NATASHA HUNT LEE
Ego Death Magazine is interested in understanding the soul of each artist. Stripping down the layers, the identity, ultimately to excavate who they are at their core.
I am honored to have spoken with Natasha, whom I call a friend, for our first story. I chose her, specifically, not because of her background or her lifestyle. Not because of our friendship. I chose her because she is a good person - through and through. She’s an artist who understands herself. An artist who takes risks. A human being who is self-reflective, considerate, and deeply compassionate. A soul that uplifts. A soul who is honest and continuously finding her way, and not afraid to talk about how she's finding it.
In understanding her soul, maybe you can understand yours too.
WELCOME TO EGO DEATH.
Natasha Hunt Lee has about a million things to do and a trillion places to be, but she treats you like the most important part of her day. I remember this quality of hers as she scurries to fetch me from the front door. It swings open, and I am greeted with a wide-grinned, nose-scrunching smile that sings welcome home.
This was my first time at her house.
I quickly merge onto the fast-moving freeway that is Natasha, trailing eagerly behind, taking in the Silver Lake artistic haven that is her home. Walls lined with art and color, music and artistry dripping from every corner of the abode. Her funky books. Her cow print rug. Her Penny Lane coats. Her shrines of idols. Her walls of birthday cards and family photos. Her soul is interwoven, seamlessly, in everything around her.
We now lay on her bed, giggling like sisters, at tales of her recent travels. I bask in the sunlight of her narratives, soaking up every warm, compelling detail. I can’t help but notice her deepened empathy, her ability to understand and communicate all sides of each story. With compassion. With humor.
In this singular moment, I realize: the Natasha I know, as a friend, is the Natasha we meet in her music. Colorful in its sound, beautifully sensitive in its lyrics, humorously self-reflective in its themes, and a hell of a good time.
Over the past four years, Natasha has released numerous singles and EPs, containing pop anthems that dance feverishly along the line of rock. While they lyrically reflect the emotions and introspection of a woman in her twenties, there’s something ageless about her sound, that makes you feel like you’re seventeen - and the world is new, scary, exciting…and dire.
This duality in her sound, I have learned, is deeply reflective of Natasha’s emotional journey to reconnecting with her inner-child.
“Sometimes I feel like figuring out who the kid is inside of you makes it way easier to understand who you are right now, or who you're supposed to be.”
Natasha always knew, deep down, that music was her path.
She knew it when she would sit in the back of her mom’s car, swelling with emotion at the piano break of Eric Clapton’s “Layla” or the rumble of the Moulin Rouge soundtrack. She knew it when she felt an uncontrollable, unexplainable need to perfect Adele’s “Someone Like You” on the piano in the eighth grade. She knew it when she decided, halfway through her senior year of high school, to commit to NYU’s Clive Davis Institute of Recorded Music, despite working tirelessly to get into an Ivy League school with a tennis scholarship.
While this emotional connection to music lived in her core, it wasn’t always easy for her to listen to her intuition.
Nestled beneath the covers, she smiles, welcoming this younger version of herself into the conversation. She shares, “Growing up in Los Angeles, my dad would throw these shmoozee Shabbat dinner parties, where his three or four friends would get up and start playing music…and somehow, it just became this unspoken thing that I would get up and sing with them. I think I was predisposed to saying I’ll sing, even when it didn’t feel like it was mine. It became this larger performance before I was willing to be a performer.”
Despite her inherent connection to music, Natasha didn’t feel ready to step into it so young. She didn’t feel like she had found her own way into her music and artistry yet. With the pressure of performance and the need to put on a show, she lost interest.
With that, school became the central focus. She worked tirelessly to attain perfect grades and to fit in. For years, she embodied what it meant to be the perfect student, the perfect friend, the perfect tennis player, the perfect daughter.
She felt most connected to herself, however, when she would tap into the source of inspiration.
After all, she could always feel the music.
What ultimately brought her back to this core purpose, after years of pushing it aside, was sitting by the piano. “It ended up feeling inevitable.”
“After Adele’s ‘Someone Like You’ came out, I thought, I must, for some reason, be able to play this. After I learned it, I approached my parents and said I want to make a record. They laughed and told me to take a singing lesson. My dad told me to write.”
This incessant need to be near the piano and the encouragement to explore her creativity propelled her into action. Once she embarked upon the journey that was honing in on her craft, she couldn’t shake the bug. She began writing, spending hours pouring her feelings onto the page and breathing life into the words through melody.
“It all started with having a feeling and the need to write that feeling down. All I knew to do was write it down and play it on the piano.”
Very quickly, this became her outlet. Her way of digging deeper, her way of processing.
“When you start writing, you don’t stop. Once you’ve realized that you can feel empowered by turning what you’ve felt so shitty about into a three-minute, diamond-pressurized thing, you’re gonna do that every single time you feel shitty.”
