“not ur babygrl,” explores the gender dysphoria I experienced while being misgendered by a beloved. The flutist plays dueling roles throughout the piece, expressing both the chaotic and sputtering world of dysphoria and the consolations of the beloved. This sputtering world gets louder and more insistent as the flutist gradually finds speech, expressed in fragments until finally declaring, “I’m not your babygirl.” 

When I’m misgendered, it understandably brings up feelings of dysphoria, and this, as you might imagine, is only exacerbated, made grittier, made more suffocating when I’m misgendered by a beloved. The piece explores this dysphoria, the way it pokes into all the tender places in me, casting me out of my body, sputtering protests against the beloved’s consolations until finally speaking.

Premiered by Ariel Flach on flute & Silen Wellington on electronics in Grusin Concert Hall, March 26, 2021.

not ur babygrl

Written for and performed by Alice Sprinkle, David Leech, and Sarah Broadwell, The Pine Trio. Inspired by Alice in Wonderland, so you'll hear falling into wonderland, chatting with the Cheshire cat, entering a mad tea party, some Queen of Hearts raucous (truly she's a reversed Queen), and falling back into the dream.

For me, Alice in Wonderland is a Rite of Passage story. Alice is becoming less child and more adult. Her body is changing, she wants to go somewhere but doesn't know where, and she's trying to figure out the rules of Wonderland but they mostly seem absurd and nonsensical. I think where I differ from Lewis Carroll, is that the childhood innocence doesn't truly die. There is something we still can gain from finding this place of everything being new, from journeying to wonderland.

Page of Cups

Premiered by Abigail Bernat (trumpet), Benjamin Wiebe (saxophone), and Hsiao-Ling Lin (piano).

The Lovers (for Abby And Ben)

This was written in 2015 about a suicide attempt and was premiered and recorded by Ars Nova after winning their 2018 composition competition.

Much thanks to the performers in taking this vulnerable work into their hearts.

it is not for fear

Gathering Bone is an exploration of the Norse creation myth of Ymir. The myth takes place in a primordial world involving a land of fire, land of ice, and the yawning gap in-between. Ymir is the hermaphroditic giant (jötunn) who dwells between the worlds. Óðinn and his brothers - for some reason - must slay the giant Ymir for the Earth to be created. Ymir’s skull becomes the sky, their bones the hills, their blood the sea. Rather than the traditionally valorized heroes of Norse myth, Gathering Bone explores the multiplicity of Ymir, grieves their shattering, and asks what remains of the whole among disparate fragments.

Gathering Bone: 3. (interlude)

Gathering Bone: 4. laguz / astral waters

Gathering Bone: 5. uruz (interlude)

Gathering Bone: 6. shattering ymir

Gathering Bone: 7.

Gathering Bone: 8. Your Song In Our Bones

A performance of a choral work I wrote back in 2016. Performed as a collaboration between Acchord (Portland's a cappella group of trans, non-binary, and gender non-conforming singers) and Phoenix: Colorado's Transgender Community Choir.

Shapeshifter

A piece for mezzo-soprano, piano, and electronics. Performed by Tessa Romano (mezzo) and Terence Dennis (piano). Text and music are both by Silen Wellington.

Beholden

“Find Me at the Horizon” was inspired by José Esteban Muñoz, a queer theorist who passed away in 2013. I desperately wish he was still writing and offering new ways to see the world. In Muñoz’s book Cruising Utopia, Muñoz describes queerness as “the warm illumination of a horizon imbued with potentiality,” as “a longing that propels us onward,” as "that thing that lets us feel that this world is not enough, and indeed something is missing.” In this rendering, Muñoz also identifies queerness' gift as a force that allows us to re-imagine, re-formulate, re-dream, a force that allows us to re-vision this endless horizon, a horizon that could be described as utopia, but one that feels at times fleeting and ephemeral, because we collect it in fragments of transitory feelings and glimpses of the future. While I originally wrote the piece with queerness in mind, Muñoz’s invitation to imagine impossible futures is one that seems abundantly relevant now. 

For me, we live at a time of an old world collapsing and a new world being created. In this piece, I wanted to speak to the new world, I wanted the text and music to invite a listener to imagine what a better world could feel like. It is not, by any means, a practical exercise, but instead one that exists ephemerally, in fragments.

This recording comes from the premier performance by the Octagon Ensemble in Invercargill, Aotearoa New Zealand.

Find Me At The Horizon

Silen Wellington (they/them/theirs) is a sculptor of sound, artist of people, mercurial name collector, genderqueer shapeshifter, and lover, among other things.

Silen Wellington

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