Composing and literature
Whenever I embark on a longer composition like I am doing now for the opera in Venice I usually take a few books with me for inspiration and sanity. The ones I pulled out now happened to be the Drowned Book by the Father of Rumi, Artaud by Anne Thology, and The Little Prince in Armenian. These books have nothing to do with what I am writing but they keep me sane when my attempts to freeze my ideas into music are close to pushing me over the edge. Writing for such a space is often burdened with the thought that it has to be such and such; an opera house has to be filled with a particular sound, a particular instrumentation- what rubbish! I can picture the whole scenario already, with or without my music- not that that helps me much whilst writing. Composing for me requires a kind of mute cutting off of impressions, a retreat into an inner world and an exclusion of the total perception I usually like to walk around with. It is like a dumming down, a return to a small metaphysical mud hut of seclusion, and a welcome one in times like these when each time I can´t avoid looking at a newspaper stand I am cast into a fit of depression at the sight of another stained century. Beneath the din of digital progress, countries like Sweden and Poland are returning to nuclear power and dolphins are shedding salty tears causing the oceans to rise. Alas! Alaaf! A small jazz lament, my live version of the Flanger piece Peninsula, another sample from last week´s Plushmusic festival:
