A man is digging a ditch. It’s tough work. The ground is hard, dry, and stony. The sun has been up for hours; he’s sweating, and beads of perspiration race the contours of his brow, down his neck, across his chest. He feels their course against his skin and knows their appearance is acknowledgment that the work is physically demanding, mentally exhausting, and spiritually draining. His hands are blistered, bloody, and raw; his back, shoulders, arms, in fact every muscle in his body, aches.
A figure walks toward him backlit against the sun’s bright rays. He can’t make out details but they are carrying a shovel. In a moment they take up position next to him and begin to dig. Shoulder to shoulder, side by side.
It may be that no words are spoken. But the burden is shared. This is the kind of collaboration we seek … in the here and now.
Our words are to the left of the page, our song toward the right.
[David]
I don’t want to ar-gue, dis-cuss, dia-logue, de-bate
Not today, thank you
I want you and you and you to help me see to help me say to help me with what we need to say
[Acoustic guitar starts: Spacious, ringing 6-string chords, picked gently]
So, it’s coloring in, filling in empty spaces with flesh-full tones
It is adding light to what was black and white
[Kitrina starts singing softly, sounds not words]
It is joining in not com-peting, re-directing, re-vising, re-working not complex-if-ying, de-construct-ing, prob-lem-atizing
But standing together
Because no-one makes it here alone
I need you to stand with me
Shoulder to shoulder
To lock bodies—like a two-person scrum
To hold on, bind tight, lift up and
… step forward
[David starts singing]
I got a way with words
I’ll get away with murder
I’ve got a way with sound that makes me much louder than I am
[Kitrina harmonizes the second verse]
I got a tale to tell
I’m telling it to you my friend
Is there room for hire?
We’re trading space and time
[The rhythm picks up for the chorus]
We’re rolling aren’t we?
Never struggling are we?
What d’you say?
[Music stops]
[David]
Kitrina! I see this clearly! if only for a moment
The lines are aligned, the boxes boxed
I have got it right!
No longer bull-shitted
I have got it, Right?
But it’s too bleak—impossible and hope-less
What I see … can never work
It will only end in …
[Gentle guitar picking resumes, Kitrina hums softly]
We need more color, more harmony, more volume and more depth
To make what was worthless work
[David sings melody, Kitrina harmony]
There’s a time to fly and a time to wander
Coz an ocean of space makes me feel better any day
We’re rolling aren’t we?
Never struggling are we?
What d’you say?
[Kitrina]
We are already at the political point
We already embody the point
We are already creating waves already making—sound waves electrical currents connectivity you are making space an invitation without words
“Let’s collaborate!” magnet-ism drawing me
This is how we work how we seek an answer how we find the question notice the absence
[David and Kitrina sing together]
Got a way with words
I’ll get away with murder
I’ve got a way with sound that makes me much louder than I am
Than I am
[End]
Reflections
Each year’s Special Interest Group (SIG) in autoethnography signals an opportunity for autoethnographers to consider, share and expand our research practices. It also offers a much-needed opportunity for celebration—of what we have achieved and the community we have created for each other. In 2018, we were charged with forging collaborations and thinking through or considering—for the benefit of our communities—what it is we “do” when we collaborate as autoethnographers. We hoped our response to this call would reflect several interrelated aspects of the ways in which we collaborate and, because so often in our work (e.g., Carless, 2017, 2018; Carless & Douglas, 2011; Douglas, 2012, 2016) we use songs, songwriting, music, and performance, we want to offer rhythm, melody, and harmony as alternative acts of autoethnographic collaboration.
Of course, our performance at the International Congress of Qualitative Inquiry (ICQI) in May 2018 was a “one-time” unique event. What we offer above, on YouTube (see Douglas & Carless, 2018), and in what follows, is a more durable artifact to communicate to others not only what we performed during the session but, hopefully, our sentiments concerning singing, playing, and co-performing music as autoethnographic collaboration. In what follows, we reflect on some of those illusive strands that can find their ways into the mix through writing/singing songs and musical performance, particularly those that contributed to the making of this piece at this time and in this space.
We perform the piece live, for each other, one sunny morning in July 2018. As we finish, I feel “full.” I want to speak. I have something to say regarding what was going on “in my spirit” as we made this collaboration a couple of months earlier.
Kitrina: David, can I say something? The line “We are already at the political point” comes from my deep-seated feeling that there is a lot wrong in the world and that, as a collective, autoethnographers are already making their points really powerfully.
David: When you talk about “the political point,” it makes me think of a critical point. A time when things have reached some kind of crescendo. And it is a critical time now: it feels like democracy is quaking, the European Union is beginning to disassemble, global inequality is unprecedented, environmental meltdown is forecast, and some say we’re perched on the edge of another world war. It’s not a good time. Few would say that it is. Within the qualitative inquiry community—our own backyard—we recognize that the old model of research isn’t working either; too often it fails those who most need help (Denzin & Giardina, 2014). We, as a community of scholars and as individuals, need to do something.
Kitrina: Things will only change if we take action.
David: What is it we are doing through this work then? What can a little collaboration like this achieve?
Kitrina: As autoethnographers, we embody, through our lives and our work, the things that need to be said. By saying what we say in the way we say, it we help can divert the powerful current going in the opposite direction. We create waves just by standing strong and holding our position.
