What I am Reading Now…
Elaine Mitchener
January 2025

I love books, I love buying books, I love seeing them stacked on my desk, or bulging from my bookshelf, or creating mini towers on the floor, so I’m clearly not suffering from bibliophobia. I gaze at books, flick through them, dipping in and out, seeking and creating a rhythm that has the power to change my mood. “Oh yes, I’ve been meaning to / I really should read / why don’t I know etc…” The circularity of these internal conversations with myself, obviously yield very little. This, plus listening to scholarly friends and colleagues talk about books/writers that I guess I either: 

a)   think I ought to know about  

b)   think I ought to have known about 

So many unread books… 

I read in fits and starts, requiring an ‘empty head’ to absorb the written word and written world that is presented to me.  

I never read with music in the background because both demand my full attention and music wins every time. I read music scores and understand each composer’s distinctive musical language and through their unique notational style, am drawn into their musical worlds ‘hearing’ what I’m reading. In this way reading a book and reading a musical score have the same capacity to draw the reader into other worlds. These are intimate experiences that for me just don’t feel the same scrolling on my iPad, phone or looking at the computer.  

I realise this is also how I read. Music is central to what I do and surrounding sounds, so I listen for these within the text I am focused on and hear them.  

Much of my reading is for research which then (sometimes) is reflected in the performance work that I do. So here I am sharing some books I’ve recently combed through, some remain uncompleted, some unread but will be.  

BOOKS: 

Freedom Time: The Poetics and Politics of Black Experimental Writing.  

Anthony Reed’s book was recommended to me after I completed recording my album SOLO THROAT. He writes ‘Black experimental writing worries that line, engaging readers at the threshold between speech and noise…’ For me this is akin to what I try to do with my own work as vocalist/composer working with text ‘worrying the line’.  

Gay Guerilla: Julius Eastman and His Music 

Edited by Reneé Levine Packer and Mary Jane Leech this well researched biography contains insightful chapters of musical analysis and personal reflections. I remember when it first came out and the importance of it to the those of us who had performed the work of Julius Eastman or had begun to engage with his music. I revisited it again as part of my R&D and preparation for a movement piece Moving Eastman that was made for me by choreographer Dam Van Huynh and commissioned by Fruitmarket Gallery’s DEEP TIME festival in Nov 2024. Re-reading Gay Guerilla has enabled me to rediscover and develop a deeper understanding of and respect for the work of a highly distinctive creative artist who refused to be boxed in, pigeon-holed or to know ‘his place’. Julius Eastman was a man ahead of his time.  

On my read list: 

Freedom Seekers: Escaping from Slavery in Restoration London 

This book by historian Simon P. Newman was recommended to me and I’m waiting for some headspace to get into it. At school (a very long time ago) we studied Congreve’s The Way of The World and although we were taught about slavery in the colonies, we were never told about enslaved people who attempted to escape England’s capital during the 17th century and the involvement of White Londoners in the ‘construction of the system of racial slavery’.   

Caliban and the Witch: Women, the Body and Primitive Accumulation 

Admittedly, I am late to engage with this cult classic by Silvia Federici. However, I do feel that this is the right time for me to do so.