What If Reinvention Is A Small Death

I hit a milestone with the show, and it pushed me to talk about something I don’t think we name clearly enough: giving up. Not the lazy kind. I mean the quiet moment where you stop trying to keep a version of yourself alive because it’s what you think you’re “supposed” to be. That kind of surrender can feel like failure, but it can also be the beginning of becoming real. 

To explore it, I use Poppy as a case study in identity, reinvention, and creative survival. From the early, eerie stillness of her pastel persona to the heavier, darker turn that shocked some listeners, her work makes alienation visible. We dig into psychoanalysis and creativity, including Freud’s idea of the death drive (the pull toward silence and relief from endless performance), sublimation (turning tension into art), and ambivalence (holding love and destruction in the same hands). If you’ve ever felt exhausted by performing your life, this connects the dots in a way that’s both practical and deeply human. 

We also talk about masks, the mirror stage, and why the fantasy of a fixed identity can trap us. Every artistic reinvention is a small death, and the cost rises each time, but that risk is also what makes art feel alive. I share why Poppy’s contradictions help me keep going, and I ask what “giving up” might be asking you to release. 

If you’re struggling or feeling depressed, please reach out for support and use 988 in the US. If this resonated, subscribe, share the episode with a friend, and leave a review so more people can find the show. What part of yourself are you ready to outgrow?

Transcript

Welcome And A Listener Milestone

SPEAKER_01 1:50

Hello, everyone. Welcome back to Heal At Lao Sai. I really hope you guys have been taking care of yourselves and each other out there. It is a beautiful May day here in Ohio. It's a Thursday. We're still in the little swing season of Ohio. You know, she likes to give us rain, then sun, then cold, you know, all the above. She'd be doing what she be doing. Anyway, I want to talk to you guys really quick about a milestone that I hit with the show. I actually have a hundred regular listeners, which is humbling. And I think you guys, whoever is out there listening to me, I really appreciate it. When I started this show, I really wanted to help others, but I wanted it to deal with music because ultimately I do love that, right? And obviously you do too. With that said, today's episode, I'm gonna make it a little bit special, a little bit personal because of that.

Defining The Real Meaning Of Giving Up

SPEAKER_01 2:53

So let's talk about giving up. And my whole life, you know, I was always told that Brown fella Oreo couldn't do certain things. Not by white people per se. It was more, you know, all the black people that were around me. They told me that I couldn't do the things that I wanted to do because I would be always ostracized because of that. Now, that's not to say that it hasn't happened because it has. And you know, it helps you build tough skin when that does happen. But with that said, with this project, I I struggled with it a little bit because of that. I didn't know how the world will react to that or anyone else for that matter. I sat on it for about a good two months and dwelling on this because I am a living, you know, Oreo. And I was afraid. It was just me put plain and simple. I was afraid. But I'm not anymore. So with that said, today's episode will be about the cost of giving up and what does it mean to give up? Not the lazy kind, not resignation, but deep private surrender when you let go of the version of yourself that was supposed to survive. And when I was trying to think of an artist a few weeks ago about who has built and erased themselves, let's face it, we all do this as we grow as a person. We kill versions of ourselves, we destroy them, or we think we do, right? But we build, we erase, we build and erase to try to find the things that work for us. And there's a lot of artists that have done this, don't get me wrong. But there's one artist that she kind of inspired me to continue to keep doing this. And as I was learning about her, she's also built and erased and killed herself a lot of times. More identities than most people dare to dream of. And that artist is Poppy. Her world is equal parts glossy nightmare and spiritual inquiry. And somewhere between those extremes, she reveals something raw. The psychoanalytic truth that creation, creation, and destruction are twins. And they really are. Two sides of the same coin. But today we explore the cost of giving up. Emotionally, creativity, creativity, create I can't get it out. Creativity. Creatively. There we go. Couldn't get

The Death Drive And Performance Exhaustion

SPEAKER_01 6:12

it out. Segment one. In the psychoanalysts, giving up isn't always a failure. Sometimes it's an act, and I really love this term when I was researching this episode. It's called the death drive. Sigmund Freud's name for the strange human pull towards stillness, silence, or disillusion. Poppy's early persona, monotone voice, doll light presence, was all about stillness. Emotion drained away until it became fascinating. Her early videos didn't just parody fame or YouTube culture, they made alienation visible, like performance art. You know, it's kind of like a disassociated performance art piece, if you ever watch her early videos. Keep in mind all the videos are really well directed, by the way. But every hello in these videos, or all the words were like hollow, looping or mechanical, a parody of digital intimacy. You can almost hear the deaf drive between the pastel colors, her yearning to stop moving and to stop being watched. And one of her earlier songs that I didn't really like, Time Is Up. I really like that one. But yeah, you can hear it in that. And but yeah, so the deaf drive isn't about wanting to die. Okay, let's get that right out of the way. It's about wanting peace from an endless demand to perform or to do things. Those early Poppy videos weren't aesthetic experiments, they were expressions of exhaustion at the culture of self-production. And maybe the first act of giving up was Poppy's decision to stop pretending that Persona was her, and that's when her music changed.