David: By standing together, standing firm, being a different kind of presence in the world. Just us, working together in relationship, collaborating, can that make some kind of difference?
Kitrina: Critical autoethnography is already achieving this. For us, working with sound and music and song, I think we are able to do this too. We make our waves through soundwaves. Like electrical currents, fully charged, I feel that connectivity when we collaborate, when we sing together. Something—more than words—is going on here. Electricity. Connection. Something bigger than its parts, something set free in the performative space between us.
David: Is that what you’re feeling, the energy between performers? Is that the electricity, magnetism—the something—that is created by collaborating in this way? Some sort of shared commitment and direction?
Kitrina: Ever since I met you and started listening to your music, I felt a space in your songs for other parts, for me. I felt so drawn to make a noise in those spaces! Simply by singing, you were offering an invitation to me to collaborate, to work together. You didn’t need to say “Let’s collaborate!” I felt a strong calling in and through my body to add, to step into the spaces you created. And over the years, it is this that has drawn us to work together, to relate, interrelate, collaborate. It’s not just singing for singing’s sake. By standing against the current, we are standing for a different way of being in the world and in academia. It’s a stand against the conveyor-belt, output-obsessed teaching and research model. By the way we work, we resist that. We are joining together through collaboration, working against the individuated, hierarchical model that operated in universities.
David: Even down to who goes first author! Like Claudio and Marcelo say about deciding author order: “The coin will continue to fly!” (Moreira & Diversi, 2014). So, one of us does not go first because s/he “led” the piece.
Kitrina: It is our piece, our work. We won’t just follow the alphabetical precedent. And because sexism is rife in the academy, we need to work against it.
David: I felt in this piece, perhaps because Stacy invited us to explore collaboration through collaboration, I wrote in a different way than I have before. I’m aware that my writing here was an offering to you. I wrote to you. I might even have written for you. We sat together to write the piece, working together in the same place and time, word by word. And I offered my writing to you in that moment—in the moment of writing—before I’d revised it, polished it, reflected on it, edited it. I made myself—at least I felt—vulnerable, by pouring this out, letting it out, and giving it to you, offering it to, before I could decide whether it was strong or right or good or useful. For me, that was a big step—to share personal material, in a raw state, through an in-the-moment collaboration—before reviewing or reflecting on it. Previously, I’d be more likely to work on a draft before sharing it with you. I’d need to know it was OK—good enough, safe enough, sensible enough—before handing it over. Whether it’s a chapter, a section of a paper, or even an email—I’d be likely to check it, weigh it, before hitting “send.”
In this project, there was an invitation to collaborate through a genuine process of co-creation through interaction. It’s not like The Beatles, where songs were credited Lennon/McCartney for publishing reasons but were primarily written, apparently, by one or other of them. So: Lennon writes “Ticket to Ride,” takes it to McCartney, who might add a bridge. Or: McCartney writes “Penny Lane,” plays it to Lennon who changes a lyric. I’ve heard Paul McCartney talk about their “co-writing” as a competition, rather than a collaboration. They’d try to outdo each other! But they didn’t, it seems, create in direct relationship with each other. In the years since Lennon’s murder, McCartney has allegedly taken legal action to change the credit on the songs he wrote to McCartney/Lennon!
Kitrina: And we see that academia too. In the sport and exercise field particularly, we see scholars “collaborating” on papers but they’re writing their own sections and lumping them together. That’s fine, but in my view, it’s not really a collaboration in a full sense. Each writer writes in her or his own space, and those chunks are placed beside each other. One person does not engage with and respond to the other in relationship. This kind of writing feels to me like separate bottles of water stacked together in the fridge. The big bottles retain their bigness, holding on to the most prominent positions. The small bottles fit in where they can. In genuine collaboration—working together in relationship in the kind of way I think we have done here—it feels like each writer’s different waters merge together to become an ocean.
David: Writers who share with each other, give to each other, learn from each other to create something more than the sum of their parts.
Kitrina: And music helps us to do that in different ways.
David: Something changes when the music comes in. A color that was dark—gray or even black—starts to look different, lighter perhaps. The words hang in the air, but the music coming in is like the sun beginning to rise. It brings a new perspective, changes the emotional terrain, without necessarily changing the conscious meaning suggested by the words. The color changes hue.
Kitrina: Those tonal shifts can be felt and experienced by the audience too. At ICQI, I felt very connected and plugged in with the audience during the performance.
David: Some responded vocally—by laughing—to the line “I’ve got a way with words, I’ll get away with murder.” They recognize the privilege of voice—of being able to write, speak, be heard—which can be used or abused.
Kitrina: Through music, we can both be on the same word at the same time yet sing a different note. Together, we can become harmonious. On our own, alone, we cannot.
David: We can sing in our own way, stay true to our own song, yet speak through a shared voice, through a song that neither of us could have created independently. So, we don’t have to follow a research methods textbook—a “how to” guide—there is room to follow our own truths, to be ourselves, express ourselves within a collective.
Kitrina: For us, music allows us to collaborate—to interrelate—more fully. It gives us the capacity to strike different notes, hold different rhythms, make different sounds that can hold and gel together to create something bigger and richer.
David: What you do, I can’t do—you sing in a different key to me. And what I do, you can’t do. We’re not trying to copy each other or follow somebody else’s procedure.
David: Yes, and so, together, we are louder—we can make something more. Something much louder.
).