I remember thinking it was quite indicative because whenever we’re in Sweden I feel like we end up talking about the reminiscences of your childhood and spaces that you moved through. It was one of the stronger memories that I had from hanging out with my parents. There were clashes between, I guess, Nazis and hippies in the center of Stockholm. Also, at the same time the first maybe racist demonstration was happening at the same time. It was all accompanied by experimental synth music. The whole thing ended with this gray man just transforming into this amazing female creature on stilts. Then a little gray man with a portfolio walking around the square. He had a tiger in the car, which was one of the other actors. It started with my godfather driving this Cadillac.

They were all hit by the cars and they all died. My mom and four other female actors dressed up and it was like a slow motion crash. It involved two long Cadillacs driving down a ramp on one of the biggest squares in Stockholm. It was in the beginning of the ’80s and my parents had made this happening thing.

You’ve told me, as we’ve walked through Stockholm before, you’ve pointed to the town square and said, “This is a weird memory for me.” The car crash piece. Is anyone here from Stockholm? From Sweden? There’s a few. They were doing more theater about the human condition and about the problems with communism as well. But they weren’t making political theater, which at the time was something everyone else was doing. They were very inspired by the Russian culture of theater that came out of the communistic era. Then we got a few other bigger vehicles later on. Yeah, the first bus we had was a Volkswagen hippie thing. They were all quite childish and lovely actors. I was touring with my parents and 12 other human beings. It was them and their friends from university. It was a group that my parents started in I think ’76. We were touring from when I was six months until I started school. Tell me about going on tour with your parents, because you were on the road with them pretty much constantly as a child, right? It’s a Persian thing, right? My pronunciation might have been right. It’s the lady that tells all the stories in One Thousand and One Nights. Your parents were in an experimental theater group called Scheherazade. Let’s talk about the influence that you claim you’ve had from your parents. We’re going to have to start at the beginning. Red Bull actually said to me, “Please don’t do a long chronological sort.” But I was like how do I do a 23-year career without some kind of structure? Then we’ll start on something that you’re going to have full and total recall for, hopefully: your childhood.

Robyn dancing on my own acapella studio