Grief, Hope and Meeting at the Maypole: An Interview with Haif Waif

If you listen to any of the singles from Haif Waif’s upcoming album, See You at the Maypole, you may feel transported to a physical space: a dark wood, a winter landscape bereft of color and bloom. Nandi Rose, the driving force behind Haif Waif, wrote the album in a period of grief—wandering through nature in upstate New York while recovering physically and mentally from a miscarriage. You can feel the weight of that grief in songs like “The Museum” where Rose laments: I know that being dramatic is becoming a habit/Wish I was laughing, I just cannot see a way out of this.

Still, if you give the singles a second listen, you’ll uncover another layer—something more hopeful springing up against the bitter winter. In another track, “Ephemeral Being”, Rose conjures a purple sunset stretching for miles. You are not a failure, she repeats throughout the percussion heavy production, you are an ephemeral being. This layered complexity is what makes Haif Waif so special. Each song is rich in sound and meaning. I sat down with Nandi Rose to speak about the upcoming album, finding hope in dark places, and how collaboration shapes her art.

As I was listening to the released songs from the album, I found that much of them were explicitly about loss and grief. But, at the same time, I was surprised by how hopeful I found many of the songs to be. So, I was curious about the emotional arc of the album when you were creating it, and what intention you have for listeners when they hear the whole thing.

Nandi Rose: I'm so happy to hear that you find it hopeful, because that I feel like that's the most validating thing to hear, in large part, because when I think about sharing music, it is my intention to create something that ultimately feels hopeful and and expansive and like something that could be used as a tool to navigate through hard times, because that's what that's what songwriting is. For me, it's very much a way of getting into the heart of the darkness and moving through the other side. So when I was writing the songs that became See You at the Maypole it was a very, very hard time with a lot of grief and loss. But even in that moment, I remember wanting to love my life, and that's actually the last line of the record, is, I'm gonna love my life. And you know, sometimes we have to choose that, right, like, sometimes when things fall apart, you really have to, like, scramble your way out of the hole back into a place of feeling whole and  joyful again. 

And you know, my, my full name is Ananda, which means divine joy and Sanskrit. So I think it is in my nature to sort of reach for those joyful, hopeful moments. But yeah, when I, when I was working on these songs, you know, I was, I was going through the deep loss and grief of a miscarriage, which left me just totally emotionally wrecked, because I had no signs that anything was wrong with the pregnancy. So it was, I was really blindsided when I learned that it wasn't viable. It wasn't there was no, no life happening anymore. It's called a missed miscarriage. When that happened, I didn't even know that was a thing. It's like, your body doesn't recognize that the life has stopped growing, so you're still carrying this, you know, and not to be too heavy, but it's like your, your body's like this coffin. And so that there was a lot of heaviness and grief there it was also winter time, not a lot of life and growth happening in the surrounding area. I think of nature as sort of my mirror and my teacher and my guide and and here it was at this time when everything was frozen and lifeless. And so I was really reaching for the springtime, for the growth, for the regeneration that would happen on the other side of this, this real, kind of tragic moment. And that's ultimately what the maypole came to represent. Was like this thing that you know, I'll see you there. I'm going to meet you at this Maypole in the springtime. And we'll, you know, come together and weave our colors together and ultimately celebrate the many colors and textures of our experiences of humanity. And we'll find each other there.

.That’s a very beautiful image to center the album around. And, actually, speaking of nature—I did find many of the songs were grounded in this natural imagery. “Heartwood” has the central metaphor of a tree, and you mention desert plains, purple skies and wildflowers. So, I was interested to hear more about how nature inspires you, and if you have a creative process that is grounded in nature.

I love talking about nature (laughs). “Heartwood” actually started as a poem that was just fully a poem. That was a process that I came to a lot more on this record, starting with poetry, and I think that - some of the song structures are a little less conventional because it's just built around a poem. There's not the same sort of sense of verse and chorus and that was “Heartwood.” The poem was built around a line that a friend said to me. They said “I always thought you were made of trees.” And I was like, Oh, that is the highest compliment. I hope that I exude the feeling of a tree. And then I was thinking like, what does that mean to embody that essence? There's something so solid and strong and sort of ancient and wise in a tree that has seen time and that withstands time, that withstand cycles. And I think I was thinking a lot about, you know, these moments of pain and loss and turmoil that come and go, and the tree stands through it all, and records it all in the heartwood and the rings. You know, as sort of an archivist, in that way, much as a songwriter is an archivist. You know, we're recording these events in our lives, but ultimately, you keep going and keep growing through it. 

