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On a bright November day, Mitski is waiting for me in my hotel lobby in Nashville.
Shes dressed practically in a hunter-green fleece, jeans, and light-lavender sneakers.
Theres an understated audacity to Mitskis person.
Then she moved to Nashville.
She hasnt seen much of the city but has seen the fleets of honky-tonk bachelorette-party buses.
She watched a lot of TV.
She baked vegan sweets.
She claims not to have it.
Im not a star.
I can say that with confidence because I have met real stars.
And I have cowered before them.
I started to get a headache and heart palpitations.
My hands started to shake.
I thought I was gonna throw up, I really did.
I told my manager, I need to get out of here, and I practically ran out.
I remember Taylor Swift talking to me, but I dont remember what I said back to her.
I remember her saying, Well.
Im not the kind of person who gets starstruck, you know.
Is it stardom or is it power?
Maybe thats what it is, she says.
I think youre always conscious of something when you feel you dont have it.
I had the same feeling of dissociation and panic.
I had to get out of there.
Was it that they made you feel that way or just their collective existence made you feel that way?
I say Im not sure.
But then when you find yourself in the situation, youre right back where you were.
Were taking a trip to Mammoth Cave, the worlds longest known cave system.
Im driving Mitski doesnt drive.
A Mitski song lasts about as long as it takes to poach an egg.
They are small and will knock you out, like pearls slipped inside the left ventricle of your heart.
She has tried her hand at lengthier forms of prose but finds her attention flags.
At SummerStage, Mitski wore a cropped white tee, black biker shorts, and knee pads.
A straight back that suffers the tempests of life.
Later it was called one of the best of the decade.
Her song Nobody, already popular, became an anthem of yearning for social contact.
By her own admission, her growing profile has made her paranoid.
Even small talk can feel dangerous.
Do you have any pets?
I ask as we drive.
I have two cats.
What are their names?
Mmmm, I shouldnt say.
The kids on the internet now are very savvy.
They could jot down in the names, figure out where I live.
Do your cats have Instagrams?
No, but theyre shelter cats.
Usually they have microchips where they have their information.
Or someone I love could just innocuously be like, A and B, my favorite cats.
And then they can pinpoint perhaps what that house is.
I see, I say.
Do you live alone?
Mm, she pauses.
I would rather not say that.
Heres the thing, says Mitski.
Once you say something, its public record.
Anyone can ask you about it and demand an answer about it at any time.
I remember my first press trip to Europe.
Im still traumatized by it.
I was nobody, had no power.
I got a lot of sexual harassment.
And it wasnt just one person.
I felt like a toilet stall, where I just had to sit there and take shit.
Just for another dude to come in and give me shit again.
Thats a situation where I kept saying yes because I didnt know that I could say no.
The traumatic part wasnt just having things said and done to me.
The traumatic part was me sitting there allowing it, over and over.
Mitski Miyawaki was born in Mie prefecture, located on the southeast curve of Japan.
Her mother is Japanese, her father a white American.
Strangers gawked at her and followed her around in grocery stores; she could not assimilate the unassimilable.
I just burnt myself all up hating myself for not being beautiful and perfect, she says.
She has lived in various countries Malaysia, Turkey, the U.S. and tried on various personas.
She discovered she could do it and that all of those iterations were a part of her.
This allows her a sociological perch from which to view humanity.
She feels as though she could be anyone and live anywhere.
And, actually, that anyone could be anyone.
Now she would just say shes American, although I dont think thats allowed, she says, laughing.
The category person of color is fraught too.
Initially, Mitski had suggested we go spelunking.
Writing has always felt like her one true possession.
It was my little secret garden that I tended to.
No one else was allowed in, she says.
Things get lost or break or disappear.
People come and go.
But my songs, my writing, it was mine.
Working in the music industry creates a paradox: Writing demands vulnerability, but capitalism dehumanizes her.
I put my most intimate feelings in a song and sold it, she says.
She demarcates boundaries around the process.
After she went dark on her social-media accounts, she handed the passwords over to her management.
No A&R people are ever allowed in the studio.
I would lose my shit, she says.
I couldnt take any criticism from the business people.
Id be like, Who the fuck are you?
What do you do?
Show me your work.
She speaks placidly while lobbing bombs.
Every day, all the time, is exploitation, she says.
You cant be a human being.
She accepts this, mostly.
Still, she wishes she hadnt even released music under her name.
It would have made the mental compartmentalization easier.
She only uses her initials on her streaming accounts.
Seeing my name just reminds me of the world.
Its just not mine anymore, she says.
I am a foreigner to myself now.
The overarching dome and walls are pure limestone gray and dry and millennia old.
One feels like a supplicant entering the shrine of a disinterested god.
The cave is a site of extraction, the sublime turned into profit.
Is this the metaphor?
I ask as we survey the ruins.
Yes, she says, laughing.
Mitski may sing of unrequited love, but her most intimate dance partner is her own hand.
She caresses herself, runs her fingers through her hair, ravishes her palm.
Onstage, she captivates the audience by going inward.
A flick of the boob elicits screams.
Mitski has worked with Monica Mirabile, a performance artist and choreographer.
What I got was that there doesnt need to be a set, Mitski says.
I dont want to do pyrotechnics.
I dont want to do big LED screens.
I want to see to it that everything onstage exists because it has to be there.
I want the whole show to feel essential.
I dont want anything superfluous.
Performance can be as deep as you wanna make it.
How deep is it for you?
Its … Its my everything.
Its my whole life.
Its all I wanna do.
Ill take anything just to get to perform.
I feel like myself.
In my daily life, my head is just crowded with thoughts, my past, the future.
Thats when I know what Im doing.
Thats when Im the creator of a world.
Its a combination of being in control, but also being free to not be in control.
Youre just existing and Being with a capitalBonstage.
I sound like an asshole, she says, laughing.
Whys she talking like shes fucking special?
We keep to the periphery of the group as we go down a passageway named Broadway.
The tour guide stops and turns on a lantern.
Mitski edges along the grapefruit glow and looks out into the void.
But its just the brain groping for a ledge.
I imagine myself unspooling into the void.
I sense Mitski drifting away.
Too quickly the light returns and breaks the spell.
Im sorry I left you all alone, Mitski says, walking back toward me.
Im sad he turned the lights back on, I say.
I know, she whispers.
I wanted to trip right here and be trampled.
I wanted to fall down and be destroyed in this cave.
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