The Love-Inns
⤏ EDEN HAIN AND ARIELA BARER IN CONVERSATION WITH FAYE ORLOVE
⤏ PHOTOS BY ALEXA LOPEZ | STYLING BY LINDSEY HARTMAN
⤏ ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED JUNE 2018
Eden Hain is a musician (Fender, plz sponsor), a fashion icon (overalls AND a wallet chain, need I say more?), and a trans advocate (but would hate that I called them that). Ariela Barer is an actor (The Runaways, One Day at a Time, this one dream I had), a musician (I hate people with multiple talents), and a first generation Jewish/Mexican hybrid (be still my heart).
They are also best friends.
As an advocate myself (for drama), I thought I’d try and use this interview to get them into a fight. Just kidding. I don’t think they ever fight, but looking back I really should have asked that. Instead, we talked about their gender identities, their band The Love-Inns, and how they turned out so cool despite having grown up in LA. That’s a joke.
Kind of.
*NOTE FROM THE EDITORS 1/15/2021: A previous version of this feature contained mentions of Ariela’s old pronouns. The piece you are about to read has been edited to remove all of these references. Please keep this in mind as you read through this piece which might reflect opinions they no longer holds.
FAYE: Eden can you introduce Ariela?
EDEN: They’re this horribly ugly person. They’re very short. And buck toothed.
F: Could you intro Ariela knowing that they will see this?
E: [Laughs] Ariela is my best friend in the entire world, they’re one of the most talented, most hardworking people that I know. And I hate them for it.
F: Ariela, can you introduce Eden?
ARIELA: Eden is one of the biggest names in music. Both as a singer/songwriter and as a producer, because there’s not a thing in the world that Eden can’t do.
F: Can you tell me about The Love-Inns? What the name means and when the band started.
E: The band started when I was a junior in high school. I remember wanting to start a band because everyone started talking about college and I just hated school so much that I wanted an excuse to not go to college. And the name —
A: I’ll tell you about the name! Because you started the band, but I really pushed for this name. I had a phase where I was obsessed with old movies and going to the New Beverly. I’d drag Eden there like every night. We’d see a lot of 70s exploitation movies and it’d be really weird cause it was always just us and a bunch of old men on a Wednesday at midnight hanging out. We watched one called the Love-Ins but with one ‘n’. It was about the love-ins that hippies held in the 60s, but it was about a high school sex cult. And we were like, wow, if that’s not the grimy shit we love, but also the political activism that we write about then I don’t know what is! We added the ‘n’ to make it a little sleazy and a little our own, but yeah. That’s it.
F: Will each of you name one other thing that is a “grimy shit” you love.
E: I love Darby Crash. The singer for the Germs, an LA-based punk band from the 70’s.
A: If you asked me like a year ago I would have said Quentin Tarantino. But, he’s...not a good guy. Have you had the Impossible Burger? It’s vegan but they sell it at Fat Burger. So I have to go to Fat Burger to get it. But it’s cheap and it’s amazing. And really grimy and gross.
F: Would you call that your rock bottom?
A: No, but I did go with my sister and I could tell she was very uncomfortable.
“Wow, if that’s not the grimy shit we love but also the political activism that we write about then I don’t know what is!”
— ARIELA BARER
F: Perfect. I’m curious to hear more about both of y’alls gender identities.
E: I’m trans. I’m nonbinary. I also identify as agender or maverick which is a term I recently learned from Ariela. People are still coming up with new ways to describe how they feel and how their gender expression matches their internal gender identity. So, maverick was coined around 2015 and I just really identify with how it stresses choosing your own way of feeling nonbinary because so often nonbinary representation is androgynous towards masculinity as opposed to androgynous towards femininity. But I would actually rather die than hear someone call me femme. That just erases my identity as a nonbinary person and puts me into a binary that I very explicitly want to not be a part of.
F: When you meet new people do you feel pressured to make it very clear how you present and how you identify and how you’d like to be addressed? Or do you pick and choose who you are close to?
E: I’ve definitely had experiences where I thought I felt very close to people and I came out to them and they were super transphobic. People who have said, “That’s ridiculous” or people who I’ve dated that have said, “No, I won’t call you that,” or “I feel very differently towards you now.” I’ve had people oftentimes that are like “So does that mean you have a dick? What’s between your legs?” And that’s just so weird for them to all of a sudden need to know the most intimate details of my life. So, I’m mostly in the closet, unless I feel really close to someone. It’s a hard battle, because I don’t want to be friends with people who are transphobic, but putting myself out there in that way is really hard. Even people I work with, when they use feminine pronouns, I don’t know how to tell them. But if I have to explain all of trans identity and trans culture to you in order to make this work, I don’t know if that emotional labor is worth it at the moment.
