And Everything Looks Like a Giant Cupcake

This week I’ve sort of been obsessed by M83’s Raconte-Moi Une Histoire, a track whose main vocals are a little girl describing a rainforest-frog-induced trip. Googling led me to a Pitchfork interview with Anthony Gonzalez, in which Gonzalez discussed a child-like undercurrent in his synthy music:

When I first moved to L.A., I was feeling a bit weird. I was alone, working in my apartment, and suddenly I had these weird memories about being a child. It made me melancholic, crying alone in my apartment, thinking about something I’ll never be able to redo. For me, this album is a tribute to those years of innocence where everything was perfect. I had the perfect childhood. My father was a policeman, and my mother sold fabric in her small store. They were very normal, very simple. When you’re young, you can do anything. And the more I grow up, the less I think that way. Through my music, I’m really trying to convince myself that I can do it. It’s like therapy.

What a beautiful, pure way to work. It’s so easy to wrap yourself in a giant stressball of needs and objectives and shouldn’ts when you’re creating in exchange for money. But it’s continually clear: a zen-like state of childlike joy can help us make something much more magnetic.