The Madwoman's Archive

Who Made You Like This?

Listen Along

About the Research

This archive did not appear fully formed.

It was built piece by piece over time through obsessive note-taking, cross-referencing, experimentation, pattern analysis, and a frankly unreasonable amount of learning-by-doing. 1

This work was not created in a vacuum.

Prior to building the Archive, I spent years working in operations, systems design, process improvement, documentation, and people leadership. I also studied English at the collegiate level, though I ultimately chose a different professional path before completing the degree. 2

Music has likewise been a lifelong presence. I began playing music at the age of seven and have spent more than three decades performing, studying, teaching, and engaging with it in various forms. Over the years I have participated in concert ensembles, marching programs, and music education, including teaching marching band students of my own. Some of those students have since gone on to professional and touring careers, including work within the metal scene. 3

While I am not a professional recording artist or musicologist, the Archive is informed by decades of practical musical experience: listening, performance, instruction, ensemble dynamics, rhythmic analysis, and the development of an ear trained to recognize patterns, structure, and change over time. That foundation later expanded into waveform analysis, stem isolation, arrangement study, and other forms of technical listening used throughout the project. 4

In many ways, the Archive represents the collision of those disciplines:

  • literary analysis
  • systems thinking
  • operational structure
  • musical observation
  • documentation practices
  • and an enduring inability to leave interesting questions alone. 5

The process behind this project has included:

  • longform manuscript writing and structural editing
  • lyrical annotation and thematic mapping
  • transcript preservation and source verification
  • comparative analysis across albums, eras, visuals, interviews, and performances
  • archival organization and metadata tagging
  • recursive systems mapping inside Obsidian 6
  • audio isolation and stem analysis using Logic Pro and other tools 7
  • waveform and structural music analysis
  • website design and front-end development 8
  • digital preservation practices
  • community outreach and attribution research 9
  • information architecture and taxonomy building
  • symbolic and narrative analysis
  • spreadsheet and database organization
  • timeline reconstruction
  • visual motif tracking
  • building interconnected reference systems across hundreds of notes 10

Many of these skills were learned specifically because this project demanded them.

Others were carried in from previous disciplines and adapted to a new environment. Operations became information architecture. Documentation became archival practice. Literary analysis became framework construction. Musical curiosity became technical investigation. 11

Some sections of the archive began as scattered notes.

Others began as diagrams.

Some began as jokes that unfortunately evolved into legitimate research frameworks. 12

This project exists at the intersection of:

  • archival work
  • literary analysis
  • systems thinking
  • fandom anthropology
  • emotional documentation
  • creative obsession

No formal authority is claimed here.

Only effort, curiosity, preservation, and an ongoing attempt to understand the architecture surrounding the art.

If the archive feels dense, layered, or alive, it is because it was built slowly, recursively, and by hand.

…Like all strange cathedrals on the internet. 13

Employment Status Update:

The Madwoman is currently in possession of an alarming number of transferable skills and a concerning amount of free time.
If you require systems thinking, operations management, research, documentation, process design, taxonomy development, data organization, pattern recognition, technical writing, project management, archival work, or whatever it is this website accidentally demonstrates, please know that she is, in fact, available for hire.

Back: The Archive Welcome Mat

Forward: The Important Bits

Help: Help, what is this?

File Under

Caught Between Black and White

Footnotes

  1. The phrase “learning-by-doing” is carrying a truly irresponsible amount of weight here. ↩

  2. The degree remains unfinished. The reading list, unfortunately, did not get the memo. ↩

  3. Nothing makes a person feel older quite like realizing former students now tour professionally. ↩

  4. The Archive has repeatedly demonstrated that listening to music and studying music are related but distinct activities. ↩

  5. The final item on this list is responsible for a statistically significant percentage of the project. ↩

  6. What began as note-taking gradually evolved into a graph-shaped life choice. ↩

  7. At some point “I wonder if I can isolate that?” became a recurring research methodology. ↩

  8. Several skills listed on this page were acquired solely because the alternative was waiting for someone else to do it. The Madwoman waits for no one. ↩

  9. The Scholar would like credit assigned correctly. The Madwoman would like everyone involved to answer their email. ↩

  10. The phrase “a few notes” ceased to be accurate some time ago. ↩

  11. It turns out that building systems for people and building systems for ideas require surprisingly similar instincts. ↩

  12. A deeply concerning number of the Archive’s frameworks originated as jokes. ↩

  13. The internet occasionally produces cathedrals, labyrinths, archives, and rabbit holes. This project has made little effort to distinguish between them. ↩

Graph View

Backlinks