We were lucky to catch up with Maudlyn Monroe recently and have shared our conversation below.

Maudlyn, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today What’s been the most meaningful project you’ve worked on?

I have quit independent music several times. That’s probably not your standard opening for an interview! But I have. The reasons are complicated, related to health, but also undiagnosed neurodivergence, upregulated nervous system, and sensitivity to sensory overload. Let me be clear—the music industry is hard on anybody. It’s hard to break into, it’s hard on the body, it’s hard on the ego, and anybody who can make a go of it has my respect. But it’s also true that the industry is particularly not set up for certain disabilities to thrive in. Sometimes this is mechanical accessibility—artists showing up to gigs and not even having a ramp to get on stage. For me, it’s an invisible available physical resources thing—my body can do all the music, it simply can’t do the amount of socialization and grinding required (and when I break down, it just looks like a personality/character thing). So I quit, a few times, but not out of real conscious willingness—more out of depression and very real somatic/psychiatric break downs.

When I got an accurate diagnosis, and began to understand more about what triggers were causing what outcomes (not completely but a LOT more accurately), I was able to begin rethinking my relationship to music. I had stopped writing songs—why write new songs when you’re not singing or recording the old ones? when you’re not singing and no one is listening? So I have this old work to unbury before I can move on to new work. In the fall of 2022, I took medical leave from one of my jobs, in part because I landed really sweetly in the middle of a local non-profit music rehearsal and production studio going to a membership model. So I had this space in which to make music, with tech I never could have afforded on my own! I had tech support, and community. And I began the process of teaching myself more advanced audio engineering skills. So I could record a couple projects that had been lurking, waiting, dammed up.

This fall, I’m releasing the first of the projects, the self-produced self-engineered ~greedy pushy needy~, on which I also play most of the instruments. I have zero idea if this will actually lead to career success in music. But the project and the experience of finally getting it out—in its absolute best form!—is just beyond. Beyond words, and beyond all the wounds that kept it dammed up in the first place. It’s really astounding. I’m really proud of the work I put into it, and the outcome. No matter what happens, I’m confident in its quality. And I’m excited for how different the next projects sound!

What do you think is the goal or mission that drives your creative journey?

I am really dedicated to creating space for neurodivergence and Madness.

Sometimes I know Madness isn’t drastically different from whatever the alternative is. That this effort is just a deeply humanizing one. That *everyone* has complicated emotions that our broader culture, particularly the commercial market, has no interest in—or has an active interest in repressing. Then sometimes I observe myself and others and know, “oh, yeah, whatever I’m going through is heightened in a way that non-Mad people really do not understand.”

It can be hard for people to be around my struggles, which I understand, because I have to live with them, and it’s not easy for me! But I also see the great insights and creativity and compassion that stem from my Madness. And at the heart of it, it has really helped me create space for humanness, especially in my classrooms. I hope, too, in my art.

Is there mission driving your creative journey?

My current goal is to somehow marry an authentic practice that doesn’t bow to market trends and capitalist concerns with a successful venture into a capitalist market that doesn’t value music and musicians much. That also doesn’t value disability, the disabled, and the lessons disability can teach us. It’s messy and I haven’t figured it out yet, but I’m trying. I think I’m in the midst of asking what the role of my music is, socially—after quitting and coming back so many times, I know why I need music. I even know my music has value. But how does my music serve people, once they offer the generosity of their time and attention and, perhaps, care—these things that are really among the most precious resources we have? Of course, that’s not a question that’s always mine to answer. But I think when we, as artists and entrepeneurs, are establishing a platform to speak from, when we’re asking for peoples’ time and energy and attention, it’s important that we consider what our responsibilities are in doing that. I think the expectations around musicians, and music as entertainment, sometimes feel stifling to me for these reasons, because I know music does so much more. And my disability keeps me isolated from the very social realms of music.

For instance, I’m also dedicated to decolonization, and to advocating for decolonization. The practicality of how to make that happen as an artist and business within a colonial capitalist system (one I haven’t figured out how to do successfully yet) sometimes feels a bit beyond me. But the internal work of dismantling colonial systems within myself, reading and learning about, and advocating for decolonial histories, stories, and thinking—that’s very much central to who I am. Sending resources to Native and Indigenous people, and bringing attention to global issues—that’s very important to me. Seeing myself as a colonized subject is important to me—a colonized subject who has benefitted far more than most from such systems, who can’t completely avoid perpetuating those systems, but who was still indoctrinated and inculcated with justifications of colonial violence without my knowledge or will, and who must work to dismantle them inside and outside myself.

We happen to be in the midst of it all the time, even when bloody violence isn’t erupting. And when it does erupt, as we’re currently seeing again in Israel and Palestine, we are particularly called to interrupt the justifications. To call attention to the history that led to such violence, and how our state is actively supporting violence, in both words and material resources. How our social discourse continues to flatten the situation—we tend to narrow these painful, complicated, traumatic histories down to one or two incidents, to dehumanize some in the situation but not others. It leads to a simpler narrative, where blame can easily be assigned and then punishment can be warranted, using that frame. But that kind of discussion just ends up using real historical harms that have happened to justify more harm, while actively ignoring a lot of other harms. In the end, it leads to justifications of genocide. And unless we speak to that, speak against that, we just watch it happen, we just perpetuate it.

I can’t pretend that I’ve adequately baked this message into my art as yet, and I won’t pretend I am the right artist to speak to all of these situations, all the time. In the end, I’m a tiny tiny part of these equations. But I think this all has to show up somewhere, whether it’s directly in my art or in the messages I share on my platforms or in the practical ways I use proceeds from art to support justice in the world.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.maudlynmonroe.com
• Instagram: @maudlynmonroe
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/maudlynmonroe
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/slp-pieplow-563941262/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCN5IAr0Ymq_QI01UvOts-5A
• Other: https://maudlynmonroe.substack.com/

Image Credits
Taylor Sandal (first two images) slp (remaining images)