Magana Interview

[Transcript edited for clarity]

Absent Sounds: We're super excited, Jeni, to talk to you, especially before your album comes out and to get to know you personally. It's cool seeing your evolution as an artist. So, give us an introduction to who you are, take us back to when you were selling fruits with your parents.

Magana: I think, I think of myself as like an experimental musician in that I grew up learning about music through making it, instead of listening to it. My first instrument was, way back when, I was playing piano. I was learning how to play piano at a church nearby my family's fruit stand. They paid them in fruit to teach me. I picked up clarinet when I was in elementary school because that's what, my sister had [a clarinet], so I was like, sure, that's fine, that'll work. And, then I went to middle school and started playing upright bass because they were like, well, we need that. I was like; whatever it takes to get the sound to come out is the thing that I'll use. And, then I started singing, because that's something you can take with you anywhere. And I feel like my whole ethos as a musician is basically like, whatever tools you have, gets the expression out.And it's like a constant experiment. So I've been sort of evolving from there. Nothing's going to stay the same probably from record to record.

Absent Sounds: Do you have a favorite fruit? What fruit reminds you of your parents?

Magana: I love that question. I love fruit. I live in California. I'm from California. My favorite fruit (and I think it is also the one that reminds me of my family) is a cantaloupe. I know that's weird. But if you had a good cantaloupe it's incredible. We used to eat that for breakfast. Freshly picked, just open it up and scoop it out.

Absent Sounds: It feels like every time we get our fruits imported, it's from California and I think about the journey that it had to take to get here.We're probably (definitely) not getting it as fresh as you guys but it's something.

Magana: I'm pretty spoiled. I've lived on the East Coast for like 13 years and I was so snobby and I realize that now but I didn't know it was so hard everywhere else.

Absent Sounds: I know. We're suffering out here. Back to another question I had specifically on the album title, Teeth, do you have all your teeth

Magana: I recently got my wisdom teeth removed last year. I named the album teeth because of a line in one of the songs: Truth was hiding behind all of your teeth/ smiling back at me. But then I had so many like dental problems. After that I had some crazy kind of tooth journey. And so now everyone's like is it because you went to the dentist a million times and had an emergency root canal and all these crazy things. But yeah, I talk about teeth a lot. I have a really intense tooth care routine now.

Absent Sounds: Tell us about it. Can you describe it?

Magana: It used to be like a 20 to 30 minute every time but it's like a saltwater rent situation. I brush my gums with a special brush, and I do my tongue scraping, and then I have a regular toothbrush, and then I have floss, water pick, and metal pick, it can add up, but I like my teeth, and want to keep them.

Absent Sounds: When you were a kid, did you have dental problems, or was, it always clean cut?

Magana: I always had straight normal teeth, but I had cavities all the time. And they would come up that way and the dentist would be like, oh, well, you shouldn't let her fall asleep with her bottle. My mom would be like; she's not using a bottle, like she's breastfeeding. And they'd be like, nope, she's clearly not because you're doing something wrong. I've always had bad teeth. Which is why when, this kind of stuff happened I was like, I need to fix something. I need to stop eating sugar or something. I think it actually is about genetics when you get cavities I think so too, based on the fact that I was a baby when I started getting them. I'm not a dentist or a doctor, but, I get that feeling.

Absent Sounds: I have a friend who's a dentist and yesterday we were talking about what, careers or majors you would have chosen if you didn't go down that route. She probably would have done, bio-chem, maybe? If you didn't see yourself on this path where do you think life would have taken you, or you would have done instead?

Magana: It's impossible to know, obviously, but, I think I would have probably ended up on the English major type train, because I am currently attempting to write a novel. It's harder than it seemed when I started, but, I think I've always loved writing, and that's what got me into songwriting, it's an extension of poetry and it's something I'm really wanting to pursue maybe not in a job way, but in a soul fulfillment way

Absent Sounds: What does pursuing it look like for you? Is it every day you're working on it?

Magana: I wish, I have so many things I want to do, which is a cool problem to have. Just before this, I was working on; I guess you could call it like a baby symphony. I read a book and was like, wow, I'm really inspired and want to write the soundtrack to it. And I just did that.

Absent Sounds: What's the longest you'll stay on one brain itch?

Magana: This album is a good example. Within the day I'll switch back and forth or the next day, pick up a different instrument or work on a different song, Whatever project I'm on, if I don't finish in the next couple years, I'll keep writing it for the rest of my life, like, that's just kind of a slow burn.

