Omar Davis has already done a whole lot. Even the most cursory google of their best-known alias Moore Kismet reveals a host of times that they were the first, times they were the youngest — times when they were like, wait, what is happening here? “When did I get a Wikipedia page? What the hell did I do to get in this position?” At seventeen, Omar Davis is still finding that out.

In Hindi, the word kismet means fate, or perhaps it’s luck, or maybe, it might even be destiny. It’s hard to be sure precisely in English, but whatever the case, they are big boots to fill, and yet Davis, at least, is clear on what it means to them. “I’ve never felt more secure being Moore Kismet. Moreso than I’ve ever felt with any other alias,” they say sincerely. “It’s essentially a manifestation of exactly what I want to do and what I want to accomplish in my life.” They’ve created under that alias for six years already, and it’s telling of their personal and artistic energy that they can grapple with topics writ large in the mind of every adolescent without ever making it about themself.

“I want everything to resonate with somebody. I want everything that I create to not only resonate with me, but to make people feel something other than the idea that this song is a banger. I want to write storytelling compositions that don’t compromise on listenability and still tell a good story. Music is telling stories that captivate people, that give them a deeper understanding.”

Where many songwriters prefer not to reveal their intentions, Moore Kismet wants to share. Like every other teenager on the planet, Omar Davis wants to be understood, but unlike so many other teenagers out there, people are actually listening. And why? Well, people are not just listening to Moore Kismet because they make bangers (and they definitely do), but because when they listen to Moore Kismet, it feels like being heard.

There’s an honesty to youth that is both refreshing and intimidating—refreshing in its ability to transcend those hard-learned, sharp-edged, and decidedly rigid norms of everyday life, and intimidating in its frank admission of vulnerability. Whether bruised and swollen or vibrant and joyous, Moore Kismet always offers something for others to lean into. Their ability to articulate so much experience so soon is admirable and, by the same measure, enviable. But, unfortunately, in the music industry, that honesty can be hard to come by. Omar has already been in the industry for five years, and that experience has come with its tough learnings. “A lot of people in the music industry are in the music industry for the wrong reason,” they mention knowingly. “No matter how much we touch on that, no matter how much you continue to speak about that, people acknowledge that it’s an issue in the moment, but they don’t do shit about it later. I know, for a lot of people, it’s difficult because people still view me as this little kid, and they still view me as this person who doesn’t know about adult things and therefore cannot help with navigating adult things.”

Admittedly, the feeling of being unseen is a familiar reprise from any young person, but for Omar Davis, and thus for Moore Kismet, the problem is doubled in scope. Young people are exposed to the issues of adulthood at an early age, and it would be hard to argue against the idea that anyone involved in the music industry from their pre-teens must have learned many a lesson, both hard and fast. Beyond that, though, what legitimate reason is there to think that a successful seventeen-year-old musician in an industry that has often ignored the music and experiences of people like Omar – that very thing that has made them so relatable – wouldn’t know what they’re doing? It’s worth remembering that Omar Davis is a young, Black non-binary artist that is thriving in an industry trademarked by a frankly kafkaesque opacity and barrier of entry.

Still, that number seventeen surrounds Moore Kismet. Until, at some unforeseen point, it is universally agreed that they are old enough to own those experiences without having to mention the number as if it were a qualifier for their artistic integrity. Moore Kismet is already wielding and molding those experiences into popular art with nimble precision. “I feel like I’m in a position with the things that I create and put out into the world where I can make a genuine shift in inspiring people.” Yet, their age is also legally bound to some of the more banal facts of life.

Davis is from Adelanto, California. A satellite city two hours outside of Los Angeles, give or take. Where there is neither much traffic nor density of experience at all. Definitely an issue for any young person, let alone an aspiring artist. “I never got a chance to perform at any local shows, in part because there was nothing up here and in part because I’m 17. At the time I was starting to blow up and get more notoriety and respect as a musician, especially as a trans musician, I didn’t have my driver’s license. So I couldn’t do shows, and I could not perform because I couldn’t drive myself anywhere, and I was too young to get into venues. The only way I would be able to get in any venue is if my mom or manager and a gigantic entourage of friends or close acquaintances were with me the entire night. And I’m pretty sure they were fucking sick and tired of babysitting me the whole night.”

