KÁRYYN’s music takes us back to physics class, but this time, we love it

Love languages have been the past decade’s golden child of pop psychology, where excuses, solutions, and explanations are served on a silver platter. Yet, when love is paired with something not as tangible, but perhaps literally more real — physics — new discourse and perspectives come into play. Steeped in the wisdom of her own experiences, Syrian-Armenian-American artist KÁRYYN literally pulls on the sometimes hard to grasp universe of quantum physics to open up a conversation about the universal interest around l-o-v-e. But add to that notes of spiritual confessions, relentless connection, and you’ll get pulled into KÁRYYN’s magnetic upcoming album PHYSICS UNIVERSAL LOVE LANGUAGE (PULL).

With two singles already released — COLLAPSE PHASE and END TO KNOWING YOU — KÁRYYN promises a sultry, stringy, electro-leaning record, one that is self-aware, allowing itself to fully feel and collapse — to ultimately connect, renew, and rise. 

Upon the release of her album, Glamcult sits down with KÁRYYN to delve deeper into the singles and their links to the world of quantum physics (we also get an Einstein quote), dismantling the linearity of time, and how the Buddhist’s perception of time actually really aligns with physics. All in all, trust us, you’ll probably leave with a renewed perspective.

Let’s begin with the basics. How do you feel upon the release of ‘UNIVERSAL PHYSICS LOVE LANGUAGE (PULL)’, coming seven years after ‘The Quanta Series’?
I just feel incredibly alive and present. I feel an earned elation as if I’m on drugs—like Dali said, ‘I am drugs.’ I’ve had this album done for so long, and it’s a whole world I built that I’ve processed, tasted everything in it, I’ve gone around its geography, its atmosphere, its universe. And by getting to share that now, it feels like I’m completely aligning with everything that I’ve created. Now, I’m the woman who wrote and produced it, and it’s almost like I’m getting to meet her in my own real life. Her —this strength that I’ve always had— I’m me, but it’s like I’m living my song.  It’s the most incredible feeling because I just don’t really take drugs, but I feel like I’m in a state of deep Kundalini awakening.

That’s a powerful way to start. Tell me about the two first singles, COLLAPSE PHASE, the opening track of the project, and END TO KNOWING YOU.
Basically, the collapse phase is the phase of a star when it’s dying — when it becomes the event horizon and it’s pulling everything within its proximity towards itself, and then it’s reborn all at once. It’s the end, but it’s also the beginning, and that’s what I understood when writing COLLAPSE PHASE. She’s talking about the internal structures that have to collapse, and the external ones that have to be modified and upgraded. It doesn’t just happen because you decide it, but it’s an instant that changes everything. After that, she’s really recognising her strength, and it’s fucking terrifying — imagine being in a black hole and warping and contorting. So the album had to begin where things ended and began. 

And then with END TO KNOWING YOU, it’s a very psychic, mental song. It speaks on the idea that between me and another, there’s this gravitational pull, pulling us towards one another. 

Can you tell me more about your interest in physics?
I’ve been studying, and I’ve been very interested in Eastern philosophies for the past 16 years. At the time I began thinking about the similarity between the Buddhists’ relation to perception – how it’s coming from us, and that we affect our reality — and physics. And well, it’s pretty much the same with quantum physics explaining that. That kind of thing has become a popular notion and we’re starting to understand that more. 

I read about END TO KNOWING YOU, capturing the tension between desire and detachment, where love struggles to be lived but doesn’t dissolve either, magnifying a constant push and pull between two people. Is that how physics seep into your musical world?
Well, END TO KNOWING YOU definitely draws on gravitational pull. But magnetism is a force, and when two things that are so alike come together, they don’t align, and the magnet flips and they become misaligned. I use those metaphors to speak on a pull between me and somebody with whom we were in a relationship on and off over a very long period of my life — and it taught me a lot. 

For example, Jung speaks about the alchemical reaction when you meet someone, and Einstein says ‘forever you’re changed’. It’s both a scientific and spiritual concept to speak about love that way. And even with your family members or your friends, if you can’t have them in your life anymore, the truth is that they walk with you on a path for a while. There is no end to knowing and loving that person because of how they impact us. It’s energetic, and you cannot destroy energy. It can only transform, and you can choose how it transforms you. And I think that’s also the crux of the album — about holding oneself accountable first, before looking at other people and saying they’re the problem. 

