space to be for a while

(Part 2)

alexa dexa with danilo machado 

This interview between poet danilo machado and sound witch alexa dexa took place on Zoom on June 23rd, 2024. The conversation, on the occasion of alexa dexa's recent online bathtub opera soak [1]. explores their practice of reimagining opera as live online participatory performance rituals that center transformative community care. It has been edited for length and clarity.

danilo: Do you see soak shaping what you're thinking about next? What else has opened up for you? Are you thinking about new questions, or does this reaffirm strategies or curiosities you've had? 

alexa: Yeah, I've been preparing this ritual for such a long time it feels like an eternity. I think preparation is beautiful but also like when is it too much? I want to provide as much support as possible, so I make sure the preparation is there for access. For soak, I'm making these hand-drawn captions and I've got these beautiful floaty little color splotches behind them, and behind the sound descriptions I've hand-written, and behind Gaitrie Persaud, who song-signs alongside me in motions evoking all the glistening waters.

When you know something special is happening, it helps to create that sense of specialness when you prepare for it, you know. Like, if you set the table specially or make the special meal or set up the special altar. I think those are really important things. And then I also think — especially while sick, tired, disabled — sometimes the amount of preparation can just be too much for one baby body. The preparation can then take away some of the beauty that comes from worship. We've just shown up and we're just gonna be doing it. We've done some preparations but now we're here. It’s a lifelong journey to unlearn ideas of perfection and correctness, including for me. I just really want everyone to have the most magical experience.

d: Yeah. 

a: And what happens when that makes it a little bit less magical for me? And how can I get out of that brain space — out of admin mode and back into the magic of it? Like this is for magic. We're here for magic. We're doing the magic together. I think there's still room for me to grow in terms of like the mess of it — letting the mess happen and letting that be part of the access as well. Which is okay.  

The other thing I'm thinking a lot about is dream space in relation to this soak space. I'm thinking a lot about dream space and the ways that a lot of physical spaces are not really accessible for me anymore but in dreams, I can go anywhere. I can imagine anything. 

How are we dreaming? How are we imagining? How are we building? How are we organizing? How are we moving in better directions and towards better futures if we can't imagine what they look like, if we can't dream them up into existence? We can't pull them from the ether if we don't know what we're pulling for. I mean, maybe you can stumble upon it. And that's nice, but how much more beauty can we collectively experience and invoke if there's that dedicated moment in time to say like, oh, hey, let's dream on it. Let's just dream on it. 

We're letting it come to us. We’re not doing anything. We're just gonna be held by the mattress or the ground or the earth. You're just gonna let yourself be held and see what's there. Maybe there's nothing — that's fun — or maybe there’s something. Maybe it's a revolution, maybe it's just what you're gonna have for dinner. I don't know, who cares, but still — how are you gonna get there? How can you get anywhere if you can't have that space for dreaming? I'm like, wow, the way that dreaming is considered like so unproductive or like an idle pastime or as unimportant instead of maybe the most vital thing we can do, the most important, the most visionary,  the most magical thing to just say — well, what do I dream of? What do I wish for? What are the pathways between here and there? How are we getting there? Like, and holding space for dreaming about that as well.

d: Right.

a: I mean it's hard to see what’s next because I feel like these things have all come up together. soak and dreaming our futures have grown side by side. They've just slowly been manifesting in their own ways, but I feel like they're very intertwined — these are spaces for us to be able to reframe our existence, to affirm it. And then also to say What do we want our existence to be? Where do we want to go? What do we want to be doing? What do we want to do it for?

d:  Totally. So many thoughts. I often think about how we can access the power and clarity of these liminal spaces — and how we can activate it to shape spaces that feel less liminal, more individualist. I was thinking about this on vacation too, since it has such a particular sense of time. The days that you have on vacation can be so different from the days in your regular life and with your regular surroundings. It's all constructed, of course and with any construct you have to be cautious about the fact that there's sometimes not direct translations — like the way that you travel with somebody may or may not reflect the way you are in your relationship. And yeah, for me that travel space, that commute space, that dream space, that soak space all echo each other. Rhyme, even.  

