Valentine's Day is my favourite celebration because contrary to all the other ones, it doesn't mark something that has, or is supposed to have happened. It celebrates a possibility, and a subsequent active choice, because love is nothing but a chance.
Who is System Olympia?
System Olympia came out of water, dripping honey and salt, sometime around this time a few winters ago. She's the essence of the many women I have been throughout my life, mixed with the women that I wanted to be.
How would you describe your music in 3 words?
Honest, emotional and evocative.
Many of your songs are named with words connoting love and have romantic imagery, where has your fascination with love come from?
I don't know where any of my creativity comes from, it's just one of the mysteries that I don't mind living with. It's part of an innate sensibility I was born with and that I surrendered to once I realised it was a gift.
What I do know though, is that my songs often hold a desire for something that is abstract and doesn't and probably cannot exist. They speak of something other than the present, and they're all drowned in dreaming wistfulness.
I walk around this earth with a big hole in my chest, longing for it to be filled, but it never does.
This is how my romanticism never subsides: by staying unfulfilled.
What song of yours would you recommend for a love-making playlist?
Softer from my Racing Heart LP, because it feels deep and touching, but abstractly so.
It's a soft melody that builds up slowly into a more intense pattern. A crescendo that develops without rushing, like some of the best love-making.
In what way do you think your music affects people?
The slogan I chose for my record label is: "What's Most Personal Is Most Universal" which is a quote from Carl Rogers. I'm very much into philosophy and biology and how the two interconnect.
I'm also someone that likes to dig deep inside mine and other people's feelings, and like Rogers, I also believe that the deeper we go, the more similar we all are at our core. Some of us are more in touch with the core, some people like to do the digging, some others avoid it altogether and others just naturally go on with their lives without being in touch with that part of them - but everybody has it.
I'm not so pretentious to claim that my music is always reaching that deep, but that's where I am aiming. So when people thank me for making them emotional or for validating their sexuality, I know my songs didn't start any of those feelings, but somehow they managed to touch them.
How do you feel about Valentine’s Day?
Valentine's Day is my favourite celebration because contrary to all the other ones, it doesn't mark something that has, or is supposed to have happened.
It celebrates a possibility, and a subsequent active choice, because love is nothing but a chance.
Our universe was born out of a mere chance, it's ruled by laws that revolve around possibility, and can only exist in one state only: ever changing and transforming itself.
Like love.
So Valentine's Day is the only celebration that makes any actual sense in a universal vision of things.
Or at least to me.
Listen to System Olympia music here and her NTS Valentine's Special here
Come listen and party with System Olympia in Sweeties this Friday 17 Feb. RSVP here
