Lotte: Strong Enough

“I think about you and the thousands of women in the world who have to fear every day. The fear to stay, the fear to go and being found again. You are dead, Marie. When we talk about you, we think of all the other women who got beaten up, humiliated, dehumanised and often also died, under the punches of what is supposed to be love.” – Nadine Trintignant, Marie Trintignant (2022)

In 2003, the French actress Marie Trintignant died in a coma having been grievously assaulted by her boyfriend. She was 41. In tribute, her mother, the director Nadine Trintignant, composed a documentary about her daughter, broadcast on ARTE in January this year. The timing was apposite: around the same time, German singer-songwriter Lotte released ‘So wie ich’ (‘Like me’, 2022), a single exploring her own experience of domestic abuse. 

Speaking to SLEEK, the singer describes discovering a voice note she’d forgotten about that she recorded after she was attacked. “He was so aggressive, he nearly beat me up to death,” she says. “I don’t know. I felt so helpless, small and weak.” 

Here, SLEEK editor Anja Prinz pens a letter to Lotte examining her own personal reaction to this song as well as Nadine Trignant’s recent film, reflecting on the topic of violence against women that unites these two artworks.

Dearest Lotte,

When I first saw her portrait, I didn’t know Marie Trintignant’s story, but I felt drawn to the photograph announcing her mother’s documentary. Yet, after the first four minutes of watching it, I felt so ashamed of its superficiality. Conversely, after watching the first few seconds of your music video to ‘So wie ich’, I felt I could see Marie’s face and the words of her mother every time you moved your lips. 

Your story and Marie’s are two out of the millions of women worldwide who experience brutal violence every day. Two stories which became public property, with all of their weight and power. What has this brutality done to you? You survived the nightmare and the following trauma. You’ve worked on yourself, your trauma and your anxiety. Marie died.

You say yourself that you haven’t found your way out of this yet. It’s all in the lyrics of your song. You wrote it in one day when the anger was rising up inside you. As it reached boiling point, it became so powerful you couldn’t deal with it. I’m also familiar with the feeling of being trapped. This feeling was unfamiliar to you. And then it came over you. Perhaps this was a reaction to your shame, your inability to defend yourself, and the feeling of weakness and vulnerability. It was boiling up so much that you felt like you had to beat something in order to be okay again. Your anger needed an outlet. I think of Nadine, Marie’s mother, whose anger and grief probably reached the same stage as yours at some point.

All that was the basic emotion for this, your song. Added to it was incomprehension and disgust for your attacker. For you, ignoring a ‘no’ has never been an option; but that night, your ‘no’s’ were disrespected multiple times. When you were exposed to violence, this man didn’t just hurt your body and soul, he damaged your ability to trust, your inner light, your freedom. You are aware that, in our world, everyone eventually shows their true colours. Until recently, you were seeking understanding and an explanation. And then you put all of those powerful unanswered questions in your lyrics. You had to get them out: out of your head, out of your system. As you said to me about the writing process, the words were screaming at each other. It took a long time to find the right music to match these words. I can sense your creative process. And I can feel that this time it wasn’t just about the artistic purpose, it was about everything. You said, at the beginning, everything had to be loud and harder. Visually, you wanted to construct an armoured tank that would protect you, make you strong and invulnerable. You were so surprised when that did not work out. Musically, the song makes you feel the exact opposite. Your voice carries small, fragile fragments through each line. And there you stand, in the music video, and I realise that you arrived at this exact point in your life right now. I can see how vulnerable you are from grief and weakness, yet still unbroken and still with your faith. You are strong enough to face yourself. It can’t get any more real than that.

Your songs, your lyrics, are your fuel. And the love you carry, you say without it you’d be empty. I am not surprised that we are talking about love. I can sense that we have a similar understanding of the term. For you, love is a big spiritual term, because it communicates an idea of our existence on this planet. You smile when you describe that love is in the small details of life. In that lies the definition of luck, you say. For you, love goes hand in hand with courage. You are brave and very warm, Lotte.

How are you getting over this? There is a minefield inside of you, you say. Anxiety and experience are facing hope and your warm naivety. You want to be naïve forever, you quickly add. You want to be a part of a new story and one day fall into a new relationship. After what happened to you, you try, like a lioness, to separate love from what happened that night. To me, it seems like you won’t let the love go, you are standing tall in front of it, protecting it, while trying to stay in control of this feeling. What happened to you is about possession, ego and power. Violence has nothing to do with love. You are still recovering, not yet liberated. If someone tries to possess you, to control you, sometimes it’s hard to back out. In this case, your anxiety wins. It is the type of fear that stops you from being free and leaves your throat dry. 

You realise and understand very clearly that you will learn how to tell this story. Sharing it in public was something you had to think through. You don’t want to be seen as the victim or the singer who experienced sexual violence. You decided to share this story, but not to let it overwhelm you. I am here and I am more than this experience, you scream. I am writing this sentence down for you. I am your supporter. If you can’t overcome your feelings of shame, sadness and anger, how will others who share the same story do it? You put yourself out there, you are loud, and you take responsibility – for love.

The German singer-songwriter Lotte is one of the most important artists of her generation. Currently living in Berlin, in her lyrics and songs the Ravensburg native appears strong and fragile at the same time. Influenced by personal experiences, she deals with topics including depression, relationship problems, family and religion – as well as abuse, fear and other demons. She is signed to Columbia Records, Germany. 

As featured in SLEEK 72 – LOVE. Available in Print or Digital here.