At fifteen, after spending nearly a year bound to the piano, she received the first sign that this was her path: an artist happened to bail out of a recording session the last day of her internship at Interscope Records. Her supervisor, having seen Natasha’s kindness and commitment to the craft, asked, “do you write?”
This was her inciting incident.
Her first song was, simply, her and the piano. In her truest and most honest form. “To this day, my family likes this song better than anything I have ever done.”
After recording her first song, music was the only thing on her mind. She wrote, and she wrote. She became more acquainted with piano. She began to learn how to effectively communicate her feelings through her art.
All the signs were there. The passion lived within her. However, being a teenager, especially in a town that so heavily emphasizes image, perfection, and status, still made her question her gut. Her worth was still assigned to her grades and that dang tennis scholarship. This was the final trial.
As college crept closer, the pit in her stomach wouldn’t subside. She knew this path wasn’t right for her. She feared committing to a school that would take her even further away from herself.
“Halfway through senior year and applications, I decided, I’m not doing this. I want to go to NYU, and I wanna do music. Once I made that choice, I really committed to it. One way or another. Because even if I didn’t continue music after college, I had put myself in front of artists for four years. And I knew that would change my life.”
At this point in our conversation, I remember, fondly, the first conversation I ever had with Natasha: I had shared that I also graduated from NYU, and was in the process of figuring out how to more presently, post-graduating, continue to embrace the artist I had become during my time there. She instilled a confidence in me that she reignited with the following words:
“When I was in college and everyone was beginning some sort of artistic project around me, I was so anxious and disconnected from myself. I don't think I could even accurately begin to see who I was as a person or an artist. I’ve only just started being able to do so as a result of a lot of patience and struggle and acceptance.
I think that when you really start understanding that [there will always be patience and agony] that’s the beginning of coming back to yourself.”
NYU, for Natasha, was surrendering to this understanding. Taking it day by day, consuming as much as she possibly could, being patient with herself. By the time she graduated, she had a basis for her creative journey upon moving back to Los Angeles.
Now, at 27, Natasha’s path is grounded, yet ever-evolving.
After sharing her backstory with detail and grace, which brought its own weight, she continues to look at me, kindly, with an expression that reads, “ask me anything.” She is an open book, always willing to share, always willing to give.
At this point, I seek to understand where she currently lives in her creative process.
She marvels, “I think a lot of what writing has become for me is - how do I honestly take this emotion that I am feeling and make it something that feels net-positive to listen to and exchange?”
She soon makes it perfectly simple for me to understand: her writing process is like gold mining, sifting through different stones to ultimately find the truth within a feeling.
She explains that there’s always sadness behind anger. There’s always fear behind control. Ultimately, Natasha seeks to understand what lies beneath, and then, through her writing, communicate it. In a way that is understood universally. Her process, itself, is ego death.
“Writing actually forces me to be harder and more honest with myself. When I go to write something and it comes out as fuck you fuck you fuck you, I ask myself, is that really true? A. Do I really feel that way? B. Did I just write that and have no part of the story? I think it's important to put myself into it and take accountability in the things that I'm writing, given that I'm writing them.”
This objective, in her songwriting, has developed through trial and error.
For many years, while enveloped in a long-term relationship, she felt “too close” to her emotions. She was in a low place, too close to the surface, holding onto that anger or that control.
Only when she got out of “crisis mode” could she go deeper.
What brought her, specifically, out of crisis mode, was leaving the relationship that wasn’t serving her; opening herself up to conversations surrounding her feelings; going to therapy; fostering her community; and trying an anti-depressant.
In taking these necessary steps for her wellbeing, she notes, “I continued to feel things, but, suddenly, without the panic. It didn’t take my creativity away from me. It lessened the intensity.”
Not only did seeking help assist her on a human level, but maximized her creative freedom. It allowed for her to quiet the chatter and understand her emotions with clarity.
“A lot of creatives fear that they need to continue martyring themselves. It's not even that they’re martyring for a cause or for pain or for Jesus, they believe they’re martyring for their craft. So they don't want to fix themselves [emotionally] because they think they need this fuel to have an output.
This is a perfect example of - what's your priority? You or your art?”
“They sacrifice themselves to keep creating as if you couldn't otherwise.”
Once she learned this truth for herself and became acquainted with the clarity, it allowed for more honesty in her introspection, as she grew to see herself as the common denominator in her life and relationships. It opened up a whole new world.
~~~
I tore off both the training wheels and didn’t ask for help,
I knew I had to find a way to ride the bike myself.
I don’t need you to save me,
I just need to know you would.
What if you need me, but you’re part of who I am?
What if we split further and the gap gets way too wide?
What if I’m not yours now, but it feels like you’re still mine?
