- Every one of us knows heartache; the sweet melancholy of a love that just doesn't work.

Today's guest traces much of her musical inspiration to that pain.

She's the multi-talented, Dessa, this week on "Story in The Public Square."

(gentle music) Hello and welcome to The Story of The Public Square, where storytelling meets public affairs.

I'm Jim Ludes from the Pell Center at Salve Regina University.

Joining me from his home in Rhode Island is my friend and cohost, G. Wayne Miller of the Providence Journal.

Each week, we talk about big issues with great guests; authors, journalists, artists and more, to make sense of the stories that shape public life in the United States today.

This week, we're joined by the multi-talented, singer, rapper, writer and podcaster, Dessa.

Dessa, thank you so much for being with us.

- Thank you for having me.

- Well, your talents are immense and there's a lot that we want to talk to you about but I'm curious, where does the creative spark originate for you?

- Yeah, I think, for me, the love of language is at the base of everything that I've ended up doing.

So I remember, even as a really, really little kid, collecting new words with the same kind of gusto that some kids collect rocks or some kids really get into dinosaurs.

I just loved learning the word "fortnight" from Peter Rabbit.

I just got so excited to add another fancy one to my collection.

So for me, that's always been part of my life.

- (stammering) I mean, I'm trying to imagine you as a child.

We're talking about like journals full of poetry or essays or music?

- Some really lousy poetry.

I would say that in the beginning, probably my enthusiasm and my gusto wasn't matched by prodigious talent.

A lot of juvenilia.

But yeah, I wrote some poems early, I had the idea that I wanted to be a writer.

But at eight and nine, and 10 and 11, you don't really know what that might look like.

And I was also interested in music but, just through the luck of the draw, my mother happens to have a really, really beautiful voice, she did when I was a kid.

She could sing Whitney very easily, and Whitney Houston is a very difficult singer to match.

And I just sort of figured, by the time I was in my later teens, that my odds weren't super good for making it professionally if I wasn't even the best singer at my address.

- So your 2018 book, "My Own Devices: "True Stories From The Road on Music, "Science and Senseless Love," earned rave reviews.

I just want to read the book description because those in our audience who may not be familiar with you, this will give you an overview of who and what you are.

And so the cover description reads, "Dessa defies category.

"She is an intellectual "with an international rap career "and an inhaler in her backpack; "a creative writer fascinated "by philosophy and behavioral science; "and a funny charismatic performer, "dogged by blue moods and heartache."

Break down the book for us.

We could do a whole show, I realize, on that, but tell us about the book, how it came to be and really what it is.

And I've read most of it and it's beautifully written.

I'm greatly in awe.

- Thank you.

Yeah, so I've always really liked trafficking in true stories, even before I knew exactly what those genre names might be.

So I think one of the sexiest corners of the literary world is creative nonfiction, even though it has, hands down, the least sexy genre name.

It names itself twice by what it isn't.

It's unfortunate for a lot of writers, they could really use an update on that particular term.

But I loved writing true stories, in the same way that...

I dunno, fiction in some ways, felt a little bit daunting, approaching a completely blank canvas.

Whereas writing nonfiction felt more like a photographer, like you were keeping your eyes open for the artful moments of your life.

And for me, at least, as a reader, every story is more poignant when there's the last line written in invisible ink, "And this really happened."

So I loved the essay form.

So I was writing short pieces, a few pages at a go.

And that book, "My Own Devices," collects a lot of essays, kind of bite-sized chunks, into a larger narrative thread about a really, really long romance that was very, very hard to try to keep afloat, and about me learning what it was like to become a touring rapper.

So figuring out how to get in the van with the rest of the guys in my rap crew, and travel, first, around our state, and then around the country, and eventually around the world.

- Do you keep a diary or a journal, or have you still do you?

- I do and I hate it.

I hate it, it's eating vegetables, it sucks.

But it's the only way to remember, I think... A, it can be fodder for future work.

