Spend some time talking with Dessa and she’ll awaken your appreciation for the capacities of language. She drops clever turns of phrase and, after a couple seconds of thought, answers questions verbally in long, perfectly constructed paragraphs. Then there’s her music — rich with evocative, emotional and sometimes biting lyrics.
That unique communicative dexterity has served Dessa (BA, ’03) well in a multifaceted career that is both genre bending and genre blending.
She grew up in South Minneapolis, was a whipsmart and driven youth, and became valedictorian at Southwest High School. She chose to study philosophy at the University of Minnesota’s College of Liberal Arts, giving her a foundation for her art.
In mid-February, Dessa shared some thoughts on her philosophy education, performing with the orchestra and alternative careers that likely will never come to fruition.
You’re clearly proud of your degree from the University of Minnesota Twin Cities. Is your philosophy education still a significant underpinning for your work?
I think that I reference my philosophy degree and the skills that it taught me to interrogate the world and to frame conflict more often now than I did five or ten years ago. Because the world is rife with conflict, and with argument, and trying like we all are to navigate through what can sometimes feel like a social, political and emotional minefield — those tools have become all the more important to me.
What is your creative and writing process like — do you have a routine?
If there were an award for discipline of craft, I would miss it by a country mile. For me, it is kind of catch as catch can. … My creatively productive hours tend to be after sunset, and sometimes much after sunset.
As I was coming up, there was real discomfort about the idea of writing for a project — like the idea of just pure, unfettered “idea work,” and then later we’ll figure out how to put it in an album or in a book. And I’m still a little bit uncomfortable with that, to be honest. But I think I’ve gotten my sea legs.
Sometimes good work can be made under the wire, because you’ve got a deadline coming up. And I think that looming deadline can sort of tamp down some of the perfectionist’s disinclination to sully the blank page with a less-than-perfect idea.
In your keynote address for the CLA spring commencement in 2012, you told graduates about the importance of rejection and failure. Do you still experience that?
The last time that I was rejected, by three editors I admire, was last week. [She laughs.] And I still am disappointed. I think I’ve learned to be a more cautious investor of my hope, which also means I make more investments because I’m making small bets. Which I think is the nature of the gig job in the arts; it’s necessarily speculative. You can expect your knees to be skinned, so buy some knee pads and celebrate big when you get a win.
Maybe not as much as having a record sell four million copies, I’m guessing it must be rewarding to have a TED Talk that’s been viewed four million times?
It is sweet. It’s sweet, but it’s also heartache-y, because I get so many notes from people who are still trying to fall out of love.
Given how comfortable you seemed in that talk presenting about the science of falling out of love, could you ever see yourself as a scientific researcher, or for that matter a philosophy professor?
Gosh, I am drawn to both fields with a powerful [magnetism]. It’s the kind of thing you lean into and don’t want to blink when someone smart is talking about an idea that I haven’t heard before, in either philosophy or behavioral science. That said, boy, you have to go through a lot of school! [She laughs.] Some of it just has to do with opportunity costs. If I had a spare four years, absolutely!
How have you evolved professionally in the last decade or so?
I’m trying to put to bed some parts of a self-concept that no longer suit [me], which I think is probably a lifelong project. … I want to stay humble, but I don’t need to stay an underdog. … I want to recognize, clear-eyed, where I am and where I’m trying to be, and also be frank about, “This is how far I’ve come.”
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