Q&A: rlyblonde Discusses Her World of Creativity, Artistic Practice & Her Debut in Music With “Fantasy”
GIVING SHAPE TO THE NUANCES THAT COMPRISE HER — rlyblonde expands her creative practice with the debut of her first musical project, “Fantasy.” But her delve into music stems from more than a desire to feel through creation — it’s a need. A universe of her own, the 27-year-old Brooklyn-based multidisciplinary artist has crafted a space deeply woven with her reality, reflecting her vulnerabilities and allowing her the paradoxically fearful and beautiful act of sharing herself as she is.
Attune to the sensitivities of the heart, rlyblonde’s music and musical process — like her photographic, video, and creative practice — capture the ever-present depth and consequence of heartbreak and love, its pain, the inevitable rope that ties itself to hope, growth, and beauty. From a young age, she has utilized her stories and her ability to connect to others as a mode of understanding herself, both as a singularity and in interaction with the world. Having spent years perfecting her craft and building a circle of many that trust and support her mind and eye, rlyblonde exemplifies the capabilities of the storyteller, one that deems the intersection of art — in all its forms — and human connection essential to its own existence.
“‘Fantasy’ is really about being frustrated with dating culture and the performances that women (especially women dating men) have to put on, almost out of necessity, until it hits a point where it all becomes too draining,” she says about the debut single. “At the same time, it’s also a song about the power of women, the power of illusion and seduction, the power of confidence, and the power of being anonymous.”
“Fantasy” will be followed by her second single, “Spiltmilk,” and the release of her EP, Fantasy, culminating years of self-discovery — in particular, a journey into the understanding of how multifaceted and fluid love as a concept, emotion, and practice is.
At once heavy and light with a gritty alternative-rock and melodic bedroom pop sound, her soundscape — again, like that of her visual portfolio — retreats into the familiar, nostalgic, and almost inescapable motions of falling in and out of love, of accepting and rejecting its depth, and of the process to self-restoration, healing, and allowing its existence to fully consume you in order to find some sort of peace. In harmony, rlyblonde plays with sound and language, exploring the art of contradiction, intimacy, and self-acceptance through her lyrical, sonic, and visual world.
Read on as rlyblonde discusses her goals, inspirations, and the experiences that influence her creativity and self.
LUNA: Before we even get to the music side, you mentioned you are balancing a million different career paths and identities under the creative title. How are you doing?
RLYBLONDE: Well, I’m sipping my tea. I feel the next cold coming on, you know? Yeah, it's definitely been a lot. I mean, this year has been a huge transition with my photo and creative work, of finding ways to split off into many different pathways, which is really helpful for my brain capacity to compartmentalize stuff. I'm getting to the point where I'm like okay; I need five new emails for all this stuff. For photography, I still have my clients that come consistently to me, which is great — [I’m] mostly working with musicians. Then I also have been working with a couple friends, colleague-type people — I don't even know what you call a co-worker when you're freelance… a person that you do things with.
I have a couple of friends that I've been working with to prep a production company. That’s in the process of getting fully set up and launched. So I'm trying to, as a director, as a creative director and a creative person, be able to work on a larger scale with both clients and the teams of people we're working with. I'm hoping that a lot of my personal creative work as a photographer is going to be shifted to this production company where I'm working [in] an art director role and [as] a consultant for the clients. And then if we have to outsource photography that isn't in line with my style, we can do that or pull in a team for video production; or if they need graphic design, we have just a giant roster of people.
LUNA: That sounds amazing and very exciting. Have you found that it offers something new to your creativity?
RLYBLONDE: Yeah, definitely — the goal with that is to be offering full-service creative rollout for artists. I'm really excited for that to be up and running. But we're just tying all the final little touches on it and getting everything set up. I really am hoping to get more into directing work because I just love video and I think there's so much more possibility for what you can do with a larger-scale project in that way. I'm hoping that will bring in more directing projects so I can get really creative with people.
Separately — this is not as glitz-and-glam exciting — but I’ve decided I wanted to own a house someday or something. I've been shooting weddings and that’s been fine. I've been enjoying it, and that’s not quite as exciting but I have found a kind of nice niche of people that look for film photography, a more candid vibe.
Then, the music thing is obviously a huge beast on its own. I've been trying to kind of incorporate the whole music project with the production company, so the music video that we did for “Fantasy” was a trial run of what we can do with a larger scale project for a client if we really pull it together. I produced it with a couple other friends, and it was the largest project I've ever worked on. It was honestly a dream. I've been dreaming about this video for a year and a half, so it was absolutely insane to actually plan the whole thing and have it come together. I kept thinking if I can just do this one video I can die happy — I don't even need to do anything else. So the music’s been sort of an interesting way to work it from both angles, to use myself as a really good test client, because frankly it's hard to get the budget for video projects and really show people what you're able to do.