Absent Sounds: It does kind of keep you company throughout your entire life, which I do like. There's always something to do. Whenever you do end up writing this, do let us know and then we will have you back to do a nice little book conversation, a book club, book.

Magana: That is so nice and it's funny because I haven't been a beginner at a thing in a really long time in such a public way. No one has read it. It's awful right now. But it's a vulnerable thing to do. Releasing music is vulnerable too, but I'm just so used to it that I don't think about it. But, with this I'm like, oh my God, don't say that, you don't know what it's like! But it's nice to get the encouragement.

Absent Sounds: That resonates with me, just the idea of being a beginner at something and feeling so completely- I don't know what the word would be, but I just started the guitar. We played the guitar in elementary school. I never forgot certain chords, but I never stuck with it, and struggling with it feels hard. It brings you back down to think like, wow; this is what it feels like to actually learn something from the beginning. Cause I don't really remember learning something that I know now.

Magana: Totally. And I mean with piano, but there's, I tried to teach someone something the other day and I was like, I don't know. I just learned it when I was a kid and I just know this now, this is just like a thing that is in my brain forever. And, luckily when I was a kid everything was new so it just kind of all got absorbed at the same time But now as an adult, there's so many things that I know already. I can cook eggs, you know. I don't know how to write a novel it turns out.

Absent Sounds: When you're writing, I'm so curious So what's been something that you've had to relearn as you work on your novel or that you're realizing that you don't know?

Magana: So many things. I haven't written anything long form in, I mean, maybe ever, but years at least. Outlines are so much more important. I made an outline, but it's really important. The long form thing is really getting me because I am thinking- "this is such a great, interesting paragraph, you know?" And then I'm like, oh, I said that four pages ago, didn't I?

Absent Sounds: [Laughs] Oh my gosh.

Magana: I think it's good to be bad at something. I'm learning and I'm bad at it.

Absent Sounds: We stick to poetry. I become afraid all the poems will end up sounding the same because I'm the same person, but this is who I am. So I'm always going to write the same sad poems or I'm always going to like stick around the same themes. And yeah, so I guess it's interesting from a, like a thinking of it from a right musician's perspective, cause it doesn't really sound like you've stayed the same over those years.

Magana: That's a funny thought because I feel like I do that like I explore the same themes over and over but my perspective on them changes. One of the songs on Teeth is About something that happened to me in high school that I have written about a million times But just never quite figured it out how to say So that makes sense, I do that. This is how I feel, and I'm still processing this, so I'm gonna get it out. Hopefully the good stuff will stick out branching off that.

Absent Sounds: The second thing it made me think of was another question we had - I like to support people, rather than being at the forefront of work. As someone who has toured with other notable artists do you feel your ambition or your sense of self, is overshadowed? Have you had to challenge that ambition? Is that a thing for you?

Magana: Yes, I think it's a thing for everyone. Instead of wanting to be the best, I'm like, who am I? Am I even good enough? What am I doing? I'm very imposter syndrome heavy. And what I've been working on very recently, which has, I think helped, I think since during making this record I'm trying to write a book. I don't know if it's gonna be any good and that's the same thing with the music that I've been making. I don't know that I ever want to be like "oh I'm the artist capital A Artist but I just want to make some stuff. Then I'll worry about how it is coming across and how I'm gonna release it into the world and stuff like that.

Absent Sounds: It reminds me of Ocean Vong. I was listening to this interview that he did. He's a Vietnamese-American poet he was talking about how he doesn't presume that he will always be a writer just because he wrote a book or a collection of poems.

[Quote: I don't assume that because I've written three books, I'll keep going until I die. What I can assume is that I can keep teaching, until my brain doesn't work anymore. I can still be of use to, young thinkers scholars and writers, for the two or three years I work with them.]

He sees himself more as a teacher. And I thought it was interesting because of the way that his role. How he doesn't assume that he's going to be able to keep producing something or being able to necessarily create something in that. Or fit in that role for the rest of his life.

Magana: Yeah, exactly. I think saying, "I'm a writer, I am an artist," it's always the, I am this thing. You don't know if that necessarily will be a role that is necessarily tied to. That's exactly, how I feel. And I met someone the other day at a show, and I was like, oh, are you a musician too? Cause she was talking about music and she was like, no, I'm a blank and I just play music. I was like, that counts. It's all about how you perceive yourself or how other people perceive you. And that's not really something I'm interested in exploring too much because it's a different game.

Absent Sounds: It is. It's kind of a scary game. It can affect your whole self-perception, your whole self-image. And that thought about self-perception or being perceived by people, was something I really felt heavily during the pandemic, which I think reflects on.