And then, B, I think it keeps me honest.

I think we're better at remembering feelings than we are... And ideas, than we are at remembering how to sequence those feelings, or to really appreciate the duration of them.

So when you get a headache, you notice that but then in the afternoon, when your friend says to you, "Oh, how's your head?"

And you go, "Oh actually, it's fine."

You might not notice exactly the moment that headache ends, although you certainly noticed when it began.

And so, I think that keeping a journal helps me understand how long my feelings and ideas have actually lasted.

- So you actually...

Earlier in your career, you've done so many things, but you were a technical writer for a medical company.

And we talked about this off-air, before we taped here.

Tell us how that influenced your later writing.

I would know, you've written for the New York Times.

It's not just the book that you've done.

Talk about the medical part of your career.

- Yeah, so after I graduated from college...

I graduated a little bit early from the University of Minnesota, which is my home state.

- With a degree in philosophy, correct?

- Exactly.

Yeah, yeah, with a degree in philosophy.

So a lot of interest in like ethics and philosophy of science, that kind of stuff.

But obviously it's not like there's a philosophy office you can go to report to for your first day of work.

I mean, you're trying to figure out exactly what the next step was, was sort of tricky.

And so, while I was trying to develop some inroads in the artistic fields, so writing poems and performing at slams, and learning how to make some music, I was also serving tables, which is a great way because the hourly can be really high if you find yourself at a good restaurant; a great way for a lot of artists to make the money to finance their life.

It was not a great way for me to do it because I sucked as a waitress, but I'm just...

There is an art to it.

Great servers have clocks, like a wall of clocks at the airport, in their heads that know when table five needs more water and table six needs the bill, and I just had a blank wall.

I was surprised all the time about what people requested.

So I talked to my father and just talking out the challenge of trying to figure out a high buck gig that could help me finance my life but leave a lot of hours left over to develop my skill.

And high buck gig, at that time, meaning 20 bucks or 35 bucks an hour, or something like that.

And he suggested tech writing.

And so, I interviewed with the firm based, again, in Minneapolis, where I live.

And it was thrilling and terrifying, and I ended up for several years, essentially, writing a lot of cardiac technology stuff.

So the kind of material that would accompany like a pacemaker for implant in a patient; the kind of thing that maybe a physician would refer to when he/she is speaking to the sales representative about a particular brand of pacemaker.

So I got really into it.

I spent a lot of time looking at rotating three-dimensional hearts beating water on my computer to try to better understand how to write clear, crisp instructions.

- So during this period, you became interested in rap, is that correct?

Was it during this time period when you did?

And there's a great passage in your book, the first time you actually did rap.

It was in a car with a boyfriend.

If you can maybe talk about both of those; how rap came into your life and how you essentially did your first song in a car.

- Yeah, so for me, I had been interested in language and writing for a really long time, interested in music for a long time, but I hadn't written a lot of rap verses.

And so, when I was freshly out of college, I became a really big fan of a local group.

Just phenomenal stage presence, and a playfulness and an authenticity that felt really new to me.

And I secretly very much wanted to be asked into this group, but you don't want to ask, you know?

You don't want to ask someone else to ask you out, they just have to do it.

So I'd been hanging out with those folks and I had also been, at the same time, learning how to write and perform in another group that I was part of.

So just getting my sea legs and the form.

I started dating one of the guys in the group that I so admired, and he had a lot of faith in me even before I had really honed my craft very much.

I think he saw some promise anyway and he asked me a couple of questions as I was trying to improve.

Like, "How come you don't write rap "the way that you write essays?

"'Cause you're confident and you're comfortable, "and you have a natural, authentic voice in your essays."

And I think my rap has probably sounded imitative.

I was just trying to do stuff, like the stuff I'd recently heard.

And he asked to hear me perform while we were driving around, and we were in the parking lot of an old country buffet.

And I said I was a little too shy.

