Sami Harlow Won't Let It Die

ROXY:Tell me about the first time you made something nobody asked you for. No brief, no grade, nobody waiting on it.

SAMI:There are two things, actually. When I got to college I was having a really tough time. I'd been so into my acting, and that's what makes me happiest, but I hated the program. I felt so depressed about it, because it was a choice I had made and it felt like the wrong one. So I decided to start writing music again. There was this person I was seeing who was very shy about showing affection to me, even though I knew they liked me. So I wrote a song called "Kiss Me," on the piano in the dorm I was staying at. I had so much fun writing it that I thought, I'm coming back to my music in a way that's really my own. Just to share myself, for me. And then in high school during COVID, there was this assignment where you had to block a couple of scenes of a play. I chose The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time. I loved the script, so I decided to block the whole entire thing and make my own version, devoid of assignment, devoid of people. I just wanted to do it for myself. It was so fucking fun, and it opened me up to directing in a whole different way. It ended up being the show my school chose to do, with the direction inspired by my work.

ROXY:The pandemic hit while you were still malleable, still coming into our own. Have you looked back at how that period shaped your art?

SAMI:Yeah, for sure. It made me realize how pertinent it is to me to be in my work, because it's the thing that kept me alive as a human and as an artist. I recently said, my true love is my work. It just makes me feel like me. I found myself in my work then, because there was no external influence telling me, you need to be doing this, you need to be doing that. That's when I got into painting. It highlighted the question of what do you do with your time? And what makes me feel good about being me is doing that.

ROXY:Do these disciplines feel like separate practices living in different parts of your brain, or the same instinct wearing different clothes?

SAMI:They both come from an unconscious part of me, the same way a truth will hide inside yourself. I think that's true for anybody who's an artist. There's that moment where all of a sudden you feel like you have to do something, right? But they are separate. There are moments where I'm ripping my hair out over a monologue, and times where I'm screaming, crying, trying to make a song better, constantly reworking it, trying to find the truth in it. Both are trying to find the truth in very separate ways. That's the connection. But they're two different pieces of me. There's the vulnerability in my acting that is absolutely truthful, and then there's this other part that's like a monster I have to reform into a person when it comes to my music.

ROXY:A lot of people in music or acting build personas for different “eras” of their life. I've read it as compartmentalizing, storing a piece of yourself somewhere you can reference later. Do you do that?

SAMI:Different eras of my life reflect differently. Part of my music started off as a release from pain. And then there's a part that's a release from the world around me, which is neither positive nor negative. That's a different persona, and the person releasing from love is different again. That's the great thing about writing songs. Each one has a different person it's coming from. And with acting. In our intensive, I could be the fucking bastard asshole trying to usurp a throne. Or a girl looking down the barrel of a gun with a man who wants to kill himself and her. Such different people that lie inside, right? But they're the same. They come from the same person. So there's no persona with acting the way there is with my PR persona, which is a filtered version of me. My music is unfiltered. That's the persona for that. It's untamed. What you see is what you get.

ROXY:How do you keep the artist in you stimulated? Are there other mediums you go to for a refresh?

SAMI:100%. I love screenwriting. It's the way to come at it from a different brain, so it re-inspires my acting. I'll go, I'd love to act in this, or I'm not right for this role but I see somebody else here. It puts me at a distance from myself. And I do a lot of biblically inspired paintings, which is odd, because I don't really believe in God. So for me it's a commentary on the beautiful things around and the evil things around. That will re-inspire whatever is inside. Seeing live performances as a hobby is such an interesting thing. I wouldn't say I present as a theater kid at all, but when I go to a musical I'm re-inspired and I just go, I have to do that. Same with live music. If there's something incredible that's my age, I think, shit, now I have to work ten times harder.

ROXY:What does the space between concept and execution feel like for you?

