A Flower that Blooms Once and Smells Like a Corpse
An Interview with Experimental Composer Jackie An
Earlier this month, Jackie An performed their debut composition for strings: a trio entitled A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Addict at The Chapel Performance Space in The Good Shepherd Center (a convent-turned-arts-space whose acoustics would make even the most cynical swoon).
Jackie is a somatics practitioner, so I didn’t take it lightly when they invited me to facilitate a talkback; they were creating a collective healing space. These days, I can actually feel my body while watching art (it’s so much more fun), and I can actually sense what healing feels like. Those were not easy victories for me, so I’m not going to call art “healing” when it isn’t. Jackie succeeded.
Their mechanism is time-honored: They shared their (sonic) story, it resonated (literally) through people’s bodies, and people shared how they resonated (figuratively). But that shit simply wouldn’t work if Jackie hadn’t worked tirelessly for their own liberation for decades. The healing is contagious, but it can’t be faked.
In their (unpublished) contributions to another interview, Jackie said that “having [Jesse] moderate the talkback is a way of making our art friendship official.” I feel deeply honored by this (and I feel the same way). So here’s to making it official. 🥂
Jesse: I think the first question I want to ask, in the idiom of “art gardening,” is what is the creative ecosystem that made you or “brought you up” as a composer?
Jackie: I went through a bad breakup and was like… “Looks like I’m in the market for all new friends.”
I had met Aslan Rife at the coffee shop where I was working. I would give him rides back to his house in the U District; it was this house of a bunch of really weird boys making music—just unabashedly being musical.
One of Aslan’s roommates was Ashley Pær Svn—one of the main people in my baby art ecosystem. (I use different names and different pronouns for Ashley, so you’ll hear Pearson, you’ll hear Ashley and you’ll hear a range of pronouns for them.) Pearson reached out and was like, “Do you want to make music with me and Evan?” And I was like… “Sure.”
This was in the MySpace days, so this exchange might have even happened over MySpace.
Jesse: [laughs] Talk about ecosystems.
Jackie: That’s a whole ecosystem.
So Pearson Invites me to make music with Evan and we have such a good time of it that we’re like “Oh, my god, we should really do something with this. Let's keep on doing this!” So that band (New Red Sun), Ashley, and their friends became the ecosystem for my baby art self.
But maybe my embryonic art self was this group of friends that I met in my early twenties; we were just doing weird drugs and listening to weird music and I could wear weird clothes. Before I knew I could make my own work, I think I was cultivating a point of view.
“There was this real desire to revolt, but I didn’t know how. I didn’t even see that what I was doing was a form of revolt”
Jesse: One of the working theses of this newsletter project is that we should treat art-making like a garden, not a factory; that we should treat art more like a…tomato than a…radio. You’ve described how you learned that you were “more than an automaton following sheet music.” How are you resisting “the automaton” in this project and in this moment in your process?
Jackie: It’s been a work in progress over the years, and not necessarily even just musically.
Pearson invited me to a performance of hers as Paintings for Animals at Gallery 1412 and I had never seen anything like it. It was a person sitting there with a mixing board with all these cables coming in and out with all these different pedals—basically painting a sonic picture.
Typically when I went to a show it was verse/chorus/verse/chorus/bridge/chorus. But that show at Gallery 1412 was unrecognizable to me; it was musical in form but in an entirely different spirit.
So I went to a bunch of different noise shows and saw people without musical training accessing music. And I saw that really anyone can make music. In my mind, with a conservatory-ish background, I thought you had to have met these “criteria.” Seeing this different model in which noise was being made showed me that I could make whatever I felt like.
There was this real desire to revolt, but I didn’t know how. I didn’t even see that what I was doing was a form of revolt. When I started playing in New Red Sun, I started tapping into how instinctively I would want to play. I was letting myself make choices. In classical music there is no choice; it’s very clearly delineated what you’re going to be doing. Over time, I learned to trust my choices and my creative decision-making.
Also over time, I’ve had to think about reality differently. Like…shit…white supremacy and capitalism and racism—how colonized classical music is. Developing as an artist has also meant developing as a human. As I’ve gotten a clearer sense of what my values are, it’s clarified who I am as an artist.
Jesse: What are you learning about these values through this particular piece of music?
Jackie: When I think about classical music, basically you need skill. You need to be “really really good”—whatever that means. It’s harder to reflect your values in a framework where it’s purely skill-based. So much of what I did with this piece was highly qualitative. I didn’t want to say play these exact notes in exactly this sort of way. I was describing that prospect to my composition teacher Max Alper and dry heaving.
