Courtney LaPlante: Pedal to the Metal
As Rihanna once said, sometimes you gotta just shut up and drive. In this episode, Michelle Tea and metal vocalist Courtney LaPlante hit the gas for a conversation about religious sex appeal, band T-shirt culture, and confronting your fears. Then, goth composer M. Lamar teaches us how to use our breath to calm ourselves when we get stuck in negative thought patterns.
Courtney LaPlante: For a lot of bands, it's almost like this cosplay of getting to be this dark thing that everyone's already projecting that on to because you like dark music and you dress weird and have weird long black hair. And, you know, you're all pale and you're hanging out in the woods with your friends.
[Music]
Michelle Tea: Hello and welcome to Your Magic! I’m Michelle Tea and today I will be in conversation with Courtney LaPlante, front person for Spiritbox, vocalist whose range goes from angelic to demonic. We’re going to talk about outsider culture, seances and adulting. After that, we hear from the radical, multi-disciplinary goth composer M. Lamar, about creating personal change through breath.
Stay with us.
[Music]
Michelle Tea: And we want to announce that if you love listening to Your Magic, now you can join us for more witchy content by supporting our work on Patreon. As a thank you, you’ll get a weekly newsletter for $1 a month, a monthly new moon tarostrology podcast for $5 (starting with this week’s new moon in Scorpio), a spot in our patrons-only book club for $15, and my $30 a month Witch Workshops where we’ll dive into tarot, witchcraft, and more. The making of this podcast is a labor of love, and we need your help to keep making it. Join our community at patreon.com/thisisyourmagic
[Music]
Michelle Tea: Okay, listen up, I live in Los Angeles, and I don’t drive. I’ve never driven. Okay - that is not technically true, but it is safe to say that until my fiancee gave me my first driving lesson in a cemetery last month, I had never driven legally.
Back when all my high school peers were getting their licenses, I was very busy focusing on my burgeoning career as a teenage alcoholic. My parents didn’t have the money to pay for lessons, or even the license fees, so that meant it would come out of the paycheck I earned at the grocery store — a paycheck that barely covered my weekend vodka and cigarettes, my British import goth records, my thrift store lace dresses. Forget it. Living just outside Boston, the MBTA took me everywhere I wanted to go, and I could get lost in whatever Anne Rice book I was reading while they got me there.
When I moved to Tucson in my early 20s, my then-girlfriend at the time tried to teach me to drive in the desert. I backed into a signpost, wedging it into the door, and when she got out to pull it off, I forgot I was in reverse and then backed the signpost into her finger. That was my last lesson with her.
Once, on vacation in Hawai’i in my late 20s, I talked my then-girlfriend — it’s a different girlfriend — into letting me drive our rental car down a jungley road, but the experience gave her a legitimate panic attack, so that never happened again.
These experiences and others have bolstered an idea about myself that I’m too airy, too Aquarian, too spacey and ditzy and perpetually lost in the ether to drive a car. These reads have been more or less co-signed by many of the people in my life, and I am very grateful I wasn’t able to drive while actively drinking. Sometimes I enjoyed this idea of myself as too otherworldly to operate a vehicle, and sometimes it made me feel deficient in some crucial way. Like, everyone drives. All sorts of folks. Am I really that low on common sense?
When I found myself, at age 49, suddenly divorced, in Los Angeles, with a child, I knew the jig was up. I needed more independence. I needed to not be spending so much money on ride shares. I needed my kid to be able to access the world, and I was his ride. Because of the pandemic, it took me a full year to be able to sign up for lessons, but I’m doing it. I’m 50, and I’m needing to reconsider this idea of myself as too ethereal, too mystical, for such a challenging yet mundane responsibility. It’s great to have an honest assessment of your limitations, but it’s also important to interrogate them, to root out whatever insecurities or discouraging voices might be contributing to your conclusion.
Witches, light a candle for me, will you? I’m spending the fall as a student driver, and I need all the positive energy I can get. And, after you hear my conversation with Courtney LaPlante, you might wanna light one for the both of us. Here she is.
