Linying is a Singaporean singer-songwriter based in LA. Her record Swim, Swim will be out April 4 on Nettwerk.
Linying is a Singaporean singer-songwriter based in LA; Mikey Xi — aka Kylie Mooncakes — is a drag artist based in Seattle. Linying’s new record, Swim, Swim, will be out April 4 on Nettwerk, and ahead of it, she’s just released “Dial Tone” — the music video for which stars Mikey as a trans woman at her sister’s traditional Chinese wedding, disguising herself as a cishet man to appease her parents. To celebrate its release, Linying and Mikey got on Zoom to catch up about the collaboration.
— Annie Fell, Editor-in-chief, Talkhouse Music
Linying: Mikey, are you in Seattle right now?
Mikey Xi: I am, yes. And you’re in Singapore at the moment, right?
Linying: I am. It’s good to see you! And also, happy Lunar New Year!
Mikey: Happy New Year! Have you had a good chance to celebrate?
Linying: Yeah. That’s what I came back home to Singapore for, and it’s been so disorienting. How into the festivities do you get when it comes to Chinese New Year?
Mikey: I celebrate it in my own way, but this year I didn’t really have the opportunity yet to get into the real traditional festivities and whatnot. Especially because I think my friends that celebrate are all a little burnt out right now. But I think we’re celebrating in our own modern ways, just with togetherness and celebration.
Linying: It’s so apt that this conversation is happening at this time, because it’s gotten me thinking so much about family dynamics, and that’s something that is explored a lot in that video.
Mikey: It’s very relevant. It’s what our video is about, essentially.
Linying: Yeah, it is. Have you seen the final cut?
Mikey: Yeah. It just felt surreal. I’ve never been a part of such a production like that. And to see this finalized project, it’s like, Woah. And it’s obviously seeing myself also in a completely different light. So I think my mind is partially still processing it.
Linying: I remember you were saying that this was the first time you’d ever acted as not Kylie, right?
Mikey: Yeah. The only real acting acting project I had done before was this really cool series called Bazzooka. I was a little more DIY, punky, and I was in drag the whole time. It was a really quick process, too. And this was also kind of a quick process, but I feel like we got more moments to sink our teeth into it — a rehearsal day, and longer shoot days. That was nice.
Linying: It was a bit of a whirlwind, the rehearsals. It’s so funny because we shot it at this restaurant called 888 [in LA], and ever since then, I’ve kept going back because the food was so good. [Laughs.] And the one thing that finally made me pull the trigger on coming back to Singapore for Chinese New Year was me being there on New Year’s Day. I’d just spent the past few months being at families’ or friends’ places, and being a part of other people’s rituals. I didn’t think I would crave this sense of waking up in the morning and knowing exactly what it is that we do on this day, every single year — I never thought that that’s the sort of thing that would matter to me, having moved from Singapore to the US maybe two years ago now. I think I’ve always been derisive of this kind of structure. I mean, you tend to be contemptuous about the things that you’re familiar with, right? And coming from a society that’s so manicured and there’s a by-the-book way of how we do things — I’ve always just thought of myself as such an outlier, such a rebel, like, “I don’t like the way we do things without without ever questioning them or asking ourselves why.” I think that’s something that’s pretty characteristic of East Asian culture, like, “Don’t ask why, just do.” Questioning isn’t very encouraged.
But it’s really funny that it was on New Year’s Day when I was at 888 having dim sum, and I saw all these families congregating. And it was just a conversation I overheard at someone else’s table, where an uncle was shaking hands with someone and they were like, “Oh, I haven’t seen your wife in a really long time. How’s she doing?” And that really simple thing just sparked something in me. I was like, I need to be home.
Mikey: Absolutely. That space was really special. It was so reminiscent of the places I ate at growing up, just big banquet hall type dim sum places. That place was also really special for the man that played my father on set — he has so many stories!
Linying: Oh, my gosh! The man who played Mikey’s father — we had a bit of trouble communicating with him, because he’s like Chinese Chinese, and we were all grasping at straws.
Mikey: It felt authentic to what it is actually communicating with Asian parents sometimes, though.
Linying: It’s so true. But we were saying, “Oh, we’re going to shoot it at 888. Do you know that place?” And he said he had gotten married there 30 years ago. That was where his wedding was at.
Mikey: It was so crazy.
Linying: It was so serendipitous. But I’m so interested in what your relationship is to structure and rules and rituals. It’s such a big part of the song as well, because that line, “Boyhood’s substitute for ‘be good’ is just a list of long ‘should’s.”