Magana: Oh man, it was such a weird time. The pandemic is not great and there are many negative aspects to being so alone and isolated and obviously the health crisis. That being said, I found an opportunity to do some deep diving on my self-perception without the distraction of an audience

Magana: Making this album was me learning another instrument. I borrowed my husband's polyphonic synth and I just kind of locked myself up and made stuff and then didn't show anyone for a really long time. He would come in every once in a while to my little office, open the door, and I wouldn't notice so he has video after video of me really self-focused. That gave me a jumping point to understanding my self-perception and what I thought about myself and the world.

Absent Sounds: Even the fact that you were learning a new instrument at that time; do you feel that your hand is drawn towards this polyvinyl synth? Do you feel like you're drawn to it now?

Magana: Yeah, I do. My view on instruments is whatever it takes to get the job done. I play bass as a job so I love that feeling but for the things that I was trying to get across at the time, it was easier for me, maybe because piano is my first instrument, to visualize how to make a sound. And yeah, it just being new was, there was a whole world for me to explore. I was like, I don't know what happens if I do this. Oh my God, that's weird. I've gotten pretty proficient in synth but there are sounds on that record that I have no idea how I made that. It was just me really exploring other worlds, you know.

Absent Sounds: The inability to replicate or create the sound in your head, can be frustrating. when you were playing around, how long do you think that it took you before you really got to a place where you said, I can make the sound that's in my mind and it sounds the way that I want it to sound, or I can replicate that noise?

Magana: It took a while because I didn't have any sounds in my head necessarily when I was starting. I was like, what is this? What is that? And so I spent a lot of time just kind of getting in tune with what the instrument could do. And then I started saving a couple of presets and being like, oh, that's a sound that could be cool for a different thing. That whole year of 2020, I didn't know what I was doing and I didn't have a goal necessarily. I was just kind of like blindly wandering . But after that when I started helping other people on their records, I was able to be like, oh, I know I've done this before and kind of have callback. It was like learning a language from scratch.

Absent Sounds: So outside of instruments, what was the last thing you've been learning?

Magana: I've been working on cooking and understanding not just from a recipe but what like basic ingredients I want to go into my meals because the whole teeth thing I'm trying to be healthier.

Absent Sounds: For track number nine which is Bones, I just thought it was like something so foundational, you know, to our existence, but we don't think about them as often as we should. For myself, I feel uncomfortable sometimes in my own skin that I notice it more than my surroundings. Do you feel comfortable in your own skin right now?

Magana: At this moment, yes, but it's something I've been working with and on, you know, the entirety of my life, but especially recently, it's a part of the 'getting to know myself,' I think.

Absent Sounds: If you go back on the same theme within my body, what are things that feel foundational to your body or feel like "this is me?"

Magana: Because I play music, something important to me are my fingers. When I'm feeling really out of myself, I will look at my hands. They're doing stuff for the most part. And I've been working on balance lately. Noticing all of my feet, hands and feet.

Absent Sounds: Given, the extremities, rit eminds me of the next track "I Feel like Ice," cold, detachment, freezer burn, do you find you're a detached or cold person?

Magana: I think I have a tendency to become overwhelmed and my response is disassociation or detachment. That track specifically, I was taking inspiration from my husband's grandma who we were visiting in the nursing home watching her leave her body. And, that kind of detachment. It's her voice in there too, that I'm singing over.

Absent Sounds: That's so sweet. I just want to pause on that and think. To sit with that kind of emulates the idea of love. You said it was your husband's grandmother.

Magana: Mm-hmm .

Absent Sounds: Our question was, if you could say three things you love about your husband.

Magana: Okay. First thing is that he is always honest, like always is wild. It took me a while to get used to, but he's so open. He's really talented. He mixed and did drums on the record. Our skills complement each other well. And that kind of stuff, even though I know its work related. My life-work really does matter to me in that way. And it's important that the person I'm with does too, like values that as well. And he loves food just as much as I do, and it's great.

Absent Sounds: Where's the last place you guys, ate out or tried?

Magana: Just got back from tour. Gone over a month and we haven't eaten out yet, but the first thing we're gonna do is get breakfast tacos because I love tacos and he loves breakfast that's a win in my books. I'm very excited.

Absent Sounds: I'm excited for you. What kind of, what do you get in your breakfast tacos?

Magana: Egg and bean. I'm a vegetarian, so egg, bean, cheese. There's a potato one. Mostly as long as it has cheese- I'm fine.