a: Hmm. Oh, absolutely.

d: So the book I grabbed while you were talking about dreamspace was Laura’s Desires [by Laura Henriksen]. It’s two long poems and the first one is called “Dream Dream Dream.”  

a: Whoo!

d: Maybe I'll just read you some of it.

a: Oh my god, please!

d: [danilo reads sections of the poem, which begins:] 

One legend I've always found compelling warns that if you die in your dreams, you die in real life. This interstitial space between worlds, residing for a time in both, it's hard to believe that an event in one could occur with no consequences for the other, that I could live on after my dream self dies. But then perhaps, like a cat, I have many dream selves. If not unlimited, at least enough to spare a few.

a:  Yes!

d: [continuing to read] 

I was first introduced to this nocturnal threat by a very bad babysitter. I adored her, her barrettes, the streaks in her hair, the way the performance of care seemed totally alien to her. I begged her to tell me more, and she obliged, either indifferent to the fear it clearly provoked in me or motivated by it.

a: Yeah, motivated by it, I'm sure.

d: [continues reading] 

All my false courage drained for me after she left in the evenings, and by night I was too terrified to close my eyes, afraid of both what I might see in my dreams and what I might fail to see around me in the dark of our bedroom while my sister and I slept. Now I am a fairly heavy sleeper, a trait I find embarrassing, especially when in company. A secret world continues around me of night activity and sound, each event unrepeatable, and while I am physically present for them, I am fundamentally excluded, lost in dreams, exclusive in their way too. Perhaps it is this anticommunal element of dreaming that interests me, their temporary but acute isolation. But then of course they aren't entirely anticommunal. There is, for example, the particular intimacy of dream disclosure, a classic if often transparent excuse to text someone on your mind. And then perhaps they will tell you they dreamt of you too. You dreamt the same thing at the same time.

. . . 

Or, Frank Ocean sings, “I thought I was dreaming when you said you love me,” this fantasy event of a love confession—I imagine it taking place in a pool—rendering reality in that moment unbelievable, too good to be true. But then immediately he clarifies, “the start of nothing,” like waking up from a dream in the same room you slept in, still yourself, circumstances unchanged.

a: Yes!

d: 

Listening to Jackie discuss dreaming I consider the possibility that the kind of freedom afforded in dreaming might offer an example of the kind of freedom we could pursue for each other in waking life. In dreams I can recognize a place or friend, for example, even if their appearance is transformed, such that it is both a kind of reunion and a first meeting. This defamiliarizing simultaneity allows for an unstable complexity of identity, a fundamentally uncategorizable uncertainty, that if I offered to everyone I know, if I incorporated into my language, would make me a much better friend, lover, neighbor. It would be a way to do what Simone Weil asks us to when she writes “Every being cries out silently to be read differently.” The same is true for my self: in dreams I can change constantly, I can be unfixed, and in this way, imagine a deeper stability, not contingent on the illusions of my attachments, but the depth of my intricate and flexible connections. In dreams, it's easy to get a little cosmic in my yearnings, particularly when I'm a little cosmic in my yearnings all the time.

a: Yeah! It's true. This is so gorgeous. This is just truth after truth. How relatable. Thank you for reading that to me. It was so special. 

d: My pleasure, really. It fits in with everything you were saying.

a:  Oh completely; really wonderful. I'm soaking it in still. So much good in there. I love those comparisons between swimming and fantasies —  I feel like they are both very immersive spaces with lots of magic. They feel like really good spaces to have, especially as it gets harder and harder to be like, oh, nothing to see here and nothing to think about. Spaces where I don't have to hold up the body. It’s this state of complete deep relaxation where I don't have to propel anything. Maybe something’s just going to come to me. 

