Maren sits down with composer and painter Rosśa Crean to talk about music, synesthesia, and even witchcraft.
The music played during this episode:
- “Dawn” by Rosśa Crean, performed by Maren Montalbano, used with permission
Rosśa’s recently released albums:
Follow Rosśa Crean
- On Instagram: @criticalmuse
- On Twitter, FB, Soundcloud: Rosśa Crean
- Website: rossacrean.com
Follow Maren on Instagram: @supermaren
Purchase Maren’s debut book, Pandemic Passion: A COVID-19 novella on Kindle Unlimited
Transcript
(orchestra tuning)
Hello and welcome to The Bodice Ripper Project, an exploration of sexuality, feminism, and the journey to self-empowerment through the lens of romance novels.
I’m Maren Montalbano, opera singer, coach, and writer.
In this episode, I sit down with composer and painter Rosśa Crean to talk about music, synesthesia, and even witchcraft. This is going to be good, folks.
So make yourself comfortable, loosen your bodice, and let’s begin!
(intro music plays)
Interview
Maren: I am so excited to welcome Rosśa Crean to our podcast. Rosśa jokingly says they quote “create music that they like to listen to when they are by themselves eating raw cookie dough in a dark closet” unquote. But in truth, their music has been referred to as being “funny and virtuosic,” having “exceptionally different, outstanding quality,” and music that “stirs you deep, undertones of humanity.” Composing and creating music with a focus on the evocative and lyrical, they began their professional career as a bass baritone, specializing in avant-garde and contemporary classical music, many of which were their own compositions.
As a person with synesthesia, Crean occasionally creates projects that focus on their own neurological responses between sound, color, and emotional states. Composer Paula Kemper recently said, “Rosśa Crean is at the leading edge of today’s opera field as a composer, producer and prolific artist with many gifts and talents.”
Rosśa, thank you so much for joining us today.
Rosśa: Thank you. I’m already blushing listening to that all over again. It’s such an honor. Thanks for having me, and it’s so good to see you.
Maren: Yeah. So I really want to just dive right in. The thing that stands out to me the most of your bio and also some of the stuff that I’ve seen you produce online is your artwork and your synesthesia. So can you talk a little bit about that?
Rosśa: Yeah, synesthesia in general is, basically it’s considered to be a neurological dysfunction, but I don’t consider it to be a dysfunction personally, um where the brain translates any kind of stimulus through two or more senses. So my brand of synesthesia is called chromesthesia.
I actually have what’s called tri-fold chromesthesia, which is where sound translates into color and then into emotive states for me. So I have what’s called a secondary emotive awakening, which is where I can be in a naturally really good mood, but if there is something sound-wise, that then gives me a color, that then gives me this inkling of sadness, I feel that sadness. But I also am aware that it’s a secondary response to the other stimulus that I’m experiencing. And sometimes I can kind of work that around from like, if I want a certain emotion I know what color to use, and then make the sound happen from that.
So it was something I didn’t realize. I always knew I had something, but I didn’t realize what it was until I was probably about 23, 24 years old when college professors were like, “what’s wrong with you?” Because I would talk about colors and shades and things I’m seeing. They’re like, “are you actually seeing these?” I said yes. For me, literally my vision is consistently filtered with moving watercolors due to whatever sounds are happening.
And it could be a car door slam, it could be the refrigerator humming, it could be… Music has a different result than just random sounds, but there’s always something happening in my vision over what I would normally see. At least that’s what I assume, because I don’t know what normal vision really is. But it’s something that, I think it caused a lot of anxiety back in my earlier days because I didn’t know why I was feeling certain ways and being, like, overwhelmed with the stimulation that was around me in my environment. And then, when I finally went to a neurologist to talk about this I started realizing like, “Oh, okay, this is what happens.” And okay, I’m not necessarily “normal” quote unquote, but I know that I’m not the only one that has synesthesia.
And I know a lot of people think they have synesthesia. Like that’s the trend nowadays. Everyone wants to have synesthesia. And I think everyone to a degree can have relations in sense when it comes to that. But to have to be diagnosed with tri-fold chromesthesia is… It is a definite neurological dysfunction that really has served me very well.
Maren: That is amazing. So was that what brought you to composing music or were you composing music before you knew you had that?
Rosśa: I was composing music before I had it, before I knew that that is what it was. I was always using the process, but not really realizing that this is something that not a lot of other composers were using, basically. So it was a bit of a transition to get used to the fact that this is something that not everyone uses.
And for a while, I think it’s a blessing/curse kind of thing. But I, for me the curse was I have high stim days. I still have high stim days, where it’s just really overwhelming and it’s hard to focus. And I have actually learned this last year through my own experimenting and practicing of my spirituality and those practices and meditation, how to really channel my high stim days into days where I just go into the studio and I write, or I paint, or I sculpt. I do whatever it takes all day long to let it channel out. And it’s become a real creative channel for me now.