[Music]
Michelle Tea: Hi, Courtney. Thank you a lot for being on Your Magic. So, you know, you know, usually when - when I do this podcast, I ask people if they have a spiritual practice. But I kind of know that you have — it seems like pretty clear from, like your music and stuff that you do have a spiritual practice. And I just want to ask you if you're a witch or what?
Courtney LaPlante: No, I don't have any spiritual practice at all.
Michelle Tea: Really?
Courtney LaPlante: I just love... You know, especially religious imagery, especially like Catholic and just Christian religious imagery. I grew up in the church and, it's just such... It's like the ultimate powerful imagery for me even in a neutral way. I like iconic imagery. It's very powerful for me and evokes, you know... just most of us, like grew up in church. It's how we were taught, the - the difference... lessons and so I'm always - it's always going to be something I carry with me for, um, how I try to express myself and my music. And I also just like to subvert a lot of that stuff, like to use for my own imagery. But no, I'm - I'm really fascinated by all religion or spirituality, but I'm not - I'm not practicing anything at all.
All that stuff, it's more so me trying to explore like being a woman and what's been projected onto us throughout history and throughout, like pretty much every society of like any negativity. It's usually projected on us in a way of like someone not understanding us. Like it gives me a lot of peace to, to use some imagery from that in my music, when I'm trying to kind of figure out myself.
Michelle Tea: I grew up Catholic also, I went to Catholic school, so I know how you get marked by it whether you like it or not. And there's a lot of sort of trying to figure out intellectually like what to do with the - the draw to the imagery and the romanticism of it and then like the reality of it. I'm trying to collect start a collection, like images of nuns in like some sort of intense emotion. Like I have this one painting, I found it at the start of this like weeping nun. And then I just found like a little wall hanging that's like this nun in ecstasy, like with her head thrown back in like this, like wash of God light coming in, you know, the convent windows.
Courtney LaPlante: Yeah, and there's something like... I find like so much of that stuff like really like sexual like it so... It's like so like anti sexual that it's sexual to me. It's so repressive. And so I don't know. I just always have been like... I've always been fascinated by it. And I had a weird growing up to where I started out Catholic, but I lived in the Deep South and we were considered very weird. And then I started — I switched over and I started going to like Methodist Church because I wanted to sing and you could sing cool like rock and roll songs in that church. So I started going to church with my - with my little boyfriend when I was like 14. I was like, “Oh, this is more fun.” But... And then I realized that. I realized that I just really liked… I liked people clapping and me performing, not so much Jesus.
Michelle Tea: Oh, I love that. You know, I was thinking about, like, metal and just like how metal has just like forever had such a relationship with like the occult, like or at least the imagery of the occult, at least the sort of performance of the occult, if not actual occult. I'm just wondering, do you take inspiration or power from that or how do you interact with it?
Courtney LaPlante: I kind of look at it in the same way as like references from religion because it's just so powerful. And then the occult stuff is so interesting because it's both like so mainstream and then so mysterious at the same time. I'm really fascinated by the Victorian era of people. When I think of that era, I think of like sexual repressed people. But then there was stuff that they would do back then that would be considered really over the top and like dark now, but they would just, you know, like do for fun on a Friday night with their friends. Like I just think it was so weird how — in a cool way — how commonplace, like séances and very performative seances where it wasn't really about actually... It didn't seem to really be about, you know, any sort of, you know, true meaning of that. It was just purely entertainment. I just always thought they were too, like, Puritan religious people to be into that kind of stuff. But they really... They were freaky and they liked that stuff.
I think that - I think that metal is really... that we... I think we're so fascinated by that because if I try to, like, analyze most of us, we felt… It’s like very like outsider culture. It's like outsider culture and the finding like-minded people. And I think that's why, like band t-shirts are just so prevalent for us. It's like a way of identifying one another. For a lot of bands, it's almost like this cosplay of getting to be this dark thing that everyone's already projecting that on to because you like dark music, are you and you dress weird and have weird long black hair. And you know, you're all pale and you're hanging out in the woods with your friends.
