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APain Aksnes is not naïve about his mission to become a musician and an activist. Ten years ago, this was the kind of cool multi-hyphenate job description in everyone’s Instagram bio. Now, not so much. current cultural moment She describes this as a kind of collective decline: a time when public political expression no longer seems fashionable, even questionable.
“People are more afraid of workers They’re more afraid of the world dying,” she says, in what sounds like genuine surprise. “Feels more scared.” worker Than war. Isn’t it interesting?” She pauses and wrinkles her nose, but this is no rhetorical question – Aurora is nothing if not curious.
She says this intersection of activism and music is made more complicated by who is speaking — see how people reacted to Bob Waylon’s talk calls for an end to Israeli army. When an unnaturally young white woman talks about Palestine, but not about a black man, most people take it for granted.
“It’s really sad how afraid people are to get in touch with someone who speaking against Great powers of the world. “It made us very vulnerable,” says Arora. “But with Bob Waylon, I was very surprised by how the industry responded and how people responded. Two very different things.” Following the duo’s Glastonbury performance, when frontman Bobby Waylon chanted “Death to the IDF” (Israel Defense Forces), they were dropped by their agent, and their US tour was canceled after their visas were cancelled. A large portion of the general public supported them, as well as artists such as Emile and the Sniffers, Fontaines DC and Massive Attack.
sitting in Independent In the office podcast studio, the 29-year-old Norwegian is pale, glowing and a little ethereal, like a snow fairy. There’s a trace of Björk’s eccentricity in there, that same charge of unpredictability, that same primal pop sensibility that you get from Florence Welch. Early career Grimes’ unique inventiveness is reflected not only in his livewire observations of the aurora but also in his music.
In songs including his most popular folk song, “Runaway”, his voice seems to emerge from the mist. Over the past few years, he has captured the attention of Gen Z for his viral small-screen meditations on the strangeness of life, death, and society. But increasingly, music and moral agency are inseparable for him.
To remain silent, as a person who is actually listened to – i.e. a musician with a public platform – is unimaginable. “Avoid using your voice just because it’s uncomfortable? That’s very sad to me, because you’re avoiding a very important part of yourself and what makes you human.”
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Aurora is in London to help promote her intimate charity show at the beautiful Union Chapel on December 10 to raise funds for War Child, an organization that helps children whose lives have been destroyed by war and genocide, before the bitter cold. He has divided the show into two parts: Dusk, which will explore activism, humanity and the power of people, and Dawn, which will fill viewers with feelings of hope and renewal. “I really admire organizations like War Child, which fight the tendency to retreat into your bubble and relax,” she says.
In his mind, numbness is the enemy. “There’s so much information out there that we forget to think about what we’re looking at,” she says softly. Social media – “designed to make people more stupid, more numb” – is undoubtedly the main culprit. “When you see footage of real wars happening right now, real people burning and dying, between makeup tutorials – ‘this is how you make pecan pie’, ‘this is how’ I Do ‘blah blah’ – and when it’s put like that? Really sad, inhumane things that you can’t even understand what you’re looking at, mixed with completely brain-dead things… Imagine how this numbs our brain to this war, or these inhumane things.
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On stage, Arora hinted to fans that she has a neurodivergent brain, but she has not previously spoken about how it affects her life as a musician. “With age and time, I’ve gotten a little better at managing being neurodivergent, and trying not to completely overwhelm myself until there’s a comeback. It’s not said so much about: neurodivergence and artistry – how much they mean to each other, but not that much,” she explains. “The opposite of what you want and need from this world is everything that comes as a ripple effect from you making your music.”
For example, what the autism and ADHD communities call “executive functions” – the mental skills that help plan, organize, and manage tasks – may be difficult for him. “It can be really hard when it’s not these things that are burning in my chest, where I can go into hyperfocused mode and forget that I have a body,” she says. “When I perform, it’s very easy to forget that I’m tired or sick; it just goes away, which is great. But with things that are more of the mind rather than the heart, it can be really hard on a day-to-day basis.”
She gets overstimulated by people very quickly, which is not ideal, considering that being an artist means she is constantly surrounded by people. “I don’t like the relationship that happens in my mind [where] Individuals sometimes become one big unit or like a wall. However, she prefers meeting other people, as her neurodivergence means she is particularly open to strangers. “It’s like a superpower, but if it’s too much all the time, that superpower disappears. It makes me sad, because [then] “I’m missing out on a lot of nice meetings with people.”
Artists spend a lot of time in liminal spaces, an observation made by pop star Charli XCX in a recent Substack newsletter. They’re always on the way somewhere: in airport lounges, on tour buses, in cool warehouses before photoshoots. “I’m quite good at letting all the desires of this life create good things inside me,” Aurora says candidly. “Like, if I travel a lot, I use that time to read a book or draw. I make it relaxing. When I feel like time is just wasting away, waiting to get somewhere or anything, I go into my own mind and I really like that. And I find it very easy.”
Not surprisingly, Aurora’s solution to our activism fatigue is a return to the physical world – to the stubborn analog task of gathering. “When people get together in the same room for a purpose, it’s so pure,” she explains. “You can see the crowd. You can feel the numbers. You can sense it.” Data become real only when they are tangible. “One in five children in our world is affected by war or conflict, which impacts their desire to grow up, to create something with their talents, to be human beings, and to explore and play,” she says.
As a statistic, it certainly sounds horrifying, but cut out the face of every fifth child in your school yearbook and it will touch your heart. “This is a good rehearsal to do, to pull statistics that are hard to realize,” she tells me, crossing her arms over her chest, “to do something that can turn the numbers into reality.” And it can go the other way too, to help people understand positive change. War Child has helped 180,000 children in Palestine. “That’s the size of my entire city,” says Arora. “That’s a lot of lives.”
For all its global concerns, Arora remains entirely local. She still lives in Bergen, Norway, a city where there are mountains for walls and winters can stretch for eight months. As a child, she didn’t listen to much music – she’s still not sure she liked it – but at home she listened to artists like Leonard Cohen, Enya and Nina Simone. Cohen taught her that feminine softness could be a form of political strength. Simone taught him that good artists reflect the times in which they live. Enya is just Enya (she was obviously a huge influence on Aurora). “If you do it right, your voice lasts forever,” says Arora. “And it’s a shame if that voice only talks about useless nonsense.” She smiles, pleased with herself. “But we also want stupid shit. I like that too.”
Aurora is flying home tonight. It is snowing in Bergen; She can’t wait. She’ll be hanging out at her new broken piano, an inexpensive purchase she’s excited about because it sounds “nautical.” In her home studio, she will continue to nurture a constant desire to create something completely shocking and new: “It’s very clear that, as humans, we always react to either what the generation before us did or what we used to do. I’m doing the same: just following a predetermined pattern of my own, where I’m currently reacting to myself first.”
Between now and when she returns to London for the War Child shows in December, fans will see the beginning of this different phase in her career. “I’m excited to see what it becomes,” she says, then a slight smile. “Life can still seem unpredictable.”
The only way to see the winter show of the aurora is to enter prize drawIn which fans can win a pair of VIP tickets. The more times they enter, the better their chances of winning.
The prize draw for tickets closes at 11.59pm on Sunday 30th November, but you can still use the draw page to donate to War Child.