So the curse has no longer become the curse because I now know how to deal with it, which is wonderful. Unfortunately, it took this long for me to figure that out, but now at least I’ve found a way to deal with it, you know?
Maren: So had you not done any visual art before this year?
Rosśa: Oh no, I’ve always done visual art too. I think, I had a fellowship with MoMA over a year ago where I just kind of like… I’ve always been creating visual art, but I never like really went out for it professionally, and never tried to get seen in galleries. I’ve had gallery showings, but I never, it was never a priority for me to get into anywhere, or even go anywhere with visual art, cause music was always the thing since I was four. And I just decided now’s the time.
I had been asked to come to Lakeside Inn in Michigan because I have friends who run the inn and they had an art community here decades ago. And then there’s been a dry spell for maybe about a decade. And they asked me to come and do some paintings, and I did, and all of a sudden it just started taking off. And then I started going back and forth between Chicago and New York to do the fellowship and work on my art and how my synesthesia affects my art and working on that kind of presentation for the public as well.
So it’s something I always did, but it’s been about two years since I’ve really been making it something that I’ve really wanted to pursue as far as just my own general expression. I love when people buy my art, but also it’s just for me to really connect with myself because let’s face it, most of us don’t know ourselves very well. And it’s usually a lifelong learning for us to really understand who we are and our responses to things and why we say and do the things that we do, you know?
I love it as a medium now. I like to do multimedia because of it. It’s definitely different than my approach to composition, but it is still very much in the family of why I express myself the way I do.
Maren: So I’m really interested in some of the mediums that you use with your art, because I know you actually crush up crystals and stuff like that. Can you talk about that for a little bit?
Rosśa: I do. It’s very primal. So right now I’ve been isolated in Michigan, in Lakeside, Michigan for almost a year now. I normally live in Chicago. And I just wanted to be able to work on my art, and when the resident apartment here got renovated my friend Sam was like, “why don’t you just come over?” And I said, okay.
So there’s actually a shop right down the street, a little witchy shop called Creative Sage Cottage. I’ll give them a little plug, they’re great. I’ll get crystals from them and I will take a very old hatchet I have in the garage that’s here below the apartment and I will literally just squat there on the floor, on the concrete, and take the back end of the ax and just crush everything I can. And I’ve done selenite, I’ve done pyrite, peacock ore, obsidian, blue and green calcites. Iron dust, that I did not crush myself I just already bought that from another witchy shop in Chicago.
So yeah, I wanted the energetic properties of those crystals to be put in the paintings to serve a purpose so that people who buy those paintings can feel like they have that energy going into their home. So if there’s one for protection and they want to buy a painting for protection I can crush obsidian. If they want something that deflects negativity I can do tourmaline. I can, you know, pyrite if they want to draw in prosperity, I can do pyrite or peacock ore. Blue calcite is really good for helping you communicate and having expression. Green calcite is very good for opening your heart chakra and opening yourself to self-love and also like accepting love from others but giving love freely to others as well.
And we all have had resistances toward those kinds of things too, you know. Every crystal has a specific purpose and I always like to use those in the paint. And I’ll usually crush them down to a really fine powder, so sometimes you can’t see it, and then paint with those. And it’s definitely for me, feels like a different energy for each painting every time I use those, just depending on which crystal I decide to use.
Maren: Okay, so now we get to talk a little bit about witchy shops and witchcraft, Wicca and stuff like that. I’ve been waiting to do this cause, it’s funny, cause I think my listeners know that I am kind of woo woo, but I don’t know…
Rosśa: I love that, woo woo, okay.
Maren: A little bit yeah. But I haven’t really, this is going to be my little coming out here. So I actually am Wiccan. I’ve been practicing Wicca for most of my life. And this has been something that’s very private, you know, and I do a lot of like my own personal rituals. I will do like moon rituals and various things and I’ve worked with other witches but not often. Cause you have to, I see this as a very, like spirituality is such a personal thing for everybody. And there are so many stereotypes around Wicca you know? The people who think that they’re going to be in The Craft. You know like the movie. And then there are people who it’s all very just like hippy-dippy sort of stuff. And all of that by the way, I say that, it sounds a little judgmental, but honestly, all of that is valid. Every single one of those things is valid.
Rosśa: Every single one, yeah. Absolutely.
Maren: Yeah, I totally believe in the power of these energies that crystals have. I believe in the energy around us, the energy that we have and our vibrations, and the energy we have between one another. And music is energy, you know? And I very much embody that when I’m performing. And so I would just love to hear what your journey has been, how you got to Wicca and what you do right now to practice.
Rosśa: Yeah, well first of all welcome to the heathen club. We’re happy to have you. I label myself a Hekatean witch. I am devoted to the goddess Hekate. I do occasionally consort with other deities but Hekate is basically my center. Cause she stands for so much for me. And every energy, it can be used as long as our, the main key to all of it is your intent. And whether you want to use the energy for the right reasons or not and whether you are able to do the work in order to manifest that until it is accomplished, your goal is accomplished.
