The Date Where Laura Lizcano Bares Her Heart

By Emily Herbein

Laura Lizcano, Colombian-born and Philadelphia-based, wears her heart on her sleeve. That being said, though she’s just released a full-length album called Heart that is entirely dedicated to love, she’s fully aware that relationships aren’t all rose-colored, all the time. Heart is a realistic, narrative approach to navigating loving people in all different ways. Lizcano emphasizes the importance of loving your friends, loving your significant other, loving yourself, and loving love. She and I talked about the highs and lows of dating today, what it means to respect yourself enough to walk away from a relationship, and what she feels is the key to remaining authentic to yourself while tied to another person.

If you could go on a really incredible first date, knowing that there wouldn't be another, where would you go?

Laura: I think I would say something really epic, like the Metropolitan Opera or something like that.

Emily: I remember I did this question with Sophie and Michael and they were like, "let's take a transcontinental train trip" or something. And Sophie was like, "Let's go to Spain. We take a train and we go to Spain." And Michael's like, "From Philly???" And they said their actual first date was at a rave in London and I thought, "I'll never be that brave or that cool."

Laura: I love them. I saw that; I love that story, too.

What's something really cringe that you've done to impress someone or something that they've done to impress you?

Laura: Oh, my God. Okay, so I was in high school, and I had a huge crush on this guy who I obviously wanted to think that I was really cool. On Facebook, I would post song lyrics of songs that I knew he liked.

Emily: Ugh. I still do that.

Laura: It was with the hopes that he would see that I was cool too, and it would prompt him into liking and commenting.

Emily: No, I do the same thing, still. It - unfortunately - works. It's foolproof and it's a way for you to gauge each other's tastes. Sometimes it just turns into a game of one-upping each other on obscure picks, but at least it gets the conversation going. What's something embarrassing someone's done to impress you?

Laura: There was a time when I was going on some OkCupid dates, and I have two infamous stories about those. One is The Leather Jacket Guy. On our second date, he gifted me a leather jacket. Like, kind of unprompted.

Emily: Oh, my God...

Laura: And then the other one is this other guy - and we hadn't gone on that many dates, first of all - and he was totally in love with me, and we got stopped by like a Planned Parenthood canvasser one day.

Emily: I have no idea where this could be going, but I'm nervous.

Laura: So to impress me here, on the spot he signed up for this monthly donation package to Planned Parenthood.

Emily: Jeez. I'm glad he did that, of course, but - dude. Did you see either of them again?

Laura: Oh, no. Oh, my God. They were very short-lived.

Emily: At least tell me you still have the jacket.

Laura: I know I don't. Definitely don't.

Emily: My one thing is that, if you go out with a guy and you either have to convince yourself that you like them, or you're justifying the number of times that he makes you cringe, he's not the one. Sometimes I'm very picky about the things that get to me, but I also feel like that's totally valid.

Laura: I completely feel that.

Emily: Are you currently dating anybody?

Laura: Yes!

Emily: Okay - what was your honest first impression of them when you met?

Laura: Well, actually, I don't remember that much because we met in college and we were both freshmen. We were in the same program at Temple, but we didn't even interact with each other. When we first met. I don't have a distinct memory of being like, "Oh, my God, they're so gorgeous" or "Oh, my god I hate them" when we met. We both were just sort of there.

Emily: Do you remember where your first date was?

Laura: Yeah, actually. So we kind of had one of those first "epic" dates because we went to New York and we went to the MoMA. We skated in Bryant Park and then we went to the Village. We got to see the Vanguard Orchestra and Jazz Orchestra.

Emily: That is definitely an epic first date. How long have you guys been together?

Laura: Three or four years. Hold on, he's here, I'll ask him. Three years, right? No, four? It's four.

Emily: Is he also a musician?

Laura: Yeah, he is.

Emily: There are those rare musician couples that really make it work. I've only met a couple of them. I'm glad you guys seem to be able to separate your professional and personal lives in that sense.

Let's talk a little bit about the album. How are different aspects of love discussed in your new songs?

