Lilliana Dee | Photographs by Alex Young
Before the world locked down, things were live in Pittsburgh. I think back to a specific evening when the town buzzed because a new nightclub billed a soft opening with local Yinzer turned trusted hip-hop producer Christo, along with Quiana Parks and Suave Pav, for DJ sets. In fact, it was Christo’s first hometown DJ set since his Grammy nomination due to his credits on “Revenge Of The Dreamers III.” The club Cobra Lounge set to usher in a new nightlife experience, mixing Japanese barbecue, private karaoke rooms, and ample space for partying. Totally chic inside, shiny black retro diner booths, neat neon Cobra branding, trendy pan-Asian motifs, and a bi-color Instagram wall transport you to mood board after mood board. “Oh, you niggas balling,” Thomas Agnew, co-owner of Boom Concepts and editor-at-large for Jenesis Magazine, said to my friends and I. We bought a table for the occasion. Admittedly, we wanted to stunt around our contemporaries, and why not? Everybody in there was cool. Rap godfather Mars Jackson was in the crowd. Mystique designer Sakony Burton chopped it up with another artist, Quaishawn Whitlock, who is the man supplying many DIY streetwear brands of the city their screens for printing. Pittsburgh’s version of Anthony Bourdain, Jessie Iacullo— better known as Hungry Grl Big City— spoke with me about Cobra’s aesthetic outside under a deep purple light during my smoke break. Back inside, I saw an interview subject across the dance floor, so Suntory in hand, I weaved my way to her to chat, knowing we would meet the following morning to continue our assignment. Lily stunted harder than me. She reserved one of the big ass, private karaoke rooms for Cobra’s soft opening. She was 10 friends deep, bopping around with a smile.
“I’m a butterfly,” the 25-year-old said about herself during the interview. “I’m successful. I’m killing it.” The self-confidence braggadocio beamed from her like the radiant smile on her face I peeped at Cobra Lounge. All her claims are warranted. The upstart holds a nine-to-five for a publicly-traded cybersecurity company. Her YouTube channel “Lily Whispers” featuring ASMR content boasts 283,000 subscribers, and she is the Chief Marketing Officer for Women In Tech PGH, an organization advocating for inclusivity in Tech. Check her out on BBC, Forbes, The Washington Post, and Vice. Add ‘author’ to her resumé because you can buy her first book “Mettle.”
Taking the nom de plume Lilliana Dee, Lily is candid. “Pages from my journal are in that book,” she said. Self-help lists, screenshots of old text messages, poems, selfies, flattering and embarrassing moments, and friendly stories about drunken jaunts around Pittsburgh make her appear familiar. While the author’s intimate writing reveals her sorrow from love’s warmth quickly snatched away by chilling heartbreak. She realizes her pain, “When things end, and people leave, I get sad. I always do,” Lily wrote. She won’t stop living though flexing her ‘mettle’ in different situations. Readers understand how Lily has grown into a young woman who is proud of what she can bring to the table. “I have so much love to give regardless of all of my mistakes I’ve made and the countless times my heart has been broken,” she wrote.
“Mettle” offers more pushing beyond the “trials and tribulations of love.” In the chapter titled “Privilege,” Lily hits a hot topic. “I accept the privilege that I’m a young white woman,” she said, dropping the race card on the table next to her plate of Takoyaki at Umami during the interview. The advantages of privilege like that are as commonplace as being able to find your shade of makeup in Walmart, but your black friend is underserved— her skin tone not considered. We cannot overlook others because “you have so many things working against you. You have your color, you have your gender, you have your beliefs, you have your income. There are so many things working against you. How can we create equal opportunity for everyone.”
Progress can be made on all fronts if people facilitate conversation. “I think it’s just telling the sides of life people aren’t so forthcoming about,” Lily said. “Creating a community of vulnerability allows for more humanity to grow.”
Talking about creepy men aroused by her Internet content, balancing personal life with career life, relationship advice, and, of course, the book, read Lily’s detailed conversation with InTheRough below and buy “Mettle” here.
Interview occurred January 9, 2020
ITR: You allow yourself to be pretty vulnerable in your ASMR videos and your book. How do you become comfortable being vulnerable?
Lily: I think society adds a stigma to being vulnerable because I think that you’re accepting sadness, you’re accepting anxiety, you’re accepting that your life isn’t as perfect as it looks on social media. Being a young white woman who has a lot of young women looking up to me, like 80% of my audience is women, a lot of people don’t think that. A lot of people think that ASMR is heavily sexualized and that all these guys are sitting back jacking it to my videos. I’m sure there’s one or two that probably do. I’m not going to deny it. I’ve gotten some weird emails.
ITR: I bet.
