Following the Flow of Art with Love, Builder of Worlds

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You can listen to Omítórera and support Love, Builder of Worlds' work on their blog.

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Transcript

Intro

Wren 0:13

You're listening to Magical Moments with Music. You'll get to hear how real people use music to express themselves, connect with others, find joy, and so much more. Thanks for tuning in to today's episode. I'm your host, Wren, and today we will be talking with Deb, otherwise known as Love Builder of Worlds.

Love 0:39

Hi!

About Love, Builder of Worlds

Wren 0:40

Love, Builder of Worlds is a multidisciplinary, anti-binary artist in residence at Olólùfẹ́ Collective, an artist collective with a focus on marginalized people. They use music, poetry, photography, and visual art to process their feelings, highlight the cruelty of social hierarchy, and imagine a more loving future. Their debut song, Scared for the Climate, has been shared in over 25 countries. Thank you so much for joining today, Love.

Love 1:13

Hi, thank you for having me. I'm so excited. This is a podcast for COVID-safe musicians, and it's just like so beautifully niche and just so perfectly suited to me. And I'm very excited to be here with you.

Wren 1:33

Thank you. I try and feature COVID-conscious artists as much as I can, but it's not a fully COVID-conscious podcast. However, in the future, when I am doing in-person interviews, I will be

Love 1:49

practicing COVID safety.

Wren 1:51

Yeah, exactly. So I'll be doing um requiring testing uh and depending on venue and/or requiring masks as well.

Love 2:01

Yeah.

Wren 2:02

Being COVID conscious is something that I really hope continues to come up throughout the podcast.

Love 2:10

It's a really cool podcast.

Wren 2:11

Thank you. All right, let's get started.

Love's Magical Moments with Music

Wren 2:15

Love, will you tell me about a magical moment with music that you've had?

Love 2:20

Um, I've had so many magical moments with music. It's very difficult to choose. Music is so spiritual to me. However, um last Saturday I had my listening party for Omítórera, and I shared a playlist that I had been working on, which um was full of lots of different um marginalized um gendered artists, like from around the world, uh from around the African diaspora. I had been working on that playlist for weeks, and I also shared a um short film about the inspiration behind Omítórera in that listening party. And I had the people that care about me show up, and it was very, very transformational for me. The listening party and hearing all of the different music from all different people and from different places, it really highlighted to me the beauty of diversity. It allowed me to completely insert myself with my peers and artists that I respect. And it I kind of felt like a respect for myself and um a validation for myself that I hadn't experienced um through my artistic career. And I just felt free and released, and I felt like if I never share my art again with the world, then it'd be okay because like I've done it to the best of my ability and I'm so happy. And like the listening party was like the height of my career so far. So it was a spiritual, magical, transformational experience. Great question.

Wren 4:22

Wow. I I mean you can't see me, but my my hands just immediately went to my heart because I just I felt that that from such a just like a beautiful deep heart space. And I can imagine how transformative that was. What how has that experienced, or excuse me, how has that impacted the work that you have done since or your creativity since

Love 4:52

for me um I was reminded that I'm allowed to play. And and playing is part of the art and it's essential to the art and it's so center, it's at the center of the art. And it reminded me that like my efforts and my work, it is worthwhile, despite the numbers, despite the people who showed up or who don't show up. Like there's healing to be found. And I'm lucky that it's not just me. Um, and it was a healing space, it was a type of freedom space that I get to share and I get to like serve other people with a message from my ancestors, and that that's what Omítórera is all about. And the more that I spend time with the song, the deeper I understand that the work and the art and my life, I want them to be closer and closer together. And I'm looking at my life and I'm making decisions about if water is enough for me, then what do I need? All of these material things. Do I need to stay in Europe? If water is enough for me, can I go back to the land that my family currently mostly reside on and learn Yorùbá more? Go deeper into West African culture and history and leave the shiny things of Europe behind. That's how it's it's impacted me, it's made me question my way of living and it's given me a challenge and it's challenged me to truly embody what it means that water is enough for me and Omítórera. I'm so grateful.

Wren 7:12

That's so beautiful, and I think it not only speaks to the power of music, but that power of music in combination with community.

