Shara Worden of My brightest diamond

Interview from BOMB MAGAZINE
I have a confession to make. The first time I hung out with Shara Worden of My Brightest Diamond about two years ago, I was really only there because my brother said we would be flying kites. I figured I could set aside my antisocial tendencies for a day of harnessing the sky. I lucked out: I got to fly a kite, and I now have had the honor of knowing and working and singing and stomping with Shara.

In a world that seems hell-bent on repetition, My Brightest Diamond challenges the cyclical parameters of self containment, continually experimenting with new ways of addressing song structure, instrumentation, and performance. The MBD trapeze swings multi-dimensionally between operatic lungs, guttural guitar chugging, sweeping strings, dark-hearted moans, plucky pigeons dancing, and rock ‘n’ roll sweat on the tom-tom of destiny. Amidst all of these seemingly disparate elements, there is a natural cohesion. What other folks have attempted to force together with varying results, MBD combines effortlessly; hammering sparks and smelting hearts in the magnetic fires of supernatural metallurgy.

If it weren’t already obvious, I think MBD is all kinds of great. So, when it was suggested that I spend some time talking to Shara about what MBD has been up to, I didn’t ask, “Will there be kites?” I just said, “Yes!”


Shara Worden I brought you a present. It’s a thank-you for doing the artwork and the art directing for the video of “From the Top of the World.” (It’s a snow globe with the city of Düsseldorf in the background. Blue, sparkling jack-shapes float inside it.)

Tim Fite Are those people or jacks? It’s from Düsseldorf?

SW Yeah, it’s from Düsseldorf.

TF There are people instead of snow. They look like jacks, kind of flying around.

SW A flying jacks snow globe for a snowy day.

TF I’ll put it on the mantle right now.

SW Okay.

TF I’m going to turn on the water for tea. How’s everything going?

SW It’s going well. We just got back from a three-month tour. We were in Europe for five weeks, and then the US for almost two months.

TF Living with your friends in transit . . . touring is like being in a circus. (drum sound, laughter)

SW It is like being in a circus; you pack up your tent and go to the next town every night. On this tour we played a lot of turn-of-the-century theaters that have been renovated and converted into movie theaters. They’re outside of larger towns, and are being bought by entrepreneurs with a vision for these smaller communities. My favorite one was in Paonia, Colorado, this bizarre little one-horse town. They made us an organic meal, the sound was really great, people came to the show, and there were little kids break-dancing. Descendants of Aspen had settled in this town—sort of fairy/hippie people. After the show the entire town ended up at Lady Linda’s, kind of a mixture between a bar and a bistro and a 1920s brothel. (laughter) Passing around the whiskey. A whole bunch of us girls rummaged through the back closet looking through antique clothes and bizarre Betty Boop dolls. We ended up in feather boas and antique lingerie.

TF Like playing dress-up, but with an entire town. What was it called? Peyotia?

SW Paonia. Apparently it’s not a real word; when they made the town they got a little confused about peyote and peonies and ended up with Paonia.

TF Back to those old, magical theaters . . . when you play a show, do you feel you have to adapt your costume to the costume of the venue?

SW For this tour, the costuming was a black-and-white-striped mix of punk; Pierrot; the melancholy character in the Commedia Dell’Arte, and a magic show. The vibe of each performance space emphasizes the clothes in a particular way. In an old theater the costumes seem more cabaret-like. In a punk club it feels like we’re coming at it from a hard-core angle—less clownish and circus-influenced. Once, however, a guy came up to me after a show and said that we looked like flight attendants and that he kept expecting us to serve him coffee.

TF You toe a line between eerie mystery in your shows and a classic, fun-loving, good time. I could see how a club could bring out the good time a little bit more. When you get into the seedier places it’s more deep, dark cabaret.

SW Sometimes when you’re playing the fancy places, you can’t stomp on the floor without feeling like you’re making a scene. I find that you physically don’t want to make as much noise, so you’re a little less free with your body than in a punk club, but there it’s not your ideal audio experience.

TF Did you ever play in a church?

SW Yes, we did.

TF Did it feel weird?