Laura: Well, I think obviously there's the very straightforward "True Love," which you and I have talked about before. It's about trying to be a bit realistic about it and knowing that love doesn't have to mean "let's get married." I know I personally don't want to get married. I have very mixed feelings about it.

Emily: That's very valid. You can love someone and just be with them without the formality of marriage. I think people are more willing to be flexible with what a typical "adult" relationship looks like these days.

Laura: And then, there's love in many other ways. I wrote one song about my best friend who lives in Columbia after we had met again; we hadn't seen each other for like 12 years. It's a really sweet story, actually. I was scrolling through Instagram and saw that she was in New York City and I freaked out. I couldn't believe it. So I hopped on a bus and then met up with her for one night. That song is about that and how friendship love never fails.

Emily: Deeply platonic relationships are some of the best ones you can have. You have to cultivate your bond with your friends and with yourself before I think you can make room for a romantic partner.

Laura: I do have another track called "Nobody Likes to Sleep Alone," and that's about dating app culture and how we're also kind of desperate for human connection, but it's kind of funny because we do it all through a screen.

Emily: Yeah, it's like an attention-seeking, surface-level validation thing. People love the attention, but they hate the repercussions of wanting that attention and owing any sort of responsibility to another person.

Laura: I don't think there's anything wrong with this hookup culture. We're human beings and we have certain needs, and that doesn't mean that every single person that you sleep with has to have this incredibly emotional connection attached to them.

Emily: Right. That takes a lot of trial and error to fully understand as well.

Laura: Yeah, it's complicated. And it's not a fairy tale. You meet the one and then you get married - it's so much more than that. So there's a song about that idea as well.

Do you feel like this record is a sort of concept album?

Laura: It sort of became a concept album after all of the tracks were recorded and I realized the common thread. There's also one cover song on the album called "Funeral." And that song is about the end of a relationship. It's by Mon Laferte, a Chilean singer-songwriter who I adore. It's just so badass. That song, to me, is really interesting because she's very honest and upfront about wanting something to end. You want it so much to end that you want it to die. You're ready for it to go down in flames. I love the honesty of that track for that reason. It's a very exposed, vulnerable moment.

Emily: Conceptually - considering that's the closing track - this album feels like it will listen like an organic take on a real relationship, from start to finish.

Laura: There are also two songs that I wrote that are lullabies. One is appropriately called "Lullaby," and the other one is called "Daffodil." That one is about my little cousin who was born on the first day of spring. Here in Philly, it was snowing, and so I thought the imagery was very beautiful. The idea of something blooming in the midst of all this snow. And I was also thinking about the violence of giving birth and coming into life and how vulnerable a baby is and having to learn how to be a person is.

Emily: I love all these themes. I think writing love songs is the one thing that everybody wants to do. And I also think it's the most difficult because it's the easiest to mess up and come across as so cliché and overdone. I feel like everything's been said. But at the same time, each person's experience with love is so unique. Each experience you have with a new person is unmatched.

Laura: I agree. I think that there are some writers that do it really well. Carsie Blanton is one that comes to mind. I just recently became hip to a lot of her music. The bass player in my band plays with her. She has a bunch of songs about love that are really like no other. "Harbor" and "Desire" are great, which is something that has been coming up a lot in my songwriting. The concept of desire and the burning of it are things she captures really well.

When you write your songs, do you pull from more abstract feelings or do you pull from specific things that have happened to you? Do you write about your own relationship or do you avoid writing about it?

Emily: I know some people don't like to mix them together and prefer to keep their personal life personal, but other writers feel like the only way to be authentic is to bring those things to the surface.

Laura: I definitely write about things that happen to me. Writing is how I process a lot of the things that happen to me, particularly relationships with people, and not just romantic ones, but in general. So I think that for me, the songwriting process is very personal, and for me it's actually very hard to not write about my experiences. I think a lot of the songwriters that I love, like Fiona Apple, just write about how they experience life.

What, to you, is the most important thing about love or being in a relationship in order to make it work?

