For the following conversation, we met each other outside our studios. We talked; we are friends and enjoy talking art and Blackfella shit.
Nicholas (NC): Could we transcribe something ‘cause the brief for the magazine was about sound? You've (Daisy) done sound and music for a long time. I also done music.
Daisy (D): This is a weird way to start off, but whatever. Went to a cafe over the weekend, it was mad over-stimulating…
NC: What' you hear??
D: Oh y’know, lots of voices, lots of noise, repercussion, reverberation. Just real bad acoustics. Like, music playing, cutlery clanging. Y’know, maybe you don't wanna eat nothing, but wanna have a conversation. I get myself into those spaces where there’s a lot of people, too much talking over top each other. My ears try to tune in, then tune out, because I don't know how to act and don’t wanna listen, just maintain focus on my own shit. Then I’m distracted by all the babel/babble and noise. You like gigs?
NC: Yeah. And then I feel like I've been into some backyard ones where I was like, this is stupid, and I don't like it.
D: Really?
NC: Yeah. Well, then how do you do like noise where it's like you get over-stimulated or noise when it's like, you're good with it? Or is it a participation thing? Or is it, I feel like it comes back to kind of choice; I want that, I want that. I'm going there because of that noise. I'm going there, but for that kind of pain; for sensation. I don't know what I'm expecting by going to that. Is that masochistic?
D: But like, going into a cafe in a small town where balanda talking about whatever they're talking about. Yeah, well that's masochistic too, didn't know they were there, but it was really on me, my choice to stay in that space...
NC: Do you like Jimmy Little?
D: Yeah, yeah. Some stuff. I sent you that one he covered, ‘Cattle and cane’. Reminds me of mudjin/family. I like his music. I think about that one song a lot. He covered that, who was it? Go Betweens, I think. Think they wrote it about being homesick, but the way Jimmy sang it just hits different. Feels like every time I hear it, we’re taking something back, reclaiming, y’know.
NC: I love a hard style remix of ‘Neon Moon’, Brooks & Dunn. That's what I like. I don't even know what I'm looking for right now. I don't know. I think, I'm not struggling, ‘cause it's like the notion of hearing as well and also like deep listening and shit like that, I don't wanna listen. But I do need to listen. I gotta stop talking. My voice sounds weird.
D: My voice sounds bit different these days since urban initiation, words come out but different after pulling teeth from the tiger. All the F’s and V’s got very fucking tongue-tied and choppy. Like, when I take a bite from an apple now it leaves this funny trace chunk of rind and peel behind. But that's part of the voice too aye — laughing at ourselves.
When it's not laughter, sometimes it's spit and phlegm and coughing and grunting and guttural bodily sounds that find their way out of a mouth through the expulsion of floating fatty air sacks from another ordinary esophagus. Crying too. Screaming also.
NC: To stop me from crying my mum would sing to me. My nan would sing too. I learned how to sing with both of them. And like before we would go to bed, she would always sing a lullaby. And she like, babysat us. It was nice. And they both sing in the car. She never sang language, not badways, she was always singing nursery rhymes like, how much is that doggy in the window and shit. I miss singing with my family. In a way that I'm like, not crying about it, and I'll just know that I'm excited for when I can.
D: Do you remember your nan singing to you? Could you sing those words to yourself today?
I remember my mum singing, but very faintly. I remember listening to my dad play the drums, my brother too. I'm blown away by what can happen when sound gathers structure. You know a drum kit can have like five or seven or seventy-three distinct voices!? How you wanna think about that? Hardware? Software? A kit? An instrument?
You said ages ago about hearing Aretha Franklin out Country there bah… Reminds me of Sylvia Wynter in Proud Flesh (2006): ‘When I write, I want to sound in theory the way Aretha Franklin sounds in song…’
That's pretty special aye.
I was tryna read a book about Wynter…
NC: If you find it, can you send it to me? I want my art to sound like how my nan sang. When I got my first paycheck, I bought Geoffrey Gurrumul Yunupingu’s Gurrumul (2008) on vinyl and would listen to it to write and read essays for uni. I felt good.
D: Well done.
NC: Can you dance?
D: Can I dance? Shake a leg? I mean, you wouldn't get me painted up, dancing. Embarrass myself. But umm, yeah, not very well. I think that's like part of why I make sound, and make art that makes music, it’s song that dances. I like experimenting with that idea in creative process or in emergent/submergent practice kinda way.
NC: I like a bit of micro performance where it makes sound, like if I was throwing myself, or slamming. a sound. for everyone. I was doing those dance paintings; it was the sound of the dance that helped me make them.
D: Yeah, I’m into that, really like that way.
NC: We're doing it as a dance, or what you see is a dance. Do you think it is like a two-step way or a messy one?
D: Hey, look out, is that Tyson?
This yarn was diverted due to us waving over Tyson Yunkaporta and Megan Kelleher. They were walking by on their way to dinner or something, and we got all excited to meet and talk to them. Tyson got excited and showed us the cover design for their new book too, Snake Talk: How the world’s ancient serpent stories can guide us (2025). Megan spoke about how it’s different down in naarm, how mob don’t call ya over to say hello so much, and that they appreciated it.
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