I’ve had several requests to cover the NYT profile on FKA twigs. You can read the piece here, published in advance of twigs’s Congregata performances in Brooklyn – 3 shows beginning Sunday, tonight’s the last one. The NYT review of Sunday’s performance is here. Sounds like it’s not just a concert but a dance showcase and an art installation all at the same time. Twigs, at this stage in her career, and at this age, sounds kinda arty-precious. Not to a James Franco extreme but, you know, she’s all about the spontaneity of art, the spirit of it – like, I can’t create unless I’m moved by the creativity. It’s an eternal debate. There are writers who won’t write for decades because their writing souls are sleeping. There are writers who get down to the work of it all and the words come from the process. That argument, in and of itself, is pretty pretentious.

Anyway, the part of twigs’s interview that’s getting the most play is when she talks about how her relationship with Robert Pattinson has affected her life. The paparazzi, the tabloids, and the those crazy ass Twi-Hards:

“It’s really hard — I can’t begin to explain how awful it is. It makes you want to just stop everything sometimes. It makes you want to smash your face into the mirror.”

Well, this is what anyone AKS has to take on. AKS = After Kristen Stewart. Well, actually no, Kristen Stewart took a lot of sh-t from these people too. There’s a possessiveness about the Pattinson fan (and the Benedict Cumberbatch fan, and the Justin Bieber fan etc, etc, etc) that means no partner will ever be good enough. And for twigs, apparently she’s not good enough because she’s bi-racial:

Worst of all are the racial insults — she is biracial — on Twitter and Instagram, some of them from die-hard fans of Mr. Pattinson. “It’s relentless,” she said. She insisted that the attention their relationship draws does not help her professionally. “There’s no amount of songs I can sing or dances I can dance that will prove to them I’m not a monkey.”

What’s really bizarre is that the racism is so multi-targeted. They spray it everywhere. Here’s an example of the kind of email that regularly lands in my inbox.

The knee-jerk reaction for a lot of people who aren’t racist is to get defensive…because they don’t think they’re the ones who’ve hurt anyone, so why should they be blamed for it all the time? Last week, we had a guest on The Social called Desmond Cole. Cole has been protesting the practice of “carding” in Toronto – he’s been stopped by police over 50 times, for no reason, to document his personal information for their records. When asked about how he engages people in conversations about race, even when they insist they’re not racist, Cole told us that it’s about systemic racism. That we belong to a society where racism has been institutionalised. And as productive members of our communities who aren’t racist, we can contribute to the discussion by first acknowledging that the system is f-cked, and then by challenging the system to evolve.

As for twigs and how she’s dealing, well, I suppose there’s no better answer than this:

“I didn’t see my life going this way at all. But it’s worth it. I’m so happy.”

Click here to watch The Social’s interview with Desmond Cole.

Attached – Pattinson at the Heaven Knows What premiere in New York last night. (I’ve no new photos of twigs to post.)