I’m sitting here late into the night working away on some writing, listening to some of the loveliest music I’ve heard in quite some time, Hans Otte’s Siebengesang and Wassermanmusik from his album Aquarian Music (also listenable on Rhapsody). Such lovely harmonies and colors, I’m looking forward to getting to know these pieces much better over the next few weeks…
Month: December 2007
Lost in Memories
Sitting here alone in my parents’ home, watching television, a gray sky outside, the light muted… it could have been any Saturday from my time growing up here, sitting here I am flooded with images of myself watching television, studying for high school classes, falling asleep on a Saturday afternoon…
Ever since returning from Warsaw earlier this year I’ve found myself more and more lost in memories. At first it was memories of the life just lived, the impressions of Warsaw that I found myself revisiting often. When a few months passed after living in Berkeley, I found whenever we went to San Franciso, walking around the city brought back scenes from a daily life that is now only a memory from a past now gone. When I visited New York in the Fall, again the experiences of my life there were so deeply present…
I see almost as many differences now as I see similarities to the Georgia I grew up in. It’s curious to me to see the things which were new to me since I left here are now things that people know as something which has always been here… already I am lost in memories as new experiences and memories continue to form…
Hans Otte passed away
Kyle Gann noted yesterday the passing of Hans Otte whose Das Buch der Klänge is a work I’ve long enjoyed since I first got a recording of it on CD. I do not know very much about the man or his other works but am curious to lose myself in Das Buch der Klänge once again…
Stockhausen has passed away…
Reading the news that Stockhausen has now passed away, I was struck with a certain sense of emptiness… perhaps more for his ideas and spirit than some of his music (though there are certainly pieces of his which I much admire), I found many aspects of Stockhausen very inspiring. Such a unique human being now gone, I am sure he will be remembered and respected for a long time to come.
A New December
Today begins another December, a very special time of year for me… Looking at my December welcome from the previous year, it is incredibly interesting to see how how much life has changed since then, and yet also to see how many things have stayed the same. The changes in life from living abroad to returning to the Bay Area and working full-time once again have been quite an experience. I feel that in many ways I have grown over the past year, yet still I find myself wanting more time to focus on deep musical work. I will have to spend some time evaluating my current personal projects to see which ones really are essential, though somehow I am sure that they are all essential in some way. Perhaps it will just take time and completing these other tasks first before I can really devote the kind of attention I would like to the musical experiences I feel myself currently distant from…
December is usually a very reflective time for me. Ever since coming back to America I have often found myself lost in memories: Warsaw, Paris, Dublin, Berlin, California, New York, Georgia… These recollections have been so vivid, I wonder how much this December will be spent lost in thought…
Beyond just the memories are the realizations of the passage of time between the memories and the present. The experience of time has been quite rich in this way, in experiencing not only the present now but as well as the past in the present. These experiences of past and present as well as expectations of the future are all very much related to ideas I have worked on in music for a long time, but the recent experiences of being with my memories have given me much to think about…