For MPR music, you're connected to all songs, considered I'm Bob Boylin.

In 2019, Mitsuki seemingly walked away from her creative career as a performer and songwriter.

The last album she put out was 2018's Be the Cowboy. Since then, she's worked on the soundtrack

to a graphic novel called This Is Where We Fall, which is more score than songwriting.

Now Mitsuki is back with her powerful words and her voice and all the drama I've come to

love from Mitsuki. Here she is to talk about the dilemma of success and fear of commodification,

and then I'll play her new song Working for the Knife.

So in 2019, I stepped away from performing and being a musician in public because I was

reckoning with the fact that if I wanted to keep making a living, writing my own music and

performing it with my own voice, then I would keep having to be the product that's being bought

and sold and consumed. And I just couldn't see a way out of this horrible exchange other than

to walk away from it. So I did. But after a while of not performing, I would watch a movie,

I didn't counter a work of art, and I would burst into tears because I would wish that I was still

making my music, and I would also think, my god, I've made a terrible mistake, what have I done?

And I was also reminded of what I'd always known since waiting tables and doing other jobs before

that if it wasn't this job, it's going to have to be another job. You know, there's no actually

escape from the exploitation. And so I had to face the reality that either I take everything that comes

with getting to do what I love most and what I'm so so lucky to get to do, or I take everything

that comes with working another job, but not getting to do what I love.

I used to think I would tell stories, but nobody cared for the stories I had about

and all the other guys, I always knew what was on, I just didn't know. I would go without

Without me I start the day high and it's so low

...