Lily: My audience is for young women. I think that creating a community of vulnerability allows for more humanity to grow. You know? It’s not interesting for everything to be so picturesque and picture perfect. To me it’s not so much as being vulnerable, but it’s just being myself and my life isn’t pretty most of the time despite what Instagram conditions us to think. It is being vulnerable, but I think it’s just telling the sides of life people aren’t so forthcoming about.
ITR: There’s a lot of power in that feeling whether you want to call it being vulnerable or being yourself or being confident. Not everybody is willing to show every side of themselves in every situation. I know I’m not. But you seem to do that. When you write a book, you choose what you want to share with the reader and you're not afraid of sharing certain parts of your life. Like you tell the story about how you pissed in your Timbs the morning after a drunken college party.
Lily: Yes, yes, yes, I did pee in my Timberland boots [laughs].
ITR: That was one of the first passages I read. I was just like wow… okay.
Lily: [Laughs]
ITR: No, but everybody has stories like that even me. I could tell you something equally as sordid, but I won’t.
Lily: Everybody… Wait how was that… you just like picked a chapter?
ITR: Yeah, I like how you used the poems to break up your stories. I didn’t have to read it linearly front to back. How does the composition of the book come about? How did you decide how it was going to look?
Lily: The actual font and style of it I had someone do. I always wanted it to be poem, piece, picture. I wanted it to be broken up that way. I think it’s easier on the eyes. It was meant to be a coffee table book. It ended up I just had more to say.
ITR: Are you going to write another book?
Lily: I don’t know. I’ve been asked that a lot. I think I’m not close to it. I think if I wrote a book, it’s probably fiction next. I wrote about myself already now I want to do everything else.
ITR: Your book is very romantic.
Lily: Yeah, it is. I don’t really write about if I’m having a really great day. I’m usually too busy living it. I’m not taking pictures of it. I’m not telling my friends about it. I’m in it. I’m having a great time, and I’m keeping those moments to myself. But, I usually use writing as an expression when I’m really going through it, and there’s some heartbreaking shit usually you know and love is one of them. I touched on romance, but it’s like the trials and tribulations of love. I’m really young, but I’ve had lots of loves in my life both as passions and men and dreams and things that I wanted of my life that maybe didn’t happen. Everything happened for a reason and it has made me who I am today for which of course I am thankful.
[Lily notes Benji.’s music on the playlist interrupting our conversation.]
Sorry [laughs]. I guess I wouldn’t consider my book romantic. I thought it was more like an ode to sorrow because when I wrote about it I was sad.
ITR: I feel sorrow. But there are sunshine points where you are hopeful. You wrote that you still have more love to give despite being hurt. I find that to be hopelessly romantic, or I see your courage to still love no matter what. How do you withstand heartbreak like that?
Lily: Well, because I’ve been heartbroken by people and they’ve not been open with me and they’ve been like, “Ah, I’ve been hurt before. I’m not going to love you the way that I loved my ex because she broke my heart,” or whatever. I always thought that was such a shitty excuse because you’re going to close yourself to something so great as intimacy and opening yourself up to another human being because you’re fearful of being hurt. Obviously no one wants to get hurt, but I think human connection is one of the most valuable things we have on this planet, so why would I deprive myself of that for fear of something else. I think a lot of it is fearlessness that I think that I have and I try to maintain my honesty. I’m not going to give someone half-assed love or half-assed emotions because I’m scared of something. That’s not me. Maybe that makes me stupid [laughs].
ITR: No. You get out what you put in. If you are going to half-ass your relationship, that’s what you’ll get out of it.
Lily: Exactly. It’s all love always.
ITR: What’s one of your biggest pet peeves in a relationship?
Lily: One of my biggest pet peeves in a relationship… oh, that’s a good question. I could say something vague like dishonesty, but I feel like it’s not someone lying— it’s someone scared of telling you something because they don’t want to hurt your feelings. I was talking about this with someone earlier. Yeah, we all fear about hurting someone’s feelings, but there’s so many words in the human language. You don’t have to hurt someone’s feelings. You can phrase it a way to make them understand. If you’re looking at it from a place of, “I’m scared I’m gonna hurt them,” it’s because you kinda might want to because of the way that you feel.
ITR: I really like interviewing because everybody says something that applies to me and my life…
[Lily’s octopus balls (Takoyaki) arrive while we speak at Umami, a red lit sushi spot and bar situated in Lawrencevile. She urges me to try her food. “I’m not that hungry so please have some of these. They’re very good. I’m like a big sharer you know,” she said. I’m reluctant, but my open mind carries me to taste. The pair of dudes next to us butt in our meal conversation fascinated with Lily’s octopus balls.]
Lily: It’s a strange dish I will say that. But you were saying you like to interview people…
ITR: Yeah, they always say something relevant to me in my life and shit I’m going through.
Lily: Are you dealing with hurting people’s feelings?