Love 7:24

Yes, for sure. The the community aspect is also such a huge part of the song song because water is enough for us, it speaks to us as watery beings on a watery planet. And for me, I have been isolated from my wider family, from my kin, from you know, outer family, um, due to being in Europe, being born in London and now living in Dublin. And I really want to reconsider my relationship with community. And Omítórera has tasked me with the responsibility of trying to figure out what that looks like for me at least, but potentially for other people who are in a similar situation to me, who do feel isolated from um the region that their family's from and the um ethnic groups um from which you know their their family line is drawn

Behind the Song: Omítórera

Love 8:38

from.

Wren 8:41

So I'm curious if you can share a little bit more about your single Omítórera and how that came to be and how that is expanded further through community.

Love 8:56

I am a water baby through and through. Um I've been swimming for a very long time. Um, I love being in the water, it's so cleansing, it's healing. I'm a crier and I cry a lot. Um, I live by the water and I do um water rituals and I dance and sing by the water. Like I am um very, very um invested, interested in water and nature appreciation in general. Um, my landscape photography speaks to my interest in water. And so when it comes to Omítórera, the way that it was created was wanting to recreate that sensation of being carried by water, floating and being taken care of by water, but also like acknowledging the multiplicities of water, um, both the slow and the gentle streams and the rushing and crushing waves of water and the chaos and the fact that water is a habitat, it's a living habitat, it's the um it's a substance that nourishes us. So for me, that's how I wanted to insert all of that as much as I can. Take a feeling, take that feeling, that sensation of water, the flowy feeling, the sparkly feeling, the fact that this is this we may not see all of the inhabitants of bodies of waters, but many, many things are happening and interacting with each other. And that's what I try to inject into the song um on the 1st of January 2026. And it was a song offering to Osun and Ayoba Orisha, and the the creation of it may have been just me, um, but it wasn't just me, because my community includes my ancestors, my community includes that artistic creative spark that I believe we all have. And so even though it was just me pressing the dials or producing the music, composing the music, it's all a community effort because it required the people who have gone before me and their invention of the West African drum, their interactions and their play and their experimentation with music like Jùjú music, Fújì music, Afro beat, and then Afro beats, and after Afro beats, um Alté music, and the subgenres of Alté music like Afro sexy music and cruise music. And now for me, my interpretation is Omítórera is an iteration of all of those things. And if you wanted to label it, and I don't think we have to, it's um it's like an Afro trance. So perhaps under the category of Afro electro, Afroelectric music. That's how it's a community thing because all of us, all of our art is in communion with each other continuously.

Wren 12:27

Absolutely. And it's I'm I'm almost thinking of it as this just this vertical how do I describe this? Like this beautiful transition back through the years through our ancestors, and then the ways in which it's almost circular and that it keeps us from building and building in each generation. And I mean, all of the genres, the genres that you just listed are uniquely distinct, and there's still that same almost like the same from an outsider's perspective, like the same home base.

Love 13:19

Maybe even an undercurrent.

Wren 13:21

Oh yes, an undercurrent. Yes, yeah, that is so present among among it all.

Love 13:30

Yes, I I I do believe is there is a home base, there is a beginning, but the the beginning is also the same as the end. And as well as an artist, I'm grateful to be a time traveler. And so when you said almost maybe like the vertical thing, but also a circle, um, for me, time is flat and it's all happening at the same time, um, continuously, past, present, future, and there isn't a linearness to it. Um, and circle is definitely close. For me, it's a spiral. So we keep on spiraling, and it feels similar, but there's a little bit of a difference because we're either very wide, like the widest part of the spiral, or maybe we're at the narrow part of the spiral. But we're continuing and we have a semblance of the same shape, we have a semblance of our humanity, we have that semblance of whether I exist right now, today as you know, a person, or I existed 10,000 years ago. Um, or whenever my ancestors started doing their calendar, we need water, we need to protect water, we need nature, we need to care for the things and creatures and beings here that share the planet Earth with us. So that's where there's a repetition, that's where there is a um continuation that keeps on spiraling. We are sharing the same undercurrent, we're stepping on the same earth, and the vibrations are felt throughout history.

