Creative Thresholds

by Melissa D. Johnston

A few months ago, Atlanta artist and former Creative Thresholds contributor Julie L. Sims contacted me about an exhibition associated with a residency she’d done the year before in Atlanta called TAR (Therapeutic Artist Residency). The TAR project is new to Atlanta and Julie is one of its inaugural artists. The vision of artist and licensed therapist Orion Crook, TAR aims to create a deeper level of support for its artists by exploring the intersection between art and therapy. Each artist in the program receives monthly 2-hour group and individual therapy sessions. The main focus of the residency is to analyze the artist’s process and how that process parallels other life processes and vice versa.

The residency ends with an artist showcase in two parts. The first exhibition, Parallels: Holding Space, held in May 2017, highlighted the work of the artists of TAR as individuals after their year of intense personal and collective art making and reflection. The second exhibition, Parallels: Unfolding Space, takes place in three parts and begins tonight, July 27, 2017. This second exhibition branches out to bring the audience into an experience of TAR for themselves.

The TAR project is a wonderful experimentation with finding the deep support needed to do art as/in dialogue with ourselves, our fellow artists, and the culture at large. In the interview below, Orion and the artists share some of their experiences in the program. If you happen to be in the Atlanta area, check out one of the Parallels: Unfolding events. All are held at Day & Night Projects, 585 Wells St. SW, Atlanta, GA 30312. “Connect” is today, July 27, 7-10 pm. “Unfold” is August 3, 7-10 pm. “Release” is August 10, 7-10. The exhibition is on view from July 27-August 19, 2017. For more information, go to OrionPsychotherapy.org or contact OrionPsychotherapy@gmail.com.

Julie L. Sims, “Coherent Superposition” from Parallels: Holding Space show

1. As part of TAR, each of you participated in monthly individual and group therapy sessions, designed at least in part to explore the relationship between life, art, and therapy. Did anything surprise you in the exploration of that relationship?

ORION: Just tonight I was saying that I am still kind of in awe that this residency actually exists. I had an idea nearly three years ago, and now as we begin to close out the first year I can’t help but think, “This may have changed these people’s lives.”

XENIA: While an obvious concept to me now, it was surprising when I first started realizing that the way I dealt with my art mirrored the way I dealt with life and myself in general. Parallel structures started showing up, which brought forth a more integrative experience of life and art. It became clear that my art was accessing that relationship, using art processing to digest life’s processing.

JULIE: I wouldn’t say this was surprising to me, exactly, but I did realize how alike the mental tools of therapy and the mental tools of being an artist are. I guess there are some artists out there who are completely confident and never doubt their work or have to turn off that nagging critical voice, but most of the ones I know and even the famous ones I’ve heard speak describe their own struggles with doubt over whether their work is any good or not, even if they aren’t people who otherwise have problems with self-doubt in the rest of their lives.

You figure out how to work around that if you want to keep making art, and the most successful ways of doing so have a lot in common with therapeutic techniques designed to defeat negative self-talk and break destructive thought patterns. Therapy teaches you to be kinder to yourself, and you will need to be in order to have the resilience for rejection that is just part of being an artist.

2. Do you believe that empathy is part of the artistic process in general? In your own art? Has your understanding of empathy and its relationship to art changed after your experience with TAR?

ORION: Empathy is part of the human experience. I imagine that it comes across in multiple ways for the artist, but in particular when the artist imagines themselves as the viewer they are digging into how (they perceive) the other feels. This is influenced by what they bring focus to, and highlights their own cognitive structures. Does the artist believe the viewer or peer to be critical, supportive, emotional, aesthetic, and so on? How does this influence their art making process? My hope is that the residents were able to become more aware of their cognitive structures and how they influence their own empathetic viewing. Empathy is a skill that can be honed in on and developed as much as it can be skewed by the mind’s telling of a story. What I find important is that, as the artist becomes aware of their cognitive distortions, they are granted access to more authentic empathy underneath which enhances their relational experience.

XENIA: I think for the longest time I fought empathy in myself, and art process is in a way being in dialogue with yourself. I can’t speak to empathy being present in every artist’s process, but for me it became an element I’ve had to embrace in order to progress in my art. Coming into the residency, my expectations of my work and myself were so rigid, I was being hindered and limited in so many realms. Through the group process of TAR, empathy made its way into my personal work and approach to art, which eventually started opening more creative possibilities.

JULIE: I do believe that empathy is part of creating and understanding art. In general, I think art is a way to give expression to something an artist feels inside themselves, so when a viewer connects with a work of art they are experiencing a kind of empathy to the artist’s intent. Sometimes art takes that even further and is made with a voice expressly meant to foster empathy for specific causes, conditions, or groups of people. In my own series, Uncharted Territory: Anatomy of a Natural Disaster, I reference how we respond to people who have experienced a natural disaster as a parallel for how we should respond to people with mental health issues, and that work is in part intended as a pathway toward empathy for conditions that are often misunderstood or mischaracterized.

STEVE: If empathy is a kind of communication or understanding that is felt, rather than thought, then artists excel at empathy. Artworks can operate both in a realm of language and in the ineffable—and this precognitive space is also where empathy occurs.

Empathy’s flip side is judgement. In a group therapy situation, you learn to stop judging your neighbor, and to listen and allow yourself to experience what that person is saying.

Xenia Simos’s work from the Parallels: Holding Space Show

3. The first TAR exhibition, Parallels: Holding Space, showcased your work as individuals after a year of personal and collaborative art-making and reflection. The second exhibition, Parallels: Unfolding Space, is a collaboration not just with each other, but also with the people attending the show. Your experience with TAR seems to be an ever-expanding circle touching people well beyond the work of an individual artist. What do you hope to accomplish in that connection?

ORION: We are letting people inside TAR, and I hope to establish a lighthouse for the art culture in Atlanta that stands for supporting our artists on a deeper level. The whole year is an extremely intimate experience; therapy comes with a lot of confidentiality. This second show is an expression of what it was like inside TAR. I mean that for better and worse, with expansion and vulnerability. We worked to unfold an experience of art that exists inside a particular container. This residency was contained with therapeutic intent, and this is being brought to the three nights, Connect-Unfold-Release. In the first night, the viewer gets to experience layers of the residency that help them connect with themselves.

XENIA: I think part of the intention of TAR was to build a creative community that saw value in and benefited from the interdisciplinary exploration of art and therapy. Going through the residency magnified the communal aspect, and made clearer that TAR sought to establish a new art culture. Connecting with other artists, viewers and anyone in the community that has an interest, is the residency’s way of doing just that.

JULIE: I am always wanting to normalize conversation about mental health. Between uneven insurance coverage for treatment and societal stigma, many people can’t afford or will never seek out a therapeutic relationship, which is a shame, because it’s something I think nearly everyone could benefit from. This exhibition is an opportunity to share some of that experience, to show how it intersects with other aspects of life, and perhaps overturn assumptions about what therapy can be.

4. “Space”—understood both metaphorically and literally—plays a large role in the description of the TAR program and even appears in the title of both exhibitions. After your year together, how do you understand “space” in relation to the artistic and therapeutic process? Does it play a role in your own individual art?

ORION: Therapy is an art form in the practice and performance of the science of psychology. I see myself as a space holder when I step into the therapeutic relationship. It it my job to curate a space that allows for unconditional positive regard, vulnerability, safety, risk taking, confrontation, and in the end a therapeutic intent. Therapeutic intent is a large concept, but it means in this moment for me that after we process and go deep we gather awareness of what is in front of us and make a choice to move forward, towards the growth work, towards connecting, and often doing what is hard but supports us to be the self we want to be in the future.

XENIA: Space is my medium; and everything I do revolves around the visceral experience of it. Expressing mental spaces into physical ones through metaphor is what I was developing before TAR, even if it was not as clear to me then. After a year in the residency my relationship with space has only deepened more. I now understand it as something necessary to any process. Whether it is artistic or therapeutic in nature, space is what gives room for that process to unfold. It is something fluid that shifts to the process’s needs, and experienced on multiple levels. Throughout this year, I have learned to expand and retract myself accordingly, adjusting to my life and my creative process.

JULIE: When you “hold space” for someone you are allowing them to be just as they are without judgment or trying to change their feelings. You’re giving them room to express their truth. Artists have to remember to hold space for themselves. If you judge every thought and impulse as they arrive, if you try and change what you’re doing to something you think you should do instead of what is true to yourself, you’re not holding space for your work to develop.

Our first exhibition, Holding Space, let each of us be as we are and express our own truths. In Unfolding Space we are opening up a new dimension and creating a wholly new space collaboratively, and we’re inviting other people to let us hold that space for them to step into.

STEVE: When Sun Ra sings “space is the place,” he’s equating Outer Space with the freedom to become what you will be, where imagination is the force that creates the world.

One of Google’s definitions of space is “a continuous area or expanse that is free, available, or unoccupied.” This can mean allowing physical and mental space for your collaborator to do their thing—to trust that your colleague is going to make a contribution that is amazing and unexpected.

Another definition is “the dimensions of height, depth, and width within which all things exist and move.” In this sense, I see the art gallery as that container, and I am covering the gallery walls with burlap as a way to contain, focus, and amplify the energy of what we do in there.

Steven L. Anderson’s work from Parallels: Holding Space show

5. The sacred or language associated with the sacred plays a role in the discourse about TAR’s projects. The visitors to the second series of exhibitions (Parallels: Unfolding Space) will participate in shared rituals designed by the artists, ultimately aimed toward the process of healing. The last show ends with the artist as “sacred practitioner” inviting people to join her in washing away their troubles in a tank of salt water with the intention to begin anew. Do the processes of art-making and/or therapy contain aspects of the divine (however understood) for you? If so, what do you see as the connection?

ORION: This is a great question and one that brings a beautiful tension between the anchor of this series and our perspectives. I come from a poly truth perspective that finds comfort in having a practice that does have a relationship with the creation force. Due to a frontal cortex, I as a human have the ability to believe that the divine doesn’t exist, that it doesn’t matter whether I believe it or not because I can never “truly know,” that it does exist, and that believing has its own affect whether it exists or not. I can hold all of these as truths and still exist, I actually believe it’s how the brain works on its own. We often find ourselves going between things, back and forth questioning our assumptions. The brain struggles to hold onto one side of such a large topic and just stay settled there. When I come from a perspective that makes space for all of the viewpoints around the divine, I get a sense of freedom that deals less with having to choose, and allows me to focus more on how I want to live and act. For me, whether the divine as you name it exists or not, I enjoy practicing from a perspective that is in relationship to a possibility that I can influence change, that my will is worth casting in intentional directions, and that art is a medium for materializing this process.

JULIE: For me art is sacred in the sense that it is the soul of who I am. I experience art-making as a force of creation, which some people associate with divinity, although I do not. I see it as tapping into the systems that drive the universe… creation, evolution, destruction.  Performance art has a very blurry line with ritual, so conflating the two feels very natural. I think rituals have value separate from religious intent—the daily routine performed exactly the same every day is a type of ritual that offers control and continuity in a world that often lacks either. So, I would not say that either sacredness or ritual are divine.

This specific performance will mark a year since my breast cancer diagnosis, and is a performance-art-ritual with the ultimate intent of “letting go.” As such, it sits directly at the intersection of art and therapy, because it is using art as a vehicle to process and release a life experience.

STEVE: More than the words sacred and divine, I’m interested in the concepts like spirit and energy. We encounter these when out in the forest, in the desert, or in the ocean; or when we meditate, or make art, or do drugs. Any situation where we experience flow is when we’re connecting to the energies that are all around us and within us.

The processes that we’re exploring and introducing to our audiences—connecting, unfolding, releasing—are ways of breaking through barriers in our selves. When we can bring down these walls, we find ourselves closer to that spirit that we so rarely glimpse.