Courtney LaPlante: I think of it more of like the Satanic Panic age, you know?
Michelle Tea: Right. Like in the 80s.
Courtney LaPlante Everything that ever happened, it was like Satan. It's kids? They like Satan. Like in the eighties and stuff.
Michelle Tea: Yeah. Even into the nineties. Totally. So how did you find your way to metal then if you were just like, a more pants-focused teenager. How did you get there?
Courtney LaPlante: I started out making a band with my little brother and we were kind of… We really liked Rage Against the Machine. So it was kind of like Rage against the Machine, like with singing, but not like Audioslave. We were kids, so we just started discovering new bands and new music that influenced us and just slowly but surely, I realized I was in a metal band.
Michelle Tea: It was just something that happened to you.
Courtney LaPlante: Yeah, it just happened because I just always... I just analyze, like and compartmentalize each song and I just think of it like, “What vocal is going to best serve the song?” And then, you know, 10 years later I'm like, “Oh my God, I do screaming. Cool.”
Michelle Tea: You do screaming. You really, really do. I mean, you have such a gorgeous, like a traditionally gorgeous, singing voice and then you sound like a frickin demon. How did you know that you could do the screaming part or like what.... Do you remember when you first took a chance?
Courtney LaPlante: When I was starting out doing music, you know, I never actually could hear myself sing. I was just always... All I could hear was drums and guitars and couldn't hear anything. I was sheltered from my own mediocrity and therefore, I never had the chance to be extremely self-conscious until I was older and could hear myself. And I had strengthened up my - my talent a little bit.
Michelle Tea: You don't have a ton of peers as female vocalists that like do this stuff that you do like. Is there anyone that like you felt inspired by or feel like you're in a lineage with?
Courtney LaPlante: Well, funny enough, the band that I was in before Spirit Box was called, I Wrestled a Bear Once. They were like a scene, like MySpace, cool, weird band that came out of nowhere. And I was a big fan of them. And they were not the first bands to do this, just the first bands that I had been exposed to where I didn't feel like the woman who was the vocalist of the band was having to be hyper feminine to counterbalance the perceived masculinity of what she was doing.
And so I - I was so fascinated by that band. And just by the way that she carried herself and the way that she would do screaming because it wasn't... It wasn't about like -doing, screaming, but also still look hot. I was really inspired by that band and then I ended up joining the band when she quit the band. So I found myself filling in and joining the band on Warp Tour when she suddenly quit in 2012.
Michelle Tea: That is wild. Yeah, what a destiny to have to, like, get to end up being the front person for, like, a band that you love. Like, that's that's wild.
[Music]
Michelle Tea: Listen, I would love to pick tarot cards for you. And I know what you're going to ask because I got an email and I got to say, you want to know about your fear of driving. And I learned this yesterday right after my very first driving lesson. I am also a non-driver who's trying to - to - to drive. So will you tell me, like, do you drive?
Courtney LaPlante: No.
Michelle Tea: OK.
Courtney LaPlante: I don't have my license and I've never had my full license, I've just only ever had my learner's permit.
Michelle Tea: Same.
Courtney LaPlante: I got it when I still lived in Alabama and you can get it there when you're 15. And I got it right away. And then I just became so scared to drive. I'm 32 now. So it's been 17 years I've been able to drive and I... I just never did it. There's like financial reasons, like not ever being able to afford to have a car, so why bother?
Michelle Tea: Same
Courtney LaPlante: I have five siblings in my family and we had one vehicle. So it's like when could I ever use it? But all those things were just purposeful, like distractions, in my opinion, for me to never have to do it. And then I've always had like my... Like my, for instance, my lovely husband, I always say he's my enabler because he's so kind and he wants me to be safe. So he drives me everywhere. So that's why I didn't ask, “Will I ever get my driver's license?” I asked, “Will I ever overcome my fear of driving?” Because I've gotten my learner's permit a ton of times. I've actually like - I always - I always pass it with flying colors because I cram and I study so hard because I am so scared of failing it. And then I just never use it ever. And it expires.
