Musing
A podcast about artists and their influences.
Musing
Musing s01e05 - Milly Hirst
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In this archive interview I muse with singer-songwriter Milly Hirst about the power of stories; mental health; Hollyoaks, and the Norwich Bubble.
https://millyhirst.bandcamp.com/
Hello and welcome to Musing, a podcast about artists and their influences. My name is Jay Solstice and this episode is a little different. It's an interview with Millie Hurst recorded a few years back on my previous podcast, but it's still a good discussion and a lot of it I think still resonates. So here we go. Joining me today is Millie Hurst. Millie Hurst is a folk singer songwriter whose narrative songwriting has been described as enchanting, portraying a soul and maturity far beyond their years. Their voice has proven capable of transforming drunken chatter into raptor tension. They performed at Glastonbury, Cambridge Folk Festival, and had radio play from Six Music. As well as performing solo, Millie has toured and recorded as an occasional member of Wooden Arms. What might be an interesting place to start is as you're writing at the moment, if there's anything that's kind of currently going around your head that's feeding into what into your songwriting.
SPEAKER_00I think I I do this weird thing where I'm obviously quite affected by things that are going on, um either stuff that's going on in my life or just other people around me. Um what I tend to do is it that normally gets interpreted in different ways. So I often don't write a song that's sort of literally about one thing. Um I tend to sort of mull it over in my head and it becomes almost like a narrative story. So I think a lot of the newer stuff will probably be about made-up characters and places. Um I think sometimes that's a bit easier than just uh singing a song about yourself, which always feels a bit strange. Um so yeah, so we'll see we'll see where it goes, but I think I'll probably start out by writing some stories and then hopefully they will somehow become songs.
SPEAKER_02A lot of singing songwriters, even if they're not aware of it, can be quite solidistic and kind of I suppose navel gazing is the derogatory term for it.
SPEAKER_00It's introverted maybe.
SPEAKER_02But Rose's seen such like such a vivid portrait of somebody else that's kind of like quite outward looking.
SPEAKER_00I know what you mean, and I think actually I'm I'm actually trying to think back to all the tracks on that AP, and I think um whilst obviously there's there's always an element of yourself in everything you do because you've got to draw from your own experiences, that's all that's all we have. We can't really put ourselves into other people's minds or emotions. Um I think everything on that AP, the starting point was probably somebody else, or certainly an external experience. I think even I'm trying to think of so like pack of wolves, which is the last one, um, which is about me feeling a bit strange and um a bit scared, but it was inspired by a film that I saw at Cinema City, um, which was Waltz with Bashir, which is a very odd animated film by an Israeli director, and it has this really vivid scene about a pack of wolves that are sort of chasing him. And I was so scared I had nightmares about it. So this the song is sort of about that, so it sort of started from an external point and came inwards. So I guess all of the stuff I think some people probably find it a lot easier and um to write about themselves, and often uh often that works because I think you're you're still somebody else is still going to connect with it. So even if it's directly about you and it's sort of to you it might feel like you're just singing this song about yourself, there's gotta be something in it that other people go, Yeah, no, I know exactly what you mean. So I think that's one way of doing it, and the other way is is probably to look outwards and look at how other people are feeling and sort of portray it through that. So I guess Rose is a good example of you know sort of directly about another person, but there's probably still lots of myself in it.
SPEAKER_02I mean, do you find that your things that anger you move you to write or things that sadden you or I was thinking about this the other day and I was thinking because I do I get angry I'm not a generally happy person, but I do have a lot of social anger, which I guess comes a lot of people who are creative tend to um maybe be quite sensitive to the world around them.
SPEAKER_00So I think I I do mull over things and I get anxious and angry about things more than other people I know. Um, but I find it really hard to write about those things. So like I'm forever trying to write a song about some sort of social injustice that I find in the world, and I can't I just can't do it because I'm obviously not, you know, in the way that Billy Bragg does perfectly, I'm I'm not the right person to vocalise that. Um so I I think it would be nice to be able to write a protest song, but I don't think it's ever gonna happen.