d:  Yeah, you don't have to drive. Like on the train. 

a: Yeah, I think a lot about the ways to bring people into that space. In this time of making, I’m thinking about how to engage in the ongoing process of preparation in ways that don't completely overwhelm me. In the best scenarios, preparation can feel like still dreaming, still soaking. And I think that's maybe also like the difference between the work of it and the love of it — and how to connect those things so that you feel you’re moving towards it and not lose it in the moving towards it, you know. 

d: Yeah, it's like planning a party. You want to have enough structure and set intentions in a way that opens up possibilities for folks without having the walls be too narrow. You want to prepare, but you don’t want to get stuck in that mode. Ideally, preparation allows you to not think about it because you've already thought about it.

a:  Right, take care of it so we could just show up. 

d: Exactly. I think about it all the time. Like with travel — how can one prepare enough so that we know our needs can be met while allowing enough room for chance, for play, for delay, for pivot.

a: And that's also this cycle of remembering, like we’ve been circling with this conversation — the preparation is still the magic; the weaving and the connecting space is still very much a part of the magical process, but it's a lot. It helps to remember that this is very strong, powerful ritual work in the making and, look, we're gonna get there, it's fine but in the meantime take a nap.

d: Yeah, definitely that part. And yes, always a nap. Sometimes I'm like, do I just need an assistant to do all the stuff that gets in the way of the stuff? 

a:  I guess that's also part of it — what does it mean to have support or to be working in spaces where there's like you know, an expectation of support, but then also to want to be supporting people.

d: Right.

a: You also need to support yourself through the process of supporting people.

d: Exactly. 

a: Hopefully it's like a learning process — as you do it you learn a little bit more and then do it differently. It’s about listening —  if it doesn't feel good, why doesn't it feel good and how can we make it feel better? Maybe not everything has to feel good, but could it?

d: We should make shirts that say “if it doesn’t feel good why doesn’t it feel good and how can we make it feel better.” Okay, so going back — or forward, or whatever direction, doesn’t matter . . . why opera? What does the form bring to you?

a:  My grandpa loved opera. When I was growing up, my grandpa had his VCR player and he would record operas that were playing on public television and bring them over and we would watch the operas together. He just loved them so much. My mother is not a trained singer, but she sings in this beautiful operatic voice. She always has. My whole life she’s been singing, it's so joyful for her. I've always loved singing and I really loved learning opera songs when I started taking voice lessons. There's something about the feeling of the song coming out of the mouth and the practice of creating those shapes which I was really drawn to. 

I would love going to see operas, but there's a real heavy disconnect between the canon of opera and not being, you know, a cis white man colonizer who's been dead for 200 years. There's rampant white supremacy embedded in the music and musical language itself — today and then — and so there's a lot of dissonance for me about what it means to create: to love this art form and what it can be and simultaneously know that the messages and the stories and the people who get to tell them and the representation is not always connected to me. There's this lineage in my family, in my upbringing but there’s also this tension in who tells these stories and who they are for.  

Even in the opera community, among living composers and librettists, people feel entitled to stories that have nothing to do with their own backgrounds or cultures. They think the stories are universal and they're not. People can relate to a story, but that doesn't mean that everyone can tell that story. And so I sort of started wanting to claim opera for me, to take back from that dissonance. I love dissonant sounds, but I didn’t love the kind of dissonance I was observing between my musical background, my ancestral background, and my values. 

d: Right.

a: And so like what I'm doing is not at all traditional, but it's still a story that's happening through song. It's happening long form. Why can't we call it opera? I'm calling it opera and you don't have to agree with that. I think that opera can be a really beautiful vehicle for telling stories, for creating something that feels like it can exist for longer — where there’s space to be for a while.

