Grieving my mother and the ceremony of playing live, I collaborated instead with the land, water and muses of Cornwall – they helped me reboard my sonic spaceship
The first lockdown, my family did medium-to-spicy well. It was me, my husband Mark, [my daughter] Tash and her boyfriend, Oliver. When the kids were fleeing university in London, and Tash said, “Is it OK if Oliver and I come down?” Mark and I said, “Of course!” – thinking that they would be down for three weeks at the most, like a long school holiday.
Five months later, they were still there. We were very fortunate to be in Cornwall, in the country – we had more space than some people. We’re a hop, skip and a jump from the water. There’s a ferocious beauty to the Cornish coast. There’s the gorgeous beaches, but then there are the crags and the rocks. There’s something gently brutal about it. I surrendered to the land at a certain point: OK, I’m in exile here. I can’t get back to the States, because I don’t know if I can get back [into the UK] if I go. If I can’t get back to Mark and Tash, then I’m going to evaporate. Because they are the reason I wake up in the morning.