Absent Sounds: When you said potato I imagined the potato as the taco itself

Magana: That's creative I like that. Your million dollar idea

Absent Sounds: I love gardens and I love just sitting outside in nature and sometimes in the winter seasons, gardens aren't as enjoyable. They can be kind of dead. But as we're getting into the season of renewal and growth, can you tell us, what's being renewed in your life or what's growing like a garden?

Magana: Wow, that's beautiful. Something being renewed for me is, I guess you could call it self-care, even though that's kind of a buzz term now, but it's self-care in, just like in caring about me. Literally putting out this record is part of that because I've had it on the back burner for a while, while I did stuff for other people. I want to focus on self-perception, self-identity, self-care. Not trying to be selfish, but just learning about me as a human and my relationship to myself.

Absent Sounds: That makes me think of this, powerful video. I don't think the person meant to make it feel powerful, but you know, they said, "I am Paola," and then she said I am this and this

Magana: So, if you were to say I am Jeni, how would you define yourself? It's hard because I don't want to make you fit yourself in the box, you know, but I just thought it was a nice thing. A good experiment

Magana: I think I'm still on this journey, but I am Jeni. Creative.

Absent Sounds: That's a great start.

Magana: I am exploring my creativity.

Absent Sounds: Yeah, and it keeps going your whole life, creativity.

Magana: Yeah. I hope so.

Absent Sounds: It kind of reminds me of Aaron Weiss, talking about how the art of taking care of nature is art, like what my sister said about the woman's art.

Magana: It's the, performance art of cleaning up the river. Cleaning up the Rio Grande as a work of art, I thought, that's a decent work of art, Clean up the Rio Grande. we could come together, wish each other peace and that would be our performance art. Not a canvas, but by taking care of it, it's an artistic or creative act or practice or something. And I love the way he was describing it.

Magana: I think that's awesome. And I've always thought, well, because I'm focusing more on cooking and stuff recently, like that is also a creative pursuit, but I love the implications of taking care of your world around you as a creative pursuit.

Absent Sounds: Just like taking care of your paintbrushes, which we do not do. I see the one that's just sitting right there that has not been washed.

Magana: Yeah, don't worry either, don't worry. Perfectionism is not a creative pursuit, so don't worry

Absent Sounds: Even the idea of being a creator. That word defines a certain group but not everybody, everybody is doing something creative, but even coding is creative because that's like its own form.

Magana: Yeah. I think, when I said I am creative, I did have a little bit of like a, "who am I?" But it was like, no, literally everybody is. And I think because we've attached some kind of weird, impression to that word, it feels like it's reserved only for [creatives], you know, but it's not. People come up with creative ideas in accounting offices all the time,

Absent Sounds: Doing our track by track, we wanted to ask about, I cannot breathe. And I couldn't think of any question for this, but I just want to hear your thoughts: where does it come from?

Magana: That was one of my first forays into using the synth so it's full exploration. I feel like it sounds like that. There's not a structure necessarily but it's some kind of sonic landscape

Magana: It started with the synth part and then I was like "oh I just have these words and they've just come to me and I think that they'll fit" and I was kind of thinking of you know like in rom coms like, I think is that movie Say Anything maybe with John Cusack's holding hands with the guy? I was thinking about that, I don't know why. And yeah, it was my first exploration, and the sounds, the street sounds you hear are just field recordings that we had made in Germany.

Magana: That song was inspired because I was on the phone with my best friend they were talking about a party they went to, and it sounded horrifying to me. I was like, why would you do that? And we hung up, and I realized my social anxiety had far reaching implications, that was the inspiration.

Absent Sounds: Have you been fighting back against it? Personally, I have not fought back.

Magana: I've been working on it. I don't want to work on not being afraid because I think that is kind of a useless pursuit for me, but I think I want to work on being like, okay, I feel nervous about this and that's just like how I feel before a party or social event. It's becoming easier because once I name the thing, it gets less scary. Especially, you know, it's like the acceptance therapy of really just accepting that, yes, I'm probably gonna be afraid of this thing, but that's okay, and I'll let it come instead of, on top of that, feeling bad about the bad feeling that you're already feeling.

Absent Sounds: I'm still better with one on one hangs than, a party or something, but it's okay. It's gonna be okay.

Magana: You kind of remind me, of Anne of Green Gables, where she has her bike you almost are Anne personified

Magana: Even if you have brown hair, you remind me of her. What characters have you been drawn to in your life during your childhood and now, where do you see yourself reflected?