It ties into my feelings about ritual too, in terms of entering into something rich and enveloping. The fact that that enveloping is happening through sound makes the term musically appropriate, and yet I don’t see myself in the traditional canon — I don't see so many of us there. There's so much room for that to expand, despite everyone that thinks we should all stick to these rigid guidelines.  

d: That all makes sense — you’re claiming and reclaiming a space you have a relationship with and it makes sense for you to be part of that space, in the ways you’re both rejecting parts of it and making new space within it; expanding it. It even makes me think about [Beyoncé’s] Cowboy Carter and how it considers the complexities of genre and how they are constructed. 

a: Right.

d: I think when artists are occupying that tenuous space is when the most expansive work can happen. 

a:  It's interesting to navigate the space where it’s like “oh, you can come in, but also you can’t” — we want to accept, but also we don't. And so to be on the edge of that is interesting. It's interesting in terms of artistic support. Being on that edge is so artistically freeing because I can, for example, do my very favorite thing which are these one-on-one online operas. I meet with someone, we share our stories, and over the course of an hour we’ve made an opera. It’s the most beautiful and life affirming thing. I’ll be having these conversations with folks and I’ll ask them how they want to be supported and like the things that come out of their mouths! I was showing up to build a container for you, but wow you gave me a gift. Everyone I have ever sat down with is sharing such brilliant cosmic wisdom and I feel like we all need to be able to just bear witness to these gems, to remember for ourselves. Gatekeeping maddens me because every single person has something to offer, and we are not going to find that if we're not opening the space and saying please tell me. Who gets to tell whose story is so important because we cannot keep having the same people telling tired old stories that don't belong to them. 

All of us have so much wisdom and artistic creativity to share, even if we’re not encouraged to do so. I think we're allowed to claim being an artist even if we're working our 9 to 5 job, and that we can understand creativity even if we're not claiming the term artist. There’s so much gatekeeping around who has the merit to call themselves this or that. Whatever — being alive is an act of creation. We are constantly creating. There's so much magic and wisdom and I feel like we are losing by not even opening it up on the table. Like how many necessary stories don't even get to be documented or shared or passed down? I'm so interested in that. I think that there's a lot of room for this work to flourish and to help sustain really beautiful community building. 

d: Those openings instead of all the closings.

a: Totally. 

d: Hmm. Well, this has been so great. So fun. I feel like we just went swimming. I feel soaked. I'm so excited to experience soak and to work on this wet set [2].

a: It's wet!

d: It’s soak summer! 

a: That is it, yes. I'm so pumped. I’m really looking forward to your wet set and so happy to chat with you. Honestly — because it makes such a difference to speak with someone who is in the same world and brings that context. Thank you. 

d: Likewise!  I'm at a point where I really only wanna be around the girls that get it.

a:  Absolutely. I feel the same because without any understanding, you end up being the only one building a bridge and that's tiresome.

d: Exactly. I'm happy to meet everyone halfway but it has to be halfway with a baseline. 

a: Great. Right, because is it halfway or is it like I'm gonna go 90% and you're meeting me 10% really because of the extra work that has to go into being like what would be seen as halfway.

d: Exactly. 

a: Ah, so much symbiosis, I love it. 

Endnotes

[1] soak is an accessibility-centered, virtual, and immersive electroacoustic toy opera by a sick + mad + disabled non-binary babe soaking in a bathtub co-created with and for sick + mad + disabled folx in bathtubs/shower chairs/showers/wash basins/sponge baths/kiddie pools/sitz baths/foot baths/areas of cozy and enveloping rest and ease/in, with, or near any body of water big or very small (an ocean, lake, river, creek/rain, snow, steam, or ice/a glass of water/our own bodies), real or imagined (because who is the arbiter of what is real anyway?).

soak is a crip ritual for nourishing our sick + mad + disabled bodyminds, for sinking into ease and effortlessness, for soaking until the ache dissipates into lull.

a small journey in a small space where the expanse is within you, the story is yours. a bath journey that moves beyond cure to ask what would feel healing for you, for right now?

the premiere of soak was presented by crip house and Experiments in Opera and took place live online over zoom. there were 3 free performances over the summer of 2024. for tender invitations to future soaks, join alexa dexa’s crip ritual invite list.

