Two silver arches gleam from the warm shadows of a bedroom in Manchester. The arches belong to Nadia Reid’s glasses. I fancy her as a tawny owl on the other end of the world. “You have a sense of inner calm which I like,” I say.
The two of us are dialling in to discuss art and motherhood. Our own. Nadia recently released the singles Baby Bright and Changed Unchained and has a new album forthcoming, Enter Now Brightness (released February 7) – meanwhile, I have just published my latest book The Mermaid Chronicles.
Megan: I saw your Instagram post recommending Brandi Carlile's song The Mother and instantly wanted to talk to you.
In that post you also mentioned Delaney Davidson saying to you sometimes after women have children, it can sharpen your voice. That resonated with me. Having your first child is always a step into the unknown, but for women artists – including me – it often comes with this real fear that it might be the end of your creativity.
Nadia: For as long as I can remember, I had this kind of fear of it taking something away from me. Like you, I grew up with a solo mum.
When I was pregnant with my first daughter, I did a huge tour, which was my form of nesting. I was trying to make hay while I could and to prove to myself that I can do this. You know? And I did do it. I've taken my youngest daughter on tour and we just rolled with it. Start as you mean to go on. That’s my motto.
My first two albums were quite melancholic and sad, there's a heaviness in there. And now, I've gone through this life stage of creating a family, and I don't feel the same. If I'm content, am I'm gonna be useless? Will I not be able to do anything and just be boring? Motherhood brought everything right up to the surface.
Megan: Yes. It's so physical too. All of the changes and the demands on your body and the way kids just want you!
Nadia: Even the hormones are crazy. I was absolutely high after both my births. I liked how you talked about Tramadol in The Mermaid Chronicles.
I had my first birth in Dunedin, and also got sent home with a stack of Tramadol. And then like you described – I couldn't poo, 'cause Tramadol constipates you and it was full on. After my second birth I was given liquid oral morphine and I hallucinated in the hospital. I was just so ecstatic, that mixture of the hormones and love. I was on cloud nine.
Megan: When I first watched Changed Unchained and saw your daughter running around in the music video it moved me. And the lyrics too, about being changed but unchained, that’s a beautiful message to give your daughters that they are not a weight you carry. “I am transcended by your light.”
I related to that, becoming a mum at 40, I had to suddenly find my way with it. A friend had once even said to me, “I'm surprised that a woman like you would want to have a child.” I don't think she meant it cruelly. But for me, I had to integrate being a Mum into my own story.
Nadia: At the core of it, we want to feel seen. Right? I think that's what people enjoy about art or music or writing, we want to feel like we're understood or that other people have had this crazy experience, like with the Tramadol at the hospital and not pooing. I think we need that stuff, especially when things are so cooked in the world.
After I had Goldie, I thought, oh, I want to share this whole motherhood thing. I wanna do journaling about motherhood. Then I kind of flipped back into feeling like I wanted to keep it private. I'm not the first person to ever have a baby. I'm not the first artist to ever have a baby. Shut up! It’s hard but it’s changed me for the better.
Mothering is so humbling. I also enjoyed Noelle McCarthy’s memoir Grand. In it, she called mothering “deeply, unsexy work.”
Megan: Yes! When I went on my big mermaid saga, I was full throttle chasing after my dream, so that I didn’t pass down an unlived life to my daughter.
I went travelling alone to America interviewing professional mermaids. I was interested in their voices – the same way I'm drawn to your voice. But as I met these performers in New York, Florida and LA, I realised oh, these women aren't mermaids. They're performing artists, that made sense too.
I had to put the mermaid quest into the context of my own mundane and unsexy story! Motherhood became the compass for the book.
Nadia: With my first album, I almost don't recognise that young woman anymore. There's some really strong threads of loneliness and sadness there. In my teenage years, I was this deeply sad young girl. And that resonated with some of the audience.
Quite often now I'll meet someone that says one of my albums was the soundtrack to their home birth or even the death of someone important. I'll never ever take that stuff lightly.
I loved the bit in your book about the baby group Space, because I did Space with Elliotte too. I met these other women that I had nothing in common with other than we all had girl babies born two weeks apart. We’d all had really different arrivals to motherhood, but I kid you not, we hung out twice a week for six months at cafes, drinking coffee while our babies slept.
It makes me sad to see mums having to go back to work for money when they hate their jobs. One was in tears to me the other day. She said, it just doesn't feel like it's long enough, you know, he is only nine months old. And I said, it's not long enough.
Megan: Yes, it’s not long enough. A big part of my book was about that search for a more meaningful way to make money and to live your life. So many of us work in jobs that mean nothing to us. The intersection of art and money has always been incredibly difficult for me and remains so.
Nadia: I feel like monetising something creative can often kill it. Early on when I wrote my first album, there was no expectation, and the creative process was so much richer. And I have to fight a lot harder now, but I know when I hit it, the juicy kind of mojo thing when you're in the flow.
If it is good, it rises to the top. I really feel like if something I’m doing is meaningful or worthwhile to someone, then it will kind of get there without me having to try really hard.
Megan: I do know what you're saying. I have conflicted feelings around this because my writing doesn't make me a living. So sometimes I think if I was good enough it would. But increasingly I find that the striving is symptomatic of something I'd rather not be doing anymore. It’s no good for creativity.
Nadia: What would success would look like in your world?
Megan: Right now, financial stability.
Nadia: Success for me is being the master of my own time. There’s a fear that bubbles away at me and I think it's because of growing up in a single parent household on a low income. And I don't say this lightly, it doesn't ever leave you. I've talked to other friends who are now in successful positions but who had similar upbringings. One of them said, “I still feel like I'm gonna wake up one day and be homeless on the street.”
Actually, I talk about being the master of my own time, but it's not a hundred percent true. Before kids, I’d wake up, drink some coffee, lounge around, you know? My time is so much more limited now, but it’s made me a better person.
• Nadia Reid is currently touring Aotearoa. Find the schedule here.
• Megan Dunn's book The Mermaid Chronicles is out now.
