The setting was about as unorthodox and unique as the woman.
Standing on a sidewalk in Koreatown, Rosa Goudsmit, 42, was watching her two baby children, Benjamin and Devrah, who fell asleep in the front seat of her Chevy 3500 truck, which she uses to safely transport bees—yes, bees.
The Dutch native was planning on coming up to the Jewish Journal’s office to chat about the year-and-a-half in which singer-songwriter Kimbra Lee Johnson, known as Kimbra, lived with her while she wrote and recorded demos of her newest album, ” target=”_blank”>Consequence of Sound that after the 2013 Grammy Awards, she needed a place without “too much stimulus” to write her new album. In Goudsmit’s words, Kimbra needed the laid back environment to “stomach the idea of living in L.A.”
Next thing, Goudsmit had a rising pop star in her house, writing and recording songs for her newest album, feeding her chickens, meditating and doing yoga in the backyard, and occasionally getting locked out of the house at night when Goudsmit forgot that her young housemate, unlike her, stayed awake past nightfall.
“She was fantastic,” Goudsmit said, noting that, unlike the caricatured pop star, Kimbra, who moved out a few months ago, was “considerate,” “very healthy” and “sane.”
Respecting her former housemate’s privacy, Goudsmit related just one story in which Ramses, Goudsmit’s “ram of the flock,” chased the pop star around the farm.
“He somehow got out of his area one day,” she wrote in a follow-up email. “He found his way into Kimbra’s outdoor cooking area while she was preparing herself lunch.”
After taking a selfie with Ramses, Goudsmit said, he became wild and chased Kimbra through the yard. “She looked like roadrunner,” Goudsmit wrote. “Her speed was spectacular! I didn’t know it was even possible to run this fast on these high platform shoes she always wears.”
More news and opinions than at a Shabbat dinner, right in your inbox.