Wren 15:28

I love this visualization of this, and and I love you mentioning it almost as an aspect of time traveling while also time not being linear. I think I really, I really deeply relate to that, and I think about that so often when I am making music and I think about all the people that made similar music or even played the same music years ago and how we're right back, we're right back there in the spiral.

Love 16:09

For sure. It's a really um, it's it's it's such a it's such a gift for us as artists to have the works of people who have gone before us, and then for us to contribute and add in our perspective and thus widen the spec perspective um as well. And maybe and sometimes narrow the perspective, depending, and sometimes both, you know. Um it's a real gift to and then to be able to like serve your art and serve others through your art by sharing your perspective, widening your perspective, um, pointing to your inspiration, pointing to other art that you're in communication and community with.

Wren 17:04

That's beautiful.

Love's Musical Background

Wren 17:06

So you just recently put out a single and you are part of the Olólùfẹ́ collective. Where did your experience begin with music and with art? How did you come to where you are today?

Love 17:23

So I recently found out that my mom's side of the family are musicians and they're very musical people. My dad's side of the family, a lot of them are writers and lawyers. So I embody both. Um, and for me, my musical journey started with so much radio play in the car with my parents, radio being played at my after school club. Um, me starting trumpet. I I may have been like seven or eight years old, um, learning to play the trumpet as a child. And as I got older, I left the trumpet and I moved on to the clarinet, which I didn't particularly enjoy. I didn't like the tone or the number of holes in the clarinet, especially compared to the trumpet. Um, and then choir, both um in church and at school as well. So a lot of early introduction to music, and then later on, um, in my later teens, dance and theater. So a lot of music, a lot of um exploration and experimenting with ways that music can accompany theatre and the ways that I can move my body to um music. I spent a lot of time at Stratford East, um, which is in London, which is in East London. Um, and there was lots of free programs or relatively affordable programs for um young kids then during the summer holidays, during the school breaks, where we would learn music. That's that's the first place that I learned about jungle music. Um, and I was completely taken in by jungle, and the BPM of my song maybe points to that because it's my song is 165 beats per minute. Omítórera is 165 beats per minute because there's so much energy at that tempo, and I draw a lot from jungle. There's something so rebellious about making your music that fast.

Wren 19:58

Absolutely. And uh a side note, I I really feel the same about the clarinet. Um too many buttons. And I I begged my teacher to let me switch to trumpet, and there were too many trumpet players. And so, but the only option he said that I could he said I could switch to French horn. And and then I fell in love with music because French horn was the instrument for me. Um

Love 20:27

Does that only have three buttons?

Wren 20:30

It's it's four, but it's three buttons and then your thumb because there's a thumb trigger. Yeah. Um yeah. So you did uh I think in your you had mentioned in your survey you also did a little bit of guitar. And are you learning bass now?

Love 20:51

Oh, correct. Yes. So last year I was learning guitar more committed. Um, I went to music school over the summer and I was part of a band while I was there. Um, my sister gifted me an electric guitar. Um, and so I really worked with it. I was going to online lessons, but I I found guitar very, very, very challenging. Um, so me and my sister swapped and they had a bass. I have an electric guitar. Said, let's let's see if the other thing works. And I really have enjoyed the bass. I have not been necessarily practicing um the bass, but I'm super excited to be when the season of the bass comes to me, I know that I'm gonna have a lot of fun because I am a dancer and I see how much dancing is involved in playing the bass. Right now, I'm taking my voice as the instrument of choice, and I'm being very serious about. Vocal warm-ups and practicing and elocution and trying to do different runs and challenging my voice in a way that I haven't before. Even with Omítórera, I took a very different approach. I was very breathy and whispery. And that's not how I've been taught to ever pair my voice with music. I've been always taught breathe from your diaphragm and enunciate and project and hold a note. So talk sing. And Omítórera, I allowed myself to forget all the rules and all the things that I have been taught. And I wanted the whisper of water. I think water whispers to us. And I wanted to recreate that.

Wren 22:58

I love how you said that you're excited for the the season of bass when it happens, and that right now is the season of voice. And I think I imagine that that has really allowed you to dive into being even deeper and really play with it in a way that wouldn't have been accessible if you were, I guess, spreading yourself thin among different art.

