annelise

annelise, also known locally as dj lil meow meow, grew up predominantly in the area and has made a strong second life here, being steeped in many layers of asheville. she currently manages harvest records & djs nights in numerous spots, but her resume & backstory is speckled with surprises - among them work on a goat farm, 3 years in social work, and teaching abroad in brazil.

she is an ultimate cool girl -- with never ending layers of gratitude, vulnerability, and brains to keep you guessing. 

our interview was at hemingway's cuba (coincidentally during a young professional event) with a loud lively soundtrack. lesson learned: quiet spaces are best. she gets into the drawbacks of a busy schedule, her search to find meaning and fulfillment, and the incredible people that hold her together. 

+ also check out the photos from our playful concept photoshoot with her in the river arts district + 

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we're going to go ahead and start recording now with this is lovely music and our young professional friends surrounding us. what is your story and relation to asheville?

I moved here with my family when I was between 4th and 5th grade, so I was a kid. i went to Asheville middle, Asheville High..moved away to go to school, came back. planned on being back for a few weeks while I got stuff together and was kind of working on a plan to move to DC for awhile...instead got a job and it's been like 7 years. 

how would you describe your family?

I guess I can start by saying I have a mom a stepdad a dad a step mom they all live in Asheville and I'm close to all of them. I kind of just enjoy hanging out with them and take any opportunity to do that that I can. my mom is a singer, my step dad is a jazz guitarist, my dad plays keyboard guitar, and my step mom is learning Bass. my brother played instruments in band in school but at this point he doesn't play anything. he has very deep esoteric taste in music. our conversations often revolve around music. we go to shows together, and he has a crazy record collection. neither of us play instruments...i'm just into it

what is one of your favorite experiences?

the ones that come to mind were ones that in the moment were really challenging but in retrospect were super positive experiences for me...the first job I ever had was working on a goat farm which is something I randomly decided I wanted to do. basically spent a summer out on this goat farm when I was 14 milking 40 goats twice a day. a lot of solitude, a lot of physical labor. it was a meat and dairy goat farm and I remember them knocking me over and crying by myself - just like why am I pushing manure up a hill? I'm 14, making $25 a day, what am I doing to myself? but I think there are experiences like that throughout my life where I was taking something specifically for the challenge or because it's so far from what I know. that's a weird thing that I did and it was really hard, but super true to who I am.

what scent triggers a strong memory for you?

positive or negative? hmm. there's a certain smell it's a shampoo I had as a kid I'm pretty sure it's one of the ones where the top is a plastic anastasia..like a kids shampoo. it only comes up once in awhile, but as a kid i would pamper myself pretty heavily. even if it was just a shower I created this ritual around it. remembering part of a movie - it might have even been the sound of music - there was a part where someone comes in and set towels down for someone else who is taking a shower. I would do that I would set it up in such a way that i would get out and sit in front of the fire and write in my journal. i was obsessed with plants I asked my parents if I could put all the plants in my room for a time to take care of them. I was a weirdo. but yeah I think that's the one.

what is one surprising thing that you carry with you?

EVERYTHING. right now i have speakers in my car. i guess that's the thing, i often have a change of clothes in my car. i don't know if i could really shock anyone with that. i carry around a small planner all the time. that's something i'm pretty married to. i write down things i've accomplished in my planner too, so it's a multi purpose thing. i have a stack of i think seven right now.

i guess that's not the way in which i'm quirky. there's always something missing also. there's often something i've left at home. 

what is your drink of choice? 

dry martini with gin. that tends to be what i get. and then mescal. 

do you prefer quiet or noise? 

noise. i do well sometimes with the social pressure of things happening around me. i like in that context of trying to get something done…the accountability of knowing that someone could look over at me and see that i'm scrolling through metafilter or dicking around versus accomplishing something. 

what is an optimal crowd for a dj night? 

this is going to sound almost too simple, but some nights you kindof just walk into it and you can tell it's a good vibe. people have a good energy, they are happy about something. they are celebrating something. you see that a lot. and really what is the most satisfying is syncing up with the crowd. a good crowd is a receptive crowd but i also realize that it's my job to make them turn up. 

what is your guilty pleasure iphone app? 

i don't have anything interesting to be quite honest. i have one called costar. after years of proclaiming that i was really meh about astrology i am now a person that for sure has an astrology app on my phone. but i truck it up to just low key naval gazing. just wanting to think about yourself, really. what i didn't realize about it when i first got it, and a functionality that has really freaked me out, is you can add friends on it and see compatibility between people. enough people have it that there are people i don't actually know very well, but i have decided that we either would or would not be good friends. 

