As an album, Bloom is full of references to flowers and fruit, metaphors for abundance and growth. But because these things are fleeting, it evokes mortality, too — even a sense of urgency. Listening to it reminded made me think of Boy Erased, and of how so many queer youth don’t get to experience their youth because of homo- and transphobia. As a queer person, do you think you have a different relationship to time than straight people do?

Before coming out, I remember distinctly feeling like there was a delay on my life. All my friends were doing just dumb stuff that kids do, like making out with people at parties and starting to date, and just, you know, getting their first girlfriend or boyfriend. When we went on leavers (the Australian equivalent of spring break where kids just get messy) I remember feeling ashamed that I just couldn’t feel like I could take part in any of that. I remember everyone was getting hickies, and I pulled my best friend, who’s a girl, into a room and told her that I was devastated because everyone was having all these romantic and sexual experiences for the first time, and I just felt like I was sitting this one out, waiting for something. I was waiting to come out or waiting to find a community of people who were like me. I didn’t know any gay people growing up or any queer people growing up, and so I just really felt alone and kind of lost, and I just wasn’t experiencing life.

She was so sweet and gave me a hickey on my neck so I could show it off a little bit to everyone else. It made me feel a little bit better, and also made me feel depressed for myself. And that’s a really real experience, I’m sure, for a lot of queer people. You know, maybe you just wanna take part and feel like a person, and you crave all the things that everyone else craves — community and friendship and kinship and love — when you’re young and queer. It’s really hard to find those things and it really makes you feel lost.

I feel like that sense of untimeliness is what gives the album that urgency. You’ve said before that Bloom is a love album, and so while on the one hand it’s very joyful and sexy and personal, I also get the feeling that because you’re coming from this different timeline, it’s also very political. Do you feel that way?

Maybe I do feel extra joyous and extra liberated that I’ve found the things I’ve found. My parents have been married for 27 years, and that’s my model in my head. They’re more in love than ever. I look to them as a kind of example of one type of a really healthy, happy relationship, and that’s something I’ve always wanted to find for myself. Growing up, I had no idea where I could even begin to find something like that. Now, to be 23, maybe it’s a little weird to be experiencing these things for the first time, maybe it’s not. I just felt excited to finally be getting the experience of crazy, unabashed love that I’ve always wanted to know and feel. I just wanted to take a second to celebrate that and document it a little bit for myself, so I can look back on it in the future and say, “Wow, I remember exactly how that felt.”

It’s like a time capsule. Even though you’re still quite young — you’ve accomplished a lot already — there’s also a lot ahead of you, too. As you’re becoming more established as an actor, do you see your acting becoming as important as your music?