Excerpts from “Training Wheels” by Natasha Hunt Lee
~~~
Natasha believes that one can create, truly, at any time. While, yes, it's true that she may be more drawn to write when she is feeling unsettled as a means to feel better, she doesn’t need to be enveloped in this low state. She doesn’t need to torture herself by denying help or remaining disregulated to create the best output. She doesn’t believe anyone can see themselves accurately in those moments.
There are some days when she has no clue what to write about. Nothing is pressing. But in those moments, a completely unexpected idea, feeling, or perspective could emerge. And also, “there's a lot of humanity in saying, I don't know.”
While seeking help and bettering herself emotionally have assisted her in making art that she is proud of, so does opening herself up to collaboration. “People are everything. Everything. Not just who you write about, but who you make the music with too.”
“[Collaboration] allows for you to break out of your toolbox. I was never somebody who could just write a song a day for a month. If I forced myself to try to do it, I just came out with the worst thing ever. When I started working with people, I grew confident enough to show up and be present. You have all the words, and you have all the feelings in you.”
Collaboration works so well for Natasha, specifically, because she is so present. She’s able to sit down and have this honest conversation with me because she’s done the work. She is constantly assessing and processing who she is, while so actively considering how she is affecting those around her.
She also has realized, over time, that this ability to be present in her process offers an invaluable emotional reward. Writing and singing her music “disarm” her difficult feelings. She regains her power in her ability to see herself more clearly and create something beautiful and true from it.
“Chaos Honey!” is a living, breathing embodiment of the process she believes in.
We laugh hysterically as she tells the anecdote of how this song came about. Her apartment had been falling apart. A torrential downpour was plaguing Los Angeles. Just as her walls were caving in, she realized that everything in her life, at this given time, wreaked havoc in a similar way.
“Not to get too biblical (I’m super off put by organized religion), but I was just talking with my dad and best friend about how the devil figuratively materializes in our lives. We decided, per the bible, that it’s the people who come into your life, shape shift into whatever compels you, and then (dramatic, sorry, but) suck your soul out. All to say, I was texting with satan and he was making me laugh and I was like…. Fuck.”
In her writing, she laid out these feelings on the table, stepping back, and truly assessed, who am I in the wake of all of this? How do I really feel? Ultimately, it became a reflective and humorously honest exploration of her secret desire for this chaos….because, after all, she sings, “nothing’s worse than apathy.” (She is a Gemini, if you couldn’t tell).
“Chaos Honey!” represents much more for Natasha than a catchy tune. She stands proud, finally, in her artistic process. She stands proud in the collaboration that made the song what it is today. She also recognizes that this came out of a fleeting situation as opposed to a long-term relationship. “It is such proof that sometimes the smallest things insight the most output, because it's a mix of your imagination, your fever and your reality. Sometimes your life really surprises you. So write it all.”
“Again, I think I’ve been most grounded by forced patience. Everyone has a different timeline. I still have days of insane dysmorphia - is this song genius? Is it trash? Do I look like a sea monster? Do I look amazing today? But, hey, I put this outfit on, and I feel good enough. I’ve learned how to take care of myself and now chose to do so. So when I look in the mirror, I like meeting myself there more than I used to.
And you know what else? Knowing my shortcomings has turned out to be even more valuable than not having them. It’s unbelievably freeing to just accept— both as a person and an artist — that I’m just not good at certain things. It’s like cutting off the fluff to access more of the actual substance.
Anyways, long way of saying it took a lot of seriousness to then return to unseriousness. And now I try to lead with a sense of fun. When something feels fun, a new friend, a new pair of shoes, a new way to do my hair, I can trust it’s an authentic choice that I won’t regret. When I was five years old, I would think, yeah, I hope that feather boa is something I’m wearing in 20 years.
That seems to be the most honest metric of self expression. So that’s who I’m trying to access now after all the drama and gunk of growing up. 5 year old me.”
Natasha’s best work is exactly this - what is true to her. What she has created as a result of surrendering. When she writes honestly about herself. When she incorporates herself and what is important to her in her work. When the letters on her walls are scattered in her songs.
As I stand at her door, I take in all that is Natasha.
I see a strong, beautiful woman with an old soul, tough skin, and a young heart. I thank her for her vulnerability and gentle honesty. She embraces me, kindly.
I see a woman that has shed her ego several times throughout her life. In her choice to listen to her intuition and choose music. In her ability to step back in her process and look deeper. And ultimately, in her journey of understanding and honoring her inner-child.
I envision her childhood self buzzing in her seat, waiting at the chance to go up and sing at her dad’s dinner party, as she has now found it for her. This time, with confidence, with passion, with beautiful rage.
As I leave, she giggles, softly, and for a moment, just a moment, I hear the child deep within.
EGO DEATH
Story // Taylor Thompson
Photos // Taylor Thompson
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