I was five years old. I don't really remember when, because I kind of always did it, but I know that I believe I started writing songs around 10 or 11. I was taking guitar lessons around that time too and that's when I became serious about wanting to do music in my own capacity, in my own way.

RE: You were just born like right into like this path, which is amazing. You just always knew! What was the best piece of advice that your grandma gave you?

NM: It's not so much something she told me but just the way she conducted herself. She led a lot by example, and it was very much in her values that she was never to preach at people. I think the one thing that she taught me, probably unintentionally, is always coming back to connection to self and connection to nature as a grounding force. Her life was one of the craziest lives I've ever heard of or witnessed and she showed me that we are so much stronger than we give ourselves credit for. The things that we can endure as human beings, as spiritual beings, are limitless. Never give up because you can be dealt a really crazy, scary hand and still make something beautiful out of it. It is completely up to mindset and finding the ways that you are able to ground yourself. Presence, mindset, kindness and never giving up: those are the things that really she taught me.

RE: I read a quote from her that said 'my recipe for life is not being afraid of myself, afraid of what I think or of my opinions' which I thought was so interesting because people wouldn't necessarily say they're afraid of themselves or they're afraid of what they think, but the way they live shows that they are perhaps hiding from their true selves.

NM: She really lived exactly in that way. She was a complete embodiment of that and she endured one of the most challenging lives I've ever seen. She grew up as an orphan in South Carolina, a mixed race girl with no parents and on a cotton plantation in South Carolina. Slavery had already been abolished, but she didn't have parents and so she wasn't accepted into any community. The fact that she was able to stay composed, elegant, kind and present was incredible to me because she had to teach herself how to do all of those things.

RE: There's something so pure and rare about that. So obviously, this album wraps up a huge chapter in your life, going through the relationship and the heartbreak. What do you think your next album is going to be about?

NM: (Laughs) Oh, I'm so excited to never write about this again. This is officially the last album and song that this relationship gets. But seriously, a lot of the stuff I love writing about is about self-discovery through relationships, so I'm sure it will still be about that, but I think it will just continue to evolve as I do and so I think it will become more self- assured and more confident.

The music is genre fluid, and I don't know if I'll write in another style like that or if I'll do stuff that feels super cinematic or more stripped back and a little more singer- songwriter style. Maybe I'll do something that's traditional jazz. I'm so excited to explore, but I do think I'll probably continue to want to talk about self-discovery through relationships and love. I think everybody loves to write about love.

RE: I know, and everyone loves to listen to love songs too. Do you find there's a place that you feel inspired to write about love? Do you have to go to a certain place or can you work from anywhere?

NM: A little bit of both. I can make it work from wherever when I have the inspiration, but the place that I feel the most inspired and end up writing is typically Paris.

I spend a lot of time there and my ex is French so I just naturally spent a lot of time there in the last five years. The art, the architecture, the culture, the people - everything about it feels like it breeds creativity and art. They're the inventors of cinema and fashion which are the two things that I draw a lot of inspiration from. It's easy to become complacent and comfortable when you're in your routines and in your space, so I do love to travel and I find that that in those moments I feel the most inspired and where some of the original ideas come from.

RE: That makes a lot of sense. And what are you most grateful for in life right now?

NM: Oh God, it's such a funny, double- edged sword. Everything that I've learned throughout this album is probably the thing that I'm also the most grateful for, even though it was painful. Healing isn't linear, but I think that what I'm feeling really grateful for is the place I'm at in my life, turning 30 this year, where I understand myself better than I ever have before. I think that it is making me a better friend, a better partner to whoever is the next partner is, a better artist and just human being in life. I'm feeling really grateful for the experience because even though it was heartbreaking, I obviously needed it and I'm glad I have learned that lesson so young. I think I feel the most grateful for how I feel about myself right now than I ever have before.

I also have to mention my community - it takes a village. We can't do anything alone, really. Every time I look around and I look at my friends and my family and my collaborators, I just feel so fortunate to have built what I've built at this point because I feel endlessly uplifted and supported and inspired and challenged and expanded by them. And I can't forget my dog...

RE: Lastly, what is your favourite F-word?

NM: Fearless.