And of course I would love to keep making music because I truly love it — I love it so much. I feel like photography has been really fun for a really long time, but I've famously just been a one-woman show forever, with no assistance, nothing. Working with the same gear for four years … I'm ready to level up a little bit.
LUNA: That's so sick. You're expanding in so many different ways at the same time and yet they all are connected in their own way. They're always gonna go hand in hand. I’m sure being at that intersection of so much opportunity and pull can be very stressful.
RLYBLONDE: Totally…but it's also kind of nice because even already I’ve been soft-launching that but I'm gonna be a pop-star on Instagram for a hot minute now … and of course I dropped followers like flies. I thought, oh, you all hate me, but it’s cool, I'm stuck with me. If you don't like this now, you never really did. The more I introduce new clients that are coming to me … looking for longer-term working relationships together, it's great because I can say, we actually can offer that to you, and I have a network of people that can support that sort of project. I never really thought about it like this at the beginning. I was just very nervous about being late to the [music] game, you know what I mean? But now it’s been months and months and months of working up my confidence to be able to say “I’m doing this,” and I think my clients trust me more because they know that I understand the other side of it, of how long music takes and how many things go into making it, the cost of everything, and just the exhaustion of the entire process.
Ava, my PR agent, and my manager, Heather, have both been super helpful … [in] setting me up for, hopefully, success in this area. But yeah, I'm hoping that being a multimedia artist is ultimately going to pay off for me, which is hard because I feel like Instagram and … social media [have] such a clutch [on] our entire career. It's very backwards to advertise doing multiple things. Instagram really loves if you have a niche, and I have consistently been bad at having a niche. It’s funny — I’m almost determined to beat the algorithm. There's value in being a creative person that has a varied background, and I don't think we should have to pretend that's not true.
LUNA: There's a whole community of people like that. I feel like that's a growing trend of being able to learn how to do more things yourself, and as things become more accessible it is easier to expand in that way.
RLYBLONDE: I have to give a lot of credit as well. I've always been a huge theater kid, singer; I've always loved that shit — I played Elle Woods in my high school production of Legally Blonde — [and] I do feel it's been in my bones for a long time. But no, I meant to say that I have been so inspired over the years to finally get to this point of being able to say, “I want to do this myself” because being around so many musicians all the time and so many creative people is so inspiring, and most of my friends here in Brooklyn are client[s] that I've met through a job, or [someone who] booked with me to do a shoot… So many people ask me, “How did you meet that person?” I'm like, “Oh, they were a client, we've just been friends for so long.”
I've been so inspired by being around all these really amazing, talented, dedicated artists, and particularly musicians. I’ve had a lot of encouragement from the people around me, which has been so nice. I feel like in every artistic industry, there are people and there are spaces where it feels very much [like] a gatekeeping mentality. I feel so relieved to be 27 and in Brooklyn, having connections in LA, and just being really supported by a really creative, non-judgmental group of creative artists. So I credit a lot of it to that.
LUNA: It's tough to put yourself out there, and in a new way, too. Obviously you have your own brand as a photographer, but with just a whole new layer of vulnerability that there's almost a cushion. At the very least there's this community that has supported you in one creative endeavor. So it’s like … they’ll be there for me in that.
RLYBLONDE: Absolutely. And I think it's kind of beyond, “Oh, are they gonna like the music?” I've never gotten that vibe from anyone that I'm friendly with here who I work with. Everyone, they want you to succeed. If you’re passionate about what you're pursuing, people just want you to be able to do that. You know what I mean? I don't even think it is so much about people saying the music is amazing. It's very vulnerable. It's very scary. And I feel like I've sort of leaned on photography as a crutch for a very long time. I mean, I love to be a workaholic. I love to never take a break. And if I'm consistently shooting with clients, it makes it really easy to not do any personal work. It's been a long time since I've done a self-portrait series. And I've definitely done a lot of that in my time. People always seem to remember those projects and be like, “When are you going to do another one?”
LUNA: It can be easy to neglect the roots of what made you so passionate, or at least contributed to this passion, once it becomes work.
RLYBLONDE: Yeah. With self-portraiture, I [was] just stumped for so long … and I just thought, well, it's easier to just do client work because I don't have to feel my emotions. I don't have to say anything. [Self-portraiture] is more vulnerable, and so now I'm finally able to do that. Music is amazing because it is like a self-portrait — it's just got more moving parts. So that's really how I view it: a very large self-portrait project.
LUNA: I like that. Have you seen any similarities between your creative process for music and photography? Or is it two completely separate processes?
