#Even spotify curated playlists for folk have her in it and it's like wow great

[thekeytotheend]

Wish I could look up folk playlists on spotify without 800 taylor swift fan playlists showing up :/

[fromtheeleventh-blog]

An Interview and Playlist with Mallory Walker!

I first met Mallory when she was an orientation aide for my freshman dorm at William & Mary. She’ll be starting graduate school in Boston very soon after a year working, researching, and putting exhibits together at William & Mary’s Swem library. Below is my interview with Mallory, a link to a paper that she recommends, and her awesome playlist! 

PLAYLIST

Mallory’s Spotify

Name: Mallory Walker (some people call me melon, which is cool too)

How are you involved in your music community?

I don’t know how much I even have a music community! The internet might be my music community. Does that count? I get music recommendations from my friends when they tweet about a song or post a playlist on their Instagram stories. I tried and failed to be a part of musical circles in college.

What do you love about your music community?

I think what’s cool about sharing music this way is the way it’s free and lacks a lot of judgement that has kept me away from other music communities. It’s like Spotify’s recommendation algorithms but from people whose music taste you appreciate and trust.

How would you improve your music community?

Well - this isn’t about my community but music communities in general. But so many spaces are dominated by a very specific subculture. I’ve talked to you about this before, I think, at a house show. It’s very male, very white, very cis and very straight. And with this group, there’s a level of elitism in the whole thing - people who want to be gatekeepers of their music scene. It can be a hard space to enter into, which is why I never did during college.

What is your first artistic memory?

I have a really vivid memory of sneaking under my dining room table with some markers and coloring the shit out of the legs of the table. It was pretty abstract and my mom flipped but I remembering feeling pretty punk rock over the whole ordeal.

How has your sense of place, your home, etc. impacted the way you think about the arts, music, or justice work?

I think so much of my sense of place has made me lazy about the way I think about all three of these things. At William & Mary, being black and vaguely ‘alternative’ made me feel like I didn’t need to do much work in terms of art, music or activism. As long as I wasn’t listening to Taylor Swift and enjoyed movies filmed in black and white, I felt like I was doing enough. My existence - at a PWI, in a sorority,etc - felt like a form of resistance. Which now that I’ve got one foot in the ‘real world’ I know now is just simply not enough - I’m too privileged to say that just my existence is a form of resistance. I have the ability to do more - and get away with doing more. Same goes for music and art - there’s a lot more than what’s just outside the mainstream.

How have your unique experiences shaped your musical or artistic identity?

I grew up on Michael Jackson and Queen. My dad went to James Brown concert (by himself I should add) when he was in middle school. My mom saw Fleetwood Mac in their prime. I think more than anything else my parents shaped a lot of my musical identity.

What are your Summer 2018 plans?

FYI I’m defining my summer as the month I have between my current job and starting school again. But I have no idea - I’ll between cities, jobs, apartments, etc. Maybe I’ll live in my car and drive up and down the coast? Maybe I’ll coach surf through cities on my way up to the Northeast? Who freakin’ knows but it will be the first time I am without definitive plans for perhaps years so I am EXCITED.

I’m a faithful watcher of your instagram stories and have often admired your tinctures and other creations. Can you tell me more about what inspired you to start get into witchcraft? Particularly being a kitchen witch and maybe what that means to you?

Let me start by saying I was a really weird kid. I often pretended to live in fantasy worlds and would check out every magic related book out from my local library. I really truly wanted more than anything to possess some kind of magical power. At some point in college, I felt called to return to that belief in the magical and supernatural. I think what people don’t realize is that we all have the power to kind of ‘lean in’ to our more magical selves. I’m a big believer in manifesting one’s own will. Before I had heard back from the schools I was applying to for my master’s, I spent a lot of time talking about ‘when I moved to Boston’ and ‘once I’m a student at Simmons’. It wasn’t long before I got my acceptance letter from Simmons. That’s magic - a combination of my own will, magical thinking, and hard work - no crystals or spells needed.

More recently, I think my interest in magic has led to a fascination with natural medicine. And that’s where my thinking of myself as a kitchen witch comes in. People often fall victim to the trope that being a witch has to be a lot of ceremony and ritual. And though that’s true, there’s a lot of magic a person can do every day. Food is a really easy way to do that. Things like basil or rosemary and horseradish taste great but they also have both magical and medicinal properties.

Can you talk a little bit about your work with Swem Library and in particular your exhibits, relationship or thoughts on display and representation? What have you learned and how do you want to move forward in library studies or what would you like to see happen in the future?

So, because my job is literally a fellowship designed to attract marginalized folks (specifically racial minorities) to the library field, I think my entire experience has been colored by this. My first project I was assigned was the curation of an exhibit that focused on the experience of the Black community at William & Mary. And for most of the time I worked on this, I questioned whether or not I was allowing myself to become a token. I’m the only person of color in my department, and one of few people of color working for William & Mary Libraries. Was I asked to curate this exhibit solely because I’m Black? But also, would it be right for a white person or a non-black person of color to curate this exhibit? I don’t think this is an issue I deal with alone, of course. A recent study found that 71% of librarians are white and 87% of exempt senior staff  are white (I’m putting the link to this study below). This is a huge problem, for so many reasons. Think about public libraries; do their staff reflect the communities they’re serving? Probably not because libraries are one of the only places of learning not restricted by a ‘paywall’.

A lot of what I think about for my career, especially now as I’m preparing for grad school, is how to I remain visible, outspoken, and effective without falling into this trap where the marginalized do all the work. I was at a conference last year that was surprisingly male dominated and even more dominated by middle-aged white folks. All the female-identifying people of color flocked to each other and one of them said to me along the lines of ‘if they’re going to make you a token, use it to your advantage’. I think that is going to define a lot of my career.

LINK TO STUDY

How are you feeling about your big Boston move? Oh and also CONGRATULATIONS ON GRAD SCHOOL!!

Ahh thank you!!! I think I have finally come to terms with my move. I hate to say it but I think I’ve gotten used to living in Virginia and am actually sad to leave the south (words I NEVER thought I would say). But, I am a nerd and cannot wait to start going to classes again. And I love the Northeast and moving to Boston is one step closer to fulfilling my dream of being a barefooted farmer in Vermont.

How have the different places you’ve lived in or occupied shaped you, the way you approach music, the arts, the ways you find to be creative, your world outlook, etc.?

As far as music - living in Virginia has made me come to respect folk music and bluegrass. Which is...weird but wow do I love some banjo solos.

I also think I have always had equals parts of a creative and analytical mind. It’s something I struggle as far as identity because those two ways of thinking feel as though they are constantly at war with each other. But the work I do in the archive - sifting through old papers, curating exhibits, and essentially organizing history - has made both aspects of myself feel at home.

My job and career align too with my magical self. I’m really interested in ancestor worship (partially because it’s common in hoodoo) and I do think there is something to be said about working on collections from people long gone. It is its own kind of ancestor worship. You’re honoring the past, acknowledging that it must be remembered - the good and the bad. I think a lot about one particularly item: “List of slaves owned by the College, circa 1780”. I got to hold that piece of paper in my hand - it was electrifying.