Emilie Autumn Wants you to Fight like a Girl
"When you come to this show, it’s a place of complete acceptance."
"When you come to this show, it’s a place of complete acceptance… despite all the dark things that inspired all of this, even the dark places in my mind where this art came from, it ended up being this very joyful and celebratory experience about unity."
This interview was a long time in the making. Originally I was going to meet Emilie in Utrecht (the Netherlands) but due to someone’s untimely death (that of the guy who jumped in front of a train and paralyzed the transportation system) I didn’t make it in time. Although we were given the option of simply doing the interview over Skype or by phone, I offered to go to Brussels (Belgium) and do it in person. While it is true that I’m far from being a “true plague rat” (as Emilie’s fans call themselves) at least in the sense that I don’t know all the songs by heart or that I don’t wear costumes, I find Emilie both very talented and interesting. The dichotomy between the classically-trained violinist on one side, and the fairy/goth/mad/burlesque musician and performer on the other, is something that had always captured my attention, and I couldn’t wait to talk more about it. Finally, there was also the fact that Emilie is Bipolar, a characteristic that I also share, which made the whole idea of an interview even more attractive. Although we were scheduled at 3:30, Emilie was still doing another interview with a couple of goth (I’m sorry if I get the different sub-cultures wrong) girls who were from a magazine about cupcakes. I know that this seems a bit bizarre but Emilie is an avid cook, she likes cupcakes (although who doesn’t?) and since a big part of her imagery revolves around tea time… what goes better with tea than pastries?
Then it’s just Emilie and us. As soon as she realizes that I’m the guy who couldn’t make it before because of that guy’s suicide, she immediately asks to hug me and thanks me for meeting her there. As we sit down I casually mention that I read this on her twitter:
As I see that she’ll elaborate on the answer, I quickly turn on the camera and commence the adventure... At 4 o’Clock.
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