This article was written on Gadigal Country, Eora Nation (also known as Sydney). I’d like to acknowledge the traditional custodians of the land on which I live, play, and work. I’d also like to acknowledge the Traditional Custodians of Country from wherever you may be reading this and honour their Elders, past and present, as we gather through this website to share knowledge, culture, and art now.
Prelude
Two weeks ago, I found myself in a PowerPoint party hosted by my student and a bunch of his friends (strangers to me). A musician named Miguel Sonnak presented last, a set of beautiful digital drawings that covered a range of topics from his passion and understanding of music, to more quixotic and abstract concepts. As I watched him talk, little lightbulbs lit up in me; I loved how his drawings captured topographical layers and became a way of visual thinking that helped him process in real time “how he understood things.”
Thanks to Miguel and his drawings, the following week, instead of writing my usual lists, or drafting the written piece that I thought I would write for The Collective’s first edition, I experimented with “drawing things up” first on a little whiteboard I bought during one of those treasured fortnightly trips to the supermarket.
This visual processing has helped me to string together my abstractions, markings, and memories from my various notes (they already tend to drip out of me as I am a visual learner, and in writing this piece I have found them in my iPhone, in the mess of my desk, in the meaningful squiggle on pieces of paper surrounding me…).
Playing with drawing as a way to remember, process, and express how and what I am learning in this strange time of lockdown in Sydney has been fun, delightful, and surprising — three words that contradict the seemingly endless mundanity of being stuck in the same house day after day. Perhaps they may offer you, dear reader, portals into your thinking, as well, where we can meet in the moment of this global pandemic.
June/July Reflections
June passed in a blur. The shock of going back into lockdown after nearly six months of “doughnut days” in Sydney (zero cases), and after a lot of sleep as we had been slowly burning out during our semester, we needed the quiet “holiday.” As each new week passed, with every new press release, the case numbers crept higher, and lockdown was extended again and again, rippling outwards into seeming infinity. I stopped listening to the news and we (my partner and I) tuned into what we personally needed to make it through this period of home-bound time: our creature comforts, regular “crying” sessions to release pent-up stress, and transforming our home life into a Winter Music Camp (at the time of publishing, it is now well into Spring!).
My first AstraZeneca vaccination was a big moment: a potent reminder of how important it was to me that radical healing and selfcare lay at the core, and also at the leading edge, of how I support myself and my communities. During that week, I experienced the full spectrum of side effects they warn about, including the hot fever, sore body, and tight chest, coinciding with the sort of period pain that all felt like many small deaths throughout the week. That month, I leaned into my support systems, sought guidance from my mentors, asked for more help from my partner than I ever had, and received compassion, understanding, and blessings as I cancelled lessons, rescheduled deadlines, and rested deeply. Passing through the other side of the general malaise, I was grateful to be back in the classroom, learning, playing, discovering anew, inviting others to transform with me. Extending the same understanding to students and colleagues who were/are facing the same was then my responsibility — offering relief from the ongoing crises, providing tension-release in our shared vibrations, and sending well-wishes to the off-screen mysteries and muted microphoned-participants in noisy Zoom rooms.
August Reflections
I am finding much pleasure in an ongoing online learning exchange with my friend Billy Han. Each Tuesday afternoon on Zoom, he teaches me deeper aspects of traditional dizi style, and I teach him a new simple piece on Western flute. We laugh about the difference in density between metal and bamboo and the implications of that for the air that we use. We’ve also been collaborating with a third Sydney-based dizi player, Brandon Pang, who is putting us in touch with a variety of instrument makers and workshops in Singapore and in China so that we can purchase instruments for our students and ourselves — a process which had always been a little chaotic in previous years.
