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Part 2

Over the course of your development, what have been your most important instruments and tools - and what are the most promising strategies for working with them?

The most important instruments and tools I have are the ones that I have created myself or are a part of me.

My voice I have developed through practice and dedication to singing. I have programmed a variety of different performance tools in the visual coding program MaxMSP which I almost exclusively use for live performance. Building a patch from scratch helps me focus on exactly what I want to do, it helps my original intention shine and to really experiment.

I also recycle a lot of things I have already made and combine them with others to build into something bigger. Live voice and electronics is my most fruitful and harmonious pairing of instruments.

Take us through a day in your life, from a possible morning routine through to your work, please.

I like routines that have a lot of variety to them. I have a hard time doing the same thing every day, except when I’m on tour doing the same thing every day but in a different place.

A good day for me would have some of the following: a cup of tea, a simple breakfast, time alone outside in the sun, solitary time in bed, listening to one new thing I have never heard before, wearing headphones while sunlight pours in the windows, singing, snacks, time to write lyrics and music ideas and to review previous ideas, time with my love Joel, time with my friends that I love, time with my family, minimal distraction from what I am working on, one sort of practical errand or work thing I have to accomplish, time spent in or near water, delicious food, and time to work on music late into the night.

Every day I am seeking to find that precious window of time where I am in tune with my creativity, feeling curious and wistful, and able to find inspiration.

Could you describe your creative process on the basis of a piece, live performance or album that’s particularly dear to you, please?

I always have to dream about each project for a while, but not too long or I might never do it. I will describe my creative process in building my MFA Thesis Performance.

I first tried to work out as many of the technical aspects of the electronics as possible, like coding the Max patches and constructing a bodysuit and wiring it up with sensors. I like any practical aspects to be as flushed out as possible before I create otherwise they can be a block for me. Then I sorted through the different journals of writing I had done recently, and elaborated on the best ideas. I would sing different melodies while sitting at a piano, which helps me to be able to translate the melody to a different instrument to hear how it sounds.

Words start to fit into the melodies, mostly effortlessly, but there are always parts that are painful to figure out. The melodic content and processing informs the electronics, which then need to be tweaked and adjusted.

I need to rest a lot when I am working on something, I need to take a lot of breaks and come back to it. I like falling asleep, waking up and then knowing what I need to fix. I work in short bursts. I procrastinate a lot unintentionally, I think the pressure of a deadline makes my anxiety produce my best creative output.

I finished the three pieces of my thesis performance in the week before the show. I was working on it continuously of course, small bits at a time, and got everything set up months before so all I needed to do was to channel some intuitive fluidity into each piece. The transitions and the gestures all came together at the last minute. I had to fail a lot while I was making it, and then just move on and try a new thing.

There were so many ideas and patches I made for that performance that didn’t get used, but that now have worked their way into other new things I am making.

Listening can be both a solitary and a communal activity. Likewise, creating music can be private or collaborative. Can you talk about your preferences in this regard and how these constellations influence creative results?

My most meaningful listening time is a solitary act, though I have had some really special moments in my life just listening to music with one or two other people in a quiet intentional listening setting, where we can talk about what we are hearing to each other in the same space and get excited about it. Listening to music in the car on tour with others has been a favorite place to listen to music and hear what my friends are listening to.

Like I said earlier, I mostly create music on my own, yet I am very open to collaboration and bringing others into my vision or into making something on more equal footing. Collaborating can be hard for me sometimes because I trust my own original vision and intention so much that it can be hard to deviate from it, but it is fun to let go of some of my rigidness and let it be something new and beautiful that I couldn’t make on my own.

Trusting in someone else’s vision and letting it become a part of my own private world of creating is really special.

How do your work and your creativity relate to the world and what is the role of music in society?

My work and creativity are just a very small drop of water in an ocean, but it feels like one string that is resonating out and vibrating others.

My music feels like it mostly exists within a community of like minded musicians, and yet maybe it has also reached other people with its small ripple. I want to make music for myself and for anyone who will be moved by it. Music brings people together, it creates community, it unites us. I hope that I am able to bring some love, understanding, and compassion to others with my music.

Art can be a way of dealing with the big topics in life: Life, loss, death, love, pain, and many more. In which way and on which occasions has music – both your own or that of others - contributed to your understanding of these questions?

I wrote a song called, "Everything is New" when I was 19, that sometimes shocks me upon hindsight with its simple wisdom and realization of carpe diem. I remember someone in Paris interviewing me about that song, and I think I was too young and naive to really have a good answer to her question. I wrote that song completely intuitively, I was just processing a moment in my life. But now I think, how did young me know that I would need this song now as I am 32 and needing a reminder to stay present in my life and not take anything for granted?

I think that in writing a piece of music that is attempting to process these big topics in life as we go through them will always deeply contribute to their meaning and my personal relationship to them. I always end up making something that resonates with me at different points in my life and in different ways. The songs I’ve written about love help me build upon what my ever changing idea of love is. My songs about grief and death help me accept what feels unacceptable.

Of course there are many artists who have also helped contribute to my understanding of these big life pillars but I think my own work will always cut me the deepest because of the intense process I have to go through to heal myself.

There seems to be increasing interest in a functional, “rational” and scientific approach to music. How do you see the connection between music and science and what can these two fields reveal about each other?

I think science can help us find new ways of making and performing music, whether that is from increased knowledge and access to music technology or by increasing accessibility to music for all people.

To me music and creativity reveals that there is still so much we don’t know and understand about our world and universe, science tries to explain why things are, but no amount of explaining can fully explain why some music and art moves us the way it does.

I think some things are meant to be unknown, and trying to have all the answers feels a bit egotistical.

Creativity can reach many different corners of our lives. Do you feel as though writing or performing a piece of music is inherently different from something like making a great cup of coffee? What do you express through music that you couldn’t or wouldn’t in more mundane tasks?

I think for me that writing or performing a piece of music is different from anything else I creatively know how to do. It is accessing a creative part of myself that isn’t present in anything else I take part in. I like to take part in other creative outlets, like making videos and sewing but I can’t even fathom how I could express myself the way I do with music. It just doesn’t come as naturally.

In a more mundane task, like making myself dinner, I do it with care and creativity, but it isn’t sound, it is engaging different senses primarily. I am mostly interested in sound, I do not really know how to express myself in any other way.

Music is vibration in the air, captured by our ear drums. From your perspective as a creator and listener, do you have an explanation how it is able to transmit such diverse and potentially deep messages?

Music is magic, sound is magic, it is tied to something unknown and beyond our full comprehension as humans. It helps us find peace and meaning in being alive in a world and reality that can at times be so cruel and bleak.


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