Michelle Tea: I can't even tell you how your story is my story. I've done the same thing. I've got my learner's permit right now. It's the third time I've had it. I've never taken an actual driving lesson. I just had like my fiancee took me driving in the cemetery yesterday, but it wasn't like a - like a official lesson, you know? And - and it is really scary. I had at different points during the drive, I was like, “OK, when you're done, you can burst into tears, but you can't burst into tears until you're like out of the driver's seat.” That was just the feeling of like so much like energy of like fear and anxiety and just like the voice saying, like, “You're never going to be able to do this. How would you do this on a highway?” You know, just all these like...
Courtney LaPlante: Yeah, and it's scary.
Michelle Tea: OK, so here's what I think about your question. You want to know, like, “Will I ever stop being afraid of driving?” And it just seems like in general, when you're an adult and you've got a fear that you've like cultivated and fed and nurtured for - for many years, like the fears, just don't go away, right?
So I have a couple of ideas. One is we can ask like - like what does it look like for you to face your fear of driving? And that could happen in a few different ways. I mean, that could happen through therapy. That could happen through fucking doing it and going and getting your license right? And like figuring out some way to be held accountable for that. Or we can ask, what does it look like if you go towards your license and set up some sort of system with people in your life to be held accountable.
Courtney LaPlante: Yes, that's what I need to do.
Michelle Tea: That's the one. OK, all right. I'm shuffling right now. What does it look like for you just to like do this in spite of the fear and just trusting that like, you are a capable person, you're an intelligent person, you've like done all kinds of against the odds things in your life. And this is something that every dumb schmuck in the world knows how to do. And so, like certainly you will not — it’s guaranteed you will not be the worst driver in the world. And what about, you know, some sort of accountability system with - with people who keep you instead of enabling you — I've had a lot of partners that enable me too — but like getting some agreements going with folks in your life to keep you accountable and staying on track. So what does that look like for you?
Listen, you are ready to deal with this is what I'm seeing here in the tarot, and part of the reason you're ready to deal with it is because this like sort of like plateau you're at, this sort of like holding pattern, is getting a little boring.
You got the — the first card that came up in your three card spread is the Ten of Cups. Some decks show the Ten of Cups as a very celebratory card. In the Thoth deck, it’s about... It's called Satiety. And you're like - it's about it's about - you've gone as far as you could go. It's an emotional card, which is your element as a water sign. Right? It's cups and it's the ten. It’s like you've gone as far as you could go sort of in this narrative about yourself, in the story about yourself, you know intimately what it looks like. You don't need to necessarily get to some sort of like psychoanalytical bottom of your fear. You're just scared to drive. It's a common fear. It is scary. You're in so much control and yet you feel out of control. It's a very strange experience. And so, you know, it makes sense that you have it and it seems like you're even so aware of your own, like using different things as excuses. But really, it's just the abiding fear that's keeping you from it. The tens precede the ace. You know, in the tarot, it's all cycles and it all turns over and begins again. So when you have a ten, it's like you've reached the end of a cycle. So this is really important that this came up. You've reached the end of this particular cycle of avoiding this, justifying it, you know, allowing, allowing, enabling to happen. And you're ready for something to kind of shake it up.
Your next card here is Adjustment. This is a really interesting card for this. It's… You know, it's a Libra card and it's about harmonizing and balancing opposing emotions. It's the sign of balance. And it's funny because, like Libras are always, like, super unbalanced. It's because, like, balance is hard and they are the embodiment of how it is very hard to be balanced and serene. And it's like, you're going to have to adjust here to something. You have to adjust to your fear and accept that, you know, you can have fear and be brave at the same time. In fact, are you even brave if you're not feeling fear? And you know, the Adjustment card is a riff on the Justice card and it's really funny because it's not like whether or not you drive is like a moral issue. It's not. But it can, in a person's life, be about like what is right for you and what is wrong for you. And I think that maybe it's right for you to face this and it's time for you to face it. And the Justice card is coming up saying, like, “Be merciful on yourself, be a merciful judge. Like, don't judge yourself harshly, you know, for not having done it for avoided it. And also be a merciful judge on yourself as you learn to do something new that is scary.” Right? And she's also like Athena, the goddess of knowledge is often, you know — in the tarot, that's the archetype for her. And it's just a great female icon of knowledge. And so this is like a new bank of knowledge that you're going to have access to, you know? So that's something to think about.