My journey actually started when I was pretty young. I grew up in Glastonbury, England, and Glastonbury has a very huge Pagan, and also Christian, history but they’re a lot more very tied together. The polarity here in North America between Christianity and Paganism itself is very odd to me still to this day, because we have such close ties between both of those forms of spiritual wisdom in Glastonbury, and well in UK in general. And I always frequented the occult library that was there. We had seven vaults underground and we had like, the human skin manuscripts from like, from like 1500-1600s, to much more popular things are going on today. A lot of Scott Cunningham’s, at that point his stuff was considered newer. There was always just something I was, I always just felt very attracted and tied and connected to that other form, that other world. That there are things around us that we don’t understand or can’t necessarily see but we that we can feel.
And I started when I was probably in my early teens doing scrying. I would use obsidian mirrors for scrying. And then did tarot, and then did runes, and really didn’t become a full hardcore practitioner of witchcraft, by the way I don’t consider myself Wiccan, I’m a witch. There are differences. But I think I really started getting involved with my own personal magical study when I came to the States, which was 14, and then deciding that I needed something to center me and guide me because it was a really bad transition for me personally as an artist. Moving to a place where there was just no art culture whatsoever and everyone basically telling me that I was not normal, that I wasn’t like everyone else, and I knew that. And I was, I decided to kind of resort to what’s considered to be high magic, ceremonial magic, think like studying with the Golden Dawn, who, I still work with the Golden Dawn, and some of Aleister Crowley’s teachings.
And I’d just like to tell people who aren’t very familiar with this that this is not scary evil stuff. We don’t believe in the de-, well a lot of us do not believe in the devil. I shouldn’t say that because there are a lot of Luciferians, but a lot of us don’t believe in a heaven or hell. We believe in doing good for ourselves as well as then letting that be a reflection to doing good for others. And always being of service to others. So there’s a lot that I think a lot of people can be educated on when it comes to this craft.
But for me it is a path of self-development and self-improvement and helping me to understand myself even better and those around me and be more patient and loving toward those around me. So I was dabbling in that and I officially joined the Golden Dawn probably when I was about 28. And then I’ve been a practitioner of high-end low magic. I don’t like those terms but those are the academic terms unfortunately. Like low magic tends to be more folk magic. Things are much more accessible, much more nature magic, things like that. And then high magic tends to be more of spirit conjurations, angelic communication, things like that. So I like doing both because I can do both, and I feel grounded and centered, and always very clear, and I have my mission set after I’ve done a ritual. And there’s a lot of ritual. There’s a lot of ritual involved, but there’s a lot of ritual within even just the week for me as well, so.
Maren: I think ritual is something that helps anybody no matter what their spirituality is you know, no matter what their belief system is. It’s a really good way for us to organize our existence, and set intentions, and create boundaries. And so yeah I see how, I have rituals every day as well, absolutely.
Rosśa: Yeah I think having, there’s a lot of people who say that having a spontaneous lifestyle every day where everything changes is very freeing for them. But I do think knowing what your long-term goal is or at least trying to figure out what your purpose of this life is. It’s always important to start back to the beginning of your day when you wake up to say, “this is my purpose.” And that in itself is a ritual, and I do think ritual is important. I don’t think you have to be OCD about it. But I think that it is very much something that is a helpful tool as well to remind yourself every day why you are here. And doing those actions, doing those things that are ritualistic for you is a great reminder and it’s a great way to keep you moving forward in that direction.
Maren: Yeah, absolutely. You’ve been mentioning being in Michigan at this inn. I’d love to hear a little bit more about it because I hear it’s haunted.
Rosśa: Yeah, it is. You’ll get a lot of stories around here. The inn is about, it’s over a hundred years old. And it was like a baby clothes factory originally. It then became like a hideout for like, Capone and some of his flunkies. I’m going to say supposedly. There is documentation that Capone has been here, but I can’t really, I don’t know all the details, deep details, and why he was here. We’ve had movie actresses and I’m not gonna remember who, what their names are right now. But I know there are two in particular that were here often.
And there’s also been like some tragic incidents that have happened here. The original owner here shot himself. His first wife I think went missing and they never found her. We have a display cabinet in the lobby where we found a handkerchief with some bloodstains that is monogrammed with the wife’s initials that we found up in room 30. And rooms 30 and 31 are rumored to be the most active when it comes to any kind of activity. No one has ever said anything about any of the activity being harmful. They’ve always seemed to be really benevolent. I myself stayed in room 30 when I first came here over a year ago to just visit, and the door would shake a lot, would shake open, like someone was trying to shake it open. And then I would immediately like unlock the deadbolt and look out and no one would be there.
