Madeleine Sami on sloth, lust and wrath
SLOTH
You describe yourself as lazy. What do you mean by that?
I like to laze around, I like to go off in a little dream world in my head. A lot of people, like my siblings, call me quite vague because I am often
sitting around dreaming, which I kind of consider lazy. But I read somewhere the other day that it's quite good to daydream, it's a good reset for your brain, so maybe being a sloth isn't so bad.
Maybe that's creative thinking happening?
I think that's probably what it is. Surely I can justify that as being necessary to my "process". Writing is interesting, it feels like you spend a lot of time going on YouTube getting distracted. You think, "Oh, I wonder if there are people out there like this." Then you end up going into some two-hour YouTube vortex and you come out with maybe one tiny little idea that then feeds a whole 20 pages of your script, so it's kinda worth it but it feels lazy at the same time. There's a lot of procrastination in the writing process, which I consider the slothful part, even though it's probably part of the "process".
Where do you tend to end up on YouTube?
I have a 2-year-old, so at the moment my YouTube feed is just full of kids' stuff, all the algorithms are skewed towards children's cartoons and learning things. Weirdly, my daughter is really into Darth Vader. One of the first impressions she started to do was Darth Vader's khhraaaaw-khhraaaaw, which is pretty cute. There's a guy called Blippi who my daughter is obsessed with and lots of Disney stuff, which is great because I am getting to relive all my favourite cartoons. So I am indoctrinating her with stuff I like and she's indoctrinating me with stuff I don't like.
Would you write for children?
I have written songs for children before and I have done voice-overs for animation. I've just done some writing and voices for my friend Jess Hansell/Coco Solid's cartoon, Aroha Bridge. I make up stories for my daughter all the time, just 'cos you do, they always need something new and exciting to hear. I definitely could get into writing children's books, I think. I am pretty much a big, silly kid trapped in an ageing woman's body.
LUST
You say you lust after shoes and music.
It's probably more obsession than lust. I can be a very obsessive person, especially about music. I love discovering new artists, it inspires me. There's an artist called King Princess who is really cool, she's a queer singer-songwriter on Mark Ronson's label. Like everyone else, I have been swept up the Lizzo phenomenon this year and I love a lot of older music. I have been listening to a lot of Tom Petty, the Travelling Wilburys and George Harrison. I can get fanatical. The Beatles are one of my favourite bands of all time and I have had a romance with most of The Beatles' solo careers, apart from ol' Ringo, who doesn't have much to crow about.
