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From The New York Times, I'm Anna Martin.
This is Modern Love, and today I'm talking to singer-songwriter Levy.
You might think from the warm, mature tone in her voice,
the jazz and bassinnova influence that leaves from another generation,
but she's only 25 years old.
She got her start in the most Gen Z way possible, on TikTok.
During the pandemic, Levy started posting videos of herself playing guitar,
asking her followers what they wanted to hear from her.
Does anybody else feel like everyone around them is falling in love?
Her viral videos led to her debut album called Everything I Know About Love,
that a second record called Bewitched, which she won a Grammy for this year.
And now she's on a nationwide tour.
So even though Levy's music sounds so nostalgic, it's clearly of the moment.
Levy is speaking to her mostly young fans about experiences they're likely going through right now.
First love, first heartbreak, feeling like you're someone's second pick.
And through her music, Levy is saying, I'm right here, I'm with you.
Everybody's falling in love, and I'm falling behind.
Today, Levy reads an essay called An Anxious Person Tries to Be Chill by Coco Mellers.
And Levy opens up about how anxiety manifests in her own relationships,
and how she turns that anxiety into art.
Levy, welcome to Modern Love.
Thank you so much for having me. I'm so excited to be here.
Levy, throughout your career, you've cultivated these really direct relationships with your fans.
You talk with them on TikTok, you respond to them on Instagram,
and recently you've been connected with them in a much more literary way.
You're doing a book club. What are you reading right now?
Well, we are reading The Midnight Library by Matt Hague. Last month we read Seersea by
Madeline Miller. It's a really fun way to connect with the fans kind of in a different way,
and has, you know, storytelling as a way to connect us all together.
What makes a good story for you? That's a big question, I know.
Big question. I think there's a level of suspense and release to a good story.
Some sort of unexpected twist and a release, I mean, I mean, it sounds simple, but a happy ending, right?
Or some sort of ending that makes sense.
Hmm. Does that kind of narrative apply to your songwriting as well?
Oh, absolutely. I talk about tension and release all the time, especially in chords, right?
If you hear a chord that sounds almost wrong and you move one note and then it just resolves,
that's what we talk about as tension and release in music, and I'm all about tension and release.
Yeah, I mean, these ideas of release of suspense, they all feel very related to the modern love essay
you chose to read today. It's by Coco Mellers. Can you tell me what it's about?
She's talking about falling in love with this neighbor who doesn't really care about her,
and I guess this overarching theme of being anxiously attached.
And we kind of visit her past and what has built up to this anxious attachment style,
and then we kind of follow her through as she finds a more secure love.
Yet this piece has a lot to do with attachment theory, which I feel like everyone kind of knows
at this point, but just a refresher. It divides people into three categories based on how we relate
to romantic partners. There's anxious attachment, avoidant attachment, and secure attachment.
And the author of this essay is definitely anxious. She's experiencing that tension
that I'm sure so many people can relate to. It's that stress that comes when you like someone
so much more than they like you. I was going to say, I think, when somebody doesn't give us
quite enough, it forms this addiction almost because then when we get it, we have a satisfying
sense of relief. And then, of course, they drop out again, but then you're aching for that sense of,
oh, he does like me, or oh, he will sleep with me, you know, or he's going to love me.
And so I think that's kind of where I was itching for that sense of love, even though it's not
really love, it's just breadcrumbing you almost. If that makes sense. It does make sense. This essay
begins with the author, Coco Mellers, hanging on basically for dear life to a guy who just wants
something the dreaded word casual. Do you want to go ahead and read the essay for us?
An anxious person tries to be chill.
The year after I stopped drinking, I fell in love with my neighbor.
I was 27 working as a copywriter and living in a studio apartment on Gay Street in the West
Village. He lived across the street in a larger apartment that had beautiful morning light and a
mouse infestation. One afternoon, he found me sitting on his stoop, smoking a cigarette and sat
down, looking like a young Paul Newman. We talked for a long time during which I learned that he
owned a local restaurant and had recently broken up with his girlfriend. Eventually, we headed
up to his apartment where we kissed until it felt like it was only us and the mice in his walls
still awake in the whole city. By the time he walked me back to my building, it was past midnight,
and I had already decided that our wedding should be right there on Gay Street. I was calculating
what kind of city permits that would require when he placed a hand on my shoulder.