And then this is my favorite. This is your final card. Pleasure. Six of Cups. Again, you're in your element. You go from Satiety, which is like kind of bored, kind of over it, kind of like sick of your own story to Pleasure. Like a feeling really emotionally on top, like good. It's Sun in Scorpio, which is really interesting because Scorpio's.... You know, Pisces don't really care about power. Pisces are just like, “Power shmower like, I just, I'm just not interested in it.” Scorpios are like, “I like the power. I like the control.” And there is something about driving that really leans on those aspects of a personality like you've got to claim the power that you have when you're behind the wheel. You know, you've got to rise to the occasion of needing to be in control and it's like.... it looks like these are maybe aspects of your personality. They're a little latent, a little dormant, but they can come out through this process and it might even be fun.
It's still scary for sure, but there's something attractive about it and yeah. I mean you're going to look so cool in a car behind the wheel.
Courtney LaPlante: Yeah. It makes me feel like I'm an adult. Because I.... Right now my life revolves around, “How can I like least inconvenience other people but still maintain my objective?” My whole life, you know, revolves around, like, trying not to inconvenience people. Like I'm not comfortable with the truth of me driving. Like I'm not the kind of person who can go, “Hey, I need to take me to this right now.” And also just being on tour for so long. I was - I was on tour and away from home from like 2012 to 2016 pretty much. And so I never had, I never had to drive, I was always on a bus or being driven around and so there's just been so much to that's made me not have to deal with it. So those cards are like... That's so cool. I've never had a reading done before.
Michelle Tea: Oh well I'm honored to be your first. It's really...
Courtney LaPlante: So exciting.
Michelle Tea: I also like to do a card pull with this deck. It's called the Vessel deck and it's an Oracle deck. I picked three cards for you to help you deal with your fear.
The first one — this is so interesting after what we were just talking about — Power. So it's like, what are the issues of power? Where are you afraid to grab power? Where is power intimidating to you? Where where do you think it would be fun to have power? What - what aspects of being a driver are powerful in a way that's attractive to you that you want to go towards, you know, and where is it scary so that you can acknowledge that and not have it be, you know, maneuvering you from behind the scenes, you know?
The next card is very like, it’s the Self Doubt card. And that is really it, right? I mean, it's like, “Can I do this?” You know? It's wild. It's - it's such a basic thing that I mean, I'm looking at my window right now, California. All I see are cars. All I see are cars driving around. People are driving cars. This is the most common thing in the world. And yet it seems so insanely like, “Can I do it?” And so really like facing your self-doubt and seeing that that's all it is. It's self-doubt. It's not like, “Oh, you have some kind of condition that makes it so that you can't drive.” Your condition is self-doubt, right? So so really working with that.
And then your final card here is called Make. Make it happen. Just doing the work, just doing the work, building, you know, one action after another, you know, until you've kind of dealt with your self-doubt, both in your mind and in real life by getting out there, getting in the car and in claiming the power of the driver.
Courtney LaPlante: I have to. This is really cool for me because, it's like I can't… There's nowhere else for me to run from all this stuff. Like everything's telling me to just do it because I just think it will, you know, I feel like I'd be a better friend and a better wife and a better sister and daughter and stuff, if I could, you know, have some agency in and help myself, because in doing that it will help all the other people that surround me that have allowed me to live a good life like this without having to drive.
You know, I was always the kind of kid where, like, I wanted to dominate everything and be the best at everything. And then to the point where I wouldn't — I did the 300 meter hurdles in track, not because I love... I don't love and I'm not passionate about the 300 meter hurdles. I just wanted to win and I couldn't win the 100 meter dash, but I could win the 300 meter hurdles. Like, I just, I only did stuff that I knew I was going to win or, you know, do a good job in.
