Meet The Joy List's Jillian Richardson

Jillian Richardson is "on a mission to make the world less lonely" with The Joy List. Every Monday morning for two and a half years now, she has sent out the curated list of New York City-based events to her over 10,000 subscribers–and she plans to expand The Joy List to other cities soon. 

And she's writing a book! Unlonely Planet comes out in July.

So, yes, Jillian is busy, but she thankfully set aside some time for The Lonely Hour. Read our conversation below. 

Julia: How did The Joy List come to be? 

Jillian: The newsletter was born of my own experience with loneliness when I moved to New York City three years ago. 

I purposefully graduated from college early because I was just so excited to move to the city and start my life as a comedy writer. I met with agents and I was on an indie improv team–it was happening!–but I noticed that successful comics did not seem like happy people. Their feelings of self-worth tended to be tied to other people's approval of them, and there was this depressive personality type: "We don't feel totally comfortable being vulnerable with each other, so we'll just tell a bunch of jokes, making fun of each other and making fun of ourselves." I still default to that if I'm uncomfortable, but I didn't want to participate in a community where that was the norm. 

Julia: So what about the loneliness piece?  

Jillian: My first night here, I was so excited: "I moved to New York City! I'm an adult! I'm going to do so many cool things!" My one friend who lived here was going to take me out. As I got ready, I texted him, and he wasn't replying. After a while, I just deflated. I felt helpless.

Julia: So, there was a plan to hang out and he just flaked? 

Jillian: Yeah.

Julia: Are people flakier these days, in your experience? 

Jillian: Good question. I can offer that I think I became so drawn to group events because if I planned on going with a friend and they couldn't make it in the end, I was still going to be surrounded by people.

Julia: I was raised to respond to invites promptly and to commit to my answer. There's something about the "interested" button on Facebook event invites that bothers me, thusly. It's a non-answer! 

Jillian: As an event organizer, the "maybe" function is the worst thing ever.

Julia: I wonder if it's degrading good etiquette.

Jillian: Hearing you say that, it reminds me: A lot of my friends and I have been discussing boundaries recently. I'm only just learning how to set clear boundaries with my time, understanding how I want to spend it and when it's okay to tell people "no." But the "maybe" function ties into that discomfort. Saying "no" is kind of like rejecting somebody, so a "maybe" option inflicts less pain. 

Julia: I got us off track. Let's go back to that first night: What happened in the end? Did you go out?

Jillian: I just stayed at home. And I cried, actually. It was a sad night, and I felt deeply alone. Then, over time, it struck me: I'm a really outgoing person, and it's really easy for me to go to events by myself and talk to new people, but I still felt this sense of disconnection. I had this moment: "If I got sick, or if I was going through something really traumatic, or if something was happening to a family member, there is really no one in my life who I would be comfortable talking to about that. Do I really have real friends?"

Julia: So how did that lead to The Joy List? 

Jillian: I became obsessed with finding events, but, to be honest, I wasn't going to the right spaces at first. Then I went to Camp Grounded, a digital detox summer camp for adults. In three days, I formed deeper friendships with people than I had in my six months in New York City.

Julia: What was it about Camp Grounded that fostered those friendships?

Jillian: They had rules in place that made it easier to have what I would call a quality connection with someone. The rules were: (1) no technology, including clocks, (2) no work talk, (3) no age talk, and (4) no substances. So I didn't know what anyone's job or age was, I was forced to be in the moment, and it was a completely sober weekend.

Julia: What wasn't working at those other events, the ones you attended before Camp Grounded? 

Jillian: It's the standard default for most people to go to loud spaces and, shouting over the music, try to talk in a mind-altered state. Bars were not satisfying to me. The conversations had there were not satisfying to me. 

You know, something has been lost, where the art of conversation is concerned. I think people feel like they need permission to ask something that's deeper than the standard, "What do you do?" People think it's weird to ask "What's something you're excited about right now?" 

Julia: What do you attribute that loss to? 

Jillian: We used to have to rely on each other more. We had to be a part of a community to survive. It's so easy to lead individualistic lives now. We go to work, we go to the gym by ourselves, we go home, and we repeat. And that self-reliance is glorified, which is scary to me.

Julia: What's an example of another deeper question you wish people were asking each other at social gatherings?

