To be released
- stuck in-between the pre and post (loopable)
- the smell of a black and white swan
- how the sun pulsated on the water surface
- transmutation beyond matter
- ever approaching edge
- ruins of the mind (dwelling excerpt)
- the many faces of fear (pt. 4)
- can souls implode
- play pretend (ft. Sondi)
- how reality collapsed onto itself that day
This deeply personal body of work emerged from a multi-year period of collapse and disconnect: from reality, the body, and others, caused by a loss of trust and love. It tainted the lens through which I live and relate, as the bodymind’s perceptive biases were projected outward. Inner became outer, sustaining loops of self-fulfilling prophecies. Similar experiences began to feel like inverted realities: the matter remained the same, while its meaning radically shifted, touching upon the paradox and multiplicity of life.
Nuance erodes in an oversimplified, binary world. This work became a transmutation of internal and external forces trying to destabilise and unsettle, and an attempt to transform these frictional energies into moments of deeper connection through practice.
During this period, I became aware of how non-linear states of mind opened a field of sonance and vibration, informed by stillness and slowness. Moments of dwelling in disconnect, or turning memories into sonic poems, grounded me while reliving cycles of overwhelming experience. Lingering became a practice of connecting with and listening to the present moment unfolding right in front of me: turning noise into sound, atmosphere into music, and tinnitus into an ancestral compass.
These sounding worlds provided stability in unstable and chaotic times. They became a form of aural inquiry, a way of sensing what lies beneath the skin. In making them, I began to question conventions within listening, recording, mixing and mastering, as well as my own relationship to these processes. Could the essence of non-linear sonic abstractions of lived moments and feelings ever be documented? The limitations of conventional formats became instantly evident.
Does an improvisational live environment not dissolve the moment you press record? What media might support alternative ways of listening and relating than the linear formats we are presented with? And what does it mean for a listener to expect the same outcome over and over again, while the process of bringing that artefact into existence is fleeting and ephemeral?
I don't have the answers. All I can do is share these thoughts and let porosity fill me with wonder. To allow myself to play and fail beyond the boundaries of our hearing, imagination and tangible world.
It took me years to change how I relate to these sounding worlds, and eventually to let them move beyond me. The body of work guided me towards holding opposites within the same tension field when resolution becomes impossible. Not by externalising them, or seeing them as an end, but by allowing tension to integrate, coexist and transform.
Perhaps this is where listening begins: not in resolution, but in lingering long enough for the granularity of time itself to become perceptible.