He was so good at it, I didn't want to do it in front of him.

And so, he put a beat...

He turned off the radio and he left the car, and then he had me roll down my window a little bit, and then he pounded out a beat on the top of the hood of the car, and listened to me rapping through the cracked window.

So that was a formative moment in my... - That oughta be a scene in a movie somewhere.

- Oh, definitely.

Plus it was a ridiculous car.

Tell us what the car model was.

I had never heard of it until I read your book.

- It's called a Ford Festiva, and it has to weigh all of nine pounds.

You can put it in your purse when you're done with it.

So it was a really tight...

It wasn't a tough... We were not in the Escalade.

We were in a really tiny, little clown car.

- And so you have been part of the collective, "Doomtree."

Now, for those within audience who might not know what the Doomtree collective is, what is the Doomtree collective?

- Yeah, so I think in independent music, and by independent music, I mean music that's made without the injection of capital from a major label, there are a lot of just natural DIY cohorts, although we probably would never use the word "cohort," that form.

So this group, Doomtree, when I met them, it was just...

They were the group that I really liked watching them perform.

I thought their lyrics were true and honest and angry in a way that felt constructive and exciting, not just tear down-ish.

They were telling stories that I was interested in, and they were funny, they're charismatic on stage.

And as time progressed, and there seemed to be a little bit of interest in the kind of music that they were making, and then initially... Or excuse me, after I was joined in, I was also making with them.

We just slowly grew into the infrastructure that you'd need to also become a label, and it was without a lot of fanfare.

Initially, it was making demos, sending them out to other major labels, hoping to get signed.

No bites.

So we go, "Okay, well we should release it ourselves."

How do you become a small business in Minnesota?

Somebody who's going to have to go to that website and do it, right?

Okay, "how do you make merchandise?"

Well, there's gotta be somebody who screens print stuff.

Okay, well we could go to Kinko's ourselves and photocopy our own album art.

This is too slow.

We can get a proper printer to do it.

We just kind of learned the skills, one by one, that we'd need to become a proper tax-paying label, and eventually also, in addition to being a band we're a production house and a music entity as well.

- Well, you mentioned earlier that not just growing into the comfort of being a songwriter, but also the presence that you have to have on stage and learning to really engage an audience.

Can you talk to us a little bit about that?

(stammering) Is there a secret sauce?

How do you actually connect with an audience like that?

- Yeah, I mean, I think there is a secret sauce but unfortunately, it's a different recipe for almost everyone.

So trying to...

In my case, trying to unlearn a lot of what I presume a show has to be like was a big part of it.

And I think very often, that's true of writing as well.

That there's so much clutter in your head about the way this goes, how a novel works, how a poem works, what a love poem looks like.

We are so inculcated with those cliches of form that to try to find out how to be your truest self, you've got to really somehow find a way to suspend yourself upside down and let all of your assumptions fall out of your pockets to even examine them, to know they're there.

And so, for me, I was excited early.

I don't think I... Again, I don't think...

I don't think I took stage fully formed.

There was a lot of very cringey moments.

I know that one of the first performances that I did, you want to look nice and so I bought a pair of what I thought were really flattering satin pants, and then I get on stage, and I'm so nervous that my knees are shaking, and the lights are so bright and satin is so reflective that I look like I have the torso of a woman and then the legs of a waterfall.

It was just constant motion, you know?

So those are some of the things you learn to avoid.

But yeah, trying to figure out...

Even when you're excited, not to yell too much, that's a big deal.

You'll blow your voice.

And even if you do one good concert, it's going to sound bad in a week because you need to have a voice every day.

We used to perform seven of eight days or so on the road.

And learning, also, how to move within the confines of the spotlight, that was a big deal.

Knowing that if I go like this, people can't see my expressions but if I tilt my face up, they can see, right?

They can see the way my eyebrows work.

And knowing how far can you extend your hand before it's off screen or out of the light.

