June 2023: Niefing and Norfing and Madly Scheming
Reshared from MailChimp from 20 Jun 2023
Dear friends,
Welcome to my newsletter, Marginal Notes! I’ve been quite busy since graduating from Haverford College in May. After coming home for a week, I went back to campus to work Alumni Weekend, which was fun. I especially enjoyed meeting older LGBTQ alums at the Rainbow Quorum Brunch. I even got featured in a display at the Haverford music library about alums involved in music! Here is the accompanying webpage for the display.
Then from June 1-13, I was in Knoxville, Tennessee for Nief-Norf Summer Festival, where I was a Composition Fellow. (Incidentally, this meant that I managed to escape the poor air quality that affected the Philly area for several days; we just had hot and humid days and some dustiness due to construction on the University of Tennessee campus.) My work freeing child, which uses a text score and is for variable instrumentation, was premiered there; you can watch a video of the performance (in which I played on piano) here. It asks performers who are adults to reflect upon their childhoods and to think about how they can contribute to the liberation and wellbeing of young people. My hope is for this work to be performed in various settings and by performers of varying musical backgrounds. I am working on preparing the score and other materials for wider distribution. In the meantime, if you are interested in being part of this project or know people who might, let me know!
Also at Nief-Norf, I got to perform my solo fluxing, quivering, transforming at the ‘Norf Space open-mic-style concert. (The work, which I premiered in my senior thesis recital, is a fusion of contemporary classical piano and performance art and narrates my intertwined journeys of gender identity and mental health). I even had a speaking part in José Gurría-Cardenas’ Bless Your Heart, which was written for the Nief-Norf faculty and performance fellows: I wrote and performed a poem that framed the beginning and end of the piece. I felt stressed at times at the festival, due to imposter syndrome and social and sensory overwhelm, none of which is surprising to me. In particular, I seem prone to impostery feelings whenever I perceive my background to be different from the norm, and at this festival I was the only person from a small liberal arts college that was not Oberlin (which is both a small liberal arts college and a music conservatory). Yet everyone there was super friendly and chill, even the Juilliard doctoral student, and they cheered me on even when I doubted myself. It was a safe and accepting group, particularly important as Tennessee as a whole has become dangerous for queer and especially trans people, having now explicitly defined gender in the law as assigned sex at birth. Several of us expressed the sentiment that, although the festival was awesome, we could not live in Tennessee.
By the way, Nief-Norf is named after a funky way of describing sounds associated with experimental music (similar to the phrase "bleep-bloop"). The range of sounds heard at the festival (and the types of notation used to express them) was astounding. During free time, I even got a cis man to "play" a tampon (another cis man mentioned that his friend had an idea about blowing into a tampon applicator like a whistle but did not feel comfortable writing such a piece because he was a cis man, so I took out a tampon from my backpack and told the guys to play it with my permission). As a person with sensitive hearing, I definitely have my limits with what sounds and sensations I can handle, but there are still so many musical possibilities for me to explore!
Tomorrow I’m heading off to Portland, Oregon to perform fluxing, quivering, transforming again at New Music Gathering! I attended this festival/conference hybrid in 2020 (one of the accidental perks of things going virtual early in the pandemic), and it was inspiring and full of amazingly creative and socially conscious people. So I’m excited to be there in person and attend some really cool concerts and presentations. Immediately after NMG, I’ll be in Kalamazoo, Michigan for a week of electronic music workshops at SPLICE Institute. I worry that I’ll over-exert myself socially and drain my energy with all of these activities! I have to remind myself to rest and that I can’t participate in everything.
I’ve been thinking a lot about how am I to navigate the world as a Mad and neurodivergent person who often functions differently than what society expects. Early this month, I had a personal essay published on Mad in America, a website that shares news articles, research summaries, essays, and art that offers critical perspectives on psychiatry and the mental healthcare system. “Reclaiming My Yin and Yang” narrates my journey of finding my own language for my experience of mental health difference, from my first attempts as a child to articulate who I was, to my relationship with psychiatric diagnosis, which for me is not an entirely satisfying method of understanding my experiences. I am proud of this essay, though initially I was freaked out by it being published and receiving hundreds of views within the first few days. It does not go into detail about specific instances of distress or crisis, and I was intentional about what I wanted to share, but it still feels weird for my story to be “out there” now. Nevertheless, it has stimulated some interesting discussion in the comments, and I encourage you to read it if you feel comfortable!
Related to this, I have recently joined the Campus Mental Health Coalition, which is a PCORI-funded project that seeks to identify research priorities on issues impacting college students with psychiatric disabilities. In particular, we’re focusing on the topics of on-campus crisis response, reintegration of students into the campus community following psychiatric hospitalization, and disability accommodations. The group consists of researchers, advocates, and current/recent college students with lived experience. The project culminates in a Mental Health Convening involving a larger group of stakeholders in September. It’s still in the early stages, so I’m looking forward to seeing how it develops.
Featured Creator
In each newsletter, I'm going to feature a creative person -- musician, artist, or otherwise -- whose work I think you should check out! I especially aim to spotlight those who are early in their careers and who are socially and/or ecologically conscious in their work.
This month's featured creator is Rain Michael! I met Rain at Nief-Norf, as they were a winner of the Nief-Norf International Call for Scores. Their work seeds to plant (in an unmarked grave), "for as many keyboardists as possible on as many keyboards as possible" (with "keyboard" meaning whatever you wish), was performed during the festival. A multi-instrumentalist performer and minimalist-leaning composer, Rain is an undergraduate student at University of Colorado Boulder studying music composition, psychology, linguistics, cognitive science, and biology with a focus on genetics. All of their interests influence the music they write, which often involves graphic or aleatoric scores that require performers to make creative decisions themselves. You can find Rain on Instagram @composerrain, and their website is www.composerrain.com.
I've got several more things coming up that I haven't mentioned in this newsletter. Those updates will have to come next month! In the mean time, I'll leave you with two of the reflective prompts that are included in the score for freeing child:
If your child-self met your adult-self today, what would they say? Would they feel respected and listened-to by your actions?
What generational cycles of harm, oppression, and/or uncaring do you wish to break in your lifetime?