she says. “It’s a beautiful thing – and something that is still so stigmatised… I was fl apping my hands because I saw whales, [but] an autistic person excitedly fl apping their hands is still seen as taboo, which is ridiculous… People don’t like different. “I’ve known that for my entire life. I don’t know why ‘different’…is such a scary concept for people. Maybe it’s because they can’t experience that happiness themselves. Maybe they’re jealous of it? I don’t know. If you don’t get excited about seeing a pod of 12 whales, that’s on you. Go see a therapist,” she laughs, then gets refl ective. “I think all of us have a box we’re supposed to fi t into. A lot of autistic people have decided, Fuck it, that box isn’t mine. I’m not going to force myself into it. It really is a very small population that does comfortably fi t. So the majority of people have to contort themselves, and they can fi t into it, but it’s uncomfortable. I think [some people] see autistic people simply refusing to even acknowledge the box, and that makes them uncomfortable: Well, I have to fi t into this. Why don’t you? You don’t have to fi t into it. The box doesn’t exist.” Along with whales, lots of things spark joy for Chloé Hayden. She loves photography, surfi ng, the RMS Titanic, her two dogs, three cats, six horses, two axolotls and frogs. And her relationship with God. And the television series House. “I’m not even a medical girlie!” she insists. It’s just that, when her own life feels too unhinged, it’s fun to “tune into someone else’s drama”. Having said that, her biggest current commitments are her creative projects – she’s directing a couple of fi lms and TV shows, and working on more books – and looking after her animals. Hayden admits she’s still fi guring out “how to be famous” while retaining her “normal life” – how to balance her mental health and her career while learning when to say, ‘No.’ “I used to just say, ‘Yes’ to everything, because I was like, One day people won’t want me anymore. You know, make hay while the sun shines. I’ve learned that I’m going to burn out a whole lot faster if I just keep saying ‘Yes’ to things I’m not even enjoying. “My whole thing is preaching self-love and kindness and looking after yourself, but I wasn’t giving it to myself,” she explains. “Now I only say, ‘Yes’ to things that genuinely make me happy.” Courtesy of The Big Issue Australia / INSP.ngo Martha Wainwright on “Love Will Be Reborn” and “Stories I Might Regret Telling You” Lauded singer-songwriter Martha Wainwright exorcises family demons on her new album and in her memoir – but only the book has been used against her in court. By Heidi Maier Martha Wainwright has forged her musical career with urbane folk rock that revels in – and reveals – the unsaid and the uncomfortable. She has often traced the scars left from a tumultuous childhood in a family of music luminaries, including a biting critique of her famous father’s self-absorption. The Wainwright-McGarrigle clan has an illustrious history of wry, bracingly honest music about the ups and downs of love and life. There’s Martha’s mother, the folk artist Kate McGarrigle; her father, the esteemed songwriter Loudon Wainwright III; and her brother, singer-composer Rufus Wainwright. Rufus famously addresses their father in ‘Dinner at Eight’, and Martha sings coruscatingly about him in ‘Bloody Mother Fucking Asshole’. A veritable lifetime’s worth of changes have happened for 48-year-old Wainwright in recent years. She divorced Brad Albetta, her longtime bassist and husband of 10 years, and is still heavily grieving the death of her mother. She has bought and is running Ursa, a live music venue and coffee shop in Montreal, and raising her sons, Arcangelo and Francis. Out of these ruptures emerged her 2021 album Love Will Be Reborn, which she’s touring across the country this month. It’s her fi rst trip here in seven years. Written entirely by Wainwright and produced by the renowned French-Canadian Pierre Marchand, Love Will Be Reborn puts her divorce under a microscope, through excoriating lyrics and Herculean, harrowing vocal delivery. “I was separated in the fall of 2016, which was the year of the American election that Trump won,” says Wainwright over the phone from her home in Quebec. “I defi nitely felt like Hillary Clinton. In that song [‘Body and Soul’], I really own up to the truth and reality in the context of going through those intense moments in a really hellish divorce. I have defi nitely been subjected to a certain amount of conservatism by the court system, pegged as some lounge act singer because I work at night and it’s not conducive in a conservative world to what a ‘good mother’ is supposed to be.” In 2022, Wainwright published Stories I Might Regret Telling You – a candid, beautifully written memoir that is as vivacious and unselfconscious as its creator. While it’s one thing to allude to situations in song, it’s another entirely to write them all down for posterity. “An early draft of this book was used against me in court during my divorce proceedings,” she laughs heartily. “I worked on it in fi ts and spurts over seven years. Writing it was really, really hard. I didn’t have the same things to lean on as I do when I am writing music. The book ended up being a lot about family dynamics – my own, obviously – but I think there’s probably a lot that people recognise in there about their own families too.” In the book, Wainwright tackles the breakdown of her marriage and her journey to motherhood, as well as her own against-all-odds entry into the world. When she was a teenager, Wainwright’s father revealed that he hadn’t wanted a second child and had heavily pressured her mother to have an abortion – which very nearly happened. The moment was echoed later, when the singer found herself in a similar position to her mother 30 years on. For Wainwright, looking back on the incident provided a chance to break a taboo by sharing her own experience of abortion. “Women don’t talk about abortion stories,” she says. “There’s so much shadow and stigma around it. They don’t talk about it because it’s painful and it’s disturbing. But it’s also important to make sure that it’s available, because it’s necessary. The guilt around it can be very strong, but it’s important to understand that other people have gone through these things and it’s okay to say it out loud sometimes.” Still, for all the despairing junctures in Wainwright’s eventful life, there has always been a rebound. And while she has taken more than her fair share of hard knocks, she’s emerged on the other side with a memoir and songbook that offer a tale of survival, against the odds. “I kind of say what’s on my mind. I live it and I say it. I do that in my songs and I did it with the book,” she says. “I do feel like a different person since getting divorced, since losing my mum, since having kids. I feel like I’ve had a few rebirths, to be honest. I really do feel like a different person since the last time I was in Australia.” Courtesy of The Big Issue Australia / INSP.ngo Page 15
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