I just find so many metaphors in nature and so many elements of healing and teaching and wisdom. I live in the country, in a small town a couple hours north of New York City, and I moved here seven years ago. I also grew up in Western Massachusetts, also in a small town. So I've kind of returned home to my home area in that way. And so I spend a lot of time in nature. We have a yard, and I'm looking out right now at the trees. There's a river right there. And when I was going through that difficult year of writing this album and sort of processing, I spent a lot of time outside and going for walks. You know, my life dialed down in terms of pace. My body took a long time to recover from the miscarriage, and so I almost fell out of time where I wasn't moving forward. And so in this sort of expansive sense of time, I would just go for walks, and I would drive to catch the sunset. That's what that song “Sunset Hunting” is about, sort of a spiritual practice that I started that year of having to go and, like, find the sunset. I just couldn't stand the idea that, like, people were living their lives and things were moving on, and I was frozen and stuck. And so I just needed to. I needed to experience the regeneration of the natural world, and the way that, you know, a sunset would flare and expire, and then the next day there would be another one. I needed to see that even in that winter, when the world was frozen and lifeless, like, even then there was life, you know, there were, there were crows and blue jays and, like, the very, very first little shoots of grass coming up, and it was just such a such a grounding thing for me. So, yeah, nature is a real teacher and ultimately, a friend. It's a place where I feel like I can go and feel seen.

Definitely. And I feel that the album will be great to listen to in that sort of natural setting. I also had a question about color in the album because it feels like color recurs a lot. I was wondering if you had any visual idea of the album, and I would love to hear how you felt color functioned in a more symbolic way. 

You know, I was writing from this moment in time, and this season that was really colorless. It was December 2021, and I had a prolonged medical recovery that spanned the entire winter up until April. And, I had to get an additional procedure in order to move on and have my body recover. December through April where I live in New York is not a readily beautiful time of year. The color isn’t in your face. There’s not a lot of blossoms. We don’t have the tanagers and the indigo buntings and the brightest colored birds. You really have to go seeking the color. So, there’s a song on the record called “Collect Color,” and again the idea of sunset hunting. You have to get out there and seek the color. And then, ultimately the Maypole has these colorful ribbons that are braided. And you can’t make the braid yourself. The braid happens with everybody, and the structure that comes together with these colorful ribbons is so strong. It’s not capable of unraveling. 

When you go through loss and grief in whatever guise—maybe it’s not a miscarriage or whatever—but fundamentally I was grieving, and I felt like it was the first time I understood this undercurrent of humanity I hadn’t connected to before. It opened my eyes in this new way, and I felt like I could see into the heart of other people. Which is the very beautiful and poignant other side of going through profound loss. You become more porous and the world becomes more porous. And I was so taken by this image of the universe pummeling us with things that are out of our control, and we’re just here collecting color. We’re collecting our experiences. We’re collecting these moments of joy and sorrow and excitement and celebration and pain and confusion. And it's like this swell of color. And what we’re meant to do is join together and meet at the maypole, in these shared experiences. And we create something so strong and beautiful and colorful because of that. 

That’s a really beautiful image, and I think it comes through in the album. Changing tracks a little, you began your career as a member of Pinegrove, and Haif Waif is very much your project, but you still seem to have a strong sense of collaboration with others. And, I was curious about how you find collaborators, and what collaboration looks like on an album that is so personal.

Collaboration is such a beautiful and finicky thing. It can be really difficult to meet creatives, and I’ve had collaborations that have been less successful, and I’ve had collaborations that have been incredibly successful, but I think at the end of the day I really value it. And, I think where it’s most successful is recognizing my own limitations. And when a project calls for certain sounds or ideas or visions that are outside of my scope.

I think early on in my career, especially with Haif Waif, I felt that I needed to do everything myself. And I think part of that was being a woman in the industry, and coming out of a band where I was the only woman at the time. I definitely had a little bit of mentality of “I need to do it myself.” But thankfully, with age, I can admit when I can’t do that, and I don’t even want to try. I don’t like mixing! I’m not going to be a mixer. I’m not a gearhead. I don’t want to be an engineer. So, in that regard finding collaborators is very helpful to fill in the holes. But beyond that, it can be such a transcendent experience. And, after going through something that was profoundly personal and isolating because it was my body…I went through it with my husband Zach, and it was our story…but it was my body. How lonely is it to have a body right? To come out of that space and into the studio with my longtime collaborator Zubin Hensler was such a gift. 

Zubin and I have been working together for a long time and we’ve really grown together. We’re the same age, and we came up in the same Brooklyn scene, and it's been such a joy to see our relationship grow, and our language grow.  And with Mythopoetics, our last record, we really wanted to make it just the two of us. We played everything. We did everything. And that was by design, but See You at the Maypole was the opposite. It felt right to invite more players in.

And I had a conversation with a friend of mine at the time where we were talking about collaboration as being a form of mothering. And this was at a time when I was trying to get pregnant again. I was not able to for a while. I was recovering. I wanted to be a mother so badly. And she and I were talking about how when you open up your musical project, or the creative space you're in to involve other people, iit's decentralizing yourself. And that is essentially  what motherhood, what parenthood is, is a form of decentralizing. It's saying like I am no longer the center of my story, like I've made room. I've made room now for another being to come forth and sort of be themselves under the umbrella of this body and this atmosphere and this space. So I think there's something really beautiful in that. It really filled that role for me. 

