Genre Fluid

Today I offer you a quick follow-up to my February 4, 2023 post, “Genre Resistance“. In diving a little deeper into the genre fluidity of Rosslyn Redux (in general) and redacting Rosslyn in particular, I hope to dilate the creative quandary and exploratory process.

But first, a couple of asides.

First, yes, you read that correctly. Genre fluid. Not gender fluid. But… I couldn’t resist the temptation to include the painting by artist, Paul Rossi. It hangs in our front parlor (aka the “green room”) adjacent to a painting we purchased in Kenya in 2005 shortly before we were wed in a traditional Maasai ceremony. More on that elsewhere. But the nude against yellow backdrop (one of several Rossi paintings, illustrations, and linocuts we’re fortunate to own) was at once appropriate and inappropriate for this post. And the similarity between genre and gender fluidity was the inevitable trigger. Looong story short, Susan fell for this painting the moment she saw it in Paul’s Wadhams studio a dozen or more years ago. Had to have it. And so home it came. But the next morning, while coffee-ing up in the morning, if memory serves, she suddenly remarked that the female figure was endowed with a phallus! Actually, that’s not exactly what she said, but that was the gist. She still loved the painting, but she’s never been able to “un-see” the appendage (the subject’s hand and wrist) as anything other than, well, let’s call it a gender blending silhouette.

Now, for the second aside. If you landed here looking for music that bridges more than one classification, I’m sorry to disappoint, but this is your exit ramp. Thanks for stopping by, and safe travels!

I’m well aware that the term “genre fluid” has been adopted primarily to describe the unboxing of music categories, the wide ranging appetites that many/most of us have when it comes to our musical listening preferences, and even the hybridization across conventional genres that accurately describes a great deal of the most innovative music being performed. In fact one would be hard pressed to quickly dig up any non-music references online to “genre fluid” without some headlamp-on spelunking into the bowels of the interwebs.

But today I’d like to post a gentle challenge to the mainstream music-centric understanding of genre fluidity. Specifically I’d like to steer you toward a broader, more inclusive notion of art, literature, and music that defies conventional segregation. I’m referencing creative arts unconfined by convention and convenience, free range arts that occupy liminal spaces, interstitial inventions, and hybrid genres that redefine expectations and experiences.

Let’s alight briefly here:

Genre Fluid: appreciating several different genres. Most commonly applied to music, but can also refer to films, games or any other media. (Source: Urban Dictionary)

And here:

I probably mean this in the most manifesto-ing way that genres don’t exist. They don’t exist at all… Genres for me are just a way in which we are controlled, protected I suppose but I’m not a writer to be protected at all. — Eileen Myles (Source: The New Inquiry)

We all recognize genre distinctions. They’ve been trained into since childhood. But does that make them important? Conclusive? Binding? Beneficial? Or just familiar?

So how does this notion of genre fluid composition relate to Rosslyn? I’ll sidestep the obvious architectural and design implications (which, incidentally, are spot on!) for now and restrain this reflection to writing.

August 2022 marked my return to the challenge of *redacting Rosslyn* out of sprawling scrapbooks, flaneurial field notes, poetry and storytelling, lyric essays, monologues, and an avalanche of artifacts.

[…]

Ostensibly a memoir in trajectory and scope, this idiosyncratic experiment… [is] an amalgam… that bridges and blurs genres, that gathers heterogeneous ingredients and collages them… in interstitial narrative, allowing the wholeness to emerge out of the fragments, not altogether unlike a mosaic. Or a montage. Or a sculpture… The space in-between the fragments becomes as important as the fragments themselves.

This experiment in genre fluidity is second nature, and I suspect that some readers may find it slightly vexing. Undisciplined and disjointed. Fair criticism, I should note. But a compelling component of the creative process at this germinal stage. No, not just compelling. Enabling. Empowering. Generative.

I don’t find it interesting to stay in my lane, to observe the rules of the road, etc. Blogging for me has been an opportunity… [to] play around and experiment and defy expectations and overlap genres and distort genres per the whims or needs of my moment, my message. And this doesn’t just go for word salad. It’s a visual salad too. A library, stage, and interactive interactive gallery. And more. Lately I’ve been experimenting with video. With audio. Experimenting. Exploring. No rules.

This freedom to share our Rosslyn adventure per my mesmerizing muse, uninhibited, unbound, has been an exhilarating and liberating counterpoint to the often rigid structure, rules, and traditions that guided our historic rehabilitation. Untethered. Whimsical. Freestyle. (Source: Genre Resistance)

Does this make it right? It’s too early to say, at least in any sweeping and conclusive way. But it has been vital to my creative process. Hybridization and fusion and cross pollination are — have always been — exhilarating and attractive to me. Mix. Remix. Repeat…

Thank you for abiding my appetite for curiosity and experimentation!