I really like you, he said, but the restaurant keeps me pretty busy and I just want to be clear
that I'm not looking for a relationship right now. I looked up at him under the yellow glow of
the street lamps and did what so many hopeful single people have done before me. I told a lie,
wishing it were true. I'm not looking for anything serious either, I said.
His face softened. That's great, so we can just keep a chill. I smiled. I'm a very chill person.
You'll see. He would not see. What followed was a two year tug of war. He could not commit
and I could not accept it. I tried every tool in my arsenal to get him to be my boyfriend.
Nothing could change the fact that we didn't want the same thing.
Instead of freeing ourselves from this mismatch, one of us would eventually leave our light on,
knowing the other would see it from the street below and send a text to come up.
I was repeating a familiar pattern. I grew up chasing my father's love, a man who, like my neighbor,
could be affectionate or absent depending on the day. Now I was pursuing my neighbor with the same
fervor. The more space he wanted, the closer I longed to be. I pretended to have no needs,
then felt distraught when he didn't meet them. I would get high off of his attention
than crash when he withdrew. I would later learn this dynamic is called an anxious,
avoidant relationship. At the time, I only knew it hurt. And for the first time in my adult life,
I didn't have alcohol to numb me. So I went to an ashram, upstate, and prayed for the obsession to lift.
I changed his name and my phone to Praseko, so I would remember how emotionally hungover I felt
after seeing him. I went to a weekly meditation group led by a Buddhist teacher, and at the risk
of sounding dramatic, changed my life forever. He taught me that anxious and avoidant people,
often connect quickly and powerfully, but the relationships are a challenge at best and doomed
at worst. You need to be with someone secure, he said. You mean boring. He smiled.
Security isn't boring. You'll see. Eventually, it was obsessing over my neighbor that grew boring.
I stopped leaving my light on all night, got some proper sleep, found a therapist, and became
open to the possibility of meeting someone else. That someone was Henry, a friend of a friend I met
at a film screening. He had freckles all over his face and a big, unself-conscious smile.
He was obsessed with being outdoors, loved to cook, and was a moderate drinker.
By contrast, I considered a trip to Central Park hiking, got my meals, sushi, cupcakes,
pre-cut fruit at the gourmet deli, and wasn't moderate at anything. I liked him instantly,
but I didn't fantasize about marrying him.
For one of our early dates, Henry made reservations at three restaurants and let me pick which one
to go to. On another, we saw a documentary about the evils of salmon farming.
In the following months, we met up once or twice a week to eat, go to the theater or see an exhibition.
There was no waiting up late for him. No will he won't he show up.
I was used to downing a person like a shot, but with Henry, I sipped.
He surprised me with his juggling skills, and later about his role as the peacekeeper
between his older brother and younger sister. Later, he told me about his friend who was killed
in a hit-and-run during the first year of university, the shock and the grief of it.
Each new thing I learned felt precious.
Still, I was wary. Where was the high, the excitement? I thought falling for someone should be
like having an orgasm and a heart attack at once. Shim'd it be more difficult than this? I asked
my therapist. In real life, good things are allowed to be easy, she said. Trust it.
A few months into seeing each other, I gave Henry a book of illustrated animal facts,
expecting him to appreciate it as a thoughtful, if not particularly noteworthy gesture.
This is the best gift ever, he said. He went through the book, page by page,
wondrously repeating the best facts allowed. Hummingbirds flap their wings up to 200 times a second.
Henry didn't need things to be dramatic to feel alive because he paid attention to the small
details that make life feel miraculous. His capacity for delight, his seemingly boundless
sense of wonder was one of the first things I loved about him. I just didn't know it at the time.
My earlier experiences of falling in love had felt like being stuffed in a barrel and thrown
off a waterfall, a blind tumble both euphoric and terrifying. Falling in love with Henry felt like
being carried along a smooth river to sea. It wasn't all smooth of course. I was still me,
after all, still anxious. For the first few months, every morning that Henry left my apartment
to return to his place, I would scramble out of bed and insist on walking him the one block to the
subway. His departure stirred some vague panic in me, triggering the childhood fear of abandonment,
of love walking out the door. Of course, I had never admitted that to anyone I had dated. Until one
day when Henry turned to me outside the subway entrance, gave me a funny smile and said,
why do you always want to walk me? I sense it's important to you, but I'm not sure why.
My first instinct was to lie, wishing it were true. Instead, I took a deep breath.
