Some Small Music With Jessika Kenney (getting back to my voice, one step at a time with the support of some friends)

Yesterday, Jessika Kenney sent me a seed riff after I wrote that I would learn a song of folks' choosing or create something new if they sent $5 or more to my tip jar (Venmo: @MecaCole), and this as a way for me to get back to singing regularly, to stretch my voice and musicality, to woodshed, to start thinking in music again after years of not singing, not even being able to open my mouth, or hum, and some of that even manifesting physically into ailments that I am currently working on.

I thought this activity might be a way to hold myself accountable to the calls from folks who are telling me I need to get back to music. I also thought that this would be a way that I could take care of myself too, to not become over-committed, and to be supported by the folks who want me to step back into my body and the world through song.

Here's how that part works: Send me $5 or more through Venmo (@MecaCole) and some song information: title, recording, poem, etc, it doesn't matter what genre or style, so long as you do not choose the most difficult operas/art songs and so long as you don't expect me to shoot back something from the bebop or super-max prog canon in the too-near future (I gotta get my chops back, y'all).

Below follows some snippets of the riff Jessika sent to me, and some of the play I was able to do with it in the short time I had yesterday morning.

I was working with limitations. My computer has gone kaput on me, my voice is rusty as all get out, and I don't know yet how to use the app on my phone, but, if I did, this would be longer, and perhaps later this week, I will work with it more. The limitations bit comes because I want Jessika's voice to be part of this, central even, rather than memorizing her Inanna riff (what I heard mama mama mama) and going from there. The riff can be a beautiful loop, or, if I knew how, a remix with that central idea intact.

I also like the idea of treating these music bits as a sort of musical exquisite corpse. If folks want to play with that, I would love to hear what comes of it. The first link is Jessika's riff. The second is my riff on Yeyo (mother), and what follows are variations.

Just a short background about Jessika Kenney: I have been following her work for a while now, ever since I learned about it through my friends Heather Crank and Greg Amanti at Crahmanti Design Collective. Some years ago, Heather shared a video from a concert that Jessika Kenney and Eyvind Kang did in collaboration with the Playground Ensemble and Creative Music Works in 2013. Click here for a video from that performance.

But, not to make this part about me: Jessika Kenney is a beautiful accomplished experimental vocal artist who is steeped in the knowledge of art songs from all over the world. She recently worked with the team of folks who helped create the very creepy musical score for Ari Aster's movie Midsommer. According to Pitchfork, Jessika brought her knowledge of Nordic and Icelandic musics, and also those of the Mideast. For more information about Jessika Kenney, check out her website over here.

I've wished I could transport myself to that concert mentioned above so many times, and have listened to this snippet from the performance so many times, so Jessika reaching out to me just melted me yesterday, and it was enough light I needed to continue with this project for an indeterminate amount of time. I hope that I can get my voice back, or grow into the voice that I am with now, as imperfect and rusty as it is, and unpracticed. I am looking forward to seeing what happens next.

Click here for the work from yesterday. I created a simple site on Google Sites to create the artifact of that work. Google Sites is slow, so be patient, and if you have other ideas on how I can upload music links into Blogger, I'm all ears.

Thank you for being here!

Small Songs: An Experiment with Community in Getting Back to Singing

I haven't been singing regularly for a long time for many reasons. My voice is very rusty but I can still sing. I can sing through the rust, oil it up, treat it or whatever, get back in, be with my voice however it is now, sing around rasps, holes and obstructions until they are hopefully healed or integrated/transformed, and remeber again how to breathe, how to play with and hold sound, breath, and silence in my body.

I'm often too timid to do something on my own. And here I am, mid life, spent a little, having been waiting, and mourning too much when I could have kept 'shedding.

But that is not the tone I want to end this post with: For a long time, I've been thinking about doing these small videos where I ask folx to send me a song to learn, and I'll learn it (+5 or more bones in my tip jar --> Venmo @MecaCole). It's a way for me to hold myself accountable in regards to my singing, and also take care of myself, and give back, too. Because people keep asking me to get back in, and I don't always know how to get back in, and maybe this is a way I can get back in, so I'm going to try it.

This morning, I start with a little tiny riff. Just a small example of something I might start with before I start riffing off of that idea into loops and variations/deviations.

I'm hoping that this week, I can get my home in order, set my loop stations up again and figure out what I need to create more sounds even when it's just my voice, and even when I'm a groggy rough mess in the morning. 💕🙏🏽☺️

If you have a song for me, Venmo me the title, and I'll oblige. 💕 I'm getting my wings back, so don't send me your most difficult operas (don't know if I'll ever get those kinds of chops back), or anything yet from the Charlie Parker Omnibook (I'd like to work up to that). :P

They/Them/Theirs: This is not an explanation I owe to you

For the most part, I am female-presenting, 
and I choose they/them/their's pronouns for 
many reasons. None of these reasons include 
anything like your comfort unless 
you are someone in the realm of folks 

with whom I wish to show solidarity. 