Laura: That's a hard question. I know I have a couple of different answers for it, too, but I also feel like none of them are right, which also might be the point.

Emily: I think you're right.

Laura: And I also think that love means different things to different people, and how you express love in a way that your partner understands and appreciates. And also are you able to communicate and work through things together? I think acceptance of our different personalities is so important because you can't love someone you can't accept. If you want them to change who they arE so that you can stay together, that's not love. You're not in love with that person. You're in love with who you want that person to be. I think love, above all, is just truly being in love with the person that you want to be with. Are you able to love and accept and appreciate all the things that they are and be able to work on the things that are changeable?

Emily: Exactly. One thing that I've learned, exactly like you said, is that you can't hope someone will change. You can't love the version of who they are in your head, you have to love the person in front of you. Something that's been so hard for me to swallow is learning to take the things a person says about themselves seriously. If they lay out their faults for you, believe them. If they're damaging red flags, walk away. Believe who they say they are and then go from there.

This is my favorite music question to ask: What is your favorite guilty pleasure album? And what's the album that you say is your favorite when you want to seem cool?

Emily: I know that's a tough on-the-spot question, but I love asking it.

Laura: I love so many different kinds of music. I love classical music and I love jazz, but I'm going to answer if I want someone to think that I'm cool... Something I don't know, like "Songs in the Key of Life" by Stevie Wonder. There's great songwriting in there and the instrumentation is so beautiful. I mean, everything about the record is. And my guilty pleasure... I kind of low-key love country music.

Emily: Oh, God, that's perfect. I low-key don't love country music.

Laura: I have so many names swimming around my brain right now, but I think I'm going to settle on Brandy Clark. And I know I'm saying it's a guilty pleasure but it's also because I'm someone who people don't assume likes country music to begin with. But Brandy Clark, "Big Day in a Small Town" is awesome.

Emily: I know I tend to not gravitate towards like current country, but from a songwriting and guitar playing perspective, there's so much important stuff in there. You have to listen to the foundational stuff in order to understand why any current music is the way it is.

What are some red flags that you look out for in other people, and what do you think your own red flags are?

Laura: Well, I trust my gut. I'm a very intuition-geared person. If my gut tells me not to trust someone, I don't trust them. And I've usually been right.

Emily: I need to listen to mine more. A personal red flag of my own is that I used to justify people's actions instead of just realizing that some light within me was going off and subconsciously telling me that their behavior wasn't okay.

Laura: I think I tend to stay away from people who talk about women in a negative way, or where I think body language often gives people a way to rank if they're looking at you like a piece of meat. I'm very aware of how people interact with each other. And, funnily enough, I'm very wary of people who are extremely charming.

Emily: Absolutely. It doesn't last. A first date impression is not the same as a fifth date impression.

Laura: That's super valid. And in my short life, I've learned that a lot of abusers tend to have this very charming personality that isn't genuine. They're always kind of trying to prove something, so I'm very wary of them. But my own red flags - I fall in love super hard, super fast. And I tend to be clingy, you know, I'm being honest with myself. And for a long time, I think something I wasn't seeing before is that I tend to kind of really romanticize the other person. And one big thing of growing up in my twenties has been realizing that people are human. Disney love is not real. But once you get past that, I think relationships can be way more meaningful.

Emily: So far you're the only one who hasn't said your own red flag is that you're a musician. So I welcome that.

Laura: That's the thing that I’m best at. That's my superpower. I want people to think I'm sexy for it. If you can't accept the fact that I'm a freelancer musician right now, you're probably not suited for this.

Emily: I've interviewed a lot of guys in bands lately and they do that thing where they're like "My red flag is that I'm a musician. I'm emotionally unavailable. Schedule-wise, unavailable, blah, blah, blah." And I'm like, "You're so boring by saying that." If you own that stereotype and you actually live up to it then that sucks. But you should also own that being a musician is really cool and it does attract people and it doesn't have to come with those built-in red flags. I think that you make time for the things that are important, and everyone, no matter what their career, is able to find a balance.

