IMAGINARY QUESTIONS TO FRANK OCEAN

HI ZoNErZ

If you know me IRL you know that I love myself a good artist. Being a highly sensitive and emotional person (a trait that for a long time I’ve been ashamed of, but that is for another article eheheh), I have a very strong response to any artistic production (music, paintings, movies, etc).

When life gives you lemons, create a blog and imagine what those interviews would look like am I right?

One of my favorite pastimes is to watch videos or listen to podcasts of creative people describing their work or to forcefully make my friends listen to my current favorite music/ see my favorite painting/ read my favorite book so that we can share our experience afterward.

However, if you know me, you also know that I have zero relevance in the mundane world to actually be able to interview those people and ASK THEM HOW THEY MAKE MY HEART BURST WITH ALL THE FEELINGS OMG. But when life gives you lemons, create a blog and imagine what those interviews would look like am I right? That is exactly what is happening here: me asking my questions to a Genius without expecting any answer for the time being.

I kick off the series, with Frank Ocean because for the past two years Blond and Channel Orange have been the soundtracks of my emotional life. I was first introduced to “Nikes” in 2017, at a time when most parts of my life felt like hell on earth. My “love” life particularly was pretty chaotic but a guy managed at the time to convince me that I wasn’t as lonely as I felt (and then turned out to be quite the douchebag). Picture the hottest day of summer in Paris, 11 PM, getting cozy in a small apartment in the center of the city after having sipped way too many Caipirinhas on the terrasse of a cozy bar. I remember exactly the smell of hot concrete and the enchanting calm background noise created by the neighbors talking with their windows opened. I remember him standing by the window lightening a cigarette, looking through his phone, smiling at me, and putting “Nikes” on. If you know the track, you know that dude KNEW what he was doing. Needless to say, after the first verse, I was completely smitten. Since then, every time I listen to the song, I am transported to this exact moment, which is both delightful and extremely painful (shout out to all my melancholic kweens out there).

To this day, from all the artists I have listened to over the years, Frank Ocean moves me the most. I cried my eyes out on “Self-Control” and “Futura Free”, and fell in love with all the strangers I bumped into while listening to “Ivy”. I am now quite the regular listener and have obviously a sweet spot for Channel Orange, but also all the singles that have dropped recently (“Lens”, “Moon River”, “Provider”, “Biking” …).

I always figured that if I were to meet Ocean it wouldn’t be a planned encounter (a bitch can dream). I’d completely serendipitously sit next to him in an Uber pool (yes, Frank Ocean is loaded but he is so cool that he still takes Uber pools) after a night of feeling lonely in a crowd. We’d discuss his music and life in general while staring at the fading street lights and feeling the pulse of the city lit up by the desperate energy of restless party people (told you I’m an emotional wreck).

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Here are the questions on my list:

Why is “swim good” nowhere to be found anymore?

I mean, I know there is a copy on Vimeo, but still. We NEED that original gold nugget on Spotify for God’s sake.

How do you “see” people so well?

This is an important one. I have had the impression that more than with a lot of artists these days, people who listen to Ocean’s songs relate/ feel strongly about them. Pick any of his tracks, and I can assure you it will take you back to an event that occurred to you. If you need proof, just check out the comment section of any of Blonde’s music video on YouTube. Ocean captures very raw emotions that he then “packages” in a very timely and modern way thanks to his melodies and poetic lyrics. The spectrum of emotions he works on is quite wide and comprises romantic love, brotherly love, loneliness, heartbreak, despair…The result is undoubtedly sentimental but it hits emotional states that we go through rather accurately (read, it’s not overly romantic and unrealistically touchy-feely to the point where it sounds fake). It means that he is able to both understand human nature in what it universally has (dem feelings) and to also understand it in the context of our current era (dem melodies/ lyrics). That is complete genius. I want to know everything about how he does this magic.

Who were your muses?

This one really has me intrigued because behind most great artists’ work lies another person who inspired the feelings they are conveying to the universe through their production: the love triangle between Gainsbourg, Bardot and Birkin, the platonic relationship between Yves Saint Laurent, Betty Catroux and Loulou de la Falaise, the collaboration between Jackson Pollock and his wife Lee Krasner …

It makes sense: you can’t feel affection, heartbreak, intense sadness, lust without it being triggered by somebody else. However, with a muse, there seem to be something more to a “usual” relationship you might develop. Violence, a risky, toxic even deadly component that when used in the creative process turns the work of the artist into a masterpiece. That is this ugly, negative feeling that replicates the intensity of the human experience and makes it, in essence, beautiful.

That is why I want to know who “Ivy” is and who the person behind “Thinking about you” is. Who makes him lose his “Self-Control”? Those seem to have been love interests of Ocean’s, but he also has been inspired by people who he didn’t seem to want to get into the pants of, which makes those relationships all the more interesting. Who is the gender-fluid person who sees on both sides like “Chanel”? Who is the one that is getting away and that Ocean wishes “God Speed” to? Again, so many questions!

What do you think about social media?

I like to imagine that Ocean would have a deeper answer than every social media star ever explaining Instagram “is so not real”, or how it “seriously harms your mental health”. Those trendy digital-hygiene claims are usually posted without any real analysis, plus the “woke” content-creator who posts these, is usually still heavily using social media platforms to gain attention and sell products (what a time to be alive).

Don’t get me wrong, Ocean is popular on Instagram (even though he is not the one to post that often), but it seems that his presence on social media is much more restrained and curated than other people in the music industry (Cardi B, Kanye West — I know it’s an extreme case — …). From a business standpoint it’s very odd in the current landscape to see someone so embedded in pop culture and so popular NOT telling you to “Swipe Up” in their insta-stories every two seconds. Broadly speaking, his entire persona is surrounded by an aura of mystery: he barely communicates on his drops, the last publicity he took part in was his cover on the latest issue of Dazed Magazine, and his remarkable appearance at the Met Gala this year (wearing all black classic Prada when the theme was Camp, again: Genius).

From a personal standpoint, he seems to have voiced an opinion on the effects that social media might have on relationships via his “Facebook Story” skit on Blonde. But yet again, it wasn’t his direct opinion (the voice talking had a furious French accent) and the story is quite vague, leaving the listener a lot of room for interpretation. For instance, you don’t hear both sides of the story to properly decide if you consider the girl went full-on PMS hormonal crazy (it happens even to the best of us), or if the guy was shady from the beginning. I’d like to understand exactly what his message at the time was and how his opinion might have grown over the last two years.

Will you marry me?

IT’S FRANK OCEAN, I have to at least try.

If you’ve read this far, congratulations! I’d be more than happy to discuss those questions with you even more on instagram. Shoot me a DM and let’s get emotional while listening to those tracks and realize our youth is passing us by … Getting us in a perfect mood for #MentalBreakdowwnMonday hehe.

Mad love ❤