zzzahara

zzzahara is Jaime’s musical nom de plume, and Distant Lands, their fourth LP, is the sound of that decision to move away from the navel-gazing. Produced by Casey Lagos (Cold War Kids), Distant Lands doesn’t shy away from the deeper lanes of grief and addiction, but its focus is on the survival side of things. It’s all part of Jaime's personal growth and healing experienced in recent years, with zzzahara’s music as the primary outlet to document that journey.

Analogue: You've talked about wanting to be personal on this record without being woe-is-me. Where did that impulse come from?

Zahara Jaime: It kind of started because I've been trying to get sober for a long time. I've been in and out of AA meetings for like two years. It took a while for it to kind of stick.

And I remember somebody kind of speaking about themselves, and I kind of appreciated everyone in the room sharing their story, because it makes me feel like I'm not alone. And a lot of the stuff that I feel, it feels like self-pity, but I'm just grateful to hear other people's stories. And the stories inspire me to come out of my shell, and not just be so, like, in the corner, ‘woe is me, I feel sorry for myself.’

Because I've met people, and I've also been there myself, where it's just like, ‘Don't talk to me right now, I'm going through a bad time.’ And I feel like just opening up more, being more vulnerable, and listening to other people more than you're listening to your inner monologue. That kind of shifts the way I thought. A lot of my earlier writing, when I talk about love, it feels like woe-is-me type stuff. But people can't really understand you unless you share your story. And if you share your story, you’ve got to want to get better. People will understand your actions, but will not understand why you're not making an attempt to change your pattern.

So in recent years—growing up, growing older, self-reflecting, reading some Buddhist literature, some philosophy—you just wonder: the woe-is-me shit gets old as you get older. It's cool to be self-pitying sometimes, but I don't relate to a lot of my heroes who were self-pity people. As I get older, I want to hear a survivor story. I don't want to hear the collapse and demise of somebody who self-pitied themselves.

Analogue: All of this sounds like you’re processing more than just music? Does this come out in other creative outlets?

Zahara: I journal sometimes, write poetry. But I've been reading a lot of novels the past two, three years, and I want to write one day. Maybe take a creative writing class first and tell my stories. Because when I read [Charles] Bukowski and Eve Babitz and [Joan] Didion and [Ernest] Hemingway, I feel like I can relate to some of that, and my life has been such an adventure that I feel like I could write to the test of time of these last twenty-five, thirty years.

They say when you turn 30 is when you should write, but people always have that criticism; just because you're 30 doesn't mean you should write a book. So sometimes I feel discouraged by that sentiment. But I don't have hobbies. I never painted a picture or anything like that. The only thing I grew up doing was listening to music and trying to play music. My family's very blue-collar—if you ask my dad what his favorite movie is, he'll probably say Shallow Hal.

Analogue: Does songwriting feel like a constrained form for all of this?

Zahara: I never really thought about my lyrics until the last year and a half or two years. Before, I was just saying whatever I felt. I had to put out a record every year for my contract, so I never thought about, oh, what am I saying? Is this basic? Do I evoke a feeling for other people?

I kind of never thought about critics or anything, and then I read some criticisms, and it made me want to deep dive into my thought process and the songwriting. Because to me, I like the instrumentals more than having to write the lyrics. But for this record I did put some thought into it, because I had the songs in mind of what I wanted to say. I want to touch on loss. I want to touch on not growing up with parents who could watch me, or having an absent parent. Like, my song "She Doesn't Want Me to Exist”—that's about my mom jamming when I was 14. And I'm like, how can I say that? How did I feel at that moment in time? Oh, I felt like she doesn't want me to exist. And that's such a dramatic statement, so I felt like that would be good to put into music, because in ways music is theater. It's kind of visual when you close your eyes.

I do a lot of walking alone with my headphones on. Two days ago I was listening to Sun Kil Moon’s "Carry Me Ohio," just blasting it in my car. And the visuals of what I'm reminiscing about, the nostalgia behind such a sound. That song's like a soundtrack. It's not just a song. That's kind of how I think about writing this record. What can the lyrics evoke in emotion without being too wordy and without being too basic?

Analogue: Does that change how you feel about the final result?

Zahara: In ways, I do feel prideful because I put in the work. But even though you put in the work, it doesn't equate to what you would expect it to be or to the result once it's out. I have pride, but I still don't feel whole. It's just never enough when I write music. I think that's kind of the beauty of making it; it doesn't feel enough in the moment. But when I look back at demos I've written or things I did when I was younger, I'm proud to see the progress. Putting in the work kind of did pay off, even though you don't really feel it.

I feel like if you're constantly working at something and you haven't had the success that you would want, you won't ever feel good until you have that external validation. One day when I'm in a big house and have cool stuff, maybe I'll look back and be proud. But I feel like I've been taught to just: if you don't have all the stuff and you don't see the progress and you're not feeling it, then it hasn't happened yet.

Analogue: Earlier we talked about your reading habits, so what's the best thing you've read in the last six months?

Zahara: In the last six months, honestly, I went through Milan Kundera. I've read four of his books, and I like them all, but my favorite piece was The Unbearable Lightness of Being. It touches on, like, two things can be true at once. I'm not an open relationship type of person—I’m pretty monogamous—but I've had bouts in my life where I've had lots of flings but then I would still have a girlfriend, and two things could be true at once: you still love your partner, but you still want to see what's out there. You still have curiosity for life and love and trying to live two separate lives, even though it catches up in the end.

The main character is a doctor, and he believes strongly in his anti-government beliefs because they're occupied by the communist regime. He writes letters about politics, ends up standing up for that belief, gets fired from his doctor's job, and his pride is so great that he becomes a window washer, but he's still a womanizer and still seducing the ladies of the houses whose windows he's cleaning, while still having a wife at home. Even at the lowest point of his life, he's still trying to live it to the best of his ability while standing firm on his beliefs. I kind of applaud that kind of pride. It's not realistic or sustainable, but it's super cool.

Right now I'm doing the same thing with Clarice Lispector. She's a Brazilian writer from a Jewish family who settled in Brazil, and she didn't really want to be known. She's stream of consciousness, and the way she describes everything is so poetic and anxiety-driven and neurotic. And I picked up Infinite Jest, and I'm like 100 pages in, and it's so grueling, but I'm going to power through because I started it and I'm already 100 pages in, if I just microdose 20 pages a day, I'll finish that shit, and I'll be able to say I read.

VISIT: zzzahara