Digital Desire: A Fortis Security Novel Book 8

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Sasha Grey: We are all sexual beings. Sex is just as an important part of our lives as the need to eat, breathe, drink water, and socialize. There will always be a group of people who are asexual and people who don’t relate to it, but as a whole, it is vital to our survival. Isabella: It’s [all] so destroyed by the algorithm and censorship. What is the ultimate social media? Where is it going? I think it’s all about [finding] ways of making things tangible and easier to absorb because now everything’s so fast. You can’t fully grasp art in the way that it should be.

Biz: I think focusing on that opposes the atomization and alienation that social media does to us all.

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Like Grey, Lovestory understands the modality of desire—the many different shapes it takes, how gritty and dark it can get, and how funny it can all seem after the moment’s passed. “Love can be nasty and violent, it’s not always a sugary fairytale,” says Lovestory of the passionate stories behind her songs. “Sex is liberating and the most primal creative expression, but this same feeling can be found in other sides of life, not everything sexy is about sex.” Recently, Lovestory was shot by Richard Kern, the legendary downtown New York photographer known for his transgressive portraits of unvarnished female sexuality and an early collaborator of Grey’s. Isabella: People don’t understand the absurdity of it—they just see all these images of overly sexualized aesthetics that are popular right now. They reproduce it without understanding what it really means. I think you have to have experience to know how to portray what you mean. Isabella: Rebellion was always inside of me. I was a troubled child, and I had a problem with authority in school. I wanted to do it my way. That’s always been part of my philosophy and personality, being rebellious at heart. Playing with the cross and [Christian] iconography, it’s fun to have humor with those stereotypes.

Sasha: I don’t know the whole story behind that. But from what I’ve read, she went on there saying she was going to get naked and didn’t get naked. Reggaeton is sexual dancing music; it’s all about liberating yourself and moving your body. By discovering my sexuality [through music], I’m doing my past self a favor. I’m trying to be the star I was envisioning, or the girl I needed, when I was young. Isabella: People don’t know how to really be personable or social anymore. Social media can be so fake. First of all, [people] believe everything they read, then they cancel people. It’s like they get this fake rulebook of who’s a good person and who’s a bad person. That’s [what I like about] music. It’s so accessible—everybody can heal through it and everybody can connect through it. It’s not elitist. Coming from Honduras, I feel like music is the most healing thing for communities and for people to connect to each other. By the time I found [my] strength, using my sexuality to be empowered became a very important tool to me, and I decided to make it part of my life’s mission. I don’t think that work is done. It’s just finding different ways to adapt it. How do I continue to communicate that to my audience and to new people in different ways than I have in the past? The end goal is [always] to inspire people to come together and be accepting. Isabella: Taking someone’s image, copying someone, or selling their images, is inescapable in this culture. There are [right] ways to do it and there are immoral ways to do it. Even right now, there are big celebrities going on OnlyFans…Isabella: With the internet, it’s so hard to own everything you put out. You’re always going to get misinterpreted and misused. Biz Sherbert: Something you two have in common is that you’re not afraid to work in extremes or beyond norms, particularly when it comes to expressions of desire. How do you see the role of sexuality in your work? I’m trying to be the star I was envisioning, or the girl I needed, when I was young.”—Isabella Lovestory The porn legend and reggaeton pop princess on sexuality, art in the attention economy, and making their Catholic guilt work for them