an epilogue in the form of conversation between jnr. and zoe dubuc
With i’ve been looking for you my whole life now out in the world, jnr. and visual collaborator Zoe Dubuc reflect on a year-and-a-half of making, unmaking, and reinterpreting the same body of work.
What began as a solo EP concept written in France slowly shifts into a shared language of images, locations, and memory, shaped as much by friendship as by intent.
Together, they trace how distance, trust, and time reframed the songs into something neither of them fully saw coming at the start.
jnr: So it’s been a year and a half since I wrote my EP in France, and then came back and showed you. My relationship’s changed with it quite a bit since I started conceptualising the project.
Obviously you’ve been such a big part of the concept and also bringing the visuals to life. How has your perception of the EP changed since this all started?
ZD: There’s a lot of things that have changed. And because it’s been a year and however long, my perception of the project has changed.
But it’s through us changing as people and our creative partnership over time, and being heavily influenced by each other on the project.
So I feel like I got to know you more as a person, as a creative partner through this. And I think you also worked through a lot of your own stuff through music, through creating new songs and growing through all these emotional hardships.
Initially, I remember when you showed me ‘I guess it’s fine.’, I was like, “mm-hmm, yeah” but I didn’t quite get it.
jnr.: Yeah, they killed me haha.
ZD: But anyway… obviously now I love everything about it and I think I’ve grown to understand you a lot more through it.
jnr.: Do you think that your connection to that song deepened when you turned it into something visual, and you were able to communicate in the language you creatively communicate with?
ZD: I feel like I developed a better understanding of the song’s thematics and lyrics once I was able to actually put them through my lens and create a visual world.
And because we’re so close it was very easy because we’re talking about it constantly. Anytime I put visuals on something, it makes me understand it better.
jnr.: When we first met we were both in places where we had this thing that we wanted to do in both of our creative fields, but we weren’t quite doing it.
I think that we’ve grown a lot since then and like we’ve really pushed each other to do these things that we want to do.
ZD: Yeah, I feel like we’re constantly striving for something else and pushing each other to get there.
I think it’s just creative freedom we’re striving for, and being able to live off creative freedom.
And through making this project so collaborative between us, there were certain goals that we both got to hit.
It just meant that when I started committing to what you needed from the project visually, I went so far into your direction that I was able to develop my own style more freely.
It’s this weird thing where you always fight the restraints until you’re like, “how can I make that the best thing?”
jnr.: That’s so interesting because I actually thought the opposite. When I was making the EP, I think that I went so far into what I wanted to do sonically, and chased this concept as far as I could take it.
At the end I was searching for an outside perspective.
I came to you and was like “well, what do you see?”
I had a lot of the initial ideas and themes for some of these videos, but as soon as you saw something in a song – for example the ‘as you are’ music video: from the jump you were envisioning a pool and that grand “euro-summer” aesthetic.
That was really freeing for me to be able to see what you heard in the song and bounce ideas from there.
ZD: I think also being able to shoot these videos in the place that means everything to you, like your grandparents’ home added a lot.
That’s where it all clicked because it was known territory. And then I wanted to bring the countryside into it, which is a little reminiscent of where I grew up in France, but still.
That was the integration of both of our childhoods.
jnr.: That’s interesting. ’cause like like the project is a merge of songs sung both from me to you and from me to myself. So it’s interesting, ’cause I didn’t know about the country thing that you were talking about with France bleeding into the music video. That all kinda makes sense.
ZD: You inherently saw these songs as like a part of me and a part of you, and you wanted to pull from part of your upbringing.
That’s the visual language that you work with because it’s how you saw the world when you were a kid and I think that’s what dictates everything that we create.
Like my childhood memories are huge for me.
jnr.: Every single video was shot there too. Everything.
ZD: Oh true, even your live videos.
jnr.: Yeah! Everything is there and it looks different every time which is so cool
ZD: It also looks different because we had heaps of different DPs come in.
But I think it all turned out the way it did because we had a very strong visual language we wanted to uphold.