ITR: [Disappointingly nods]
Lily: [Laughs] Man… How are you coping with that now?
ITR: Shopping and just not doing that shit anymore.
Lily: Boundaries and sharing accountability. Those are my two things for 2020. That’s usually my outlet— retail therapy. And then like $750 later you’re like, “Damn I was really sad!”
ITR: I wanted to talk about something you wrote: “I always change myself, like a never-ending caterpillar to butterfly metamorphosis.” The last relationship I was in I changed myself a lot. I used to think your significant other should love all of you as is— take the good and the bad.
Lily: I recently read a study that looked at individuals who had a bubbly personality and if they went into a workplace that was very serious, they always thought they could liven it up. Well, it doesn’t work that way. Whoever has the authority rubs off on the individual. They use that as an example with narcissists. You think you can change a narcissist, but those people are so set in their ways because of the feelings they have of themselves that they end up changing you to be more like them. So, I always think did I change for somebody or did they just have a personality that was more dominant.
ITR: How was work today?
Lily: It was good. We had our employee kickoff. We are a humongous publicly traded company and for some reason we couldn’t figure out our Zoom for presentation. We have over 70% of the Fortune 500 companies as our clients, and we couldn’t figure out how to get a constant streaming connection [laughs].
ITR: I saw you recently got a promotion?
Lily: I used to only do the digital advertising for one product line, and now I manage all the product lines we have, so I do all the paid media for our entire company. Anything that you see online about our company I did it.
ITR: You guys do cybersecurity?
Lily: Cybersecurity, yep. We provide email protection and security awareness training. Our product suite would floor you. It’s definitely fulfilling to know what I do is protecting U.S. citizens from cyberattacks and shit like that. I don’t talk about my day job very much.
ITR: You have to find the balance juggling a nine-to-five and your other interests. How did you find that balance? I mean you also wrote a book and you have a YouTube channel where you maintain 283,000 subscribers.
Lily: I read an article once that was talking about this man who ran this 100 million dollar company. He was a multi-millionaire, he was busy all the time, but he had no time for his kids. He was like, “I need to find a balance.” He basically took a pay cut to dedicate more time to his family because that’s what he found to value. That was the article that told me you can’t have it all. They say you can have it all. You can’t. There’s no possible way. We are conditioned to think we can do anything if we set our mind to it. We can’t have it all. Even when I thought I was on top of everything, something always fell through and something always does. There’s only so many hours in a day. For whatever reason, there’s people who make it seem like they don’t sleep, but I’m in the business of sleep and I like to get it. So, shit… When I was writing my book, my YouTube channel 100% suffered. Definitely was not uploading with as much regularity. You’re going to prioritize the things that matter to you. It wasn’t a diss to my subscribers. But, I was going through some shit, so writing that book was cathartic for me and I had to get my ducks in a row before I had my creative talents translate to YouTube. I play a character sometimes on YouTube in various videos, but I always try to be myself through and through because once you wear too many hats it gets complicated. I was reading an interview about Nelly Furtado. She used to be popping back in the day until she fell the fuck off and no one knew why. She did an interview and she said that she got conditioned to put on a show. She just had to play this part of being Nelly Furtado around her family and her friends. She’s like, “I’m that on TV.” With me, the YouTube me you’re going to find, but I’m just whispering. The me in the book… shit pages from my journal are in that book.
ITR: What does your journal look like?
Lily: Oh my god. This is so fucking corny. I don’t think in paragraphs. My whole journal is just text. It’s not necessarily stream of consciousness, but it’s not formatted.
ITR: You know that popular culture says when people write like that it’s the mark of a sociopath.
Lily: Really? I never heard that.
ITR: Yeah.
Lily: Yup, that’s what my journals look like. Just a whole bunch of text. It’s usually just about getting it out.
ITR: I want to go back to when you said you can’t have it all, but what do you want?
Lily: I think I’m still figuring that out. I guess relatability. We don’t value sadness in our society. I play this video game called “We Happy Few” that opened up people’s eyes and said that we don’t value sadness. So, in the video game you pop this pill called joy and everything is colorful everything is great. We’re in such a self-medicating society. If you’re sad, take a pill for it. Oh, you’re anxious? Take a pill for it. Oh, you’re going through something? Drink about it. Smoke about it. Whatever it is. I do think there’s something cathartic about having a drink after work or smoking a blunt after work of course, but our society does not value natural human emotion. They make it seem like it’s not okay to feel heartache or sadness, so I’m trying to say no one is perfect get that out of your head. I think the more I talk about my experiences hopefully it encourages other people to talk about theirs. But also to accept or acknowledge that it’s not unusual. They’re not alone in what they feel. Even though I didn’t go through the exact same situation, I probably felt the same chemical emotions they felt.
ITR: Talk about your poems like “Please Don’t Settle”?
Lily: I get lines stuck in my head and I usually put them in my phone. Half those poems were one liners and that’s all I had to say. Less is more I’m trying to learn that.
Photo via Lily’s Instagram
ITR: What does a selfie mean to you?
Lily: When I take a selfie, I know my best angles. I know that I am perfectly trying to look my best because it’s something that I’m making of myself, which is almost paradoxical because I probably don’t look the same way in person that I do in selfies. I hope I do. I do believe in being my authentic self, but that doesn’t mean that I’m going to be fucking getting my triple chin in an Instagram post either.
ITR: Yeah. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with wanting to be beautiful and knowing how to make yourself the most beautiful. Whatever you need to do to feel that way there’s nothing wrong with that.
Lily: You take a picture and you want to look your best.
ITR: Do you know who Frederick Douglass is?
Lily: Yeah.
ITR: He was always photographed in a suit because he wanted enslaved black people of the time to see him at his best as a freeman— to importantly show there are freemen who look like us— black and proud, which means you too can be free.
Lily: Lead by example.
ITR: Your image and how people perceive you is everything.
Lily: I’ve always been very comfortable by myself. My mom always calls me. She’s like, “Oh, what are you doing tonight?” I’m like I went to dinner. She’s like, “Who’d you go with?” Myself. “Oh, I feel bad.” I’m like, “Mom, I can do my two favorite things: I can eat and not talk to anybody.”
ITR: I go to movies by myself.
Lily: Okay. That I have yet to do. I heard that’s nice.
ITR: It is nice. You time and you can fall asleep if you want, but I get up and leave if that’s happening.
Lily: I’ve never fallen asleep in a movie theatre.
ITR: You will.
Lily: That’s usually my ‘never have I ever’.
ITR: What’s the most meaningful thing someone told you after you finished this book?
[Travis Scott’s ”Highest In The Room” (the Rosalía remix) peers over the room on Umami’s playlist.]
Lily: I fucking love Travis Scott.
Damn. It’s always along the idea of “this pertains to something that I’m going through in my life.” What’s crazy is that when I was going through a heartbreak back in 2016 2017, I came out with my first ASMR video about heartbreak, and today it’s one of my most commented on videos. People have found it to be cathartic to share their experience. Sometimes I’ll get like, “This bitch cheated on me with my brother. Fuck her. I’m watching this video trying to settle down.” People are really going through it. I did have a girl reach out to me and she said, “I was feeling so alone in my feelings. I’ve been contemplating suicide for a couple months now. I read your book and I realized ok ebbs and flows of life it’s okay.” That type of pressure I hate almost. That’s amazing, but it makes me feel so powerful and powerless at the same time. I don’t know if there’s a word for that. It feels like great you look up to me. I have this…
ITR: Responsibility.
Lily: Right, responsibility to somebody. If it’s one thing I hate, it’s responsibility man. I had some friends come out with me and if it’s one thing I hate it’s when people go out with me and they expect me to cater to them all night. I like to run around and take shots and dance and do my own thing. I’m a butterfly. They’re like, “Where did you go? I was so mad you just left us.” I hate that. I was like, “Wait, I wasn’t responsible for you. I was doing my own.” Unless it’s someone new or if I’m on a date. I wouldn’t like go off and whatever on a date. You’re not my keeper. I guess in the same sense that responsibility is really intimidating.
ITR: Why?
Lily: I don’t think somebody can infiltrate the reason that somebody is depressed. I don’t see myself as that influential to have that impact on somebody. People have told me that I help them in amazing ways, which I love and I understand that. But I think something as severe as ending one’s life, that type of influence and the responsibility that comes with that, I don’t think of myself as that. Yeah, I’ll help you destress with depression, anxiety, sleep, whatever, but I realize I’m in the part of the Internet that deals with coping, but with addiction. I had a girl reach out to me and she was like, “I’m using and your videos are helping me.” I’m like, “No.” You can’t watch a video and be good. That’s why I’m a big advocate of talk therapy. I just make videos on the Internet. You guys gotta take care of your brain you know. It’s pressure. Shit.
ITR: It is pressure from The Lily Pads (the nickname of Lily’s YouTube subscribers). I watch ASMR. My niche is the close shave or the head massage or the cat petting videos. I go right to sleep.
Lily: I watch it every night.
ITR: Who do you watch?
Lily: I like a lot of South Korean ASM-artist. Gibi ASMR is like the big one that I watch. FrivolousFox. Grace V. People always want triggers like tapping and brushing that’s great, but I just like someone’s whisper. I’ll put it in the background at work and just fucking do shit. Not even full volume just very soft. Almost as white noise, but enough to keep you feeling good.
ITR: You occasionally post Instagram stories of you petting your bunny. That shit is amazing. I love how your fingernails look against the fur.
