(All photos by Travis Gillett)

Look, it’s not like I didn’t try not to have a massive crush on Grimes. When I first listened to her latest album Visions (approximately 40-50 times in a week) and it knocked me over like a massive, frothy ocean wave of awesome, at once washing over my tender heart like a healing salve and rubbing coarse grains of salt into the wounded bits, I buried those feelings deep and switched back to listening to my very special R&B playlist every day (which incidentally actually includes “Very Special” by Big Daddy Kane and Spinderella).

And when photos of her started clawing their way across my computer screen (it’s not easy living inside of the Internet), I tried very hard to ignore the captivating and enchanting details: the perfectly imperfect bangs, the severe side cuts, the expansive eyebrows, the adorable protruding ears, the Fifth Element knuckle tattoos. (Oh, the Fifth Element knuckle tattoos…).

I tried to steel myself even in the face of imminent dissolution, but between the music video for “Oblivion” (that strange sporty goodness), her incredibly detailed and delightfully odd artwork, and that fucking lisp, my battle ship was SUNK.

So when we got the chance to ask her our standard seven Cultist questions (formerly nine, we have downsized in light of the economy), I rapidly drank four or five beers and secretly prayed she would be an awful, ungrateful, ugly, stuck-up wench in real life so that I could go back to my quiet life of buried creative aspirations and muted hope.

She wasn’t. She is soft-spoken and sweet and exactly the weirdo Canadian Anna Karina I had imagined, and at the risk of sounding totally uncool (apathy cover blown), I find her inspiring. (But, you know, not like I care or anything, whatever etc).

Here is her interview:

1. What is your life motto?
Fear is the mind killer.

2. Who is your muse?
This girl Brooke Candy.

3. What is your idea of abject misery?
Being unable to do anything artistic. And the moment my computer dies.

4. What is your idea of total happiness?
Doing something that I feel proud of and ideally with people I like who are also doing things they are proud of.

5. What is the best quality in man?
Intelligence as long as it’s not accompanied by cruelty.

6. What is the best quality in a woman?
Same thing

7. Draw a picture of yourself: