Meet Zena Lynn Carpenter

We were lucky to catch up with Zena Lynn Carpenter recently and have shared our conversation below.

Zena Lynn, appreciate you making time for us and sharing your wisdom with the community. So many of us go through similar pain points throughout our journeys and so hearing about how others overcame obstacles can be helpful. One of those struggles is keeping creativity alive despite all the stresses, challenges and problems we might be dealing with. How do you keep your creativity alive?

I have a lot of different phases of my life that I go through. When I’m not playing shows or heading back over to Paris in some poor attempt to be like Hemingway, I am more often than not in a public library studying for my JD. Sometimes my mind doesn’t quite jump into these different lifestyles very easily though. When I’m on the road playing shows with strangers, I find myself missing being in France, in the comfort of my favorite garden and quiet living. Then when I am back into a constant routine in law school, I find myself missing being constantly around unknown places and strangers. Throughout all of these stages though, no matter the detriment, I have learned that in order to feel creative and inspired, you have to romanticize the hell out of whatever you’re doing. I spend every morning listening to jazz and going for a walk with my tea. I usually will note down poetry nonsense in my notes app and toss around ideas of whatever book I’m currently reading at the time. Doing this, no matter where or what I am doing, has really allowed me to take in whatever life is throwing at me and appreciate it for what it is at the time.

Thanks for sharing that. So, before we get any further into our conversation, can you tell our readers a bit about yourself and what you’re working on?

I am a western jazz musician who likes every song to sound as if Albert Camus and Jim Morrison had a talk over some cheap wine. I started playing as a kid to earn some cash, and then found myself booking and touring at 16 years old. I collect vintage dresses while on the road and wear them to every show while quoting Robert Plant on stage. I really love mixing spoken poetry and music together, probably from watching too many Doors documentaries, and often improve absurdist quotes on stage to the hum of electric guitars and harmoniums. Nashville has always been my home, and even though I have started playing in Brooklyn more these days, Nashville will forever have my heart for being the first real home.
I am currently planning a release for a song called “Acrylic Prayers.” I wrote it while on a road trip from Florida to California. I seem to always write about the same fellas, but this song was a special one I wrote while on the side of a highway in Nevada at a dive motel with a corner store bottle of wine. I really wanted the song to sound like driving on a cold night in Las Vegas, and I think we really captured that sound for it.

If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?

There’s really only one quality/ skill that matters I think. Learning to love wherever you are in life, and spreading that love with whoever you meet. A lot of folks really try to play it cool in the music scene, and I just think that’s bogus. What we do is cool and we do it because we love it. There’s no need to pretend to be a tortured artist all the time. I put all of my sadness into my poetry and songs, and a lot of times when people meet me they are surprised by how happy I am which is kinda funny. But there’s nothing left for me to dread when I dig into it as much as I can to create the orchestral charts for my music. And with all of my fellow musicians who do the same, they have noticed, likewise, that when times get tough, you are not completely squashed by the weight of it all. The Entertainment industry is just like Sisyphus boulder, and if you don’t learn to love the pain of existing in it a bit, the boulder will tumble.

As we end our chat, is there a book you can leave people with that’s been meaningful to you and your development?

The Stanger by Albert Camus. The book is full of absurdist ideologies and has really impacted the way I go through my life. From attending law school to playing in dive bars in brooklyn, this book has really centered in me that in the end, life is simply just living. Everyone comes and everyone goes, and what happens in between is relative. The book really makes you not take life so seriously. Some may find it pessimistic, but hey it’s a french classic what do you expect?

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Image Credits

Panayiota Katsaitis
Ryan Hartley
Chérie Ramona

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