Conatus

In early philosophies of psychology and metaphysics, conatus (/koʊˈneɪtəs/;Latin for "effort; endeavor; impulse, inclination, tendency; undertaking; striving") is an innate inclination of a thing to continue to exist and enhance itself. This "thing" may be mind, matter or a combination of both. Over the millennia, many different definitions and treatments have been formulated. Seventeenth-century philosophers René Descartes, Baruch Spinoza, Gottfried Leibniz, and Thomas Hobbes made important contributions. The conatus may refer to the instinctive "will to live" of living organisms or to various metaphysical theories of motion and inertia. Often the concept is associated with God's will in a pantheist view of Nature. The concept may be broken up into separate definitions for the mind and body and split when discussing centrifugal force and inertia.

Conatus (album)

Conatus is the third studio album by American recording artist Zola Jesus, released in the United Kingdom on September 26, 2011 and in the United States on October 4 by Sacred Bones Records. The album was produced by Brian "Nudge" Foote (Jackie-O Motherfucker, Cloudland Canyon) and Nika Roza Danilova herself.

Background

Several critics noticed that the new album sounds different from Zola Jesus' earlier works. "I just wanted to try out new ways to produce and different ways to write. And with this new record it's a lot more stripped down and there are way more acoustic elements as opposed to no acoustic elements. [...] I just wanted more breathing room, so people could insert their own experiences into the song, their own feelings into the song, as opposed to me forcing it on them with the densest sound possible", Danilova explained. Speaking to Prefix Magazine after her performance at the Pitchfork Music Festival, she said she wanted the album to be a step forward. "[I]n doing that, there was so, so much trial and error and so much quitting music at the end of the day", she admitted. Danilova said that the title of the album (meaning "moving forward" in Latin) appeared before the work on it began. "I had it in mind beforehand because I knew that's what I was going through even before I sat down to work on the record, I was already going through that emotional process of trying to push myself", she said.