Lily: [Laughs] Really? Yeah, Spooner is the best. He’s my old bunny. He’s like nine or something. He’s a rescue. Yeah, he’s a G.
ITR: Why bunnies?
Lily: I don’t know it’s so weird.
ITR: Have you ever had other pets?
Lily: Yeah. I never had a rabbit growing up. When I was in Barcelona, I found out that there was such a thing as a Flemish Giant Rabbit. I never knew rabbits could get that big. I obviously wanted one I had to have one. My parents were so against me getting one. My best friend and I found an ad on Craigslist for this beautiful blue flemish giant rabbit who was my first bunny that I had nicknamed Dobby. I think I talk about him in my book a little bit. So we drove across the state. Picked him up. My parents even gave me the money for him. I remember he was 75 bucs. They were so against it. My mom was like, “Here’s the cash.” I was like fuck yes. My parents to this day they can’t talk about him. It’s too sad the fact that he passed. He was like a family member. He was the reason I fell in love with bunnies. They have a very unexpected, interesting personality. They’re very entitled. They’re kind of like a cat. Some of them want affection like a dog, and they’re so fucking cute. They’re just so cute. I would say it’s more like having a cat.
ITR: What was your introduction to the Internet?
Lily: I want to say MySpace. I remember I made my first profile in sixth grade and I didn’t know that Tom was the founder of MySpace. So I freaked the fuck out thinking that some old man named Tom had friended me. My parents made me so paranoid of the Internet that I was going to get trafficked and shit. Tumblr and Facebook came later. I still fucking love Tumblr shit. Love it. Good shit on there honestly.
ITR: Whenever I’m in a creative block, I get on Tumblr.
Lily: Always. Tumblr is the inspiration for a lot of my captions on Instagram not even going to lie. I remember the days of AIM and shit. No one had cellphones back then. God, I sound so old. People had cellphones, but it was the kids whose parents like… I don’t know. There was like a little ring in middle school of people getting in trouble for sending nudes. I didn’t have a cellphone ‘til high school, so I wasn’t apart of that.Good times, man, before cellphones.
ITR: Is there anything you did on the Internet or anything that happened on the Internet that you regret?
Lily: Yeah, that’s a good question. [Shivers] This is a good story. So, when I was first blossoming into YouTube, I Googled myself. I Googled “Lily Whispers ASMR.” I never Googled myself before. I think this might have been 2013 2014. It was still very early. Actually it might have been 2015. I Googled myself, and ASMR really blew up in 2016 it has since gone up and down as major news articles come out, like Washington Post brought a lot of interest to the community. I’m Googling myself and there’s a couple articles whatever, and then I see “Lily Whispers Tribute.” It’s this video of this man masturbating with his camera over his penis looking at his computer going through images on my Instagram. He like cums [laughs]… he ejaculates on an image of me. But you know what’s crazy? You cannot find this video on the Internet because in some of those images he was flipping through I was 17.
ITR: Oooo.
Lily: So I had to email ‘xhamster’ who was the video host and I said, “Hey, I was 16 17 in these images that this man included.” You can’t find it anywhere on the face of the Earth.
ITR: What???
Lily: Yeah.
ITR: So, that happens. What’s the first thing you do? Do you tell your parents?
Lily: No, never told my parents. I couldn’t tell them that.
ITR: That’s not in your book.
Lily: [Laughs] No. It’s a good story now. I remember when it happened, I acted so rhythmically. It was immediately like, “Oop. I was 17 in that picture. I was a senior in high school. Immediately emailed.” I knew exactly what to do.
ITR: That’s on the record now.
Lily: That’s fine. Yeah, I mean, it’s prevalent in our culture— Revenge Porn. I definitely got black mailed by an ex with pictures that he had of me. I had to tell my dad about that. Not the nature of the pictures obviously, but I was like, “Dad, he’s holding something over my head.” My dad was like, “I have a lawyer on retainer. Whatever you need if it gets to it.” I think about it occasionally it still creeps up in my mind because I’m fearful of it.
Do you know what 8chan is?
ITR: No.
Lily: Do you know what 4chan is?
ITR: Yes.
Lily: Okay. So, some creators of 4chan found 4chan to be too conservative so they branched off and they made 8chan which was even less— literally the cancer of the Internet on there. It’s like Neo-Nazi, alt right wing, conservative, just very awful. I found a thread because they hate women who have influence. They hate women who make money from ASMR, and they think that it’s just a sex thing. There have been studies that show that we’re not intentionally trying to arouse somebody in our content. I mean, I’m fucking whispering about makeup half the time. But, I found the thread and somebody had photoshopped the thumbnail from one of my videos and a picture of an African American penis in my hand. At the time it wasn’t funny, but I’ve spent a lot of time looking at this picture. It’s a very clean photoshop job. There’s no white space. It’s just so immaculately done you almost have to applaud the skill that went into it.