Jillian: I spoke at Startup Grind last week about why companies should use traditional advertising less and create spaces for connection more. At the end of my talk, I asked everyone in the room to close their eyes. Then I said, "Think about someone who really loves you. Think about how that person would describe you to somebody else. How would your partner describe you? How would your mom describe you? Then, turn to someone who you don't know and introduce yourself from the perspective of that person." The auditorium exploded in conversation. The stage manager said he has been working that conference for six years and had never seen anything like it. 

Julia: What's your answer to your own question? How would you introduce yourself?

Jillian: I would introduce myself from the perspective of my friend Duncan. He would say, "Jillian is good at finding something that she's afraid of and then tackling it." One of his favorite things about me is that I had a paralyzing fear of dancing up until a year ago, and I just decided that I was going to keep going to dance parties until I could move on the dance floor. So I just kept going until I felt more comfortable. 

Julia: Brave! So how does all of this play into The Joy List? 

Jillian: I promote events that have facilitated moments of connection. Our mission is to reduce loneliness in New York City, and eventually the world. 

I also host an event called The Joy List Social once a month. The idea is to come by yourself and leave with a new friend. Once you've checked in, a volunteer takes you into the space and introduces you to someone. So, immediately, boom! Permission to talk to somebody. You're both given a prompt, so that you can ask anyone else that same question. Last time, it was simple: "What's something that brought you joy this week?"

Julia: What does the future look like for The Loy List?

Jillian: One goal is to launch The Joy List newsletter and event series in a bunch of cities. People are hungry for deeper connection everywhere, but they don't know where to go for it! That's what The Joy List is for. Another goal is to share a collection of healing resources in each city. Trauma centers, sliding scale therapists, hotlines, reiki practitioners–I want to dig deeper into mental health. 

Julia: And your book!

Jillian: Yes! Unlonely Planet is made up of three parts. Part one explains how we got so lonely. Part two shows certain secular spaces that do a great job of creating belonging. As participation in organized religion is going down, loneliness is going up. A lot of people are missing what religion provided: that sense of community and connection and accountability to each other. We're in this weird stage of trying to figure out what new spaces to create, but some people are doing that well. Then, part three explores why we, as a society, don't value community builders very much; how to prevent organizer burnout; and why the reader should, despite all of that, be a space-maker themselves. We desperately need them!

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Read Study Hall's Interview with Host Julia Bainbridge

Study Hall interviewed me about this show, and while you have to subscribe to get SH's content, the very cool editors there granted The Lonely Hour permission to share the transcript.

Study Hall, by the way, is a weekly report on the media industry. You can sign up for the newsletter here. Its community Listserv also has job listings and pitch calls, and the Network is a platform with editor databases, pitch guides, and chat rooms. Writers, do sign up.

We hope you enjoy my conversation with Study Hall writer Allegra Hobbs below. It’s all about the loneliness of being a writer, antidotes to loneliness, the upsides of solitude, and what I’ve learned from the guests of The Lonely Hour.

Study Hall: Can you give a brief recounting of what inspired you to start The Lonely Hour podcast? Why was this particular facet of the human experience the one you felt compelled to explore?

Julia Bainbridge: When I launched The Lonely Hour, I was a freelance writer for the first time in my life; I had afforded myself the space to come up with big, perhaps unconventional ideas and turn them into something. This was two years ago, when I was 33, living in New York, and looking for partnership and not finding it. So many of my friends were dealing with the same thing. And the video game-ification of dating made modern romance seem pretty bleak. Was I going to be alone forever, I wondered? That combined with some other thoughts had been brewing for a bit: I read reports detailing our society’s increasing sense of social isolation; I observed the ways in which technology is distancing us from one another; I saw more and more people freelancing or otherwise working alone; I learned that more people are living alone (and aging alone) than ever before. I wanted to explore what all of that looked like.

The topic is gaining traction because there’s talk in the press about a loneliness “epidemic.” I don’t think that language is helpful, and it might not even be accurate: The data on loneliness is complicated because there are so many different ways of measuring it. Sociologist Eric Klinenberg wrote a smart op-ed in the New York Times, ending with the statement "I don’t believe we have a loneliness epidemic. But millions of people are suffering from social disconnection." I was grateful for his skepticism and his platform.

SH: Do you find writing to be an especially lonely profession?

JB: It certainly has been described as such, so much so that I dedicated an episode of season one to that particular topic. Ernest Hemingway, for example, said at his Nobel Banquet speech in 1954, “Writing, at its best, is a lonely life.”

