{"id":1609,"date":"2020-05-30T09:01:50","date_gmt":"2020-05-30T08:01:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/fr-nt.nl\/?p=1609"},"modified":"2022-06-07T22:48:22","modified_gmt":"2022-06-07T21:48:22","slug":"laura-marling-verkiest-wijsheid-boven-woede-liefde-is-mijn-triomf-over-trauma","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fr-nt.nl\/en\/2020\/05\/30\/laura-marling-verkiest-wijsheid-boven-woede-liefde-is-mijn-triomf-over-trauma\/","title":{"rendered":"Laura Marling chooses wisdom over anger: \"Love is my triumph over trauma\""},"content":{"rendered":"

When life came to an abrupt halt last month, Laura Marling released her new album Song For Our Daughter<\/em>. It is an intimate record, on which Marling gives motherly advice to a daughter she does not yet have, but also addresses young women in general. Shortly after her thirtieth birthday, she looks back on her own childhood, which largely took place within the music industry, and she definitively grows beyond the trauma of it. \u201cThe older I get, the more comfortable I feel.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Written by: <\/strong>Dirk Baart
Photos: <\/strong>Justin Tyler Close

Laura Marling radiates a contagious calm. She speaks softly and weighs every word on her tongue. Her answers aren't long; she doesn't like to say more than is necessary. But they do consist of the type of thoughtful sentences that you hardly encounter in spoken language. Sometimes Marling cuts herself off if she doesn't agree with herself halfway through such a sentence or wants to build in a nuance. Then she just starts over and tries to articulate her thought a little more sharply. It can be deduced from every answer that Marling gives that she is not just saying something, but also that she does not think she has a monopoly on the truth. No matter how many times she's thought about a particular topic, she doesn't pretend to ever be done thinking about that topic. \u2018I think\u2019, she often says. \u2018Maybe\u2019, too. In a conversation with Laura Marling, a lot is open and little is fixed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That calmness \u2013 fostered by a total absence of arrogance and pretentiousness \u2013 has been the common thread running through Marling's life, especially since she moved back to London three years ago after a stint in Los Angeles. Of course she will always draw inspiration from American country and folk from the sixties and seventies, but her 'affair' with the United States is over. Marling no longer moves between actors and actresses, but lives with her boyfriend and older sister in a quiet neighborhood in the north of the British capital. Another sister and her niece live a block away. \u201cI started my life here again,\u201d she says. \u201cI'm close to the people I love and I feel like I'm part of a community again. I feel like I'm more grounded.\u201d Laura Marling's life does not look very different from normal during the lockdown. She gets up early and goes for a walk every day, a habit she also maintained in Los Angeles, a city seemingly built for cars. Then she listens to full albums; to Big Thief's last, or to Roberta Flack's First Take<\/em>. She only makes music in her basement, in the home studio where she wrote and recorded Song For Our Daughter<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Marling's balance takes on moving forms on that album. Even when she sings about the most complex feelings, or portrays her own traumas through vivid characters, she maintains serenity. Musically, too: on previous albums, Marling sometimes let herself be carried away by her emotions. On Song For Our Daughter<\/em>, she limits herself to sober folk songs with tasteful string arrangements here and there. Marling is not lighthearted and does not give the impression that she ever will be, but Song For Our Daughter<\/em> does sound hopeful. \u201cThe fact that I'm able to keep it that way partly has to do with a lot of therapy,\u201d Marling laughs. \u201cI also think that I \u2013 like many other people \u2013 went through a period of anger. Anger dominated my life in my mid-twenties and it got me nowhere. Well, of course that's not true; it does have a function. But I think I've realized by now that you can also deal with difficult things in a thoughtful way. I couldn't have said that about myself a few years ago, I don't think.\"<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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That mature approach obviously has to do with the birthdays Laura Marling has celebrated since she debuted with Alas, I Cannot Swim<\/em> (2008). Over the years, Marling bit by bit abandoned the notion that the world revolved around her, the illusion you can treasure in your teens and twenties. Not that she talks about her past with disdain, mind you. Rather, she sees that such naive narcissism is an essential part of being young. \u201cBut letting go of that idea is a growing pain, I think. Sooner or later all people realize that they are not special, although sometimes people try to maintain that illusion longer than they should. Since I gave up on that notion, I realize more and more how many special interactions are constantly taking place around me. That passion can arise and disappear without ever being expressed, and that it can happen in the most mundane of places.\u201d It's a great source of inspiration for her narrative writings, she says, before referring to Conversations With Friends<\/em> (2017) and Normal People<\/em> (2018), the critically acclaimed books by young Irish writer Sally Rooney. \u201cShe is the master of the mundane, of the insignificant situation with particular emotional undertones.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The passing of time has not only made Laura Marling wiser. After all, Marling was already wise when she broke through at the age of seventeen: her poetic songs were always full of layered characters. The characters she wrote about were not heroes or victims, they hovered somewhere in between. The young singer stood out in the London folk world, which also produced Noah and the Whale and Mumford & Sons \u2013 Marling's backing band at the time. She was often described as wise beyond her years. But, as Pitchforks Joshua Love asked in his review of Alas I Cannot Swim: 'What happens when the years catch up?'<\/em> Now Laura Marling answers that question. The years have not only made her wiser than she already was. They have also made sure that she has more to apply her wisdom to. \u201cThe older I get, the more comfortable I feel, and the closer I feel to my past.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cPassion can arise and disappear without ever being expressed, and that it can happen in the most mundane of places.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

With Song For Our Daughter<\/em>, Marling does not focus exclusively on the daughter she does not (yet) have, but also on a younger version of herself, a young woman who grew up not long ago, but at a time when the position of women in the (music) world was different than it is now. \u201cI think the cultural changes of recent years have made me look back on that time. I realized that I had a lot on my plate and had to deal with a lot of difficult things early on. Somehow miraculously I managed to do this without getting too big of a scratch, without being pigeonholed, and without being pitted against other women. Song For Our Daughter<\/em> contains lessons I would like to teach my younger self, but the album also proves that you can get through your trauma on your own and develop yourself as a result.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Marling thus touches on one of the most important themes of Song For Our Daughter<\/em>: trauma, and especially processing it. Although Marling, as always, keeps her distance, it makes her consider Song For Our Daughter<\/em> a very personal album. \u201cThis album is more of a part of me than my previous albums, I think, because to me it represents the triumph over trauma,\u201d says Marling. Especially closing track 'For You', a glorified demo that Marling wrote together with her partner, is dominated by that victory. The song is a kind of hopeful epilogue to the record, which actually ends with the bittersweet 'Hope We Meet Again'. Three days before the album came out, Marling changed the track list, and 'For You' ended up at the end. \u201cIt didn't really fit into the narrative of the record, but I still wanted it to have a place on the album,\u201d she explains. \u201cBecause in that song I say, 'Love is my triumph over trauma.'\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Marling, who is currently pursuing a master's degree in psychoanalysis, is increasingly realizing that the things she writes from her subconscious mind often precede the emotions she experiences consciously. \u201cI was particularly interested in how trauma affected my creativity for a while, especially in my twenties. That made it even clearer to me why we need to support women who are traumatized, especially in the cultural world. Trauma is breaking boundaries you may not have even known existed. That makes you feel constantly on guard, because you don't want it to happen again. Trauma affects your innocence, and that's where creativity comes from. The way women are prevented from expressing themselves is very subtle and insidious.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n