But the interviews don’t serve any purpose for you, even as far as getting to talk out ideas or thoughts?
HARVEY: No.
Because you—
HARVEY: They mean nothing to me.
I had heard that you were very open in your first interviews but then regretted it.
HARVEY: I think to begin with, I was. I tried to answer every question as best as I possibly could, and then you learn slowly not to trust anyone. And you learn you have to put barriers up and give only what you want to give.
I think people do that because they’re worried they’re going to be judged for communicating what they really think.
HARVEY: You know, I’m not sitting here talking to you being myself at all. It’s very guarded, and I’m just giving you exactly as much as I want to give and what I’m comfortable with today. Maybe if you’d interviewed me tomorrow, it might be different.
I actually am interviewing you tomorrow, too. But I get what you’re saying. For me, the point of an interview is not necessarily to promote someone’s music, but to let people know who someone is beyond their music and maybe enable others to learn from their experiences or outlook or creative process.
HARVEY: Yet people who write these things form their own kind of opinion. And none of it is right. I mean, I hope one day I get to the point where I have to do very, very few interviews, because I do feel it’s an intrusion of my privacy.
Yesterday, when you were talking to those two Japanese girls, they were saying that they had sent you a couple of letters. Do you read your fan mail?
HARVEY: No. Some people have managed to find my home address and they send it there. But I find it a bit intrusive, so I tend to not read those out of principle.
So you’ve never corresponded with your fans at all?
HARVEY: No.
Not even—
HARVEY: No.
What’s written on your hand, by the way?
HARVEY: Serum. I’m not going to explain that for you.
Maybe I don’t want to know.
HARVEY: It’s my personal notepad. Everything I have to remember goes there. And when I see this person, I have to talk about serum. [. . .]
Could you record what you felt was the greatest album you’ve ever made, and then bury it in the ground somewhere afterward—knowing no one else will ever hear it—and still be satisfied?
HARVEY: I don’t know. That’s a very interesting question. It’s very much a need I have, to write music and to make things. Not just music things, but little pieces of artwork that mean nothing to anyone else, that I never show to anybody else. I keep sketch pads I’ll never show to anyone. I write loads of words I’ll never show to anybody. It’s for me—and I need to do it. It’s part of my learning process and part of my life, of being here and experiencing as much as I can. So, yes, I think I could make an album and never play it to anyone, and it wouldn’t really make much difference.
Midway through the interview, Lady Gaga asked me to stop recording. She sang a new song, “Born This Way,” a cappella, then opened her MacBook and played demos of half a dozen other tracks she was working on. Wendi Morris, her tour manager, shook her head in disapproval, since the album wasn’t supposed to be released for at least nine months. “He’s going to write about other stuff,” Gaga protested. “I just want him to know who I am.”
I’m going to ask you a question I’ve asked a few other artists: If you finish this album and you feel it’s the greatest album you’ve ever made, could you then go bury it somewhere and know that no one is ever going to hear it, but still feel artistically satisfied for having completed it?
LADY GAGA: No! No way!
So far, only one person has said they could do that and feel satisfied.
LADY GAGA: Whatever artist said that is lying to you.
I’ll tell you the one person who said yes. It was PJ Harvey, and I think I believe her.
LADY GAGA: I would believe PJ Harvey. But you know, to be totally honest—and I don’t like to say anything bad about other artists at all—but I will say hypothetically, any artist that’s on a record label that’s putting out music that tells you they don’t care about fame is lying to you. Because you can always just make music in your room at home by yourself for no money.
Right, and she was doing an interview.
LADY GAGA: And you’re doing an interview, so why? Even if they don’t really believe they’re lying, they’re lying. I think it was John Lennon that used to say anyone who says they don’t make music for people to hear it, they’re full of shit. Go make music in your room. It’s so dumb to me. Are you thirsty?
I’m fine. Your fans seem to really like what you stand for, because some people need to be reminded that it’s okay to be different.
LADY GAGA: I love what they stand for. I love who they are. They inspire me to be more confident every day. When I wake up in the morning, I feel just like any other insecure twenty-four-year-old girl. But I say, “Bitch, you’re Lady Gaga, you better fucking get up and walk the walk today,” because they need that from me. And they inspire me to keep going.
On her tour bus that night, she discusses finding a mentor in the writer Deepak Chopra, and crying hysterically to him before a recent show about a dream in which the devil was trying to take her to hell.
Do you have any recurring dreams?
LADY GAGA: I have this recurring dream sometimes where there’s a phantom in my home. And he takes me into a room and there’s a blond girl with ropes tied to all four of her limbs. And she’s got my shoes on from the Grammys. Go figure—psycho. And the ropes are pulling her apart.
I never see her get pulled apart, but I just watch her whimper and then the phantom says to me, “If you want me to stop hurting her and if you want your family to be okay, you will cut your wrist.” And I think that he has his own like crazy wrist-cutting device. And he has this honey in like Tupperware, and it looks like sweet-and-sour sauce with a lot of MSG from New York. Just bizarre. And he wants me to pour the honey into the wound, and then put the cream over it and a gauze. So I looked up the dream and I couldn’t find anything about it anywhere. And my mother goes, “Isn’t that an Illuminati ritual?” And I was like, “Oh my God!”
You definitely have a martyr thing going on in that dream. Instead of bleeding openly, you take it all inside and cover it up.
LADY GAGA: You know what’s so funny is that’s what Deepak said to me. He said that I was recognizing my own cultural death and resurrection. I wrote that song I played for you right after I had that dream. So my dreams do induce my creativity.
They have to come from somewhere.
LADY GAGA: And they gotta