Sell Out, A Series: 5 Questions with Herbert
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Sell Out is a series by interdisciplinary artist Angela Fama (she/they), who co-creates conversations with individual artists across Vancouver. Questioning ideas of artistry, identity, “day jobs,” and how they intertwine, Fama settles in with each artist (at a local café of their choice) and asks the same series of questions. With one roll of medium format film, Fama captures portraits of the artist after their conversations.
Herbert (they/them) is a pianist, piano teacher, and spoken word poet. Follow them on Instagram @naturally.herb.
Location: Kits Beach Coffee
What do you make/create?
I am a multifaceted person. I am a pianist, and I teach piano. I am also a spoken word poet. I do these things separately but they are very intertwined with each other. These are my primary forms of self-expression and so far, it has been very liberating from my previous trauma. It helps me to connect with different people, and be a lot more confident as a result. Sharing poetry has helped with my storytelling and connecting with other people so much. It’s how I heal, how I self-express, and how I help to make other people’s lives better.
I feel very natural on the piano. It’s something that’s very much a part of me. I don’t really have that many memories of the parts of my life that came before I was learning piano. I pretty much have grown up around it. That’s basically how I also connect with different places I travel to. For instance, when I do go to a different place, I tend to remember the music in my brain pretty well, and by playing it again, I pretty much get teleported back to that place; back to that moment, with those people. It’s really wonderful to experience that. By teaching music, I hope that other people can discover this innate ability, this kind of mindset, to hopefully have them connect to different places and people as well. I love to travel. I also do photography.
I am also a speaker for jack.org, which is a mental health organisation. We talk about mental health in schools and community settings: the basics of mental health, some statistics, some storytelling, being there for ourselves and for others, resources for supporting people in their crisis and getting us to hopefully learn more afterwards, and how to revolutionise mental health. That was my big thing before I discovered poetry.
I first did poetry workshops in late 2022, led by this wonderful poet, Lindi Nolte. She encouraged me to perform poetry for the first time, which I did in December 2022. This was followed by her second offering of poetry workshops in January 2023, which completely changed my life. She made me feel so confident. I don’t think anyone else has made me feel as confident before. As a result, I finally had the courage to start applying to different music teaching opportunities in a few different places. I got a response in a few weeks asking if I wanted to substitute and see if I liked it, and in August I got the dream job. That was very beautiful, discovering how particular spoken word poets helped me change my life and brought me back to my original purpose of music.
During the pandemic, I took a three year break from music. I think the longest streak of time I didn’t play for was like eight months. I probably refreshed a little bit from time to time but it wasn’t regular practising, and at one point, during the depths of the pandemic, I forgot that classical music existed. Eventually, through the aforementioned spoken word poetry workshops with Lindi Nolte, I connected back with music, fully revived it from the dead pretty much. It’s such a beautiful thing. That’s how I got back into the loop and now that I have two jobs, I don’t really have as much time to write new poetry. But at least on the financial side of things, it’s healthier. Hopefully I can travel more as a result, and connect with more people.
What do you do to support that?
I live with my family, so we do have shelter, thankfully. Financially, my piano teaching job helps the most, as well as my second job with Curiko, as their concierge. That has been going pretty well. Other things include a lot of self-care, like daily journaling, finding inspiration for new pieces of music to practise and hopefully perform in the future. I often look for inspiration; that’s something I love to do.
Describe something about how your art practice and your “day job” interact.
They interact quite a bit, piano teaching is my day job and also my art practice, so that’s pretty much all in one. There’s the aspect of me learning different music on my own, and also showcasing it to other people. I connect music with the poetry I do but they are wildly different styles so there’s a little bit of a disconnect there, but they still connect very well.
What’s a challenge you’re facing, or have faced, in relation to this and/or what’s a benefit?
A challenge with piano teaching is my fear of not attracting enough students, or students leaving or quitting without any apparent reason. Piano music in general can feel quite isolating in that we usually practise alone and when we do find other opportunities, we do it alone. Sometimes frustration gets in the way. I try to chill, I try to calm down, hopefully find other ways to calm down in the face of these challenges.
In regards to poetry, there has been quite a bit of comparison with others lately. It does happen, though I try not to do as much as possible. In poetry, we have poetry slams, which are the competitive aspect of poetry. I try to not take the scores too seriously but sometimes the scoring and peer pressure can get in the way, so that is a challenge.
Some of the benefits I have found are in the connections with others. I care, and I do genuinely care, about people and reconnecting with them. I have other skills that I do that enhance this. For instance, I create handwritten letters and cards to give to people. I grew up in a time where in elementary school we had an emphasis on writing nicely, in the form of cursive writing, and that connected me to my love of fountain pens. It is such a lovely hobby to do, to enjoy. I find people to be really disconnected these days with computers, laptops, all of that stuff. It does not feel human if we spend so much time on devices. I see the benefits of writing by hand to other people, and I see the benefits of meeting up in real life as well. That is something that I very much enjoy. And of course, the pandemic was very hard on this as well.
Have you made, or created, anything that was inspired by something from your day job? Please describe.
In regards to my day job, my piano teaching job, I’ve definitely created a community. I’ve created a lot more connections than I thought it would. I’ve made new friends. I’ve become better at myself. When I connect with different communities, different people, I become a better person. I see it as a creation because I’ve seen parts of myself that I’ve never discovered before which I think is such a beautiful thing. That also has inspired me to learn new music as well.
From my other day job, at Curiko, vision boards are quite a big thing; creating vision boards, new ideas on ethnography is a big part of our job, which is something I enjoy very much. It helps create connections to other people too.
I would say listening to music, or playing my favourite music, does help me compose poetry. For instance, certain music that evokes a certain mood. There are quite a few classical composers who have composed in places that I’ve actually been to, like various places in Europe. One of my favourite places to travel to is the coast of the Baltic Sea where Finland, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania are situated. I went to those places quite a few years ago. Some of the composers from the Russian Empire, like Alexander Scriabin, have also worked over there. One of the new pieces I’m learning is his second sonata which was inspired by his visits to the coastline of the Baltic Sea. He evokes the colours, and the waves of the ocean very well, even including the stormy aspects of the sea as parts of the piece. It’s really a connection. It’s how composers, not just him, but others as well, connect with people of the future essentially; how they worked, how they interacted with other people, which I think is such a beautiful thing. My interpretation of the music composed by others is certainly going to be different because of my own different perspectives. Like when people cover other people’s songs, they do it differently – it’s pretty much the same thing. It’s a way of connection which I really enjoy.
Angela Fama (she/they) is an interdisciplinary artist, creator of the Death Conversation Game, photographer, and musician of mixed european descent currently living and working on the unceded traditional and ancestral territories of the Coast Salish xʷməθkwəy̓əm, Skwxwú7mesh and Səl̓ílwətaʔ/Selilwitulh Nations.
Follow them at IG @angelafama IG @deathconversationgame or on their website www.angelafama.com