ITR: Fuck.
Lily: Do you deal with haters on the Internet with what you do?
ITR: We do the Commendations, which I like to think about as the Grammy’s or something for Pittsburgh.
Lily: Mmhmm. Yup, I know you guys do that.
ITR: Right, so obviously we create a list and when someone’s not on the list they’re going to get mad. Sure, I’ve dealt with that, but nothing in comparison to you.
Lily: Yours is probably fueled by people being actually pissed.
ITR: Which I understand, but we are trying our hardest to document thoroughly, but it’s only us. You have the Pittsburgh Magazine and the City Paper, but in terms of detailed journalism about popular culture for people our age and who look like me, there isn’t anybody writing about it besides us, so you have to be patient with us. It’s worth it.
Lily: When I was writing my book, there’s a shitty Amazon review. The guy didn’t even read the book so it’s fine. It has a gazillion upvotes from my haters and I read it a bazillion times. I’m working on another project I want to come out with an album. I know that sounds so crazy.
ITR: An album? Like rap?
Lily: I want to blend spoken word with music and I want to give people a different type of genre that they didn’t know they wanted. I see this process as being more collaborative than my book. My book— nobody could tell me anything about it. I sent it to an editor. I think I sent it to my dad to read and maybe a couple other people, but I was doing it for me. I was writing it to get it out there. I thought that people needed to hear it. I didn’t care if people liked it or hated it. I was publishing it for me.
[I try the octopus.]
Lily: Do you ever feel that way with the articles that you put out? You could be like, “What do you think of this? What do you think of this? What do you think of this?” With me, I put my diary in that book. I don’t give a fuck what anybody thinks of my diary.
ITR: Anybody writing a diary that shits personal so that shouldn’t be collaborative. Whenever I got this [“Mettle”] in the mail, it felt very much you. This feels like Lilliana. The branding and the character of it is there. I try to make my process about who I’m writing about as much as I can. I take myself out of it.
Lily: I loved your interview with Chad and I equally liked his interview with you. That was really cool to be able to see both sides of it. You guys got some really good shit.
ITR: Thank you very much. I was in the car when my episode drop and I didn’t want to listen to myself, but I had to.
Lily: [Laughs] See I couldn’t listen to my whole episode. I couldn’t I have an issue with that.
ITR: Can you watch your YouTube videos?
Lily: I can’t watch my YouTube videos. I don’t even watch them all the way through when I edit them that’s why they always have issues with bloopers. Yup, I’ve burped in videos before and not caught it and people are like, “Damn.” [Laughs] Gotta go back and take that out me having a little indigestion on camera.
ITR: I have the same issue, but when I listened to my interview on I’ll Call You Right Back I was like, “Shit. I feel like I’m on NPR.”
Lily: Right the audio quality yup. The only thing I couldn’t watch was my BBC interview. It was short like two minutes. I didn’t even know what this man looked like I couldn’t see him at all. I was in the separate studio in Paris. My ex-boyfriend and my parents came with me we were on vacation. They were waiting. BBC put me in this tiny little room and I could hear him, but I couldn’t see him so I had no idea how animated he was. So when I came out, my dad was like that was a really great contrast with his animation and your calmness. I had no idea what the motherfucker even looked like [laughs].
ITR: What’s the last thing you bought when shopping?
Lily: The outfit that I’m hopefully wearing tomorrow for Cobra [Lounge]. What about you— you said you were in New York— what did you buy?
ITR: Last thing I copped shopping in New York was David Yurman.
Lily: Damn, okay. Is that it?
[I flash my sterling silver link bracelet.]
Lily: That’s dope. I know him as being a woman’s jeweler. That’s cool though I didn’t even know that he did shit like that.
ITR: He has a men’s line, yeah. My mom put me onto him.
Lily: That’s like a suburban white woman brand [laughs].
ITR: It is and I went to private school my whole fucking life.
[Lily waves to DJ Femi who spins records during her weekly residency at Umami.]
Lily: Femi gave me my first shot of Crown Royal Apple and my last. We went to the Travis Scott concert together in 2017. We kept going back to her car and drinking. I was like, “This is going down so easy.” I felt like shit the next morning. Can’t drink it again.
ITR: Aren’t you like a tequila person?
Lily: I am a tequila person. I’m surprised they don’t have Espolon here. I love Espolon. I used to love Corralejo, but I think they switched the recipe, and then my fucking friend fuck him for showing me Don Julio 1942. My first experience of getting it was buying it myself at a show, so I was really gassed up you know.
ITR: Yeah!