In LA, proximity to stardom has a double effect. On the one hand, there’s the world of possibility on the edge of one’s stoop. On the other, there’s comfort in anonymity and the knowledge that whatever you do and whoever you are, you are not the only one. Davis walks this line with grace, humor and humility, while always maintaining a healthy appetite to have more. “My last show directly coincided with the day after my finals. So, I passed my finals, finished the first semester, and celebrated by performing in a stadium in front of a thousand people on the other side of the country. I’m like, fuck, who fucking does that? The way I used to celebrate getting good grades was I would go out with my family to fucking Baskin Robbins, get a quart of chocolate ice cream and then like, eat half of it and watch movies with my mom.”

They’re clear to add that family has been a significant influence on their confidence, stability, and success – Davis’ Grandma picked them up from school right on the bell to get them to this interview on time. “I’ve been in Adelanto for the past 15 years. My mom moved away and separated from my dad when I was two years old. I think it was just for us to be in a more stable and comfortable environment where we both could grow to be a lot happier and a lot safer in the position we’re in now. I’ve been making music in this very room ever since I was six years old.”

Like any teenager, Moore Kismet’s music is imbued with all the experiential doubt of youth but also with the dyed-in-the-wool support of those around them. Vulnerability is a double-edged sword, and Omar Davis has felt the nick of each side. “The first time I came out to my mom as non-binary and at the time, bisexual – I now identify as pansexual – being transgender, but not outwardly changing my appearance but just identifying this way and understanding that I feel this way and that I lean this way. She sat down and listened.” Yet as with anyone else, parts of Davis’ family life are strained, especially towards their father. “I commented on something that E.J. Johnson was wearing on a photo that came up on his Facebook feed. It was these thigh-high boots and this fluffy cheetah print outfit and a Birkin bag. And I’m like, ‘Oh, they could have picked a better jacket, but the rest of the outfit is cute.’” And in return? “I got a fucking two-hour lecture about the perks of being straight.”

“It’s a very difficult experience that my mom and I have had to navigate the past few years. When he calls, I never get an opportunity to get a word in, but then literally, he texted me the other day to let me know that he watched my gay-ass music video with my ex-boyfriend and said that he liked it. In a more restrained and general sense, I know that relationship with him influences my music and what I create. I know that at some point, he’s going to end up seeing this and reading it and getting a deeper understanding of how exactly it is.”

Just as with age, there is no talking about Moore Kismet without talking about identity. To grapple with essential questions of oneself and come out on top without the tacit knowledge of respect and safety extended to many other people, inspires empathy. It’s a topic that Davis understands and engages with rare intuition, having seen both sides extended to them so distinctly. “Showing empathy to somebody to me means making a genuine effort to show somebody that you care and that you’re listening and that you’re understanding their situation.” That outlook is something that has extended into their own life. “I want to be as understanding as I can because I didn’t have the same experience as everybody else did. I had a wonderful mother and her incredible best friend. They understand me, how I am, what I create and do as a human being, and how that connects to my art.”

Of course, it’s important to note that while Moore Kismet can confidently inhabit this identity, it’s not Omar Davis’ job or responsibility to teach it to anyone. Naturally, they say they don’t mind explaining to anyone who is “genuinely interested and wants to make a better effort to be respectful and accommodating.” But more often than not, they simply don’t mention it. “I just tell people to use the proper pronouns and then go about my day. It’s a lot easier than trying to give them a fucking Encyclopedia Britannica definition of what non-binary is because that’s not even going to work because not everyone has the capacity to understand that. So I’m just like, yo, my pronouns are they/them. Hopefully, you can get down with that. If not, so be it. That’s your own issue.”