SAMI:That's a hard question, because I sit down and I just go. There's no conceptualizing it. Sometimes I enjoy a treatment for a script, but it's a word hodgepodge, and then I'm just like, fuck it, I want to write it all down right now, in my body. Let it go. Same with my guitar. I'll pick it up and think, that song was really good, but you know what would be greater? If I changed half of these lyrics. It comes as it comes. It's more fluid. And there's an unconsciousness to it. Once you start going, it'll just come. I watched a show and the singer put me in a trance, and I was like, do they like me? Were they watching me? It started off romantic, and then it became, I'm delusional. I'm a delusional bitch. And then I wrote a song literally about feeling delusional. But that's unconscious. The unconscious has the feeling.

ROXY:Performing live puts you in a room full of strangers. Some know your music, some don't. What still surprises you about that exchange?

SAMI:A lot of the time people don't know who I am. Maybe I'm opening, maybe I'm the third act, and people came to see their friend. And something a lot of people forget when they're playing their music is the story. It's not just you playing the music, it's you connecting with the people around you. That's what music started off being. A campfire, a way to connect and tell a story.

ROXY:It's so intimate, especially the smaller shows. You feel like the people on stage are singing directly at you.

SAMI:And they are. I have a moment in most of my shows where I'll see a friend, or a face I've never seen, and I think, there's something about you that is this. And I see it in your eyes. When I played Mercury Lounge, singing a song that's going on my EP, there was this kid. I'm just like, I don't know why, but I feel like you maybe, you, this. And the kid noticed, and we had a moment of connection.

ROXY:The EP is coming when?

SAMI:TBD. Probably next January.

ROXY:Exclusive, right here.

SAMI:That's the thing about feeling people out. It's not a one-way street. If you're a bad performer, they're just going to stare at you. But if you're really tapping into the artistry, you feel everyone in the room's emotions.

ROXY:Is there a version of yourself you let die?

SAMI:Yeah, for sure. When you do musical theater there's an aspect of playing it up, hamming it up. And when I was younger I felt the need to be seen in such an extreme way that I would just give it all out. Very intimate shit that I didn't need to. The performance is good, but it's not truthful. It's just to get you to see that I'm here. And then as an adult I said, people who will see me will see me. People who stick here will stick here. Fuck it. And I let the hamming it up, the show me, show me, show me, almost a narcissism to it, die. And I'm happy I did. Because now whether you like it or you don't, you get the experience.

ROXY:And on the opposite end, is there a version of yourself you wish you'd seen through?

SAMI:No. That's what I'm doing for myself now. There are things with my acting I didn't nurture, because I didn't have the space for it. But I'm going back to love it and care for it the way it deserves. And she's not going to die, because when you're a real artist, it lives within you. It can't die, because if it dies, you die. If you continue to perform, it'll nourish itself, no matter how it goes. I don't think I've ever let it die, because that's just not who I am.

ROXY:What does the phrase "almost becoming" mean to you right now, in your own life?

SAMI:Almost becoming is a start to a bigger thing. It's the beginning of a path that is uncharted, that you just have to walk. And when you really love what you do, you don't care about being famous. You don't care how many people are obsessed with you, or who's giving you the pat on the back. Instead you're sitting there going, I'm just going to do this because I know it will be a bigger thing than me. It is a bigger thing than me. And almost becoming is stepping into those shoes.

ROXY:Last question, and it's a wild card. The floor is yours. What's in process right now? What are you excited about, nervous about?

SAMI:I'm starting training for something bigger, which is going to be difficult and painstaking and will make me want to punch myself in the face a little bit. And I'm going to need things to get me out of my head, because I will get in my head. Being with my friends, going to the gym. A hobby that isn't completely focusing my body on this. And I'll have little breaks. I'm filming a music video for my new EP, and I finished my vocals, which was wonderful. We're planning a proof of concept for a script I wrote, and possibly the whole thing if we can get funding next year. I'm continuing to audition for movies and TV and whatever comes my way. And writing as much as possible, playing more shows, working on new music, always. Reading new plays, hearing new songs, painting again. And travel, anywhere that will enlighten me to something new. And there are parts of all of it I'm going to need a kick in the ass for. But with the right inspiration, with people who can guide me, I feel more confident. I feel like I can do this in a way that doesn't make me sad, that doesn't make me feel devoid of emotion, or vapid. Just in a way that's honest.