Mikey: I mean, being Asian, we joke about it all the time but it really is all we know — following the rules and making sure to live life the correct way as to bring honor to your family. We talk about “honoring” in such a specific, rigid, all-powerful way that it’s kind of all you have. If you lose everything, all you have is your honor and your face. It makes it feel so daunting, and like such a huge, major task that’s omnipresent.
Linying: So much responsibility.
Mikey: So much, “Do the right thing the right way. Perform this specific brand of masculinity or femininity or goodness.” Also the arbitrary rules we make up, because all our individual parents and families are like, “Well, we see this, so this is obviously the correct way.” Or, “I know someone on Weibo that said you’re supposed to do this, so I’m going to trust them and parent that way for you.” I think once I’ve grown up, I’ve found a lot more comfort and I’m able to see more of the intricacies and beauties of our cultures and traditions. But rules, regulations — it’s a lot. And it’s a big, complicated relationship, especially being someone who is queer and trans and exists in kind of a newer world and lifestyle, you know?
Linying: Yeah. But isn’t it crazy how — because right now, I’m sure you have a strong queer community that you’re really embedded into, right?
Mikey: Absolutely.
Linying: The whole thought of rules — it just depends on how many people say it’s the way it should be. And that’s of course dependant on where you position yourself.
Mikey: For sure. And I’m really grateful to have come up in my young adulthood through the queer community and to have created such strong bonds, because it really is a lot of those relationships I had that taught me that it’s so important to unlearn what you were taught growing up was right or correct or wrong or bad or good.
Linying: Did you have someone to show you that?
Mikey: I yeah, I had a few people. But one of the biggest was my trans mother — well, my drag mom that kind of became my trans mother as I went through my gender journey. Her name was Jade Dynasty. She had such a strong vision and clarity on what she believed in. Whenever someone said something that was tone deaf or a learning opportunity, she would just be like, “Don’t say that, that’s fucked up. That’s disrespectful.” And wasn’t afraid to just be direct. Even with the way she would fundraise for our ballroom house, she would go up to people in the club and be so blunt like, “You should donate your dollars to Black and brown people today so they can continue to party and have a thriving life, just like y’all are right now.” It was so disarming in the best way.
Linying: Uninhibited.
Mikey: Yeah. She carried herself with so much serious grown energy too, that I didn’t even realize at the time she was only three years older than me. I was 20 at the time, and just seeing a woman like that — so down to be in her power and her action and her directness with what she wanted from the world and needed — was really empowering. It taught me a lot about being direct, being honest about what it is, and just going for things.
Linying: I can imagine how it helps sometimes to see that someone can be deviant, and deviate in such a dignified way. And that sometimes helps you renegotiate your relationship with what you think is the way things should be. You imagine that, If I go left, then I have to be chaotic and I have to completely reject everything.
Mikey: And she was so chaotic in her own way, but she also just had such a strong belief in her own values and morals and what she believed to be right and for the good of the people around her. She was so certain of that, that it was so powerful to me, because I never questioned that. It was just so easy to be a good person, or the person that you wanted to be. It’s so accessible to simply do what you feel like is right. It kind of broke that mental barrier of, Oh, but what if? Or, I shouldn’t, I can’t, whatever.
Linying: That’s really amazing. I struggle a lot with the what-ifs because I tend to be very calculated and not just act on feelings.
Mikey: Absolutely. I think for me, I especially when it comes to saying something that might rock the boat, I think about, What if this action doesn’t do anything? What if no one listens, and I’m just out here looking stupid? But at the same time, I really learned that, Well, if you stand in it, then at least you know your truth. At least you know that you did that.
Linying: Exactly. I feel like knowing one’s truth and being able to express it is important because, even if it achieves nothing, sometimes the expression itself is what’s necessary.
Mikey: Absolutely.
Linying: Singapore is another level of rules and propriety, but because it’s so small and there’s such a strong sense of community and what’s normal, people who deviate quickly get called “shameless.” There’s this app called Stomp, and people will just take pictures of people doing anything. It can be really benign and harmless, but there’s also this hyper vigilant culture of people being like, “Oh, my god, what’s this weird person doing?” And the idea of shame and face is so embedded in our culture.