XENIA: I do not feel connection with the language of sacred or divinity as much as I do with the concept of being in touch with oneself. I experience this while making art. I believe at times, through our process we can experience moments of calm, and a sense of faith in ourselves and in the work. Those moments could be described as divine; but in no way do I see the artist as sacred or divine. I am simply tapping into something that already exists. As far as ritual, while it often is associated with religion, our intention came from a more meditative approach. The repetition of a task while holding a certain idea in place, the overlay of a movement solidifying it; over and over and over. This is seen in performance often and I think ritual can exist within that realm.

The TAR group, working hard on their new performance and installation-based show Parallels: Unfolding-“Connect.” From left: Xenia Simos, Steven L. Anderson, Julie L. Sims, Orion Crook

Julie L. Sims lives in the Atlanta area and graduated summa cum laude from Georgia State University. Her work has been exhibited nationally and locally, and has been written about in Creative Loafing, ArtsATL.com, and in publications including Possible Futures’ Noplaceness: Art in a Post-Urban Landscape. She is a 2016–15 TAR Project resident, and was a 2014 WonderRoot CSA artist, a 2013–14 Walthall Fellow, was selected by the New York Times to attend the New York Portfolio Review (2013), and was nominated for the Forward Arts Foundation Emerging Artist Award (2012). See more at lensideout.com.

Steven L. Anderson is a founding member of Day & Night Projects, an artist-run gallery in Atlanta. Anderson has been a Studio Artist at Atlanta Contemporary (2013–16), a 2015 Hambidge Center Distinguished Fellow, and a 2014–15 Walthall Artist Fellow. Anderson’s notebooks are in the permanent collection of the Stuart A. Rose Manuscript, Archives, and Rare Book Library at Emory University. He has exhibited in Atlanta, Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco, Miami, and Chicago. More information at  www.StevenLAnderson.com.

Xenia Simos is an installation artist with a background in sculpture and design. A graduate of the University of Georgia with a bachelor of fine arts in interior design, her work explores space and our relationship to it. Through a conceptual and process-based approach, Simos translates the human experience into a spatial composition, manifesting mental structures into physical ones. Her works are often site-specific, and interdisciplinary in medium.

by Melissa D. Johnston

It’s not often you’re able to get the story behind a groundbreaking collaborative artistic project, so when I got the chance to interview the artists behind “Year of Glad,” I immediately took it. “Year of Glad,” which premieres this Saturday, April 16, at Roosevelt University in Chicago, is a song cycle composed by Patrick Greene for the coloratura soprano Joelle Kross, inspired by poet Jenni B. Baker’s Erasing Infinite poems. Baker’s poems, which also provide the lyrics for “Year of Glad,” are poems formed by erasing words from each page of David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest.  (Jenni shared her project to Creative Thresholds readers in 2014 with “Erasing Infinite Jest: Five Poetic Approaches.”)  The spirit of Wallace suffuses “Year of Glad” and the process of its creation.

Patrick, Joelle, and Jenni give a rich account of what it means to be an artist working with other artists in today’s world.  They speak of the value and freedom that constraint can bring to the act of creation, the role of love and grief in art, the joy and excitement of collaboration, the challenge and fecundity of working in many genres/media, and what inspires them in the work of David Foster Wallace. They have inspiring and wise words for all of us who hunger to create and especially for those of us who long to create with others.

Update May 13, 2016: Here is the live recording from the premiere:

Tell us about your journey as an artist. Who or what influenced you the most? What provides your primary source of inspiration? What aspirations do you have for the future?

PATRICK: I didn’t start “seriously” composing until I was in college; prior to that, I was primarily a singer: boy soprano, musical-theater tenor, rock-band frontman, etc. In the spring of my first undergraduate year, I heard a visiting string quartet perform Maurice Ravel’s Quartet in F Major, and the thing seriously changed my life. I’ve been writing music ever since.

I’ve always drawn inspiration from a variety of sources; poetry’s one of my favorites. I’ve set texts by Eliot, Ammons, Crane, Poe, Cummings, Sappho, you name it. Until last year, however, I (somehow) hadn’t worked with a living poet. That changed when I collaborated with W. S. Di Piero on Come Soon, You Feral Cats, a setting of poems from his recent Tombo (McSweeney’s). It was a tremendously edifying, enjoyable process, and led me to seek out a living poet for my next text-setting project – Jenni Baker.

David Foster Wallace has influenced me just as deeply as any composer. My first reading of Infinite Jest was a transformative experience, and it’s stayed with me in a very deep place ever since. I think eclecticism is a fundamental part of my aesthetic; we’re lucky to exist in a time characterized by the dissolving of barriers, and I try to incorporate that into my music wherever I can. One of the reasons I enjoy reading his work is that I feel like we share stylistic priorities: to be complex yet sincere; to be elevated yet vernacular; to be formally playful yet structurally rigorous. He’s definitely emboldened me to compose in a way that feels honest.

My chief aspiration is to continue to collaborate with interesting people on worthwhile projects, and to find new ways of challenging myself to stay artistically relevant while creating a diverse, non-duplicative body of work.

JOELLE: I started in musical theatre and choirs in elementary school and went to college for acting with minors in voice and French. But as I had more classical voice instruction and sang in opera ensembles, I began to realize that was where I wanted to be. It’s so much more comfortable in my voice, and my vocal and character types match a lot better in opera than musical theatre. The big moment was when I was studying abroad in London and joined the London Philharmonic Choir for a performance of Mahler’s Resurrection symphony and just knew classical music was it.

My inspiration comes first from the gorgeous music I get to sing and hear all the time. I’ve been especially lucky over the last year and a half to be back in grad school and surrounded by inspiration from the music, my amazing colleagues, and the incredible teachers I’m studying with.

Aspirations for the future is a timely question, since I graduate in a month! I hope to someday make my entire living from only singing. I’m not terribly picky about what form that takes – opera, concerts, choral, weddings, whatever. I may try the sort of “standard” track of getting into a young artist program apprenticeship with an opera company, then get into a better one, then get into an even better one, then “have a career,” but maybe not. A European audition tour may also be on the horizon; they have smaller opera houses there and tend to favor lighter voices like mine.

