Moby has responded to Lana Del Rey‘s claim that he has “a mind like a steel trap” after he recalled a date between the pair in his memoir.
In 2019, Moby shared the revelation that he once dated Lana Del Rey pre-fame in his memoir Then It Fell Apart.
The excerpt detailed a brief romance, revealing that the pair had their first date at a vegan restaurant in 2006. Moby said his evening with Del Rey – known then as Lizzy Grant – concluded with the singer visiting his five-floor New York penthouse where they shared a kiss.
“She was beautiful, smart, and charming,” he wrote of the ‘Summertime Sadness’ singer.
In a subsequent interview with The New York Times, Del Rey confirmed that the pair had indeed been on a date, sharing: “I don’t know how he [expletive] remembers. He must have a mind like a steel trap. I don’t even remember what was going on. I think I was a backup singer and I was opening for people and yeah, we went on a date.”
Now, Moby has responded to Del Rey’s observation about his sharp memory. Asked in a recent interview with Stereogum how having a good memory can affect his life, the artist shared: “When it comes to writing memoirs, I’m pretty adept at remembering scenes and building an environment. It’s a tool I learned where you start with one thing and build out. If you can remember the shoes you were wearing, then you think, “What pants was I wearing? What did the light look like? What was the furniture like?” Immediately, it’s like a mnemonic cascade.”
He continued, however, that he’s not sure if memory is “true or not”, adding: “There’s so many studies that have been done on memory, and as we all know, memory is very fallible. That’s why eyewitness testimony is almost always discounted.”
The ‘Porcelain’ artist added that he “presumptuously” believes he remembers things “pretty well” but if “some objective divine entity came down and said, ‘No, everything you’ve remembered is wrong,’ what are you going to do? Memory is, by definition, subjective.”
He went on: “There’s almost no way to prove or disprove it — even if there’s evidence, especially now that evidence can be manipulated. So I like to think that my memory is pretty good, but if it turns out it’s not, I won’t lose too much sleep over it.”
Moby previously claimed that he once dated Natalie Portman, which she denied. In a statement, she said: “I was surprised to hear that he characterised the very short time that I knew him as dating because my recollection is a much older man being creepy with me when I just had graduated high school.”
Moby subsequently responded to her refutal in the an Instagram post, writing: “I recently read a gossip piece wherein Natalie Portman said that we’d never dated,” he captioned an old photo of the pair. “This confused me, as we did, in fact, date. And after briefly dating in 1999 we remained friends for years.”
However, he later wrote a public apology “to Natalie, as well as the other people I wrote about in Then It Fell Apart without telling them beforehand.”
“I have a lot of admiration for Natalie, for her intelligence, creativity, and animal rights activism, and I hate that I might have caused her and her family distress,” Moby said of the actor.
He continued: “Also I accept that given the dynamic of our almost 14 year age difference I absolutely should’ve acted more responsibly and respectfully when Natalie and I first met almost 20 years ago.”
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