In Her Own World

PERHAPS THE DEFINING characteristic of the Mexican painter, musician, and writer Teá Mox is her unapologetic love for and exploration of so many creative objects/mediums. Here, after all, is an artist whose lush, near-symphonic EP Sailors—produced and recorded entirely by herself in her bedroom (!)—is not only one best dream pop releases in recent memory, but also is perfectly complimented by her lovely series of accompanying paintings, ethereal self-shot avant garde videos, and uninhibited lyrics—at turns poetic, biting, defiant, and soul-baring—that easily stand on their own merits as poetry.

“There isn’t a lot of shade between these things in my mind,” Mox tells AQUA Pinecrest. “The art, painting, music, writing, videos, photos, it’s all one thing to me; it’s all interconnected. I’m always chasing the same idea or goal with different tools…

It’s very much world-building in my mind. There are many different elements, but it’s the same world.”

AN ARTIST’S SOUL

Born and raised in Cancun, Mox’s first love was fashion design, which gave way to writing fiction when she encountered a certain young wizard. “I was deeply obsessed with Harry Potter,” she says. “I was one of those kids who had all the spells memorized.”

Art, too, was always present. “I grew up looking at a lot of Frida Kahlo. That’s probably where my thing for self-portraits comes from,” she says. And then, in a moment of pre-teen serendipity, she discovered the Paramore record Riot! amidst the tumult of her parents’ divorce. “I was blown away by it,” she recalls. “I had never really had music or even poetry speak so directly to me like that before. It was like Hayley Williams was hitting the nail on the head with every single line.”

Later, living in Fairfax, Virginia she played with other musicians attempting to conjure some of that band magic herself, but it never really clicked; She really was an art pop peg struggling to fit in a hardcore and aggressive rock-shaped hole. And then she got a new laptop and discovered the GarageBand app.

“I realized very quickly: I want to produce my own music. I put hours and hours in learning my way around it.” And then, when she felt as she had a handle on the program, Mox began to study music theory so that she would be able to translate the ambitious ideas into musical notation, more complex chord progressions, and four-part harmonies that could act as a kind of bridge between the low-fi bedroom pop she loved and the cinematic, orchestral work of transcendent alt-pop stars like Bjork and Tori Amos. If Picasso really did say, “Learn the rules like a pro, so you can break them like an artist,” Mox took the sentiment to heart. “Whenever I learn a technique or theory,” she says, “it is with the intention not of becoming an expert but to get the things I have in my mind done in the real world.”

PASSION PROJECT

Sailors represents the first time Mox actualized a holistic, multimedia work on this scale. Part of this is made possible by the fact that, as Hermann Hesse noted, solitude is freedom.

“I have memories of being very hesitant to bring up an idea or show people something in a band setting,” Mox says. “And not just because they might not like it or make me feel stupid about something I was proud of, but also because I didn’t want to waste anyone’s time pursuing ideas. When it’s just me, I make so much stuff that is just trash and will never see the light of day, but it’s fine because it’s just my time and I know that’s how I find my way to the sounds and ideas I’m looking for. I’m not scared or embarrassed to say any stupid thing I want or make weird noises because it’s just me in my bedroom refining ideas, taking chances with my art.”

But it’s also that Mox’s process has caught up to her conceptualizations. The visual aspect of the record, for example, was there from the beginning: When Mox paints, she listens to music. And when she writes music, she keeps half her computer screen open to a page with a selection of images and pictures she finds inspiring. “I begin to put together a little scene, and it evolves and grows through each step on every level,” she says.

It seems appropriate in that, lyrically, Sailors is about the search for love and the fleeting nature of a person or feeling that is only in port for so long. Mox cites both the sailors who populate and abandon the Kit Kat Club in Cabaret and the maid Jenny from The Threepenny Opera who dreams of alternately leading and being rescued by pirate sailors.

“Throughout the record, there’s this tension between whether a given sailor is someone who comes, takes something, and leaves or one who saves you and stays—and just the confusion, from my point of view, of never being able to pick the correct one. Then, on the last song, the title track, I have this epiphany that…it’s okay, no matter what. If you don’t find that one person who is going to save you, and everything is temporary, that’s okay. Because when you are not giving your energy to these people, you can direct it to your art

or whatever it is that propels you forward. Always, forward.”

BY SHAWN MACOMBER