Magana: Gosh, I love that so much. Marianne is my mom. That song is about my relationship with my mom. Her and I are very similar, so things you're seeing in me in that song, you fully are seeing my mom, and that's really beautiful to me. I'm reading a lot of fantasy romance books, the thing I'm identifying with is the strong female lead who, is strong out of necessity, but realizes that's awesome and there's a badass quality to that. Not just desperation

Magana: I mean, these are a lot of fantasy books out there, but I just fell into the Sarah J Maas universe of romanticy. It's not for everyone but for me, I was like, this is incredible. I read the Court of Thorns and Roses series. And I was like, this book is amazing. Like this whole series. And, so I guess that, I mean, I don't know. I don't know if I'd recommend it because it's a very specific tastes, but for me, I'm in right now. I was gonna give a different recommendation, one of my favorite trilogies is The Broken Earth series.

Absent Sounds: Wait, the book? Is it based in China? Does it follow generations?

Magana: No, it's a made up world. The author is NK Jemison it's an incredible story.

Absent Sounds: I think what I was thinking; it's by Pearl Buck, The good earth. This is jumping out, but speaking of breaking, or broken, there the track Girl in Chains.

Magana: Ah, I thought you were going to say break free.

Absent Sounds: Speaking of Break Free! Tell us about that.

Magana: I mean, Break Free was another song that started out as an experiment of sound, which is a new way of writing for me. Before it was classic song structure, guitar, and then I kind of arrange it from there. But I liked how cyclical it was and so I just kind of was like imagining this idea of a person who can't get out of their cycles it keeps stacking harmonies like over and over again over the same thing because it's kind of just a person in their own being trapped in their own mind.

Absent Sounds: When you get into a cycle like that, what helps you get out of it?

Magana: The best thing for me is if I can find something that'll shock my brain. Perspective into some kind of paradigm shift. So, sometimes that is myself. Recently somebody sent me a text and gave me their perspective and I was like, oh right, all of this is in my head. That really helps when I can get it. For me it's like, wow, these are just thoughts. My thoughts aren't actually real.

Magana: It's fun because it was a different song before. It was an old song I'd written on guitar. I liked the chorus, but I was, it just didn't fit right with me. Like I was like, I don't know about this one. It's just not, there's something weird about it. When I was in Boston visiting my in laws I had a lot of time because we were there for Christmas. And it's really cold and I try not to leave the house too much. So I was kind of messing around with it and revamping it from this perspective of kind of a prayer I guess. To be like, what do you want from me? Does are you paying attention? It's like my version of 'Are you there God? It's me, Margaret.'

Absent Sounds: That brings me to the idea that your are almost like a spell rather than like meditation on the subject.

Magana: Yeah. I think of spells and prayers is very similar and meditations and like chants is very similar spaces in my mind.

Absent Sounds: Do you find that all your music occupies that same realm as well? Are they separate?

Magana: I think that's a new thing for me kind of leaning into the repetitive nature and chanting weaving something more meditative. I was more interested in the craft of songwriting in a traditional sense. everything's always skewed a little spooky I guess, because I had so much classical music influence, there used to be, random piano breaks and more scores, but this weaving of spells is probably only for this album.

Magana: Honestly, very recently, I have a niece, who's like six, and so she's just learned Tic Tac Toe two months ago. We played several games in a row and the first game I let her win, and the second one, I was like, no, I'm going to win and the third one I was like, oh, you just won. I just wasn't paying enough attention and a six year old beat me. When was the last time you played tic tac toe?

Absent Sounds: The last time I remember was in the summer, in Sudbury for a music festival, I was in the car with Nate and we were playing for a good hour.

Magana: [Weadee] I don't even remember the last time I played tic tac toe.

Magana: [next song]

Magana: Girl in Chains kind of makes me feel very eerie and like, I can't help but think of you being restrained in some way or think of confinement. Is that what it evokes for you? Does that meaning ring true and if so, how do you think that influences or touches upon your own life outside of music?

Magana: That does ring true. It's funny because that kind of story in the song came to me as a whole picture. It's one of those random times that wasn't really directly related to my life as far as I knew. I was just like, oh, this is a girl in a relationship, she just wants to be saved and can't figure out she's the one who has to do it. But once you start reading into it, you're like, well, that's me. That's everyone. There's like probably some aspect in everybody's life trapped in a chain of their own making and waiting for someone else to come and unlock it. I really started leaning into that after I sat with it. It's weird how that happens. I don't, know where it came from at first.