Love 23:26

That that is the

Following the Flow of Creativity

Love 23:27

thing. When as a multidisciplinary artist, as a transdisciplinary artist, it's very important for me to go with the flow. And I don't mean to make so many like water analogies. It's just it's just in me. But it's very, very important for me to go with the flow and kind of forcing it with guitar because I would with guitar, I had an end goal in mind, and that was to make sweet, sweet guitar RB music. I don't know if that's in my destiny. I don't know if I have to be the person to produce that, but that's what I wanted. And so I sought it out. But I did not go with the flow with guitar. I had to remind myself that I should be practicing 20 minutes a day. I should be doing this and I should be doing that. When it comes to singing, now I'm in my vocal song singing era. No one has to remind me. I don't have to remind myself to just sing and to practice and to strengthen my voice. And so the bass era, when I'm ready, I know that it's gonna come. I was briefly in a collage era, you know, earlier this year. Um, last year I was in a writing era and I wrote in my blog almost every other day. And it's okay. I'm not writing in my blog as much now. I'm just going with what feels good to me. And not am I going with what feels too good to me. When I'm able to play with whichever medium I'm interested in, incredible things happen. When I'm able to experiment, incredible things happen. And they can happen in this moment, but guess what? Like I'm gonna do my best to make that moment live forever. And so I don't feel like I'm missing out on bass just because I haven't picked it up. I don't feel like I'm missing out on crochet or um ceramics because I haven't, you know, touched clay in a moment. When I had the opportunity to, I did it to the best of my ability. And when the season went, I let it go. And when the season comes back, I'll embrace it again with open arms.

Wren 25:55

And and what a a true testament to committing to art in whatever form that creative process takes you. Part of why I started this podcast was because I went through this a whole reckoning with my musician identity after I graduated college because I wasn't playing French horn anymore. And that was like my primary instrument. And I felt like my musician identity had almost fractured without that. And I went on this uh whole journey to redefine what uh being a musician means to me, and like I it took a long time to accept that I was not in my French horn era anymore, and that I kept pushing it and I kept pushing it, and I know that someday I'll start playing again, but right now I feel so called to other other things to to piano, to singing. And it it feels like such a breath of fresh air to hear other musicians talk about that, and for you to also talk about it in such a a positive way, too.

Love 27:21

It's we we definitely gain something when we listen to ourselves and we recognize and the changing seasons. And this is a this is again when we think about um the people who have gone before us. That's one of the things that they did. Not only alongside nature appreciation, water preservation, they also tracked the seasons, they track the stars, they tracked their environment, and they listened to the environment, they listen to the seasons, they pay attention to the clouds and the wind. And I think for us as musicians, sometimes when we have that end goal or that identity that we hold on to, or whatever it is that we feel maybe legitimizes us and our obsession and our desire to create, we hold on to that legitimacy. But we're already legit. We're already we're already legit, regardless if we never make art ever again, or we take a very, very, very, very long, long, long hiatus from whichever medium. Um it doesn't it doesn't invalidate or undermine our creativity at all.

Wren 28:53

Absolutely. So you are it sounds like you're very in tune with with listening to yourself in terms of what feels good, what feels right, what feels wrong. And something you had said was that with guitar, it you had all these thoughts of I know I should practice and all this, whereas singing and practicing that just came very naturally. What are some of the other ways that you know to pursue something or to pull back on something?

