Susan Maughlin Wood

Composer for Media and Concert Music

Seattle, WA USA

…is an award-winning independently contracting composer and artist seeking opportunities in film, apps, games and other media. While engaged in writing concert repertoire and chamber arrangements she is a visionary of passion projects including festival darlings music video “Spectratta” (and Butoh dance-fusion “Spectrutoh”) as well as documusic film “Coastal Fire: A Common Diary.” She holds a Master of Music in Film Composition from the Pacific NW Film Scoring Program at SFI, and served as Past President on the Board of Directors of the Seattle Composers Alliance.

"Parallel Plaid" gets an origin story

April 16, 2016  /  Susan MaughlinWood

The sonatina I've been working on has been given a title. I hate to explain a joke, but in this case, even though it's not exactly a laughing matter, I do want to present some of the clever or punny bits that went into creating this title.

1. "Parallel Plaid" is a riff on parallel play. I first encountered this term when my kids were babies and I was reading everything to do with parenting. Parallel play is something that toddlers do as a way of interacting without really interacting. They play next to each other, each involved in their own thing. A similar concept is "laughing at..." vs. "laughing with..." someone, although parallel play is by no means a malicious thing and indeed facilitates social interaction where otherwise there might be none.

2. "Plaid" doesn't sound like "play" even though the printed words look very much like they almost rhyme. It's very tricks-y, it is. Have you ever discovered a word you'd been pronouncing wrong because you had only read it versus hearing it spoken aloud? Maybe the way you discovered your misconception was when you said that word aloud to someone! This is a nod to the awkwardness of "parallel PLAD" failing an attempt at rhyming with the thing it references. (Plaid itself can also be a little awkward to coordinate with. Is this point all "plaid" out yet? ...get it? getitgetit?)

3. On a meta level, play/played is what the musicians are doing, or have done, with the music on the page. They are engaging in parallel play by each having their own motifs and rhythms that exist side by side. It also has a somewhat angular, geometric feel like the parallel and perpendicular lines of plaid.

If you're thinking that all of that explaining up there seems a bit, well... 

The theme of autism asserted itself pretty early on in this work. There are three movements, and the first one that got a name was "Stim." This was followed by "Transist" and "Off-Script."

If you know me fairly well, you're curious about why the subjects of ADHD, ADD and autism come up frequently, on Facebook and elsewhere. Many of these issues are highly interconnected. It has to do with being an ally, with being on one end of the spectrum and acknowledging my friends who live with the other end of it, and with living with certain aspects myself.

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