It’s the same with any kind of creative endeavor: It takes an enormous amount of work done quietly and in one’s own head. In some papers that were, I believe, found after her death, the artist Louise Bourgeois wrote to a mentee: "After the tremendous effort you put in here, solitude, even prolonged solitude, can only be of very great benefit. Your work may well be more arduous than it was in the studio, but it will also be more personal." And a few months later, she reiterated: "Solitude, a rest from responsibilities, and peace of mind, will do you more good than the atmosphere of the studio and the conversations which, generally speaking, are a waste of time."

Loneliness, though, has to do with the perception, which I know we'll get into later in this discussion. There’s no doubt that writing requires significant alone time, but William Faulkner, for example, said "writing is a solitary job—that is, nobody can help you with it, but there's nothing lonely about it. I have always been too busy, too immersed in what I was doing, either mad at it or laughing at it to have time to wonder whether I was lonely or not lonely. It's simply solitary."

I do wonder if there’s something about being a writer—specifically a journalist—today, what with the level of accessibility readers have to them on Twitter. As New York Times White House correspondent Maggie Haberman put it, Twitter has become “an anger video game for many users.” Haberman wrote a piece explaining why she’s stepping away from Twitter for a while, revealing that the constant defending of her reporting against criticisms that are no longer in good faith has sent her anxiety in overdrive. It's true that Twitter is, as she wrote, "a place where people who are understandably upset about any number of things go to feed their anger," and as a prominent reporter, she's been a target. Whether or not you’re a fan of of hers, I don’t think you can deny how alone she must have felt in all of this. This idea isn’t polished yet; I’m just kind of thinking aloud, here...

SH: I'm wondering if you've found loneliness to be more a circumstance or a mental state, if that makes sense—I can't help but think of the Lonely Hour episode about the hermit, who chose to be alone for 27 years and said he never once experienced loneliness. Likewise there are people who have visibly busy social lives who would describe themselves as fundamentally lonely.

JB: Oh, thanks for listening to that episode! Christopher Knight’s story is wild, right? Michael Finkel did such a great job of communicating it.

And yes, loneliness has to do with perception. John T. Cacioppo, the director of the Center for Cognitive Neuroscience at the University of Chicago, who unfortunately passed away last year, had been studying the effects and causes of loneliness for over two decades. According to him, “...loneliness refers to the perception that one’s social relationships are inadequate in light of one’s preferences for social involvement." Introverts in his studies, for example, show none of the health risk factors that married persons with perceived isolation showed.

SH: When you talk to people who were very lonely and have since emerged at least in part from that loneliness, what do they have in common, if anything?

JB: I don't purport to be an expert of this topic, just a shepherd of the conversation, but what I've learned based on The Lonely Hour listener feedback is that talking about loneliness, or hearing others talk about loneliness, makes people feel less lonely. Someone recently wrote to me that "it is intensely comforting to know that I’m not alone in my loneliness."

Otherwise, small and consistent acts help, right? If your friend says "I'm lonely," then make a plan with him or her. Be kind if that meeting is awkward, because she or he may feel lonely even in your company, but know that it's still helping. If it's you who is feeling lonely, force yourself to reach out to a friend and ask to meet for coffee. Or sign up for a yoga class, just to be around other people (and the endorphins won't hurt your mood). And be kind to yourself if you're a little awkward during either of those activities!

Earlier I said I was weary of the “epidemic” language, but that doesn’t mean I don’t see that a discussion about all of this is important, perhaps now more than ever. We all work longer hours than we used to, and we're never disconnected from work because of our new appendages: smartphones. So I think some changes can be made within the professional world.

I'm a big fan of Vivek Murthy. He was the U.S. surgeon from 2014 through 2017, and since then, he’s been focusing on improving the feeling of connectivity in the workplace. It's where we spend most of our time, and he believes a lot can be done to strengthen relationships there, ultimately improving productivity. It's not just about office happy hours, it's about creating opportunities for colleagues to learn about each other at a deeper personal level. At the office of the surgeon general, for example, Murthy gives one individual the floor to tell his or her own story for five minutes at every weekly staff meeting.

That’s just one example; I’d love to see what Murthy comes up with as he studies this further.

SH: Do you think there are benefits to loneliness? Maybe a better way to phrase this would be—what can loneliness teach us?

JB: Sure. Like anything dark in life, it can help you appreciate the light, right?