That’s very interesting. But for the more physics-uninitiated, could you give us an example of what a physics love language is?
I genuinely think that ‘physics and universal, love, & language’ all speak to one another, and they are the pillars of how to understand and experience being a human. This album is very much about coming into the physical when you’re in all these places, but also to be able to embody the physical aspect of being alive. Personally, a new love language has come recently over the last few years, and it’s this ability to feel my body and to be able to understand emotions via touch.

Who do you hope this album will resonate with?
I’m making music for people who want to be conscious, who have real self-awareness, and awareness of people around them. And for people who have been traumatised, who have been through things, and can confront and accept what they’ve been through, and they have survived them. In a way, my music is my own testament to myself. It’s like I went through an experience, and I took time to consider it and bring it meaning. 

I would love to know more about your relation to space and temporality. What does it mean to go back to the same space and dig into specific times and locations?
It’s only recently occurred to me that people experience time as linear. I do not have that experience — everything is circular for me. And it’s lots of circles that overlap and converge. I say my memory is like a film: I can tell you what I was doing in January 2011, and what I was doing in May 2015. I’m able to instantly experience, and still live that moment. It’s never been that I go to a timestamp, it’s more that it continues to be present for me, like something that I could access as if it happened last week. And I’m able to see it from now, but be in the then. 

I don’t think that my way of processing and thinking, by the way, is that unique. I think we’re becoming more aware that more people understand that they’re naturally experiencing time non linearly. And those people, I think, have probably been very misunderstood in their own lives. 

So when you’re not working on your own music, what do you turn to for inspiration?
I’m reading ferociously, I love to read nonfiction and fiction, and not think about music. I love to learn things. I love film, like Darren Aronofsky. I’m a writer that makes music in a way. Writing is direct, and music is the next thing afterwards because it can get in between the words — it’s so complex, and I love that. I really love physics and space, and I am a very devoted person to the practice of mindfulness. So that’s what I do with most of my time. 

Talking about mindfulness, what’s something you’re mindful of?
Nothing is in its isolated state. Everything that we’re experiencing in our lives is within us, and we are affecting the conditions that we have. We’re all interconnected. Every perceived negative has the potential to be turned into its highest potential. And in understanding that we can navigate, and understand how deeply connected to one another we are. Even those that we perceive as our enemies — they are not, they are just us in a different form. 

Speaking about connection, sometimes it’s hard to remain 100% focused on what you’re listening to. And as you’ve spoken about deep listening in the past, I was wondering what that looks like for you?
Getting lost in your thoughts at the show is precisely what has to happen. If the music is starting to make you think about your own things, then it’s doing what it needs to do. But some people make music to entertain so that you forget yourself, and you can live this fabulous moment for an hour. And other music is meant for something different, so it depends on the music you’re listening to. 

What artists have had the biggest influence on you?
I would say that it started with Ani DiFranco — the punk folk artist from the 90s — and Tori Amos, The Cranberries, and Sarah McLachlan. These are not the ‘cool names,’ but they’re women who felt so deeply, and when I was really young, they helped me know that I was going to be okay, and that it was okay to feel that big. 

Also, what I found in Janis Joplin and Led Zeppelin is this capacity to go to the edge of aliveness. And sometimes it was about the way that they delivered it. I don’t know where it comes from, but something in me somehow needed some sort of permission. And I got it by seeing other people be so brave with their expression. 

That’s a really cool way to answer — I feel like the inspiration is usually anchored in the similarity of sound between two artists. But let’s finish off by looking forward: what are you wishing for following the release of the album?
I hope to be on the road, bringing a real message of hope and honesty — this universal feeling of interconnectedness of deep presence. I want to bring it to every person who is willing to feel their feelings. I can’t wait, it’s going to be so fun. And I can’t wait to discover more of who I am as a woman on stage. I think I’m just very excited for my own experience of feeling confident in being seen. It’s in the unknown, and that’s what’s exciting.