Quotes from Arlo Parks

Honestly, I've been reading a lot of books on visual art. I've been reading a lot of books by Olivia Lang, I've been listening to a lot of folk and singer-songwriter music, but also a lot of electronic and really hard techno. I'm just trying to create something that pulls from everywhere and that hopefully feels unique.

I was writing short stories aged seven or eight. I had a vivid, overactive imagination.

All of my songs are so hyper-specific - that they can seem universal is a beautiful thing.

When you approach the world with such vulnerability and openness, people return that energy. It's draining, but it fills me with a purpose. I wouldn't trade it for anything.

What I want to do with my music is to just encourage vulnerability, and to talk about things even if they're uncomfortable. Everyone has mental health - everyone has a mind that works in different ways and goes through highs and lows.

I think that there was a part of me that hoped that maybe people will be able to connect to what I was saying. But it was quite a scary thing, actually, making that decision to put music out there, and to be so vulnerable.

Most of my songs are based off poetry, but I mainly write to write. I never know which form the words are best suited to until I hear an instrumental.

As I'm writing a song, I focus on the music and try not to let my mind wander too much, but if I do think of any visual moments or references that I think would connect nicely, I'll make a note of it.

To me, nature is so inspiring - that sense of constant change, the way things are cleansed or washed away, and it's beyond your control.

I'm quite a dreamy person but I'm also very realistic about my possibilities, so if this was meant to remain a hobby I would have kept it as that. But I feel like music goes in waves and when you get an upward swing, you have to push it as far as you can.

I'm journalling, checking in with myself. I write about the week and how it felt, my hopes and plans. I do it every evening, and have done since I was 13.

There's nothing that compares to actually being in a room and having that sense of collective experience, feeling the music in your body and having all these people around you.

But I think for me, writing poetry when I was younger really helped me to condense an idea or a story into only so many words, because in a song you really only have three, four minutes to have a complete world in this song, so I think it definitely taught me to be concise.

I think 'Black Dog' came out at a time where a lot of people were feeling quite low and confused in quite a chaotic space.

When I first started writing in the beginning, it was very much surrounding the idea of escape and of fantasy, then when I got a little bit older it very much became a way of looking inward.

I guess I want to be a voice for the kid. I mean, it sounds quite contrived, but I want to make music that I would have wanted to hear when I was 14.

It's a very strange thing to suddenly be approached in the street and have streams of messages, and not know how to work through getting bad reviews and hate comments. It's something that can really weigh on the mind and be quite isolating.

Yeah, it can be dangerous to kind of try and target your art to a certain type of people! You don't know who's going to gravitate towards your work, you never know what people are going get out of the work. So I try and just create music that feels true to my taste, and then see what happens.

It's after dark that I feel most inspired, I'm a nocturnal creature. I'll write poetry or streams of consciousness, play instruments, or teach myself to DJ by doing a silent solo set.

I really like Pat Parker. I really like Audre Lorde. I read a lot of the Beats when I was younger, so Diane di Prima, Gary Snyder. I've been discovering a lot more modern poems as well.

When I feel something, I write it down so I guess technically it's a personal catharsis, but I would really like to help people as I figure myself out.

Sometimes the world is just weird and you have to just roll with the punches.

When I was growing up, there weren't that many queer girls of colour making music. So I just wanted to be able to exist, just to be that, without putting too much emphasis on it.

I definitely think social media does cause this desire to be perfect. It can make kids feel like they've got quite a lot of the weight on their shoulders in terms of how they're supposed to be and what they're supposed to like and how they're supposed to act.