It’s that lack of regard for his fan base, that deviation from accepted norms that has paradoxically given his music an appeal to a growing and supportive group of listeners. Case in point: 2012’s The Mad Writer. This record showcases just how deep into our collective neurosis L’Orange is willing to plunder. “I went insane,” he explains. “Writing The Mad Writer was the most immersing, consuming experience that I’ve ever had. When I say I’m reclusive now, it was on another level with The Mad Writer. There were days when I couldn’t get out of bed. Days of constant fear and anxiety, psychopathy and removal. The album analyzes the relationship between the artist and the viewer, the questions being, “What happens when you’ve been writing for so long that you lose your audience? At what point does your audience stop defining your art? At what point does your art start defining you?” So, let’s begin the bootless game of defining an individual. Outlining the origin story of how a boy named Austin from Wilmington, North Carolina, became L’Orange, the mind-sea psychonaut. “I remember thinking about the inevitable feeling of death when I was five or six,”
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# N AT IVE N ASH VILL E
he confides. “I remember exactly when it hit. I think that’s the impetus for everyone’s anxiety and depression—knowing you’re going to die.” I won’t be so bold as to expand upon L’Orange’s formative years. Purporting on the effects of the family on the individual is the folly of armchair psychologists. All I’ll say is that he had a brother and a sister, a mother, and a stepfather that were around for some time in his life. He grew up on a cocktail of antidepressants and therapy, both of which he’s since stopped. The rest is in his words. “I missed being self-destructive and weird and dark. I was sick of being happy all the time. If I’m going to have these delusions, which are very important to me, than I need to be aware of them. I think that’s the key to happiness, making peace with the darkest parts of your life, accepting the beauty in them, and embracing your own delusions. “I admired people who were tortured because they could embrace it in a way that I wanted to. The people that I grew up admiring had managed to channel this troubling awareness of existence, this painful clarity into something that others could relate to, even if they weren’t going through
“I THINK THAT’S THE KEY TO HAPPINESS, MAKING PEACE WITH THE DARKEST PARTS OF YOUR LIFE.” it. And I couldn’t do that on those drugs.” We continue at some length discussing the influences of his art, some of which seem quite telling and atypical—others, more expected. J. Dilla, for instance, is something of a grounding device for men of beats. Tom Waits comes up in conversation as well, mostly in praise of his unconventional approach to people and his sideshow humor. Leaning towards the recherché, we have comics, intellectuals, and bards: Carlin, Einstein, and Shakespeare respectively. L’Orange always wanted to play Iago. You can draw your own conclusion from that. Still, though these aforementioned figures decorate the reliquary of his thoughts, they are not his heroes. He reserves that