2017 | Eris DeJarnett

Untouchable: The Male Gaze, ASU Jazz, and the Phoenix Community

[Note from future Eris: although this essay cost me a lot of friends, I am still proud of it beyond measure. I highly recommend that readers experiencing this essay for the first time consider that these were some of my last words before coming out. (My actual coming-out post went live a little less than two months later, but the two essays were edited concurrently, and the original draft of this essay ended with me coming out.) If I were attempting this essay today—and maybe someday I will—I’d be able to more clearly state that the observations I made regarding my treatment were examples of how the patriarchy clocks and punishes trans people pre-transition. I’d talk more about how some of the women enforced this, too, by sabotaging some of my closest connections and all but ensuring anyone in our community who did date me would be subject to a unique flavor of hell. I kept my mouth shut about that in the original, hoping to keep friendships intact, but that didn’t work out.

I love this essay. I love how committed I was to telling my story as an individual for the first time, rather than trying to flatten my experiences to make them more palatable to large groups of other people. Someday, I owe it another follow-up so I can properly give it its due.]

When I was an undergrad running with the jazz boys, no one wanted to sleep with me.

…Yeah, I didn’t know how to start this one, either. For all my work addressing sexual assault, I actually don’t spend all that much time dealing with sex. (I tend to leave that creative artistry to Rebecca Drapkin, who writes about the consensual side of things.) While I love my body and everything it can do, I’ve grown accustomed to keeping my sexual side to myself. I’m still figuring out how much of it belongs in my artistic life. And though that answer is nonzero, part of why I keep my sex life (and body, and sexuality, and . . .) separate from the rest of my artistic discourse is just because I don’t share all of me with all of you. But part of it isn’t, and there are reasons for that—reasons I can trace back to a very specific time and place—and though I’d rather not discuss any of this, I think it’s time.

Bringin’ it Back: Don’t Tell Enters the Jazz World

When prepping a senior recital, most music students stop working on anything that isn’t absolutely necessary. Unfortunately, I’m not most music students.

On Jazz Performance and the Isolation of Women

This one is for every girl and woman who’s ever felt lonely in the jazz world.

[hi. I’ve written about this post a lot since 2017. especially because I’m nonbinary! and getting shoved into these boxes really set me back in figuring that out. this post speaks in woman-centric terms, but many of these issues apply to broader swaths of gender-marginalized people, albeit in different ways. look through some of my more recent stuff if you want to get a fuller picture; good places to start include here, here, and here.]

*If you don’t like opinions, keep scrolling, friends.*

I don’t talk very much about being a jazz musician. I’m not sure I specifically discuss being a classical musician, either; I’ve spent enough time crossing between the genres that I’m not sure I really care what my label is right now. But I do spend quite a bit of time in the jazz world, listening to jazz music and interacting with jazz people. A lot of them are really awesome, and almost all of them are rational, reasonable individuals when spoken to one-on-one. But the problem with jazz, as with plenty of other male-dominated fields, is that when you get large groups of us together, mob mentality takes over and things are said that shouldn’t be said.

A theater set of a cluttered room: a couch has clothing strewn across it, and a slew of paintings are propped against walls and each other. In a mirror, two actors can be seen engaged in an intense, intimate conversation. The actor to the right is tall, with short dark hair and a beard. The actor to the left is Tess Galbiati, a white woman with long, wavy auburn hair.

You Can’t Cry While Drinking (Coffee)

Sometimes a project sucks you in so fast you don’t even realize it’s happened. My roommate’s capstone is one of those projects.

Sometimes a project sucks you in so fast you don’t even realize it’s happened.

My roommate’s capstone is one of these projects. Written by Tess Galbiati and serving as both her final creative project and her honors thesis, the production follows Stacia, an art major with big plans for the future, as she struggles with her own wellness during a rough relationship and a fatal illness within her family. Relationships of all kinds are tested. It’s a fascinating dissection of the nuanced conversations and friendships that today’s young adults make.

Tag: 2017