ASMR

Using my body in my music: stimming

I use both gathered sound and streams of consciousness and sounds from my own body like tapping myself or things I fidget with or even stimming (autistic movement). Since the residency I compose sound through software. I do need my Access support, music Tech who helps me because my memory is very poor and I forget the shortcuts and how to use the programme from day to day. 

He’s very patient and doesn’t lose his temper with me or correct me like repeating my own words back to me which is a prejudice many neurodivergent people face in the world and why we so often go mute or stop leaving the house - so his guidance really helped me to gain confidence and autonomy with using software which would often frighten me off as my short term memory is so poor and I forget basic instructions very quickly. 

Before having a Music Tech, I often made multilayered and perhaps dense and chaotic soundscapes that often overwhelmed neurotypical audiences and sometimes they were too inaccessible for the majority of people, but having this access support has helped me to free up space in my impenetrable and often soupy soundscapes so my work has become more fluid, more sensory, more porous, more accessible for the neurotypical audiences. 

Due to my synaesthesia, I need to paint or draw music and create physical compositions and visual soundscapes. Once I have a clear rhythm and pattern in my mind then I can visually follow it like a map and add my voice to them creating journeying soundscapes.

And that’s why I

began to listen to the objects again

because of trauma

because of stress

because of the quiet

fragile

quake

under

my feet.