Mikey: Being Chinese, I definitely feel the same as well. And as a culture, we’re also so much less outwardly friendly. So especially me, having grown up a good part of my childhood in America, when I went to China, you never get a sense of encouragement or friendly support from the people around you. Unless you’re exceptional, I suppose. So at least as someone who partially grew up in the West, it feels like you’re always on your toes and kind of like, What is the right thing? But that’s also my own thing to unlearn. Because a lot of times people don’t really care.
Linying: That’s so true. Most of the people are too busy thinking about themselves.
Mikey: Exactly. But we have that ingrained fear in us as well. So it feels like everyone’s just looking at you.
Linying: Do you think it’s human nature to create predictability and a rubric for everyone? And do you find that language changes whether you’re talking about rules in an Asian context or in a queer context? Like, are there ways in which the queer community oppresses itself?
Mikey: I think with any community, honestly, yeah. I think a lot of us learned a lot of things very quickly, but then we don’t unlearn certain values. So we’re trying to uphold each other’s values, but in a way that’s similar to policing. You know, acting holier-than-thou, or it feels like sometimes we’re all waiting for a gotcha moment instead of a learning moment.
Linying: But I think the tricky thing is that, I’ve also come to realize that when you’re part of different communities, you start seeing that everyone thinks that they’re doing the right thing. No one thinks that they’re being a bad person. And when you get to that core, it’s hard to not have some kind of empathy while still navigating the ways in which you feel you’re hurt and the ways in which you are rejected. Because that’s still true. But at the same time, all it takes is a little shift to see that no one thinks that they’re purposefully being wrong. You know, they either grow up under a set of values that they feel is important to uphold, or their deviance from it makes it such that they feel it’s the right thing to do to then enact it on someone else.
That’s how I feel about masculinity and the ways in which women don’t benefit from this definition [of it]. And it sometimes feels a little unfair — I mean, the running thought in my head is, Well, that’s not my problem that you’re damaged. It’s like you’re asking me to first have to deal with my own hurt that you are the perpetrator of, and I’m being asked to be empathetic towards you. Sometimes it feels really upsetting to have to do all that knowing that people only hurt when they’re hurt. But at the same time, sometimes I wonder if that’s what it is to be human, in the sense that it’s never a 1-to-1 tally, that if you have the capacity to be empathetic then it’s kind of your moral responsibility to use it. I don’t know. I’m still kind of working that out in my head.
Mikey: That makes a lot of sense. I think about empathy a lot, too, and it does tie back into pride and honor and face. I feel like the way we worry about being perceived and trying to uphold whatever honor — it does suck that it gets in the way of actual empathy and actually trying to navigate things morally. I feel like a lot more people are concerned about appearing good than actually being good, you know what I mean? I interact with men in the world and hear them talk about what they believe in, but it comes across so performative, almost like they’re trying to win brownie points with me, knowing I’m Asian and queer and a femme and trans. It seems like everyone’s just so hyper aware now of doing the right thing instead of learning.
Linying: Do you mean, in your experience, they come off as just knowing exactly what boxes they need to tick?
Mikey: Yes, exactly that.
Linying: Like there’s a model answer, even if it’s not what they truly believe in.
Mikey: Right. Or they might even believe they truly believe in that, because they know they’re supposed to. But I think a lot of people don’t actually live their lives in the sense of, “I’m going to uphold these actual values in my day to day life.” They’re like, “I will say that I do when it’s really convenient for me and makes me look good.”
Linying: Yeah, when they can capitalize on it. I guess that is true. It can be disheartening sometimes, to sense people being performative. But sometimes I also feel like, what are we doing if we’re not always thinking that we’re doing it right? That gap right between who you say you want to be and who you actually are — is it sometimes good enough to even see that as an ideal? Is there ever a perfect way in which we are the people we want to be?
That’s one of the big heartbreaks, I think, when it comes to this song for me, when I listen to it and I think about where I was when I wrote it. The title “Dial Tone” is me putting the phone down, cutting off someone who cost me a lot of pain. Despite all the anger that I feel, the final line is still, “Thank you for living. We’re here for you.” It’s this expression of resignation, maybe, and understanding. But at the same time, I’m filled with so much rage and my own personal sadness. And at the end of the day, it’s still like, “Hey, I know that at our core, we’re not people who want to cause pain to other people.” No one really wants to do that. And maybe people think I’m very idealistic for thinking that, but I think it’s true. And it’s one of the most difficult things in the world to have to accept that at every point, everyone’s doing the best that they can. And if they could do better, they would. And so if they aren’t, then it must be that they’re incapable. I don’t know if you believe that, or if that’s like a little extreme.