[2] DJ Queer Shoulders, danilo played the afterparty for soak, with a set as follows:

Waves / Ibeyi

Wet / Barbra Streisand

Underwater Love / Smoke City

Drink Water / Jon Batiste

Water (FKJ Remix) / Little Dragon

Lost [but you're underwater at a pool party] / Frank Ocean

Bubble Bath / AJ Tracey

Hot Tub (ft. TPain) / Yung Gravy

Bubble Bath / BlockheadNYC

Splish Splash (Album Version) / Barbra Streisand

Bathtub / Margaret Giaspy

Underwater / Mika

Bathtub / The Front Bottoms

Bathtub / Snoop Dogg

Taking A Bath / Mista Trick

Bathtub / chillzara

Take Care / Tasha

About

alexa dexa is a sick + mad + disabled toychestral electroacoustic composer-performer, technologist, and crip xXgrandmacoreXx songspell crafting + casting sound witch reimagining opera as interactive remote-access rituals that activate transformative community care, interdependence, and disabled joy. Using sound as a source for shaping change, they dream and manifest aleatoric, indeterminate, and improvisatory works for our resonant bodies and crip ecologies, an ever-expanding toychestra to rival a playpen, and live and pre-programmed electronics. Envisioning online performances as living art forms with all the magic and potential of in-person performances, and even more, alexa dexa values generating collaborative accessible experiences that nurture strong community bonds.The originator of divinatory oracle cards that double as graphic sound scores, alexa dexa’s rituals + readings with their self-published oracle//composition decks offer portals for dreaming our most glorious dreams into existence as we shape + reshape our own nonlinear paths. Their crip ritual operas have been supported by The New England Foundation for the Arts, New Music USA, Mid Atlantic Arts, Creatives Rebuild New York, The New York State Council on the Arts, and OPERA America. Pre-pandemic, alexa dexa spent 4-6 months out of the year for 8 years touring the world with their toy piano. Their 14 previous self-booked tours have taken them throughout North America, Europe, Oceania, and Asia.

Instagram: @xxalexadexaxx | Facebook: @AlexaDexaMusic | Twitter: @Alexa_Dexa | YouTube: @AlexaDexa

danilo machado is a poet, curator, and Leo living on occupied land, interested in language’s potential for revealing tenderness, erasure, and relationships to power. A 2020-2021 Poetry Project Emerge-Surface-Be Fellow and 2024 NYC Poets Afloat Fellow, their writing has been featured in Hyperallergic, Art in America, Art Papers, Poem-A-Day, The Recluse, GenderFail, among others. They are the author of the collection This is your receipt and is not a ticket for travel (Faint Line Press, 2023) and the chaplets wavy in its heat, to be elsewhere, and suggestion as more profound or more interesting than the thing itself (or, july) (Ghost City Press Summer Series, 2022/2023/2024). Recent curatorial projects include to hold a we (BRIC, 2024), Any place I hang my hat is home (Bullet Space, 2024), and Eligible/Illegible (PS 122, 2023). They are the author of the Post Post Post newsletter on Substack and, with Em Marie Kohl, co-organizes exquisites, a queer reading, workshop, and anthology series. danilo currently serves on the Board of Directors for No, Dear Magazine and co-organizes The Long Poem Support Group with Ry Cook. danilo has performed at venues including National Sawdust, Poetry Project, Lincoln Center, Bowery Poetry Club and, as DJ Queer Shoulders, danilo has DJ’d as a part of programs and fundraisers with The Shed, ART PAPERS, CultureHub, Crown Heights Mutual Aid, and Connecticut UndocuFund. They are working to show up with care for their communities and believe in a free Palestine. 

Across social media platforms as: @queershoulders