Author: Hana Seifelnasr
Image courtesy: Getty Images
Autonomy is a state of being that I have always sought out and valued, even more so when mental illness and disability took it away. Throughout my least autonomous days, I resolved to foster a sense of control by engaging with my musical practice.
What Autonomy Means to Me
Growing up as an agnostic and generally non-conforming AFAB (assigned female at birth) person in a Muslim Egyptian household meant that autonomy was something I spent the majority of my childhood and adolescence pining for. I dreamt of the day that I would have the freedom to make decisions independently, without requesting permission from surrounding authority figures like parents, grandparents, and elders. The day came when I had the privilege to move to England to complete my undergraduate studies. I spent several years living with what felt like a freeing and fulfilling sense of autonomy until, in 2022, severe mental illness and disability took it away from me again. Though I didn’t know it at the time, music became one of the only things that I could still access to exercise my sense of autonomy, even when it felt like my every action was dictated by something I could not control.
Cultivating Independence Through Music
Music has long been a tool I use to express myself and cultivate a sense of freedom. When I’m singing, it almost feels like everything else stops, fades, and waits for me to be finished. When I am singing, there is a moment, an apex, in which no other responsibilities exist other than the completion of the song. It is during this moment that I feel free. Over the years, I have learned to grow and evolve the creation of the moment so that it is in alignment with my ever-growing interests and musical practices. Throughout my school years, most of my singing and music-making took place on stage or in a friend’s basement during band practice. Nowadays, most of my engagement with music and my voice happens in the comfort of my own home, often with my laptop and my simple audio interface and condenser microphone setup.
In 2019, after my Bachelor’s graduation and before COVID and the consequential collapse of my mental and physical health, I enjoyed a period of unabashed autonomy. I performed at festivals, wrote, produced, and released new music and felt the most free I had ever felt. This was my last summer in England. The days until my student visa expired were numbered, and I was encumbered with the weight of being, what felt like, forcibly removed from a country and returned to my own.
Shortly after I moved back into my family home in Cairo, Egypt, the pandemic hit, and I, having what were then undiagnosed cases of Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder and Borderline Personality Disorder, resorted to isolating myself completely and not leaving the house for anything nonessential. To most, this will sound like what we all did when COVID hit. My isolation, however, was not an appropriate response to my surroundings, it was compulsive. I succumbed to my OCD, and with that, my autonomy was slashed. I went from living on my own in a different country to living in my family home and due to my mental illness, excessively sequestering myself to my bedroom. Throughout 2020, though I did not release any music, I still sought solace in musical exploration. I played my bass guitar every day, alongside a variety of other daily habits, and experimented with looping, making little videos that I posted on Instagram. As simple as it sounds, having this daily practice allowed me to cultivate a sense of control over my day during a time when everything felt out of place and uncontrollable.
In 2021, after a year of proudly and painfully processing and participating in Egypt’s #metoo movement, I released my first track since 2019. Titled 9/10 and released during April, sexual harassment awareness month, it was my offering to anyone and everyone who was struggling with their trauma and wondering whether it was possible to heal from the hurt. 9/10 was for the nine out of 10 Egyptian women who are victims of sexual harassment, for all women and for all queer, gender non-conforming, and trans survivors, including myself. In a way, this track was a way for me to reclaim my independence and my freedom from the trauma I have endured. I cannot say that I am fully free from my past, though I can promise myself that I am practising and exercising my freedom like a muscle. Releasing 9/10 was the first step in what became a long string of practised autonomous acts.
Losing my Autonomy: The Impact
Living through a pandemic with severe Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, in an apartment with parents, a sibling and a ninety-two-year-old cancer patient, is not an easy task. Over months of isolation, pandemic living and the deterioration of my grandmother’s health, my own mental health followed. I developed a life-altering case of OCD which left me incapable of completing basic daily tasks like making coffee, cooking, walking, talking and even breathing. Some things I could do, along with a long list of compulsions, and some things were impossible, until I found myself at the mercy of my mental illness. My mother, a woman who learned about my illness along with me and supported my recovery even when she didn’t know what it meant, did for me the things I could not do for myself.
I found myself helpless, like a child. I was a person possessed by a cause so strong that all I could do was be an agent to it. I felt alone, I felt misunderstood, I felt like I had no control, and I spent my days desperately trying to gain it. Most importantly, my actions were not my own. My illness was moving through me with a disturbing level of comfort, as if it knew the ropes and knew exactly what to do to get me to oblige. I couldn’t release myself from its clutches. I had no control. More accurately, it was incredibly difficult to regain control. Simultaneously, the continuation of my long COVID, which I developed after catching the virus in December of 2020, left me with a consistent low-grade fever, trouble breathing, constant flu-like symptoms, and unrelenting nausea. I was miserable.
