Why Make Music from Scrap? (Answered by Jessie Lausé)

Why Make Music from Scrap? (Answered by Jessie Lausé)

For me, Music from Scrap exists at the intersection of the two intangible resources that are most vital to my existence and progress: peace and power. I feel like my reverence for nature came later in life than most of my friends. Although the fear of humanity shredding the earth to bits has begun looming over me by the time I graduated high school, I honestly can’t say that it served as a primary inspiration to protect it. My anxieties about what humans were doing to each other were a lot more intrusive.

How could I protect anyone or anything with such unbalanced power dynamics always at play? With such limited power, how would I know that I’m using it wisely? If power is being taken from the earth in such vast quantities, does that mean all the earth’s power is a nonrenewable resource? Why should anyone get to take more from the earth than anyone else? Realistically, most of us aren't given the choice of whether to drive a car or recycle or drink fair trade coffee, and I could never get the attention of anyone whose opinion seems have enough power to make positive change on a global scale because I'm a tiny-ish woman-ish person born into a shallow pool of first generation wealth, and who knows if I've even discovered my power as an activist early enough to make a meaningful impact while also building a financial foundation for my future children that will probably live in a world ravaged by continuous environmental racism and classism regardless of what I do because, as I said before, no one will listen to me–I mean, why should they? What do I know about anything? I'm just a queer youngest child of two podiatrists with a lot of student loan debt, and my credentials are irrelevant to 99.9% of situations, so how do I even know if what I think and say should matter to anyone with or without power? Also, are you mad at me?

Thought spirals like these command my life daily. 

Eventually, I found the peace that the natural world provides me. Often when I’m outside, (and I have the time) I do a sensory meditation. What do I hear? What do I smell? What do I feel? And so on. These senses aren’t invincible, but when I’m in nature, it feels like they can’t be readily taken from me by late capitalism or the American patriarchy. This peace is creative. This peace is a renewable resource. Through that peace, I gain back my power. In this perfect little vacuum, I could share that power with all the humans I want to share it with through artistic engagement, and they could discover the power that I’ve found in making experimental art. 

Truly experimental art should be for everyone, not because we all need to be at the forefront of the field, but because we all deserve a taste of radical creative liberation, to know what’s possible and how to make it so. Don’t get me wrong, I’m extremely grateful to be able to play instruments, have my foot in the door of creative academia, and have a platform for thoughts like these to be garnered by people like you. I can’t ignore how up in our ivory towers, it feels like sometimes academics forget that the right to question and ponder is not–and should not–be something that must be earned. We should all be allowed to think and want and try. 

I have had the privilege of discovering the power provided by experimental art over the last several years and the gaps in access to it. People should be able to explore that power and all it has to offer without having to go to grad school at CU-Boulder, or having to grow up going to museums on the weekends, or having to buy a $20,000 bassoon. That’s why work like Music from Scrap is so resonant. It’s a reminder that anyone can make a sound, and everyone generates trash. We have bent, glued, screwed, stretched, and sliced our waste into new creations for everything from traditional notation inspired from familiar songs to improvisatory punk rock thrashing to absurdist musical acknowledgements of our individual impacts to invitations to create new artistic languages in an instant–all for well under $20,000, mind you. My contributions to Music from Scrap are made up of items found in thrift stores, the dumpster behind my apartment, my coworkers’ frozen lunches, and so many other places. In the words of Australian sketch group Aunty Donna, “everything’s a drum.” And I don’t care what your middle school band director told you–anyone–from any tax bracket or protected class or geographic region can play that drum. If you live in a society, you should get to hit things (appropriate and inanimate things) once in a while. 

In summary, Music from Scrap is about creative connection and liberation in service of protecting our peace. Art gives me agency, the natural world gives me the head space to create art, and the humans around me give me a reason for it all, be it in service to or in spite of. I hope today, always, or eventually, it does the same for you.

Thanks for your time. I hope you join us at the Boulder Public Library in February and March for the Music from Scrap exhibit in the Canyon Gallery. You can make some sounds there! For free! How neat is that?!