It’s tricky because there remains a sect of EDM that is heavily associated with a certain white cis male identity. Doubly problematic because most people are taught the value of role models from a young age. On that topic, Davis maintains a healthy distance. “I really don’t think that I am a role model in any way. I’m just doing what I’m doing to help myself and protect and express my emotions — the things that go on in my mind and the things that go on in my life.” Like a lot of what Davis says, it comes across as remarkably level-headed despite their often giddy tone and ever-smiling manner. The case against role models is that no one needs to be the voice for anyone but themselves. To heap the pressure of expectation on a young person is essentially to wait for them to buckle beneath that weight.

On the topic of EDM culture, Davis is careful not to get drawn too closely into any overly simplistic notions of what that might be. “I’ve tried my level best to distance myself from that. I’ve always had a deeper understanding of the fact that I could make something that reaches beyond this one singular label. I’ve gotten the opportunity to think about what that is and to start staying away from that part of my life that, yeah, I did grow up in, and think how much better it is for me that I’m not entirely involved in it anymore and that I’m slowly working my way out of being pigeonholed in this phase.”

Getting typecast as one thing or another is at the forefront of the minds of artists of every kind, and it’s difficult not to feel that for Moore Kismet, the issue is even more immediate. Everyone has an opinion on who they are, school kid, prodigy, disruptor, or unintentional icon. They are just focusing on themselves, their music, and the people around them. But remember that just as they are lauded, fetishized even, for being a young person in an exceptional situation. Remember that young person is ultimately just a regular teenager. Asking themselves the same questions of agency, identity, family and future. And Omar Davis is no different.

Peggy Gou chants in Korean on her 2021 single, I Go. Written on a plane, where the Berlin-based DJ and producer presumably spends most of her time, the self-motivational anthem draws on Gou’s reality of constantly going somewhere, where the journey and destination are ongoing adventures to pursue. But as the now-30-year-old readily admits, she was born for the whirlwind (and utterly rewarding) life she leads.

Born in Incheon, South Korea before moving to London throughout her teens and young adulthood, an instinctive pull to house music led her to her surrogate home of Berlin in 2013. Having already developed a skill in DJing, Gou was proactive in her absorption of the city’s (sometimes fickle) sense of possibility, amassing a growing touring itinerary and releasing her debut EP Art of War by early 2016. The rest is history, with Gou refining her sound to what she playfully coins ‘K-house’: punchy, dreamy house often met with vocals sung in her native tongue, a self-proclaimed risk that paid off in viral smashes like Starry Night, It Makes You Forget (Itgehane) and, most recently, I Go. By 2019, Gou was everywhere at once – playing consecutive benchmark shows while attaining a level of success not just unprecedented in electronic music, but as a fashion and social media fixture. Even a pandemic didn’t interrupt her momentum, downtime Gou welcomed to recalibrate and work on her highly anticipated upcoming LP.

When I was asked to interview Gou in a manner reflective of this issue’s ‘Empathy’ theme, I firstly considered the unique insight one might possess from extensive, superhuman touring for a genre as intimate as house music. I wondered whether that was even an achievable quality for a touring DJ of her stature, and how she could possibly maintain that while frequenting every corner of the earth on-loop. What I discovered from our conversation is that connecting with people through music remains Gou’s foremost virtue, a foundation she honors to keep the dream and joy of what she does intact.

Unsurprisingly, the internet went wild after her glorious ugly cry. Besides various memes comparing Kim’s crying performances over the seasons, many people speculated about why her crying face looked so damn weird. The answer, in short: Botox and filler, combined with a few subtle surgeries.

And, indeed, Kim Kardashian’s face is the definition of what author Jia Tolentino called the “Instagram Face” in a 2019 essay for The New Yorker: a cyborgian beauty grimace with a slim, chiseled straight nose, sculpted cheekbones, oversized lips, perfectly arched eyebrows, and lashes as long and thick as the bristles of a hand broom. Tolentino dubbed this face that makes women look like sexy tiger cubs the “Instagram Face” because it performed particularly well on the small thumbnail size of social media platforms and had therefore been mimicked thousands of times.

