“The Sun Itself: Expanding my Horizons as a Queer Multidisciplinary Being”

I am sitting before my computer with the Sibelius software slowly starting up and I am feeling intense anguish. It’s almost a choking feeling as soon as I hear the orchestral crescendo of strings as the application buffers to life. It’s not something I feel when I go to sing, paint, weave, play the violin or even write. In fact, I barely looked at this blank Google Document for two seconds before my fingers began typing away.

In 2018, I began creating notated music for the first time. Or rather I began translating my music into western notation (for many years, I’ve jotted down my ideas in less formal ways). Whatever it is, this moment, right now, feels so deeply unnerving.

I turn to my fiancée, Shannon, who is bewildered seeing me in this bizarre state for such a long period of time. “But you always get over it. It always starts as a shortterm block and then you have such good flow.” she offers, “It’s been weeks without flow, but you had so many great ideas this morning. What about those?”

“I don’t know... something about this time is different.” And it hits me. I do not speak this language of Western notation. I read it (albeit very slowly) and I can write it (again, barely), but I do not speak, sing or breathe in this language. And what’s worse, over the past year, I have felt more and more that this language is merely another extension of white supremacy, colonialism, classism, ableism, and heteropatriarchy haunting my life.

“How comfortable are you with Spanish?” I ask Shannon, hoping that this example might help her understand what I am feeling.

“I mean... Barely, but I can figure it out,” she says, still perplexed as to where I might be going with one of my many metaphors. So, I continue.

“Now, imagine that you are writing a dissertation. You are hoping to write it in Spanish while also questioning what we’ll call the ‘patriarchal and colonial linguistic frameworks of the Spanish language.’ You’re developing your own version of Spanish so that it doesn’t limit you even though your comfort with Spanish is extremely limited. It’s barely there, as you said. This dissertation could make or break your career. You are bubbling with ideas, but they are all in English. And while translation is an option, it simply doesn’t resonate with you the way that it does in English. You know that you’d be selling yourself short if you wrote the dissertation in Spanish. You're an expert, by the way. And for kicks, let’s pretend Spanish uses a completely different script made out of dots and lines as well.”

And before I know it, I am sobbing my way through this hypothetical scenario. Not because I am afraid she won’t understand, but because I am finally feeling the weight of what I am pressuring myself to do: to be a beginner at Western notational composition and to be the best at it. Or to be the beginner who transcended beginnership itself to become the best! I am pressuring myself to somehow arrive in this new modality already equipped with years of experience, and dare I say it, the experience I do have doesn't count for... shit. But shouldn’t it? Doesn’t my experience as a musician, improviser, and unwitting composer—at least to me and those in my corner—count for something?

While I am relatively new to Western notation, I am a composer and I have been composing (knowingly or unknowingly, insecurely or confidently) for at least a decade now. The ideas are constant. I hear the hum of the fridge, a vacuum cleaner, or some dissonant horns outside our Bedford Stuyvesant window and my mind overflows with ideas. I hop out of the shower and hear the contrapuntal pitter-patter of the shower head and the faucet as they slow their flow. It creates waves of polyrhythmic ideas in my mind. I dance to them. I see the music in front of me. It’s not in dots and lines. It is in colors, in characters, in concepts, in facial expressions, in hand gestures, in footwork, in love. I have been composing in the format of Western notation for over two years now and only now--as I try to liken it to my barely bilingual fiancée writing a dissertation questioning Spanish in Spanish; as I finally begin receiving appropriately funded compositional commissions—do I see the ridiculousness of my ambition, insecurity and forced creative flow.

My creativity must be telling me something if it chooses only this one space to disappear on me. And my mental health is definitely telling me something about its feelings of safety in this musical form. Am I tossing out the intensive research and study of the past two years? Absolutely not. Notational composition has allowed my music to reach some exquisite musicians and helped me forge connections with people I wouldn’t have been able to communicate with before. The people who kindled me in this form helped me find my footing and never once made me feel like I was less than. Yet, there is something about these realms of “classical” music -- and yes, it is specific to classical spaces whether we speak of Indian classical, Western classical or any other classic and therefore classist form of art -- that make us feel that our creative abundance is meaningless without mastery of the correct form. It is rarely a specific person or institution. It’s something far more visceral, omnipresent, and seemingly insurmountable.

Hell, here I am, writing an essay convincing myself that I am an abundant, prolific, creative, worthy composer deserving of the opportunities coming my way, all while staving off paralyzing self doubt and composer’s block. I am still feeling insecure about saying that I am a worthy composer. Why? Because my abundance does not come pre-translated. My abundance lives in intergalactic melodies sung into a frying pan sizzling with shallots, cumin seeds, cloves and bay leaves. It lives in the precarious watering schedule of my 27 plants and their alliterating names (Parachute, Parvati, Pankajam, Pita and so on). It lives in the laughter that echoes through the walls of my fiancée and my rainbow colored apartment. My abundance cannot live on a page (or worse on a computer software with poorly produced midi) because it was born from something far less tangible yet far more intrinsic. It was born in the whisper of crisp winter winds coming into one ear and endless poems and songs flowing out of the other. How can I possibly bastardize this oh so divine and human abundance by fixing it onto a page?