This is not an explanation I owe to you. This is not a signifier of an identity crisis. This is ultimately none of your fucking business. This is not a signifier of a course of action you imagine for me. This is not license for you to ask me what I do with my genitals or my love. This is not license for you to tell me what I should be doing with my genitals, my body, my mind, or my love. 

This should be enough: They/them/theirs. It is what I prefer to be called, and yes, it is absolutely political. This is not a blanket statement over anyone else.

I have always felt "in-between things." I was born on the cusp of Taurus/Gemini. I was born to a white mother and Black father. My familial life for a long time was always in some state of flux. We lived in at least five or six places before I was five years old, stitching our way back and forth over the country, and with many homelife instabilities that carried forth into my adult life. For most of my life, I've felt like I was in some sort of limbo for so many reasons and in so many different ways. I write about these things in other places.

I have always felt someplace between what our society calls female and male (though I used to call this state "nondescript," and often dressed accordingly), and I have always craved some sort of script or even mention (permission, even) of an integrated gender, one that was both, neither, all. Shiva Linga, for example, or my idea of what Divinity is: a place from which all things come and then return, which ultimately does not have any gender, and which ultimately switches back and forth and to every in-between, depending on what energy is called for. 

Two of my Shiva Lingas -- in simplified terms, Shiva Lingas are 
a representation or manifestation of feminine 
and masculine energies combined.

In my deepest silent moments, I am neither. I know what organs my physical form carries, and I know how this body functions biologically. But that is not all that I am. 

I know precisely what reasons led me to they/them/theirs. I have been thinking about it a lot because people often ask me. I will list some of these reasons below, and give myself license to change this list as I need to:

I can choose.

There isn't a lot more to say here other than that. I can choose. This is an action out of my own volition. I choose they/them/theirs, and I am thankful that it mostly feels significantly safer in 2019 to do so because of everyone who is celebrating who they are and how they want to, because of everyone who has come before, because of everyone who has suffered/ is suffering or who died because they stood up for who they are, or because they simply exist. Choosing they/them/theirs is one minuscule action I can make towards that energy of everyone being able to choose how they express their gender.

I want to recognize, too, how for many of us, it really isn't safer. Folks are still being harassed and even killed for expressing how they want or need to express. It is important to point out that I am very lucky in being surrounded by supporting and growing communities who create a foundation and safe container in which many of us can come out and be who we are in the world when and if we feel ready. It is also important for me to recognize my particular privilege. I am female-presenting, which jives with most folks' perception of who/what I am.

I am less and less afraid to use myself as an example.

It has become important to me to show my clients and students where I stand, and to hopefully open up spaces that aren't always safe or welcoming for folks who reside on any point of the gender spectrum that isn't fully accepted by social norms which are predominately determined by a select minority who deems any "deviation" a threat to whatever comfort or power structure they would like to uphold. For the record, gender nonconformity is not a deviation. Gender nonconformity is valid expression and necessary action. There are other terms that ring better than "gender nonconformity," in my opinion, like "gender fluidity." I feel that it is important to say that.

I am a person who recognizes my own energetic and gender fluxes.

I've often considered it a goal, to be that entity I feel I am in my deepest silent moments. Currently, though I feel this state of in-betweenness, I do not feel wholly fluid. I do not feel wholly free. I do not feel wholly urgent in being one thing or another. Maybe I never will. I do feel, that for me, fe/male is a false dichotomy. I am not either/or, though sometimes, yes, I am.

I've never felt particularly "female," and I don't completely jive with feeling "male," though I recognize myself as carrying both energies in differing capacities. The term "female" (along with Black, Queer, POC, etc.) is a label that only matters when I leave my house. It is a term that is most often applied from the outside. It is a term that is applied without asking me who I am or how I feel. It is a term that makes many assumptions. Most terms place a certain stagnancy, and demand a certain outcome. I am stubborn, and feel more comfortable being a living, breathing, changing question. 

I realize that in this moment I contradict myself. I've said my choice of pronouns isn't any of your bee's wax, and I have said that I prefer to be a question. People will ask, and I prefer this over any assumption, and there are plenty of resources these days to direct folks to when necessary.

"Guide to Being a Trans Ally" is one of many 
helpful resources available, this one from 

PFLAG, an organization that "unites parents,

and allies with people who are are lesbian, gay, 

bisexual, transgender, and queer.

To show solidarity with my friends and loves who are transitioning, coming home or who are also finding comfort in or making sense of any version of an in-between place.