The desire to be prettier, smoother, younger comes as no surprise, given that studies continue to show that people who fulfill the common beauty standards experience an advantage in pretty much all areas of life – when looking for a partner, a job, or even at court, where they apparently get milder sentences. Cosmetic surgeries have reached the mainstream and also the opposite sex – in America, male cosmetic procedures have increased by 28% since 2000. You probably know somebody who has had something done (or they probably have even if you don’t know it), if not someone who would like to if they had the money. We see Instagram Face in real life with its long lashes, protruding cheekbones and plump lips everywhere – at the gym, in a restaurant, on the subway. What do these people see when they look in the mirror? A dream come true? An indicator of their social success? A performance of their will?

While the Instagram Face may mirror what society considers to be the female beauty norm, it does not come across particularly simpatico. Research has proven that humans must be able to see themselves in their counterpart in order to feel the empathy that is crucial for societal solidarity. A perfectly symmetrical face with a glow to die for may look pretty, but it doesn’t really touch us. Human facial expressions are highly developed compared to most other mammals, and they can be pretty nuanced. They have developed in combination with our social intelligence over the course of evolution. Understanding the underlying emotions behind facial gestures requires empathy. It is therefore crucial for small children to learn to interpret others’ facial expressions because it teaches them, for example, that if they pull somebody’s hair, it hurts the person just like it would hurt them. In 2012, U.S. host Kelly Ripa caused a stir when she explained in an interview that she knew it was time for the next Botox injection whenever her children asked why she was so upset.

If there’s no frowning to indicate one’s mood, children will have a hard time assessing social situations. Studies have shown that ‘frozen’ facial expressions after cosmetic procedures can even impair relationships and friendships.

Adding to this is another effect: A face injected into immobility like Kim Kardashian’s does not only look weird in case of a rare emotional breakdown, it also gives others a hard time believing the person in question can really experience deep feelings. As a user in one of the Reddit forums dedicated to KUWTK asked: “When you have that much filler on your face and in your lips, can you feel like when someone kisses your cheek? Or can you feel on your lips kissing someone else?”

Indeed, it seems like cosmetic surgeries not only affect the perception of emotional veracity by those looking at them, but also the experience of emotions by the persons themselves. Apparently, their own emotional experiences seem to be impaired and they may have more difficulty reading others’ faces. The Facial Feedback Hypothesis explains why: Our facial expression signals to our brain what mood we are in, and the brain then regulates, for example, the release of happiness hormones. That’s why smiling makes you feel good, and you can trick yourself into feeling better by smiling even when you’re not happy.

By extension in the opposite direction, suppressing negative facial expressions can yield positive effects. Studies have found that persons displaying fewer negative expressions like anger after a surgery actually felt better – because their brains don’t read the anger as such, which affects their behavior, and their environment consequently also reacts more positively towards them.

Treating clinically depressive patients with Botox showed no less astonishing effects: Two months after injecting their glabellar frown lines, all patients were free of symptoms. Back in 1872, Charles Darwin described a typical facial expression of depressed people as characterized by their eyebrows being drawn together above the nose in his work The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals and suggested that this was correlated with their suffering. Just as smiling can enhance people’s feelings of happiness, this facial expression, he thought, could contribute to people’s unhappiness. However, the Botox effect on depressive patients unfortunately only lasted as long as the effect of the neurotoxin itself: After three to four months, their condition started to worsen again considerably.

The pandemic experience has put a spotlight on issues of mental care and mental health as isolation and anxiety have taken a toll on our social and emotional wellbeing. Many consumers started to ask themselves if fashion and beauty are really worth all the effort if there is limited physical presentation and interaction. Plus, the body positivity movement has thankfully added new and more diverse beauty ideals to our social media channels, contributing to a shift to broader awareness and appreciation, which is in turn forcing the fashion and beauty industries to change their marketing. In 2021, US pharma company Allegan launched a marketing campaign to advertise Botox treatments with a series of commercials designed as short documentaries. These commercials told stories of suffering and emphasized the therapeutical over cosmetic effects of Botox injections with the tagline “Still you” stamped on the protagonists’ smoothened out foreheads.