Love 29:30

That's a really good question. For me, um the pursuit of it is actually a sign that maybe it's not for me because it's not coming naturally to me. It's not kind of floating towards me. That's that's what I like. I when I feel like something is floating towards me or feels easy or is close to me, or you know, I can walk there. I don't have to take a bus and a train and an airplane to get there. If it's close and cozy and accessible, if something is free as well, that also speaks to me. So tomorrow I'm going for a cozy crochet morning session at my local library. The library is not too far away from me. It is a little bit early, but turns out that I have to wake up early tomorrow's, anyways. That's easy. If tonight I decided I didn't want to go to sleep and I was going to be up all night, and I woke up earlier, anyways, that is be that may be a sign to me that oh, I woke up early, no expectations. Am I still on time for this crochet session? I'll go. If I wake up and I'm like, I don't feel like going out today, I will not force myself to go. So it's the force and the pursuit of something that allows me to kind of say, actually, I need to conserve my energy. I'm a disabled artist. And so feeling myself, feeling my bodies, feeling listening, listening, listening to myself and listening to what I want to do and what I don't want to do, and not judging myself and not and trying not to be too concerned with the outcome of a thing or attached to the outcome of a thing. I have a lot of hopes and dreams and things that I imagine for myself that I believe will come to me when the time is right. Sometimes when I chase something and I pursue something, and then I'm finding myself putting a lot of effort towards it and kind of let go because I think I want this thing to be easier, and I'm sure it'll come back around much easier. I don't know how guitar or if guitar is going to come back around much easier. Someone may give me an acoustic guitar, and it may have been the electric guitar all along. I really like the electric guitar, but I I don't know. I really never need to learn the guitar because my sister may just become a guitar whiz, and we work together. It's I I trust, I trust the things will work out the way that they are without my blood, sweat, and tears, a plane, a bus, a train, all of this effort, all of this um work. Because the work is the artwork is already work. So then I don't wanna I don't wanna have to work too hard to get to the work. Because I already gotta do the work. If that makes sense.

Wren 32:54

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I think people who are not actively in a creative space can't always, I guess, understand that even though it's it's our work, there still needs to be room for for play and for allowing the art to speak on its own. And this that same like grind culture is just never going to allow any kind of art to speak the way that it wants to speak.

Love 33:34

The the grind culture is is an antithesis to my art. So I don't honor my art when I work too hard and think about productivity and I pursue an end goal. And last year when I was learning the guitar, it's not even that I felt like I didn't honor my art. I felt like I didn't honor my process and my process of making things easy and accessible. Because like music school was expensive and it did put a lot of effort, and being a band was a lot of effort as well. Um and it was a very cool and unique experience.

Sustainability as an Artist

Love 34:21

But once I realized that it's it's it's challenging to maintain, I'm I'm all about sustainability as well. What is sustainable for me? What is what does that look like? How does that feel? Um scared for climate, it's about sustainability. Omítórera is about sustainability. Um, as human beings, we've been sustaining, and I want to continue that. I want to keep on practicing the art of sustaining because that's carried me, and it's it's beautiful and it's worthwhile putting in the effort on figuring out how to sustain. And I think that does look different for a lot of people, and I think people who may have not, you know, met their inner artist or they're you know not in their creative era, I think it can be challenging to understand or empathize with us regarding the sheer amount of work that is expected from artists in order to appear legitimate, in order to appear successful, or in order to even have access to funds and resources when it's being done in a traditional manner with our institutions and government bodies.

Wren 35:57

I feel like people often lose sight of what the point is and are almost chasing this this output or a cclaim. And when I think all it comes down to is being creative for creative purpose or making music for the sake of making music.

Love 36:19

So that's that's what you judge to be the point. Like when you say that people lose style, the point is the point is creation for the sake of creation.

Wren 36:30

And I mean for the sake of creation, for the sake of building community, for the sake of expression. But I think having it's difficult because I feel like for me and my work, I want to have some kind of intention where where I'm also leaving leaving a lot of it up to chance and leaving a lot of it up to the moment. And I guess I guess for me, it's almost like um speaking, like when I'm creating and making music, it's like I'm gonna feed into the music and I'm gonna allow the music to feed back into me.

Love 37:14

I really hear you. I think bringing up chance is really interesting. I would love for you to expand on that.

Wren 37:22

I've been thinking about this a lot with this podcast because I'm trying to create opportunities for music collaboration. And something that I I worked on recently with a a guest was we uh uh wrote a song inspired by a horror novel, excuse me, yeah, a horror novel. And it was it was so interesting because it was the first time that I had collaborated with someone like this, and I I felt like I had no blueprint, and I just allowed whatever came next to come next. And I went completely out of order with my typical creative process because it's what felt right, and I think with giving up a chance, I think it was giving up to the creative process in the moment, and then also giving it up to my collaborator and whatever he came up with, I was gonna build off of, and just accepting that I really didn't have full control over what was gonna come out of it.