I asked this question of my listeners, and many felt that loneliness can teach self-confidence, resilience, and even gratitude. “The absence of loneliness isn't togetherness; it's being fully satisfied and without want,” one of them wrote. “We wouldn't appreciate or know what that feels like without loneliness. So I think we can rejoice when we feel loneliness because that means we are human, can related to others, and have the propensity to yearn.” That was very zen of her! Another listener said, "It has taught me self-motivation. Without experiencing loneliness, I wouldn't push myself to get out and explore half of what I do. As an only child growing up, and now as a single adult, I've learned to use loneliness as a gauge to identify my emotional needs. Not always, but most of the time when I feel lonely, I ask, 'What is it that I need? Exercise, socializing, rest?' From that perspective, [loneliness] can [help me] live healthier.”

Here’s another idea that might interest you: Going back to Cacioppo, he believed that loneliness, which he also calls “social pain,” is a kind of alarm signal. It’s nature’s way of telling us to rejoin the group, lest we compromise our health (which Cacioppo shows is linked to feeling part of a society). So, in a way, the stigma has value. Our discomfort with solitary life is a survival instinct.

SH: It's been said that in this particular moment in history we are lonelier than ever before—do you think this is the case? If so, why?

JB: It's hard for me to say definitely whether it's the case or not. According to some reports, the rates of loneliness have doubled since the 1980s. (There have also been reports of those reports having been based on faulty data, though.) If the reports are correct, then I could make some educated guesses about why. The biggest reason: The Internet.

Here's the formula, as I understand it: While, yes, the Internet can alleviate loneliness—social connectivity with a click!—that's only a temporary form of self-soothing. Studies show that most people feel the connections made online are less genuine than those made in person. And if we lean on virtual chats and the like too much, disconnecting from the world more and more, the Internet can stunt our "real" relationships. (Sydney Engelberg, a psychology professor in Israel, had a lot to say about this in season one of The Lonely Hour, on the episode about social media.)

Also, loneliness is contagious. So if you've got more people feeling lonely because of the shortcomings of but reliance on the Internet, you've got the people they're directly connected to, people who weren't already lonely, becoming lonelier. "There is this cascade of loneliness that causes a disintegration of the social network," said one social scientist at Harvard Medical School.

SH: How do you personally combat feelings of loneliness? And what advice would you give to others seeking to combat it?

JB: I’m all about acceptance. My show aims to demonstrate how much loneliness exists in all of us; it's part of the mixed bag of emotions involved in the human experience. So I guess you could say I don’t want to keep loneliness in the "problem" box.

Now, I don't focus much on the chronically lonely: poor or displaced people whose lives are unstable to the point that they can't get adequate social or medical support. That's a whole other thing, and should be combatted, because the effects of prolonged isolation are serious. Not only are there mental and emotional consequences (depression, anxiety), but it's also been linked to greater risk of heart disease and reduction of lifespan. And the stigma can make those experiencing debilitating loneliness reluctant to ask for help.

What I’m doing, though, is having conversations about lonely or solitary periods or moments in the lives of people. Hopefully, over time, those conversations will help neutralize the taboo around it all. And maybe that will soften the blow of the feeling, which is an inevitable one.

Wet Front Woman Kelly Zutrau: "I take loneliness with me everywhere"

Today, Brooklyn-based band Wet heads on tour for its new album, Still Run. "It's about me trying to be a more authentic version of myself and what losses came about in the process," says front woman Kelly Zutrau. Our host Julia Bainbridge sat down with Zutrau to discuss that process, her work, and, of course, loneliness. Read the interview below. 

You're about to go on tour. What is life like on the road? 
It's a disorienting lifestyle, being on a stage and doing this really intense thing, then breaking down [the set] and getting back in the car. It's just like, "Where am I? What time is it? Where are the people I love in the world?"

What does the title of the new album, Still Run, mean? 
It's the same title as one of the songs, which is about loving someone but realizing the relationship is dysfunctional, and choosing to leave it even though that's the harder thing to do. It started out being about a romantic relationship, but it extended to address a lot of the relationships in my life. As I wrote it, I was getting older and taking stock of my life, doing inventory... I think this all comes down to my relationship with my mom, really.

[Laughs] Doesn't it always?
[Laughs] Yes. We're very co-dependent, me and my mom. She's a single mom, and we were running around for the first three years of my life, couch surfing, staying with her friends...all of our stuff was in the back of her car. So I clung very tightly to my mom. She was really smart and powerful, but also so young, and she had no education, no money, no man, nothing. It was just me and her [before my sisters came along]. So I formed into this sort of malleable person, who thought that to survive, I just need to be liked and likable.