I think learning how to move your body in the service of a feeling was part of it for me too.

- So one of your current projects is a monthly release called "IDES," and your latest is "Life on Land," and let's listen to a selection from it, and then when we get back, we'll have you talk about it.

♪ I know how the tide pulls deep ♪ ♪ Eyes open but the mind's asleep ♪ ♪ Flash frozen in the driver's seat ♪ ♪ Lights in motion ♪ ♪ But they're lost on me ♪ ♪ Out in the water ♪ ♪ You can't touch bottom ♪ ♪ It pulls you farther ♪ ♪ Life on land forgotten ♪ - Yeah, so "Life On Land" was released just a couple of months ago, and it's one of the singles in the series that you mentioned, "IDES."

Initially, my collaborators and I, the two musicians with whom I often work on the production, on the music, their names are Lazerbeak and Andy Thompson, usually when it's not pandemic season, the way that an artist would go about recording and releasing her work is very cyclical.

So you stay home for some months, you write and record an album, you release it and then you go on the road to monetize it, essentially.

You promote it until nobody really cares anymore, and then you go home and you write another one.

And without the touring part of this past year, I decided to try to really reconsider, at least short term, how we were making music.

I found myself...

I'm watching a lot of serial stuff on Netflix and I really liked the fact that there's something more to look forward to.

When I go to bed tonight, I get to see the next installment right now, for me, of "Masters of Sex," the Netflix special.

And I liked that idea of instead of a one drop of all the music, given folks something to look forward to on a monthly basis.

And then also, to be totally frank with you, we had to figure out how to monetize music.

Streaming, as you might imagine, really disrupted that entire market.

It's free to listen to music now, which means it's harder for a performer to get paid.

And the way that it worked before the pandemic was you made your money on the road, and then all of a sudden there was no road.

So for us, we tried to release these songs once a month and have them be accompanied by a limited edition, cool, collectible merch item that could help us try to build a new model to finance the work.

- Dessa, I've heard you say that a lot of your solo work has a melancholy feel to it.

And I got to tell you, one of my favorite songs is "Good Grief."

I'm wondering if you could tell us a little bit about the origins of that song, but also, about the music video, which I found very theatrical, sort of cinematic.

There was a story that was being told in the video too, and I'm wondering how that process comes to be.

- Yeah, thanks for asking.

I think I do just lean a little bit blue and I... For many years, I think I understood that to be a failure.

It was an indictment of the choices that I was making.

"If you're sad a bunch of the time, "you're doing it wrong."

I don't know that I think that anymore.

I think that our dispositions are heritable and I think that our mood is the product of a lot of different variables, right?

There's the circumstance, there's the...

The, maybe, genetic inclination or the genetic, neurochemical fingerprint that you've inherited from both of your parents.

And I think I was just beating myself up about being sad, which doesn't help a sad person.

And now, I think I just embrace it that...

But yeah, you gotta be mindful, you don't want to be miserable.

But like leaning a little blue is when I write most of my...

The stuff that I'm proudest of.

So with that song, "Good Grief," I think a lot of the lyrics do examine when grief can be in the service of a person, when is it good, essentially, right?

And can it be a clarifying feeling?

Can it temper a person like steel?

What does it do to a personality?

Except it rhymes.

The lyrics rhyme.

And then, oh man, I mean, music videos are...

I think they're super interesting, even as I watch other artists do them at my general level of artistry, because we don't have huge budgets for them so it really is a product of some very creative thinking, usually, on part of the artist sometimes, but also in part of the directors.

So the director there that I worked with is a dude, super talented, named Mercies May.

And I wrote a text message to the front man of another band that I liked, who I thought had like a good, cool stage presence and seemed kind of...

I don't know, he seemed actor-y to me.

I said, "Yo, will you be in my music video, please?"

And he was like, "Sure."

And so we went up to a very cold cabin in like the north of Minnesota, so cold!