SPEAKER_02It's it's really difficult to probably the hardest to find a kind of balance where you're not preachy.
SPEAKER_00Yes, yeah.
SPEAKER_02And it I mean even in arguments that you have with people who maybe have different political opinions, it's it's very hard to change someone's mind. Yeah. And being able to kind of and also it you know, if it goes off wrong, it can sound very kind of immature, I think sometimes. But you know, it doesn't have to be something that you directly write a song about, it's more that feeling that anger about a social injustice kind of.
SPEAKER_00I think it's about feeling, and I think particularly as a singer songwriter, that's kind of what you're tackling. You're either tackling situations um or emotions, so reactions to those situations. Um so I think I I don't know, I do f I definitely find it harder to write when I'm really happy and content, and I think most music most singer songwriters would probably agree with this. There has to be a level of I want to say angst, but that is not the right word, um, something going on, something sort of bubbling for you to sort of feel. And I think for me, songwriting was always sort of a way to deal with some difficult emotional uh situation. So if there isn't that difficult emotional situation, I find it hard now to sit down and say, right, I'm gonna do some writing, but I've got better at that, and I've got better at sort of being motivated to sit and and think about things that I might like to write about, even when I don't feel that sort of anxious need to be writing music.
SPEAKER_02You've ended up in some strange places over your music. How strange.
SPEAKER_00Oh, yeah, this is the funny thing about it, and again, I I um I take guidance from others in terms of things like sync, uh so having your stuff on TV and film. And when I first released the EP, um lovely, lovely Alex from Wooden Arms was running Bear Feet Records and decided to release it. And as part of this, uh he had we had a big chat about royalties, and I knew nothing about how any of that worked, it was completely clueless. And he said, Well, we'll sign you up to this thing and they'll take it for you. And and for me that's worked really well because I sort of keep half an eye on it, but mostly I can let it run itself, and I occasionally get a little check for about 40 quid or something. Um, but they send you a list of all your sinks, so all of the stuff has been played on. And the first time I got that, I was it's baffling. There was hollyokes, there was yoga classes, there was like DJ sets. Like I kept thinking, what DJ has put my music on? Just to really bring the tone of the night down. Um, it was really interesting.
SPEAKER_02In terms of kind of cultural influences and background, like did you come to Norwich to study art or are you from here originally?
SPEAKER_00No, I'm I'm not from far away. My family are from London originally, and my sister lives there. Um, and I grew up in the Fens in Chatteris, which is a very nice, bleak landscape. Um, and then I moved to Ely when I was sort of nine or ten, and then from there I went to Cambridge as a teenager to move out of home, and then I got a place, I didn't know Norwich at all, but I got a place at the art school um uh after living in Cambridge for four years and sort of poodling about doing music. Um I decided I wanted to be an art student. Um my mum's like a printmaker, so I'd always sort of dabbled in bits and pieces, but I never really knew what I wanted to do, so I started at the art school. Um I think I mean I I think I did it just because I really wanted to do something creative, but I've I've always enjoyed lots of different creative things and I didn't want to kind of commit to anything because people always say, Oh, it's weird that you didn't do music. It's sort of like I studying music solidly for three years probably wouldn't have done me any good to be honest. I think I needed something that would allow me the space to do because I did do a bit of music at uni and I combined it with some sort of performance art and film, which is another one of my loves. So um I think I needed the kind of freedom to to do different bits of pieces. I think if I'd focused on one thing, I would have driven myself mad. So um, but yeah, no, I I loved being there. I often wish I could do it all again. It would be nice just to keep doing an art degree, but um yeah, real life takes over, fortunately. So yeah, I I probably could have moved back to Cambridge after I graduated, but by that time I'd completely fallen in love with Norwich and um met lots of lovely people and lots of great musicians who I wanted to work with, so I thought I'd see how it went, and I've been here ever since.
SPEAKER_02Other than on a musical level, do you think there's anything about Norwich as a kind of cultural place that is kind of fed into what you do and to your creativity or your music anything?