F: Yeah. Oftentimes the onus or the labor of explaining nonbinary identities and identities that don’t fall into societal norms is relegated onto the folks who identify in those ways. It’s such a burden. I get that. I feel a lot of pressure just being a young feminist realizing there are a lot of ways to exist that don’t fit into the confines of what we grew up learning. It falls on us to explain to other people, but that can be so exhausting. But if we don’t do it who will? There’s no easy answer. Ariela, you identify as female?
A: Yeah, I’ve never been a person who likes labels in any way. So it’s something that I explore within the confines of that label. Just because I don’t care. Not like I don’t care about how other people identify, I’m pretty down with whatever anyone feels they identify as. But me, personally, it’s something I think about when I think about it. But I don’t push it to the forefront of my thoughts. It’d be a little too difficult with where I’m at right now in my life. But it is something I think about especially with the intersections of sexuality and gender identity. It’s something I explore, but that’s just my experience and I’d never invalidate anyone else’s.
F: When you were saying “Where you are right now in your life,” do you mean pursuing acting?
A: Yeah, career and just where I am as a person right now. It feels like they should intersect more, but there’s a big separation between career and art to me. Like I’m exploring my artistic identity within my career and my priorities right now are in that. Most of the time it doesn’t feel like there’s time for anything else, relationships, whatever.
F: What are some priorities of the band? You’re about to record album number two. What are some of the themes?
“But I would actually rather die than hear someone call me femme. That just erases my identity . . .”
— EDEN HAIN
E: The mental gymnastics that I’m always straddling is looking at the world and politics and thinking I should write about things that matter. And the world around me matters. But on the other hand I want to give people a distraction from the fact that the world is a scary, horrible place. So I’m always thinking that I should be writing more stuff that people can relate to as anthemic as opposed to things people can relate to as an escape. I feel like the record is a good balance of both.
A: I have an acting mentor and we like to talk about why we make art. My favorite thing to say right now when I find art completely useless and bad is, “Where is the fear of god in this?” Art has to be something that really motivates you and gets you excited. I think my strongest motivator is empathy. Teaching the world empathy through art. If you can humanize a type of person through a medium or a song, you can make someone else’s experience seem real to a person who otherwise wouldn’t relate, that’s really important. Another element I’m just now exploring for the first time is personal expression. What am I getting out of my art? What feelings am I getting out of it and what am I trying to get to you?
E: In our songs, I think about the phrase “The personal is political.” But I mostly think about it in the way that Angela Davis talks about it.
F: I’m sorry, is that an actor?
A: She’s an influencer.
F: Oh okay go on.
E: I feel like a lot of people say “The personal is political” and therefore anything I make and anything I put out is inherently political. Which I have a problem with, for like, a million reasons. I don’t want to walk out the door and immediately be a political body. That’s just me personally. I don’t think you should look at any trans person or person of color and think “Because you’re living, you are a political entity.” That’s so much pressure to put on a person. But then again you look at getting Reagan to admit that the AIDS epidemic was an epidemic and that queer people need to have medicine. And those people with AIDS would say, “Sprinkle my ashes on the White House. Let me die on the FDA’s steps.” They made their bodies political. They made that choice for themselves. The way that Angela Davis talks about it is in the sense that all her experiences are political because there is no vacuum. There is no realm where I experience something and there are no politics surrounding it. So it doesn’t mean that all art is political. It just means that it can’t exist within a vacuum.
F: I feel that so much. Unrelated, Ariela, how do you feel about my new Instagram follower, which is an Ariela Barer fan account?
A: Those are really fun. People always tell me that those accounts follow them and I’m like yeah, because they’re on their shit. They’re good at what they do [laughs].
F: How much do you pay Eden to keep making the fan accounts?
A: [Laughs] Um, Eden volunteered at first. Eden thought I was doing it myself.
E: My first finsta account was called “Ariela Barer Fan Account” or something like that.
A: You need to delete the shit out of that! All it is is like pictures of rat tits. [Laughs].
E: I don’t even remember what the password is.
