Why choose an office as the setting for a music work?
"A lot of this piece (and a lot of my work) is about queer experiences – specifically, the constant feeling of being an outsider (many people can relate to this, queer or not). So the office setting represents the imagined ‘normal world’ of a non-queer experience - although of course there’s nothing normal about it, it’s just as absurd and insane and toxic. The absurdity of the setting (an office setting where 4 bureaucrats are stuck in and endless meeting about how to build pyramids, despite having never seen a pyramid before) is a queer experience of everyday life."
"It's also about what my childhood understanding of what grownup life was like. The models of adulthood (specifically for men) given to me in the 90s and 00s in the UK were about, having a shitty office job that you hated, pulling girls in nightclubs, football, “I hate my wife”, straight-male loneliness, emotional repression – for a young queer kid like me, the future looked bleak. It was powerful when I realized I could do something else and live in a different way. So it’s not just about the pain of queer experience – it’s also about how it can be liberating."
What does “normcore opera” mean to you? What does that sound like?
"Finding creative opportunity in the mundane, taking seemingly overdone or banal tropes (for example, office meeting, love song, catholic sermon, etc.) and filtering through my own perspective, turning the volume way up, adding just enough absurdity that a boring situation enters the uncanny valley. We recognize the basic structure, we recognize the outline, but the content makes us feel alienated (another queer experience). I always like to play with audience confusion, the feeling of “what the hell is going on?” – but I think the question is much more interesting if you understand or recognize little parts of “what the hell is going on”, instead of just throwing weird stuff up in the air with no plan. Hence normcore opera – heightened, operatic emotional states with a basis in mundanity."
How do you balance humour and sincerity in the piece?
"My take on humour in music is that the idea of humour as a mask cuts both ways – yes, sometimes humour can be overused by an artist to cover something up (sometimes to cover up a lack of substance). But, in the same way, the reaction of finding something humourous on the part of the audience can be its own act of covering-up. If you laugh at something, for whatever reason, it’s triggered something in you in some way – there’s something that you recognize is being played with. It’s not my job to figure out what it’s triggered for you – you’re bringing your own baggage into the concert hall that’s nothing to do with me as an artist."
"What is my job is to create the circumstances for you having that reaction, but also to create space in the work for you to explore the reaction you have. This is why repetition becomes so important, so we can spend more time in the world being created onstage, and reflect on what this world makes us feel."
"As for sincerity, that’s easy – I mean everything I do. The piece contains humour, but it has come out of pain. Having the kind of queer experiences (and other experiences of loss) that inform this work involves a lot of pain, and this is my way of processing this pain, reframing it, laughing at it, making it mean something else to me. That’s my job for myself, using pieces like this to engage with my own existence. So in a way it’s not really about balancing humour and sincerity, because they both come from the same place."
What du you hope for the audience to take away from the performance?
"A change in perspective, or perhaps a feeling of being “seen”. At a bare minimum, it’s nice to get out the house and go giggle for a bit. If an audience member is able to recognize or engage with the pain behind the humour or not – I’m trying not to be concerned with this. That’s not my responsibility. But my hope is that they can."
Time and place
- James Ditlevsen Black: Songs Old and New
- 20 August 17:00 + 20:00
- Copenhagen Opera Festival, Aveny-T
- Performed by NJYD
- Information and tickets