Love 38:40

It's it's I I had a feeling that you were gonna mention control because when we talk about chance, leaving things to chance, giving something a chance, having a chance, giving second chances, it's something that is like very cosmic to me. It's something that's very there, you know, there are two states or two potential states, and you don't know, and you're allowing all of those potential states to live at the same time when you don't interfere and you don't try and control or you don't um have a predetermined idea in your mind. Um and I think you've just taught me something about collaboration that I have actually found very challenging, and I would love to collaborate with people more when it comes to music. I do when it comes to my writing. Um, I do when it comes to like organizing virtual events, but when it comes to music, um it's something that I would love to practice. And I think that's even there's a difference between like what you think is worthwhile practicing and what you're pursuing, and what you leave to chance, and what and whether or not you should leave your practice to chance, or whether or not you should leave your creativity to chance. And what what can we control and what can't we control? And all these are all the questions as artists that we're constantly asking ourselves and asking each other through our work.

Wren 40:30

Absolutely.

"Love" in Music

Wren 40:31

So kind of switching gears a little bit, you have a theme of love that comes up throughout your work and throughout your collaborations. And I'm curious, where do you find love in music?

Love 40:49

Oh that's a very, very powerful and potent question. Where do I find love in music? I think self-expression, open, honest, vulnerable self-expression is love, and it's a type of love. Um when you share your perspective, your feelings, your creativity via music you serve yourself and your community if you decide to share that music with them. And there's so much service in love, I believe. There's so much respect, um, and honoring a perspective, like honoring someone else's expect- perspective, I think is central to love. Honoring your own perspective is really central to love. And so when you make music, when you make art, and you honor your perspective, that's where I find love. That's where I find our connection to each other from across time zones, across generations, across eras, across continents. The love happens when you share that music and you honor your perspective and you honor your self-expression. I for me that's love in music.

Wren 42:45

That's beautiful.

Love 42:48

Thank you.

Wren 42:49

I I'm curious how how you are intentionally infusing love into your music as you are creating and expressing your self through it.

Love 43:03

I don't think I infuse love into my music. I think my self-expression has love in it, and so my music has love in it. When I co-wrote Scared for the Climate with One of the Many, I was being honest, open, and vulnerable about my concerns for the climate. And when I shared that and put myself out there to connect with other people who are having the same concerns, that's a type of love, that's a type of connection with other people. So Being vulnerable in my music, being open, honest, and honoring my feelings and honoring my perspective, that's that's where you're gonna find the love. That's so it's it's not infused, it's not something I have to think about. What I have to think about is the vulnerability and having courage. I think there's a lot of courage required to be vulnerable. And then so there's a lot of courage required to have love, be loving, receive love, um love love. Thank

Love's Summer Break

Love 44:46

you.

Wren 44:47

So uh kind of wrapping things up, you are uh currently on summer break as an artist. What does that look like for you?

