Ramadan Mubarak!
Assalamu alaikum, blessings and greetings,
For this Ramadan, I focus a bit more on reading and studying in the little free time I have, and with so much work going on in my shift, I'm often not in the mood anymore for much music, even nasheeds or field recordings - ironically, at the same time, I've started setting up one of my Linux computers for... music production! InshaAllah, that's what I'm going to do this year!
People who know me well are aware that... I've been saying I might have to get to the age of 50 - at least that's when composers are said to mature - until I'll actually get to making music. For the longest time, I've been enjoying listening to what others make - my over 7,000 ratings on RYM over the last two decades can prove that - and feeling like I wouldn't be able to rise to my own expectations as a listener; in the same time, I've flirted with music-making countless times, such as on the one time I've played around with bits of manele (!) in Audacity, or when I've freely improvised on a local DJ's flute, trying to make a homegrown Evan Parker impression... Some years ago already, I attended a workshop held by the composer Iancu Dumitrescu and he would look into my eyes and say there's a fire burning in them! Not gonna lie, that made me sweat a bit, but I'm sure he just meant I might have a potential for music.
In earnest, I've been nervous about the idea of taking up music for a few precise reasons: one, I know it's going to take up much of my time and energy, and right now I do still have my own other writerly projects and whatnot which I should be taking care of first; two, I can't say I've found yet the best way of approaching music or what might be my appropriate workflow... When I was a teenager, playing a broken toy piano was the best thing about my therapy sessions; on the other hand, my grasp of music theory has remained partial, as in school I've had a very unsatisfying relationship with it and with forced auditions from the canon of Western classical music... Every now and then, an instrument visits my hands, but it won't stick; every now and then, I try to learn a DAW and get daunted by the simplest technical issues with audio I/O - as embarrassing as that sounds, it's the truth...
For many years, I've felt more at ease with creating literature, usually poetry - I could feel even "competitive" in it, which in retrospect was kind of a mistake. I didn't feel much of an imposter syndrome, I absorbed tons of poetry and, somehow, I was able to kind of write poetry that didn't feel like just a remix of other people's poetry - in fact, it felt like my poetry was a bit too personalized, being rather strange in the recent local literary landscape... Nevertheless, I insisted on writing, publishing, getting myself heard a bit, never quite enough for my ego, the unrefined nafs as we say in Islam...
Fast forward today, I think I'm losing, at least momentarily, interest in writing literature, or at least in writing texts. The conundrum of translation is one aspect; another is that I've always aspired in poetry to something of a visual or musical quality, and there's only so much you can experiment before crossing that threshold into other media; then, I'm torn between the troubles and uncertainties inherent to my personal and political contexts. Others might judge me for becoming weak or almost "bourgeois", but the truth is my psyche can only take so much praxis! I should be ashamed in this context that I'm turning to creating (more or less) pretty sounds, but seems like it could turn into a satisfying cope...
I'm trying to shed the outer pressures, the idea that I should be any time soon creating... landmark-worthy art! Haha... I've already had a decent attempt at it in poetry (needless to say, it had some positive outcome, but I'm not sure I'd put in all the effort the second tiem around!), so I don't have to seek acclaim anymore, I just want to find first of all some joy in the process (like in my early days, of writing fairly care-free), then perhaps, at some point down the road if there will be any more time, inshaAllah, I might get to release the best of what I'm doing in a form that's going to look neat and, hopefully, made in more eco-friendly ways - there are still labels that do that kind of thing and I'd aspire to release on one of them, but it's too early to say...
I have some ambitious ideas lying around my head, like putting a personal spin on a possible... "Islamic minimalism" - ever noticed that minimalism had virtually no influence on musicians from the Muslim countries? I can't count there Catherine Christer Hennix's projects drawing inspiration from Hindustani drones or the most minimalistic of Muslimgauze's joints; also, as much as I love Frangizh Ali-Zadeh, the fact that Kronos Quartet have performed her works doesn't automatically make them minimalist. Part of the reason might be that while Islamic geometric art contains a great deal of repetitive patterns, the calligraphy, Arabic itself (and Farsi likewise, etc.), and the music tend to put emphasis on elaborate phrasing, chaining together fairly complex sequences, though they can rhyme here quite a bit! Another reason might be the peer pressure and expectations - if you're working there in the art of sound, you're probably expected to sound complex, and minimalism can sound, or actually be to some degree (if you're trained), simple. You might also face the reaction: Terry Riley has already played around with "dervishes", his pieces in just intonation, what else is left to do? Considering the mileage of Christian holy minimalists, probably quite a bit, but I'm digressing...
As much as I'm tempted to jump straight into things like microtonality, I guess I'd actually like to take a simpler approach - working with field recordings, processing them, building up from there. InshaAllah, I might get around buying a field recorder until the summer, and then I'll surely have some fun traveling around the city and surroundings with it... Then, in Erstwhile Records fashion, I might try to merge the recordings with some kind of recordings, but I'd need to find a sweet spot on the drone/sine-wave/noise spectrum, and drones are, I guess, something I'd certainly need to use - maybe in a Michael Pisaro-Liu fashion? We'll see...
Speaking of drone, may Éliane Radigue rest in peace - she was Buddhist, but her music was much about a concept of Oneness that is, I think, not very far from the Tawhid in Islam! While I haven't explored much of Radigue's oeuvre and she hasn't influenced me as much as the fellow Buddhist we know as John Cage, what I've heard is more than respectable, I definitely need to hear more...
Been reading now about how her commitment to Buddhism tempted her to abandon making music altogether, yet her guru Lama Pawo Rinpoche convinced her to get back to work, but start viewing it as a kind of offering - I like that.
I'd like to aspire to that sort of humble approach, or rather maybe there's no other way for me when I'm so far from being able to claim any masterly approach to this art... Poetry has a way of making you almost convinced you "own" your words. But sound? It feels sometimes like I haven't really learned a thing about it. I wish I were able to hear sounds in color, sometimes it feels like I'm almost there, but still it's not synesthesia, so I can feel a little lost if I try to map out sounds - I definitely can't put down notes on a sheet, not gonna lie. All my music experience? Guess it feels like I'm approximating music like how blind people try to map out their surroundings. It feels like I have a disability and need to work twice or several times harder to get around it...
This first blog post here on Bear came out so long - I just wanted to do a quick intro, but I felt like voicing out so much, because... these days, I really only ever talk (online) about music or any other of my interests once in a blue moon. Usually, I hardly ever have time to just sit down and write. I won't guarantee I'll write much here. Maybe I'll transfer reviews from RYM, maybe not...