Bumping Into... is a series of mini-chats with a variety of peeps that you might run into in some of our local music communities. (There's a bit of an intro and my thoughts behind the series here.)
How are you? Where are you?
I am managing. I am at home in Toronto’s east end. The physical home varied in a way this year, but I am really thankful to have several friends who have shared space with me at different times thus preventing an apartment search. The two transitions, and three roommate configurations, offered a different filter for my experience of ‘isolation’. It also offered three opportunities to get feedback on my baking—the pie crust is improving every time.
My co-parent is working from home. I am working from home, and my employment and income were sustained through 2020. My daughter is in online schooling with the TDSB and she is more and more comfortable with the daily routine. Parenting has been an evolving challenge and a profound gift. The big emotions that were on display in the early months of the pandemic (feeling isolated from friends and community, being caught up in fear, anger) are still there at times but my daughter and I are finding increasingly gentle ways of settling into, sharing, and talking about them.
I often lose sense of the day, but I am making time for rest, nourishment, and social connections that help to keep me restored, inspired, and motivated… and sometimes I am also baking sugar cookies at three in the morning while episodes of Star Trek are booming in the background.
What have you been up to since March or so?
There are various programs that I support through the Canadian Music Centre. My work keeps me connected to a number of artists and arts organizations. I have been able to contribute in some small way to artistic mentorships, performances, career development, and inter-generational exchange among community members in Toronto and elsewhere.
I have spent the year reading and re-reading Dylan Robinson’s Hungry Listening—among other things, the book offers an impressive analysis of listening positionalities. Dylan questions and defies the assumed objectivity of musicological analysis, and asks that readers consider epistemic distinctions of settler and Indigenous understandings of music. Hungry Listening is one of the most consequential offering in the field of sound studies I have encountered. It has been a joy to take part in two book clubs dedicated to reading and discussing Hungry Listening.
I have also been rewatching Avatar The Last Airbender on loop and drawing stills from the show in my sketch book. My daughter has orchestrated a few art projects that recur over time—squishy makeovers, POSCA paint marker decorating, melty bead figures, water colour and drawing challenges, and so on.
Have you found any new ways to do old things? How are you feeling about the shifts in how music is being made/shared/listened to?
New ways. I did take part in the Exit Points series in November (and really appreciated Michael Palumbo's thoughtful facilitation of the experience). For all of the livestreams I have produced from the CMC in Toronto, Exit Points was my first contribution as a performer in a livestream. It was also my first experience improvising telematically, and while the listening was more elusive (I often benefit from visual cues and extra musical exchanges in performance) I was delighted by the outcome. I got to dabble with my harmonica during one of the closing sets which was especially fun.
Back in the spring I worked with my friend Pouya on a short guide to audio production and livestreaming—I got the sense that it was helpful for a number of people, which is great! We included a comment about continually updating the guide to reflect questions we receive, and new developments in streaming software and hardware. That comment seems completely silly now, as there are countless approaches and tutorials for artists to consider. My hope is that artists feel empowered to advocate for themselves, that presenters are compensating artists fairly, and that artists receive additional financial and technical support when they are required to handle audio and video production (and sometimes even online audience engagement!) as well as performing.
The new obsession I have is working with TouchDesigner software. My friend Jason casually mentioned TouchDesigner to me over the summer. When I had some time off in the fall I spent hours each day completing online tutorials and replicating projects that folks shared online—there is an astonishing community of artists demonstrating their techniques! I am learning some basic steps to drive audio-reactive (or more general interactive) animations, and this new skill is serving as the impetus for a renewed individual recording practice. TouchDesigner is developed by Derivative, and the non-commercial version is free to download.
I don’t have the most informed perspective on wider habits for making, sharing, and listening to music, but I am encouraged by the number of people who have supported artists through Bandcamp during the pandemic. There are a few sound artists in my network who are drifting into other mediums and/or adopting community-engaged methods for co-creation and reproducing pieces online. My friend Ilana just circulated a call for recordings, images, and graphic scores inspired by letters and postcards. This has motivated me to collaborate with my mum on transcribing, translating, and recording a message that her grandmother, Maria, wrote to her on a postcard from Italy when I was born. My mum was shocked when I sent her a picture of the postcard—she had no idea that I had been carrying the postcard with me all of these years. The postcard might represent the only writing sample we have from my great grandmother, so this rare opportunity of contributing to a sound project in collaboration with my mum is evolving into a family history project. I have Ilana to thank for that.
Any works of art that have been a light for you in these times? Anything that's just been a good diversion?
I got a new prescription a year ago, bought some new glasses, and this has made it possible for me to comfortably read my paperback copy of Samuel Delany’s Stars In My Pocket Like Grains of Sand. Published in 1984, I picked up my copy from a used book store nearly a decade ago. The writing in Stars is signature Delany in its intricate lyricism. World- and universe-building are striking, from the inter-species and gender dynamics encoded across cultural/linguistic practices on the fictional planet Velm, to Delany’s reimagining of dragon “hunting”. Most magnificent is the love, passionate and vulnerable, between Rat Korga and Marq Dyeth, which culminates in a superbly crafted epilogue that as a unit of writing unto itself was a highlight of the year for me.
More immediate to my own work, I was part of the technical production team for the Freesound concert in October featuring works by Jason Doell and Anna Höstman, performed by Aysel Taghi-Zada, Wesley Shen, and Anthony Thompson, and organized by Paolo Griffin. The three days we worked together at the CMC were wonderful, and served as a beacon in the midst of an impossible year, the sounds stretching out like soft tendrils backward and forward in time to affirm all that we had done, and to secure a hopefulness for all we will do.
I should also mention how much I enjoyed reading Namwali Serpell’s The Old Drift, and learning about the work of painter Mohamed Melehi (my knowledge of visual artists is inadequate, and I only learned about Melehi after he passed away in October).
I took part in a CSA program with Wheelbarrow farm. I don’t think it is too much of a stretch to say that the biweekly farm boxes we received were beautiful, and fulfilling in a variety of ways: dandelion greens, hakurei, kohlrabi, napa, purple mizuna, tatsoi, watermelon radish, and more. My friend Jacqueline shared several recipes for rhubarb to start the season.
My daughter and I got through the first couple of months of the pandemic with the help of Flamingo Rampant, and their radical approach to storytelling, illustration, and literature for kids—we also took part in their daily drawing prompts which is why my sketch pad includes a drawing of rigatoni noodles on the run.
How are you feeling about 2021?
I think I am going to be skating outdoors a lot to start off the year. I need to make time to talk with my dad. I can’t wait to meet my friend Rick’s baby. I can’t wait to hug my grandmother and grandfather and tell them I love them. It is overwhelming.
Anything else we'd chat about if we bumped into each other?
I would go into more detail about pies, how I finally made pumpkin pie from scratch, and how after making pumpkin pie from scratch I proceeded to make another pumpkin pie from scratch. I would ask what new and delightful gadget you are planning to unleash in your electronics set up. I would ask when you were available to join me for lunch at Ethiopian House, my treat.
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