Wendy Rudin is a presenter with Spirit FM 91.1, a community radio station in Narrandera, NSW here in Australia.  When she told me her listeners had given her positive feedback about my albums played on this station I asked her if she wanted to ask me any questions for her listeners.  Here’s her questions.

WENDY RUDIN
After you’ve practiced or played your music are you more sensitive to sounds, the light, the feeling of the breeze?

DONNA WILLIAMS
Ooo.  Interesting question.  When I’m absorbed in arts I ‘disappear’.  I think I go very ‘right brain’, off into creativeville, where pattern, theme and feel dominate and conscious awareness doesn’t have much relevance.  It’s a very intuitive space.  I refer to it as the System of Sensing.

So when I come back out of that space, I guess I’m in a kind of preconscious state, dreamy, drifty.  That’s part of why I feel ARTism was a way of living more constructively with my autism.  I do feel that nature and the world of sensations is closer to the world of ARTism, yes.

WENDY RUDIN
Do you have any moments which really stand out musically for you?

DONNA WILLIAMS
Ah.  Yeah, I think so.  Sometimes a lyric just feels so poetically right that it almost feels beyond me, as though someone else or some other part of me, some more unconscious, sometimes more gutsy, more intimate, or stronger self snuck through and wrote it with me merely as witness.

The same on the music side, there are times where the music begins writing itself, and it can feel wild, moving, but also scary.  I really love when I’m just along for the ride.

If composition is too mechanical, I believe you can hear that, it feels too cerebral.  When it’s something very organic, you can feel that too.

I think the different songs took me right to the edge of such different extremes; insight, estrangement, intimacy, surrealism and silliness, loss.  I am always pretty blown away when things that are quite off limits to my conscious, more ‘left brain’ self, just blurt themselves out in a musical moment.

WENDY RUDIN
Have you found over the years that you’ve developed a degree of skill, clarity of vision & strength of purpose where your music is concerned?

DONNA WILLIAMS
Hmm.  It’s definitely evolving.  The first album, Nobody Nowhere was a celebration of dagdom.  It was right out there.  Some of it is probably pretty cool, because two tracks from that album went into an international TV series and another two made the top 50 on Idol Underground (now Artist Underground).

But for me, the first album is really real, earthy.  The second album, Mutation, was almost a concept album.  It has a kind of protest feel to it, songs like All Be Happy, Subtlety and Beautiful Behavioural Mutations are definitely socio-political as well as really personal in an almost Alanis Morrisette way.  It was almost more adult, stylish.  And the spoken word stuff was very experimental, stepped outside of musical conventions entirely and journied into the surreal.  I’m proud of that and it’s been part of my development beyond singer-songwriter into improvisational performance poet.

I’m working toward a third album as part of a  band, Donna and The Aspinauts, and as it’s taking shape it’s really shifting again.  The ART of my work is definitely branching out and I have no idea how far it’ll go.  That’s cool.

WENDY RUDIN
Is it hard to find substance for your music so that people really listen & hear a message or story?

DONNA WILLIAMS
Hee, hee, not at all.  Someone who’d known me since my 20s said I’d always suffered from ‘existential angst’.

I had rapid cycling bipolar as part of my autism fruit salad which is a whole rollercoaster in itself and is sure to ‘expand your mind’ if it doesn’t break it.  Added to the mix were anxiety and compulsive disorders so I know something about substance and about sometimes being too deep for one’s own sanity and the necessity to sometimes just get surreal and laugh at yourself and the weird stuff around you.

I haven’t found people have to force themselves to listen to the messages, the stories in the songs, because I have a pretty raw, sometimes nutty way of expressing things, it’s not the norm, and that captivates people even if they don’t normally like ‘deep stuff’.

WENDY RUDIN
Do people approach you after having heard your music & tell you how they’ve been affected by it?

DONNA WILLIAMS
(Embarassingly) yes.  Some people feel my albums, my books, my artworks are their ‘friend’ and sometimes they are just moved as they’re passing through and that’s cool too.  I’m glad for them because they seemed to have needed to feel found, understood and they got that through the songs.

I didn’t want to stand out.  I didn’t want to be a catalyst for change.  I used to adore privacy, invisibility.  It’s ironic.  I travel the world as a public speaker, effect people through my books, art and songs.

I still feel a strong need for solitude… that’s artists for you.

WENDY RUDIN
Have you ever felt disheartened or felt that your music isn’t important?   If so, who helps you get back on track or what do you do?

DONNA WILLIAMS
Hmm.  I wish I could say I’ve done that tough trek.  But I was so lucky really.