And I’ve also been like, a year ago from this last Christmas I was cooking in the kitchen a lot. I was staying here the week of Christmas and the kitchen doors are on swivel mounts so they don’t lock open or closed, they just swivel. And there were a couple of times where the door would just open and there were several of us who were able to witness this. And then I just kind of like did some communication, and I read of a name called Virginia and a name of Mary. So I will say, “Hi Virginia or Mary, whoever’s here.” And then all of a sudden like the door will close. So like someone’s getting acknowledged. I think that’s what they want. I think they’re very benevolent spirits.
And people have claimed to have seen things here, seen shadows here, or heard things. Which, you know, in any old historical inn someone’s going to say that. It’s just human nature for us to create those scary stories in our minds. But I have found it just to be kind of part of the energy of the place. And we have a cold spot right by the kitchen too that I think has been there well before the inn was even built. I think it was, you know we are on the land of the Pokagon tribe here, and the current members of the Pokagon tribe own a lot of the casino, and a lot of casino properties out here in Michigan. And they do a lot of good, but I think a lot of this land was theirs, and I think some of those cold spots are from way back then when they were still here.
I think it’s been, I think it’s added to some of the art that I’ve created. I’ve created a short music video for a piece I recorded called Chaennuna for ChamberQueer in New York City. We did a streaming festival of queer artists and composers and I made a little movie to go with that recording of that piece. The creep factor came through a lot of people said. I’m like, well good, because this place definitely has it.
But there’s also a really comfy home charm to it too which I love. We’re right by Lake Michigan. You literally step outside and you could see the lake. I’ve been very inspired, I always find inspiration here. It’s just, my art studio’s here, I get to paint as much as I want. I get to do anything I really want. I recorded an album here. I worked on a chap book here of poetry and photography and some of my art, I was able to do that. And we’re starting out a new residence program here, and our first residents come here at the end of March. And we have a lot of two week residents and then we have two six-week summer residents coming in. So we’re opening up this community for artists to really just express themselves and do whatever work they really want to do. And part of the charm is knowing that there are other energies and other things here that I think just add real charm to this location.
Maren: That’s amazing. Well you know, actually now that you mention residencies, art residencies, this is something that I talk with some of my students and my clients about, as they’re working on their creative careers. I have mentioned, you know there are residencies. You can go places for two weeks or six months or whatever and just work on your art. And I’m curious is this the only residency that you’ve done? Or have you done other ones? What does, how does this?…
Rosśa: Oh no I’ve done plenty. I’ve done plenty. Most of the residences I have done have been with universities or specific galleries. But I’ve never— the cool thing about what we do here is that we open it to all mediums, all ages, all orientations, all races. We would love to have as much diversity here as possible. We are a very progressive-minded crew here. And we want those kinds of arts from different cultures to come in.
You know we have a clay studio here, and then we have a massive art studio that can be used in various ways. Our first residents will be a dance troupe, well it’s a couple who run a dance troupe, and they are going to be working on just a work on progress. They’ve already voiced they’re not gonna have it finished but it’s their way of trying to get progress moving further while they’re here. And they’ll be able to empty that art studio and use it for their work and movement there. Then we have some potters coming in eventually too. We have a textile artist coming in, and then we also have a poet/filmmaker who, I think she references herself as like an iPhone filmmaker, but some of her work has been very cool. So we’re trying to just do whatever we can.
We started having live music here pre-COVID. We actually had Sun Ra and his orchestra scheduled here in April 11th last year and then of course… And we sold out tickets, I mean we could fit about 80 people in the inn in the ballroom there. We sold out tickets in under an hour and then COVID hit and we didn’t get the concert. But they’ve said that they will come back, as soon as it’s safe they’re happy to come back. We have ties with a lot of different musicians here. We’re like, hey, if you want to come and do an outside concert even this spring, where we can still do this safely, we’ll be open to that. Eventually we’ll want to do recitals in the ballroom.
There’s so much opportunity that we have here that has kind of been untapped that we’re realizing we can really move forward with. We have an art gallery showing on April 24th, I think, this year for myself and Anna Ryan Drew and Lauren Nichols. We’ll be presenting our works here at the inn and selling our work and just trying to get other events going that can at least follow COVID protocols. So yeah.
Maren: Yeah so with the art showing I assume there’s like an online way for people to see and purchase the art as well?
Rosśa: I’m hoping we’ll be doing an Instagram live showing of all this. I’m actually gonna be painting live, by myself but also with Anna Ryan Drew as a collaborative work. And I think Lauren will be probably doing work of her own as well during the showcase. I think we’re doing like 1:00 PM probably till 8 or 9, who knows, eastern time on that day. I’m hoping we can get a lot of documentation, that’s the plan. And hopefully get some of the other crew involved in taking photos and documentation of it as well.
Maren: Yeah cool, awesome. All right, let’s see. So here’s the question that I ask everybody which is, as you know the bodice is a thing that restricts us, or I consider it something that restricts us, and we want to like, rip it open to let our true selves out. So what is your metaphorical bodice that you’ve experienced recently?