Reader, I don’t need to say this, but my anxiety implores me to clarify: I am not arrogant. Anyone who has experienced creative flow knows that these ideas are not ours, but something that we are put on earth to share with the world. They truly do find us before we find them. I am not arrogant. I am worthy. I have been for a long time. I have acknowledged it for a short time.

How do I allow this worthy visionary to coexist with the infectiously curious learner in me? Can the visionary be curious as well? Do I have to give one up to be the other?

I remember when my mutual mentor Jen Shyu recommended me for a program. She wrote something along the lines of, “Anjna has a FIRE. A fire to constantly SEEK OUT knowledge and INTEGRATE that into her artistic visions.” Capitalized letters and everything. I do have it... Don’t I? A fire.

At another instance, I was a runner up for a major grant and the feedback from the panelists was, “Anjna appears to be surrounded by a constellation of brilliant mentors. She speaks of them often, but is she a star? Her work reflects that she is, but it seems like she doesn’t think she is. We don’t believe she is ready to embrace this grant as a solo artist.” I am though... am I not? A star.

So, how can fiery learner Anjna and stellar visionary Anjna merge to become the Sun I am and radiate light confidently without end? This brings me back to my tearful conversation with my fiancée. I am terrified of my own brightness. Especially when I am studying something new.

Before the pandemic, I met an older white male composer who had built much of his career off of his study of Indian classical music. When I introduced myself as an Indian classical musician and composer, he towered above me and asked, “Oh, are you a serious musician?”

I had only had one other experience with the term “serious musician.” It was at a jazz workshop with an infamously terrifying male elder nearly 10 years ago:

“So, you grew up and you’re a serious musician now, huh? Do you have a good ear?” The elder interrogated me in a crowded room full of white jazz musicians.

“Yeah,” I said rather confidently. I play oral tradition music, my ear is fantastic, and I had no reason to believe otherwise.

“Alright, listen to this note.” He played a note on his horn and then talked to me about various mutual aquaintances for about 5 minutes. Then suddenly—“What note did I play? Play it on your violin.”

“I-I don’t have perfect pitch,” I gulped. I tried rephrasing every workshop I’d taught about the differences between Carnatic music and Western music. “We play in relative pitch—”

“Well, come on, try it. You said you’re a serious musician, right? We’re all waiting.” The mostly white male group of students looked on. Terrified, I plucked an open string to get my bearings, panicked, and reproduced the tone of the air conditioner, which had become a drone for the entire experience.

“That’s not what I played,” he sneered, “Damn!! You said you were a serious musician!” He turned to the rest of the class and joked, “‘Serious musician’... She couldn’t even play one note.”

The group of white faces laughed along with him. Mortified doesn’t begin to describe it. I truly felt like everything I knew meant nothing. Naturally, when asked again years later by another tall older man if I was a “serious musician,” I dared not answer without clarifying what this would entail. It was silly to get anxious about being tested again—this was a post-concert reception, not a workshop—but it triggered something.

“Uh, I’m not sure what you mean.” I deepened my voice as though my alto resonance would close the gap between our heights.

“Serious. Do you do your practice seriously? You know, I am a very serious musician. I do my riyaaz (intensive practice) every morning.”

“Oh yeah... I-I practice,” I stammered again, feeling his towering figure over me.

I am a serious musician, right? I mean, he described something about Indian music during the concert and it was literally wrong. But I still felt so unworthy. Do I not know enough to be an expert? Why do I feel so small—not just in height—in front of this random man I have never heard of? This encounter was a turning point for me. I realized that I had been holding myself back for fear of wrongfully claiming expertise in anything while so many others proudly claim expertise in things that are my entire world.

So, yes, I am stepping into a world of Western notation and questioning it simultaneously. I am studying scores that are experimental and sometimes reading them thinking they are canonical. I cannot claim to be an expert in this language. I cannot claim to be an expert in any musical language for that matter. I am an expert in myself. I am an expert in this weird conglomeration of languages in which I create -- weaving, cooking, cartoonish voices, impressions, jokes, painting, drawing, make up, hair braiding, tending to plants, singing, making love, nurturing, crying, strutting, fashion, styling, listening, speaking, breathing, and sometimes, in my own way, composing. Even though I woke up to a depressive episode about my creativity leaving me, I am going to face this creative block head on as a vestige of patriarchal, colonial, ableist, capitalist and homophobic conditioning—all of which I am an expert at interrogating. I know this insecurity is not something I can turn off, but if I can transfigure the echoing voices of towering male gatekeepers into something less threatening--something humorous or caricaturesque even--I will share something far more powerful and resilient than “serious music.”

Today, I am choosing to step away from the pressure to be an expert in anything other than myself. If you hire me to create something for you, I am creating it in my wild and wonderful, ever-changing language. You may receive a painting and some instructions for musical play. You may receive a few essays and some listening exercises. You may receive poems about love and revolution. You may receive a plate of home cooked food and a note saying that playing my music requires you to nourish yourself. And, you may receive a meticulously notated score with lots of mistakes and only 75% of the formatting that I would need to be taken “seriously.” Whatever you receive, it will be me: a fiery learner, a stellar visionary, and on most days, the Sun itself.