Destruction As Rebirth Through Sound

SPEAKER_01 8:04

Segment two will be destruction as rebirth. When Poppy shifted into her heavier, darker sound, some people called it shocking and very sudden. But some would say it's not sudden. It's a return of the repressed emotions that you hear in the other songs. All the anger, tension, chaos that her doll persona couldn't express, came roaring back as industrial guitars and distortion. And this guy liked it a lot, by the way. Um, that's the psyche-breaking containment, the shadow staging a concert. Poppy became confrontational, less actor, more confessor. And in that transformation, there is kind of catharsis, right? The Freudian sublimation turning unbearable tension into art. Sublimation is the creative cure for despair. It's literally your psyche saying, if I can't control this pain, maybe I can name it. So when you do listen to the later albums, the other songs, especially she's got a new album now, the rage, the irony, and the serenity buried under that distortion, you're not hearing contradiction. You're hearing someone converting inner chaos into a form. To give up the past self is painful, but to keep the illusion alive is worse. And I know a lot of people who actually love to keep up past self and to keep an illusion alive. And it's kind of wild, isn't it? But with that said, we are going to let you listen to the song, What's

Featured Song Break

SPEAKER_01 9:40

the Cost of Giving Up? And then I'll be back to talk catchy more. I really hope you watch the entire video because it's pretty cool. She's got a little tiny poppy strapped to her car while she's driving the car, and you know, it's done really well. But overall, I hope you like the song because I really enjoyed it. And again, it did inspire me to keep going. So, with that said, let's go to our third segment.

Masks Mirror Stage And Fragmented Selves

SPEAKER_01 11:20

Every persona we wear is a mask, protecting us from the unbearable truth that we are multiple, we are fragmented. Poppy just decided to show us the cracks of this, especially if you watch the video, you'll see it. In the Kanean psychoanalysts' psychoanalysis, the mirror stage is when a child first recognizes their reflection and mistakes it for wholeness. It's a beautiful delusion, right? Thinking the image is the self. Trust me, we all do it, especially as babies. Poppy's career, though, reads like an artist trying to smash that mirror over and over again. Every aesthetic, pastel android, priestess, rock siren, tender minimalist. It's a reflection she builds, but then she shatters. Not because she doesn't know who she is, but because she's showing us that there is no final I to find. We think of giving up as stopping. But in the real world, giving up the illusion of a fixed identity is how creation begins.

Alienation Ambivalence And Honest Art

SPEAKER_01 12:30

Next segment is which is four, is alienation is freedom. The thing about psychoanalysis and art is that both force us to face voids directly. And sometimes that voice stares back with neon lighting and a whole ass distortion pedal. And we should do that. You should do it for yourself. And if somebody's struggling, you should do it for them too. If they let you, or if they want you to. A reminder that sometimes the only way to stay human is to vanish for a while. And we all go through this. And if you ever feel that way, maybe you should disappear for a little while. Freud, though, on the other hand, would call this ambivalence. The push and pull between love and destruction, between creation and erasure. And the cost of giving up, then is the acceptance of that split. We don't get to be whole, but we do get to be fucking honest. Honesty is so amazing, by the way. The art of self-annihilation. And again, I've done as many times as I'm sure some of you have as well. And if you haven't, you will. It's a bitter pill to swallow, but certainly you most will killing versions of yourself. But one of the most interesting things about Poppy is how she uses contradiction as language. She doesn't resolve tension, she holds it. Pop melody against metal aggression, sweetness against menace. And I've said this to a lot of people I've met at shows that metal music has some of the softest lyrics, but the harshest delivery. But I digress. But it is also like Freud's concept of ambivalence. Love and hate directed at the same object. By giving up one side of herself, she doesn't lose the other. She integrates it, and giving up becomes the metamorphosis, the end result of that. Every artistic reinvention is a small death, a letting go of the ego's favorite disguise. And each time, the cost rises. The more you destroy, the less safe the next creation feels. But maybe that's what makes our art feel so alive. It's built on risk. The cost of giving up in her case is the courage to face the fear that there's nothing permanent under all the noise. So let's go to the next

What Listeners See In Poppy

SPEAKER_01 15:45

segment. Listener's reflection. As listeners, which is me and you, maybe that's why Poppy does intrigue me and others. Not because we understand her, but because she stages her own fragmentation so very clearly. And I do want to stress that a lot of bands do this. And it's not just her, but the music they create. It stages literally the fragmentation. She performs what we suppress the desire to disappear, to be reborn, to start again without explanation. I mean, I too dream of a better day where the chicken could cross the road without being asked why. But anyway, when we give up on a dream, a person, a perfectionist fantasy, we don't vanish. We just return to the material, the body, the sound, the real. Giving up is not failure, it's to collapse before a new truth can emerge. What psychoanalysts calls the work of mourning. And that's what Poppy's work is doing. And especially with this song. But let's talk about and finally the cost.

The Freedom Inside Letting Go

SPEAKER_01 17:19

So, what is the cost of giving up? It's losing the comforting fantasy that we're coherent, that we can always be what we were yesterday. But in that loss, there's immense freedom. Poppy keeps showing us that art can hold paradox, the android that feels, the saint that screams, the dissolution that bursts clarity. To give up is not to fade away, is to make room for something else to breathe. But also maybe the cost of giving up is the price of becoming real. I'd like to know what you guys think. But yeah, no, I hope you really enjoyed the episode. Again, I did get a little personal, but I felt like I needed to, and I really appreciate the support and the love that I get from you guys. I would definitely keep me doing this, and I would definitely try to make the show even

Closing Thoughts And Mental Health Resources

SPEAKER_01 18:19

bigger. And with that said, take care of each other, please love each other and stay safe out there. The world is wild right now. But it's also a beautiful place. Again, a paradox, right? So again, if you're feeling depressed and you need help, dial 988, Boys Town National Hotline. There's also a plethora of other resources out there if you are depressed, or reach out to us at the show. Again, thank you for listening. Be safe. Be well. Bye now.