Rosśa: Oh recently.
Maren: You know what it’s fine, any time.
Rosśa: Oh no, it doesn’t matter. I was gonna say there’s a lot of bodices I’ve had. I think my whole life has been a coming out process of various things, like, coming out as a queer person, coming out as non-binary, coming out as a witch. I think my most recent bodice has been a programming of fear that I’ve really had since childhood. I think I lived in an environment and with parents, God rest both their souls, that was very fear-based. Fear was always the initial reaction to any ideas. And I realized how much I still have drawn that onto my own life and then my choices and in any of my ideas. And so I have had to do a lot of work, a lot of shadow work this year on remembering stopping the “what if.” What if this doesn’t happen? What if I fail? What if? Instead of going like, what if I do amazing? What if this makes me a lot of money? What if this gets me more exposure? What if this gets me a whole new network of people who edify and gratify my work as an artist? Why shouldn’t I think that way?
Because we get programmed so often to be told like, we always have to be aware, and we always have to be ready and feeling like we’re warned to have the negative happen to us. But the negative can be such a small part of results in everyday life no matter what. And we always focus on that one negative thing that’s surrounded by all those other numerous positive things.
And also like, just realizing that our expectations are our worst enemy. We can hope for things but we also shouldn’t be afraid of them either, and if honestly if we fail at something, so what? That doesn’t mean we’re failures. It means it just didn’t work. And it isn’t necessarily our fault that something didn’t work either. It could just be the timing. It could be trying to like, get something on social media. Maybe it just isn’t the right time of day. Maybe it’s just those people who would have attached to it just aren’t around to see it. There’s algorithms. There’s like, life in general can just get in the way and you won’t even know it.
And so like, I always try to tell people, and some of my clients too, stop having the expectation and just start listing down when you have an idea or a goal. List just what you want to gain but also how you want to feel. How do you want to feel, and let that be the expectation instead of: I want to have a Grammy. Which we both have dealt with. Like, I want a Grammy, or like I want to be signed to a major label, or I want to be part of this major opera company, or I want this album to be done by this time. How about, how do you feel when you have those things? And then let that feeling be your focus. Let that feeling be the goal and then put that energy out, and that energy will come back to you. Instead of putting all of these what I would consider vanity and material successes that we want, where you can just show it off to people. Instead of how would you like to feel at the end of the day? How would you like to feel at the end of the month? How would you feel end of the year? How would you have to feel when you leave this mortal coil? How is it that you want to feel? What legacy do you want to have passed on to people?
And we don’t leave legacies by awards. We don’t leave legacies by the material things that we accomplish. We leave legacies by our communication and the love that we give to people, and the respect and the honor that you can give people throughout your life as an example, to show that as an example to people. I think that’s the most important. That one’s been the hugest bodice for me, much more than coming out, much more than being non-binary, much more than anything. It’s been how do I talk to myself now? How do I accept myself? How do I tell myself I love myself every freaking day? Because that is important, more than anything else. Cause otherwise why set all these things for your life when you’re just going to constantly tear yourself down? It’s not worth it.
Maren: Yeah, exactly, yeah. So you do have a bodice tattoo. When did that happen?
Rosśa: I do, with butterfly wings.
Maren: Butterfly wings. It’s beautiful.
Rosśa: Thank you. That happened years ago. I think I got it in like 2000, 2001 maybe. It’s been so long. It was right after I closed singing with The Met and I was done. I had come back to Chicago to visit my parents and just decided that’s what I wanted. It was, I’m a big fan of Alphonse Mucha’s work, a lot of art nouveau work and lithograph work, and my entire right arm is all work that’s paid tribute to him. And he had these major lithographs and big large pieces, but he also had like these Victorian clip art, little like magazines that I thought were really cool. The bodice was there and then the butterfly was there and they were right next to each other. I’m like well this is a polarity in itself. But it felt like it really represented who I was.
I was someone for most of my life who was told by almost everyone around me that nothing was going to be possible. Nothing I wanted to achieve was going to be possible. And to every one of them I just gave the huge middle finger and said I’m going to do this because I want to do this. Why don’t I deserve this? Just because I grew up in a low-income family in a low-income neighborhood, there’s no reason why I still can’t deserve this, these things.
The bodice for me originally it was being able to come out, be a queer person, and feel like I wasn’t wrong. Because I had, grew up with a lot of evangelical thinking as well, that anything outside the norm was a sin. And I’ve come to the fact, to the reality that sin is not sin. Like what people consider to be our sins are not sins. They don’t exist. It’s this gate we’ve put on ourselves. It’s another bodice we put on ourselves. And when I came to that realization I was, it was like I saw all of that symbolism of the bodice and the butterfly wings. I said well, I’m still someone who’s going to carry some of this programming with me for who knows how long, but at least I know I can have the freedom from it if I just work at it. And that’s what that, that’s how that tattoo came about.