I hid my music until my 20s, then didn’t dare record it until my 30s, so I didn’t feel bad nobody knew of it.  Then, when I made my first album, it was in the first 6 months of it being for sale that a TV producer bought the rights to two of the songs for his TV series.  So I didn’t really get to feel it wasn’t important.  Both albums continue to have some nice steady sales through http://www.cdbaby.com (who also sell the tracks and albums via iTunes and the like) which people also find through my website http://www.donnawilliams.net

Also, I feel it’s importance of the songs was always in the creating of them, in that initial dialogue with me, that’s priceless, and private.  From there I let it journey into the world, and if it befriends people, brings something to their lives, great.  It sort of takes on a life of it’s own.

So I guess I’m not personally invested in its success.  I’m a very practical person.  If I needed to work outside of arts and public speaking, I’d just become something else…a dishwasher, a gardener, it’s all just another step to me.  There is not much up, or down in my world, changes just all feel across from each other.  I think that’s such a lucky ‘defect’ to have

WENDY RUDIN
Do you feel a physical joy after performing?

DONNA WILLIAMS
Cool question.
Well, I wouldn’t even let anyone know of my songs until my 20s so I hid them for a few years.  Then I wouldn’t sing in front of anyone, just in a recording booth.  It was as if an audience would remove the magic, make it no longer part of my world.  Maybe that’s an autistic thing and many of us have some degree of that somewhere.

But I did so envy those who looked like they were having a fab time performing (because the surrealist in me would love to find something as un-fun as being watched to actually be fun).

I tried acting, got in a play once.  I did really well, people complimented my performances but all I knew was I’d vomited at the side of the stage and forced myself soldier-like to go through with it.  I can be pretty military with myself.  I’m both sargent and soldier.

And for some time, when I started singing live, it was a dare I had with myself.  I’m on medication for bipolar and had to get it increased to manage the Exposure Anxiety enough to take it that step and actually sing TO people.  And afterwards, people were crying and whistling and cheering and I felt worried about having effected people.

I like to be a spy, to watch people, not effect them directly.  More Jim Morrison than Madonna   But in my world all I felt was, ok kid, you just did Everest, we can go home now.  Then it took several more of these before one day the penny dropped and I found myself really happy I’d effected these people.  I didn’t feel it was an imposition to effect them (I did before), I accepted that it was really a gift, that I had something they really valued being given and that I felt really honoured to have something so portable as a voice, as a song with which to give.

We live in a world of material things and wastage and everything has a price, but to give a song in a live performance, you just open your mouth, your heart, your soul, and let the sharing happen.  That is so cool.  So, yeah, I finally found the ‘performer’ in me.  And that’s what got me into Donna and The Aspinauts.  I was ready to take that further.

WENDY RUDIN
Do you think performing music allows you to express yourself in a way that you couldn’t do in a conversation or another way?

DONNA WILLIAMS
Ooo.  Definitely.  I’m a solitary character.  I’m not comfortable with direct intimacy.  I barely cope with a handshake and I don’t do hugs.

I’m so practical and don’t easily share my feelings verbally on a personal level.  Generally only really through arts and typing and in public speaking I’m basically reiterating a world of thoughts and feelings I’ve already typed out at some time.  So, yes, arts allow me to express myself in ways far beyond conversing.

And performance?  Well, that’s a whole other level because I’m fluent in gestural signing and I use this as I perform, and characterisations.  So my system of home signs is quite like deaf signing, so it’s really alive, it’s like visual music.

People seem captivated by it in its own right, and yet for so many years I’d hidden it, been ashamed of it as part of my world of meaning deafness.  So it’s crazy that it’s actually something others really enjoy and the singing and signing and music go together like a visual and auditory symphony, so artistically that’s very cool.

WENDY RUDIN
Do you trust the voice within yourself when it comes to your music?

DONNA WILLIAMS
At first the reluctance to perform would clam up my throat.  I literally couldn’t sing in front of other people.  It would abandon me, much like how Selective Mutism does this with speaking (I had phases of that in late childhood after acquiring functional speech).

But since I’ve found the joy of giving through performance, yes, I can trust that voice within myself in performance and not just in the recording booth or alone at the keyboard.  It’s been quite a journey.  We always think about world travel but there are worlds within all of us and many mountains to climb nobody sees.

WENDY RUDIN
Is there anything in your life that you would change if you could?

DONNA WILLIAMS
Nope.  Every time I think of something that really bugs me, I find it’s positive side.

Thanks for the interview.  I hope the show continues to give you a buzz and best wishes to Narrandera.

Warmly,

Donna Williams,
http://www.donnawilliams.net
author, artist, singer-songwriter, screenwriter.