JENNI: Over time, I’ve come to discover that, for me, writing under constraint leads to greater creativity. The constraint can take various shapes – you can limit yourself to text written by others, to a specific source text, to specific letters of the alphabet, to specific concepts, to specific forms, and so on. In Erasing Infinite, I constrain myself to a single page at a time from a single source text using a single procedure (erasure). In other work, I’ve experimented with constraints made popular by the Oulipo group and played around with more conceptual approaches – for example, pulling out phrases from a podcast transcript that start with the same words –  to craft a piece. I’m always looking for new source texts and new approaches to try.

There are a lot of people dipping their toes into the experimental writing field right now. It’s easy to write under an easy constraint, and this is alluring to both writers and publishers. I’m inspired by the obsessives, the writer who construct difficult mazes they must compose their way out of. Christian Bök spent seven years writing Eunoia, a book composed of chapters written entirely of words with single vowels. Doug Nufer wrote a 200 page novel, Never Again, where he never repeats a single word. I admire that kind of focus, that singular pursuit.

I’m also very interested in how writers are leveraging the Internet to do new things with their work. I love the poetry bots, the hypertexts. Look at the companion website to Collier Nogues’ The Ground I Stand On Is Not My Ground. Cool, right? I want to do more in this space.  

 What’s the story behind “Year of Glad?” How did it originate and what did the creative process look like for each of you?

JENNI: I began work on Erasing Infinite in late 2013 as an act of homage to Wallace, posting the poems as I completed them on the project’s website. All along, I hoped the project would have additional incarnations – I could see, for example, a book length manuscript, a gallery exhibit of selected prints, and erasure poetry workshops. I can truthfully say that the idea of a musical interpretation of the work never crossed my mind! In early 2015, I received an email from Patrick, proposing the idea, and I loved it from the beginning. My job at that point was to just say “yes,” and step back to allow Patrick the space for his own creative work and interpretation.  

PATRICK: Joelle mentioned that she’d like me to compose something for her recital, and I immediately said “yes” – she’s a dear friend and a terrific artist, and this project would give me a great excuse to visit Chicago. We agreed to keep our eyes open for texts to set.

Then, a few months later (March 2015, I believe), one of the DFW websites I frequent (The Howling Fantods) posted one of Jenni’s poems (“No More,” from p. 222) to Facebook. It was perfect. It “worked” as a poem on its own merits, and yet it refracted the text of this book that’d meant so much to me for so many years and afforded me the rare opportunity to look at it from a different angle. I contacted Jenni, who was extremely nice about the whole thing; ran it by Joelle, who was game enough to literally read the whole novel before her recital; and set about developing a form that I thought would work.

I think I’m inherently a narrative-driven artist, for better or worse. Even if the story isn’t immediately graspable to the audience – even if it’s just something implicit, something only I know about it – it helps me to channel my ideas and energies in the direction of communicating something. Since there’s this grand tradition of soprano-and-piano song cycles (epitomized by the German lieder of the nineteenth century), I thought it’d be fun to take this thoroughly modern material (new poetry from a relatively new work of literature set to music written in 2015-16) and stretch it over a traditional framework. So then the challenge was culling down the, like, 150 poems that I wanted to set to a manageable assemblage that’d fit into the fifteen minutes allotted to the project in Joelle’s recital.

Then it became a matter of following the flows of the poems and seeing what they wanted to sound like as music. I looked for moments of thematic crossovers and elisions, and tied them together with motivic tools that served to make the whole thing feel like a single, unified piece.

Joelle was instrumental in all of this, of course; she was workshopping much of it as I was writing it, so I was able to guide the piece based on her (very helpful) feedback.

JOELLE: I met Patrick through his wife Micah several years ago when we were auditioning and performing together in Boston – I was actually one of their bridesmaids and now I am proud to call myself the crazy spinster aunt of their son Jude, who is the coolest 2-year-old in the world. I’ve always loved Patrick’s compositions, especially his vocal writing. As I was starting my grad program I asked him if he’d be interested in composing something for my masters recital. A few months later, I got an excited 6 a.m. text from him – he had found Jenni’s poems and wanted to set them! I immediately started reading Infinite Jest with the hope of actually finishing it before the recital, and I’m proud to say I finished it just two weeks ago!

Since I sing a lot of music that was written about 150 to 300 years ago, having the chance to be involved in the actual creation of a work, as opposed to more the interpretation of it, was really exciting. Patrick knows me the person and me the voice (as a singer, it is often extremely difficult to separate the two!) really well. Then we were also in pretty constant communication about how the work was shaping up – from basic things like how long it needed to be to satisfy the recital requirement, or how tired I was going to be by the time I sing it, to more exciting discussions about finding the musical and dramatic arcs. He also asked me to pick one of Jenni’s poems for one of the central movements. And then as I worked on it, primarily with my coach, then voice teacher, then recital accompanist, I would circle back with Patrick about things like an easier way to set the text or a better place to breathe.

I find it funny to think about how music scholarship and research will change as the technology of primary sources changes. Like someday on the music library shelf next to “Collected Letters of Strauss and Hofmannsthal 1900-1916” or whatever, you’ll see “Selected Emails, Texts, and Blog Posts of Patrick Greene”. But that’s how this piece was created!

In an interview with Larry McCaffery in the “Review of Contemporary Fiction” (and as Jenni points out in an interview), David Foster Wallace says, “Fiction’s about what it is to be fucking human.” Is there an aspect of being human that you especially connect with in Infinite Jest? Do you believe that what Wallace says about fiction here applies to your own practice of art?

JOELLE: Absolutely. I was on a train on Christmas Day when I read the passage about American society treating anhedonia as “hip and cool,” in opposition and in fear of and in secret longing for the messiness of actually being human. I gasped and flailed at my boyfriend next to me and made him take out his earbuds and read it too. I think Wallace got it absolutely right, and I love that Patrick has updated the emotional arc of Schumann’s Frauenliebe und -Leben to include some more of that messiness. It’s one of the things I love about being a musician and a singer specifically – the human voice moves people in such a unique way among the instruments. I always try to honor the very human impulse to connect and tell stories when I sing, and not just stand onstage and make pretty sounds.

