On FKA Twigs' Eusexua
I can't get it out of my mind, and frankly, why should I?
I initially came across this song by way of YouTube’s demanding algorithm. The video captured me, placed me under a trance, and refused to let me go. Hell, I didn’t want to let go. I couldnt’t get enough of it. The visuals, lyrics, production, all of it held me dearly. I don’t even like electronic, Friend. I only recently started listening to Kaytranada by way of his latest album. Don't crucify me!
At the time of my first watch, Eusexua’s viewership was around some hundred thousand, in contrast to today’s 2.7 million views. And there’s a simple reason why people latched on. Beyond its weirdness.
It speaks to our reality through performance art.
Twigs arrives late to her corporate desk job, somewhere she and coworkers clearly do not want to be. Her computer malfunctions, her greasy looking supervisor grows irritable, and then she gets a call. Queue coworker dance montage!
I understand how the chair dance sequence might lose some watchers. The employees were in business casual and then suddenly glistening in underwear. But that marvelously executed cut from pixie hair Twigs to her half shaved mullet updo, commanded my further attention.
What I noticed especially were the lyrics from a different track, Drums of Death, on her upcoming album. This appears be the conversation heard on the other side of the phone line that ushers Twigs into Eusexua. Emphasis on the last two lines:
Hello, what you like? Do you wanna meet later?
Relax and ease your mind 'cause you work so much
I know what you like, and you're my main character
I'm here anytime, you can call me upCrash the system, diva doll
Serve cunt, serve violence
Enter a transition scene from a worker’s hand tap, tap, tapping at their keyboard while the camera pans upward toward the ceiling where Twigs is hunched over in the dirt, as if she were in a gestation period. And boom! We’re in a new environment completely with people frantically hopping into frame with an animalistic vigor. It’s a mix of pop, fluid, and primal movements. There is no standard. The dancers move as though there is no other greater release. It is the essence of freedom personified in the human form. This, is Eusexua.
The dance style repeats throughout the end of the video with even more provocative visuals and stunning light work.
And my goodness, the way Twigs sung the first two lines spoke directly to my spirit.
Do you feel alone?
You're not alone
And if they ask you, say you feel it
But don't call it love, Eusexua
To be reminded that you’re not alone in the moment that you may feel alone, is so simple, yet so profound. Ah! Let me gush for a moment.
In a Vogue interview, FKA Twigs defined Eusexua in three states of being:
“That feeling of when you’ve been out all night and you lose 7 hours to music, and you look at your phone and you think, “Oh, my gosh, it’s 8:00 in the morning.” And last time you looked, it was 1:00. It’s because you’ve been in a state of Eusexua.”
“If you meet somebody that you really like, and you just kiss all night and you kiss for all hours. You lose time. It’s like your bodies become one and you’re just like an amoeba. And it’s like this kind of meditative, like, amazing physical experience.”
“The moment before I get a really good idea of pure clarity. Like, when everything moves out the way, everything in your mind is completely blank and your mind is elevated… That’s when I feel the most like myself, when everything’s completely clear…”
Personally, I remark the term as the first and third definition. There are moments, whether I am out dancing or creating, when I feel myself nearly space out mentally, as if I'm elsewhere and nowhere simultaneously. I feel like an idea aware of its divine existence. You know how thoughts come and go in your mind? I, the idea, flees from one mind to the next without directions to where I’ll stumble upon next. Yet, I am free. For those moments, I am just me.
This performative art, packaged as a music video, begins and ends with scenes of the corporate office space. Ultimately, I think Twigs is encouraging us to break free of reality’s normalcies and experience our bodies in a heightened stream of intense euphoria. Let go and let be. Ah! What an inspiration FKA Twigs’ artistry is.