RLYBLONDE: I think when it comes to my personal fine art — self-portraits I’ve done in the past, personal work — I think that the process, because the mediums are so different, is very different. But thematically — and I don't even think I realized this when I was making everything — it's always been about my relationships and about heartbreak. I did a gallery show in 2019 and it was three different series of self-portraits, all under this one theme of relationships and breakups, and about how I learned about myself through all of them. So it was called “Tough Love.” I have the little card from the show right here [on my wall]. It's a classic me aesthetic, the tears, the crying. I've been doing this shit for years. So I thought, of course my music would be the same sort of aesthetic.
I already have many more eras planned out in my mind of music that I want to make, but it feels really appropriate for this first single and EP coming, to have it sort of be in the same world that I've been making a lot of photography about in the past. But process-wise I've actually been so grateful for the challenge of music-making because I said to so many people in the past [that] I don't think I could ever do it, because how do you write something and then a year and a half later you still fuck with it? That’s crazy to me, you know? Photography is so instantaneous: you do the shoot, you get it back.
I think I've really enjoyed the pace of photography for a while because I get very impatient, and I'm a Sagittarius, which is very classic — I'm over it and moving on. If I do a shoot with someone and it doesn't come out for months, I don't care anymore. So I was very nervous to really commit to making music because I thought, “Oh god, I'm sure that in six months I'm going to want to trash it.”
It's been such an affirming relief to really challenge myself to commit to a full visual rollout of the whole thing and figure out the story and what makes sense together and what doesn't, and [to] spend the money and time to actually see it fully through. I wrote this song, “Fantasy,” last fall. It just was so long ago. I'm definitely at a different point in my life right now. But I still love it. I listen to my own music. I still relate. This is a whole other tangent but “Fantasy” itself is very specifically about my experience dating men. But, I realized this year that I was queer. So it's been a really big year of identity shifts and thinking about myself, and I relate now in a different way. I'm very grateful for her [my past self] and for all the things I've gone through, but I feel like I've entered a new chapter, which is great.
LUNA: You articulated how you're feeling at the time in a certain way — maybe you'd articulate it differently now. But you still have those essential thoughts, those base feelings.
RLYBLONDE: I still feel that way about that time of my life. I appreciate a lot of the music that I'm about to release because there's a sense of humor to it too. I was writing a lot of music, and then I had this one day where I was like, “I figured it out, I understand. I understand who she is now and what the voice is,” and I realized: I’m a sarcastic little brat. Of course that's what it's gonna be like — I have to be laughing; I just can't take it so seriously because I just don't think it's that deep. I don't really think anything in life is that deep, and ironically, I'm a very emotional person. That sort of humor aspect of it has been so helpful. I get why people and artists and musicians are so emotionally tied to their stuff, because it's a healing process. I was able to move through very intense emotions and a lot of just shit from that time of my life through writing all this music.
LUNA: So, if “Fantasy” is almost the intro and kind of our first taste of the EP, how would you compare it to the rest of the project?
RLYBLONDE: I think that the project is very much about getting to know myself in a really vulnerable way — sort of realizing what I really want out of my life and realizing that I have the agency to choose that. I think that is a universal kind of reminder but also a reminder for myself to appreciate how far I've come. I've worked hard to surround myself with people I really care about and [who] I'm inspired by. I’ve created my own community. I can choose who I want to spend my time and energy on.
I moved into my own apartment in May of 2021, and I just started spending a lot of time going to shows alone and doing whatever it was alone and just realizing that my life could be whatever I want, you know. Alongside that realizing I was queer … I used to have this sort of tragic femme storyline in my head, that this was always going to be how my life was, and in a way I do feel that my biggest life breakthroughs are going to be through heartbreak. I am big on tarot. I have the Three of Swords tattooed. I just know — it’s in my bones.
I went to a psychic once and she said, “Do you ever feel this? Like when you break up with someone and you don't know what happened or why they disappeared. I see in a past life you were a medieval woman and I see that your lover just left one day and never came back.” I'm gonna sound crazy, but I do in a way believe that I was ghosted in a past life. I do really feel that this is my journey to take and that I have to go through these experiences to know myself and figure out what I really want. I definitely don't know exactly what I want yet, because I feel like I'm having this identity shift that a lot of people have when they're in high school. I'm having it now.
LUNA: Almost like the shifts that come with puberty and adolescence — that kind of discovery. I think growth is so sporadic though.
RLYBLONDE: Yeah, exactly. The emotional side of it, too, because [I’m] really … not rebranding — [I’m] almost honing in on the brand that [I’ve] been building.
LUNA: Yeah, almost like expanding?
RLYBLONDE: Yeah. I think that the whole project of Fantasy, the EP coming, is very much a reflection of this time that I spent by myself, marinating and thinking about who I want to be. The whole “It's hard to be in your twenties” idea. I'm 27 and I don't feel like I have the space to have the same problems that a 21-year-old has, yet somehow I still feel emotionally stuck in time and trying to figure it out.