Lily: It was expensive. We got a discount too and it was still $400. One or my exes who I wrote about in this book he gave me this hideous Supreme jacket when we were dating. It was so not me. It was so not me. It was hideous. It was nothing that I ever would have worn. I was cleaning out my car before I got my new car and I found it. I was like, “This is so ugly. I’m never gonna wear it, but I bet it’s worth something.” I gave him all his shit back, but obviously the shit in the bottom of my trunk I didn’t give him. Took it down to Shop Zeds, flipped it for 150, and bought another bottle of Don Julio 1942. I called my friends and said, “We’re drinking good tonight!”
ITR: Is that something you do when you go through a breakup— give people their shit back?
Lily: Oh, yeah. Oh my god. When my most recent ex and I broke up, everything he gave me I gave back. I don’t want any triggers. I don’t want any reminders. You do me the way you do me you have to live with that. That’s why I delete people off of social media. I’m successful. I’m killing it. I don’t want to attribute any of my success. I don’t want any of my followers to think that you have any… I know it sounds spiteful, but for me it’s regaining my power. Why would I keep you up on my page and potentially get you a new follower or get you some gas when you don’t deserve it. You certainly don’t deserve any of mine. But also that goes to how the breakup happened. I’ve had breakups where things are more respectful. I’ve burned shit from exes in high school. I was not over him until I burned his sweatpants. I remember he gave me these adidas sweatpants. I looked at my sister and I was like, “Yo, I’m really hung up on him.” She’s like, “Let’s burn his shit.” Alright. Let’s burn his shit. Whatever you need. One of my best friends he burned his exes stuff. He was engaged the engagement was called off. So we have a seance. He goes in the backyard right after thanksgiving he’s burning all her shit. There’s something cathartic about it you know burning things drinking things there’s something cathartic. He was like, “I have nothing to say leave it in the flames.” His mom comes out and she’s like, “Fuck that bitch she broke my baby’s heart!” [Laughs] He burnt all her bras. She had to get specially made bras because of how big her boobs were and he was burning that shit. Sorry I went on a tangent about my friends, but good times.
ITR: They seem to be important to you.
Lily: They are very important to me yes, and I think it’s important to realize you go through ebbs and flows of what you’re into and what friends you bang with at the time. Just hang out with different people and you always have your core group. If you know you’re going through shit, or if something happened to you that was bad or really good, who are you telling? Who do you feel the most compelled to share that information with? My dad is still the first person that I call when big shit happens to me. Who do you tell first when something happens?
ITR: My twin, but sometimes he doesn’t answer the phone in those moments. I know exactly what you’re saying— the burning feeling of wanting to share something with someone because they will relate to it.
How’d you like going to CAPA (Creative and Performing Arts Magnet School)?
Lily: If I had to go back to any period of my life, I would go back to freshman year of high school. I loved high school.
ITR: Why?
Lily: CAPA was different.
ITR: A lot of people who move the city went to CAPA.
Lily: I appreciate you saying that. A lot of people have come from the outskirts of Pittsburgh and profited off of our town and opportunity. I respect the hustle, but don’t say that Pittsburgh raised you when you grew up out in Aliquippa. But, I loved CAPA. It was so accepting. There was this kid who was crossdressing and he got suspended, and the kids in my school banded together and we were like, “That’s fucked up.” So the next day we decided to dress up in the opposite sex. Schools don’t do that. There was a lot of freedom at CAPA being downtown. Other people took the yellow bus. I took public transportation. I had a bus pass I could go. anywhere in the city. A lot of people were gay or wanting to change their gender. I was exposed to a lot of that. Exposure was a big theme for me in 2019.
ITR: Exposing yourself to different things.
Lily: Yeah, because I went on a date with this guy and I was like, “Dad, I’m not going to jump the gun, but I don’t think this guy has any black friends, and that’s an issue for me.”
ITR: Wait. Wait. Wait. What did you say?
Lily: [Laughs] I was telling my dad I don’t think this man has any black friends.
ITR: That’s what I thought you said.
Lily: Okay. My elementary school was very white. At Rogers, at CAPA, I grew up in the city. I was around so many different things and that exposure. You want to be with somebody who also has that similar culture. My dad was like, “Well, maybe he hasn’t had the opportunity to have any black friends.” I’m like, “You make it seem like he hasn’t had the opportunity to breathe air.” Maybe he didn’t grow up in an area where there were black people. He was like, “But what you can impact is has he made an effort to try to integrate in the place he’s living now.” So exposure. I don’t trust people who don’t have multi-cultural friends.
ITR: Did the guy get a second date?