SW Yeah. I think for me, because my dad was a music pastor and I grew up playing in church, I have a couple different reactions to it. If it’s a modern church I get really twitchy because it brings up the past and who I was as an awkward young person in that environment. But if I’m in an old church, I feel much more relaxed. Nice wood is everywhere, and there’s something more formal about it. I like to be able to work with that sense of confusion, where the audience comes in and they’re like, “Should we not swear?” (The kettle whistles) It’s the tea!

TF Do you curse in church?

SW I don’t really think of church as a building.

TF What is it if not a building?

SW It’s a larger idea than a building. Most people, myself included, have been conditioned to think of faith as related to an architectural structure. I don’t think that’s very useful.

TF If you could choose absolutely any existing setting in which to play your show, what would that place be?

SW There’s a particular old theater in Brooklyn: the BAM Harvey Theater. It feels like it’s falling apart; it’s a very old room, so it has that kind of classic, Fabergé egg feeling when you go inside. When you walk up to the balcony you’re not quite sure if you’re going to fall over or whether your seat is actually going to hold you. So there’s something kind of unstable about it. It feels like a barn but has a more theatrical feeling as well. That seems perfect.

TF I’ve always thought that you’re more likely to encounter a portal to a completely other plane through a hole in a stage. Stages have more holes than anywhere else. You go to a graveyard and they dig holes everywhere; there are manholes all over the city—but they’re purposeful. On stages they’re never on purpose. I would say at least one out of five stages I go on has some kind of hole.

SW Plus, stages have reverberations in them. With a cello, or any kind of wooden instrument, the wood picks up the vibrations, it resonates with the player’s body in a different way. You can hear how the sound is an echo of the person who owned the cello before you, and then over time the cello begins to adapt to the new person’s way of playing. I think that stages are that way, too; there are vibrations of all these different people who have put sound into the place, and there are ghosts in the floor.

TF Along the same lines, I’ve always wanted to sleep on a waterbed. Not every night, but once. I’m wondering if somebody could make a water stage; rubber on top and water inside. I guess this brings us back to circuses?

SW There’s this show, La Veillée des Abysses by James Thiérrée who is a . . . I don’t know what to call him; he’s kind of mix between a dancer, a comedian, a magician, and a circus performer, and he happens to be the grandson of Charlie Chaplin. But there is one scene from his show that I’ve been obsessed with on YouTube where he’s got huge, very, very long pieces of fabric, and offstage there’s a really big fan, and you see him “swimming.” There’s someone that he lays on, but the person is underneath the fabric so you can’t tell what’s actually going on. And he’s swimming over this blowing fabric that’s very water-like.

TF So he has a water stage.

SW Yes. There’s something about water and flying and wind—that kind of lightness—and also about water that bypasses something in our consciousness. We used shadow puppets recently during the last song in the set. People’s reaction to seeing the shadow of a boat and blue water through a scrim was . . . it caused an immediate childlike response in them.

TF How do you feel about breaking the rules of rock ‘n’ roll and encouraging childish sentiments instead of neo-childish sentiments? I think, “We are the new children, we are young adults, we’re assholes,” is the attitude that’s encouraged at a lot of rock shows; it’s a very self-conscious, performatively edgy way of behaving. Are you encouraging something like an antidote to rock ‘n’ roll cliché?

SW I relate to the angst of rock. Especially when I was younger, I had so much frustration and not very many ways to express anger. Going to rock shows was really helpful because I could just punch the air and be around that kind of energy. In a way you could say that it’s expressing something negative, but that season in my life was about having a place to exercise these frustrations. So, I went to see Dinosaur Jr., Catherine Wheel, Rubberbullet. Now there’s a bit of that punk spirit in me left, but for me beauty is the antidote to despair, and so is finding hope through stories. Stories can bypass our constant analyzing; our analytical nature is suddenly usurped when a puppet shows up on stage and transports people back to when they were six years old. There’s something lovely and freeing about that. I hope people can access the same thing through music, and they do, but I find that the puppet theatrics allow people to jump into this other world—they experience emotions they usually don’t allow themselves to feel. That’s what puppets can do for me, anyway.

rest of article/interview here