PATRICK: Going off of what Joelle said: DFW’s greatest influence on me, personally, is his taking a very strong stand against the very dark, anhedonic forces that are constantly beckoning to us. It’s so much easier to just not give a shit, you know? It’s so much simpler to live stuck in your “default settings” (as DFW beautifully articulated in This Is Water); it’s a lot easier – and sometimes a lot sexier – to just sort of assume you’re right, and that the world’s actually a pretty simple place. And the path to that sort of mindset is paved in denying yourself human, deep experiences. In Infinite Jest specifically, every one of the main (and semi-main) characters is a fully fleshed-out person. They are complex and mercurial, and they aren’t what they appear to be on their surfaces. And that’s the way we all are, right? And if we’re aware of each other’s complexities, we’re suddenly treating each other like human beings. We’re a little bit less alone.

JENNI: At the root of Wallace’s comment about “what it is to be a fucking human being” is this understanding that we are all multidimensional and complex human beings. Infinite Jest is a book about the search for happiness, and all of the sadness and self-questioning that goes along with that quest. It follows characters who alternately embrace and reject the entertainments and addictions (and addictions to entertainment) that promise relief from that sadness and self-questioning.

I think the people who really connect to Wallace (myself included) do so because they recognize these struggles in themselves. Which is not to say we’re all sad, depressed people – there’s a difference between realizing your struggles and being consumed by them. When I’m sad or anxious, I can spend an entire day sitting in the movie theater or lying on the couch binge watching entire series of shows on Netflix. Now, I’m self-aware enough to know these activities are distractions, attempts to deactivate the think, but I can still connect with the characters in the book who lack that awareness and take their entertainments too far.

Some of my poetry certainly addresses human emotions and experiences, though I wouldn’t necessarily call that my purpose or aim. If something I write makes someone think, “Yes! I feel that way too!,” that’s certainly great. But I also embrace the practice playing with language and form for its own sake. Maybe Wallace would say I’m not creating real “art,” but I’m okay with that.  

Especially for our readers who don’t know the work of David Foster Wallace or Infinite Jest, could you share the reason you chose the title “Year of Glad?”

JENNI: In Infinite Jest, Wallace conceives of a future with “subsidized time,” where corporations sponsor the year. Gone is our numerical way of numbering the years, and instead we get years like “Year of the Depend Adult Undergarment” and “Year of the Perdue Wonderchicken.” Each year, the Statue of Liberty gets new accoutrements to reflect that year’s sponsor (including a giant diaper in YDAU). In the book, “Year of Glad” literally refers to the year subsidized by Glad, maker of sandwich and trash bags. It’s the first chapter of Infinite Jest and the last, sequentially, in the novel’s timeline. But it has a nice figurative ring to it, doesn’t it? A “year of glad” — who doesn’t want one of those?

PATRICK:  Exactly! I’ve always found the idea of “subsidized time” sort of hilarious, and Year of Glad in Infinite Jest is something of an annus mirabilis. Also, I’m just immensely grateful this whole shebang materialized in the first place.

JOELLE: I was just sort of along for the ride on this one! I didn’t address it in my program notes either. I kind of like that the title will mean different things to my audience whether or not they are familiar with the novel.

In “Year of Glad,” each of you has worked within a set of constraints as an artist—not just because it’s a collaboration but also because the nature of the work is cumulative. Each artist works within the framework(s) provided by the artist(s) before. How did you negotiate artistic freedom and creativity in relationship to the project?

JENNI: Every piece of creative work has its influences, its inspirations. With “Year of Glad,” our lineages and connections are just more exposed. I go back to what I said earlier about finding creativity in constraint – that’s so clear here with this collaboration. We were each handed something to work with, and used our own talents (writing, composing and performing) to interpret it and make it new.

Turning Infinite Jest into poetry is both an easy and challenging task. It’s easy in that the book contains a plethora of characters and voices to work with. It contains great varieties of of dialogue and description. The palette is large, so to speak. At the same time, David Foster Wallace is “Saint Dave” for many, and Infinite Jest a holy text. If I’m going to create poetry from it — an act in and of itself that some see as sacrilege — it can’t just be a poetic retelling of the book. Nobody wants to read that. So there’s a challenge to do something that’s more authentic to my experience and my voice as a poet.

As far as our “Year of Glad” work goes, I trusted Patrick to incorporate the poems into his composition as he saw fit and didn’t try to exact any influence that front. To put it another way: I wouldn’t have wanted Wallace (if he were alive) to be directing or setting parameters on what I create from Infinite Jest. So I wanted to extend Patrick that same freedom and courtesy.

PATRICK: I’m definitely in the Jenni camp on this front: I really love working within very specific constraints. Knowing there’s a “before” – Jenni’s poetry – and an “after” – Joelle’s premiere – took a ton of pressure off. I knew exactly where I fit in, and I felt relatively free to take my portion of things in whatever direction it wanted to go. I just knew that I had to completely respect two things: the words and the performance needs.

JOELLE: Being a singer and an actor for me can sometimes feel a little divorced from the creative process – I’m not actually writing the words or the music, or even with some directors, really creating my own physical or vocal interpretation of a character (I do not like those directors). As I’ve prepared this piece, and all the other music on my recital, I’ve tried to keep in mind that the singer’s interpretation is the extra dimension that gets the words and music off the page. Patrick’s score is beautifully designed, but this piece wants to be heard! It also feels empowering to know that Patrick trusts me as an artist and supports the interpretive choices I’ve made. And though he wrote it with my voice in mind, the next person who sings it will create an entirely different performance, because she will connect with it in her own unique way.

“Year of Glad” originated with Jenni’s erasure poetry, which was meant to be a celebration and tribute to the life of David Foster Wallace in the wake of his death. The structure of “Year of Glad” mirrors Robert Schumann’s Frauenliebe und –leben, a song cycle about love that ends with death and mourning. Do you believe “Year of Glad” as a whole is one of both love and mourning? Can creativity function as a practice of both?