“My favorite thing to say right now when I find art completely useless and bad is, ‘where is the fear of god in this?’”
— ARIELA BARER
F: That is the funniest thing I’ve ever heard. Okay, Ariela. I watched all of One Day at a Time, and I want to know more about your family. You’re Latina?
A: Yes, both my parents were born in Mexico.
F: Are you first gen?
A: Yes totally! It’s very cool. I’m very proud of it. It was kind of a Romeo and Juliet situation where my dad was in this super rich Jewish community in Mexico and my mom was from the other side of town and they fell in love. But their families were actually pretty chill about it.
F: Okay so not Romeo and Juliet at all?
A: Yeah their families were just like, “I respect you and your experiences.” [Laughs]. Before that we were from everywhere. I mean being a Jew means being from everywhere. My family really migrated all over the world, but I just say Latinx. I guess more recently my grandpa is from the Ukraine.
F: And both of you are Jewish! Which is awesome! Me too!
E: I don’t even know how far back into my lineage you’d have to go to find a non-Jew.
F: Same. I really didn’t know you were Jewish, Ariela. I love this.
A: Really? Yeah, I used to get into fights in elementary school because kids were like, “Oh you’re Mexican, so you’re Catholic?” And I’d say no, so they’d say “Oh, so you’re not Mexican. You’re Jewish.” And I’d say I’m both and they’d be all “What the fuck?” So then we’d punch each other. Just kidding, I’ve only punched someone once.
E: I remember one time we went to a party, and there was someone there that Ariela thought they had slapped in middle school.
A: [Laughs] It was his twin!
F: So, you both grew up in Los Angeles. I’m weirdly fascinated by that life. I’d come out to Studio City every year to see family. I remember on my cousin’s birthdays, one of her friends would always ask the brand name of whatever gifts she got. And I was just like, “God LA is weird.”
A: I never hung out with rich kids. The valley is its own thing. Like, very much not my experience. I dated skateboarders. I almost got a stick and poke tattoo from a dude who taught me how to play bass when I was 16.
F: You both turned out cool. I feel like there are parts of LA culture — the vapidity and materialism — that people associate with LA, but that hasn’t really been my experience.
E: Here’s how I feel about LA culture: I think the negative connotations are most often perpetrated by people who move here. People don’t move to LA to just get a desk job. It’s all people who want to be famous. Our friend says it best, every person from middle America with a racist family that comes to LA to escape, has to kill their racist uncle. And for every screenplay they try to sell they have to kill another.
F: [Laughs] Amazing. Okay, Eden, tell me Ariela’s favorite movie and the band that they would most like to play a show with!
E: Hm, I don’t know your favorite movie. Wait, I got it! “It’s Such a Beautiful Day.”
A: Maybe two years ago.
E: Is that not the background on your phone!?
A: It is, [laughs]. I just like it. Yeah, okay I guess. I don’t have a favorite. I feel like I just get a lot from every movie I see and it’s been a while since I’ve been really obsessed with a movie.
E: But you’d love to play a show with Mitski!
A: Yes! Okay, for Eden, I’d say they’d like to play a show with Elliot Smith or Kurt Cobain or Darby Crash. But if they have to be alive: Palehound, Andrew Bird, Tancred.
E: But there’s a very obvious one you are missing! Courtney Barnett!
A: Yes, obviously! A movie? “The Decline of Western Civilization?”
E: That is one of my favorite movies.
F: Okay, one more thing. I know we are all busy after this, but hypothetically if you two were going to go hang out, what would you do?
E: We are really close to Noshi Sushi.
A: Oh yeah, definitely. We’d go get sushi. Go get food. That’s a very us thing.
E: We eat after everything we do.
A: It’s very exhausting being us.
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⤏ FAYE ORLOVE (SHE/HER) IS AN ILLUSTRATOR, ANIMATOR AND ACTIVIST ORIGINALLY FROM THE EAST COAST. IN 2015, SHE BEGAN THE NON-PROFIT SPACE JUNIOR HIGH IN EAST HOLLYWOOD. FAYE LOVES POP-CULTURE, THE FACT THAT KIM KARDASHIAN IS STUDYING TO BE A LAWYER, AND THE JONAS BROTHERS COMEBACK. SHE DESCRIBES HERSELF AS A VIRGO, A JEWISH AMERICAN PRINCESS AND SOMEONE JUST TRYING REALLY, REALLY HARD.