I am constantly puzzled and bewildered by my own position within music, art and our world. It naturally IS a place, which poses multiple questions, if one is ready to listen and receive these. By default it becomes impossible for me, to apply a readymade scheme to my work and put it on automatic mode. Even though my individual story with the instrument is rather one of lucky coincidences and surprising synchronicities, as well as deeper routed human needs and longings, I sometimes get to wonder, if it is not, infact, a position I - maybe unconsciously - have chosen deliberately to some degree. Not ‚to stand out‘, but to be puzzled, to not rest, to be challenged myself, to uncover this which lies within, that wasn’t apparent or accessible to me. To get to know myself and the world surrounding me. For when coincidences take place in our life and doors open, it is still us making the choice of embracing them and walking in, instead of turning away and remain within the sphere of what we believe to know and understand. I remember years ago, just in the summer, when I applied to study the Oud (even though I had not had the skills yet) and got admitted to a new program in Germany, sitting in Venice by the water watching the sun rise and contemplating. The day prior a professor for Baroque Violin, who have heard me play a bit of Bach, expressed the invitation to work with him and potentially make a part of his class. I felt flattered and it felt like a possibility I should wish for, but there at the water, thinking about the Oud and all that, which I do not know, made me so much more curious. Thinking about Baroque Violin, as much I adore and appreciate the music, a thought came up in my head: „yeah, I know how that one goes“, I could see a possible future, I could see multiple paths of how life can be and what to make out of it. Whereas with the Oud and that program I couldn’t see what’s ahead and what it is I am embracing. It was an open door to a place I didn’t know and sitting by the water it felt like this is the ship I longed to be on. To sail out into the unknown. To find a balm for my heartache, and to remedy my longing.
In a world in transit, in change, in crisis, interconnected, upheaved, in turmoil... it is bravery and courage to embrace exactly that and pave ways for new forms of togetherness, becoming the interconnection, a link to almost anything, again, like a rhizome, linking things and shed light and focus on connections, which where there already, but in the dark, unseen, unclear, uncentered, blurred out in our collective consciousness. Living a possible future means, bringing that to light, which already was a seed planted centuries ago, watered and activated in our times. Living a possible future means, sailing out into the unknown with an open heart and mind and it also means to HAVE TRUST.
Trust, curiosity, openness, courage are very needed assets in a world which is scary and makes many afraid today. It is affirmation of what can come, saying: look, this is a possible future too and it is ok, it is possible, it can also be good. Listen. Listen. If I have a space here, in this space I worked to create and shape, you too, have space in our scary world and there is an island of trust, things can grow out of. You can rest in this space, that we now share or in any other, that is anywhere within our view or imaginary scope. You can rest and be comforted, affirmed, confronted with the instability of life on a much wider scale or shape it with me. Receive sound or the world without judgment, without instantly categorising it. Be human in it.
Art is not linear or simple to understand. Today’s art pleads to be experienced rather, than something to be acquired and consumed. Art today seems to urgently wish not to depict, but rather to become part of life. And I can more than wholeheartedly put myself in exactly the same plead. For what good would my performance be, if it would not move the audience towards the places I have been sailing and encircling for years? To focus someones attention to what I have been looking at. It matters not to me, if being moved becomes intellectual, conscious, emotional, sensory, situative or lasting...it matters, that we move. Our focus, our direction, our thought, it matters, that we adapt to the constant changes we are faced with in life as in our times. Music, sound and performance are my tools to cope, to be moved and move. To connect and to interweave myself with the world.
I can not NOT reevaluate my own expressions without positioning them in relation to other artists work, for unintentionally, we are the product and expression of our time. Being a ‚rhizomatic being‘ (as a writer and theatre director once called me) I find and discover relations and similarities anywhere and in anything, because I am open to receiving them. Just as modern art is pleading, our world, LIFE is not an ordered, well segregated, administered, categorised, isolated product to be sold out, waiting on a shelve, displayed. It is multi sensory, chaotic, anachronistic, organised in a multifaceted way, we hardly have tools to grasp and above all it constantly IS changing, in transit, unknown, unstable, unclear. Not everything needs to be understood, our way of being in the world is such, that sometimes it just needs to be shared and received. And the ones to whom it can mean something, will receive it. Same director also said to me: „the remystification of our world is an important quest today“. I don’t want to be an answer, I am a reaction, I wish to be a path, I wish to open spaces of mind. (If only mine, but being in the world is synergetic, what I experience, exists in others too, even if only as a potentiality.)
Being a position of tension, questions, uncertainties, surprises, unprecedented encounters, challenges, affecting my sense of identity, questioning life’s linearity - which in today’s world already is becoming a thing of the past - I very consequently find myself faced with NO CHOICE but to look around and relate to Philosophy and Art, to have some of my questions answered and find new strategies for life. I am naturally confronted with the broader society, for my place in it is not guaranteed, is not stable, is dynamic, is peculiar and specific. By inhabiting a position, which does not grant me a pre constructed belonging, I have to embrace all the questions, which philosophy and art pose nowadays. I think also, I naturally, very consequently become ‚part of that (scattered) gang‘... of ‚outcasts‘, thinkers, dreamers, questioners, loners, artists, writers, poets, painters, visionaries and people carrying their skin open for others to see. It is hard in my position to NOT become JUST THIS. I think, I am discovering my belonging in the loneliness and abstraction of thought. For every idea, concept, performance, piece of art, philosophical thought is a reality which is not quite here yet, until it isn’t formulated, presented and received. So long it is but a dream, an inner reality, a state we face, but can not really grasp. I think when the Oud chose me, I chose it, because it would force me to be who I already was, but didn’t dare to dream.