Mikey: That’s real, actually. And your song does really beautifully capture the complex feelings of, “no one’s perfect.” That’s something that’s felt so inward for a lot of people. But at the same time, it can be such an interesting experience to see it outwardly in others. Like, witnessing someone so close to you struggle, and seeing how difficult it is to connect with something that might feel like simple and easy to you. It’s a complex feeling. Because, yeah, you’re right — culturally, different people are going through so many different things just based on how they grew up and what they’ve experienced.
Linying: Yeah. I also wonder if this ties into this whole existential question of, what do we owe one another? Do I owe you my capacity to process your emotions for you? Because I know you’re incapable of doing that, do I owe you my ability then to do it for you, and to then forgive you preemptively before you’re even able to say you’re sorry? That’s kind of what the song is. That sort of ties in a little bit to the idea of face, I think, because something about Asian culture is that idea of accountability in the sense that we belong to one another. You know, when your parents say, “Don’t dishonor the family,” it’s such a different framework compared to this Western ideal of, “You belong to yourself.” Theirs is a much more individualistic approach where if you misbehave or if you make a fool of yourself, you’re the only one that suffers. You suffer the consequences. And likewise, when you succeed, you reap the rewards. But this is something that’s so different in Asian culture and Asian families, where it’s like, “Don’t bring dishonor to the family.” But then the heartening thing about it is then that there’s this inexplicable sense of belonging to one another. And it’s really hard for me to villainize one or to see another one as more right. I don’t know how you feel about that.
Mikey: It’s such a complex feeling. For me, for example, being a Pisces—
Linying: [Laughs.]
Mikey: [Laughs.] I have a lot space in my heart and I feel a lot of empathy that I’m able to extend. I do understand for a lot of people, the way they grew up was simply the way they grew up, or the way they were taught things was just the way they were taught things. It’s so difficult to break out of that. And I think shooting the video — it’s a story that is so personal to my heart, and it’s not my story, but it is something so similar to what I’ve experienced. Throughout the entire shooting, it did make me think a lot about my own personal experiences, and what I’ve experienced with family and more of a traditional Asian community.
Linying: There were so many Asian people in that room.
Mikey: Oh, my god, it was such a fun time. But the video really made me think about acceptance and forgiveness, and kind of understanding that — not that you should forgive them — but healing is an individual thing. For many years I held a lot of internal resentment and bitterness, or just a closed-offness to the whole situation. And I think this past year especially has really been thinking about not forgiveness, but just the feeling of letting go. Just the feeling of being able to accept and move forward. Not like, “This is fine.” But just, “This is what happens.” I think my feelings have turned more from anger just to, I hope someday we all can understand each other better. I hope one day we can all come to a place where we feel more at peace with ourselves and each other in our hearts. And I think that’s possible. I think shooting your video changed my brain chemistry a little bit. I think I was like, Oh, maybe things like this are a little more possible. Just being on set with an entire room of Asian people — there were a lot of queer Asian people in that room, but not everyone was either. And it was cool to feel like, It is possible for all of us, all ages and from different places to grow and learn.
Linying: We could all enjoy roast duck! [Laughs.] So, this whole story is Lenne [Chai, the director of the video]’s mastermind brainchild.
Mikey: Right. And I’m so honored to have worked with her, by the way.
Linying: She’s amazing. I just played her the song and she came up with this entire story, and it put me in a really existential place. One thing I love about her is that she has such an eye for beauty. And I often give myself a really hard time about prioritizing beauty, because as someone who cares about doing the right thing or doing important, meaningful things, it can often feel like beauty is secondary or sometimes conflicting with that desire. And I often wonder, Is it frivolous to chase beautiful things? But it’s just like with food — with beautiful things, music, food, all these things in life that we enjoy, I sometimes can’t help but gravitate towards that. Because there’s so much that we can’t agree on when we come from different places and we’re not always on the same page about stuff, and I lose faith in our ability to find common ground intellectually — because of course everyone thinks that they’re right. And that’s why I focus so much on what’s beautiful and what’s good and what’s fun, because what is there to fight about that? It’s much more productive, or maybe more efficient, for us to just enjoy a plate of roast duck. Like, enjoy these five minutes where we’re not going to have anything to disagree on.
Mikey: Absolutely. I’m really grateful you took a chance on me and included me in this project, because I know it was such a whirlwind of a process to make it happen. But you were so sweet throughout all of it.
Linying: It was our privilege to have you on the shoot.
