Preamble

I am always a touch apprehensive when sharing thoughts through music, even more so when crafting program notes; I rarely speak on topics currently stirring me. What I am hoping for by starting this “thoughts” series is a small, but critical change in my engagement with sound: a shift away from a type of recluse. What I must disclose: these writings are intended as little homes for my current thoughts, and are subject to change. Things I say now may have changed tenfold by the time they reach someone else’s screen, and could be revised many times afterwards. Humans are fluid; I am not trying to solidify anything permanently, but my ideas often slip me just as they materialize. I want to be able to return to my rumination, not feel pressured to deliver, and still offer others a chance to peek in or identify if they desire. Expect these little homes to be renovated regularly.

Toiling, Hiding

Although I may allude to it, music reached to me on a whim. Up until the age of 18, I wanted to be a chemist. Somewhere, there was a grand shift. Only midway into my first degree in performance did I engage with composition on necessity of focal dystonia, which halted my career in performance; this was not long ago. My correspondence with music is tinged by years of scientific thought; only recently have I come to terms with an internal tug-of-war defining my sonic beginnings.

Like many artists, I pass through phases of experimentation, guided by my life outside of music—everything is a bit connected to everything else, is it not? We call upon our past when forced to confront our future, and our immediate environment colours—yet does not completely dictate—our trajectory.

Over recent years, I have struggled with musical agency and identity. Around four years ago, I left home, and began to gravitate towards noisier and noisier sounds; I fell back in love with process, just as I remember in the laboratory. Sound first became an object; then so did space, and finally so did time. At some point, lines between these concepts blurred leaving behind one viscous mass, but I digress…a topic for a different thought. Anyways, the sounds I previously loved were—and perhaps continue to be—pushed repeatedly through what I consider a permeable wall; only a few sounds carry from work to work, and what makes it through is regularly missing a limb or two. In fact, I hide a little speck of the previously-used in the current.

What I noticed: I kept returning to a few, persistent sounds. These sounds were dressed in the same clothes, maybe even functioning in the same vein. Despite being diverse, each was defined by a specific proportion: ~35% clarity, ~65% noise. This is where I felt most comfortable. I was enamoured by the obscure—with secrecy. When I would wrestle with my mediums, I knew well and could count on these sounds. I could quietly fill these little vessels without anyone knowing; I could settle into the solace.

I was never a fan of dualism in music. Something about being explicit was unsettling, and I preferred to work with the notion of an amorphous spectrum, where qualities rest in transition. I favoured precise, non-medial zones between extremes, compelling an attribution with “everyday” sounds.

Where you, the reader, reside in this current moment, do you notice the hum of your refrigerator, the swishing and pulsing of blood through your temples, the buzz of your radiator, the street noise beyond your window, maybe even the faint hum of your neighbour’s AC unit through your walls? Perhaps now you do. I enjoyed when sounds seemed to shy away at first, manifesting only on account of an external, maybe unrelated stimulus—an invisible agent.

I was convinced the non-medial, murky aspect of my music could bypass immediate categorization in the psyche. Allow me to iterate: this was never merely about sound alone. Obscurity can reach well beyond the immediately tangible. And so, I was never really thinking “loud” versus “soft”, nor on the contrast of pitch with noise; I was crafting environments and timelines that did not strike on account of the extreme, but rather a seamless blending into their own often-ignored frame—the everyday.

I imagined that this “slipping-by” would shield me.

A Confrontation

Both a year ago, and only a few weeks earlier in October, I received related questions that forced deep, internal confrontation. The more recent arrived to me as deceivingly simple: “if someone put a bright major chord two minutes into one of your works, would you be angry or relieved?”

I was unsure how to answer, and so I left it be. It remained buzzing muffledly in the background, before I was forced to revisit it while writing melt//thaw.

Frankly, it was the question I needed to hear—very thoughtfully crafted at that. Just how I preferred sound: blurry enough to zip right by on first encounter; and zip it did.

The answer is: four years ago, I would have been furious to have burnt through my veil of safe obscurity with something as clear as a major chord. The legs of my sound worlds would have been broken, and I would have to come up out of the noise that previously cloaked. As said, this noise was not always sonic in character.

You know when you want to say something but not really say it? That major chord would be shrieking, and I wanted to scurry past my listener muttering something while in a crowd. Not a scream, nor a whisper; nothing at all conspicuous.

It all comes down to a fear of being seen. There was a certain vulnerability I was avoiding in hopes of escaping an obligation to defend. Put everything in sight, but not close enough to pick apart the details one by one. Hide behind your sound. And I had good reason to hide—sometimes it was necessary.

My approach has since shifted. That said, I have earlier suspected a subtle residue of this thinking in my current principles; was there a deep-seated dread of vulnerability that continued to stain my decisions? Such is not to say my love for ambiguity need end, but I feel compelled to question it. There is an art to mystery. I believe one’s sound should speak for them without choking their inner agent. The two can collaborate symbiotically. Can I repurpose my aforementioned blurry proportions?

I enjoy sitting inside the cloud, and do not think for the current moment to be wholly explicit in my art, yet there is certainly more leeway than one may expect. There is room to move around. So why not explore, press up against the wall a bit?

I suppose this is the next adventure.

Wandering, Accepting

The October question opened up an old wound; I am perpetually trying to dance on the threshold without ever crossing it. There is undoubtedly more ground to cover. How can I skitter on this line while still being vulnerable, and how far is too far?

Suffice to say, sharing these words frightens the ever-loving hell out of me; but, I like to experiment, and why engage with art if you are not to embrace the raw, ache of it all. Art does not need to numb.