“I don’t have to have all the answers”  – Monnie chats to Laura

This article is part of our Community Conversations series, exploring stories of personal, professional and collective growth from across our 7 years working to redress the gender imbalance in music tech. 

Each piece follows a 1:1 chat between someone who has been closely involved in Saffron’s activities over the past 7 years and a member of the Saffron team. In this piece, emerging audio-visual artist Monnie chats to Saffron’s Founder Laura.

LAURA: Can you tell me a bit about your background? Where are you from and how did you first become interested in music tech?

MONNIE:  I used to go to like raves and just dance loads. Everyone would always ask me ‘what drugs are you on?’ but I was sober and just drinking water. They thought I was really strange, but I just really love music and found it really healing to move my body. I was ill at the time so it helped a lot in my recovery. As result, I ended up with a lot of friends who were DJs or musicians or music producers, and that’s kind of how I got introduced to music tech. 

Then I went to uni during COVID. I was doing a music degree without any real background in music and found it quite restrictive. I was being asked to do notation and scores and stuff like that but I just wanted to experiment with sounds. At that time I was trying to collaborate with other students to get instrumentals for my songwriting, but I was having difficulty translating what I was trying to create. That’s when I realised I needed to learn more about music production so I could do it on my own or at least give people an idea of what I was trying to do.

LAURA: You’ve been involved in so many of our different courses and initiatives – Mix Nights, music production,  sound engineering, Saffron Members and the music tech kit group. What’s that process of exploration been like for you?

MONNIE: It’s been really helpful because I didn’t have much of a background in music. I knew it was something I wanted to explore but it can be hard to know where to begin, there are so many different directions to go in. It was nice to try a bit of everything and see what felt good for me. I found they were supportive learning environments, which as a non-binary and neurodivergent person is something that I’d really struggled to find.  It’s given me new faith in education.

LAURA: So do you see the different music tech skills that you’ve been learning as a complementary package? Or is there a particular area where you’d like to focus your energy?

MONNIE: I definitely want to focus on hardware, synthesizers and live production. I feel like doing everything has given me some clarity over that but also I’ve learned skills in all of the different courses that I can use towards what I want to create. So even if I don’t want to focus on sound engineering, for example, I’ve learned skills from doing the sound engineering course that I can use in production. So that’s really helpful.

LAURA: What do you think is the most important thing you’ve learned about yourself through your involvement in music tech?

MONNIE: A lot of it’s just been navigating my brain and realising that I don’t need to have all the answers. It’s nice to just have fun and play around. I feel like that’s the side of music that I’m most drawn to – when it feels like I can just mess around and it’s not rigid, because being autistic I do like things a certain way. Having a space where I can break out of that a bit, which is how my creative practice has developed, is a really good thing for me.

LAURA: So how would you describe the relationship between your neurodiversity and your creativity? 

I do find it quite frustrating and restrictive at times because like I get quite fixated on needing to know the formula of how things work before I feel comfortable and confident enough to give them a go myself and to feel like what I’m doing is correct. The creative side of it is very therapeutic to me because of how I experience the world. I interact with the world through sounds and colours and textures and feelings – and being able to have that heightened sensitivity I think is a really good thing because I come up with ideas that maybe other people wouldn’t originally think of. That’s quite different to how a lot of people experience stuff, so it sometimes comes out quite weird, but in a good way.

LAURA: It sounds like you’re in a place where you understand the real positives of your autism. Has it always been like that? The reason I ask is that having dyslexia myself, I used to see it as a problem, but now I see the beauty in how my mind works.

MONNIE: It’s been an up-and-down journey. There have always been certain traits of mine that I felt were positive in terms of my creativity,  but. I’ve always struggled with being around people and how being hypersensitive affects me in social environments. For a long time, I did feel that was kind of a problem and I felt kind of broken in a lot of ways. I guess I still have moments where I feel that way. I do get upset that I can’t do as much social interaction as other people and form relationships in the same way,  but I feel that I’ve learned to accept myself by spending a lot of time on my own and coming up with ways to entertain myself. I do feel like that’s a very positive thing.

LAURA: At your Mix Nights showcase you played a masked set, a practice you’ve incorporated into other performances. Can you share something of the significance behind this?

MONNIE: There are a few reasons behind it. The first is that I’ve always just been quite a shy and introverted person and being the centre of attention makes me quite uncomfortable. I performed in a band before and I found it really anxiety-inducing, and the only way I kind of like got through it was by wearing a veil. So it’s a lot to do with me managing my anxiety around performance but also it’s nice that it interplays with the whole masking side of being neurodivergent in society. If I put on a mask, I don’t have to wear the invisible mask as a neurodivergent person that people don’t see. I feel like when I wear a mask, people can actually see me because I’m more comfortable. I do feel that people who are neurodivergent – and just in general – should be able to drop the mask and just be themselves without feeling judged.

One of the other things that led me to think the mask would be a good idea was that I’m a bit of a perfectionist when I’m creating stuff. With DJing, if I do make a mistake I feel like it’s quite visible – I’m not one of those performers who can just smile and act like nothing’s happened. So having the mask helps me to go through the emotions and move on from it, without everybody being able to see and their experience of the performance being affected.

LAURA: You previously said that your music doesn’t really have an agenda and that you’re simply trying to try out different sounds. Do you think there’s too much pressure on artists to tie their identity to their ability to create?

MONNIE: I feel like in general, there’s too much pressure for people to know their identity and to be able to express that clearly. In reality and from my own experience, identity is an evolving thing and it’s something that changes and shifts. Having to choose one identity or label to present yourself to other people is something I find quite restrictive. For a long time, I was quite against labelling myself with any kind of label for that particular reason. I do understand it has benefits in terms of helping people to understand you and to find community, but the labels are just a descriptor on a surface level. They still don’t really explain your experience and your actual identity. That’s the same with music as well. So unless you’re very set on making music of a particular genre, how do you put a label on what you’re creating if it’s very unique and original to yourself, rather than trying to create what’s already out there?

LAURA: What do your personal growth goals and hopes for the future look like?

MONNIE: I’m definitely going to be getting some more hardware. I’d like to create some content for a live set. I’d love to do a live set in Berlin, that would be amazing, but I feel like it’s still going to be quite multidisciplinary, so bringing in visuals and stuff that stimulates the senses. 

I also want to find a way of also incorporating my voice into the music that I make. As I said previously I was songwriting before and that’s not something I’ve done in a long time, so I’d like to get back into it. I feel like that will come more naturally again when I start feeling more comfortable with the music I’m producing – then I’ll find a way to fit vocals into that, whether that’s spoken word or singing. 

Monnie (M.P) has composed a piece of music to accompany PART II:VERNIX – a performance at Centrespace Gallery which is part of the UNMADE exhibition. Find out more about the event here.