You may be familiar with the concept of fight or flight.
It's the deep, cutting physiological response to supposed danger or perceived threats.
An immediate and dire choice to confront the danger before you or to flee it completely.
Our ancient ancestors ingrained this subconscious physiological reaction into our human nature
through thousands of years of evading predators as they lived in an unexplored and unchartered Earth.
For them, failing to respond quickly enough was the difference between life and death.
For us, things are a lot more mundane. In our safe and sanitized contemporary culture, what
we perceive to be threats are much less physical than they are psychological. In a life where your
physical needs are more or less accounted for, it leaves the greatest threat to your existence to
be your own thoughts and how you perceive yourself -- a completely different kind of self-preservation.
Which brings us to Porter.
In his relatively brief musical career, Porter Robinson has released two bodies of work that
explore the concept of self-preservation through this fight or flight archetype. It was a long
seven year gap between worlds and nurture but that time between albums proved to be crucial
to the bigger picture that Porter would end up painting in his music. Nurture is the antithesis
of Worlds and understanding the experiences that led Porter to each of these respective
projects helps us understand Porter more fully as an individual, but perhaps more importantly,
it enables us to more fully understand ourselves and how we react to our perceived threats.
[Song: Worlds Live Intro]
Porter Robinson -- an electronic music icon who for about 12 years now has been a staple within the
electronic music sphere. Despite being so worshiped within specifically the EDM community that he rose
to fame, in his musical catalog is fairly diverse; each project sounding totally different than the
last. In fact, it'd be a tad unfair to label him an EDM artist but it's within that genre specifically
that he built his name and reputation. And despite having such a heavy influence within the space he
exists today, he wasn't always particularly musical it wasn't really even until his early adolescence
that he began showing any interest in music at all and it's because of one very important
catalyst that Porter Robinson would grow up to be the world famous musician that he is today.
[DDR MAX Intro]
DDR Max -- Let's MAX!
At the impressionable age of just 12 years old, Porter's brother brought home a copy of Dance
Dance Revolution for the PlayStation 2 and it seems that that game single-handedly unlocked
some latent desire within Porter to learn and create music himself. [Porter:] Dance Dance Revolution
actually unironically super changed my life and I just like, something about it like I
would just be up there in that room for hours and hours and hours playing. It was my first
time hearing Japanese music it was my first time like hearing electronic music so I downloaded like
some preliminary music production software and I was like, "Wait you can, like, change it."
This realization was the true Inception to Porter Robinson the musician. Enter: Ekowraith.
[Porter]: I remember being like 15 years old and telling my dad I had gotten a record deal in Germany and I
was going to get paid 500 euros to put out a vinyl of this track that I made called Booming Track and
my dad just being like... hmm... like okay? Like that's really weird that this is happening for
you in Germany but like then the check came through and he was like I guess this is real.
Ekowraith is one of the several names that Porter went by in his early musical career and
though it wasn't the first artist name that he made for himself it was certainly the one that
helped him gain the greatest amount of traction at the start of his career. [Porter]: You know I feel like
a lot of the people who are getting into electronic music now they see these
DJs on the main stage and they're like, "Oh I want to be that" and for me it was never ever that.
It was never about performing live, it was never about DJing. I was just trying to make
music that sounded like the stuff that I liked.
And thus the beginnings of Porter's career as a Dj.
Not really out of passion for the art itself, but really more out of chance. Simply accepting
fortunate opportunities that were given to him. {Porter}:My origins, my roots are not as a DJ. I didn't go out
watching DJs, I didn't go to clubs, I was seriously 15 years old in Chapel Hill North Carolina just
at home writing electronic music for many many years. I started getting requests to
go DJ. This guy's like I'll pay you 500 to come to Portland and DJ my party
and I'm like, well let me learn how to DJ and I will do that for you. I almost feel like
I chanced into it. I hadn't, I didn't follow this aspiration to be this big DJ.
I just kept taking the opportunities that were being given to me.
Around 2010, Porter decided he would drop the
idea of an artist alias altogether and begin releasing music under his own name. And with
this change in identity he released say my name his first commercially successful track.
[Song: Porter Robinson - Say My Name]
[Porter]: I made my song Say My Name and it really resonated with people and that that's how things got rolling.
[Narrator]: Electronic dance music began getting huge in the U.S thanks to genres like dubstep that started
out as a kind of Niche underground music movement in the UK but had began migrating
over to the US thanks to the appeal and accessibility of many popular UK artists.
However there was one artist in particular who was based in LA who was harnessing all of this
forward momentum and taking it to a completely new level. [Music] Porter Robinson caught the
[Song: Skrillex - My Name Is Skrillex
Porter caught the attention of Skrillex. Skrillex was worshiped in the U.S.
He was the torchbearer of edm's mainstream popularity, and to this day he is almost universally agreed to be a legend in the genre.
[Song: Skrillex - First of the Year]
Skrillex caught wind of Porter after Say My Name began blowing up on
iTunes and Beatport, and in 2011, Porter signed a one EP record deal with Skrillex's newly formed
label and artist collective OWSLA. The EP was titled Spitfire and it was Porter's first major release.
[Skrillex]: We starting a record label as well called OWSLA.
Porter is my boy and anything I can do to help him, he's a good person and you know, he's stoked.
[Song: Porter Robinson - Spitfire]
A mere 10 minutes after Spitfire went live, Beatport crashed from the sheer amount of
sight traffic that Spitfire was pulling. At this point, Porter's momentum seemed
unstoppable. He would spend much of 2011 touring with Skrillex and would continue to make valuable
connections in the industry that would further propel his international reach.
By 2012, Porter Robinson was a household name in the electronic dance music scene. In just
two years time he went from some obscure bedroom producer posting amateur tracks to online dance
music forums, to being a world famous DJ headlining festivals with Skrillex and co-writing Clarity with Zedd
[Zach Sang]: People may not know that Clarity, the song that is it fair to say, like, changed Zedd's life was
really a song that you were on to? [Porter]: Yeah, Clarity was co-produced by me it was supposed to be a
collaboration between me and Zedd. [2012 Porter Interview]: We're working on a long overdue collaboration
that's you know, one part soulful, one part funky, one part beautiful.
Spitfire was an immensely important project. Not only did it put Porter on the radar but it really established his sound.
A sound that kind of became its own genre with a name that Porter even coined himself.
[Interviewer]: You coined the term "Complextro" [Porter}: I did. When I came up with the word complextro
I was creating my MySpace when I had zero fans.
and I wanted to have like a nice funny cute little portmanteau to describe my sound.
Complex. Electro. Complextro. I never intended for it to describe a genre or anything like that but people
started using it and they started describing glitchy bass music, particularly glitchy electro with it.
After only one EP and a handful of singles, Porter didn't seem entirely satisfied with this
stylistic trajectory that he was on. In the second half of 2012, Porter released his single Language.
Language introduced a more melodic and atmospheric approach to his songwriting. It was much more
ethereal yet it still maintained his signature electro house style. It was immediately met with
high praise and many people, including Porter himself, considered it to be the best thing he'd written up to that point.
[Interviewer]: Now you told us back in in Miami at Ultra that you wanted to move toward
making music that emotionally affected audiences more, right? Now what have you done to manifest
that since then? [Porter:] Well I mean Language was the big one. That was sort of testing the waters and the
response has been magnificent. I released a song called language which I felt was risky at the time
because I had only released really banger-y bassline electro stuff and this song comes
out and is a little bit more sensitive and more emotional and it became my biggest song.
[Song: Porter Robinson - Language]
In 2013, Porter released another single in collaboration with Mat Zo titled Easy.
It was extremely similar to language in its style and sonic blueprint.
[Song: Porter Robinson & Mat Zo - Easy]
At this point it kind of started to feel like he was trying to tell us something and these
two singles were big hints as to the musical direction that Porter was aiming to head.
[Porter]: The first song that to me that was really deeply personal and made me feel something real I
think was language and that came out and it did really well and that was a moment
to me that was vindicating when I was like, "I can make music that I like even if it's
risky" because at the time you know language did feel risky to me because I had only been making
like electro bass-y stuff to that point. Maybe I should just write an album that is 100% exactly
to my taste, you know, with no compromises. Even things I didn't even think I was compromising.
So what they knew me for was this raucous awesome like party thing and that's not
really where my heart was anymore and so I was in this weird place where
you know by playing this music that I had kind of fallen out of love with, I felt like I was
being dishonest with myself. What if I just stop making DJ music altogether? And that was the most
liberating thing by far. I was like holy shit, I'm gonna go back and listen to every album that
ever inspired me and figure out what it is that I loved about that stuff and try to like channel
this all into something that's really like really me, you know, the most personal thing that I can do.
On February 10, 2014 Porter uploaded a mysterious 10 hour long video to his YouTube channel.
[Worlds. Worlds. Worlds....]
This was the announcement of his debut album Worlds.
A project that would end up defying everything that he was known for.
It was a blatant and outright abandonment of his entire musical identity up to that point.
Worlds was Porter's escape from a life and a direction that he didn't want.
Flight.
[Porter]: There is definitely a big focus on an appreciation for this like sacred thing to me which is the Escape and the Fantasy.
This entire album was so so much about escapism and fiction.
The whole idea of the album, it's meant to feel like this very kind of beautiful sweet
but kind of tragic Escape.
[Narrator]: Why do we seek escapism? Why are we so enamored by our own imagination and nostalgia?
With the advent of the internet and the exponential rate at which technology is advancing
society has been steadily pulling more and more in this direction of leaving reality entirely and
living instead in these synthetic and virtual spaces.
[Porter}: I kept finding that I was using sounds that evoked like in this era of video games like late 90s early 2000s N64 stuff.
And then I, you know, in the art direction I kept using these low-poly 3Ds and that looks that looks so
cool to me and that really touches me because it is that's what I grew up with.
I remember when I first started playing around with the idea of using these sort of like N64 sound font style
instrumentations of like Ocarina of Time sound and combining those things with like Vocaloid,
I felt like I had this palette of sort of Novel references to fiction and
I felt like the the angle that I had on it was taking some of that that like
indie music sound and incorporating this sort of EDM and video game soundtrack world view into it.
Just a couple weeks later, he released the album's jarring first single Sea of Voices.
Sea of Voices was completely devoid of any of the styles or sounds that we were used
to of a typical Porter Robinson song. Soft ambient pads, a gentle vocal choir,
wind chimes -- it was really hard to believe that this was Porter at all.
It was at this moment that we as fans began to realize that the Porter Robinson that we all knew was gone.
On August 12, 2014 Worlds was released. And just like, that Porter grabbed us all by the lapels
and threw us head first into this new world that he had been carefully and quietly been crafting.
[Song: Porter Robinson - Sea of Voices]
The album begins with divinity. [Porter]: That was the the first song on the album and
I think it's the first song that I wrote that was really
in the world's style I felt like I kind of stumbled upon the sound of worlds.
[Song: Porter Robinson - Divinity]
The lyrical content for much of Worlds was always certainly secondary to the atmosphere and
instrumentals. However there is inherent beauty in these lines and the concept of never truly
feeling alive is intriguing to consider when you think about how worlds is primarily about
escaping life itself. After a nearly two-minute buildup Divinity drops into a magnificent wall
of sound and we are properly welcomed into Worlds. It's such a perfect introduction as
it capitalizes on so many of the sonic and thematic motifs that the album is built upon
[Song: Porter Robinson - Divinity]
The album's second song Sad Machine stands out a bit. Not only is it Worlds' most popular song,
but it's the only song on the album that has a clear-cut linear narrative. [Is anyone there? Oh. Hi.]
Sad Machine is essentially a love story. It follows the story of an artificially
intelligent robot girl who has been living in complete loneliness for more than 100 years,
only to be found by a human who stumbled upon where she had been residing for so long.
'Who survived?' implies that at some point there must have been some sort of inciting incident that
led to the robot girl's loneliness. Perhaps some sort of apocalyptic global event that left her
to be one of few to survive. A blinding light could be interpreted as either the physical
light of this unknown disaster or the metaphorical light of the human who found her and took away
her loneliness that she'd been feeling. The girl who slept 100 years has something after all and
that something is companionship. It's love for this human. The tragic twist to all of
this is how painfully temporary her joy will be. The unfortunate disconnect between a robot
girl and a human boy is the human factor. The inevitability of mortality will one day leave
this girl alone once again. It seems that she's forever destined to be a Sad Machine.
[Song: Porter Robinson - Sad Machine (Worlds Live edit)]
Not bound by mortality, she'll live on remembering the life she had with those
before her -- those who are now gone. Life, love, and companionship that's now lost. Living forever in
her loneliness, and never truly knowing who or what may lie ahead.
Worlds' entire track list is filled with songs that channel our nostalgia and our seeking for
escapism through fictional characters, memories of childhood, video games, and Imagination. Years of War
is about imaginary conflict and playing pretend as a kid. Fresh Static Snow is about the idea that
out of the billions of people in the world there necessarily must exist some sort of best possible
and most compatible partner that you will likely, tragically, never know. [Porter]: There are billions of people
out there and you you'll meet only a fraction of them and the likelihood that your best -
that you'll ever meet the person who would make you the happiest is just infinitesimal.
[Song: Porter Robinson - Fresh Static Snow]
Natural Light is a brief instrumental interlude that paints a more dark and melancholy tone.
[Song: Porter Robinson - Natural Light]
Lionhearted was literally written about the video game Space Invaders. [Porter]: This is like an album that
I felt was trying to express the beauty I found in exploring fictional universes and
how meaningful like books and movies and fiction can be, and it was all through
this sort of indie pop lens. [Narrator]: Every ounce of Worlds takes you out of reality and into
somewhere else whether it be memories of the past or in another world altogether. That said
Fellow Feeling is a track that provides a brief glimpse into reality. Porter's reality.
[Song: Porter Robinson - Fellow Feeling (Chet Porter Remix)]
[Porter]: At the time I was very much like f*** EDM, and like you know like I just want to be known for this other thing.
To me, what Fellow Feeling stands for... I wanted people to kind of feel what I felt. [Hear What I Hear]
[Song: Porter Robinson - Fellow Feeling]
when it came to like aggressive electronic beats and, you know, where my head was at at that time.
How that music was making me feel. I was really frustrated.
In other words, Fellow Feeling is Porter lashing out. The messy off-metre bass hits contrasted with the beautiful and Lush
strings creates an interesting musical dichotomy that represents the internal negative feelings
Porter had about electronic music at the time. It provided the opportunity for Porter to take
out all of these negative feelings about his environment and channel them straight into his
music, showcasing a full display of raw emotion. [Porter]: To me, the second half of the song is more of a
reference to like language and easy earlier songs of mine and I wanted to show that I could write
this like big loud melodic music at 128 BPM that that was still who I was. That fit
with my new vision. But this idea of just writing heavy aggressive beats for the sake of it was
you know I feel like I was just expressing some like violence towards that idea.
[Song: Porter Robinson - Fellow Feeling]
Worlds closes out with an emotional and bittersweet fan favorite that hones in on
all of the motivic development that's been bubbling over throughout the course of the album.
Things like fiction, nostalgia, existing in a world that isn't your own, escaping to a world that
we create within ourselves. Worlds concludes with Goodbye to a World. [Porter]: This notion of
world destruction of a world disappearing is is really dear to me. I've talked about it in
interviews before but I was very much attached to these online worlds and the thing about these
games is that when an online role-playing game that millions of people are connected to goes
away and the servers shut down, it's not like other games. Once those games are gone those
worlds that you very much immersed yourself in are gone. That's why I think the whole idea of
a beautiful apocalypse is really evocative to me. This isn't a zombie death thing here. This is like, pretty, you know?
This is a beautiful world kind of disappearing in a clean way.
[Song: Porter Robinson - Goodbye to a World]
There's something very nice to me about this idea of everything and closing off
and in a pretty way. I'm obsessed with this idea of like vastness
and there's nothing more big than like the end of the world.
[Song: Porter Robinson - Goodbye to a World]
I don't think that goodbye to a world is about losing everything, rather, it's about loving what
you had and your ability to create something new. It's about being thankful for the world you are
able to live in. if not only for a brief moment in time. Fortunately for all of us, Goodbye to a
World wasn't the end of the world's era. In 2015, Porter released a remix of Nero's 'The Thrill' that
scratched all of the same itches that Worlds did. And a year later in August 2016, in collaboration
with madeon, we were graced with Shelter. However a perhaps lesser-known inclusion in the Worlds-era
discography is Shepherdess -- a B-side on the Lionhearted 7-inch vinyl record, exclusively
distributed through the quickly-sold-out, and now-hard-to-find, limited edition Worlds box set.
[Song: Porter Robinson - Shepherdess]
Written in 2012, it was allegedly intended to be included in Worlds, but was
axed last minute for one reason or another. Probably because of the dance-driven beat
and hard-hitting drop in the second half that didn't quite fit the tone of Worlds.
[Song: Porter Robinson - Shepherdess]
The song didn't really get that much attention. But in 2016, it began appearing in Porter's live sets...
This time with a variation in production and a new name: [She Heals Everything]
[Song: Porter Robinson - She Heals Everything]
I personally believe that She Heals Everything epitomizes why Porter Robinson is such an
incredible songwriter. The honesty and vulnerability in the title, paired with
the emotional melody and synths and strings -- it all comes together to awaken this innate
instinct to find connection and companionship in someone. To love and to be loved.
[Song: Porter Robinson - She Heals Everything]
[Porter]: I had chased after a musical identity that I was proud of for so long and I knew when I heard this
that this was going to be a signature that I was going to embrace and actively lean into...
...and that was a very good feeling.
[Interviewer]: So with your musical journey, do you see Worlds as a finished concept that's done and now we try and
do something else or is it a step on the journey and the next thing is going to take those ideas further?
[Porter]: Well, I I just spent two months on tour in the US and I came home, I had three weeks off
I wrote... I wrote music for six hours every day for three weeks and I have kept none of it.
After that, this is where... this is how we get to nurture.
[Song: Pentagon - Heal]
Gone are the days of simulated worlds, fictitious characters, imagination, and living
in your nostalgia. Nurture is about life. Nature.
[Porter]: I think nature, for me, is this stand-in for basically health. This idea of things being as they should be. Like things being at this
stasis point where everything's balanced. I wanted the album to feel up close and I wanted it to
feel intimate like I knew that like nature was a good representation of that because like nature
is real and it's everyday and it it feels like you can touch it.
[Narrator]: Nurture is all about self-improvement and overcoming personal and mental difficulties.
[Porter]: Like, your nature is something that you can't change and your nurture is a combination of the experiences that you
have and the way that you're treated growing up but also the things that you do for yourself. It's the self-nurturing thing.
[Narrator]: It's incredibly personal the Porter's unique experiences as a musician
but really more so as a human. [Porter]: I got connected to the idea of nurture because it not
only evokes the idea of nature inherently, it also is about the things that you can control
and the things that you can change and the stuff you can do for yourself to, like, leave yourself
and the world in a better place. [Narrator]: Porter shares his experience in fighting his personal
battles through a lens that the listener can easily grasp and relate to. Through Porter's
journey of mental struggle and overcoming his inner voice, so too are we able to do so.
Sonically we are presented with a whole new soundscape and style with an array
of natural and organic textures. This becomes abundantly clear in just the first few seconds
of the album as the first song, Lifelike, begins with a light gentle pulsating synth.
Gentle piano and strings welcome us to this new world. The real world. Furthermore, consider the
title, "Lifelike". This is what life sounds like. You can hear faint birdsong with the accompaniment of
real life instruments and Porter's faint but real and untampered voice joining in the background very briefly.
[Porter]: I tried to use more physical sounding instruments like more real pianos and some more
samples and less synths, for sure. It felt more in that world, it felt less dreamlike and more up
close and intimate. [Narrator]: The song is only a mere 1:34 but this natural, organic, and real-life motif is
picked up and carried straight into the following song, aptly titled, Look at the Sky.
Look at the Sky introduces the main antagonist of the nurture album narrative: Porter's inner voice.
Immediately with the first line: [Is it fate?] We can hear the seeds of doubt being sown into his mind.
Is it fate for him to buckle under the pressure of his own doubts and fail as a musician, despite the
magnificent highs he felt coming off the heels of Worlds just a few years prior?
It is relatively well documented through interviews and a lack of musical output post-Worlds that
Porter suffered from incredibly frustrating and persistent writer's block that had a heavy toll
on his mental health. [Porter]: On much of the album I'm singing through this effect that pitches my voice
up like an octave and it makes it sound very like feminine or childlike. Like, I'm almost doing these
duets with myself where I'll sing with my natural chest voice and the call and response will be this
little childlike voice or this, like, feminine voice. It's like this duet, and you know when you get into
the lyrics you kind of quickly realize that it feels like this duet between my head and my
heart or like yeah like between like what I want to say and what my inner voice is kind of telling
me. You know, what that represents for me is these alternating voices that I feel. One of which is
like my anxieties and then the other part of it is my values. It's like there's this clash between
these anxieties and these values and I sort of take that dialogue and I'm trying
to decorate it and all of this beauty. But I think there's a little bit of - I try to inject a little bit of pain into the lyrics too.
[Narrator]: Immediately, we are made aware that just as any human is at
one point or another, Porter is struggling. He's trying though. If you look at how the first and
second verse contrast each other, specifically the lines: "But then something must have changed in me"
visible progress is beginning to be foreshadowed. Where in the first verse, Porter is referring to
how something changed in him which led to his eventual despair, the second verse tells us how
something different changed in him. What changed in him this time was his doubts. Whatever he feared, he didn't fear it anymore.
Following Look at the Sky is Get Your Wish. This was the lead single
for nurture when Porter announced the album back in January of 2020. With it, Porter posted this.
A brief summary of what get your wish is about and an explanation for his prolonged Hiatus
[Porter]: You know, around 2015, 2016, Worlds had come out... I remember feeling like I was going to get back
into the studio and I felt like I knew, like "Okay, I did worlds. It's well received..
..like I know how to do this now." I think there's a natural kind of ebb and flow that comes with
creativity and inspiration things like that and I happened to hit one of the valleys, and I just
completely overreacted to it. "Oh my God, what if I can never make music again" and once that thought
occurred to me it was like I was going into the studio every day with the intention to disprove that idea.
That is incredibly infertile grounds for breeding creativity.
[Narrator]: I think at a point in everyone's lives, we get so caught up in what we're doing and who we're trying to be that we forget
to consider why we even bother. Who is it all for?
[Porter]: Like, damn. What is the point of all of this?
What is it that I actually want and what is it that I am actually trying to do here?
[Narrator]: Many people live their lives yearning for success, money, recognition, or fame. It seems that
Porter took into consideration his own motives, reflecting on his past success and questioning
why it isn't as fulfilling as he imagined it to be.
[Interviewer]: You were being productive you were releasing great music
but the struggle for you to make nurture was very real I mean take us through that a little bit.
[Porter]: Right. I started coming into the studio every day with this desire to prove
I could still do it. I was just like, it was just like this white knuckle on the mouse like just being like
oh my God if I don't make something today, like I'm truly screwed. That was how I felt.
I was really stuck, I was really uninspired, and then the second major mistake that I made was that I...
...I thought I need to put more pressure on myself. I thought that I wasn't working hard enough.
That's what much of especially late 2015, 2016, early 2017 was a lot of
being scared I wasn't going to be able to do music anymore.
This constant mental battle is the main overarching narrative of Nurture.
Even so, themes of love, gratitude, optimism, and acceptance
still trickle through the incredibly dense clouds of despair shown through much of the album.
Wind Tempos, for example, is a more experimental, ambient piece that spans over six minutes of run time.
At the latter end of the song is this repeated saying. While it's unclear what or who this song is about
what matters is the emotional tone that's conveyed. It doesn't sound like sadness but rather hope and love.
In musician and do-re-mi, he revels for his love and appreciation for music and the
opportunity he has to be a musician despite how discouraged he sometimes feels. In Mother, he pays
tribute to his mom who has been a continual and reliable support system throughout his life.
Sweet Time was written about his now-fiance Rika, and in Porter's own words, is about being so in love with
someone that for the first time in your life you're scared of dying.
[Porter]: You come to realize how there's no guarantee of the time that you'll get to spend together with
that person beyond the reality that we know. Then you know that death is coming...
it's like, it's about being so in love that you become afraid to to die for the first time.
Blossom, which is also about Rika, picks up on the same themes presented in sweet time.
This time through an intimate interaction that he has with her as told through the lyrics.
On a walk through the woods together, Porter is stuck preoccupied with the thought that one day
he's going to lose her. That one day, "we're all out of time". Being the voice of reason that she is,
she tells him to stop living the time they have left together in his head to just laugh.
Something that I do again and again on this album is I'm singing through this kind of pitch processing it's like
this sort of mask that I wear to get through some vulnerable sentiments that'd be hard to say
in my my own voice. But on the words "I love you" in this song, that effect turns off.
[It's just that I love you]
I didn't want to hide behind the mask that I do so often, I was like, if I'm gonna say I love you
on one of my songs like you gotta mean that shit.
These songs highlight the brighter side of Nurture.
They are the Silver Lining to the Grim mental struggles that Porter is battling.
Mirror and Trying to Feel Alive are what I consider to be Nurture's two most important tracks to the album's
narrative as I believe they properly close out and resolve all of the struggles presented within it.
[Song: Porter Robinson - Mirror]
I like to think of mirror as the "final boss" of the album.
This is Porter finally confronting his inner voice, saying, "I know you'll say I'm a burden do your worst.
I know what you want from me. I know what you're thinking."
In interviews, Porter has mentioned that this inner voice he holds within him
is at least partially derived from what others have actually said to him in the past.
[Porter]: Saying to me, like, "You know you don't.. you don't have to do this."
Like, "It seems like trying to do music is making you really miserable. You don't have to do this."
And it was it was said from a place of love but it actually fucking terrified me.
There came a point where I would be sitting in the shower for like 30 minutes, not with my phone, but basically
engaged in an imaginary argument on Twitter with like somebody who was dragging me or whatever, like defending myself.
I eventually realized like wait, this is all internal.
Like this person who's like "dragging me" is myself
and the thing I'm afraid of hearing.
After years of doing this I was like, "Wait this is so unhelpful."
[Narrator]: The song is a brutal back and forth between Porter and his inner self
never seeming to reach a resolution. That is, until the very end. Suddenly the narrator chimes in:
[Sometimes the inner voice is encouraging, calling for you to run those final few yards.
You're nearly there, keep going, keep going, keep going, keep going.
It will all be okay in the end.]
And that's it.
The inner voice doesn't have to be a vice, it doesn't have to harbor doubt, and it won't always do so.
Porter finally found this inner voice and to close out the album he gives us trying to feel alive.
It is the great conclusion to the ultimate struggle he's been facing.
I also think, like, maybe trying to
change from like a fixed mindset to a growth mindset was another thing, too, where I was
taking all of my works in progress, everything that I worked on, as this evaluation of who I was.
Like what I'm making says something about me and it's so much better if you can take your
own works in progress and the things that you're trying to do as opportunities for lessons and
opportunities for growth. I want people to believe that I fixed all my problems, you know, like I wrote
this album, I'm on the other side, and I'm just fully happy... but on the other hand I
kind of don't necessarily want people thinking that because if they're sat there thinking "I've
been working on recovery for six years, I'm on the other side, I'm still not perfect what's
wrong with me?" That's equally harmful.
I like to think of the extended intro of Trying to Feel Alive
as a sort of end credit sequence of a film where it cycles through shots of the
movie's protagonist in their new refined mindset after a long and arduous journey.
It's a beautiful, encouraging, and emotional, but modest instrumental. It's thinking music. It allows you to breathe and consider
everything you've listened to. To listen to your inner voice.
After a full two minutes, we get the song's brief but potent lyrical content. The final words we're left with on nurture:
[Well, do you feel better now? I thought I'd run until the sky came out.]
Do you feel better now? You climbed a mountain, are you satisfied?
These words echo that of Get Your Wish. Finally achieving what you've been working toward.
Finally walking on water. Finally getting your wish... Only to look ahead and question:
What was this all for? and what's next?
However this time Porter knows. The mentally taxing journey he
faced throughout Nurture taught him what he needed to understand this whole time.
[Maybe it's a gift that I couldn't recognize. Maybe I don't really need to feel satisfied.]
[Maybe it's a gift that I spent all this time trying to feel alive.]
Satisfaction was never what he needed. Maybe continually feeling dissatisfied is a blessing.
Maybe his dissatisfaction is what drives him to continually keep trying...
...to be better than he was before. Moreover, he realizes who he does this all for.
It's us. The listeners.
Recall the statement he released with Get Your Wish where he wrote:
"You know how every once in a while when you're driving or something, the music you're listening to just
moves you in this amazing and transcendent way? Where you feel like the world is beautiful and
filled with possibility and you want to cherish every second you have to be alive
I have this experience every once in a while when I'm listening to my favorite artists
I feel overwhelmed with gratitude that they do what they do. I think being able to give
people that experience through sincere songwriting is what makes it worthwhile
[And then somebody somewhere finds the warmth of summer in the songs you write.
Maybe it's a gift that I didn't recognize. Trying to feel alive.]
Despite the exhausting length of this video, I have really just barely scratched the surface
of what I could have or wanted to say about these albums. I could have gone into a tiring amount of
detail dissecting every song ad-nauseam. Instead, I chose to make this still-extremely-lengthy-video
because among many other reasons, I have a really deep personal connection with Porter Robinson
I've been listening to him since his Spitfire days and I've loved every project he's touched since.
I consider worlds to be my favorite album of all time because of how deeply I connected with its
themes at the time of its release. I've seen him live twice; once at Worlds Live in 2014 where I
was actually able to meet him in person, and again in 2016 during his Shelter Live tour with Madeon.
The reason I dissected the life out of these albums is because I feel that there
is a really interesting thematic dichotomy that exists between them. In the long seven year wait
for Porter's sophomore record, I really had no clue what he might try to attempt post-Worlds.
It was my biggest fear that he would just follow the "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" mentality and
attempt a "Worlds 2.0". Fortunately for all of us, we got Nurture. And now today we have two albums
that I think perfectly complement each other both sonically and thematically.
[Porter]: Something that I really needed between albums was like.. part of the reason I probably struggled in
the beginning is because I didn't feel like I had something new to talk about. Like I didn't
want to just do the same thing again and so when I would make these sort of Worlds-esque
attempts it just didn't... I didn't feel a spark in the same way. So like I think that was a
a big part of it was like I needed something new to actually talk about.
[Narrator]: Worlds illustrates the yearning to exist in a world other than your own. It's based in fiction it
represents dissatisfaction with physical reality and harbors the idea of seeking to create your own
reality. Your own world. It's about escapism, and finding temporary relief from the constant and
incessant life battles that chip away at your determination to keep, going by leaving it, and
creating something better. Worlds is about reliving your naïve and innocent youth where you were able
to be anything and anywhere you wanted to be through your wild and endless imagination.
Worlds beckons the times of logging into an MMO and speaking with your best friends whom you've never
even met in real life, creating your own unique avatar, and having a completely new virtual life.
Creating an identity for yourself that has nothing to do with your physical traits or limitations.
Nurture, on the other hand, illustrates the harsh reality of living in *this* world. Nurture *is* reality.
It represents the incredibly frustrating and debilitating and inescapable human condition
that we exist in. One that we ought not seek to escape, but to embrace. To face head-on and to
find happiness in any way. It's about finding relief from the constant and incessant life
battles that chip away at our determination to keep going by confronting them. Nurture is
about living in the present and not thinking about the time that's left but just living and
laughing. Nurture is about creating your own true reality, your own real life self.
Creating an identity that has *everything* to do with your physical traits and limitations.
Worlds is synthetic. Nurture is organic. Worlds is Porter Robinson seeking to find his true sound.
Nurture is Porter Robinson's true sound fully realized.
[Porter]: Where Worlds, the previous album, was about this love of fiction and of these other places, these far away dreams...
Nurture became about this appreciation for the things that are close to us and the intimate and like..
the real life and the beauty and meaning that you can find and just like...
like...
the very mundane and the everyday.
Nurture is the antithesis of Worlds.
Fight or Flight.
[Song: Porter Robinson - Unfold (Live Edit)]
Thank you for watching. : )