Stuttering, Blackness, and Music with JJJJJerome Ellis, Part 1

Transcript

Jerome:

You know, growing up, I felt, you know so much of the pain but also the beauty of the stutter for me was the way it's, you know, it's feels like it, you know, it alters time in a certain way

 Maya:

I'm Maya Chupkov. And I'm a woman who stutters.

Cynthia:

I'm Cynthia, Maya’s longtime friend, and I know nothing about stuttering.

Maya:

And this is proud stuttered. A podcast about changing the conversation about stuttering and embracing verbal diversity and an effort to change how we talk about it one conversation at a time.

 Welcome back to proud stutter. I am so excited to be talking today. To the one and only Jerome Ellis. Jerome is a black stuttering animal who practices performance music and poetry. He is also a person who stutters. Jerome recently released an album titled The clearing the Guardian describes his album as a profound and richly textured 12 track album that blends spoken word and storytelling, with ambient jazz and experimental electronics to create a soundscape that is both meditative and theatrical. drome welcome to the podcast.

Jerome:

Oh, thank you, Maya so much for having me. I'm so grateful to be here with you.

Maya:

So Jerome, I absolutely loved your album. It was truly one of the most beautiful pieces of music and poetry. I've ever listened to. And I sincerely mean that because, you know, I've never really connected so much to music before. Like I've grown up listening to music, but, um, but I don't know. It's just never really spoken to me. In as an emotional way as yours did. And I think it's because it was really an entirely new experience for me. It was beyond emotion. It was transcendent, which I know is a word that's used through intermittently in the album. So before we get to your album, I wanted to ask some questions about your stutter specifically, and the first one is when did you first notice you had a stutter and what was it like growing up?

Jerome:

Oh, thank you, Maya so much. Thank you for your kind words, really means so much to hear. I think I noticed that probably in elementary school some time. It was interesting because I was in this improvisation theatrical improvisation problem solving troupe called Odyssey of the Mind. We would was a group of maybe five or six or seven students and we would be on stage and we would compete with other schools. These like improvisation challenges. So I'd be on stage and I really love doing it. But I remember that when I went to middle school around the age of 12, that I was thinking, Oh, I would love to be an actor because I love to be on stage so much and then I thought of a way to have a stutter. And so that's not going to work. Like I'm not allowed to be in an actor. You know, I didn't know about, you know, James, Earl Jones, Marilyn Monroe and these other actors with stutters so you know, it's around elementary schools, and I've learned that I had one which I found really interesting because I wonder, you know what, what I approached how my approach was before. I like learned that I had stutter. Part of what I'm trying to do with the clearing is actually with the work is to try to, like, undo some of the things that I that has been told to me about stuttering that it's you know, a pathology.

Maya: 

Can you tell us more about what it was like growing up with a stutter?

Jerome: 

Yeah, growing up it was you know, very I definitely felt weird a lot of the time and like an eye that I didn't have the language to even express how weird the ways in which I felt weird that I stood out. I think gradually I started to notice that my stutter would appear more frequently with certain kinds of people like I would notice that I would stutter less frequently with with people whose gender expression seem to be more female than people whose gender expression seem to be more male. I would stutter very little with children with with other children. Or with animals would stutter more with adults. So gradually, and I started to observe these things about this very mysterious, you know, creature living in inside me, you know, one that I have come to love so much, but for many for many years, I, I regard my stutter as like a curse, you know, something I wanted to get rid of.

Cynthia:

We've interviewed I think about five or six guests now and I think you're the first person who's brought up how your stuttering changes depending on who you're talking to. And I love that you brought up animals because you call yourself an animal as well. And you know, I don't even think about talking to animals in that kind of way. Why do you think it is that talking to animals specifically, you don't have a stutter?

Jerome:

Well, I think part of the experience was a fear of being judged or a fear of being a being thought that I was weird, a fear fear that I would be interrupted a fear that someone would think I was stupid. And these are fears that I just don't feel when I talk to animals like oh good, the zoo and just like, talk to the animals and love to talk to animals and I was so afraid you know, in school of just people Yeah, people making fun of me or thinking I'm, you know, weird again, or stupid. But these animals Yeah, we just talked to the birds and my grandma had had a bunch of birds and Eastern Parkway in Brooklyn, New York. And her apartment and I love to be with those birds. And yeah, I've just felt very, you know, very, very safe from, from the fears of all the pressures surrounding speech with humans. All the like, all the performance involved. In it, you know, you know, in school, I would sometimes raise my hand and that'd be called on and I knew the answer, but I would stutter so much that sometimes I couldn't even say the answer. And then I would think like God is just teach it that I think that I'm not as smart as I am.

Cynthia:

You know how they suggest for people with stage fright to imagine everyone naked. Do you imagine everyone has animals?

