And sometimes when I'm falling flying or tumbling in turmoil I say whoa so this is what she means, she means we're bouncing into Graceland. I’m not really sure what Paul Simon meant by bouncing into Graceland, and from what I’ve read he didn’t exactly know either, but the flying and the tumbling in turmoil I understand. It has been over a month since I last wrote and this month, even more than the last, has been the biggest freefalling, flying, tumbling month I’ve probably had in my entire life. Disorientation, depression, self-alienation. Conviction, lost then found, lost again… Motivation found on the ground, on a walk or on the way to work, in very small golden morsels, only to be picked up and then immediately dropped, slipped through my fingers.
Yet I don’t feel that I can productively write more about the freefall than to simply say that it happened, and that it still continues to happen to a certain extent. There is nothing to be said without it seeming cliché and solipsistic. The truth. I suffer existential crises like everyone else. We wake up in the morning, confronted by all the possibilities, all the contingencies of our existence. And worst and best of all, we are confronted by our ability to choose what to do. Out of all the options, the projects, the friends, the books, the podcasts, the degrees, the papers, the closets to be cleaned, the trip to plan, the jobs to be applied for and considered… And, ringing in our ears, “No excuses” (“..no exit..” a distant echo), “Responsibility” “Freedom” and other Sartrean banner slogans. Or perhaps it takes a more 1980’s EST motivational training tone, “take responsibility for your actions” or “only you can create your personal transformation!” And it is in this state of choice and responsibility that I have been lingering, stuck, aware of my responsibility, my freedom, my lack of excuses, yet not being able to choose. Not being able to say, “Yes! This is the project I endorse!”
There is so much more to be said about how much this state of not choosing sucks, how emotionally and physically and socially draining it is, depressing. But I wont go there now, because in all likelihood, you, dear reader friend, if you are indeed one of my friends, angsty as you probably are if you are one of my friends, already know. And I have no real complaints after all, right? No real wars to wage, babies to feed, conflicts to negotiate, essential problems to solve. No, just me and my own internal conflicts and blockages. Spoiled and comatose, you SELF-CENTERED BITCH!!!! I console myself somewhat with the words of people I meet. A guy at my last show: “Yeah, the first year after college totally kicked my ass.” Yeah, totally getting my ass kicked, but in the most pansy childish way to get one’s ass kicked. It just goes back to overeducation, and holy jesus that’s a hard sickness to conquer.
As I was writing my thesis I concluded that I wanted to be a female music artist who broke a whole host of stereotypes about women who play music. I wanted to have my own band (instead of being a tool for someone else’s), play an instrument (instead of just singing), write my own music (instead of performing someone else’s), and produce myself (instead of going into some studio as a half-decent singer songwriter and have some dude with fancy equipment make me sound like I don’t suck). I feel like I am living up to most of these ideals I set forth for myself, but I still have my uneasy feelings about how the album is getting produced. Matt is the producer of this album, no doubt. He knows more about mixing than I do (or, more importantly, cares to know more about it) and has a much better ear for all things mix-related. Reverb, delay, compression, EQ, staging. These are elements of music I can hear if I bring my attention to them, but they are not what I primarily pay attention to. I think about the song structure, the arrangements, the harmonies, and now, more than I used to, the lyrics. But those other elements of production are certainly all elements of music that I understand. After taking electronic music last year, building my own synthesizers from scratch, applying envelopes and filters to these synthesizers using Reaktor, I get it. But I definitely don’t get industry standards. The “expected” amounts of reverb and compression on industry quality albums. To me this all seems to historically arbitrary—it’s not really about the music, just about priming the music, dressing it up in a way that is palatable to a contemporary audience. Kind of like how Schoenberg started to introduce atonality in the language of romantic music. So perhaps catering to industry standards when it comes to reverb is my historically contingent version of Schoenberg presenting atonality in the compositional language of Brahms?! It was worth a shot….
Nevertheless, I still have moments where I feel like the typical female artist, being emotional, tapping into her creative inner self to create art, haphazardly putting it together with the available technology, while the man, the producer, comes in and “makes it sound good.” When I think of it this way all of my feminist anger boils over and I don’t feel like doing anything, and I get angry at Matt. Yesterday I even hit him, much harder than I had expected to, half joking half seriously. Matt doesn’t always help, because for the most part he sees it like this as well. Of course, for him it’s not a matter of gender. He just thinks that it would be difficult for any artist, male or female, to try to compose, arrange, record AND mix his own music, and do all aspects well. Having someone else there to make the mixes of your creative babies is just a plain old good idea. And Matt is really good at it, so I really need to let go of my angst and anger for the time being.
Still, these feelings are there and I acknowledge that. And the only way I can think to remedy them is to perhaps take on a song on the album to fully produce myself. And then to console myself with the prospect of producing another artist in the future—someone else who is just getting started who needs a third party listener to rework the tracks.
This past week we’ve had another drummer in the studio, and his energy and style are really refreshing and enjoyable. Still, seeing the way he and Matt interact, friends, collaborators, getting excited about making music together, makes me miss having female artists to collaborate with. Not that I don’t feel that I can have this relationship with men, it’s just not at readily comfortable. I definitely felt comfortable with the guys in The Done For, and with Aaron. Perhaps the sex jokes have something to do with that. There’s really no way to avoid the ‘your mom’ jokes when it comes to “trying out a couple different positions” with the mics. COME ON dudes!!! I can’t help but turn into a bitch around that, defensive and equally abrasive.
In another arena, I have been slowly but surely revising my thesis for the Music and the Arts in Action journal. For a long time I didn’t want to think about it at all because I was so burned out on my thesis, but finally one of the editors contacted me and asked if I was still interested in and planning on resubmitting my revisions. As I rethink my ideas, I realize how much more there is to explore in the topic and how underdeveloped some of my ideas were. Or at least, how limited they were by the initial theory I decided to use. One of the biggest comments from the editors about my paper was that I talk exclusively about musical knowledge as cultural capital, (which informs social status, power, etc.) but very little about the technicalities of the music itself. Does gender in music have a sonic component? If so, what is it?
The truth is that I didn’t go into this element because it’s kind of a touchy topic for me. If a potential interviewee for my study played an instrument in a rock band, according to my definition of a rock band (more than one person, amplified instruments, usually a drummer etc.), then she counted as being a more or less successful participant in local level rock music making and qualified for the study. But the fact of the matter is that I really didn’t like the music most of these women made, and that in most cases they weren’t as good as their male counterparts—their music was simpler and they didn’t play as well. Some of them were really awesome and I genuinely liked their music, but for the most part, yes, I have to admit it, I didn’t! Of course, I attribute this to a number of factors, like less playing time and fewer people to practice with. Women for the most part started playing in their early twenties, instead of their early teens, and had very little encouragement for all the reasons I illuminate in my thesis…. Still! There’s the reason, out on the table.
As I play more music with other people and as I slowly turn my gaze towards my project in Peru, I realize that I do want to incorporate more music analysis. But that is then and this is now. I might consider submitting the current article to a different journal if MAiA insists on more music analysis. Something like Socioanthrpology, Ethnomusicology, or the Journal of Popular Music.
I leave now to work on my newest song, Rabbit Hole, which incorporates the original string quartet audio recording of my piece Rebel Princess. Not really sure how the orchestration for this part is going to work out, but I have the inclination to record some of my own drum parts… so, I now set to work…