SPEAKER_00I think I found it a very nurturing place, and I came here I'd played a little bit in Cambridge, and I I'd sort of started doing a national diploma in music when I was about 16, and then had a bit of a freak out and sort of went back to doing my A levels instead. Um so I'd played live a little bit in Cambridge, but I certainly hadn't played live for about three years when I moved here. Um, and it was something I really wanted to get back into, and I found such a warm environment that it was just so easy, and I think the great thing about it, as soon as you meet one person, so I met Shane, who was running the How Batcom at the time, who put me on, and then I met Alex from Barefeet who put me on a couple of nights. I think as soon as that that kind of opened up a whole new world for me. Um, and the other thing is in comparison to other places that I've lived in, it's really affordable. So I've had the freedom. That sounds really boring. It's like, oh, it's all about finances, but in terms of like just graduating and not having any sort of money or resources, it it allowed me to live and to to not be having to work all of the hours that God sends so that I could I had time to be creative, I guess is what I'm trying to say. Um, and I think it enables you to have a way of living in a pace of life that is about community and creativity and all of these things, um, which I've sort of find that people I know who are maybe living in other cities don't get that freedom, and I think it you know it is important. It it kind of goes both ways though, because it can also I know a lot of people also feel like maybe you you get sort of caught up in a little Norwich bubble, um, which I think is fine, I'm happy to be in that bubble, but I think it can be quite um you do tend to find yourself maybe playing gigs and stuff and collaborating with the sort of same people as sometimes maybe it is good to think outside of of the Norwich world, but I think that um yeah, I think there's always room to go outside and challenge yourself.
SPEAKER_01Listen to me, gentle sailor. Try not to scale my walls, for I have spent so many years building up this fort so tall, and I would not have all your sweet gestures ending with my life. Listen to me, gentle sailors, hear my words and heap my call.
SPEAKER_02I was thinking about that. What was the song? It was uh Gentle Sailor, I think. Yeah. I thought there's there's a lot of diff you know, it's kind of broad enough that you can probably interpret it. Interpret in lots of different ways. Um and there's a I mean I'm a sucker for consistent imagery as well in songs like if if a if if a song's gonna start having like shit metaphors and things like that. Better carry carry through, like uh yeah.
SPEAKER_00Um it's this the sea thing is such a strange thing. That that whole um I think again it was coming to Norfolk and studying at Newark and spending I fell in with a group of lovely, lovely friends who I'm still very much um friends with, and for some reason we just spent a lot of time by the sea, and I've always loved I love swimming, it's one of my favourite things in the world, so I've always loved water and spent a lot of my childhood by the sea, so it's always been something that's obviously important to me, but I don't think I ever realise how much until I look back at that AP and it's like it's all about boats and seas and that kind of imagery. I think I was really affected by the coastline, and there's something about thinking about all the different types of people throughout history who have encountered the sea. I know it sounds really strange, it's like when you walk around Norwich and you think about all the people who walked on the stones or you know, sat in the churches, or it's a kind of it's a history thing, I guess.
SPEAKER_02Which there's a lot of in Norwich. I mean I mean where we are now and where you work is just around that corner. There's the wall of the bridewell, which is like fifth fourteenth century.
SPEAKER_00And some parts of this building as well. Oh yeah, because there's Suckling Hall is part of it.
SPEAKER_02It's I So I think that must seep in.
SPEAKER_00I think it does, and I think I I'm a bit of a history geek, kind of love um, I th I particularly love learning about different people who have lived in certain places in terms of historical. So I think that probably feeds into it um a little bit. I just find I find it so fascinating. Um thinking about all the other kinds of um lives and also the kind of the the universal thing. So I guess we've like Gentle Sailor, which was sort of I mean it's really it's a real narrative fictional thing, because obviously it's about a witch, a ghost of a witch, and I don't believe in ghosts or necessarily witch.
SPEAKER_02I did I didn't pick up that it was a ghost or a witch.