Lily: He didn’t get a second date for other reasons, but that was a very big red flag. My friend group is very diverse and that is something that I am so proud of, and we’re a lot to handle when we get together. We had a party maybe a month ago and it’s like something out of Bad Girls Club meets Survivor meets Chopped when we’re all fucked up in the kitchen. We’re a big family. We’re so diverse. We’re so mixed. That was my thing. Do you have black friends, but also how are you going to act around my black friends. That’s a whole other thing because my friends are my family. I talk about that in my book too. I accept the privilege that I’m a young white woman, but going to Walmart to check out this makeup and my friend is like, “They don’t have my color.” That wasn’t an issue that I ever had obviously it’s an issue she’s had on a daily basis that she deals with continuously. That shit broke my heart. I didn’t want this conversation to turn about race, but I do think it should be talked about.
ITR: All it takes is a conversation.
Lily: They always talk about white guilt and black shame. I don’t know what my ancestors did, but I only have control over what I can do now.
ITR: You put what you’re talking about in the passage called “Privilege” in your book and it follows your experiences you share about being abroad in Europe. Not everybody has the opportunity to go abroad and the juxtaposition of your privilege in the book is apparent. You know you’re a white woman in America.
Lily: Yeah, I think my opportunity to even go to school to even go to college… I recognize that to take accountability for the things I can control. This is something that should be talked about, but it also should be spoke in a way that is easily understood. I guess the things I have control over are recognizing my privilege and realizing that’s the only thing I can take accountability for. What are the things that I’ve done as a white person in America not knowing that it kept people marginalized? They always talk about culture. There could be somebody who is African American that is more qualified for a job, but they won’t get it because they don’t fit the culture. Well that’s bull fuckin’ shit. It’s a whole systematic thing unfortunately that I wish I had every opportunity to destroy. All I have control over is to try to spread people opportunity. I don’t believe when people say, “I don’t see color.” I think that’s bullshit. That’s a cop out.
ITR: Thank you.
You’re involved with Women In Tech.
Lily: That’s a huge thing for us is inclusivity. We want to position ourselves to be a voice for people who aren’t listened to. One big thing that is seen as controversial is that we’re advocates for sex workers. They don’t want to see you’re pro sex workers, but it is work. You know it’s work. Just because someone does a line of work that you don’t agree with doesn’t mean it’s any less valuable or they shouldn’t have protective rights. My big thing since I’ve been with Women In Tech is biases in tech. People aren’t understanding is that when they’re writing code, their personal biases are actually inserted unknowingly into code. They talk about this example in Turkish there’s no gender. There’s no he/her, but when you use Google translate, it genders people. So it says, “She is a nurse. He is a doctor. She is a teacher. He is an engineer,” and they will add genders to those roles even though this language doesn’t have them. Somebody’s writing that type of bias. Being aware of those things, and being a person in tech, and how the things that I do impacts society and people utilize these tools to apply to their lives is important. People don’t take accountability for those types of things. They just think they’re doing this scientific thing on the side, but it’s like you’re misleading people who don’t know better. As a white woman, I’m already ahead of a lot of other women, so my job I see is to provide those people that feel like they don’t have a voice with a voice. You have so many things working against you. You have your color, you have your gender, you have your beliefs, you have your income. There’s so many things working against you. How can we create equal opportunity for everyone?
ITR: That’s amazing.
What are you doing next? What can your Lily Pads look forward to?
Lily: This album. I have another story to tell. I have a lot of the similar themes in “Mettle” because I don’t write about life’s highs because I think that’s un-relatable to a lot of people especially my audience. I don’t want to sit around and read about how great someone’s life is. I feel like change and improvement and innovation happen when people are uncomfortable. I’m trying to share my happiness, but it’s not that easy. I think what’s more useful to people is to say, “Okay, I’m happy now, but I wasn’t always. Here’s when I was sad and here’s what I did to make myself happy. I think that those are the stories that are more compelling. There’s teachable moments. I’ll read a book and this guy went on a juice cleanse and it fixed his marriage. That’s definitely not going to do it for me, but it’s still interesting to hear his perspective mainly parts that I can dissect and apply to my life. I’m working on this album and it’s telling a story that is very similar to “Mettle,” but I’m excited about it. It’s going to be cool. This is more so collaborative. I have no expectations with it.
ITR: Where do you plan to release it?
Lily: Everywhere. I’m going to take my time. I’m more excited for the experience than doing a project, because I’m learning things that I don’t know how to do and that excites me.
ITR: How have you accomplished what you’ve accomplished? You know you have a nine-to-five and all these other projects. How do you motivate yourself on a daily basis to get it all done?
Lily: Two answers: one is to have less things that enable you to do the opposite. The other thing, and I don’t think that people are going to like this and you might not like this either, but I think motivation and finding it is something you either have or you don’t. I’m always hungry for more. I always want to keep busy. My ambition comes from not only maintenance because I’ve seen my success, but one of my proudest defining moments was finding my own internship in college in digital marketing without my dad’s help. I was like, “Oh my god I did this myself.” I’m so self-sufficient. You can’t give me anything that I can’t have.
You have to gas yourself up because no one else is going to.