The symptoms of long-term COVID, of course, only helped corroborate my OCD’s fear mongering. “You’re sick, you’re infectious, you’re a virus, you are harmful, and you will infect and potentially kill those who come in contact with you”. I spent over two years, from December 2020 to November 2022, walking around my house wearing two masks, a slipper that was specifically designated for spaces outside my bedroom so as not to trace my germs, and armed with a litre of alcohol spray that I would use to sanitise everything from myself to my family, the floor, door knobs, money, the couch, chairs, and even the air that I was exhaling through my two masks.
Throughout seemingly endless months of living through mental illness and long-term COVID, I practised my independence through music and found ways to maintain and exercise my autonomy in small ways. Even when my days were mainly filled with compulsions, medications, and desperate attempts at control, I developed a system to consciously bring an autonomous experience into my life on a monthly basis.
2 Years of Trauma, 2 Years of Tracks
One of the most difficult things I lived through during the past few years was not even my own illness and the decline of my health, but rather the slow and simultaneously swift deterioration of my grandmother’s health. My grandmother, a woman who I had lived with since birth, and was a second mother to me, someone who I felt intrinsically linked to, like our life forces and souls were connected. A strange phenomenon occurred: my life force followed hers as her illness got stronger. The sicker she became, the sicker I became. Watching her leave me slowly everyday was one of the most painful things I’ve ever experienced. On the other hand, taking care of her in every way possible through her painfully drawn-out departure will always be one of the most fulfilling things I’ve ever done. Unfortunately, my own illnesses led me to the point where I could no longer care for her because I believed that any physical contact or proximity would cause her death.
The one thing that I held on to throughout these painful years, when it felt like everything was falling apart, including my relationships - and that was a storm of its own due to my aforementioned Borderline Personality Disorder - was my musical outlet.
After the April 2021 release of my track 9/10, I resolved to create a challenge for myself, whereby I would release a track on the twenty-eighth of each month for as long as I felt capable. I found myself releasing every month until the year hit 2022, and I continued the challenge even through 2022, which was set to be the most difficult year of my life thus far. On the second of January, I lost my cat. I made a track called Put Down, in which I unleashed my emotions regarding the loss. In February, I was diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder and processed through a track titled Jagged. In March, my grandmother was officially diagnosed with late-stage colon cancer. I made a track titled Wogood وجود, which is the Arabic word for presence, in which I crooned about the impact of my grandmother’s presence in my life. In April, as I continued to process her diagnosis and what it meant, I made a track titled Tashabok تشابك, which is the Arabic word for intertwinement, so as to represent the connectedness of my grandmother’s and my soul.
The pattern continued, and as my life spiralled out of control, I somehow continued practising my autonomy by making music about it. In July, when I was officially diagnosed with Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, I made the track Wiswas وسواس, which refers to the Arabic name of the disorder. The pattern continued even throughout my grandmother’s passing in January of 2023, until I resolved to complete the challenge with my two-year anniversary track All That They Are, which, released in April 2023, was an ode to myself and all that I am and have accomplished over the past couple of years.
Though it may seem like a triumphant feat of strength, determination, and perseverance that led me to complete this two-year challenge, it was actually desperation that kept me going. Every month, as things slipped further and further out of my control, I only had one thing left. One thing that was accessible to me no matter how much my illness spiralled and no matter how much I locked myself in my room and forbade myself from interacting with the world around me, I could still, with some discipline, of course, open Ableton and make a sound. My illnesses meant that I wasn’t talking to many people about what I was going through, so I spoke through the music. I yelled and screamed and cried and lamented and pitied myself, and built myself up through the music.
The Healing Properties of Sound
The study of sound healing has shown us that there are healing properties that are ingrained in sound, both generated and naturally occurring around us. For example, the solfeggio frequencies, which are based on the karmic chakras, have been used across a wide range of spiritual and sacred musical practices for thousands of years. These frequencies, which have been extensively studied, are said to benefit different parts of the body and mind, and can be sought out by listeners based on their needs.
I believe that the sounds that I was instinctively creating every month were contributing to my healing and allowing me to be soothed by both the release I gained from creating and the frequencies I encountered throughout the process. I can’t say where I would be without the musical and artistic outlets that kept me processing when I had no idea how to. If not for my musical practice, I certainly would not have been able to express my trauma or begin my continuous journey of healing. Creative outlets are a privilege that everyone should be afforded, as they allow us to turn pain into purpose, and sometimes pleasure, and synthesise life in a way that makes sense to us.
What Next?
After two years of releasing music, a year and a half of therapy, completing a DBT course, and nearly a year of medication, the stability of which was abysmal for the first six months, I can finally say that I am living for myself. I have been afforded the privilege of therapy and medication, which are not and should be available to everyone. I, of course, still struggle with my illnesses on a daily basis, and I am likely to for the rest of my life. What I know now is that I can continue learning to manage them and live an autonomous, free and fulfilling life in spite of them.
I am currently working on a collaborative musical project and have set myself a new monthly multi-media challenge that will allow me to continue stretching and exercising my autonomy as I carry on on my journey of healing and self-actualisation.
You can check out my website or follow me on Instagram to keep up with my multidisciplinary creations and share in any future discussions regarding illness, creativity and autonomy.