Youth is fleeting and transcendent but also eternally damning. It’s the object of all of our desires—creams that promise wrinkle erasure, anti-aging procedures and surgeries, gently airbrushed poreless skin—yet solely unattainable on a natural path of aging.
We’re told that our twenties are supposed to be the most gleaming of any other decade, the prize of beauty in our society, that only tips off and landslides as we shrink further towards our third decade. What are you supposed to do when societal pressures make you feel expired?
For rockstar and artist Charlene Kaye, known as KAYE, the year she turned 34 was a brutal dose of reality; she began to feel further away from her youth than ever before. Her second single, Lifeline flies with vulnerable but steady wings out of her newly released EP, Neon God. The song details a transformative moment when she felt at her lowest and began to call out, in hopes of a response. In return, a voice, whom she calls “God,” responded to her: “I’ll be your lifeline out of here.”
What felt divine and necessary to pull her back to the surface was ultimately her own self, reaching up with outstretched, affirming arms.
“In times of intense distress and panic and feeling the ground sort of dissolve under you, it’s music and art that saves me every time. So I’m so thankful that I have this medium and this relationship with my work that I feel like I have come back to again and again to save me. It’s really myself. It feels like a higher thing but really it’s something deep within me as well,” KAYE reflected.
As a city dweller for the past 14 years, KAYE is also deeply influenced by the bubbling streets and alleys of New York City: ones that constantly push herself to reinvent over and over again. In Lifeline, the vibrant rolls of film from the accompanying music video also feature New York City center stage. Partnered alongside her sister, filmmaker Liann Kaye, Lifeline debuts the sisters’ 14th collaborative music video project together highlighting KAYE’s music. Their artistic collaboration began in 2007—when Liann was a freshman and KAYE was a junior in college respectively.
For KAYE, she describes Liann as the most important artistic collaborator in her life. In 2014, KAYE even wrote “Carry You,” a song from her then EP, when Liann was going through a difficult time in life. Their closeness as sisters allows KAYE to further thrive alongside the added support.
“I hope to always continue to uncover parts of my artistry with her. Part of what makes being an artist so exciting and interesting is the journey of getting to share with her my work throughout every stage of the process and having her, one: know exactly what I’m going through and two: hold me accountable in my honesty in telling the full story and making sure that it’s coming from the truest place,” KAYE said.
Their creative ideas for the video took a different direction from past projects, allowing for a more freeform filming process. KAYE’s favorite shots happen to be those of her dancing freely on the Kosciuszko bridge. Unbeknownst to the viewer, it was midnight on one of the coldest nights of the year, remedied by hand warmers shoved in her shoes to prevent her feet from freezing.
“I don’t know why we didn’t wait like a month to do it because it wasn’t going to come out until July. But I think it’s fitting for this song because it is about isolation. It’s about a season where you’re waiting for things to get warmer and things to get better,” KAYE laughs.
Ultimately, Lifeline’s visuals took a largely different route from Neon God because it came down to their subject matter and message.
“I’m just a lumpy human trying to make my way through the world. I am starving for understanding and for connection and embracing the brutality of how it feels to be alive. I wanted the video, which is shot on film, to have this free reeling quality of it and me being lost in the city,” KAYE recalls.
The feeling of being lost is one that KAYE knows all too well. When she turned 34, she grew depressed as she continued to place limitations upon herself and her artistry, losing several months to self-doubt. Her journey to break free from that mindset and negative self-talk blossomed fully to fruition in Lifeline.
“It really was the first example of how my experience living under patriarchy felt deadly in a way because it made me feel purposeless. It made me feel like it was pointless, that I had no reason to continue to write because nobody wanted to hear what I wanted to say. Of course this is all negative self-talk that I was telling myself because of things I had seen and absorbed,” KAYE recalls.
For KAYE, it’s important that we remember to fight the messages fed to us in the groundwater: to nurture, grow, and push back. As an artist, she yearns to create art and find light through tapping into a deeper part of herself without glorifying the pain. In time, she believes art can be a lifeline.
“For anyone who’s continuing to make music or starting drum lessons or age 60 or starting to act at whatever age, I just want to commend you and say that it’s so incredibly brave to keep going in the face of the whole world and culture telling you that you shouldn't or that you can’t or you’re not worthy enough or you’re not sexy enough, KAYE said. “Everybody has that creative impulse within them to continue to change.”