Maren: That is amazing, so beautiful. Thank you so much for sharing.
Rosśa: Thank you, I appreciate it.
Maren: Tell me a little bit about coming out as non-binary because I think, you know coming out as queer these days is a lot more normal. Like it has been normalized a lot, and now non-binary is becoming normalized, which I think is great, but I’d love to hear your experience and what brought you to talk about it.
Rosśa: Yeah I’ve never felt male, never in my life ever felt male. I never got along with, I shouldn’t say never got along, but I never related to the other boys, but I also never related to the other girls. But I think in my childhood I had a lot of female friends because they knew I was safe. I think a lot of them, and I still talk to some of them from childhood, that even recently we discussed me being non-binary and how they have felt that even when we were younger, that they felt a different energy from me than they did with other boys that they were with at school or just in their neighborhood. There was something they knew that they can trust and feel safe from. Not to say that being male doesn’t make you safe, but in my personal experience I had lot of toxic masculinity in my culture, and so that’s what I’m going to be referencing right now.
So I didn’t realize the term non-binary until about three years ago. And of course it was younger generation who brought this forward. And I related it to that scene in the opera As One where Hannah before sees the card in the library that says transgender, or at least we assume it says transgender. And it’s like, “Oh my God, this is me.” And that’s what non-binary was to me. It was, this has always been who I felt. Like, this isn’t something I just realized. I have always felt this way. I have always considered myself to be neither male nor female. It’s a whole spectrum. Some feel like they’re both. Some feel like they can move between. I’ve always felt very solidly in the position that I am neither. And I felt for the first time like I was a hundred percent myself when I was able to come out and say I am a non-binary person. I prefer they/them pronouns. And go back to my original Gaelic thing which was Rosśa.
So being able to like, come home was the best feeling. And it was really that journey of really being able to recognize and point a label of non-binary on myself. It made everything make sense after that. It’s amazing what labels can do, but sometimes labels can really do a lot of good too, you know. So yeah, that was for me. And I think I had a lot of opposition from both sides. I had opposition from cis heterosexual friends. I had opposition from also like gay, mainly gay cis men that I had known, because I think some of them felt like I was leaving the club. And it’s like, there’s no club. People, there’s no club here. This is part of the reason why we still have these divides. We need to realize that I’m still Rosśa. It doesn’t matter. I don’t need to be a male or a female. I’m Rosśa, and that’s it. That is who I am.
I think there’re still people that I don’t really communicate with very often that still have a hard time really wrapping their heads around it, but they don’t need to wrap their heads around it. They don’t need to. I had to, because this is what I live with. This is who I am, and this is what I have to deal with 24/7, is myself. So being able to say that out loud. I remember when I announced it on Facebook was like, the biggest weight came off my chest, but also had like such overwhelming visual support on that status on Facebook.
And I can’t tell you, like so many of my friends in the opera community immediately were like, “They.” Or if they’d say, “he” they’d be like, “I’m so sorry!” I’m like, it’s okay. This is a learning period, and I don’t think there’s ever been a person that I’ve been upset with when they say “he” if as long as they have not meant it to be an insult, you know? Because this— this is still relatively new. This is a new thing. This is a new realization, discovery that a lot of us are dealing with. And so like, you also have to have grace for those people who might not necessarily understand it. And we don’t have to educate them. They can do their own education if they really want to, but we can also just be examples of who we are as human beings, just as we are as nonbinary people, or male or female. It doesn’t make a difference. So that’s my stance on it, is that, I’m just going to be Rosśa.
Maren: That’s wonderful. And I am so glad you shared that because even just listening to you, when you talk about being truly yourself, your voice just opens up, and your, you know your demeanor is just clear. Everything is so crystal clear. And that’s where we all want to be, right? Like, all of us. We all want to just…
Rosśa: Yeah, every single person.
Maren: I don’t want to be put in a box. Certainly you shouldn’t be put in a box either. And, you know if you want to define yourself as whatever you want to define yourself as, that’s great. And I, as a cis het female have tried to find ways of supporting people who are not cisgendered or heterosexual. And one of the things that I’ve found has been helpful is to just put my own pronouns down when I’m trying to, you know like in my signature and all of that kind of stuff, because to be able to just put pronouns down is helpful for everybody. You know?
Rosśa: Oh absolutely, absolutely.
Maren: I mean also. Sorry.
Rosśa: No, do please, go ahead.
Maren: Yeah, Maren is not necessarily, people sometimes don’t know if that’s a male or a female name. So I’m sometimes accidentally referred to as male, because they haven’t looked at me, but you know. But it’s helpful. It’s just generally helpful.