I'm just starting to realize that I've formed a lot of these important relationships in my life the same way. I've thought that the way I'm going to get what I want is by being liked and making decisions that I think will make them happy. But I got to this point where I wasn't happy with the music. I thought, "I'm not making the art I want to make. This is my work. These are my words. This is primarily my project and I feel disempowered by everyone around me." It wasn't their fault. It was a dynamic that had been established, and I had to break out of it. So I cut people out for a little while to get in touch with what I wanted. 

At times, that process felt overly brutal, and I wasn't not sure if it is necessary. I'm still not. But I know that it's important to make boundaries. No one taught me how to do that, so I'm trying to teach myself. It's not always graceful! 

Are there any other songs on the album that stand out to you?
"Lately." The chorus is, "What have you done for me lately?" I didn't mean it to come off as sassy as it sounds, but it feels like an important question to ask. "What are we doing for each other? Is this relationship helping us grow and live, or is it because we're comfortable or scared?"

What's your writing process like? 
For this album, I wrote a lot on tour, but there's definitely always a period when I need to focus in and be alone and really figure out what the body of work is going to look like. I did that a few years ago to make our first album, moving to western Massachusetts and living in a cheap house by myself. And I went away a couple times for this album. It was intensely scary, and I was sober then, too. I was trying not to drink or do any drugs so I could get in touch with what I was actually feeling. And it was dark! But one of the songs I wrote during that time is one of my favorites on the album. It's called "Out of Tune" and it's about losing Joe [Valle, my band mate], in a way.

Is he no longer in the band? 
No, Joe is still in the band, but our relationship profoundly changed. Our lives were too entangled, and I had to get some distance from him to be able to get in touch with my vision for the art and the music—and also my vision for my life. I felt like I was clinging too tightly to him, as well as Marty [Sulkow], who's no longer in the band. 

Do you take time off from drinking often? 
Addiction is in my family, and I've struggled over the years with drugs and alcohol. I dropped out of high school when I was 16 and was in and out of rehab centers in Boston and really kind of lost the plot for a while. I don't have a clean, simple relationship with drugs and alcohol. I get out of bed and I mostly do my job and I'm functioning better than I ever have as a person but yeah... I go in and out of trying to be sober. 

Tell me more about your upbringing and how you got into music.
I grew up in Boston. My parents were never together; it was a quick thing between them. My dad's a chimney sweep. My mom was a waitress when I was growing up and she now does real estate, but at her core, she is an artist. She grew up in Brooklyn going to auditions and in her heart she always wanted to do music and acting, so she really encouraged that stuff in me. There were community theater centers that she'd take me to and we didn't have any money, but she was very savvy about getting financial aid and navigating around those challenges. She helped me get into a private arts high school that gave me a full scholarship, but it ended up being too hard for me. It was two hours from where we lived, so I had four hours of commuting every day. 

So she didn't discourage you from having a creative kind of career, then, which so many parents do because it's not exactly a stable way to make a living...
No, my mom was very good about that. She grew up dirt poor, in a garage with no bathroom, and made her way through with no high school degree and no college degree. She told me I could be whoever I want, and she was evidence of that.

I'm painting the nice side of it, but there are a lot of fucking issues! We're all crazy and none of us have money and don't know how to get money or keep money. But she did a good job. All of my [three younger] sisters are amazing people and do amazing things in the world because she told us that we can do whatever we want. "The only thing that gets in the way is resources sometimes," she said, "but there's a way around that. There's always help." It's powerful to hear that a lot growing up, and she lived it, too. She's very spontaneous. She doesn't follow rules. She's just floating out there doing life her own way. The world was not made for my mom, but she's found her way in it, and that's inspiring. That's a good role model. 

I mean, it wasn't perfect, but she was always trying. She was like, "You're an artist. I see that in you." I was always painting and putting on shows and singing. My mom was a very on-the-run type of woman, and she'd be like, "We're leaving today and we're not coming back for a few weeks." And I'd be like, "Okay!" She'd put us all in the van and we'd all sing from the few Whitney Houston or Madonna or Mariah Carey cassette tapes she had. If I had to say my favorite song it would probably be "I Will Always Love You," because it means so much to me and my sisters and my mom. I just have memories of really happy times with women.

So you grew up around all these women, and now you're in a band with men! 
Music spaces, in general, are mostly male. There are not usually women working in venues as sound engineers or tour managers. And there are so few women producers. I'm constantly in a room with five or ten men, and it can be exhausting. There are subtle ways in which it becomes clear that they think women are a little worse at stuff like that. They're not aware of it, and  they're not bad people, but it's a big-picture problem. My opinion, even though I'm at the center of the project, even though I'm the sole writer on the album, is usually heard last. And I have to say it over and over and over again. Not always, but even the best men I've worked with slip back into it, and you see how powerful misogyny is in the world. People assume I don't know what I want, and that's because I'm a woman, definitely. 

