MUSIC

Sophie sounds off
Singer Sophie B. Hawkins describes her orientation as ‘omnisexual’
Friday, March 26, 2004

Remember Sophie B. Hawkins’ first song, “Damn, I Wish I was Your Lover,” and how most people figured she was talking about a man, and then she threw that twist in at the end, where she talked about making love to a woman?

Ever since she hit the airwaves with that song, Hawkins has attracted attention for her unconventional and unapologetic views on sexuality.

It’s not that she’s been coy about her own sexual leanings. It’s more that everyone wants so badly to label her and get her to come out of whichever closet she’s in, that she’s frequently misunderstood.

Hawkins will be in town this weekend, as the Sunday night headliner at Calliope Fest, the women’s music festival at Young Circle in downtown Hollywood. In addition to her older hits, she will be singing songs from her new CD, “Wilderness,” which is due out mid-April.
In this honest and intimate interview, Hawkins talks about her new CD, motherhood, gay marriage, her fans, and her ever-evolving sexuality.

Express Gay News: Your new CD, “Wilderness,” feels to me unabashedly romantic.
Sophie B. Hawkins: I must be in that period of my life.

Express: The other thing I noticed was that this CD is about someone who is happier. What’s made such a difference in your life from your other CDs to now?
Hawkins: I’m not feeling that I have to go somewhere to find what I’m looking for. It’s not that I don’t see the darkness, I just see it in different ways.

Express: That’s sort of what the last song, “Feelin’ Good,” said to me. I was surprised you added it, because it’s the one song you didn’t write, but it is about someone discovering a new world, like waking up from a bad dream.
Hawkins: I heard Nina Simone do that song about a year ago, and I wanted to cover it. When I heard her do that song, I felt as if I’d suddenly woke up and saw the world differently.

Express: Do you have a favorite song on “Wilderness”?
Hawkins: “Walking on Thin Ice” is such a spiritual song, and it really is true when I say, ‘Please take away from me all these things I do not need.’ I really don’t want to hold onto anything anymore that is not for a higher spiritual purpose.

Express: I love when you get jazzy, like on “SweetSexyWoman.” Is that written about anyone in particular?
Hawkins: This is what I think about all the songs: I wish it was, but it’s triggered by someone in particular. It’s triggered by a present day experience, but I think the actual songs come from many lives.

Express: Where does the title “Wilderness” come from?
Hawkins: “Wilderness” came from this feeling that even though I’m not technically in the wilderness, ever since I was born I’m going further and further into the wilderness of my soul, and this really pure place, where I know there are going to be things to battle, and I know there are going to be predators, but I know there’s also angels and goddesses and gods.

I also have this really strong sense that having given myself to the wilderness, it will take care of me, no matter what I go through. My whole life seems to be trying to invoke the wilderness in someone else. If everybody gets in touch with their own wilderness, it makes the world so colorful.

Express: I know you had quite a problem with someone pirating promos of your new CD. How does that make you feel as an artist?
Hawkins: I feel like I’m up against that so much in my life, up against this banality and this obnoxious hatred for anyone trying to do anything that is different.”

Express: Was there anything in particular you wanted to achieve artistically with this CD?
Hawkins: I don’t think there was an overall vision that I had. I just wanted to make a record and I wanted to have enough really good material.

Express: It’s interesting that you say you don’t have an overall vision, because unlike a lot of groups and artists, when I listen to your CDs, I see them as a collection that has to exist together. I can’t see taking a song from “Tongues and Tails” and putting it on “Whaler.”
Hawkins: I think the vision happens so far ahead. Right after I finished this one, I started to conceive the feeling that I wanted for the next one. The vision so far preceeds the actual hard work of making it that I forget. It’s like when you make a prayer and then you forget when it’s answered. You set things in motion so far ahead of time.

Express: So many of the songs on “Wilderness” are so much more feminine. Just about every song is about a woman and it’s such a celebration of women and love for women.
Hawkins: It is, and I love that and that makes me so happy to accept and be able to express it and so happy that it comes out. I’m more feminine. Basically, it’s accepting a certain part of myself.

Express: You’ve always been open about your relationships with men and women and described yourself as omnisexual and so many of your songs over the years could be taken to be about a man or a woman. But this collection of songs is very centered on women. Is that another form of acceptance for you?
Hawkins: It is centered on women. I love the word omnisexual and I feel that by opening myself more up to women I am also opening my soul up to my omnisexuality.

I’m unabashedly in love with women and I’m also unabashedly more aware of my fierce leanings toward males and it’s really nice.

I feel like I don’t want to set a course in terms of my sexuality. I want it to come to me. Whatever it is, it is, and it’s always unfolding to me. The feminine totally awakens the masculine in me and in other people. It’s a very beautiful interplay that’s going right now for me.

Express: You see a lot of women now who are embracing the side of themselves that is able to love women, even if they consider themselves straight.
Hawkins: I think that’s what I am, that’s more where I’m coming from. I admire heterosexual women in many ways. I understand it, and I would hate to have to choose, because then I would have to ignore my emotions. But when I was woken up to women, I was completely blown away by the intensity of my creativity that came out.

And so that’s why I chose the word omnisexual because it would really be very incorrect for me to say I am a lesbian because I don’t feel like one. I feel more like if I’m in the closet, I’m in the closet as a heterosexual woman, because I’m more now in a gay world, because the gay world has opened up to me. I think that a lot of “heterosexual” women relate to me in that sense. We get where the other is coming from.

Express: I think it would be a happier, more tolerant world if everyone embraced that.
Hawkins: You know, I don’t understand what’s wrong with this world.

Like the Christian right — who’s more feminine than Jesus Christ? I also think religion is so funny. Thousands of years before Christianity, the same symbols, the same characters were in so many other religions. People like Moses were in other fables. We take our selves so seriously. It’s got to be Moses, it’s got to be Muhammad.

If the world could let go of this dogmatism and see the world as a creation in progress — like gay marriage. It’s so important that gay couples, or omnisexual couples, or transgendered couples, can get married because they make great parents. Obviously there have been gay people raising children since time began — they just had to lie about it.

It breaks my heart every time some very conservative person says we have to save the institution of marriage. I just want to puke. It’s a stale institution anyway. It needs new blood and I don’t understand a world where there’s so much darkness and so much heartache and so much pain, and yet people don’t want to change?

I want the choice to marry a woman or a man. I never wanted to get married but part of it was that I felt I had no choice. Now that I think it could open up, I think marriage could be a beautiful thing. I see those girls and those guys getting married just for as long as they can hold onto their licenses, and I applaud them.

Express: You were talking about parenting before. Are you eager to be one?
Hawkins: Yeah, and I don’t know who I’ll have it with, a man or a woman. I don’t know any of that yet, but I want to have a choice. I would be totally comfortable either way

national | local | world | health | letters | viewpoint | arts | classifieds | real estate | about us

© 2008 | A Window Media LLC Publication | Privacy Policy