“When you’re out there, walk the sideways
I’ll be right there on your arm”
From “Rise” by Alison Mosshart
I remember when I first saw The Dead Weather’s live video of “Will There Be Enough Water.” The song is magnificent. I mean how many bands can venture into “No Quarter” territory and still sound fresh and original? But what was most compelling about the performance was the scorching interplay between singer Alison Mosshart and Jack White. As they screamed the lyrics “just because you caught me, does that make it a sin?” I wondered — were they going to kill each other? Kiss? Merge into a single organism made of molten lava? Who knows? Who cares? It was riveting — they were simultaneously wild and unhinged and yet grounded and connected in the moment.
So, it was with great interest when I read a recent interview of Mosshart talking about her feeling of “rootlessness” that came from a lifetime of travel and art. How did that wanton, wild creative energy reside in someone and manifest in one’s life? Most of us feel that we are faced with a binary choice: on the one hand, we can be “rooted”– stay in the same place and career and develop local friendships and family networks. The promise of this path is a sense of security and stability. But the implicit quid pro quo is that we must limit our sense of independence and excitement. We need to be tamed. On the other hand is Mosshart’s approach – one in which we embrace our wanderlust, pursue our passions and let them take us where they may. Using this rootless approach, we may experience a sense of freedom and spontaneity, with each day a potential adventure. But the risk of being rootless is that we may not feel connected to anything or anyone, and, therefore, feel unhinged and aimless.
But in talking with Alison Mosshart for the Hardcore Humanism Podcast, it is clear that she has rejected this binary choice as a false dichotomy. In fact, what Mosshart describes as “rootlessness” can alternatively be conceptualized as rootfulness — a term used to describe children who grew up in multi-cultural backgrounds. The key element of rootfulness is that one’s purpose and connection with others are not limited to place or time. Those qualities are with the person always, no matter where they may be or what they are doing. And it is in her rootfulness that Mosshart is able to experience both personal and artistic freedom as well as stability in her life.
The core of Mosshart’s rootfulness is her sense of purpose – her devotion to her creativity, travel and connection with people she’s met along the way. And whether it was her early work with Discount, her later work with The Kills and The Dead Weather, her new spoken word album Sound Wheel and art book Car Ma, or her new singles “Rise” and “It Ain’t Water,” Mosshart has never stopped growing or exploring — and that feeling is her home.
The wanderlust seed seems to have been planted in Mosshart’s life as she was growing up. Each year her father would take the family on a summer-long road trip. “The day that school was out, we would get into a van or an RV … and we would drive around the country for the whole of the summer,” Mosshart told me. “It was like this mad rush to get somewhere. And you get there and you’ve accomplished that. And now you were like, okay, can’t wait to leave again.”
And Mosshart continued the family tradition as a teenager, touring the country with Discount. She soon recognized that while some people found staying in one place comforting, she found her sense of security in travel. And rather than feeling “abnormal,” she declared her lifestyle her new “normal.” “I’ve been on tour since I was 14 … I really love waking up in a different place every day. That feels very grounding to me in a strange way. But when I describe it to someone else … it can sound like a nightmare,” Mosshart explained. “Normal in my mind means just what you’re used to the most … I couldn’t wait to go anywhere — all the time … and that became normal I suppose because I loved it so much.”
While continually staying in motion, Mosshart also developed an intense commitment and connection to her art and music. “There was something about my love for playing music and being on tour and even just any of those things I was into when I was a kid — art or writing — I would become so imbalanced in them. I would become so obsessed. I wouldn’t stop doing them. I would lock my door and do these things … 18 hours a day,” she recalled. “And it wasn’t like I had a choice to evaluate … Is this normal? Is this acceptable? Are people liking this or not liking this? It really truly made me feel good and safe. And I loved being on my own missions.”
One thing that helped Mosshart settle in to her sense of “normal” was that she was able to find people who had similar interests. Soon she realized she was not the only person out there who loved creativity and travel. “I developed friendships with other people who were similar in that way,” Mosshart explained. “I think you attract that same energy. The things that you enjoy doing in life … It’s like this thread, it’s this undercurrent … people that travel for a living and move around… this other society.”
By nurturing her sense of purpose through connecting with herself, her music, her art and her friends, a rootfulness eventually settled into Mosshart’s life. “My roots are in performing. My roots are in my friends … During my teenage years, in my early 20s, if I wasn’t on tour, I really missed everybody … I miss my friends and my family that lived everywhere,” Mosshart said. “And it quickly became that every major city that we went to … you had these friends, these good friends. Especially in the early days, we didn’t have money to stay in hotels so you stay at people’s houses and you developed friendships that lasted, well, my whole life at this point … That was what I was rooted in, was seeing these people.”
In addition to fueling Mosshart’s rootlessness, her sense of purpose also empowered her to accomplish difficult tasks, like sticking to a grueling touring schedule with minimal sleep while remaining energized rather than drained and demoralized. “You have this … super shot of purpose and adrenaline and you feel great on one hour of sleep … you kind of don’t feel pain in the same way,” she said. “And I think that’s the thing that really hooked me to that life, that career … It’s funny when you come off tour you just suddenly you’re sick. Your immune system goes down, your adrenaline’s gone. There’s nothing to hold the pieces together. The glue melts, you know, and you’re back on Earth. And, you know, washing dishes and making beds and figuring out how the hell do I feed myself?”
Mosshart embraces her rootfulness and has no plans to change her lifestyle. “I think because you’re an explorer, you’re a wanderer, and I think because your home is in your head … it doesn’t matter where you are. And if you’re on a mission to find something or you’re excited about the world and you want to see it, and you’re excited about the things you don’t know that are daunting, it’s exciting,” Mosshart said. “I think that having a purpose and or having a goal or having the mission is the thing that makes rootlessness not bad — not a negative thing. I don’t want to miss anything.
“I feel like that … I’m excited about what’s out there and what I can find.”
Photo credit: David James Swanson