if you could spend 24 hours as someone else who would it be? 

what's kind of hitting me at this moment, and i am absolutely being affected by the environment that we are in, is being a captain of a ship…? part of it too in answering a question like that i am still living in my own reality where everyday feels so busy when i think about what would i want to do with any set of 24 hours it's probably something chill. as much as part of me was like o0o who is an interesting ceo? who is someone that has a very dynamic life interacting with a lot of other intelligent and inventive people? but i kinda just want to drive a boat. any opportunity that i get to be in or on the water. few things make me happier than that. 

what is the best part of your day? 

i get to work with really great people via at harvest or djing. i think about that a lot. bar managers or staff or regulars at harvest. those relationships that are kind of inherent to my days - those friendships really make my days. 

what is one thing that can ruin your day? what turns you off? 

well i don't want everything to be on the theme of oh, i don't give myself enough free time - but i do feel like realizing that i have over extended myself is something i run into and something that really throws me off. i know i could be really engaging in a present moment but instead i can't because a clock is ticking in my head. i have a million mental tabs open. as grateful as i am for so many things in my life, when i do that to myself i don't get the full enjoyment out of any of it. when i've done that to myself i know it. 

what's one thing that can turn around your day? 

recognizing other people's...i think flexibility? when someone extends me empathy and is just kind or appreciative, just those things are really big. when i am rushing around the way in my mind where everything can become cacophonous and eventually just kind of explode on me -- when i encounter a situation where someone is just like "it's fine" and i realize some of it is just in my head. 

also, when people are really flexible with me. having friends that will get up with me knowing that i have this window and them not taking offense to that. just giving me that empathy. 

who is your living hero?

so many women in the music industry. i want to come up with a name...but it's like female techno djs that are producing and touring. how does one answer that question in a world with rihanna and cardi b and solange and janelle monae and beyonce? i'd say a mix. i feel constantly inspired by people. 

what traits do you dislike about yourself? 

being as much type b as type a is typically something i really like about myself, but i also have attention deficit problems, i tend to be thinking about a whole lot of things at once. i think feeling scatterbrained, having a difficult time slowing down. those can be really positive things but they can have consequences with them as well. i think that is probably it, feeling a bit all over the place. 

what traits do you dislike in others?

i think that's an interesting question in part because to dislike something in someone else speaks to something you see in yourself that you don't want to see in yourself. i'm trying to think of the last set of things that really irked me. entitlement and disrespect. those are two things that a drunk person at a bar...really...they fly that flag sometimes. those are traits in anyone that i dislike and the root of things that irk me in anyone come back to one or the other of those things. 

what are you learning or working on right now? 

with it feeling like the beginning of summer there are a lot of events in the making. i've been lucky to have residencies which has been great to have that to anticipate and build on a thing over the course of time, but having a handful of one-off things has always been really fun. i am always building upon my last set - which was probably just a few days before - but with one off events it's an opportunity to delve in and really explore songs that are new to me. 

what is asheville to you? 

one thing i always feel having grown up here is - it's not where i grew up. the coordinates are my hometown, my family is still here, but otherwise this is a totally different city. harvest, somewhere i was going when i was in high school, is twice the size. 

what asheville is to me one minute is very different the next. people will come here, especially creative people in a lot of cases, do what they can and hit a ceiling with that and move on. i make a lot of friendships with people like that who eventually transition out of asheville. in that way, what asheville is to me one year is totally different the next, and sometimes it doesn't even take that long. what i do really feel about it, and one thing that makes this in no way a begrudging relationship with my hometown, is i love walking into a myriad of coffee shops or grocery stores and being able to continue a dialog with a friend from the last time i was in there. enough people that are in my life who are kinda cut-the-bullshit people and i love that my life is just peppered with those moments. 

what do you think the direction of asheville is? 

something i always wonder about. the face of asheville is ever changing. i see things that are really positive within that. i know so many people who have their own projects. creative people, you guys doing this, friends with clothing lines...everyone is interested, it seems at least, in circles of creating new spaces for people and engaging creatives. my hope is that asheville continues to cultivate that. obviously tourism is where a lot of the energy goes, but i think there is a way in which those can benefit each other. that at least is my optimistic hope. and it's not easy, people that do want to start projects and build things aren't compensated for it in a way that's realistic. that's part of what i mean when people transition out of asheville. they came, they tried, and they couldn't afford it. how many jobs does everyone have? two? at least in some essence. so yeah, i hope that if at some point there is what feels like an inevitable back swing to how the tourist market is booming, that it ends up reinstating the importance of locals to asheville. 

what is asheville missing? 

i think in some ways this is improving, because of events like -- shoutout to hex -- but events that serve to highlight the nonprofit world and some of the important things that are going on in the fabric of asheville, and not just the fun "what can we do in asheville?" vibe. but there is a major disconnect between this world we are in, where it feels like we are out on a boat drinking a mojito, which is lovely, and the fact that there are a lot of really real issues happening in and around downtown and in greater asheville that really need to be addressed. it's easy to not even notice them. but to shove those things in the face of people who can so easily escape them. this world is such a bubble that you can forget that ice was just in asheville. it's easy to avoid and that is problematic. people live in asheville that are on vacation everyday but that makes it easy to forget about real stuff that is going on, that you are spending your time and money basically averting attention from that. 

as someone that has kind of been a downtown person now working in west asheville -- seeing that west asheville is a world that is maintained. the community on haywood is incredible. it's really there, and it seems like it being close enough to watch downtown and see what's happening it's banding together even more in a way that is "that can happen to us..." 

i think one thing that comes out of having this boom of, quite honestly, people that no longer feel like my type of people (in downtown asheville especially) is kindof like the feeling that i had going to app state. i don't mean this in any negative way, but it was very easy to determine who my people were because there were so few of them. i think that is in part what is happening to downtown. west asheville vibe is, as few of us as there are, these are the spots. 

what is your special places in asheville? 

huge one for me? a place that i love going on walks by myself, with friends, at night or in the daytime -- there just is not a bad time to be at montford cemetery. though it is nestled between montford and the highway it feels like this serene space that unlike nothing else. these curvy winding roads, it’s beautiful and a historic amazing spot. 

i love the riverside high five. i am really big into, though for sure i have my haunts around town & i love to hop in and see people, i am also really big on powering down and escaping. i'll drive out to marshall just to get a coffee sometimes. 

do you have a power outfit or item? 

it's always changing. part of what i think power comes from is that feeling of 'i didn't know i would do this' kind of thing. i think times that i have even discovered what a power outfit would be for me is when i try something new or different or end up kind of stuck out, i can't go back to my house for whatever reason, and you just have to roll with it. even if it is almost uncomfortable you try a new move and you have to commit to it. right now it's these big green linen pants that i have. high waisted army green, goodwill find like most of my stuff. 

what is one small thing that is abnormally special to you? 

so my mom remarried when i was in college, i came back and sang in her wedding. my step dad is someone that came into my life in high school as i was moving out of the house. when i came back and they lived together it was an interesting way to start that relationship. we didn't live in the same house ever and he was somewhat of an authority figure to my younger brother. you know, navigating a lot of things without really having the time to spend with someone. when i graduated in school i went and taught in brazil and i found out that he had been diagnosed with cancer. so i came back and lived with my mom while he was up getting treatment in maryland. he was always someone that i cared for, i knew cared for my mom, and had gotten close with in a big transitional point in my life. i remember he came back, and he collected pottery for a long time. i was talking about this one mug that was my favorite and he just said, "you can have it, it's yours." and that is the thing. that is my mug. it means a whole lot to me. he is fine now, but just one of those things. he is a very stoic person and all of a sudden i could see the care he had given without really noticing it. all of a sudden, ‘whoa this person loves me.’ it's beautiful, no handle. this eyore blue grey thing shaped like a tulip. 

what is undeniably you? 

i wish i could phone a friend for this. i am also someone who sometimes puts a lot out there and doesn't realize everything i am putting out. one thing that i love is a friend that i work with and her partner were in atlanta and i got a text saying that they were in a place playing ace of base and atm, all this 90s stuff, and they said it was annelise music and i loved that. it made my day. probably stuff like that, really fun over the top music. period pieces. 

or just donna lewis “i love you always forever.” i pretty much play that every night. it's perfect, how slow it begins and overly dramatic. that's the one. 

in a book about your life thus far what would three chapters be? 

in no particular order one of the chapters would be my time teaching in brazil. it was just this disrupt of any sort of routine i would have had before. i typically love to be around people, i do power down but that was an experience which i knew spanish not portuguese. i learned enough to get by, but i wasn't living with expats or anything. i kindof didn't have friends that i was hanging out with. i had my students. getting around was something that was a bit dangerous. i saw crazy stuff there right off the bat. the second day i saw a body that was bleeding out with stab wounds. that was my introduction to being there, so it affected the way in which i felt comfortable traveling around. it was a time i spent many hours in the day by myself. i taught myself how to whistle when i was 21, i had so much free time and had never done it before. i read a whole lot and had a routine of waking up every morning and walking to the beach and swimming. it was this distinct moment of, ‘this too is me..’ and that was a really cool experience to have. 