At the latest, the pandemic has woken us to the reality that we face huge global and local challenges that cannot be solved without empathy and solidarity. We need to realize that we have more in common than what separates us – we need to come together, not move apart. Robust communication comprises at least 70 percent nonverbal communication if not more, making facial expressions evolutionarily connected to our emotions essential to understanding ourselves and one another. Being able to read and experience one’s own and others’ emotions is crucial for human coexistence. In 2021, Kim Kardashian not only said goodbye to Kanye, but also to some of her butt implants. Might this be a harbinger of a slight shift in the beauty industry? We can only hope that 2022 will turn the other cheek on Instagram Face and bring feeling back.

But those tiny hands, button noses and that softest of skin merely distract from the fact that we start out in life as highly emotional, uncivilized creatures, helplessly dependent on others. And yet, even at our most primal, at a time when we’ve yet to acquire reference points and the powers to reflect, we assign meaning. We develop ideas of what it means to love and to be loved. No matter how beastly these concepts may be, they stay with us, often buried under all the emotional rubble we accumulate as adults.

The US-­Palestinian cultural critic Edward Said described psychoanalysis as a process of psychic archeology. A way of uncovering the places within us which exist beyond the limits of rationality and social conventions. In his brilliant lecture “Freud and the Non-European” in 2000 at the Freud Museum in London, he talked about the idea of the counterpoint, a concept from musical theory, as a way to integrate all the different elements of our identities. It’s a lecture about how to live with the plurality within and without. Plurality within oneself and within other people. At a time when large segments of Western societies seem like they’re living in a parallel Harry-Potter-on-meth universe and when Western democracy is experiencing a clear and present danger from the far right and the extreme populists, this seems incredibly relevant.

The concept of the counterpoint, as executed to perfection in the music of JS Bach, refers to how multiple melodies can be independent and yet form a harmonic whole. Voices intertwine, clash and battle, only to find themselves coming back together again. The counterpoint is a technique which can contain tension and dissonance and also provide sweetness and release. Bach’s sacral music is all about transcending the pain and limits of earthly existence while the music he wrote for aristocratic courts is the audio equivalent of a champagne orgy. Whether it’s boredom or despair, Bach’s counterpoint will get you to the other side.

Democratic societies need counterpoint. Indeed, they cannot exist without it. Democracy is the continuous struggle to create harmony out of a multitude of melodies. Our constitutions are our baselines. Our laws set the range for how far the various voices can go.

The plurality of the counterpoint seems obvious – it’s what we pride ourselves in when we compare our democratic societies to autocratic states or dictatorships. And yet, even before the pandemic, we had been finding it increasingly difficult to accommodate other voices along with our own melodies. There’s Us and then there’s The Other, and it feels like only one of the two are allowed to survive. The attention economy of social media, which fosters the drama of the extreme, has promoted an environment where we are increasingly retreating to binary oppositions – woke vs. populist, science vs. esoteric, progressive vs. far right. All of this against the steady growth of class divisions and the gap between rich and poor. Rather than allowing complexity and dissonance, we prefer to bang our drums as loud as we can, to drown out other voices. That’s not music – that’s noise.

In the simplicity of the one-track-environment, we feel supported and understood. It’s the safe haven from the cacophony of the outside world. A retreat from the threatening Other. It seems like we’re all yearning for a place where we can be beasts again. Craving a return to our earliest experience of love. To the kind of love we felt as babies when we melted into the arms of our primary caregivers (often our mothers). When we couldn’t tell the difference between their bodies and ours. When we were one with them. That warm, fuzzy feeling, when there is no separation, no threat, no conflict. When all that is solid melts into milk.

When our little milk parties are disrupted, we react with anger and wrath. Any form of conditionality or relativizing turns us into angry tyrants. We scream and howl, become insufferable, lose ourselves in outrage or righteousness when that someone distinguishes themselves from us and becomes an Other. When that Other is no longer wholly aligned with our values and beliefs.

