Momus and the Vera List Center for Art and Politics have co-published the spring edition of Post/doc, the VLC’s biannual publishing series for discursive, speculative, experimental writing and artistic practices. This shared edition features a new text by writer Diana SeoHyung and a new sound work by musician JJJJJerome Ellis, both reflecting on the theme of intervals—on languaging, language breaks, aphasia, riffing, and repeating.
“Our open mouths harbor a not-yet . . .” — heidi andrea restrepo rhodes
“Delayed yet here.” — Diana SeoHyung
Air whistles through a pipe organ. A voice says, “Yeah, whenever you wanna start, we’ll go.” A second voice responds, “Perfect, thank you.” A sustained, low-ish note sounds from the organ. The note trips downward. More notes—higher, lower—enter, forming slow sustained chords. Orbiting around something. A saxophone swoops in. The organ continues slowly, the saxophone pauses, breathes. The saxophone returns, wailing and hoarse. It climbs higher in pitch and volume. The organ continues to provide a haven for the saxophone’s movements. A very low note, played by the organ pedals, enters, a tremor. The saxophone waits, then erupts. Eventually it rests, leaving the organ to sing us out.
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I stutter when I speak, but I also stutter when I play saxophone. Both forms involve an interval of time between when I intend to make a sound and when the sound occurs. When I’m speaking, this interval can extend from one to five to thirty to sixty seconds and longer. Making room for the interval can be challenging. If I’m stuttering on my tea order at the cafe counter, I might choose a flavor whose name I can utter more quickly because I’m getting anxious holding up the line behind me. If I’m pulled over by a cop, I might fear that my stutter will arouse suspicion. In the cop’s presence, I feel unable to speak with my true voice, unable to be, as Diana SeoHyung writes, both delayed and here.
In her essay “A Distance That I Cannot Seem to Close,” SeoHyung reflects on the letters her mother/Umma used to write her. She notes that, where she had previously misunderstood her mother’s letters as a withdrawal from or denial of spending time with her, she can now begin to see them as her mother’s “form of resistance and reservation, in order to speak to me beyond time’s persistence. Delayed yet here.” SeoHyung captures so beautifully the uncertainties and dissonances that can arise from letter writing, and I admire the way she navigates them with such honesty. She teaches me that the delay between when the letter is written, sent, and received can feel like distance as much as intimacy, withdrawal as much as presence. SeoHyung goes on to quote artist Theresa Hak Kyung Cha’s 1977 mail art piece, audience / distant relative: “the in-between-time: from when a sound is made / to when it returns as an echo / no one knows if it was heard.” Will the letter reach the recipient? If so, how will it be heard? Reading SeoHyung, I can begin to hear anew the dissonances embedded in the stutter. If the cop asks me if I have anything illegal in the vehicle, and I begin stuttering, by the time my no reaches his ears, how will he hear it?
As scholar Joshua St. Pierre has taught me, some oral communication relies on certain “beats.” When someone asks me my name, the underlying “communication beat” often requires me to say my name almost instantly. But if I stutter on my name, my stutter’s rhythm can be at odds with the beat. As writer heidi andrea restrepo rhodes teaches me, the open stuttering mouth can “harbor a not-yet.” And in that not-yet, a rhythmic dissonance can arise, sometimes leading the other person to laugh and ask, “What, did you forget your name?” I say, “a rhythmic dissonance can arise,” but for most of life, in these moments, I simply felt that I had failed to speak properly. I have felt great shame about this. I still sometimes feel this way. Other times, these dissonances can amuse me, exhaust me, or make me fear for my safety.
In “Havensong,” my primary musical gesture is to deliberately play with little to no beat (at least in my perception). I’ve tried to create a sonic haven where I can rest. And because music shapes time as well as sound, I like to think of this piece as a haven made of time.
I created this music by first recording an improvisation on pipe organ. I improvise to practice unknowing, teaching myself slowly to not know where I’m going. To fashion haven is the only score. After playing the organ, I recorded a saxophone improvisation while listening to the organ recording through headphones. Because I structured the organ music with minimal beat, I didn’t really worry about stuttering on the saxophone. If I stuttered, I wasn’t failing to play within a certain beat. I was speaking, saxophonically, naturally. Welcoming the stutter and the intervals it carries. Rhythmic dissonances still arose, but I tried to create a musical space flexible enough to allow those dissonances to live. And I have been inspired by SeoHyung’s honest reckoning with communicative dissonance.
Stuttering through my saxophone, I rehearse and imagine speaking as if I had enough time. Or, to paraphrase my mentor Milta Vega Cardona: speaking in time, rather than on time. Or, again following SeoHyung, I seek to use music to create a space, however temporary, where I can be both delayed and here. In music I can call / into question, fall / into the question of what delay might mean, delay the meaning of delay, the saxophone’s epistles all arriving in due time.
Improvised and performed by JJJJJerome Ellis
Recorded and mixed by Graham Duncan
Mastered by Jacob Irish