this current chapter is interesting because it's not really where i thought i would be or what i thought i would be doing, but i sometimes think about how i will look back on this period in my life. ‘oh, that's what i did in my twenties.’ it's one of those things i'm getting a lot out of it. it's always something new and i know it won't be this forever. not in a negative way, but at some point i am going to want to do something different. 

do you have a motto or words you live by? 

not specifically. there is not a mantra i read to myself or a particular line i go to. but one thing that stands out to me is a marquez quote and it's something to the effect of - living life looking through the lens of someone else serves only to make you more isolated and defeated. a series of negative sentiments that come with basically trying to fit into a set of values or a box that belongs to someone else. and part of that is just all that you know of most people is your perception of them, so even what you are trying to connect with isn't a real thing, it's kind of fictitious. it is a big one for me because i am very apt to be curious about people and pay a lot of attention to people and you don't want to confuse that information with information that comes from within. i guess a belabored way of being true to yourself. 

...on that same token don't underestimate the power of your words to someone else. touching people and letting them know that they are appreciated. 

what traits to you rate highest in others? 

empathy for sure. when i see someone speaking up for a person that's not being spoken up for. or when there is an opportunity for a bunch of people to have a negative opinion of someone, the person that comes out of the woodwork that shows love while still holding people accountable. it's probably just complexity - the ability to have multiple thoughts at one time. can you humanize things more than that? i seek out those people. 

and people who have taken time to know themselves and create their boundaries and be flexible but also know what is good for them, and do that. that is really attractive to me. maybe in part because i can be so flexible that i can at times forget to create those boundaries for myself. 

who was or is your greatest mentor? 

there's not really one person that stands out to me...i do feel like there are just a myriad of people throughout my life. i think about the day i had yesterday, even just two people i spent time with offering so much insight and guidance. i feel really lucky that is the way i feel with a lot of my friends. they have different sets of strengths and abilities and are people that are willing to share their wisdom with me. 

if there was a new two dollar bill whose face should be on it? 

does everyone say beyonce? don't know that it's mine, but i just wondered. 

definitely a woman. definitely a woman of color. my mind is cycling through politics and music...i guess part of the question becomes what is their influence on society and the world? what is the message that they send? ...i would say jlin. nobody would know who it was, it's kindof an arbitrary answer in some ways but i'm going to say jlin - a black female musician producer who is also queer. i feel like that's the sort of person we need on the dollar bill. 

how are you contributing? 

my hope is - as a general sentiment - making people feel heard and encouraged and supported. again, caring about people's projects. just wanting to be a voice that amplifies that and just recognizes it...gives people the attention and support when they are putting a lot of effort into…especially art. that's kind of a constant mission statement. 

what is one thing that always makes you cringe? 

people that pronounce their s's too much. 

i cannot stand when people are eating a food and if the food has crumbs they dust their hands off over the food. now that you've thought about it you'll see it all the time. people think that bucket of tots or plate of nachos is a trash can. they just dust their hands off over it. it's not only chip crumbs but your hand grease. i can't stand that. 

when you're pushed to your limit how do you cope? 

if i have two hours sometimes i will go to my house and i will put on some ambient record and lay in my bed, and not even fall asleep, but put on a face mask and chill for however long and then get up. listen to a podcast. but sometimes i listen to challenging podcasts so even that's too much. i meditate, not as much as i used to, but creating that space for myself is a really big reset. the dark room. or even if there is light shining, just knowing that i created a space for myself requiring that i do nothing. it also helps because one thing about staying really on the go it's kind of suppressing of creativity - you don't have thoughts that are random ones because you are just trying to keep things together. 

what's on your bedside table? 

yellow vintage lamps i am obsessed with. i am obsessed with vintage lamps. i love to thrift and goodwill...i have so many lamps that at one point i had set them up in my desk in my room, it was one of those things like people have a bunch of plants in their room - which i also have maybe 50 plants in my room - but it was one of those things where i had lamps beside each other and it just didn't make any sense. i have a cactus. i love to read, i don't have a great reading habit right now, but books of poetry. i make it a point to only read in spanish because i don't get as much of an opportunity to speak spanish as i did in my last job a year ago. yeah, that's what's on my bedside table. 

what do you find is the most beautiful part of your job? 