That’s very profound. I’ve never thought of collaboration that way, and I was going to ask you about how you feel being a mother has changed the way you work. On the practical side, I know a lot of women want to be mothers, and they want to be artists and they are scared that they’ll not be able to handle that both. And in a creative way, motherhood is a unique experience, and I’d love to know how that inspires your work. 

I think one of my biggest fears when I did finally get pregnant again, and I was approaching the due date was I am going to fall headlong into motherhood, and I’m going to lose myself as an artist. And, there is nothing wrong with being a mother, and having that as your identity, but I was scared I would lose that part of myself. And it would be an exchange of energy.

But actually, the opposite happened, and I was happy to be a mother, and I love my son, River, but I was pretty immediately like “woah, woah, woah, I need my creative time.” And it’s such a column of my identity, and it’s not going anywhere. And that was a relief to know that I was not going to forsake one for the other, that they would be integrated, that they could be integrated. Of course, it was really hard to find time in the beginning, but I’ve been able to find my creative corners. 

And it was interesting, I lamented in the beginning, after he was born, like, “Well, I'm not being creative. Like, I don't have time to, like, write.” And a friend of mine was like, “You're doing the ultimate creative act, like you're creating a human and shaping them.” And that's a really beautiful idea. It does not feel that way to me. It didn't fill that same niche, you know, I didn't feel like it was filling me up as like an artist, even though I love I think it's a beautiful notion, so it is really important to me to have both. 

But the other thing I wanted to say about what mothering has given me, and it actually came more from, from the journey to try to become a mother and then into motherhood, was this lesson that I think I really needed to learn, which was surrender and letting go of control. I'm like a bit type A in that way, where I just, I really, I love planning, I love structure. I love my calendars. You know, I'm also a very creative type, but I have this other side of me that's like very, very Capricorn. And when the loss happened, followed very quickly by my mother in law, she was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, and like my life just completely shifted what it looked like and what I thought it was going to be, and it, like, really freaked me out. And I, like, did not handle it. Well, I remember saying to a friend of mine, like, “I cannot accept this.” And he was like,” you have to accept it.” I really was, like, fists up. And so that was a bit of a journey to learn how to like, soften into it and be like, Okay, this is happening. This is what my life looks like. And how do I learn how to love my life, despite all of this, and coming into motherhood, there are so many moments where I can't control when he goes for a nap, and I can't control what's gonna happen. It's really hard to schedule things. And I think it has made me just like, yeah, a little bit more fluid and resilient. And, you know, it wasn't, this wasn't the reason why we did it, but we did name our son River. And I think it's really interesting that the river flows and there's no stopping it. There's no changing the direction. You’re swept away. And I think that that has been a really important lesson for me. And to be honest, I'm, I'm really holding on to that as I come into releasing the album, which, like, as much as I want to, like plan, how am I gonna release it and the shows, it's not in my control. Like, I sort of, I did this stuff, you know, I was, like, I made this music with my friends, and it was really transformative for me, and as much as I hope it goes well and resonates with people and finds people like I'm surrendered to it, like whatever's coming next. I don't know what's coming, but it feels really good to be able to stay soft against it and not have my fists up all the time.

That is very freeing. So, my last question would be about your live shows, and your tour for the album. I know the album has a visual aspect already, and I was curious about what you would like the experience to be like for these shows. 

I'm really excited about these shows. We have these release shows coming up, and it's an eight piece band for these two shows, one in Chatham, New York, where I live at an art center, and the other in Brooklyn, and those two shows, it's an eight piece band, and I’ve never done anything like this before. We have like, five days to put it together. It's gonna be like a wild ride, but I'm super stoked. I think the element about these shows, or one of the elements that I'm most excited about, is the sort of visual component I've been working with this choreographer, movement director who is my college dance teacher. I love dance, and I haven't really  danced in a while, but it is like something that I feel is really a part of my soul. And she recognized that, bless her, Kora Radella Is her name, and she reached out to me right when I was starting to think of the visuals for this record. And I was like, will you do my live show? She’s done all the music videos or any of the visuals that I'm putting out, she's behind the movement. So there's going to be some really, I think, really beautiful choreography and sort of visual rituals. 

I really want this to feel like a space of cleansing and healing and the place where we can all come together and go through that together. So I'm, you know, I come from a theater background. I really loved musical theater in high school, and then when I was younger, I did a lot of acting in musical theater. And so I think with these shows, like having this almost more theatrical component, not theatrical, and like, it's not dramatic, but it is staged movement and  sort of these visual rituals that we're doing is really exciting to me, so that it's beyond a rock show, but at its heart, you know, we're a band. And the tour, the US tour, and early next year, will be with the five piece band. So that's, that's also the biggest band I've toured with. And then in Europe, I'll be playing solo, but I have some really cool visuals planned for that one. 

So yeah,, it's really fun to approach the different aspects of making and releasing a record, because you kind of get to take this tour through artistic mediums. Where now I'm a poet. Now I'm a songwriter, now I'm a graphic designer making my tour posters,, now I'm a dancer. And, I think that’s a good reminder after becoming a mother which can feel so singular. And, that’s something that I really love about getting to do this work.