Rosśa: Yeah, I mean it’s one of the things I do whenever I do residencies at universities. The last residency I did at a university was at Illinois State for their Arts Technology department and it was a really great opportunity. I mean I got my Master’s at Illinois State in composition, and it was nice to kind of go back and deal with this new program. It’s been maybe like five, six, seven years old, around. And working with technology and music which we didn’t have at the time when I was going there. And one of the things I did was I wore a “they/them” pin the entire time. And it was amazing to see in central Illinois these professors, when announcing themselves or their students including the pronouns because I had not seen that from a lot of universities before that. I’ve actually had one university, I won’t make drama about it, but I had one university actually say like, “can you just go with he/him right now because a lot of these people won’t get it.” I’m like, that’s not my problem that they don’t get it.
Maren: Exactly.
Rosśa: Respect my identity. My identity is important. My identity is no more important than your insecurity.
Maren: Exactly. Bravo, seriously.
Rosśa: It’s much more important than your insecurity, so deal with it. So that helps a ton. So yes, when I do go into a public sphere, especially in education, like an educational sphere when it comes to arts, I will always wear that to make sure that people understand. And if they do mispronounce, if they do like give me the wrong pronouns I will just point to the pin. They’re like, “Oh yeah, sorry.” That’s okay. Let’s move on. Let’s move on. We don’t have to linger onto that, you know? But just move forward with that knowledge.
Maren: Yeah, well we are getting close to the end of this so I want to make sure that we talk about your albums. You’ve got two albums coming out.
Rosśa: I do, it’s crazy.
Maren: One of which I’m on.
Rosśa: Yeah, the first album is coming out. Well also you and I are label mates, we’re both on Navona. The first album is March 12th, 2021 called The Priestess of Morphine. It is a monodrama, I call it a monodrama for two voices written in song cycle style. So you can wrap your head around that as much as you want. I wrote that with librettist Aiden Feltkamp who is a fellow non-binary creator as well. And it is about, it pays tribute to Marie Madeleine who is the Jewish lesbian erotic poet and writer whose work the Nazis tried to destroy during World War II, during the Third Reich. She was also married to a Nazi official. She was a huge morphine addict, and her addiction to morphine started because when her husband passed away the authorities there thought she was too hysterical in grieving her husband and shot her up with morphine against her will. And she wrote many, many works, and many, many poems about her own morphine addiction, and also the Sapphic themes. She frequented the lesbian scene in Berlin for a good like 20-30 years I believe. There’s no, it’s a non-linear form. It’s not a story form. It’s just paying tribute to her work and her poetry.
We have two characters. We have Gertrud Günther who is Marie Madeleine’s real name, and then we have Marie who is the more wild addictive feverish personality. It’s played by two separate. So with Katherine Bruton playing Marie and then we have Jessie Lyons, another soprano, playing Gertrud. And there is a point where they do come together in that piece and sing together acapella and their voices just they made me cry from the first time we premiered that piece. And I think it’s a lovely tribute to someone who would possibly have been forgotten in the annals of history when it comes to the LGBTQIA+ community.
Then the second album is I believe March 25th on Odd Pop Records, and it’s called a lonely voice in these haunted rooms, songs in quarantine, where I recorded a lot of my own miniatures in room 13 at the Lakeside Inn, here. And then I have you, Maren, and Jessie Lyons and Natalja Aicardi. Each of you contributed a track to it. Most of them are unaccompanied miniatures. But then I have a couple, I have a set in R’lyehian language which was originated by HP Lovecraft, but we use characters that HP Lovecraft did not create. I sing that in microtone, like in microtonal tonality with water phone. It’s a very strange piece but I love it. And then there’s French, there’s Gaelic, there’s English, there’s made up languages. I did a piece called Phonemena II. My first Phonemena was done on my album Blackwater and it’s only using phonemes in the Gaelic language, and I multi-track multilayer myself doing these different vocalisesbasically over each other. So Phonemena II is coming out on that one as well. And that album definitely taught me about the necessity for good set audio, because room noise is something sometimes you just can’t escape and you just do your best.
And so, while the first album is much more on a major label and higher quality. The second one I just wanted do something that was like— I wanted to do something that felt like they were field recordings, cause that’s really what they are. It was all of us like recording in our closets or living rooms or bedrooms. And I’m proud of that. Yeah it’s not a studio quality album but it’s something that we now have as a part of a documentation during this time that we were trying to do something that’s still made us feel like we had a purpose as artists. Yeah I’m looking forward to that. Odd Pop Records is pretty new. I think they’ve released like three records before this. So yeah, I’m looking forward to seeing that come out and to get that in people’s ears. It’s definitely going to be different than The Priestess of Morphine. Two very different animals.
Maren: Yeah, wow. Well I’m super excited to hear both of those. And you are also selling your artwork through your website as well, and your sheet music. You have your sheet music available for sale, if there’re people want to perform your stuff, they can.
