Joan Wasser on dancing with melancholy and learning to accept the “not figureoutable”

Damned Devotion is a beautiful record, Joan

– but it’s so sad. Are you doing OK?

My resting place is a state of melancholy, but I’m always dancing on top of it! Maybe I push that further on this record. You hear a lot of pain. But, to answer your question, I’m really good. I’m just finding better ways to express the pain.

Listening to the record for the first time, I wrote down “Goth R&B”. Does that make sense to you?

Ha – that’s great! But “damned devotion”, you know, I think you feel that in soul music. The desperation, the fatalistic this-is-never-going-to-work-out vibe. In my work this is more slanted into the “this is definitely not going to work out”, which may be into the goth realm. I find that in my own life. I am constantly trying to find that balance between being devoted and being completely fucked. Somewhere in there I think I probably take 37 breaths in a balance that was perfect, but every other breath has been teetering to one side or the other. And that’s OK. I used to feel I was doing something wrong. Or I can’t figure this out. But nah – it’s not figureoutable! It’s just life. I really feel a lot more comfortable with the fact I won’t ever figure it out. And I don’t care, I just have to dance with it as best as I can.