SPEAKER_00It's this really odd thing. I think maybe sometimes I explain it live, but obviously I would have never done so on the recording. It's about the ghost of it's of a witch who's been a ghost for a thousand years and she falls in love with a sailor, and it's about her kind of telling him that she is uh that that that ultimately it's doomed and they're unable to be together. So it's about sort of asking him to let her go, I suppose, and letting him go in some respects. Um so again there's sort of like a mythical element to it, but I like the idea that somebody from hundreds of years ago would have probably felt the same kind of things in terms of love and fear and anxiety, and you know, so that the un these universal themes that identify us as human.
SPEAKER_02But it's kind of finding a new way to frame those things, isn't it?
SPEAKER_00I guess so, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_02Because a lot of a lot of songs that deal with love can be very trite or just kind of banal in a way.
SPEAKER_00I don't know what it is that makes it work, and I don't know, I still don't know what it is that makes people connect to it. I think a lot of it is actually not about being too literal literal. I think finding imagery or a feeling that describes something without actually saying what that thing is can often be far more effective than you know, saying something.
SPEAKER_01Oh, it's called in the flat shit, windows called your leg and slide the wind bowing, bowing and he's gentle correct sings. Won't you say your name to both rose? Maybe you will blow your caves away.
SPEAKER_02affected by rise just because I I kind of having spent a lot of my life with depression on and off, it's not patronizing about it and it's not judgmental or it doesn't sound judgmental to me, it's very there's like there's like a compassion behind it. Um in terms of a lot of the problems with prejudice, I mean in all other areas as well, but with mental health is a lack of understanding and having been depressed, there's so many times that you're told to snap out of it, or you know, yeah, and and I feel like in Rose there's that compassion and it's almost like just sitting with someone and and trying to understand them.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and like I think maybe again that feeds into being a songwriter. So if you're continuously thinking about other people's stories or writing stories about other people, then maybe you do there's a level of there has to be a natural level of sort of compassion there. But again, I think it's I mean I I honestly don't believe that anybody could stand up and say I have no experience of mental health or depression. If you don't want to talk about it or be honest about it, it's fine, but I think it's a fundamental part of human nature to a degree, um, but just obviously that in some people it it's completely different balance. Um I think also uh I've always found mental health and creativity quite an interesting uh concept, I guess, because most people I know who are creative people, there's a level of of uh mental health issues of whatever level that kind of feeds into that. Um, and I think it's important to sort of it's a lot about accepting who you are and that maybe that's a part of your character and that the way that you deal with it is to be creative and find an outlet for it, and that sometimes it's a necessary part of your character. I think I guess what I'm trying to say is if I um as somebody who's also sort of got a history of anxiety and depression, I don't think I'd ever want to take that away from myself. As difficult as it has been in times, because I honestly don't think I would be I certainly wouldn't be the person I am today, but I also certainly wouldn't have the creative outlets that I do because it that's sort of for me where it stems from. So it's a bit of a yeah, but it's a kind of constant balance, I suppose.
SPEAKER_02I know I found that that they it comes from the same place. Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_00And um I mean Rose for me um was probably born out of just a a literally a sense of helplessness, um which again I'm sure that everybody's felt at some time when somebody else is going through something, and I just you know, I think that's probably for me one of the things I get most upset about in life is feeling helpless to other people's plights, and whether that's on a huge social scale, like watching you know, desperate refugees leave Syria, or whether it's just a friend who's going through something really tough and that there's nothing I can say or do that's gonna make it any better. So I think the song was sort of me pouring all that out in the hope that one day maybe it would make a difference.
SPEAKER_02Well, it has made it, I mean it makes a difference to me.