Jerome:

I love that. I've never actually I don't I don't know. I don't think I've ever tried that before. I really love that as an idea, you know, it's I so much of the pain that I experienced growing up with stuttering is that it felt like a barrier to connecting with people, you know, and now now I don't feel like that so much. You know, now I often find soldering becomes the bridge that that can connect me with people, including with YouTube, you know, we might not be talking if it weren't it weren't for you if it weren't for the stutters I'm very grateful for that. So, I love that idea of thinking of matching the audience as animals. And the stage fright is so interesting because I what I what I have what I found very gradually you know, as a performer as an adult is that is at the stage actually, for me also became another kind of safe space for my stutter because even though you know, like many people I at first would feel a lot of stage fright. What I wrote gradually learned is that most audiences that I've been in front of at least, they're very respectful of the stutter in a way that some people in in the street in daily life might not be, you know, so many of my experiences performing on stage I feel that the audience is just we'll just wait as long as as long as they they want because that's part of what being an audience member is, is to listen.

Maya:

I was the same way growing up. I always wanted to be on stage and I loved performing it was where I felt most alive and my stuttering did hold me back a lot and trying out for, you know, those acting gigs at school. That's why I doing a podcast resonated so much with me because it is kind of like I'm a performing and it just it fills the space in my heart that I've been wanting it to fill for such a long time.

Jerome: 

I'm so glad to hear that you have this space. Maya that's really very important. I'm so glad you found find that it can be so painful when we have the need to create but we don't. We don't have the outlet for it.

Maya: 

Yeah, and I always thought like, I wasn't too creative and all these things and I just never really gave myself the opportunity to create and so it's it's the best, it's the best feeling in the world. And I'm just so thankful to be able to have this platform to connect and, and be creative. When did you first think of how you could connect your stutter to music and have you always been into music?

Jerome: 

Yeah, I think it's you know, it's only been, you know, very recently, around 2015 or so. My friend, James Harrison Monaco, who I he and I have been collaborating for some years now since about 2008. We create live performance and theater together. And we were working on this piece called Inc. a piece for museums. And it's it's it's like an art lecture and concert at the same time. So we use like slideshow style art lecture. images with live music that we created. And it was the first in that show and there's also like at the same time, a personal essay and then that show, which we premiered at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, for whom we we like really made the piece was a fat piece was the first time that I spoke about stuttering on stage spoke about it directly and and since then, I've spoken more and more about it directly and woven it more and more into my work. As I became a musician I also noticed that music is a way that we we can alter time, you know. So I grew up around a lot of West Indian music. And the first things that I really came to on my own was European classical music, a lot of Mozart and Beethoven and then jazz. And it was when I started playing the saxophone wasn't when I was really listening to a lot of jazz around the age of 13. And you know, you know, in, in being surrounded by these different kinds of music and jazz particularly with its with its deep practices of improvisation, you know, and also ext jazz your jazz history with with jazz, as, as a black music, you know, really um I really resonated with it as, as someone black as someone interested in black history as someone also who is very used to improvising as many senators are, you know, to the use, of synonyms of finding other ways to say things. So, you know, I think there was an early connection between jazz jazz improvisation and stuttering is improvisation that, you know, only took me it took me some years to be able to really think about that, but I think I think when I started playing the piano, also around the age of 15, I started to be able to like you know, I started to be able to like create these like Sonic worlds, and the sonic worlds that felt like, you know, refuges in time you know, and I feel like so much I feel like I would go to the piano so much to heal myself from the from the temporal pain that I would feel during the day with so much of it connect with stuttering, you know, that I would have an encounter at school. Yeah, like I said, with like, raise my hand and the teacher calm you know, it couldn't say the answer. And that was painful. And part of the pain had to do with, you know, time that, you know, I didn't say the answer the right amount of time and I feel like so much of my piano practice became like, I would go to the piano and just like you know, try to heal from the wounds that I had experienced. And with poetry, you know, something also of, there's the kind of liberation that I feel in poetry that stuttering Of course, so much of the pain that I've experienced, in connection with stuttering. I don't think stuttering is the cause I think it's in connection with stuttering and certain ableist you know, expectations in the world. So much of the pain I think also comes from you know, it comes from time it also comes from language that I'm I've had many years of this experience of like, language being I'm at odds with language, you know, that I know what I need to say, but I can't say it in the time that I want to say it and with poetry it feels like there's so much freedom that I get to explore with language. And I get to I get to escape also the like, utilitarian or bureaucratic uses of language that's so much of the day to day. Support poetry as another music as a space of liberation. Poetry as a space of liberation, you know, and, and, and healing.

Cynthia: 

I listened to your album last night as well and I thought it was amazing and one thing that I really really felt from your album is this sort of meditative quality. I mean, of course, in the music, but also just in the way that you speak. And I remember distinctly I mean, this is all kind of, I think relevant because of everything that you're saying about it being healing, I think the way that you portrayed your interactions, you know, instead of what I see a lot when it comes to the stuttering narrative, this one track that you had, I remember very clearly, it was a recording of you asking for a specific book on the phone. You first told her and disclose to her that you had a stutter and that it may take some time for your words to get out. And for some reason, I could feel on the other side of the line that she was just like, okay, and, and was patiently waiting, you know, I could have for some reason I didn't imagine her kind of like, you know, clicking her fingers I just felt like the whole thing was was really really healing for me to to hear an interaction like that. And to see so much positivity and to see everything between the lines to from that short interaction.

