‘Help me
keep going despite the ache’
‘Recognize where privilege rests inside your bones
Use it to combat oppression
Find your role’
‘Know where you are, know where
you've been
You've got strength, allow it in’
Annah Anti-Palindrome, ‘Dangling Modifiers’ (2014)
I put this on when I got in from a particularly
wild/manic/frustrating/exhausting day at work and had come home to find Annah’s
package patiently waiting for me on my doormat. Putting her CD on calmed and
quietened and focussed my mind. But more than that, in the quietness it gave me
the space to consider the positivity and empowerment of her delivery and the
songs’ messages. With titles like ‘Keep Going’, and ‘Find Your Role’ the album
filled my head with possibilities and a sense of consciousness-raised.
Listening to this album made me think about community and
the connections I feel to so many incredibly talented, giving, and productive
people I know and am indebted to for filling my life with messages and
affirmations of positivity and mindfulness, even if to get to those places they
themselves have gone through acres of hard-times.
You know sometimes that thing happens when you love
something that your friend has made, and then you wonder if you like it because
you love and want to support your friend and appreciate what they have gone and
done. But then, no, you really hear what they’ve made, and strip away any ties
you may have to their work, and it is actually achingly wonderful.
Doing a comparative thing to Annah’s album would do it a
disservice, but at times it really does remind me of the magic sadness and
hushed poetry of a Mirah album.
Oh, and you’ve gotta know, the physical version of this
album is the most beautifully packaged thing. Opening it feels like an act of
art and love, bound up and enveloped in recycled and co-operatively made
casing, featuring hand-printed artwork designed by a dear friend of ours (Lex
Non Scripta), and liner notes that give considered sense and meaning to the
sounds you hear: the whole thing is a joy to hold in your hands. Like Annah
says in one of her lyrics, ‘Hello thoughtful precision’.
As someone
who knows Annah as much as somebody living on the other side of the world can,
after meeting briefly in the joyful Californian summer of 2009, it’s so good to
re-connect with her and the art that I’m so pleased she’s creating, making and
sharing. It makes me feel like there’s so much potential and joyful talent in
our communities coming from people who are actively seeking to creatively make
things that have positive impacts on the worlds we live in.
‘Dangling
Modifiers’ is a work of art in every way possible.
I was lucky enough to ask Annah a few questions:
Where did you make and
record the album?
This album has been under
construction since 2011. It was recorded in different bedrooms, lofts, attic
spaces, squats & back seats all over the US and Canada (Toronto, Vancouver
BC, Philly, Oakland, Portland Maine, Portland OR, Seattle, Baltimore,
Connecticut, San Francisco, Tennessee, etc.)
You’ve collaborated with a
number of artists and musicians on this album. How important is collaboration
to you, and is community to your art?
Both are
absolutely vital. As artists I believe we have symbiotic relationships to each
other. We inspire each other by existing, by creating, by sharing, and by
bearing witness to each other’s processes. These cyclical and symbiotic
relationships are a driving force for me—experiencing & participating in
other people’s art is what sustains me & my own ability to create. My art
is filled with the echoes and reverberations of other artist's work- the ways
in which they’ve creatively shared themselves with the world.
What does the title, beyond
&/or because of it’s definition, mean to you in terms of what you are
wishing for this album to convey and communicate?
In a literal way, I’ve been
thinking about this concept of the “traditional sentence,” which is supposed to
contain a subject and a predicate. The subject of a sentence serves to assign
specific context to the rest of what's being communicated. The predicate
consists of the verb and all of its modifiers. A dangling modifier, then,
refers to the descriptive word associated with an action, in a sentence that is
void of a subject. For example, in the sentence, “Annah sang loudly,” Annah is
the subject, and “sang loudly” by itself would be a dangling modifier.
In this project I've identified
the “dangling modifier” as a symbol of resistance rather than simply a
grammatical error. I've found that sometimes predicates are more powerful
& all-encompassing when the subject is left blank. The listener or reader
can superimpose themselves into the narrative & assign context themselves.
In other words, the absence of an autonomous subject in a sentence encourages
us to relate to each other through shared, collective experiences. I mean for
the “dangling modifier” to complicate the capitalist obsession with
individuality & individuation.
With that said, I think this album
is very much about the importance of connecting with each other, building,
sustaining and honoring our queer/chosen families.
How long have you been
making music, and what instruments have you played on this album? I remember
you telling my when we last saw each other that you made/reused items as
instruments (I’m pretty sure you told me that you made an instrument out of
your bike), is that still something you’re enjoying?
I've been making noise forever-
and at some point I think it turned into music...or maybe it never did, I don’t
know! Using objects that are referential to the theme of a song in order to lay
down my initial percussion tracks has become an important component of my work.
For example, songs written about my mother are often looped from the sound of
me tapping whiskey bottles together (cuz whiskey was her favorite when she was
alive). This creates a visual component to the song, which (obviously) isn't
legible on recorded CD. In this album I use melodica, piano, xylophone, guitar,
some metal pots & pans, sloshing bathwater, asthma attacks, sewing machines,
snapping twigs, voice-message clips, crickets, and all sorts of other stuff to
make referential sound for each piece.
Malic Amalya has made a
wonderful video for your track, ‘Keep Going’. How did you guys end up
collaborating? Is it exciting for you to see your work entwined in two mediums?
Yes! Getting to see my work
inspire projects in other mediums feels like such a gift! Malic’s film for Keep
Going is compiled of still-shots from the yard of my childhood home. This
visual gesture creates a narrative for the piece that feels simultaneously
attached to my body & out of my grasp at the same time.
We met through mutual friends at a
queer-land project in Arcata, California called “Fancyland”. We had creative
chemistry right away.
Malic's work is breathtaking in
general- check out his other stuff at malicamalya.com.