LUNA: It’s a dichotomy.
RLYBLONDE: Yeah, the whole second puberty. All these thoughts. Realizing that I want to do music and I want to date women, and just thinking, “Oh wow, this whole world is opening up for me.” I’ve taken the time to build my own foundation and my own safe space for myself to explore that without my entire nervous system shutting down.
LUNA: That's really awesome. I like what you just said at the end, that you've built the space for yourself to get more in touch with yourself. And I feel you — when you said you live alone, when you moved into your own apartment. I moved into my own place last year and I think that's crucial. It's such a luxury, I understand, but the power of living alone, no matter how long it is, allows you to learn to like yourself, which you can. I learned and knew how to actually be comfortable with myself and my thoughts.
RLYBLONDE: Exactly. That’s such the epitome of all this music because we were talking about my process — my photography process at this point is very much professional. Here's the moodboard, and we're going to do this, and how am I going to do the lighting setup, and I need to make sure I have all this stuff. My music process has been this magical thing for me, and … I’m quite a spiritual girlie. So I really do feel like there was something I was tapping into last year when I was writing all this music. I had an astrology reading for my birthday this year where she said a lot of things that really affirmed what I'm describing.
LUNA: What did she say?
RLYBLONDE: In short, she basically told me that there was a Neptune transit I was having most of last year that she literally called the “rockstar transit.” She said, “Yeah, you're in your own world. You're just vibing on your own magical little world. You're running on this delusional self-confidence. You have no idea where it came from. You don’t know what the fuck [you’re] doing but you know you have to do it.” And that was very accurate.
LUNA: Oh wow, that must’ve been affirming, I see that.
RLYBLONDE: Yeah, so I feel having my own home space was very crucial because all of my music-making was really [just] spending hours in my apartment alone with my little mood lights on. I have my whole wall right here of all my moodboards — me and my friends do moodboards for every new moon; whatever the themes are, whatever we want to see, and so all my moodboards are about making music and being an artist and doing all these things I want to do and just shaping this entire world. I might scan some of them and use them as some sort of art for the project because it was so representative of the world that I was making. I literally [sat] here and [made] my little demos all night long, and then I would listen to them back for an hour on repeat and be like, “Okay, yeah,” and it was just such a personal intimate vibe that I created with myself.
LUNA: That sounds amazing. Do you think this is something you want to carry with you?
RLYBLONDE: I think, moving forward, I would like to challenge myself in a session with some other people and find new ways to make work, but I think I needed this first project to be this kind of intimate thing. I didn't really think about this for a while, but it was almost a pride thing. I work with my producer, Will, who is fantastic. I brought him the demos and he understood the vibe immediately, and he's been so great to work with. I was talking to him and he was like, “No, Carina, you really bring in fully written demos, we just re-record everything and then I write a bassline and drums.” He said, “You’re an artist. You came in with this.” And I didn't even think about it like that, but yeah, [he’s] right. I knew what I wanted the songs to be already.
LUNA: Has it been hard, then? I feel like everyone goes through this, no matter what the medium is. I don't know what your journey was like with photography. Do you feel comfortable having the identity and saying, “I'm a musician”? And when we're talking about identity, is that part of the identity? Would you say “musician” is part of the identity?
RLYBLONDE: Yeah, I’ve been trying to put it in the vocabulary because it's been kind of hard. I've been trying with clients to sort of just sprinkle it in here and there so that it just feels normal. I already did the trial. I told my friends I want to do this and they supported me, and the family showed their support, but I don't think they quite get it yet. They haven't really heard the music. They don't really understand, but my dad made me a custom pink guitar for Christmas. He got a Telecaster kit and built it and painted it true rlyblonde pink. The more I feel supported, the more confident I feel to say, “this is a real thing.” I think once the song is announced and the first single is out, I'll be far more ready to add [“musician”] to the label.
LUNA: I think it's the woman thing, this weird idea that in order to be the title of model photographer, musician, you have to be the best right now.
RLYBLONDE: Yeah, I feel like I have such high expectations for myself in that way. But I also think with everything, especially with art, I would never perpetuate that onto other people. There can never be enough art — just keep making your art. When I started writing music I really just wanted to be able to express myself in a different way.
LUNA: Okay, well, last question, very broad: What's next?
RLYBLONDE: We've got “Fantasy” coming out, which is very exciting, and also the music video coming out, which is also very exciting. And then I just recorded another music video yesterday for the second single called “Spiltmilk.” I don't know exactly when that will be out, but I'm hoping over the next couple months, and the full Fantasy EP before the end of 2023. I’m prepping to perform live too, so yeah, that’s what’s next for me. All very exciting.
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