It's a messy process, making an album, but I needed to be in control of it, and I was, in the end. I wanted the songs to breathe a little more, and I wanted production to be simpler. I wanted to hear more organic instruments and for them to be in service of the voice. I'm mainly interested in vocals: the words and what they're saying and where they're coming from. That's my access point into music. 

Your music is so personal. Do you ever get nervous to share it?
If it's not connecting with the audience, that feels really bad. A loud crowd that's not really paying attention when you say a particularly vulnerable line? I feel like a loser. That's generally not the case, though. Mostly, playing live reminds you why you're doing this. When I look out on a sea of girls who look like all different, who all come from different places, and they're singing the words to "I Don't Want to Be Your Girl," I feel like the luckiest person in the world. I get to express this thing that felt really powerful in my life and then have it shouted back at me, affirmed by hundreds of young girls. 

I absolutely love "You're the Best" from the first album. The first lines really struck me: "All I know is / when you hold me / I still feel lonely / lonely when you hold me." Can you explain them a bit? 
I wrote that song when I was at a point in a relationship that I often get to in relationships: I'm there. I am finally with the person I wanted to be with. And then he falls asleep and I realize I'm still alone. As much as I try and want to be bonded with this person, the dominant feeling that I feel at all times is a loneliness. It just doesn't go away. And I think that resonated for a lot of people. Relationships don't make that go away. You can be more lonely in a relationship sometimes than you would be on your own. 

Loneliness is such an interesting thing. I feel like I really take it with me everywhere. On tour, sometimes I can lose myself in that feeling of connectedness. I think, "Wow, we're really in this together and I really love everyone for being here." But I have noticed that, in romantic relationships, I'm really confronted with that loneliness. 

Where do you think that feeling comes from? Is it because of how you grew up? Is it just part of the human condition?
I don't know. I really think about that a lot: "Does everyone feel this way? Am I more in touch with it or am I less capable of handling it?" Sometimes I wonder if it's a chemical thing. "Was I just born this way?" Both my parents are loners at their cores. 

My mom's currently in the process of moving for the fourth time in two years. Still Run is as much her album as it is my album, because a lot of the stuff I'm touching on are my mom's issues, too. It's interesting how connected we are, even at a time like right now, when we're not talking very much. We're the least connected we've ever been right now, but we're intertwined with each other forever. 

You mention Rosalie in a line in "You're the Best." Who is she?
My boyfriend at the time, that was his ex-girlfriend, and he was not over her. So, that was part of our relationship. [Rosalie] became a fan of the band and she's totally sweet—I never had any issue with her—but she was the other women occupying a lot of that boyfriend's headspace. That's part of why I was probably feeling lonely: He wasn't totally there with me. He was still caught up with her. 

What is "Deadwater," from the first album, all about?
I was reading The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath, and she called a whiskey "a glass of dead water," which I think is beautiful. I wanted to write a song about drinking and my mom and all this stuff, but I didn't have a nice way of putting it...dead water just seemed really poetic to me, like it's water drained of its life force.

That first album was so well received. Have you had any experiences with fame since then, and what does that feel like? 
Maybe in the venue, but, generally, no. We're not pop stars or anything. I have some friends who can't walk down the street without people taking their photos, and it was really good for me to see that. You assume that the goal is to get bigger and better, but watching what happened to this person made me grateful for where I'm at. I've achieved a certain level of success. I'm allowed to do music as my job and I also don't have to deal with fame. That brings profound changes and I don't know if you can change it back. So, selling out Webster Hall? Maybe that's the level that's fine for me. 

You released the music video for "Lately" last Friday. Do you like working on music videos? 
I struggled with them in the past, but I actually shot and directed this one and really enjoyed the process. I thought, "I went to art school, I am an artist." I bought photo lights, rented a dance studio, got a VHS and a tripod, and just danced around and made this video. It was a reminder that I can do all this stuff. I know the most about this project, more than anyone, because it's coming from me, so I can make a music video for it if I want to. People might not like it, but I'm happy with it. I think its really intimate and it might be interesting for people to see what I would do on my own rather than what a crew of thirty people who don't know me would put together. It comes back to that idea of trying to be in control of your own process. You can make it fun or make it however you want it to be. 
 
This conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity.