Cat Power on Moon Pix: 'I'm alive today because of those songs'

It makes me feel good and very humbled, how many people have told me Moon Pix was important to them for personal reasons. It’s beautiful.

I turned 26 when I was in Australia recording it. Those early years are so tumultuous and strange. There’s something about that age; I had one foot still in my youth.

I had been in South Africa, Mozambique and Tanzania for two months, alone. It really dented me, that experience. Cross Bones Style is about two children I met. Their parents were killed and they lived in trees at night. A lot of kids slept in the trees in the park.

I came home and moved to the countryside in South Carolina. I lived in this little house. That’s where I wrote Moon Pix. There was crazy shit going on in the south at the time. I was so disgusted, so I left for Australia.

I did my own gallivanting around before recording. I went to Yallingup in Western Australia and to a saltwater lake and a tea tree lake. I made a friend at a youth hostel in Byron Bay and we did things like swim with sharks and jump off the cliffs.

Stepping into Australia was stepping into something more positive and triumphant as a young woman. I was, on purpose, choosing a path out of solitude. I found joy I had never felt; some part of the freedom I got there. I consider myself Australian, which people probably think is stupid but it’s true.

I wrote Colors and the Kids at the studio in Melbourne. Listening back, the memories come. Even now, in my chest, I feel loss. I feel also the fight that I had for it. The yellow hair in the song was affiliated with a few characters. My nephew – who was like my own child – as a little boy he was very much a funny bear, and had yellow hair. Leaving him was hard.

It was about my friend, the original drummer in Cat Power, too. He was HIV-positive and I was frightened as I had already lost a friend from Aids. I bumped into Will Oldham in Australia; we drank with Jim and Mick. Being with him took me home, to the south, where we’re both from. Will is another of the funny bears in the song.

The cover was shot by a friend, a fine art photographer. As a teenager I served pizza and beer in a place in Atlanta and he’d come in. I always had a little crush. I bumped into him years later in New York City and was like, “Could you take some pictures for my next record?”

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I remember being so happy to be with him. That connection with Atlanta, and he was sweet and funny. I remember feeling safe. He took one picture and I almost blacked out. Not black, though, nothing but light. I had some mystical experiences around this time. I lay down in the floor and couldn’t see. We looked at the pictures and that was it. That was the cover.

To me Moon Pix was just so elementary in its simplicity. I never really felt it was that good but people say, “It’s your best record.” He Turns Down is about God saying, “No, you’re not good enough.” I didn’t realise other people didn’t write songs that were so personal. I just didn’t know that!

I played Moon Pix for the next three or so years until The Covers Record. I’ve always just recorded, played and moved on. I don’t often look back. But I did go back and listen to every song to work with the string arranger, Ned Collette, for the Sydney Opera House performance. I was moved by the challenges I remember being in my heart; shedding tears and having some very hard rocks in my throat.

It feels like I’m alive today because of being able to write those songs. Instead of darkness, instead of other choices humans make, I chose to write songs. Moon Pix was my salvation as a very mixed-up young person. And suddenly I see that.

I’ve heard stories from people around the world, or people who’ve written me letters, saying things like, “I listened to this record when my brother killed himself.” The reality is that I wasn’t as fucked and alone as I believed I was at the time.

Singing the songs again, I think I’ll look back and see the good parts. Being in Yallingup, being naked on a beach, not knowing anyone, being in Mick’s backyard drinking beers. Going to barbecues in Melbourne and hanging out with friends. That’s the good shit. That’s the liberation Moon Pix gave me in my heart.