Manafonistas

“ … We were in a hotel. A bit worn down. A memory of better days.

 

Where I don’t know, perhaps it was in Sylt? I haven`t been there yet so I don’t know.

 

I recognized Michael of course and there were other people (whom I had not yet met, but I understood they were the other Manafonistas – perhaps Jochen, Gregor, Martina or Marcus – there were no individual identities that I could separate from each other, just an identity as a group).

 

We (perhaps Uwe, Wolfram, or Lajla – again there were no individuals – just shadows bleeding into each other) were sitting around a big table in a room with very a strong light. White and strong.

 

The food was being served – cut into small cubes. There were no cutlery – no knives or forks. And nobody seemed to get the idea that it was possible to eat without knives and forks.

 

We (or maybe Henning or Jan or Ian – or rather a creature consisting of us as if we were one) started looking everywhere, but the only cutlery we found had been dipped in paint or so broken that we couldn’t use it.

 

Finally we returned to the table to discover that the food was gone) …“

 
 
As I woke up this morning the dream still lingered in me. And it is still lingers on, and I have the feeling having met you – the other Manafonistas – already.

 

What it means that we could not eat our food (cut in small cubes) without cutlery or that we didn`t find anything suitable when we were looking for it I don’t know, neither that the plates with our food were gone when we were back from our search.

 

I usually do not remember my dreams so clearly, and also during this dream I remember the feeling of knowing that I am dreaming. I feel I dream so much with my eyes open, that I prefer to not use my dreams as source of creation, whether it is with sounds or images or words.

 

As I am writing right now – the dream mixes with the sounds of Daniel Lanois Flesh and machine – that I have played quite a lot the last days. Or have I? Is it rather that it is a record that was already playing inside me, and I have just needed someone to record it for me to recognize it? And it happened to pass thru Daniel? Flesh and Machine does feel like home, in a quite unexpected way.

 

Flesh and Machine grows on repeated listening, and also when i am just trying to remember the sounds (without playing it, like just before going to sleep or just after waking up) and it has a lot of the same effect on me, as visualizing Stalker by Tarkovskij or the playing of Coltrane, whose record Live at the Temple University has been equally a revelation this week.

 

But that is another dream waiting to dream me.

 

*

bird and tree

 

touching your branches with my wings

somewhere inside us

we are bleeding into one

 
 
looking at us

 

i see us without faces

without eyes

 

looking beyond

what can be seen

 
 

branches and wings

 

flying high – wings touching wings

 

looking down – wondering is it me and you I am seeing

– branches touching branches  – down there?

 

am I both bird and tree?

both you and me?

have we both branches and wings?

 

at the same time?

in the same being?

 
 

spark of life

 
gently circling leading and following

 

into the great unknown

from where we once came. There

is no hurry

 

having all the time in the world

being  all the time in the world

 

bleeding into one

 

we are the spark of life

before becoming the spark of life

 

floating on snowflakes

drowning in drops of water

resting in pulses so slow

that we hardly know we exist

 

but we do – just before the spark of life

becomes the spark of life

 

*

 

Written/sketched while listening to

Sudovian Dance by Marcin Wasilewski Trio w/ Joakim Milder

on repeat

Thursday

 

We met where the stairs ended, waiting for the first begin to concert. Exchanging some walls while the words we spoke slowly turned into a bridge between us. After a while, he said his name: Fredrik Engelbrecht and I said mine: Michael Hossmann.

The first concert changing something inside of me was Sheriffjunko + Streifen of Nothingness. Playing without microphones, but inside them was the sampling of experience, delays, sound manipulations and technology all brought back to their Viofones, saxpet and trumlin. Did i listen with open or closed eyes? I don’t remember. It is not important. Was i on the stage? Were the musicians inside of me? New roles are needed to describe these feelings: like perdience and auformer.

Me and him meeting between the concerts – discussing among other topics music not yet created. What is the sound of Neil Davis and Miles Young? Of Bob Eno and Brian Dylan? Of Leonard Brahem and Anouar Cohen?

 

Friday

 

began with the Radioshow: Burning songs for storytellers (or how to turn magic into radio.) filled with songs that were mine before I had even heard them. Followed by the almost brutal soundscapes of Jana Harding and Mike Vinderen. A voyage into the depths of their uncompromising recordings of unspoken promises from the independent recording business played back at earsplitting volume. It was painfully pleasant closing the eyes and floating away into the unending space between my ears. At last there was a meeting with Andy Laurel, who spoke a lot about her cat slowly growing deaf, but had learned to play cards. We would watch a movie with the cat playing poker and grinning. The image of this almost deaf cat with a paw full of a straight flush is a door that I have passed and can never go back.

Later that evening Eriographs by Helikh Onore was a fishbowl of aural delight and we were flying with the seagulls on the beach. Arve Zach and Eivind Henriksen on drumtar and gitpet. Jeffrey Aarseth and Ingar Bruinsma on viobal and cymlin. And the remix, just flowing out of the moment, like a gracious dolphin giving birth to itself under water. Another of these magic moments was to see a Zapp played by his instrument, to see a machine touch his naked skin, to hear sounds that no Bang has yet wrenched from the bottom of his endlessly moving body. There was hammers of sound and nails of noise. And then the remix by Fennesz4; violently playful and playfully violent at the same time, a contrast between before and after the beginning.

 

Saturday

 

began with Henning Bang seducing Jan Bolte about his sampled approach to conversational Zapping.

This is where the idea of remixing conversations came up:

What tools does the conversation remixer have? A sampler – repeating everything that is said. A cutup sampler – sampup a cutler. Playing samples backwards. Sdrawkcab selpmas gniyalp. Adding delay. Repeating the words slower (sssllloooowwwwweeeerrrr) or faster (fstr) or making them stutter. We have the replacer and the sensotron – taking everything that is send and depending on which direction you push the dial too make sense out of random or the purest stupidity out of perfectly sensibel krauersaut.

The discussion ended with a poem sampled and remixed live:

 

„Why not sit on the wind / bang on a drop of water / and sing along with the rocks …“

 

Then there was an unnamed piece outside of the official program performed by a nameless artist with an ending I wished had continued longer, a beginning that had begun later and a middle that could have been somewhere else. Later that evening the concert with Bang4 and Jan Zapp was not without reason that the applause were rising to the feet after this audience. A cascade of beings responding to each other picking up elements letting go returning floating mirroring breaking glass red velvet getting lost finding the way being the way just being (…) Closing in to the end we gathered in the belly of the Phoenix to listen to Arve Anderson on trumlin and Laurie Henriksen on violet blending into each other becoming one beautiful beast. The final words softly spoken were:

 

„The stars looking down on us / too far away / far away to touch / still they try / still they try to touch us / with their fingers / fingers of light / light / fading light“

*

Here are some tracks you can download for your listening pleasure:

Arve Anderson and Laura Henriksen – The Birth of the Phoenix

Bang4 and Jan Zapp – (Videofeet Remix)

Unnamed artist: unnamed piece – Silent remix by Fredael Engelmann

Henning Bang/Jan Bolte: interviewing the interviewer Jan Bolte (Recording)

Michrik Hossbrecht – Radioshow: Burning songs for storytellers (or how to turn magic into radio.)

Sheriffjunko + Streifen of Nothingness (Identity blur remix)

Jana Harding and Mike Winderen – The sound of unspoken promises amplified

Eriographs by Helikh Onore (Under water remix)

The remix of Fennez4 (Remix by the remixer remixing the remixers remix)

(to be linked to the picture: instructions for download)