Jerome: 

Cynthia, thank you so much for saying, sharing that that's really so meaningful to hear. I'm so glad Yeah. That's so the goal is you know, is to is to offer healing. So hopefully the album is able to contribute a little bit to that. I think it's important to include both the bookseller Part One and Part Two, you know, that both are, I think, valid approaches because the person I'm not saying of course is that is that the center should always disclose the stutter. I don't think it's so simple as you know, these rules like you should always do this or you know, I think, I think, I think the first part where I where I don't tell them that was done that I'm hung up on. That is important too, and that it's not, I think I tried to think of, of, of communication, as you know, and there's a scholar named Joshua St. Pierre who, who also is a person who stutters, is Disability Studies scholar, and he writes about, you know, communication as a shared responsibility. I have responsibility to be to steward the conversation and to be carrying in the conversation and the other person does as well and to me it is an act like it is one option for me me to disclose that I speak to the Senate but to me that is not it is not an outright requirement because to me the other person also, you know, they're responsible for, you know, for for, I think, you know, holding space for a wide range of, of communicative possibilities that there are people who are going to get on the phone, who need more time whether they have a stutter or or or or they speak, they they they they speak in another way that is not as that is that is marginalize.

Maya: 

So, I wanted to talk about track one and track two. Track one is called loops in retreat and track two. I don't want to butcher this so drum can you say, track two for us?

Jerome: 

Oh, yes, sure. Yes, it's easy to con tight is Stein music colleges problem.

Cynthia:

Oh, yeah. I'm glad we didn't try that.

Maya:

Lovely. Yeah, so in in tracks, one and two, you talk about this connection. Between black history and this fluency throughout this album and in these two clips, you are intersecting blackness fluency and music. Can you talk more about this connection and why it was so important to you to bring in your album

Jerome: 

I think I want to I was interested in speaking from, you know, my, my my identity, my my positionality my political you know, positionality as you know, a black person and I just flew in person. And you know, as as a black person who stutters who is a musician, I wanted to speak about these three things. You know, these three dimensions you know, of life that I, you know, have lived in for some time. And I wanted to think about them through time through through through the lens of time, because in recent years, I had, you know, I had I had I had come across, through my friend and great artists. Jaylen Livingston introduced me to the scholar Brittany Cooper's TED talk the racial politics of time where she's talking about blackness and time. And, you know, music and time I've been thinking about for a long, you know, for a long time, you know, about music's relationship to time, the way it shapes and bends and alters and organizes time and then I had been recently thinking about stuttering in time, largely also through the writings of Joshua St. Pierre. Joshua St. Pierre, he writes about how certain disabilities like if someone uses a wheelchair that that Some of the ways that the the environment can be disabling is through space, you know through not having curb cuts and elevators and ramps, you know that there that the person that wheelchair has to navigate is at a spatial, you know, a spatial is marginalized spatially. And St. Pierre talks about stuttering then in terms of as disability as as a marginalization that takes place in time that the stutter the person who stutters is often excluded from certain rhythms and expectations of time, you know, and that that can lead to discrimination. You know, in job interviews things like that, you know. And so I was so so I you know, I was thinking about music and time blackness, the time stuttering and time, so I was like, Well, how about we try to think about all four of these things together. And the opening line of the album is this retreat is you know, stuck. My thesis is that blackness disfluency and music are forces that open time and by opening I wanted to speak to the way that time is not allowed to be linear only linear when when when seen from the vantage point of blackness disfluency and music with blackness, you know, Professor Cooper talks about in the TED Talk, British politics of time she quotes Hegel, who says, essentially, that Africa is like Africa has no influence on world history, the Africans are not historical beings. And so there's this attempt by you know, by this white European philosopher to exclude Africans from time. You know, she talks about she talks about, you know, black state sanctioned Black Death, as, as also a loss of time. And then yeah, and considering as we've been talking about, you know, has all these interesting relationships to it, so I wanted to Yeah, I wanted to try to think of them together to think with, you know, with with, with Kimberly Crenshaw, his idea of the intersection.

Maya: 

And that's it for this episode. I'm Maya. And

Cynthia: 

I'm Cynthia,

Maya: 

and you've been listening to proud stutter. This episode of proud stutter was produced by me, Maya Chupkov

Cynthia: 

and edited by me, Cynthia our music was composed by Augustine, and our artwork by Mara zekiel. And know what

Maya: 

you've called. If you have an idea or want to be part of future episodes. Find us on Twitter at proud stutter. You can also find us at www dot proud stutter.com

Cynthia: 

drop us a note or share a voice memo. What's your stuttering story? What topics would you like us to cover? And what are you curious about?

Maya: 

And if you liked the show, you can leave us a review wherever you are listening to this podcast.

Cynthia: 

More importantly, tell your friends to listen to

Maya: 

until we meet again. Thanks for listening. Be proud and be you