PATRICK: Year of Glad is an ode to living life boldly and bravely. The final movement – which took literally, like, four times as long to compose as any of the others – is an exhortation of sorts: she is telling the audience, as an old woman (the piece progresses chronologically, a la Frauenliebe), what she’s learned. And what she’s learned is that a loss can be a beautiful thing, because it means you’ve found something in the first place. She’s saying we should get off our asses and trust that we’ll figure it out.

JOELLE: I think both love and mourning, which really is another form of love, are so central to the human experience that it’s tough to create something that is not related in some way to one or the other. When I think about my whole recital program, which is 60 minutes of music by six composers in four languages spanning four centuries, it’s all there – love of God, a lament for a departed loved one, maternal love, love of nature, nostalgia for a lost homeland, and above all, love of love itself. And while Schumann’s cycle ends in mourning, Patrick’s final movement pretty joyfully transcends it and celebrates a love that was worth it.

JENNI: I think Joelle has it right when she says that mourning is another form of love.  After Wallace’s passing, McSweeney’s put together a collection of reflections from those who knew him and who were impacted by his work, called “Memories of David Foster Wallace.” Read through that page: it’s all love. Also, isn’t the majority of art — in all its iterations —  about either loving a person, place or thing, or missing that person, place or thing? You love somebody, you miss somebody. You love that mountain outside your window, you reminisce about the time when you had a mountain outside your window. (You get the point.)  Indifference and ambivalence aren’t very good instigators for art.  

Do you have any words of wisdom for artists who want to collaborate?

JOELLE: I don’t think you can be an artist and not collaborate. The 19th century Romantic solitary genius Artist, if it ever really was a thing, is over. Contemporary lives are so connected. I think it’s really important to know yourself first – how you like to work, what you bring to the table and what your weaknesses are. Then try to find other artists who complement that, figure out what you want to say, and do it! I also have to echo Jenni’s sentiment of saying yes. Since moving to Chicago I’ve really tried to embrace the pervasive “yes and” spirit that comes from the huge improv scene here. I’ve found it a really fulfilling way to make art and to live in general.

JENNI: You’ve got to find your creative kindred. Find the people who want to make cool stuff more than they want to make money. If someone wants to charge you to use their work, or you’re charging someone to use theirs, it’s not a collaboration – it’s a business transaction.

Good collaborations should raise all boats, with everyone involved standing to benefit equally from the exchange. Patrick, Joelle and I are at relatively similar points in our respective careers, which helps. Nobody is in a position of power over another. Everybody’s intentions are good. We share in any publicity and, most of all, get to put something new out into the world. It works from all angles.

Ultimately, if you want to collaborate with people, ask. How many awesome projects go undone because one party was afraid to ask the other? Oh, and if people ask you to collaborate, say yes.

PATRICK: My best piece of advice is just do it. There is nothing to be lost in trying. If you stumble across something on the internet that hits you the right way, send that email. The worst thing that can happen – and I really mean this – is that the person who’s inspired you can’t take on the project, but is left knowing that his or her work touched somebody. The best thing that can happen is Year of Glad.

The creative world is simultaneously larger and smaller than it’s ever been. There are more artists alive and working today than have ever existed at any point in time in the history of our species, and yet we’re all just a few keystrokes away from each other. It’s amazing! And we can all complain endlessly about how the system isn’t set up to support us, but in some very tangible ways we’re actually more empowered than we’ve ever been to create awesome, lasting, relevant, multivariate art that can come together to change the world.

But these things don’t happen unless we harness the fact that we’re all out there to begin with. So just ask. Reach across that electronic threshold and make a human connection.

Thank you so much, Jenni, Patrick, and Joelle! 

Jenni B. Baker is a poet and editor based in Bethesda, MD. She is the founder and editor-in-chief ofThe Found Poetry Review, a literary journal that publishes experimental forms of poetry including found, erasure, constraint-based and conceptual pieces. In her multi-year project, Erasing Infinite, she creates poems via erasure from David Foster Wallace’s 1,076-page text, Infinite Jest, one page at a time. Her chapbook, Comings / Goings, a collection of poems generated by applying Oulipian constrained writing techniques to Washington Post articles, was released in 2015. Her poetry has been featured in journals such as DIAGRAM, BOAAT, Quarterly West, Washington Square andLunch Ticket. For more information, stop by her website or follow her on Twitter.

A composer, singer, and sound designer, Patrick Greene (b. 1985) is a rising artist in the world of contemporary art music.

Hailed by The New York Times as a composer of “enticing” works, Mr. Greene’s music has been described as “shimmering” (New Music Box), “unearthly” (The New York Times), and constructed with “true musicality” (Boston Musical Intelligencer). Recent engagements include performances by Boston Musica Viva, the Atlanta Chamber Players, the New Haven Symphony Orchestra, loadbang ensemble, Christopher Houlihan, Transient Canvas, Balletik Duo, and many others.

His theatrical sound design has been called “disturbingly real” and “memorable” (ArtsImpulse). Recent design projects include the Boston premiere of Cassie Seinuk’s Eyes Shut. Door Open. (Wax Wings Productions) and D.W. Gregory’s Radium Girls (Flat Earth Theatre).

Patrick’s abstractEXTRACTION won the 2010 Rapido! New England Competition (and took the Audience Prize at National Finals in 2011). In 2014, he was Guest Composer at the inaugural Birmingham New Music Festival, and, in 2015, his My Dearest Friend earned a C7Prize as a “Recommended Work.” Most recently, the St. Botolph Club Foundation selected Patrick for the 2015 Emerging Artist Award.

Mr. Greene earned his MM degree in Composition from The Boston Conservatory in May 2010, where he studied with Andy Vores and Dalit Warshaw. He graduated with a BA in Music from Trinity College in 2007, as a student of Gerald Moshell, Douglas Bruce Johnson, and John Rose.