Indeed, how can we not explode when someone insists on spouting some blatantly ludicrous conspiracy theory which exacerbates racism or sexism? I go into panic-meets-fury hyperdrive when I see anti-vaxxers wearing Star of David placards. It’s not just that they are fashioning themselves as victims of a totalitarian state, they are essentially denying the horrors of the Holocaust. That’s not something I can accept. These are not people I can play with. And yet, what if one of them is a sibling, a parent, a neighbor, a colleague, a friend? Someone we love. What we you do then? Is this the end of music? The end of empathy?

Fascism can be defined as the inability to accept that identities can be complex and even contradictory. Anybody who’s migrated, anybody who’s moved social or cultural class is only too aware: Who we are doesn’t make sense. To be human is to be implausible. Our identities are complicated; conflicting versions of ourselves are always at work: Who we are, who we’d like to be, who we think we should be, who we think others think we are, who we fear we might be… all of these ambiguities are whirling around the unconscious spaces that were formed when we were still cute little beasts.

Fascism works on the premise of eliminating all these ambiguities. It creates homogenous identities that have no room for conflict. The obvious example being Nazi Germany, where you couldn’t be German and Jewish at the same time. Any form of complexity is shouted down, eliminated or – in the language of today’s wellness industry – cleansed and detoxified.

I’m referring to the wellness industry here, because it’s not just the Chick-fil-A-eating, gun-slinging, Fox News-watching, Daily Mail-reading parts of society which have problems accepting complex identities. The industrial yoga-complex – of which I consider myself a participant – with all its talk of love, oneness and mindfulness, is having a hard time living what it preaches. When my idea of love is that there can only be one great sentimental melody and that all “negative energies” (whatever the fuck that may be; really, the word “energy” should be reserved for conversations on physics) are to be purged, the Other can be difficult to integrate. Not just in regards to other people, but also in regards to the parts within me that I don’t particularly like or that I’m ashamed of. The parts within me that don’t make any sense.

It’s hard. Indeed, it often feels impossible to accept the unacceptable. And yet, if we’re ever to get out of our current mess, we’ll have to move beyond our current binary cacophony toward a new counterpoint. In psychoanalysis, it’s the Oedipal stage during which the child learns to integrate new voices and widen its concept of love. When a third person or third element – for example, a father figure – enters the love bubble between child and primary caregiver, the child may feel threatened. Love ceases to be a one-on-one dynamic which offers safety in fusion. Instead, it turns into a complicated triangle. This may cause the child to be angry and reject this third other. Yet, the child has to learn to integrate the other in its mental space, accept an additional melody, see the world from their point of view, empathize. In other words, develop a concept of love beyond that of total fusion. Because that’s how we learn to accept and appreciate not only others, but also The Other within ourselves.

It seems that as a society, we might have to get over our collective Oedipal complex. To let go of our regressive fantasies of love as fusion. Let go of the idea that as individuals we need to be faultless, unfailing and coherent. And that any misstep shall be met with the wrath of Twitter. Let go of the idea that somewhere, there’s a pure version of myself which I’ll reach if I only do enough sun salutations. Instead of engaging in omnipotent fantasies of purging, cleansing or eliminating unwanted elements within myself, it might be more helpful to develop empathy for The Other within me and within others. Empathy is crucial if we want to put an end to “othering.”

To have empathy does not mean to disregard our constitutions and democratic principles or indeed tolerate anybody who does so. The rule of law is still stronger than all the noise on social media. And yes, Holocaust denial is illegal. So I live in hope that those Star of David placards will be deemed unlawful. In the meantime, I’ll have to push myself to find better arguments and continue the dialogue about Germany’s past so we can learn from it. Engage even though I really don’t want to. Accept that this is a moment of extreme dissonance, but that my inner beast must learn to sing along to new, incredibly complex harmonies.

Keinemusik have introduced a new model to the Berlin club scene: Gregor, Adam and André are at the core of a community in which releasing their own uplifting tracks to a growing global fan base is only part of the message. The three boys have become an all-star nightlife band, playing hours-long sets together on stage like a band. The goal in all they do: Deliver a soulful intensity to a roaring crowd that is looking for a communal feel of bliss and ecstasy on dance floors all over the world.