i think one thing with both working at harvest and djing is connecting with people over music. some songs just wash over me, i am taken away and i let that happen. and so sharing that kind of innate experience with someone who is psyched about an album they are buying that i am so into. we can dissect it in all of these ways and talk about it…but also just that feeling. it's one thing to communicate about that daytime at harvest, and it's another to watch people have that experience djing. a friend of mine, dj audio, was out on tuesday at shakeys and i played ‘let me love you’ by mario and he was like, "don't you love that?" everyone was dancing, everyone was in the moment. you just play that right song. i feel that. where you connect with people. in essence both at harvest and djing…feeling that deep connection with people over something else that they connect to.  

what mundane activity makes you uneasy? 

oh god all of them. my brain is very active and when i try to do something that is repetitive or not very mentally stimulating or engaging i lose track of what is going on right in front of me. 

are there any mundane activities that you love? 

i love brushing and flossing my teeth. if i'm on an airplane i will get up as many times as i can to just brush and floss my teeth again, and moisturize. it feels so great i love flossing. 

day or night? 

a friend of mine said to me that i'm like a pull string doll. you pull the string, i get out of bed and just go into the end of the day when i just fall over. it's pretty apt i think, but also nights i'm out often times until 3. just blessed with energy for the time being. 

what do you need around you, what brings you happiness? 

really engaged real conversations. sometimes if i feel a lack of something in my life and i think about the last time i really got to spend time with someone and get into the really good stuff...that's what's often missing. i don't have enough time to get into that. yeah, just relationships. 

what does your ideal birthday look like? 

i have always loved birthdays. as a kid i would start planning my birthday 6 months in advance. i am still kind of that way. this time it's a month out, but i have been talking about it for a few months. i think the simple answer to that would be, i'm going to take the week. it's going to be a week. and wanting to engage a number of different things i want to do - get out in the woods, host a dinner, throw a dance party. i usually do some mix of different things i love, and part of what i like about that is being able to engage all the people in my life that are in my life in different ways. i want to spend time with you in a way that's authentic to our relationship. 

what are you proud of? 

i feel really aware of the privileges i have been afforded as a white woman. with that grain of salt, i feel like i work really hard and i always have. from the time i was 12 i was babysitting and kind of always busting my ass. i think when that pays off and i get a return on that it makes me really happy. once and awhile i remember to give myself props for that. 

what do you dream about? 

i'll answer the literal dream one. many times when i have dreams there is a punch line. i think it speaks to the way my brain processes information where all these wacky things will happen in a dream and in the end there will be this thing that makes sense of it all. i think it's me trying to make sense of it. one dream that sticks out to me — my mom and i were walking down my childhood neighborhood and we both had with us these super long planks, super long boards like 30 foot by 2 foot boards. at some point i was like, “why are we carrying this?” and before i am even able to finish that thought i look up and all of the houses up and down the street the front doors are like 15 feet above ground. so to get into anyone's house you have to put up a board and walk into it. that's an example of how my dreams go. i'm having this crazy experience and my brain is like, "oh it has to be this…i got it." 

i also do a lot of pre-sleep dreaming, just laying there and letting my mind wander. i don't know to what corner my mind hasn't gone in that regard so it makes it a hard question to answer. 

what are you scared of? 

very honest answer: i think that sometimes i fear that i'll wake up and realize that things aren't how i thought they were at all. that i had it wrong all along, things just aren't what i thought. 

do you have a secret hunch about how you'll die? 

oh, i was having this conversation with someone recently. i was listening to the love & radio podcast and it was one of the episodes where people were calling in to share a secret. one of them that really struck me is a train conductor talking about how he sometimes fantasized about hitting someone. he didn't want it to happen...but i will say when i'm driving, and it spooks me to say this, but i'll sometimes see a ditch beside the road or see things along the side of the road and be like, "shit. that could happen." 

what do you want to accomplish before you die? 

so many things. i moved into my current position at harvest doing events and marketing for them. prior to that i was doing social work for over three years. and that was really meaningful work to me. i liked working in the communities i was working in, and felt really moved by the general missions that we did. outside of work that was what i would have been talking about most of the time on some level. but ultimately, i didn't feel super supported in that - it was a challenging position and i didn't know where it was going. i made this kindof crazy decision when i saw that harvest was hiring a person - thinking that would be a sick job for somebody. i called my dad, talked to him about it, and made the jump. i think that my mission is to somehow come up with a way to do something - and i will say too being at harvest is really meaningful to me and i do feel like they do a lot of good for the community. i see all the ways they are giving back and building and cultivating a community, but ultimately it's two different worlds. how can i do something that feels like it's actively fighting the fight but also feels really true to myself? and where it's healthy for me and good for me? also trying to help people find that space. i think it's really easy to be on one side of the spectrum or the other - you're either exhausting yourself or you're just living the life. there's gotta be an in between there. i want to find that for myself, and i want to help other people find that.