Quotes from Arca

When I was young, I put on performances for my family and my parents where I would dance like a woman, singing a really exaggerated woman's vocal in front of my whole family.

It's not about living my life as a boy or a girl - but I'm also not trans - it's just that one day, you wake up feeling masculine, and one day, you wake up feeling feminine. The flickering in between those two states is what's most fertile for me.

Being knee-deep in sadness or suffering and refusing to look down - to me, that represents something more powerful than someone who's never gone through difficulty.

When I was making 'Xen,' I was surprised at how introverted some of the songs were. I wasn't deliberately trying to go quieter, but I had to embrace it.

Something I keep coming back to in my music is the tension between two extremes: healing and chaos, hope and anxiety - these big themes are inside us, flickering, all day.

When I was about 13, and I would write in my journal, I'd be like, 'I just watched 'Spice World,' the Spice Girls movie, and I loved it.' Sometimes I would sign them with the name Xen.

Compulsion is a behaviour that short-circuits you out of feeling ashamed, and then you feel triple-ashamed afterwards.

I've learned to use things like softness and vulnerability as weapons against the things you feel ashamed of in yourself.

I like contradictions, and I like exceptions. I don't like rules and dogma.

I think for the longest time I used to be kind of embarrassed that if I hung out with someone that had a really, really strong personality, I would end up accidentally catching myself talking like them.

I have an interesting relationship with my voice. I give myself tons of freedom in how to engage with my voice because I respect it a lot.

I exist in agreement with all the weird chaos, destruction, and agony that is undoubtedly part of the texture of being alive.

It's impossible to exorcise the darkness out of you. We can pretend it's not there until something bursts.

I want to make music until I die.

A mother isn't someone who does it on purpose; mothers are who they are, and just by existing, they affect the way other people negotiate with the environment and with themselves.

Making music can get so emotional that, if you don't set limits for yourself, it can push you or the person that you're making music with to a breaking point.

I kind of roll my eyes when people say they make music for themselves or they make art just for themselves, because, maybe in their head, what that means is that they're making it for someone who they don't think is real. Their audience isn't real. But it's still a communicative act. It's still an outward manifestation of longing.

Arca means 'box' or 'wooden' in very old Spanish. It's a ceremonial container where you store jewelry or valuables, an empty space that can become pregnant with whatever music or meaning I give to it.

With 'Lonely Thug,' I constructed a fantasy character who was very masculine and strong and almost threatening, but his demeanor belied some complication.

You become more animalistic when you don't know what's coming next - you have to be on guard, but at the same time you're also more receptive.

I've come to the conclusion that the best way for me to grow is in a very self-forgiving way: to take a risk and, in response to how a record pans out, take a risk in the opposite charge.

Theatricality - that's where you get catharsis. The Greeks went to see drama because they felt like this wasn't happening to them.

I never judge my song titles; I just spit them out.

Internally, we have so many different parts, both positive and negative. And if you force them together, a spark comes out.