Nichols: TIMARA minor portfolio

Pale Orange Circles

Starting in my fourth semester in college, inspired loosely by Pamela Z and Thom Yorke, in very different ways, I began to write several pieces for live performance, making primary use of delays, pitch-shifting, looping, and other similar forms of processing on my own voice. Most of these pieces are vocalises, with the exception of the middle two, which are (in various degrees) songs. The songs in question are meditations on my own childhood experience as an autistic kid in the NYC public school system, mixed as well with images from my current state in college.

“Ode to Behavioral Engineering” is a direct response to instructions of classroom etiquette and self-containment that, I feel, had a long-term and detrimental effect on my learning, and my capacity to engage: primarily sung instructions to “stop, look, and listen,” to sit “criss-cross applesauce,” and orders to avoid talking out of turn, and engage in mental processes only internally – to “think inside my head.” These ideas demonstrate a perfect framework for putting on the appearance of an engaged, respectful, and well-behaved student – and they are, in a sense, essential to maintain a classroom: if one voice, or one presence unduly dominates a space, then it becomes difficult for everyone else to chip in. But from my perspective, it taught me to lock away my curiosity, my engagement, and my willingness to stick up for myself and others. That those actions, disruptive to everyone else, were tied with essential components of expression for me, make the feeling of reclaiming them feel impossible even to this day.

“I Wanna Run” describes a feeling best encapsulated by the title: the desire to run away from a feeling of rigid confinement within social structures that make me feel trapped. This straightforward desire dangerously slips into a darker one: to run away from responsibility, from my own emotions and actions, from my experience, from my very self. The words throughout the piece are repeated and distorted and broken up, in an ever-present rhythmic pulse almost imitative of the act of running: or of the feeling of runaway thoughts. The piece further relates to my discovery of my autism diagnosis, when I was 11. This resulted from my parents telling me about the disappearance of a nonverbal autistic boy, Avonte Oquendo, after he ran unattended out of an NYC public school: in telling me about Avonte, and explaining to me what “autism” was, my parents revealed to me that I too was diagnosed with the same condition that he had, though I was “a less severe case.” I recall an intense fixation with the progress of that story at the time – with any hint that this child was still alive – and the sinking in my chest when I heard that his death was confirmed. Lastly I recall a feeling, one that I felt and still on occasion feel, and one that I can only imagine Avonte shared: that we were “different,” and everyone knew it, and nobody knew how to handle it – a feeling that no amount of love and care could quite shake. Neurotypical society, and in particular school, was not adequately built to handle the differences in mental processing, thought, and outward expression of autistic children.

These pieces were written and compiled over about a semester, and by and large recorded in one take. I have since made a performing version of this and done it live in all or in part. It was done in VCV Rack, particularly making use of the “Chronoblob 2” delay module, which allowed for a sort of runaway feedback that breaks up and distorts the sound, in such a way that I have yet to figure out how to exactly recreate in any other form.

Hey-Ya