This album strikes me as
equal parts defiance and compassion. Is that a fair reflection on your
emotional association to your creative output?
Yes, I think so. The compassion
part is pretty overt I think (?). The defiant components are captured in
multiple ways that are probably a little more subversive. For instance, the
bits of static & background noise on each track, the absence of a pop-filter,
the slight changes in timing that happen in the middle of some songs, the
instruments that introduce themselves in the beginnings of a verses and vanish
by the end, are all structural decisions I made in order to challenge the
rigidity of traditional music-theory norms (which are established and
controlled by a very specific class culture).
Could you comment on the
politics of your music making? I see and hear an equal mix of personal, and
radical subject matter on the album. Is it important to you that your politics
are explicit and integral, (alongside the more general political implications
of a queer/femme making kickass art and sharing it with the world)?
Whenever I think of art-activisms,
I think of this quote by Anne Cvetkovich from her book, An Archive of
Feelings. She says,
As a name for experiences
of socially situated political violence, Trauma forges overt connections
between politics and emotion. And music as a medium, can help return the
listener to the pleasures of sensory embodiment that trauma destroys.
I believe that music- and art in
general-have the capacity to mobilize people into radical, political action by
way of accessing the powerful emotional responses humans have when witnessing
or experiencing injustice. While political theory, lectures, texts, etc, can
inspire action from the left side of the brain via analytical, logical,
critical thinking responses, art and music have the power to access the right
side- the emotional/ empathetic/ somatic responses. We live in a society that values
left-brain thinking, but when we act using a combination of both our emotional
and tactical lenses, I believe mass revolution becomes 1,000 times more
possible! I guess in short, this is why I make music.
What other art and projects
are you working on at the moment?
For my
30th birthday I asked the artists in my life to create a piece of work (in
their medium of choice) that’s been directly inspired by my art (music or
otherwise). Since then, I’ve continued to update this forum, artisticsymbiosis.tumblr.com/ Sometimes
these kinds of artifacts/reminders about artistic symbiosis are what motivate
me to keep creating (and keep breathing in general).
I'm also working on a publication
project with Lex Non Scripta (lexnonscripta.com)
called PASSAGE & PLACE. It aims to connect conversations of localized
displacement and gentrification to more expansive conversations around
immigration, imprisonment, community building across intersections, mental
health and spirit, and the ways in which queerness interfaces with these.
PASSAGE& PLACE asks its
participants and audience to connect their own experience to a broader
narrative about the impacts of movement and place-making in physical, liminal,
and metaphorical space in three parts: an art exhibition, a panel discussion of
participating artists, and a printed anthology of visual and written works. The
printed project will incorporate works of art sourced via an open call for
contributions, a curated collection of essays, and letters from both free-world
artists/writers and queer prisoners
And finally, I'm also part of an
independent publishing collective in the bay area called Deviant Type Press.
We're in the process of editing our second publication. For more info, see devianttypepress.net/about-us/
You’ve played on some
crazy-amazing bills and been part of some amazing looking performances over
this past year or so. What’s it like to play shows with a lineup or team of
people that you respect and love?
Getting to play on mixed-media
bills that include artistic mentors and/or members of my broader community
might be some of the most intoxicating moments in my life! I feel so honored
when I get to participate in collective, temporal events w/ people I respect
& care about.
I know you used to (still
do?) make zines. How does it feel to now play venues such as zine libraries and
zine fests (amongst all the other amazing venues, shows and performance spaces
you’ve been at over the past few years)?
At one point in history (namely
during early Riot Grrrl/ pre-internet punk era), zine culture and DIY music
culture strongly relied on one another for survival. I guess I feel nostalgic
for that sometimes.
In some ways I actually think of
my albums as “audio zines.” They tell stories and political narratives in
similar ways.
The existence of both written and
recorded archives that are controlled by the communities they represent, is a
vital form of activism. Zines, like independent music projects, are important
venues through which we're able to share knowledge, tell our stories, critique
the system, and honor our histories without relying on (or risking censorship
from) corporate institutions.
Playing in zine libraries or
info-shops reminds me of these connections- I love it.
You’re part of a community
of people that perpetually get-shit-done, and who dream up and execute some of
the most fantastic politically motivated, important projects. What drives that?
And what’s it like to live that?
Hmm...what drives this? The belief
that being creators of culture is a radical, subversive, important affront to
the white-supremacist, capitalist hetero-patriarchy! ;)
Have you hand-stamped the
album sleeves yourself?
The album covers are hand-stamped
w/ letterpress ink. Lex Non Scripta created this image of me, and I had it made
into a rubber stamp at the Berkeley Stamp Company. They are pressed and
assembled in my bedroom, usually with a pot of coffee nearby ;)
I guess in the same ways that I am
nostalgic for early Riot Grrrl distro & archive tactics, I also feel
strongly about keeping a DIY ethic alive. Central to this ethic, is the
encouragement of individuals and communities to share skills and resources in
order to produce and distribute their art. I'm not against the mass-production
of media materials, though. I recognize that sometimes it's necessary. I think
it just makes sense for me to still play a role in all the components of my
album making since I have the time, space and desire to personalize my work in
that way.
I recently saw photos of
you and others recently smashing the life out of a piano. Could you give a bit
of backstory to that?
It's a secret for a gestating
future project! I'll keep you posted, promise! ;)
What’s next, musically?
I don’t know! Eeee! I hope to
spend some more time “with the page” in these upcoming years. I’m working on a
book called Resisting Palindromes- a publication that I hope will have
audio components to it...I'll keep you posted about that too!
See, hear, read more about Annah Anti-Palindrome, and the new
album, here:
(Strawberry farm, en route to Santa Cruz, Summer 2009. Photo by Em Ledger)