My flute and two dizi lying on a woven grass mat 
Brandon, Billy, and I compare the intonation of various dizi via Zoom
My own constellation of notation is fuzzy thanks to my musical education in classical music, Baroque flute practice, contemporary dizi repertoire, and traditional Chinese music. This drawing is a reminder and a celebration of the ways that I get to choose how I want to perform these works: what turns and trills to keep and what can be simplified into a purer form, for my learning, in this process, in this moment. During my study of classical flute and dizi, I was often aiming to get a perfect copy of a “master version” that would usually form the definitive performance of a piece. This was fulfilling, fascinating, and rewarding — though occasionally trapping. In lockdown, I play what I remember and ornament in my own way. Remembering and forgetting and then re-creating music is a fulfilling process for me. What “sticks” and what does not is interesting to me as well.
September Reflections
The nature of how I relate to people has expanded in lockdown. My teaching jobs/offerings during this time include my private teaching studio and three types of group class (woodwind masterclass at The Australian Institute of Music, dizi class at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music, and Alexander Technique). In two months, my classroom has grown to include musicians living in various parts of Australia, China, and Indonesia.
On Sunday 12 September, I directed and hosted a Zoom concert for Dreambox Collective[1], “Coming to Our Senses” for over ninety attendees in our Zoom concert hall — a record for our Zoom concerts so far. A sweet old lady called me an hour before to ask me what ZOOM was; if she clinked on a link, “would a magic concert hall suddenly open up to her?” I smiled — “YES, that’s how it works. You can call me if it doesn’t!” It was a big, surreal moment greeting so many people after weeks of invitation. The month of August was enriched by this creative collaboration between my fellow Dreambox Collective artists and local Sydney-based inclusive Music therapy centre, Musical Between. Creating four new works, our skill-building deepened in the areas of website design, digital illustration, video editing, songwriting, and, last but not least, home-recorded performances.
At the beginning of lockdown, after I logged off a Zoom call, it used to feel very quiet afterwards, awkward, like, “Did that really happen?!” These days, I intentionally carry the thought of the other person with me post-Zoom and travel with the pocket of communication we had — a small but exhilarated energy spike shines through, like I’ve just travelled to many different people’s homes and back again using a magical device, and less than a minute later the kettle is on again and it is time for the next lockdown lunch.
The aspect I love about virtual music making or communication is the agency and responsibility it gives us — there is no reason to make a concert now or perform with anyone since there are no performances — so why play music together? Because it gives us all the vibrations we need! With all gigs cancelled, the music is what we have been driven to make, or compelled to make; the connections are our collective willpower combined together to come together in extraordinary moments — for specific reasons! To heal, to laugh, to connect. Delayed duets, birthday choruses, music therapy, art therapy, deepening our pathways to expression. To be in relation with one another! I have, for the longest time, been more “alone” than ever in lockdown, yet my sense of belonging, to the world, to my friends, to my family, to my sense of “self” in the world, has increased three-dimensionally over this lockdown period.
Postlude
If you’ve made it here, thank you for time-travelling with me through these three drawings and reflections! This week, I’m celebrating moving into full vaccination status after my second dose, which means that soon I’ll be allowed to go out on picnics with up to five people (a tiny but profound significant change for the near future). Through this writing process, I wanted to make a note of the unusual quiet of my self-critic who has been pretty hushed these days, as I lean into trust that I will be well-received in some way, shape, or form at the other end — I haven’t shared so much writing in a really long time (!) — a significant celebration for me. As with lockdown and digital/delayed communication, I am learning not to rely on the “quick signals” that I used to receive from a live audience, so I speak and play into cold silence, trusting that what I have to say will be received and processed and broadcast again hundreds of kilometres away to whoever needs it. Or in this case, moving at my own pace through the day, planning picnics ahead, and experimenting with writing and drawing some of the moving events happening in my life right now, and wondering if it will catch someone, somewhere, adrift, in the collective consciousness.
[1] Dreambox Collective, a group I founded in late 2019, includes 12 musicians and artists. We partner with NGOs to create intimate, educational concerts — and, yes, half of them have been online due to the global pandemic interrupting our launch season!
