We were lucky to catch up with Luna Windust recently and have shared our conversation below.

Luna, appreciate you joining us today. Do you think your parents have had a meaningful impact on you and your journey?

I was very lucky as a child in that my parents did an incredible job at fostering my creativity both as an artist and a performer. My father, as a hobbyist musician, comic creator, and driveway tinker, and my mother, as a screenwriter, drama teacher, and extraordinary collage artist (although she would never publicly admit to it), both in their own ways created environments where creative play and imagination were accessible. Although the back-and-forth between their respective homes for joint custody was in many ways chaotic and unstable, it also led to an incredible variety of activities that would not have been possible for me only living in one home. At my Dad’s there were painting supplies, all manner of musical instruments, recording equipment, and a sewing machine. Frequenting the high school drama department my mom ran, I had access to costumes, hot glue guns, scraps of this and that and hours and hours of time to spend creating all sorts of little sculptures and doodads.
Both my parents had very specific must-haves in regards to my artistic education: for my father, this came in the form of teaching drawing fundamentals, perspective, shading, and color theory, and 3D design. For my mother, art camps, dance lessons, voice lessons, and youth theatre were in order. As I grew and my interests deepened this background formed an incredible foundation for me to specialize and take on more intense projects. Costume design and musical theatre became competition items, and music production and songwriting became my favorite midnight hobby. My mom made sure I got voice lessons weekly, and supported me in going to California State Summer School for the Arts, where I discovered my love for classical voice.
With all this creativity, it might be unsurprising to learn that I was not a very good student. School was less hard and more arduous, isolating, and in some ways traumatic. Despite this, my parents never restricted my access to creativity, and although it was sometimes a struggle, they ultimately embraced me for who I was.
The impact of their unwavering support has led me to be able to carry my creativity through into my adulthood, and never lose the childlike joy and healing that art has the capacity to create for all people.

Luna, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

A fellow creative friend once described to me what they called the “Quilt of Income”. It was an apt description for the oddball way that many creators and artists create a living: a tapestry of gigs, side hustles, day jobs and other assorted activities that conglomerate into some sort of income.
As I’ve begun to sew my own tapestry of income, the things that sustain me have been often surprising.
I work both professionally and as a volunteer in an odd assortment of areas: music, tarot, childcare, audio engineering, social media management, and most recently, acting work in the form of doing murder mystery parties for the Murder Mystery Company. Each of these little hustles is rewarding and engaging in its own way, although some have my heart more than others.
Music is one of my favorite things I do, but also probably one of the least profitable career paths I could have chosen to pursue. Writing, recording, and producing fill my soul. Performing by myself and with other musicians, especially those in my choir and the incredible talents I work with in the Queer Jam Collective, is transcendent and truly magical. The humanity that vocal music invokes is what makes it one of my favorite types of project to work on. Finding myself as Luna Windust has been a deeply personal journey: growing up with my theatre and classical background, I was trained to sing and perform other people’s work as other people’s characters in a very specific way. Singing my own work as myself was a challenging but freeing revelation that has forced me to examine myself not just as a performer, but as a soul. Writing and producing music about my own experience has been a balm during the hardest times of life, and continues to be the way I self soothe and self reflect, but it is also incredibly labor intensive, time consuming, and expensive as an undertaking. My most recent project, The Temple of You, which came out on all platforms on October 31st, took 5 years to create and perfect to a point where it was releasable. Working with a song I wrote at 18 as an older, wiser, 20 something was a difficult, but very gratifying journey that I hope to continue my way through as I record more of my writings. The Temple of You and my other works are findable on my website, lunawindust.com
My journey as a performer and a tarot reader are oddly, quite linked. Both were maternally passed family traditions, and things that were part of my consciousness from the time I was a small child. Tarot reading, of course, is not acting, but both require an intuitive understanding of people, the power to channel something beyond yourself, and the ability to deeply listen.
This particular set of skills was very advantageous to me in my time as a historic mansion tour guide. Knowing the tour group, the energy of the day, even the way the house was feeling were critical to success in my day job. At night, parties with my coworkers afforded me the unique opportunity to develop my party trick: raw, intuitive, slightly messy tarot readings.
The strange thing about doing slapdash readings for friends and coworkers is that very quickly I became good. Like really, really good. It got to a point where friends began asking me to pull cards for them outside of work for serious issues, which I was happy to do, if slightly puzzled by.
It wasn’t until I moved to Oregon that I was discovered by a local psychic and began to read professionally. Although my age sometimes works against me as a metaphysician, my work as no-nonsense, truly intuitive reader has earned my a strong local clientele base and a rising reputation.
My most “day job” like income source is my work with the Murder Mystery Company as an Immersioneer. My mom always said “If you can be anything else, don’t be an actor” and I of course took that to heart as it turns out I truly can’t be anything else ( I tried, I swear). The nature of my work with MMC allows me to perform all sorts of roles for all sorts of people, flex my improv and crowd work skills, and work with an incredible community of other performers.
In my spare time, I sing with(and sometimes guest conduct) the choir at the church I do AV work at, where I also provide the venue for the Queer Jam Collective’s weekly jam. I came into Queer Jam during a really difficult transition period, and being in community and collaboration with other queer musicians has been deeply healing for me. I am incredibly proud to play a small part in the creation of these communal safe spaces and hope to continue this work as long as it will have me.

How can we best help foster a strong, supportive environment for artists and creatives?

I believe that we as a society need to reorient ourselves towards the prioritization of the arts again. From the clothes we wear, to the furniture we sit on, the buildings we live in, the music we listen to and the media we consume, the things around us only exist because of creativity and creative thought. With the greigification of our society, we’ve begun to turn away from beauty in ordinary places in favor of inoffensiveness and neutrality in our spaces and in setting out to please everyone, we’ve pleased no one. I mourn the loss of nuance and intricacy in our every day lives, and hope we can work together to restore the value we place on beauty for the sake of beauty.
If you want to keep art alive, look on your street. Your local singers, painters, artisans and creatives in your community are the people to support. You might make some friends along the way, too.

We often hear about learning lessons – but just as important is unlearning lessons. Have you ever had to unlearn a lesson?

The biggest thing I’ve had to unlearn is people pleasing.
Growing up with my strong performance background and familial ties, decorum, and other little hidden societal rules were drilled into me to a point where I was constantly afraid of embarrassment.
As it turns out, there is no such thing as “too big” or “too weird” or any other descriptor like that to art.
Art does not exist to placate you, it is there to make you feel something and there will always, always be someone who resonates with your message if you give it authentically.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://lunawindust.com
• Instagram: @literallytheentiremoon
• Facebook: Luna Windust
• Other: Spotify: Luna Windust