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Hayden Anhedönia, the singer-songwriter known as Ethel Cain, draws from an encyclopedic trove of cultural references for her work, stirring them into a Southern Gothic brew that feels uniquely her own. But long before the alt-rock visionary began building worlds with her albums Preacher’s Daughter and Willoughby Tucker, I’ll Always Love You, she was getting lost in those conjured by others.
“I was a massive reader as a child,” Anhedönia, who is 27, writes in an email the day after wrapping the North American leg of her Willoughby Tucker Forever Tour. “I was extremely into the escapism of fantasy, so series like Redwall and Eragon were my bread and butter,” she explains.
Those books helped occupy the big mind of a small-town girl from Perry, Florida, who grew up surrounded by vast stretches of forests and swampland—an atmosphere she’s evoked onstage with haunting fog, tree branches, and a cross-shaped pulpit. “I remember being so painfully bored all the time, so there was nothing I wanted more during the day than for everyone to go to sleep so I could turn my little flashlight on and read until 4 a.m.”
As an adult, Anhedönia’s life remains, in some ways, suspended between fiction’s fantasy and the physical world. “I’ve always said I have one foot wholly removed from reality at all times, but I like it that way,” she says of living her life half as Hayden, half as Ethel. “I feel like I run parallel to so many narratives in my own head, like my own true mirror is cracked and reflects my true self back at me in various different ways.”
She thinks she’d like to write a book herself one day—eventually. “It will take me a while,” she warns. “It’s hard to know what to say when you can say anything! I have to find my narrative style and the angle I want to take, but when the moment is right, I’ll move forward with it.”
While she says she isn’t a big reader on tour—“I mostly sleep all day, every day or lie still in the dark just to combat the intense overstimulation of it all”—books have significantly helped shape her live show, as well as her pursuit of the “simplicity of mindfulness and presence” on the road.
Below, Anhedönia discusses five books that have helped shape her last few years and particularly her ongoing tour, which picks back up in Manchester, United Kingdom, on October 2.
Knockemstiff by Donald Ray Pollock
Knockemstiff scratches a specific itch I have for interconnected narratives circling a central location spanning multiple characters and time periods. I love when a story zooms in and out of a web because I’m just very intrigued by the reality of how we knowingly or unknowingly affect each other’s lives.
Simulacra and Simulation by Jean Baudrillard
The core philosophy of the simulacrum spun up so many questions in my head about the way I live my own life and the way I change myself constantly with the cyclical nature of my own actions. It’s something that is applicable to nearly all facets of life and has shaped the way I view the world.
A Philosophy of Walking by Frédéric Gros
This book has been a pleasant read because the act of walking has always been sacred to me, so it’s nice to see my feelings towards it expressed in words. Walking has been the core therapeutic measure that has saved me many times in my life when I felt like the world was crumbling around me, and I very much resonate with the perspectives Gros writes about.
Nausea by Jean-Paul Sartre
The older I get, the more intense my derealization gets, and I always find myself thinking about Nausea when little mundane corners of the world start to appear as shifted, peeling edges of reality. Existentialism is something I’d like to delve deeper into, but I also think it may drive me insane, so I think Nausea may be as far as I get for the time being.
Catching the Big Fish: Meditation, Consciousness, and Creativity by David Lynch
This book is the one I enjoyed the most across touring. It’s very easy to get overstimulated and for my brain to feel bogged down, so this book was a very nice read as I practiced centering myself and my vision and my dreams in an attempt to stay focused on what truly matters and what I actually want. It made getting through the first leg of tour a lot easier than it has been in the past, which I’m grateful for.