Love 44:57

Oh I um last year I was heavily involved with my blog. Um I finished a script last year, I completed um a short experimental poetry film, and I and I applied for all sorts of competitions and grants last year. And I felt I found myself feeling tired and dejected, and I saw a new season of more applications and more grants and things that I've already applied for. Um, I think say December, and I said, you know what, it's okay, I don't have to join this cycle of applications and grants. And so I allowed myself to be um at first I called it a semi-retirement, but I think I allowed myself to be on a sabbatical in relation to my artist career. So the part of myself that is about the career aspect, the marketing aspect, the receiving funds, the promotional aspect of myself. And I said I'm going to take a break. I have one thing that I am looking forward to, which would hopefully make my life easier, and that is the artist basic income scheme here in Ireland, which would be guaranteed um funds, um, regardless of the work that I do or don't do. And that's that's how I want, that's how I wanted um perhaps any resources to come in, not through competitions, not through grants, just something guaranteed, regardless of what I was doing. So I think the tiredness of being rejected last year, and then the desire to focus on the basic income is what allowed me to say, okay, I'm having a sabbatical for 2026. I'm not going to have any new projects, I'm not going to apply for anything. Um, I'm going to keep on creating just as I am. But I also, it's so important for me to go back into my archives and reread my work, reflect on my work. It's important for me to connect with other people, enjoy myself, focus on my body and my healing, focus on having fun. I have written something about what I plan to do this year in my blog. And then I was very tempted in so many different ways. I was attempting, I was tempted to um apply for a business grant and a business competition because I was like, well, that's not art, even though it was going to be related to my art. Um, I was tempted to become a workshop facilitator for another organization. And many, many things. And I actually did give in to my desire to work, and um, I can be a bit of a workaholic. And I started facilitating the virtual art studios, and I did the promotion and I did lots of things that were very interesting, and I really played with marketing on the business side back to my art career. And after four sessions of my um of the virtual art studio facilitating, I said, you know, I've actually done plenty of work. And I said, you know what, I'm gonna take the summer off because when I was working for someone else, I would have loved to take the summer off. Now that I'm working for myself, why don't I give myself the permission to have the summer off? And so the virtual art studio will be there, there may be workshops facilitated hopefully by other people and other artists. Now that I've released my song and done my listening party, I'm not going to be hosting any more or facilitating any more virtual events for the rest of the summer. I'm going to rest, going to play, I'm going to go for trainings, I'm going to visit art galleries, I'm going to take in inspiration. I'm hopefully going to archive more. I haven't felt the desire to archive, but if I do, that's great. And what I didn't know is that I would connect with my family and my community, and I would need time to care for my sibling when I was trying to slow down this year. So this summer break is a re-up and a recontinuation of the hiatus that I planned for 2026. I say that I do have more music that I would like to share. Um I want to take, I want to have a different approach to music. But I want to share, but I am going to take, I'm not going to share any more music over the summer. Um, but I did share my short film onto my blog um a few days ago. So I don't know what it looks like. I'm taking every day as I can. I'm trying to slow down. And now I've said I'm taking a break, I'm taking a break. I'm hoping that I convince myself to take a break and other people speak to me and say, Oh, Deb, I thought you were taking a break. I thought you were taking so I can be like, you know, you're right. I'm let me stop. Let me stop right now. So it's it's definitely um it's evolving, it's not one thing, and it requires practice because I have been in grind mode for so long. Um, I started working when I was like 12, 13 in the church. I've been volunteering in different places, and I had a full-time job, and I was I was very much a corporate girly up until last year. So the idea of working so hard, having to prove myself, that's what I've been trying to let go with this. I can do art and I don't have to apply for competitions, don't need anyone's seal of approval. I can just keep going and rest and leave it to chance, except that there're opportunities are going to present themselves in nice and easy ways. Like this podcast presented itself in a really nice and easy way. Um, I didn't have to copy and paste anything from my CV or previous. I said, I don't want to see that CV. I don't want to see no emails. If there is anything that says please submit by this submission date, I'm not doing it. And that's that's that's what I've been trying to um embrace. I did I'm I'm playing with time and interacting with time. And when there's our when there are submission dates, it it stops the fun.

Wren 52:44

Yeah.

Love 52:45

It stops the fun for me.

Wren 52:48

Absolutely. Well, I love I love knowing that you are still creating and still following your intuition and listening and you know, doing what your creative self needs to do to continue to make art in a way that is sustainable, that honors you, that honors your ancestors and your community.

Love 53:18

When it comes to your work, uh what does sustainability look like?

Wren 53:25

Uh well, for me, the majority of my work is as a music therapist. Um and it means I think the big thing is creating a schedule that works for for my my brain and my body and planning breaks in advance and being really honest with myself about when it's necessary for me to uh cancel to take a break. And I think that that can be a little bit of a hot topic in in music therapy and therapy adjacent communities because we we really want to try so hard to care and show up for our clients. But at the end of the day, if if I if I'm not settled in myself, um, I can't I can't hold a space properly for someone else. Um I was on my way to work this past week and right in front of me on the highway, um I saw a car accident.

Love 54:33

Oh no.

Wren 54:34

And uh thank you. And um and I uh I remember in the moment being like, oh well, nothing happened to me, so I should just continue on as normal. But it was extremely unsettling. Um and so I I canceled my first session and I went and I I grabbed some fidget toys and I listened to some music, I did some regulation activities, and then I went on about my day, but really honoring myself. And then when it comes back to the creative side, because I love making music and I'm really enjoying making this podcast too. I think the same thing is honoring how I'm feeling and recognizing that it really doesn't matter if my podcast comes out Monday evening instead of Monday morning if that means that I'm gonna get some better sleep and I can better edit this podcast. I can better uh make sure that it aligns with my vision and what I want to be sharing with the world. So just being really honest with myself about my capacity.