Laura: Maybe this is for all the readers who aren't musicians, but that means a little bit of compromise, you know, because we don't work a nine-to-five and we can't hang out with you on the weekends, that doesn't mean that we can't totally make an afternoon out of it on a Wednesday or something. I think that it takes a little bit of time and compromise. You follow your passion just like I'm following my passion. I feel like a lot of musicians often use the excuse of wanting to practice and then they go home and sit on their phones for hours and they're like, "Oh, but I was practicing."

Emily: Even from a friend-perspective, I've been learning to navigate the scheduling conflicts with musicians as well. I'm just as busy running this publication and going to shows and doing interviews as well as working another nine-to-five. So if I can do it, they can do it. Musicians are hard to work with.

Laura: I also think it's kind of like an age thing, you know. I think that it's about how much time people spend on their phones or like Tinder, or something. But they don't take the time or seem they want to spend that same amount of time actually connecting with someone in real life. And I'm sure that when people are out on their dates, they're still Tindering.

Emily: Again, it's the instant gratification issue. And people love attention, and they love getting it from multiple sources. There's still nothing wrong with going out on a date and trying to get to really know someone outside of that social media bubble. It doesn't have to be like a speed-dating situation all the time.

Laura: I feel like one big thing that we forget is that this little online persona that we put on is often not the reality. And so that's what those Tinder first dates are about. The first dates are so disappointing, we all spend so much time putting on this online mask, and now that we're both here, I don't know if I like who you are.

Emily: My friend had this burner Instagram account for a little while, sort of like a "She Rates Dogs" account. And she'd save the, like, scariest messages that she's gotten from guys on Hinge or Tinder or whatever. And it's funny and kind of refreshing knowing that it happens to literally everyone. But it's also so tragic.

Laura: And honestly it's pure just cowardice, you know? Why do you need to tell me that I'm a bitch? Yes, I said no, I'm not interested. And I'm not saying that women aren't also bad at rejection. I think that there is a problem, as someone who has been on Tinder and has received those kinds of message that a lot of men do feel entitled because, even on Tinder, you have the "audacity" to even put a picture on there that then they're entitled to your time or to your body or to whatever it may be. And that gives them a license to say whatever they want. I think that is a very real kind of gender violence issue that we face. But also, I just read - since we're on this topic - Carmen Maria Machado's "In the Dream House." It's a memoir about being a queer woman who was in an abusive relationship with another woman. I really appreciated her point of the perspective on this, because she made the point that we don't really talk about violence or that kind of relationship violence in the queer community. And it totally blew my mind.

Emily: Yeah, you're absolutely right.

Laura: We're so stuck on this violence from men towards women that we don't focus on the core issue, which is violence within relationships, period. And yes, we do have to accept the fact that a lot of it is patriarchal. But we also have to understand that these things can happen to all people. I know that was kind of a weird train of thought, but something I'm thinking about is how we are waiting to see things in a very kind of black and white ways and that just isn't going to happen.

Emily: I've definitely read some of her books in college. She's an incredibly insightful writer and her introspection forces a lot of extrospection. She breaks walls, like you said.

We'll end it on a lighter one. Or, maybe this is a hard one. Do you believe in love at first sight? And can you justify it either way?

Laura: Do I believe in love at first sight? No, I don't. I think that feeling is real, like when you look across the room and you're like, "Wow." That's definitely real. But I think it's dangerous to say that love is this kind of very superficial thing. Because it's not. We have to be careful with love. It's fragile. To say that you can look across the room and immediately know that that's the person where you're going to spend the rest of your life with - that's a red flag. And to project that onto somebody else - what if they don't feel the same way?

Emily: I don't believe in love at first sight, either, but I do believe that if you love yourself, and you put out an energy that is reflective of that, you'll naturally attract the right people.

Laura: I fully agree. And not that it's an easy process, but a big thing that I've learned is that you have to be okay with being alone. Be okay just being who you are, with yourself. If you can't do that then how can you expect somebody else to?

Our Date WithEmily HerbeinOctober 16, 2020Comment