First Steps Into the Nothing

After spending some time talking through my creative process (yes, I talk to myself - doesn't everybody?), I arrived at this journal to track that process. Not a progress report, but a journal of what happened, how I felt about it, and where I want to go next. So, here we go...

I want to start now with the atmosphere of Namib – sitting there on the deck of the chalet in the afternoon sun. Before we get deep into the piano melody and really working on the composition of it, I want to first really explore the place where this happened. The quality of light. The colors. The sounds. The feeling of the wind. The way it smelled.

Before continuing, I started to cry - a lot. I remembered the place so vividly that I felt like I was there, but of course, I’m not there. These were tears of joy and longing. I very rarely have such a strong emotional reaction to my own music. I can hear in this music the fact that the Namib desert is one of the most beautiful places I have ever been, that I miss it dearly, that I'm very sad that it is so far away from here, and that going back there is not at all easy. There is a tenderness in this music, and a deep longing. In time, we can return to that feeling.

Today, I want to take the first step INTO the landscape. Go musically where I couldn’t go physically. When I was on the deck, I really wanted to hop off and walk out into that landscape. This was something that I did later, when we were at Fish River Canyon. But in the Namib, I stayed on the deck and looked out.

When I recount my experience there through photos and video, I see that the immersion happened very gradually. The first day was just arrival, and taking it all in superficially. The next day was more intimate, with the sunrise drive. Day 3 was when things got really deep. That morning was the Sesriem Canyon experience. And that afternoon was the “in the place where there is nothing” experience. The last day was the most intimate, with my bare feet in the sands of Big Daddy.

What I love about that landscape is that, when taken as a whole, it’s an immense field of pale green gha grass stretching out towards the Naukluft mountains. But if you focus in, it’s actually made up of an almost infinite number of elements. Rocks, bushes, grass, trees, birds, wind, sunlight. It’s the combination of all these elements that add up to the singular experience. I think that this musical landscape could be similar.

I started with the sunlight, then moved to the bushes and the wind and the grass. This is now a multi-layered, dynamic soundscape.