Love 55:55

That's that's that's really that's really insightful. The honesty with yourself is it seems to be such a recurring theme because I think uh we're taught to be so dishonest with ourselves and minimize our feelings for the sake of productivity in particular. Um and that's that's where time is being used as a tool sometimes to constrict us and restrict us. Um and so the honesty is like really cool.

Wren 56:30

I love how you put that time being used to constrain and restrict us. Yeah. Well, speaking of time restraining us, I think it is the end of our time today.

Love 56:44

Yeah, yeah, but thank you.

Closing and Giving Love Their Flowers

Wren 56:46

But this has been such an insightful conversation, and I I so appreciate you taking the time to speak with me, especially knowing that you are on summer break. I hope that this was all aligned with uh what feels right.

Love 57:02

100%, 100% aligned with what feels right. Um it's just nice to have this conversation. It was very easy, everything flowed, and um I really appreciate the work that you did beforehand. Um looking into me, looking to my approach to um my approach to art, my, you know, the themes of love in my work, the themes of community and um ancestral veneration. It all comes together and it's always evolving and it's always in conversation with each other, and it's in conversation with artists like yourself. And I think that's one of the things that this year I've been like, you know, I really want to, I really want to connect with other artists a lot. I've been attempting to connect generally and like widespread, but um, especially for Omítórera, I want to connect with DJs and dancers because I'm like, I feel like you guys could really get it and it could really um speak to you and and serve you and tickle something in your brain, and and that excites me. And I feel like talking to you on this podcast, I was like, I think I could share something interesting and fun and worthwhile um with you and also the people that listen to your podcast. So when I'm sharing, when I'm playing, it's it doesn't feel like work. And that's what I tell myself, and that's how I justify it all. And I don't even need to justify it, I'm just doing, but I I really have that perspective that when it's gentle and easy and it's sharing and it's um flowing um and it's playing and experimental, then I I could do that for a very long time and not, and it's uh it's a part of my rest, it's not separate from it.

Wren 59:01

Absolutely. All right. Well, before we go, I do want to give you your flowers. Um this podcast is all about hearing stories about the power of music for good. And it's such an honor to have this conversation. I feel like it so deeply has tapped into the whole purpose of this podcast and you know, hearing about how your music comes from such a place of uh vulnerability and love and community and something so much deeper than uh just you or I and it's collective. And I I really think that uh especially after talking with you, I can really so beautifully see how you've come across this, your artist name of Love, Builder of Worlds. It it seems so fitting and such a testament to the work you put out.

Love 1:00:01

Wow, thank you. Thank you so much. That that means means a lot to me. And I'm so excited that this is just the beginning of getting to know you more and seeing what we can do together and um sharing, sharing more and more. So um thank you so much, Wren. It

Supporting Love's Work

Love 1:00:23

means a lot.

Wren 1:00:24

So, how can people support your work?

Love 1:00:28

People can support my work um by having love in their heart and rejecting ultraviolence as a start. Um, I really am opposed to social hierarchy as a concept, and that's something I would love to see eradicated. And as well, aside from that, I think listening to queer, trans disabled Black and African people about the things that they experience and their challenges that they endure due to the social hierarchy that we all feed into. Um, I really want to emphasize that. Um, I think practicing disease mitigation and COVID safety, practicing safe sex, practicing car safety, um, trying to limit the risks and harms that we inflict on each other is an is one way to support me. And if we're gonna bring it down to the material world, I think supporting my blog, joining as a paid member is another way to support me. But listening to this podcast is another way to support me. There's so many different ways, and I'm trying to learn to accept love in whichever way people have the capacity to share it. And I'm trying not to judge their methods. So um, I know the ways that I would love to be loved, and I also accept the ways that people have the ability to show love.

Wren 1:02:03

So expansive. Thank you. All right, so Love, Builder of Worlds is currently on break through the summer, but you can still check out their past blog posts and/or make financial contributions. And links to their blog and music can be found in the show description. Thanks again for joining. Bye, Love.

Love 1:02:26

Thank you Wren, take care.

Outro

Love 1:02:28