Patrick is a member of the Society for Music Theory, the American Composers’ Forum, CompositionToday.com, and the Society of Composers, Inc. He is also a founding member of the Fifth Floor Collective and the Equilibrium Concert Series.

He lives with his wife (the actress Micah Greene) and son in Lincoln, Massachusetts, where he serves on the town’s Cultural Council.

by Melissa D. Johnston

I first met Nicola Ayoub as the spunky pilates instructor who kicked my butt in class each week. I learned quickly, however, that her passion, talent, and determination weren’t confined to being a teacher at a pilates studio in Atlanta, GA. Nicola was a gifted dancer who had trained and performed with the Atlanta Ballet. In addition, she worked regularly with Full Radius, a modern dance company. Now she was moving to France. Where she would dance. Period. (Even if all the hows weren’t worked out—yet.)

And dance she has. In the seven years that she has lived in Paris, Nicola has become an award-winning, international dancer/choreographer. She choreographed a bilingual one-woman show dealing with self and cultural identity, “The Language,” which was awarded Paris Jeunes Talents in 2008 and first place at the Parisian choreography contest Tobina in 2009. She’s toured Milan, Berlin, New York City, and Seville as well as performed regularly in Paris. She represented the USA in UNESCO’s 2011 production “Astro-Ballet” and traveled to Banjul, The Gambia on a Fulbright grant to work with the country’s first theatre troupe. If that weren’t enough, she also began a dance company, 3 D Company, with partner Guillaume Morgan.

Nicola’s work is fascinating, creative, intelligent and powerful. Her positive attitude towards life and the pursuit of her dream continues to inspire me. I am honored to have gotten a chance to speak with her recently.

When did you first realize that dance was your passion? How did you decide to follow it and what keeps you energized in its pursuit?

I always wanted to perform. My first memories are of making up little song and dance numbers pretty much anywhere and for anyone who would watch.  I was 12 years old when I realized that dance was my passion and that was the thing I wanted to do with my life- be on stage and shine for the audience. Thus, at 12 I decided for myself that I would audition for the Atlanta Ballet’s pre-professional program. I called and planned my own audition, did it, got accepted, and then told my parents that dance would be my life. It is still the performing on stage that keeps me motivated to dance. Also, the chance to learn from other choreographers- their movement languages and ideas. I am always learning and hungry to learn more in this creative job.

“What I thought I knew” (duo with Asha Thomas)

In many of the dances you’ve choreographed and performed, you deal explicitly and implicitly with identities that are hybrid, “in-between,” straddling the borders of culture, language, and nations. “The Language,” a bilingual performance in which you use words, music, and dance to share the joys and confusions of an American living in Paris, was first inspired by your Lebanese heritage. In “What I Thought I Knew,” a duo with Asha Thomas, you both draw from your personal narratives to explore the internal realizations and revelations formed in living away from one’s home. Has the creation of dances and their performance brought a new understanding of self- or cultural- identity for you? Has it changed the way you think of the concept of “identity” itself?

Yes and yes. Self and cultural identity inspires all my work. Living far from home made me reconsider my values, my past, and who I am now. The story for “The Language” was my autobiographical experience as a foreigner in Paris and a lot of the clichés that go along with being the overly smiley American here. In France, I felt and still feel very American, but when I go back home I feel a little out of place, like something is missing. I’ve lived in France long enough that it will always be part of me too, an added layer to my identity. It is true that the original idea for “The Language” stemmed from my own identity questions about being both Lebanese and American. Until my first trip to Lebanon I was always proud to say how Lebanese I was. Then finally visiting my paternal country I realized just how very American I was/am. I think more than blood, where you grow up, what language you speak, your education, your travels, and experiences shape the person you become, in short, your identity. Through the creation of dances I’m finding how identity is also something malleable, time and experience change parts of you.

In “The Language,” you say, “My language is a system of symbols so that I can communicate to you my yearning, my yearning to understand and be understood.  Words alone cannot convey to you how I feel.  The body tells much more.  Les mots parfois sont inutiles. And words about the body are never as illustrative as body language by itself!” How do you think words and body language function differently in their symbolization? Do they tap into different symbol systems? I realize this question may best be answered by seeing you dance and perhaps also by we, the readers, becoming more aware of our own bodies, but perhaps words can catch a faint glimpse of the difference.

Body language tells the truth; it has weight and substance. Words can be strong too, but they mean nothing if the body language with it is false. For example, I could say “I am so happy you are here. I welcome you to my home.” Sounds nice, but imagine me saying that with my arms firmly crossed, shoulders up and tense, jaw locked, and legs squeezing together and you would definitely know that my words probably meant the opposite.

Dance is a universal language. In my opinion, open arms, a twirl, a hip sway- all that is much more inviting than the word “welcome.” For Atlanta readers, the perfect example of such a warm welcome is my Uncle Nick in his restaurant Nicola’s.  You see generosity come to life through movement and music.  Incidentally, my uncle is also my biggest dancing hero.

I totally agree about your Uncle Nick! I’ve had the honor of experiencing that generosity–and of taking part in the wonderful dancing there as well.

You’ve performed in “Astro Ballet” with a multi-national cast at UNESCO in an effort to promote the peaceful use of space through dance. You’ve also spent two weeks in Banjul, The Gambia, working at the Ebunjan Theatre with their troupe to help create and perform “Mystical Strings” and give the first modern dance show in that country. Could you say a bit more about these experiences? Do you think dance can really have a role in helping people from radically different backgrounds and experiences understand and relate to each other?

Yes! As I said before dance is the universal language. In the “Astro Ballet” the other dancers were Russian and spoke very little English, however, they all used classical ballet vocabulary (which is French and used by all ballet students worldwide) so I knew exactly what they were talking about with phrases like “arabesque, glissade, grand jeté.” Technically, the piece was very ballet based and we all shared the same vocabulary for these moves so I had no problem learning the steps called out or working with the other dancers. For the project in Banjul, the students had no formal dance training, no terminology so Asha and I had to be clear with our own movements and ask them to copy us. They learned some in this manner, but the first two days we thought they would never catch on to certain basic modern dance steps. Then we asked them to improvise to live drum music and WOW we saw some amazing natural dancers. Once we saw what their strengths were we could incorporate these moves into the choreography too so that they felt comfortable and then add new steps on top of it without frightening them.

