I really wish I had discovered the true meaning of queer music earlier, because until recently, possibly like you, I had in my head the political/identity definition of queer, referring to LGBTQI+ people, and had largely disregarded it as being relevant to my work as it has little to do with sexuality or gender identity. However it was my teacher Michael Wolters who explained, when used in a performative context the word draws upon the original definition of the word, which is to spoil, or ruin an event, agreement, or situation. Not only is this fascinating/terrifying to discover how this word became used to describe LGBTQI+ people, ruining the ‘agreement’ of ‘normal’ social conduct, but it revealed so much truth about how this idea of queering a situation is not about making it gay, but ‘spoiling’ it, or, not using it in the way it was intended. When I introduce the birthday party, or the rehearsal for the birthday party, I am queering the situation by changing its intention. The audience has expected to be audience, and suddenly they are not.
This idea breathes so much meaning into the birthday party situation and why I find it so invigorating. Without lingering too long on the sadness of being queer, I just want to say a few brief words about why I believe I found myself with such a strong desire to queer my performance. I came out as gay when I was 16 to my friends. I was the only person in my school that was out, and so I had to make a decision to go against the normal, and become different. My family knew, and I knew they knew, and we all kept quiet about it. I never made an announcement to them, which thinking back now would have provided some catharsis and ability to grow and accept myself for who I was much sooner than I did. Instead, we tip toed around the topic, and I grew into an adult believing that there was something wrong, weird, and unspeakable about a core aspect of my identity. Around this time I was discovering music, studying composition at the Conservatoire and forming my musical identity. It wasn’t until I was 24 that I had a conversation with my mum, who up until this point had not realised that being gay was not a choice I made. She thought she was responsible all this time. After then, I began so much healing and acceptance of myself as a gay person, and began finding joy in my creativity in new ways.
As Michael Wolters explains, being gay and making queer music are not mutually exclusive.
One big confusion had been my assumption that “gay” and “queer” were synonymous. I realised that that wasn’t necessarily the case. A lot of people who make queer art and music would define themselves as gay, lesbian, non-binary, fluid etc, but on the other hand, I know a lot of gay artists who wouldn’t define their work as queer.
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Being gay, however, hasn’t led me to produce art about the outward expression of being gay. Instead, it has made me conspiratorially seek out “otherness” in things.
So even though my sexuality is nothing to do with my decision to queer my performance, it has undoubtably given me a longing to demonstrate my ‘otherness’, it’s like I want to say to the world, “Hey guys, I don’t fit in! Look at me!” Evelyn’s birthday has been such a journey into the world of queerness and I din’t even realise it. British composer Rauri Paterson-Achenbach speaks on the Sound and Music podcast:
Queerness in many ways functions well as a form of community building, and I think this is really palpably felt in a lot of music by queer musicians. There’s this hope for collaboration, and a hope for finding meaningful ways of being with each other through the things we create that aren’t just about pre prescribed end products or perfect objects. There’s a lot of shared need for something a bit messier and bit less tangible sometimes.
I was so excited to hear Rauri speak these words, because so much is relevant to my interests as a performer. I have long felt a part of the queer community in the cities I live in. Being gay, I have a free ticket and an instant reason to connect with others that have discovered themselves to be non-normal. It’s one reason why I feel the need for community much stronger than perhaps others, why I feel its power more intensely. The queer community was forged out of a necessity to protect ourselves and look after each other. Although there’s so much less of the danger these day, thank god, there’s still a desire to shout and celebrate our otherness with the rest of the world. For me, it’s more about celebrating our differences and finding community together with other queer people, and everyone around that wants to declare their solidarity, too. He speaks about collaboration, which when I think about the birthday party, in particular the rehearsal, is a collaboration between everybody in the room. Everybody in the space needs to work togetehr to get ready for the birthday party, making the music, decorating the room, and signing the birthday card. The product is the process – whilst making the collaboration happen we are all simultaneously creating the product. It’s a messy, unsteady, ramshackle, community effort to succeed together as one.
I remember seeing The Voyage by Michael Wolters at AE harris in Birmingham in 2012 – a commission for the 2012 cultural olympics. The piece was an Opera, and the audience is seated on tiered seating in front of a small stage, in a much larger space. At one point during the performance, two large men appeared and began rolling the whole structure that contained the seated audience back through the space, towards the back of the room so that the performance became further and further away. This for me was an introduction to the idea that spaces can be transformed into something you didn’t expect them to be. And raises a beautiful question – ‘What is happening?’ I enjoy the presnece of this question in the room I perform in. As well as making people feel safe to participate and building a brief community with the audience, I love the uncertainty that the birthday party and the rehearsal provides. Who is Evelyn? Why am I going to her birthday? Am I free? Why are we rehearsing for this? I think the queerness of the situation also fuels the community fire in the room. The common uncertainty, the queerness of the event makes people uncertain together, left suspended in a space between fact and fiction. Of course the space is all positive. At a birthday party we know how to behave, we know it’s going to be fun.
On the 13th of November, at Lygten Station in Norrebro I performed a 10 minute set at a queer open stage event. The room was packed with Copenhagen’s alternative and queer population, and I brought Evelyn’s birthday to them. I remember the energy was crazy, so much love and support for everyone’s performances. I reflected on the fact that there I was, presenting the room with the idea of community and working to build one with them, but they already belonged. Everyone in the room already related to each other through a shared experience of sexuality and gender identity. In a way I didn’t need to make any effort to try to make a community, because I was already in one. The energy in the room was crazy, I really felt from on stage how ready people were to contribute, to participate, to give their voices to each other and share the experience together. I often feel while performing that I need to give big energy in order to facilitate the audience’s experience, however in this instance, I felt like I was riding a wave of the audience's energy. I thought about in this case, what more could I have done? What more could I have extracted from the audience given that they had so much to give?
I spoke with a friend, Pape Arce, another musician living and creating in Copenhagen. In October 2021, I was involved in his performance where he invited multiple musicians to perform different songs with him. He asked the musicians to sit in the audience, and came to find us and touched our shoulders to invite us onto the stage. We spoke about queering, and about how his concert could be an example of this also. The musicians are in the audience, and the audience are there also. Suddenly they are not only witnesses to the music, but a part of a network of musicians and performers. The boundary of the stage is dissolved and the space opened up. We spoke about the idea that community permanently exists and that a concert can be an opportunity not to create community, but simply expose it. In this way, queering is not spoiling, or changing a space, but simply lifting a barrier to expose the fact that we all belong to each other in a larger ongoing community. I love the idea that the queerness in performance is actually what we’re accustomed to now. The silence, the applause, the etiquette… that’s pretty weird when you think about it. Of course I appreciate the respect it brings for the performers who want to share their expression with us, however we don’t stop being a community when someone is performing. So perhaps a queer concert is what we’ve come to know in the west, knowing when to clap and when not to, holding your cough and ducking your head ever so slightly when standing to go to the toilet.