Actually, I have this thing when we separate where I get, I fluttered a hound over my chest,
really anxious. I think I'm afraid you won't come back. Henry gave me a long look and my heart
dropped. I waited for him to dive headfirst down the subway stairs away from me. I see, he said,
taking my hand. Would it make you feel less anxious if we walked around the block together one more time?
I could have laughed with relief. I could have pressed my palms into my eyes and cried like a child,
but I kept myself together and nodded. We walked once more around the block, and then he got on the
subway, and I went about my day. A year later, we moved in together. Six months after that,
we got married. Today, we live in a house in Los Angeles with a small garden regularly frequented
by hummingbirds. Up to 200 flaps a second, Henry likes to remind me, isn't that remarkable? It is.
If I had a nickel, for every time I need to go to an ashram upstate to get rid of a crush,
am I right? I'm like seeing a bit of myself in this, not that I've gone to an ashram, but now I kind of
want to. When we come back, Al-Levy's first-ever date and first-ever ghosting became the
creative spark that kicked off her career. Stay with us.
This podcast is supported by Cartier. I was at a new friend's apartment not too long ago,
where I told her that I hadn't spoken to my father in almost four years. She turned to me and said,
I feel so sorry for him. I froze naturally because people normally say that they feel sorry for me
when I bring up my dad. Then she said, he's missing out on how special you are.
With love from Cartier.
So, Al-Levy, you just read Coco Mellers' Modern Love essay and you said that you saw yourself
in her story. Tell me what parts resonated with you. I think this feeling of anxious attachment
and avoidant also, I think I've definitely felt versions of. Sometimes the further I get into
secure relationships, I expect something to go wrong. Are you saying that you identify as
slightly anxiously attached? I think so. I thought I wasn't, but I think I am.
I mean, how has that showed up in your dating life? I've had a blocked out boys in dating
when I was younger. I don't know why. I guess I was just like, I've got to focus on school and music.
I was just so embarrassed. I was so embarrassed. But it wasn't until I moved to the states and
moved to, I went to university in Boston that I kind of allowed myself to open up and be a young
woman and date for the first time. I remember the first time I had started going on dates with this
guy and my first thought was, oh my god, does everybody feel like this? Because I felt insane.
I felt insane. And this first guy, it was definitely like this push and pull. You didn't really
care that much. But I remember I would receive a text from him. I was like, oh my god, this is
like a movie. And then he ended up ghosting me. And I was so hurt. I was so sad. And like,
and every single feeling I was feeling, whether it was that excitement after a date or the anxiety
about receiving a text or the hurt of being ghosted, the only thought I had throughout the whole
thing was does everybody feel like this? Because I feel insane. I know exactly what you mean. The first
time I felt a real connection. I remember riding the train and looking at other people in the train
and thinking like, have all of you felt this way too? Because it feels like a medical event.
Like I'm not okay. No, literally, no, I genuinely felt it feels like a medical event. I remember
I'd look out at the people. It's so dramatic. I had a dorm room that looked over Boston. And I'd
like look down at the people and be like, so everybody goes through this. Wait, I'm not. You're
looking at all these people and you're like every single one of you has a experience,
a version of this. And it's true. And that's why my first song I released was called Street by
Street. And I wrote it as I looked out as the, it's so cute. It's like my first little baby song.
But I looked out on the street and, and saw the people and I was like, I'm going to reclaim
this city because this boy had ruined the city for me. And that was the first song I wrote.
I absolutely want to play this song. But first I have to ask, like, does this mean that
Boston is ruined for you forever? You can never return to that city again?
No, it's okay. I've reclaimed it. I've made my triumphant return. I love Boston.
Okay. It's a big relief for your Boston fans. Let's play the song that let you reclaim
it. An entire city. It's called Street by Street.
What is it about the potential of a relationship, a crush, a situation chip, as some people call it,
that's so creatively inspiring to you? You know, the songs we listen to growing up are often
about this deep heartbreak or falling deeply in love. My experience has been everything in between.
The confusion in between that, oh, does he love me today? Oh, he won't love me tomorrow.
So, as I became a writer and started illustrating these feelings through song,
I think I really zeroed in on these feelings that I felt like hadn't been represented in
songs as much because those are the lyrics. Those are the songs that you hear and you're like, wow,
I, I, she feels like that and I feel like that. So maybe I'm not that crazy. It's validating.