Not even a year ago, I was with a dear friend in the hospital during their top surgery. I was reminded all the reasons I try to stay out of hospitals, one of the main being a certain loss of agency that can happen when you enter a hospital's doors. That is: if you are not informed enough about your personal needs, about how the system works, what's available, your rights, etc. as a patient, as a person, and if you do not essentially fight full-steam, non-stop for those needs and rights, even during the heavy grog- of painkillers and the constant change of cast who have varying degrees of care for the patients on their shifts, whose ideas don't always jive in the same lines of compassion, because they can't (overtired, overworked, etc) or because they won't (these reasons are to numerous to name).

I won't say much about this except that I was deeply affected watching my friend fight the whole time through potential mistakes by the staff (at least a couple of which were caught by my friend's hyper-vigilance) which could have been detrimental (physically, mentally, emotionally) or fatal. Self-Advocacy needed to be constant, and having a network of support to uphold that advocacy was paramount. 

I've heard other stories that I cannot mention, but if you do any search on the internet, you can see for yourself how the medical establishment is far behind in implementing inclusive care. You can also find many stories (some of them might be your own!) about how the medical establishment plays all-knowing and also gaslights so many of its patients who either don't know better or feel powerless or who have placed too much trust in Western Medicine as a know-all cure-all. 

A Note: As I said above, this post is not meant to be a blanket statement over anyone. This is written from where I am today, with what ability I have right now to see into this subject. There are probably holes here, and I am noting that in my states of flux, I am also learning and growing, and I hope to continue opening my understanding towards more inclusivity, self-recognition/love, and helpfulness.

I have a byline at Westword. That's so fuckin' cool.

It finally hit me how cool that was when I was walking towards the Westword building to talk with my editor about some things the other day. I have a fuckin' byline at Denver Westword! I get some small ducats sometimes from Westword!

More than 17 years ago, when I first moved to Denver Colorado, I wondered how you got your foot into the door at places like Westword and The Denver Post. I might not yet have known about Denver Westword's office, but I did go downtown and enter into the lobby where The Denver Post was held, and I walked up to the security desk and asked how I could get a job there. heh. That's how I thought things worked, and really, up until I'd moved to Denver, things kind of seemed to work that way for me. I mean. . . Boise is a little bit smaller, and for the most part folks are pretty open and nice about what they know. Or were when I lived there. I'm pretty much out of the Boise loop these days. 

Since then, I've worked at a click-bait site (now defunct), written hundreds of articles, conducted numerous interviews, written for a minute over at Colorado Independent (their freelancer budget dried up), taken a handful of journalism MOOCs, and completed a grip of ghostwritten things that paid alright while they lasted. ...and this is all outside of the creative writing stuff I do (which generally doesn't pay, but feels good when it's published).

Anyway. . .this kind of work is so super humbling. I have a lot to learn since I've entered into journalism through the back door, and I get edited a lot. This work is challenging, but I think I like things that way. I'm always working upwards on the curve, learning all I can, and as part of that, failing a lot. Failing is part of the practice and the work. I get better and better by failing. That's just how it is. 

I like telling my students how challenging writing is generally when they say that they want writing to get easier and that they're just bad at it. I tell them writing is a learned skill and it is always work, always learning. I tell them that I just received an article or review or essay back from my editors or writing group that was red-marked to hell with stuff I needed to change for whichever audience, or because I was inadvertently hiding something that was too important not to be left out, or because my language was super fuzzy or flowery or not concise. 

I've been writing for a long time, sometimes get paid for it, and I still write shit. I still need other eyes to help me to see through it and to compost what's salvageable, and continue on with something better.

For the most part, hearing this allays classroom excuses. I am a working writer and I still write shit. It's okay. We'll all learn together. Give yourself permission to "write shit" (I first heard this sentiment, shit attached, from a workshop writer and editor Heidi Pitlor conducted at Regis University's Mile-High MFA program).

I'm not writing these things to brag. I'm doing this more so to take stock. It's important to take stock. I know a lot of really brilliant writers and journalists, and some of them work much harder than I do at just writing. A good deal of them have gone to journalism school and/or have been in the game for decades doing the thing more than intermittently. I piecemeal my life and my income from massage therapy, teaching, freelancing, and many other odds and ends when and if they come. I still do my best. And I still feel green. And when I start feeling like I'm failing too much, I take a moment to look at the tip of the iceberg, the stuff I have to show for the work I have been doing, which in some sense has been constant. 

I still feel so new at this, and at the same time, I've been able to take stock and see where some successes were, and this gives me a little more confidence to aim higher as I continue learning and writing.

Blah. This is another blog post with a flat ending, but I'm ending it here, just the same. I honestly needed to pick myself up this morning, and to do a little writing warm-up before I address the stuff my editors have sent back. At any rate. . .yeah. There it is, for whoever cares or wants to know. :P If you want to, we can talk about it (in the comments).