And we bought a bunch of, I think, paraffin was the accelerant, so something to burn.

And I had seen on the internet, a way that you could create, with angled fans, a fire tornado.

If you like started a fire, essentially, in a metal fire pit or something, and then you were able to blow the wind of the fan at just the right angle and do that several times with several fans, you could get a cool fire going.

I think we were awake for like... We were there for 26 hours and it was on our very last drop of paraffin that we finally got the tornado going.

So that was a big one for us on a cold night.

- (stammering) Are you consciously telling the story behind the song in that music video or are they independent works of art?

- Oh, that's such a good question.

I think... And I'm really interested to see how other artists answer that question too, because I think sometimes, you have the lyric musical... Or the literal musical video, where someone is like "I was walking, "and then I stopped," and it's very much acting out, scene-by-scene, the lyrics of the song.

And sometimes, you have one that just feels thematically related, you know what I mean?

Okay, this feels kind of wishy-washy and sad and nostalgic, and this looks wishy-washy and sad and stuff.

And then sometimes you have people who say, "This is two tracks, "that we've got to train parallel tracks running "and they're going to be complementary."

I would say that I probably land somewhere in the middle of those extremes and that I think you do see a relationship forming there, and I think you do see a couple, in this case, trying to figure out how much hurt they can bear.

You know what I mean?

How much grief can they endure and still find solace and meaning in their relationship.

- So we have to hear about your BBC iHeartRadio podcast, "Deeply Human."

Tell us about that.

- Thanks, yeah.

I got an email, a couple of years ago now, I think, that was like from a friend at APM, American Public Media, that said, "Hey, we're doing a joint project with the BBC "and it's like a science podcast "and they might be looking for an American host.

"Any chance you'd be interested?"

And I think I yelled at my computer.

Like, "Yes, I'm interested!"

And I was really excited by the prospect.

My family is like... We're a lot of radio nerds.

My parents both know Morse Code.

And I interviewed for the gig when I was...

I had a modest show in London and the commissioner for the BBC World Service was kind enough to meet me backstage, amidst all these open suitcases before the show and chat a little bit.

And we hit it off well enough to give it a go.

So the podcast is airing now, it's out now, and it's essentially a 22 minute episode every time that investigates some facet of human behavior with, I hope, well-written stories, and also some interviews with really, really different kind of experts.

So "why do we get deja vu?"

And I'll interview a cognitive psychologist and an astrophysicist, and write an essay that connects all of the information that is gathered throughout the course of those interviews.

- Well, one of the episodes is "Sad Songs."

"Why do we love sad songs?"

Why?

'Cause we do.

- 'Cause we do, yeah.

I mean, it's interesting.

That's such a simple question, particularly for someone who makes a bunch of sad songs and who is moved by sad songs, but it's weird not to have an immediate one or two sentences in which I'm totally confident.

But I think in a lot of ways, the jury is still really out.

There's a lot of ideas.

So in the podcast, one of the things that I found really interesting is that the degree to which a person is empathetic might be an indicator to the extent to which that person is likely to enjoy sad songs.

So some researchers in...

Some Finnish researchers had tried to figure out if there was a correlation between personality types and a proclivity towards sad music, and that was one personality attribute that seemed related.

And then, also just like what makes sad music sad?

One of the most interesting answers I got was that it might be the case that the melody's slow, often cascading.

They sound like prying, that there might be some of the formal features of sad music that resemble the sounds that sad people make.

- Dessa, I could talk to you all day and I would encourage everybody to go visit dessawander.com and check out all of your creativity.

Thank you so much for being with us today.

She's Dessa.

That's all the time we have this week but if you want to know more about "Story In The Public Square," you can find us on Facebook and Twitter, or visit pellcenter.org where can always catch up on previous episodes.

For Wayne, I'm Jim, asking you to join us again next time.

for more "Story In The Public Square."

(upbeat music) (gentle guitar music)