SPEAKER_00It's interesting because like I have had people in family members say to me, if I'm depressed, don't you know you shouldn't listen to music that you know, and I I find that actually listening, there's uh a comfort and kind of solace that I get from from that song from listening to that that it you know it doesn't stop me feeling that way, but to but to have a a a piece of music that I can connect with on that level it's an interesting discussion, and I think that um a lot of parents of teenagers probably struggle with that because there's an element of of you know um what's that ridiculous well not ridiculous obviously, but there was like a sort of survey recently that said that goths are you know so much more percentage uh depressed as teenagers than I sort of feel like well it's a chicken and egg situation because maybe they're drawn to this community and this music because they feel a certain way and they're looking for an outlook for it or they're looking for a way of sharing that experience, and that even if you remove that, they'd find something else. There'd be another way of experiencing it. And I I I think that yeah, I think it would be a real shame to not to remove that as. A community or a sense of comfort or belonging. I think that's it, that's it, isn't it? It's about feeling like you belong somewhere. Um, and I I think that you know music and art have always done that throughout history, and I think should continue to do so.
SPEAKER_02Um I've had that discussion with with um Sophie, my wife, before, and and kind of saying that rather than it being like you listen to that music and it makes you feel worse, you're actually looking for something which reflects how you're feeling.
SPEAKER_00You're kind of looking for somebody also. I think that feeling that way is quite lonely, and I think often the one of the awful things about depression is it makes you feel like nobody really understands what you're going through or how you're feeling, and that nobody in the history of life has ever felt this way. And actually to find a piece of music or a piece of art or read a book that makes you go, okay, I found somebody who gets it, and I think that's so important because sometimes you can't. I think the other thing is it's also difficult to talk to the people around you when you're feeling like that, and so to to have a level of to find a musician who's you know probably lives far away from you, you've never spoken to in real life, but is singing the song that that makes you feel like they understand completely how how you're feeling. I think that's so important. Um yeah, and I think if if as a musician, if if ever that that gave that sort of comfort to somebody else in the way that I've felt that about other people's music, I I think you've sort of achieved the the point of it all, maybe. Um, certainly with this type of music, I guess.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, that there seems to be this weird thing that there's so many things that are frustrating about it, but like people will assume that well, a woman couldn't have written that, so there must have been like the producer wrote that.
SPEAKER_00And it's not even a malicious, it's not like a oh, you know, she's too chippy. It's it's it it is a presumption that runs through, and female musicians presume it about other female musicians. It's a terrible ingrained current in our culture that we just don't see women as able to do certain things, um, despite the fact that they have throughout history, but they've just been forgotten.
SPEAKER_02Or it just seems that you know if if a woman is successful, it's probably because of a man's dance. Because of a man, or because they select with men to get yes, yeah.
SPEAKER_00They've used their you know womanly charms, uh, which I think very rare very rarely happens.
SPEAKER_02No, and even I mean, even if a man did that, there'd definitely be a double standard of like, you know, that wouldn't be.
SPEAKER_00It would be perceived in a completely different way.
SPEAKER_02I find it interesting how how much women of any I mean, whether they're whether they're in acting or music or anything like that, like so much of it focuses around their appearance at the time.
SPEAKER_00Yes, and as a musician, I'll be honest, that's something that I've always struggled with purely because I try very hard not to focus on my own appearance. And I think that um I've again that's one of the things about being a musician is suddenly you're expected to be a certain way or look a certain way, and a lot of that you have to have promo shots done, and it all becomes a sort of weird thing that is just like a whole part of it, and I I really dislike that. And I had somebody come up to me um who'd heard my music through the website and then came to a gig. I think I was in London, and said they said you don't look at all like how I thought you would look. And I kept thinking, like, how do you think it looked? It's like you know, not even wearing a dress. So I felt like right, okay. And they also said that I they sort of told me off for swearing. I was thinking like they obviously had this real idea of me in their heads about who I was, and maybe from doing kind of folky music, there is an element of that. Um, and I obviously wasn't, I obviously hadn't met their expectations, and it was just this hilarious reaction of feeling like sorry, I don't quite know what you want me to say.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, thanks again, it's been a pleasure and um you have been listening to Musing. You can find us on Instagram at MusingPod or MusingPodcast on Facebook. Ratings and reviews are always welcome. The podcast artwork is by Poppy Marriott. See you next time.