Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith on the exchange of electricity in the body and music

I'm inspired by learning about what natural forces come together to create a life form and what ways I can reconnect with those. I'm inspired by connection and continue to learn about connection through electricity. It's the energy that I collaborate with to make music; I play modular synthesisers and sculpt electricity into sound. It's the energy that animates objects and life forms. It's the energy of the nervous system and sends messages throughout the body creating connections.

With a modular synthesiser, sound isn’t made unless you actively make a connection with patch cables. This way of creating music puts you in touch with the cause and effect cycle of creating sound as well as teaching you the fundamentals of sound. If a synthesiser is animated by electricity and the physical body is animated by electricity, it makes me wonder if there is a way to connect with the cause and effect of the physical body. To me, dance is making music with the body's electricity. To me, art is a way of connecting the ineffable.

I'm in my adult years learning dance/movement as a language, learning how to sculpt the electricity of my body into expression. Learning to go beyond my expectations with the physical body is opening my mind to allow my expectations to expand. Practising exercises to expand my expectations is helping me expand my creativity.

The other day I had the joy of participating in a follow and lead activity with a friend of mine on Zoom, taking turns leading dance improv and trying to copy the other person. I haven't played with another human in this way before and felt so much open in me by reconnecting with the sense of play. It has been a source of hope for me in these recent world experiences to reflect on the many ways humans have discovered play and will continue to do so.

I remember reading that in the Lummi culture if someone wasn't feeling well they would ask them, "When was the last time you sang? When was the last time you danced? When was the last time you cried? When was the last time you were held? When was the last time you saw the horizon? When was the last time you were alone in nature?" All of these questions to me are about connection, and connection is an exchange of electricity.