Charlotte Oleena, a.k.a. Sea Oleena, and Julie Byrne interview each other in anticipation of Living Spaces - Brooklyn, NY.

Charlotte Oleena: What’s your earliest childhood memory?

Julie Byrne: I’m sure this isn’t the earliest one, but when I was six years old I went through a phase of being worried that an alien was going to abduct my mom’s soul and take over her body. I told her about this and she suggested that we devise a secret password that would only be shared between the two of us so I could always make sure she was still there. This seemed like an alright plan until a couple weeks later when we were walking in the woods and my mom forgot the password! She said I looked at her bug eyed, and with tears rolling down my cheeks, I took off running down the path. Eventually she caught up to me and we sorted the whole thing out.

What’s the strangest job you’ve ever worked?

CO: This question has made me realize that in spite of the vast amount and variety of jobs I’ve worked, none of them have been especially strange. The job that felt the most strange at the time was when I was house sitting for about a week, taking care of the homeowner’s dogs. It was almost a year after I’d graduated high school. Most of my friends had moved away and I was in an especially solitary period of my life, trying to figure out what to do next (I ended up moving to Montreal about a month later). I ​was just getting stoned in the backyard of this unfamiliar house and listening to Vampire Weekend and hanging out with dogs​ and getting paid for it.

JB: When I was nineteen, I was living in Pittsburgh working part-time at a diner in Bloomfield and for a short while, I also picked up work at this shitty costume shop during Halloween season. On my first day they had me dress up in a huge taco suit and walk around this bustling market district handing out coupons and promotional flyers. I quit that job by going on my lunch break and never coming back. Point being, hell yeah, that age is nothing if not strange and solitary. That backyard sounds pretty cool, though. Maybe they can convince portals to host the next traveling showcase there and the theme can be hangin’ out with puppies, smokin’ weed.

CO: Oh wow… I’m so sorry to hear that. The one time I had to wear a costume to work it was Halloween at this shoe store and there were three of us working—the boss, the manager, and me—and we dressed as Cat in the Hat, Thing One, and Thing Two and there was basically no one in the store except kids coming for candy and so we ate chocolate and smoked weed in the back room. It was weird.

In light of the full moon tonight, do you have any moon phase rituals?

JB: I don’t, although I like the sound of it and wish I did. Do you?

CO: I’ve been thinking a lot about rituals, specifically around playing music, but the past couple full moons have had me feeling like I ought to bring some sort of deeper mindfulness to her phases. Maybe some small ceremony for each new and full moon. These kinds of things add a certain balance to my life that I find both comforting and empowering.

JB: Yeah, we’re living in an age where technology has almost replaced attention. I think it’s crucial to find some kind of practice that connects with the rhythms of the natural world beyond night and day.

CO: Have you moved around a lot in this life?

JB: I have moved around a lot, five cities since 2009. I don’t think it’s completely true, but sometimes I wonder if I have this ability to enter places and the lives of people in almost unnoticed passage. Like when I stay somewhere, it quickly feels as though I’ve always been there and when I leave, it’s like I was hardly there at all. It’s felt right, though, to live this way. I’ve chased even the most laughable, hopeless desires with the same sense of conviction and priority as any life defining pursuit.

I technically reside nowhere now, other than where I happen to be when the question gets asked. I gave up my room in Seattle in the beginning of the year and I’ve been traveling and touring since. It’s had its share of elation and trial for sure. There have been times I’ve felt so overwrought that I’ve hardly had strength left to erect any psychological barrier between my social exterior and this ocean I feel, of psychic scars. It’s been a wild ride to continue playing shows and to meet new people when I’ve felt that I had no vitality to exchange and no place to go that could protect the privacy of such a violent feeling. Ultimately it’s good, though, infinitely good, because having to live presently and so transparently has forced me to work on myself in a very direct way and to realize that it’s alright to seek safety in others during low times. There are a few people in my life now who I’d move the earth for, who I believe I will love, in my deepest possible capacity, forever. We’ve never needed proof of that beyond our continued presence in each other’s lives, but living so nomadically these past six months, I’ve had to rely on my friends in greater measure, emotionally and otherwise, and I’m in awe of the generosity of their love.

CO: “…because having to live presently and so transparently has forced me to work on myself in a very direct way and to realize that it’s alright to seek safety in others during low times.” This has been a theme in my life lately, and you’ve expressed it here beautifully.

JB: Thank you, I know it’s a long answer to such a simple question but it’s been on my mind lately. If you could choose one tarot card to represent where you find yourself right now, what would it be?

CO: I did a simple one-card tarot reading for myself this morning, as I’ve been doing every morning with a beautiful deck that found me recently. I’ve been using this as a way to ask about my focus for the day and to keep a consistent interaction with the deck. The card that came up was ‘Strength (mastery of emotions),’ which I read not as representing an immediate truth, but rather a force that I need to harness. The more I think about it, the more I feel how it applies to the broader scale of my life right now.

JB: I remember reading once in a Penguin book that fortitude represents a passive, inner strength of steadfast purpose rather than a positive, outer strength of action. I always thought that was really well put.

CO: Do have a favourite poem? Maybe one that you’ve memorized?

JB: I have this song, “Emeralds,” that’s based on a poem I’ve always loved by Frank O’Hara called “Animals.” It goes:

Have you forgotten what we were like then
when were were still first rate
and the day came fat with an apple in its mouth

it’s no use worrying about Time
but we did have a few tricks up our sleeves
and turned some sharp corners

the whole pasture looked like our meal
we didn’t need speedometers
we could manage cocktails out of ice and water
I wouldn’t want to be faster
or greener than now if you were with me O you
were the best of all my days

CO: “Animals” is perfect, thanks for sharing that.

JB: Of course.

JB: Were you voted anything for your high school’s superlatives?

CO: I don’t think my high school yearbook team was on top of the superlatives, although I also don’t actually remember looking once at my yearbook, so I could be wrong about that. Either way, I don’t think I would have been voted anything, I kept very much out of the way in high school.

JB: I did, too, I was a total slacker in high school. I didn’t even go to my graduation.

CO: Did you spend any time, when you were younger, convinced of what you wanted to be when you grew up?

JB: Oh for sure, I was nine years old in the millennium and for my 4th grade class I mod podged a cardboard shoe box to use as a time capsule. Inside of it, I put a beanie baby platypus along with a letter that I wrote to my future self, which read something like, “Dear Julie, when you were just a kid you wanted to be an artist, a comedian or a professional swimmer and your favorite food was french fries.” All those things are pretty much still accurate to a greater or lesser degree.

What do you think has always been true of your personality, no matter your age?

CO: I hope you still have that beanie baby…

I’d say the most constant shade of my personality has been a gravitation toward solitude, with varying degrees of intensity throughout my life. That and a startlingly consistent lack of direction, which I’ve been learning lately how to experience positively.

JB: Goodness, well said, that certainly resonates. You know, I think those are two particularly wonderful and incredibly useful qualities to possess. I was watching this awesome interview with Stephen Fry, where he says basically, “It’s disastrous to set goals for yourself, especially material ones, because they will keep you from becoming who you really are.” I think there’s infinite truth to that. You grow up and everybody is so fixated on attaining some kind of occupation, but I think the most enriching, vital times are periods of not knowing and not having.

CO: That quote sums up a lot of my feelings lately. Damn, thanks Stephen.

Alright, one more question: If you had to choose someplace anywhere in the world to spend the rest of your life, where would it be?

JB: Oh, I don’t think I could ever say now. I’m sure there will come a time when I’ll believe in my answer to that question, but right now, I don’t even think I’d want all my ashes to be buried in one place.