ColeMarie Soleil
Exclusive Interview
ColeMarie is one of those people who crawls up inside your heart and finds a place that was always meant just for her.
ColeMarie Soleil - Musician/Machinimist/Designer/Photographer/Artist
ColeMarie is one of those people who crawls up inside your heart and finds a place that was always meant just for her. There is something so pure about her vision and approach to the world that you know immediately you are touching greatness in her presence. This is a young woman who has the ability to do just about anything … and she probably will.
BW: ColeMarie I felt at times, watching some of your work, listening to your music that I was in almost a scared place .. .a place that exposes your soul .... is it difficult for you to touch that place within yourself over and over again and expose it, or is it simply the only way you can create?
CS: I'm not sure it's really a "scared" place. I think that I have lived an unusually intense life. At a very young age I had to learn to use my voice to survive. I think I knew instinctively back then that, I needed to learn how to project that I needed help and was in trouble through my music, because I have a hard time speaking to people. Communication is not really my strong point. I think I developed the ability to project how I felt into not so much what I sang but how I sang it. The inflection in my tone, the notes I sang, how I sang them. I felt it was important to speak without speaking.
I think art is a big factor in me still being around. I guess I didn't realize it so much really until SL. I don't think my creation comes from one specific place or thing. I create when I am overfilled with thoughts and emotions and need to purge in order to be able to function, whatever mood that may be.
BW: Talk to me about rockerfaerie where did she come from, what does she represent within you?
My bestfriend Jesse Vaughn nicknamed me "The Water Faerie" when I was younger and, over time as I played music more, his petname for me evolved into "RockerFaerie". He drew a picture of me as a faerie and I sort of based my avatar around that. He passed away a few years ago and I found SL a few years after that. I guess my whole faerie thing comes from my actual personal obsession with faeries. Ever since I was a little girl I'd been writing faerie tales and talking and learning about them, collecting artwork, anything I could get my hands on. He used to tell me that I was the most faerie-like person he knew and it sort of stuck with me even after he passed on. He was a big influence in my life and I miss him everyday, so, I guess, RockerFaerie is my way of remembering him. Corny but true.
BW: So much of your work plays with light, in visuals, in metaphors. You can't fully express and understand light without also expressing and knowing the dark. Is this a spiritual theme for you, a struggle you feel, an understanding of life and death? What does it mean to you?
Um. Haha. Not sure how to answer this question. I learned a lot about how life really is very early. Put it this way, there are just some things people never should see and I was subjected to them at a very young age. I've just lived a very strange life and seen a lot of very gritty harsh truths about the world and what it means to be human. I've been to the brink of death a few times and I think that might be where a lot of my more painful stuff comes from. I am very piscean in the face that, I can be sunshine one minute and a black hole the next. It really depends on what's going on around me. I'm like a mirror, I reflect the things around me. I think most artists are that way.
BW: The sadness that permeates your work, does it define you? You obviously have tremendous ability to empath .. how do you deal with that? How do you cope?
I think that my reality defines me. The things I experience. The things I go through. I guess I just don't do happy well. It's not an emotion I am very familiar with. I think that sadness just sort of runs through everything I do because there is this weight I carry around. My friend AM Radio once said something very wise on this subject. He said to me: "you know... and I know that we see the world with a much wider eye than most people. it's the source of talent and our ability to communicate through creation, like your music. But it's also a burden, there's the bigger picture, a stack of baggage we carry around, we hurt simply because someone else does. we get angry because we recognize ignorance when no one else does" I think that I cope through my art and the amazing network of people I have who reach out to me and love me despite me being difficult. I have some amazing support here, I have to say. I have some really good friends that stick by me.
BW: I get a great sense of the significance of your friends. You seem to experience them as family, allowing them to mother you, you mother them, and always there is this sense of having each others back ... can you talk about what these relationships, specifically those you have found in SL, mean to you?
Hm. I think my close bonds with my friends come from the bonds we've created here through music and art we've done together or around one another. I think that SL has the ability to reveal a layer about people that we don't see so easily in day to day non-virtual life. I've experienced this first hand after having friends I knew outside of SL come in. I saw things about them I knew were there but, I was surprised how FAST I had seen them about them here, versus how long it had taken me to realize those aspects to them even though I'd known them for years and years and have very deep friendships with them. SL is strange in that way. I tend to be very maternal. When I care about people I tend to look after them and want what's best for them and they do for me. I have found family in SL through amazing people like Kriss Lehmann and Shai Delacroix who have taken me under their wing and adopted me not only here in SL but they treat me very much like real family. They have been very supportive for me and I owe them so much. Also there is AM Radio who is one of the best friends I've made in my whole life. He's been sort of a guardian angel as cheesy as that sounds. Always really supportive of everything I do, and always reminded me how special my talent was. He really pushed me when I would want to stop. Then there's Bryn Oh. Bryn Oh is like my other half artistically speaking. She's been pretty much my backbone. She does so much for me. I don't think I could ever pay her back if I tried. She's been a huge inspiration to me and one of the most influential people in my whole life. Bryn is just special and I am glad she's my friend. She's very unique and empathic herself and she's able to look at the world a lot differently than most people. She always reminds me of why I still try and create when I don't always remember myself.
BW: You often sit in amongst the crowd when you perform. I found that really an interesting experience. I almost felt like you created this sense for me that I was alone with my emotions. I listened to your music and I found myself exploring me. Do you think about things like that when you make those decisions or is it simply what feels right?
I like to make the audience comfortable. It's a conscious decision. For me... music is about the shared experience. I think that music culture sometimes gets too wrapped up in the "who" and not the "what". I think that it's important that the audience feels a part of the music and not disconnected apart from it. I think it's a symbiotic relationship. The listener and the performer. I don't think one is more important that the other. I guess that is why I loathe the whole idea of a stage.
BW: I know your life has been full of ups and downs .... can you share the most important thing life was taught you and tell us why that lesson is so valuable to you?
I think the most important thing I've learned is that I know nothing. It is important to realize that life goes on with or without one person or another. I think that teaches humility.
BW: Is there anything else you would like to say or share?
I'm not very good at these things but I guess if I could add something I'd just add, you define your own success. Not other people. What works for other people might not work for you. Be you. Even if that makes it hard. At least you're not a zombie.
What can we look forward to? What are you working on now? I have an EP in the works. I also am working on a new SL Couture line. I am always creating new machinima. There are some projects in the works for that as a collaboration with another musician here in SL. I do a lot. It changes everyday really. Who knows? We'll see.
You can find out more about ColeMarie but visiting her website at: http://www.wix.com/ColeMarieSoleil/The-RockerFaerie
By Bliss Windlow for EOS Magazine