Even reading what Coco wrote, you know, it's, reading that is very validating. Someone else
feels that way. Yeah, I mean, Coco's piece reminds me of how I felt in my own relationships,
the toxic ones, but also the healthy ones. I always feel some amount of anxiety and I know that
my friends do too. I think a lot of women do feel anxiously attached, right? And then the
fear that comes along with it is being crazy, right? And it's like when Coco is seeing Henry
away at the subway station and she tells him, you know, I'm scared he won't come back. She knows that
it's irrational, but she's still scared that he's going to think she's crazy and that he's not
going to come back. Right, but it's like she's not being crazy. She points to her addiction,
her relationship with her father, all these things that influence her anxious attachment style.
And throughout the piece, she's working really hard to get herself to a secure place and embrace
her connection with Henry, the guy who loves hummingbirds. But in the back of her mind, she has this
fear that a stable relationship will be boring. Have you ever had that same fear? Yeah, you know,
I'm also deep on the TikTok that talks about safe love being boring. So I see it all the time. I mean,
in my experience with the safe love I've received, it isn't boring. I see it why people think that.
I think a lot of women don't recognize safe love because it's boring in comparison to
the push and pull of the guy that's never going to give you enough. But this is so cheesy. But safe
love is joyous. It's happy. You know, I don't think that's cheesy. Do you think that's cheesy? I
think that's real safe love is stable. Let's use that word instead. It's stable. So yeah, you don't
have as much of the tension, the tension released, but it's stable and it's beautiful.
In your experience, is that type of love harder to write a song about? We spoke about the sort of
creative inspiration of the more toxic type of love. But what about the secure type? It is harder
to write about. It is. It's once you do write about it, it is the most beautiful product. But
there are less questions. In my songwriting, it's a lot of questions being answered. A lot of them
about love as well. And when you have a secure type of love, you're not thinking all the time,
like, oh my god, do you love me or why are you doing this? Why did this happen? Why are you looking
at her that way? There are no questions. It's secure. So I definitely think it's harder.
Do you ever worry that a safe relationship wouldn't give you enough material for your art?
No. Although a lot of, oh my god, I've seen so many TikToks and tweets where people are like,
oh, live, I can never get in a relationship or else we'll stop getting songs. We'll stop
getting albums and I'm like, hey, please, I'm like, don't you wish me happiness?
Okay, we're going to prove all those fans wrong. Is there a song of yours that we can point to
that's about a secure relationship? Well, the first love song I wrote, a best friend. I'd never
been in love before and I wanted to write a love song. And I thought about the most secure type
of love I've ever had in my life. And that is the love I have for my twin sister. And then the love
my mother and father have for each other. And I asked my mother, how do you know when you found the
one? And my mother was like, well, your father's my best friend. So I wrote a song called best friend.
I mean, this song, I love it because it's really an ode to secure relationships of all different
types. Let's go out on that song, Levy. This is best friend.
I've never left so much I haven't written a song. There's no one else I'd rather fall asleep with
and dream with you're my best friend in the world.
Levy, thank you so much for this conversation. It was such a blast to talk to you.
Thank you. I've had so much fun. I literally could talk about love and relationships. It is
something. It really is the one thing that everybody goes through and nobody really has the answer
to. And I love trying to get to the bottom of it. And I know that I will never get to the bottom of it.
Next week, I talk with model and writer Emily Radikowski. After her very public divorce,
Emily's now on a mission to shift negative assumptions people may have about her relationship status
starting with her wedding ring. I basically took the diamonds that were in the original ring and
made them into two different rings, which I kind of playfully called divorce rings. I really liked
the idea of a woman not having to be ashamed of leaving a relationship, but even just like of having
a past. Modern Love is produced by Julia Botero, Christina Josa, Riva Goldberg, Davis Land,
and Emily Lang. It's edited by our executive producer Jen Poient, Riva Goldberg, and Davis Land.
The Modern Love theme music is by Dan Powell, original music by Dan Powell, Pat McCusker,
and Rowan Nemisto. This episode was mixed by Daniel Ramirez. Our show is recorded by Maddie Mas yellow,
digital production by Mahima Chablani, and Nell Galoghli. The Modern Love column is edited by
Daniel Jones. Meal Lee is the editor of Modern Love Projects. I'm Anna Martin. Thanks for listening.