In order to create, I need to be liberated. I have no tolerance of oppression—like at all! I’m very sensitive to it. I freak out, I get so bummed out, and I internalize it so quickly. It is so quickly metabolized in my system as self-loathing. It gets so claustrophobic that I can’t actually ask “What do I want to do? What do I want to say?” There’s no room for that at all.
All the different components of liberation are so intertwined and interdependent that I need to cultivate liberation in all areas of my life in order to get the composition out of me.
“In order to create, I need to be liberated. I have no tolerance of oppression—like at all! I’m very sensitive to it. I freak out, I get so bummed out, and I internalize it so quickly. It is so quickly metabolized in my system as self-loathing. It gets so claustrophobic that I can’t actually ask ‘What do I want to do? What do I want to say?’ There’s no room for that at all.”
Jesse: That leads to perhaps my last question. You’re a somatics practitioner. I’m so curious about how it feels in your body to play and hear this piece. And what does that liberation feel like in your body?
Jackie: It’s complex, right? There is the grief of like….I could have been doing this earlier. But it’s not necessarily true. It’s all cumulative for me to get where I am. I forget that. I try to look at myself as some sort of resource—like if I had done it sooner I would have produced so much! This weird capitalistic framework.
Jesse: Yeah…trying to treat art like a factory.
Jackie: Yeah and it doesn’t work! Like…maybe I’m really more like a Rafflesia flower. It’s a corpse flower that blooms every couple of years.
Jesse: Whoa!
Jackie: It’s huge! It’s massive. Maybe I’m not like…a blueberry bush. Maybe I’m a Rafflesia flower that takes so fucking long to bloom and by the time I do, I smell like a corpse.
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Addict was presented as part of the Wayward Music Series, curated by NonSequitur’s Michaud Savage. It featured cellist Lori Goldston and violist Heather Bentley.
Nutrients (From Jackie)
This segment lists some things that are feeding me or the artists I’m chatting with. This takes some inspiration from Ndeye Oumou Sylla’s “Pleasure Focused Routine.” It is also inspired by a professor who, when she saw me freaking out about graduating and building a “life in the arts,” gave me a simple prescription: go see one play each week.
This week, Jackie shares their nutrients—from pink sheets to somatics to living with (perfect) pets.
Art
The most recent art I was gifted was stickers my friend Jules Estacio made. Jules was a part of a BIPOC Artist Way cluster with me earlier this year, so it's extra wonderful to see someone from the group flourishing with art projects for the sake of "well, it just pleases me so to make this." It really warms my heart to receive a sweet thing made by a friend and makes me want to give in return. I want to be in the flow of creation, experiencing synchronicity and inspiring others!
Earth
I love September in Seattle. I think the September light is magical, this is my favorite month of the year. I have so many fond memories of New Red Sun: Picking up Evan Gilman from Equal Exchange Coffee in Ballard with Ashley Pær Svn, hot rooibos tea in hand, and going to rehearse in the basement of Evan's parents' house in Crown Hill.
Reading and Wisdom
Somatics by Thomas Hanna. His framework for understanding the embodied human gives so much hope for the human ability to heal and restore once our brain is on the same team as our body. The Cartesian split basically encouraged us neurotic-ass humans to existentially decapitate ourselves and only think of ourselves as a brain, when the whole body informs so much of the larger human experience of mind.
Food
Late summer stone fruit, yum!
Rest
I got pink sheets because I felt like somehow, the sleep would feel softer. Whenever I put the fresh pink sheets on the bed, it feels incredibly refreshing.
Fun
I'm going to get a tattoo! Collaborating with the artist, Rin Jung, has been really great. I'm looking forward to meeting her in New York!
Embodiment
As part of my training, I've been doing the Hanna Somatics daily cat routine. It's deeply relaxing, it's not about stretching or flexibility. The slow movement almost feels like using Non-Violent Communication between body and brain so the two have a harmonious listening-based understanding of each other.
Sensation
My favorite incense is Woods, and I found some at Apna Bazar in Bellevue. Nag Champa is fine, but Woods is wowza.
For Younger Me
Having a cat and dog family. Cherry (dog) and Jonesy (cat) play together every day and it feels so joyous to have this much peace in my home
Here is my Google Calendar for art I’m hoping to catch in Seattle. This is simply my chaotic way to keep track of art shit; I make no promises I will catch it all. If you’re around and wanna be my date lmk. Please feel free to also share things you’re excited about and I’ll add them.
If you want to learn more about my creative work and/or hire me for writing, dramaturgy, editing, communications, copywriting, tutoring, or teaching work, check out my (new) website.