Rosśa: Yeah absolutely, it’s all through rossacrean.com, R-O-S-S-A-C-R-E-A-N, as in “Nancy,” dot com. Yeah original paintings are there, ink prints are there, my sheet music’s there. You can hear recordings of many of the pieces, not all of them. We’re always working on recordings, right? All of that stuff is accessible there. And I’m also very, very approachable and easy to get in touch with. You know, I’m always happy to chat or answer questions or meet other musicians. Yeah, it’s a joy of mine in life. So
Maren: Awesome, and if people want to get in touch with you should they go through your website or should they, like find you on social media?
Rosśa: There are so many ways to get in touch with me. No one has an excuse, I guess. I mean yeah, like you can get touch with me through the website. It’s pretty easy. And then my Facebook is under Rosśa Crean, my artist page is under Rosśa Crean, my Instagram is criticalmuse, @criticalmuse I should say, one word, and Twitter is also Rosśa Crean. My SoundCloud is Rosśa-Crean. Like, it’s pretty hard to not find me. I’m pretty all over.
Maren: You’re accessible. This is good.
Rosśa: I think it’s, I mean assuming that if there’s time I’d like to address this, it’s just like there’s a lot of singers nowadays, I think they have this wall between the whole composer— like there’s a composer-singer dichotomy sometimes where they think there’s this wall between us. And it’s like, no. Like as someone who has had a career and kind of still does now as a singer, I want them to get in touch with me. I want to work with them. I want to learn from them as they would learn from me. Composers aren’t out to get you. We are there to make great work with you, and communication is first and foremost key. So like please, yes, reach out to us. We want, all capitals, WANT to hear from you, and communicate with you, and see if there’s any possibility of working together in the near or far future. You know, that’s something we really want to make very clear.
Maren: I’m so glad you brought that up because it is true. I think there are people who are really afraid of reaching out and gosh, collaborations are so cool. Like, some of the best art comes through collaboration. And really there’s— I may go on a tangent here.
Rosśa: Please do. Go ahead.
Maren: I feel like sometimes people when they put themselves in a lane and say like, “Well, no, it’s only my job to show up and sing the song and that’s it.” They’re actually absolving themselves of any responsibility, any artistic responsibility. And I,
Rosśa: I agree.
Maren: Yeah. I feel like, let’s reject that. Like, let’s tear off that bodice. We don’t need that one, you know? It’s better for everyone. It’s better for the art. It’s better for us individuals as artists to be able to own our own creative expression and then collaborate with others and feed off of others’ energy. You know, we can compliment each other. Talking about going back to synesthesia; the color compliments the sound sometimes, and compliments the emotion, and they’re all connected. Whether or not I can see that or experience it, it’s there. So I’m so glad you brought that up. I’m really glad. And yes, definitely contact Rosśa because they’re awesome.
Rosśa: Thank you. Yeah and it’s something about the community itself, is that we want people to be more open toward like, creating these things together. I mean, one of my best experiences I did, my opera The Harbingers, which is completely unaccompanied opera. We premiered it a year ago on Halloween night in a cemetery in Chicago. And it was like, we had ten singers, myself included, and we had the best time getting that together. We just self produced it. We put it together and we had a wonderful, sold out, awesome night. And we had a snow storm that night even, and we still sold out because people could feel our zeal, and our desire, and the fact that we loved each other and our practices, and that we can work on this thing together.
So I know that this kind of community does exist. And if you are a musician who has been spurned by a composer, just know like, that’s not everyone. Everyone is different. And I for one and many other of my composer colleagues that I know are not going to be pulling that on you. Your opinions are important for us to make our art stronger, better and more accessible. So just remember that.
Maren: Perfect, perfect way to end. Rosśa thank you so much for joining us. This has been such a wonderful conversation.
Rosśa: Thank you.
Maren: Uh, and I can’t wait for the day that we actually meet in real life and I can give you a big huge hug.
Rosśa: Same. I can’t wait. It’s going to be a fantastic day when that happens.
Maren: I know. All right, thank you so much.
Rosśa: Thank you.
Before I sign off, I want to give you a little teaser of one of the albums that Rosśa mentioned, a lonely voice in these haunted rooms: songs in quarantine. It was released on Odd Pop Records just a few weeks ago. Because I do sing in one track. So I figured I’d let you listen.
I recorded this track right at the beginning of quarantine in my closet, this very closet that I am recording this episode in. And I will ever be grateful to Rosśa for giving me something to learn and sing at exactly the moment that I needed to remind myself that music hadn’t completely left my life. So here you are. This song is titled “Dawn.”
[song plays]
Next episode will be the end of season two and the conclusion of Desire’s Peak. And as always, I love hearing from you. So if there was something that particularly struck you about this or any episode, please let me know. I’m easiest to find on Instagram @supermaren. You can DM me there.
The Bodice Ripper Project is a production of Compassionate Creative, and it was conceived and written by me, Maren Montalbano. It was edited by Andrew Carlson. The song sung at the end was “Dawn” by Rosśa Crean, and the theme music was written by yours truly. If you liked what you heard, I invite you to give this podcast a five star rating, you know, so more people can find me and hear my dirty stories. And I’ll see you next time.