I think music plays a huge role in this process as a guide, support, and inspiration to the dancers.

Banjul students after “Mystical Strings”

What are your current projects? What are some of the projects you’d like to pursue in the future?

This spring I am performing with the company Karma Dance Project (works by choreographers Alexandra Bansch and Gigi Caciuleanu) in France and Italy. Also collaborating with Greek choreographer Taxiarchis Vasilakos for his new creation “All is One.”

Specifically for next season, I want to expand the duo Asha Thomas and I started last year “What I thought I knew” and get it programmed in a Parisian theatre. Generally, I would like more choreography outreach projects abroad like I did in The Gambia. I’m hoping my dancing future will give me the chance to travel even more, meet new people, learn new dance styles, and share my own experiences.

You’ve been very successful in living your dream. If you had one thing to say to artists struggling to follow their dreams, what would you say?

It takes so much longer  “to make it” than you think and that is hard (the repeated rejection, the waiting, the lack of money I know it all well). But if you really want to be an artist, if you are starving to perform then persevere. Yes, perseverance will be your best friend.

***A wonderful update: In July 2013 Nicola and her partner Asha Thomas will be participating in another dance outreach program in Contonou, Benin, sponsored by African Regional Service (US Embassy).***

“The Language/femme fatale solo”:

UNESCO interview for Astro Ballet:

by Melissa D. Johnston

I remember the first time I saw Atlanta-based Monica Arrington, who performs under the name nerdkween, play. Two of the friends accompanying me, both musicians who had seen her before, were already giddy and starstruck. They had good right to be. Monica is a rarity. She is a classically-trained singer/songwriter/composer who freely experiments in both songwriting and performance, blending multiple styles effortlessly and elegantly into a spare and stunning lo-fi sound. Nerdkween released her debut full-length recording, Synergy, in 2008 with Stickfigure Records, which puts out recordings of acts such as Snowden, Deerhunter and Xiu Xiu.  She released a second CD called Profitandloss in November 2010 with Fieldhouse Recordings , a branch of Stickfigure. I got an opportunity recently to ask her a few questions about music and life as an artist.

Even before I heard your music, I was already in love with the name nerdkween. Is there a story behind the name? 

It goes back to high school for me. In school I associated with the smart kids and I guess secretly to myself, I imagined myself the “queen”.  As I started in college, I wanted to start my own label and I was going to call it  Nerd Queen Records.  The lettering has evolved over the years  into the official  (nerdkween)* .

Your music pulls from multiple influences and musical styles. Among your influences you’ve mentioned P.J. Harvey, Sonic Youth, Lisa Germano, The Sundays, Mazzy Star, Low, Cranes, and the early Liz Phair among others. Which were your earliest influences? In general, which do you think have proven or will be proven to be the most enduring in their effect on your writing and performing?

I love noise.  I think I will always find inspiration in it. I love vibrations and it recharges me.  I feel as though the music is born out of that haziness as in from chaos comes order and understanding. I also find the light airy and smothering  voices of Hope Sandoval and Lisa Germano to be  feminine yet strong all at once. My voice is similar and I also find the lyrics from them resonate with me. They celebrate their pensive and uncertain natures which I can also relate to.  It inspires me to dig deeper and not to be so afraid to express myself.

You’ve called your music postmodern pop. One of the interesting characteristics of postmodern music to me is that it can challenge barriers between “low” and “high” styles of music as well as “elitist” and “populist” values. You are a classically trained vocalist with a degree in musical composition. Do you see yourself as purposely playing with the cultural boundaries of pop and classical training either in attitude and/or in the actual creation of music?

Oh yes, my interests in music crosses over to many genres and it continues to grow. I think any creator or performer does themselves a disservice by not exploring  all there is in the world.  And with technology our world is becoming smaller and we can reach out to anyone anywhere. The cultural exchange is amazing for personal growth for anyone.  Yet, people would be surprised how much and often pop music “borrows” from  classical music.

What musical project or projects are you working on now? What most excites you about it? How does it relate to the work you’ve done in the past, particularly that in your last album Profitandloss?

Right now I’m in writing mode, I want to see what I can create just for the sake of writing. I would like to release another recording but I want to make certain I have good material and the best resources  to release under. I am listening to more world music and roots music and I want to find ways to incorporate it into my sound.  Simply songwriting can be very exciting if you are struck with inspiration.  So I’m kind of just enjoying the process without a clear agenda  or goal.  The last album I recorded and released something  within the year and it was a  great growth lesson for me.  At the time I needed to do it. Now, I want to take a bit more time and better myself.

You’ve been very candid about your struggle to live the dream of being an artist. Recently you’ve been putting your gifts and training to “practical” use by teaching music and voice lessons. About that you’ve said, “I have been fearful that finding a practical outlet for my craft equals failure of childhood fantasies” but also “Now, as an adult, I am working on helping my dream to also grow up.” Could you say a bit more about this journey? 

I think I actually surprised myself once I started teaching and coaching.  I am reminded that we as artist ARE teachers  even if we don’t have students. I love  being involved with music so that is what I have come to understand , not just the pursue of  being a so called recognized artist.

The craft of singing is something very dear to me so I don’t mind sharing what I know and experienced over the years.  In fact, I’m very excited when a have a student who displays a yearning to learn as much as possible about music and singing.

Recently you wrote, “I think it’s the ultimate role of an artist: to guide oneself and others through the process of living, to make connections with our ideals and the real world, and to find beauty and peace in conflict.” Do you have some hard-won advice to give to other artists aspiring (but also struggling) to live this role? 

It’s important to listen to your heart., and realize there are many avenues to take your dreams.  Life can get into the way but you can use it to challenge yourself and learn more about who you really are.  Just know that there are other people going through similar struggles in life, your art can help them cope.  Don’t stop creating, you never know who is paying attention. You never know you will need your art.

Thank you, Monica!