Michelle Tea: You know that — I have a Leo rising and I feel like it also just makes me want to be like the shining star queen of everything and if I think I'm not going to be like a fucking NASCAR driver, then why would I bother getting a driver's license, you know? So I relate. But we're going to do it. We're going to be drivers this time next year. We're going on road trips and we're behind the wheel.
Courtney LaPlante: Thank you. And it's very, very special to me that... I got to finally have a reading in such a cool way, so thank you so much.
[Music]
M. Lamar: My name is M. Lamar. I am a composer, a singer and a person who is struggling to be better spiritually, emotionally. I'm struggling to be an embodiment of love first for myself and then to sort of powerfully extend that out to everyone else. When you're Black and queer, Black man, I'm a Black male identified queer person. I mean, the world is really not a beautiful place for you. I… All the examples of the people that I love, Black people that I love, have been able to move through a life where all of these things are still present. You know, these things have been present forever and live a life of joy and a certain kind of holiness and sacredness. When one is singing, one is taking these large breaths in and then slowly exhaling those breaths as one makes sound. And so this is — it's a very cathartic and very meditative thing. I mean, if you do this hours and hours and hours and hours and hours a day, it's going to be extraordinary. I mean, you're going to have these like - this sort of like feeling of elation.
What I’m offering today is this breath. Is this kind of snore breath, primarily through the nose. This sensation where it's sort of behind your nose and then really, I feel the breath moving through my upper sinuses. Your upper sinuses are in-between your eyes or eyebrows, in that sort of area. And then I feel it coming up into my hairline area.
So this breath... And in terms of practical stuff, I'm using it as a reset for when I have anxiety in public spaces when I feel someone's too close to me or I'm in danger. I mean, I'm, you know, sort of dark and macabre and goth. So I've been noticing that I have a lot of negative thought patterns.
Many of us walk around with that all the time, you know, like in that state of anxiety all the time and it's really... What I'm noticing is that I don't need to do that anymore. That whatever kind of trauma that I've been working with for a very long time that started in my childhood, I don't have to be in that state of hyper-vigilance, of fight, flight, or freeze at every moment. And the breath helps me to sort of reset all that. I guess it's - it's not just the breath, it's the intention to be more loving.
What I'm trying to do with this reset is also to tell myself different stories. To tell myself stories about how I'm not in threat, that I don’t have to be hyper vigilant, that I am safe, that I don't have to be constantly on guard, that I can allow more vulnerability. I can allow myself to be more generous to people because it really, if you're not, it has a negative effect on you.
It's just stopping and being very still. It's kind of like an instant drug thing, like it's just an instant kind of like adrenaline thing and there's a joyous thing that happens in that breath, too. And that's been a revelation.
[Music]
Michelle Tea: Thank you, M. Lamar. If you haven’t listened to M. Lamar’s music, I really urge you to seek it out on the internet. It’s haunting and passionate and operatic and goth, very performative and working with themes like colonialism, Blackness, and queerness, to name a few. That deep and otherworldly intelligence you just heard infuses all of his work. I’m definitely going to use that breath on my driving lessons this week. And we hope this episode has inspired you to reconsider any limiting beliefs you might have about yourself. Get out there and learn a scary new skill, why don’t you? I’ll light a candle on my altar for you, too.
[Music]
Michelle Tea: Thanks for tuning into Your Magic. Make sure you follow us on Twitter and Instagram @thisisyourmagic. You can subscribe to us right here on Spotify — do what you need to do to never miss an episode. And you can support us — plus get access to a whole bunch of bonus content — at patreon.com/thisisyourmagic. And you can email us at hello@thisisyourmagic.com, we would love to hear from you.
This episode was produced and edited by Molly Elizalde, Tony Gannon, and Vera Blossom. We got production support from Raven Yamamoto. Our executive producers are Ben Cooley, myself, and Molly Elizalde. Our original theme music is by John Kimbrough.
Tune in next week for a conversation with Melissa Lozada-Oliva. Thanks for listening!