The concept for this album was described and refined
After the experience of making the album
The album approximates the processes of:
- experiencing
- memory building, and
- memory reconsolidating
The first three songs
(Elephant, Pivot and Deliberation)
Each have one organic/acoustic instrument/performance
Running through them (guitar, recorder, kalimba respectively)
Which could represent the
Unpredictable quality
Of an experience as it is lived
These organic/experiential sounds
Weave through generated/synthesized sound layers
That represent the way experience is contorted/mediated
At the moment of experience
By existing perceptions
Or patterns of perceiving
These generated/synthesized layers
And the organic/acoustic sounds
That run through them
Are further modulated by effects
Representing an observer position…
The consciousness that is aware of
Experience being contorted/mediated by perception
In many cases, there is modulation on top of modulation
Representing reflecting on reflecting on reflecting on…
The unpredictable experience
Being mediated by perception
And modulated and remodulated by observation and reflection
Each song is named after an experience
I was having around the time of its composition
Between June 27 and July 1, 2020
In the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic
And as I was conceptually and socially
Navigating issues related to the “Trans/TERF War”:
Elephant:
Having a conversation with someone
Who asked me what I would do
As a counsellor
With someone who reported perceiving themselves
And insisting everyone else acknowledge them
As an elephant…
An analogy for this person
For working with someone
Who might believe they are a sex/gender
Different from their “biological sex”
(Which I put in quotations to indicate
Some perceive this to be a fact
Others a construction)…
My answer was that I would respect
But not affirm/agree with this perception (of being an elephant)
(As I don’t think it is the job of a counsellor
Or really anyone
To try to either undermine or affirm
Someone else’s perception of reality)
I said, depending on the circumstances
I might share that I thought they might run up against
At least some people who may not want to
Acknowledge them as an elephant
And explore if they thought they could use any help
Navigating that probable experience
(One they may have already encountered
Especially if they have made it to a counsellor’s office
Though it’s possible they got to a counsellor’s office
About something other than “elephantism”
So I’d want to carefully check
Any assumptions I might have
Maybe they want to talk about
Their relationship with chocolate chip cookies)
Pivot:
As executive director
I’d been navigating near-continual
COVID-19 adjustments
Across five different programs
Their staff and participants
Trying to find ways to keep
Our mostly already-marginalized
Intended program beneficiaries
Connected in a time of physical distancing…
Not feeling forgotten
Almost everything
That I would have normally been doing
To keep our organization running
Was not getting done
Creating reports
Evaluating our financial position
Making broad adjustments to practices
To continually improve how we meet our vision and mission
Just trying to keep everything
From shutting completely down
And then slowly reopening things
In a new way
So as to hopefully not be at the centre of
A career and organization-ending
Major COVID-19 outbreak
As the avalanche of adjustments
Started to slow
I started to dig out from under it
Realizing that some pretty big pivots
Needed to be immediately enacted
Deliberation:
I agreed to join a private Facebook messenger group
To engage in some dialogue
(Without as much risk of being dog piled
By ferocious social media gangs)
About some of the finer points
Of the concerns that “feminists” have
About the effects that the “trans ideology”
Was having on the “women’s movement”:
That research on women’s health
Was being dangerously polluted
And “women’s sports” was becoming
Incredibly unfair
Due to “biological males” (people with “large gametes”)
Who insisted on being considered “women”
That “safe spaces” for women
Who were easily triggered
By “male qualities”
(Due to past traumatic experiences with males)
Were being invaded by “men in skirts”
That “young women”
Were being “seduced” into “gender confusion”
And “irreparable damage”
Caused by “gender-confirming” medical procedures
At alarmingly skyrocketing rates
That “sexual preference”
Was being conceptually disconnected
From “biological sex”
Instead focusing on “self-identified gender”
So “lesbian women” were being labelled “transphobic”
If they wouldn’t consider a trans “woman” with a penis
As a potential sexual partner
I’d never personally experienced or observed
Any of these things happening
Though I was quickly buried
In articles and YouTube videos and books
That went some distance to substantiating
These claims
(But, for me, there were always flies in the ointment)
I had experienced and observed
Countless complications
That people I knew who were trans
Experienced
And which I could only imagine
Getting worse if these “feminist” concerns
Got too much daylight
The second three songs
(Elephant-Silence Reconsolidation, Pivot-Retarded Reconsolidation, Deliberation-Indirect Reconsolidation)
While I was producing the “Wedge” album earlier in 2020, it occurred to me that the songs were mostly improvisational, so I thought of calling the album “Wedge Improvisations” and then I was considering doing a series of remixes of the songs, which I would call “Wedge Recalibrations.” It was an interesting idea, but seemed like a lot of work.
My next album, the EP “Quips,” initially had 9 sets of quotes/quips that I was going to set to music, and the idea that these songs would function like “remixes” of songs that didn’t exist. In other words, the small quotes that were in the remixes were taken from hypothetical songs that included the larger texts from which the “quips” were extracted. As I created the first 3 songs, it became clear that much of the “meaning” of the other “quips” I had initially planned to set to music were already contained, in some measure, in those three songs. So I stopped.
“Redundant Current” picks up on some of the ideas that developed and/or were left behind on “Wedge” and “Quips”. From “Wedge,” the album is composed of “original” songs with improvised qualities, which are then remixed (or “reconsolidated”) with (from “Quips”) only small portions of each song repeated to form a new composition that, while being comprised of much less unique content, still forms an equally complex composition.
The last two songs
(Intermix, Intermix Reconsolidation)
Then, also from “Quips,” those three reconsolidated songs (based on the three “original” songs) are combined together to form one song that is redolent of elements from all that preceded it. Then, taking it one step further, that combined song is reconsolidated with even less unique material, but which still recalls all that preceded it in both content and complexity.
The idea with “Redundant Current” is that, upon multiple listenings, everything begins to resemble everything else… which could be said to emulate or represent the experience of memory:
- While every experience we have is unique and unpredictable… it gets filtered, mediated and modulated through our observation, perception and reflection into something that, rather than destroying who we are with its uniqueness, supports who we are through how it is rendered familiar.
- Once you’ve listened through the whole album, and then start again at the beginning with the “original” songs… is the additional information and variability contained in these original songs consequential any longer?
- Even though much of the original songs was “lost” in the reconsolidations… does what was “lost” anymore matter?
- When we do relisten, is it to gain new perspective or to support our existing identity?
- Do new experiences change who we are, or do we just ingest them in a way such as to render them consistent with our existing perception of being?
- And, if we are changed, are we so changed that we no longer have access to any way to know that we are?