An offer for Inner Listeners in interesting times

Dear Inner Listeners,

Today I am writing to announce a new offering. It's a little bit different than before. There is no new album today, no new single, no big “news” to share. There is, however, truly new music and potentially a novel container for it. There's also an opportunity for you to be involved. Interested? Read on. If you want to skip the poetics and jump right to the point scroll down to the "Offer" section.

It goes without saying that we've been through an unprecedented and very strange time in the last few years. I don't think I've spoken with anyone who hasn't been challenged by these times in some way. The landscape of our public lives has changed, relationships have changed, our ability to hear and listen has changed, for many of us the very way we relate to the world has changed. Profoundly. Irrevocably. In a recent conversation with an old friend overseas we discussed how music is needed now more than ever. But this raises some big questions: What kind of music? Music for what purpose? Where shall it be played, if anywhere at all? What is the context? Is it meant as entertainment or is it art? Is there a difference? Why bother?

Thinkers such as Carl Jung spoke about the link between dream and myth. I remember one literary passage that had a great effect on me many years ago: “A myth is a public dream, a dream is a private myth”. Inspired by this, I began a years long quest to link this idea with my personal musical artistic work.

In the 80s and 90s with the emergence of so-called “world music” and the nascent promise of electronic music we started to hear musicians such as Jon Hassell and Brian Eno talk about “possible musics” – hybrid and emergent musical offerings previously unheard and perhaps even hitherto impossible. A new generation of artist/thinkers observed how music had entered a quite new context, with recordings in many ways no longer being artistic artifacts in themselves but “the soundtrack of our lives”. This had its liberations and successes...and its shadow sides as well. What kind of shadow, you may ask? We are inundated with music - it is the wallpaper of our lives. As a result we have a lot of Outer Hearing and not a lot of Inner Listening. If music is the next best thing to silence then the shadow side of that is that constant, ubiquitous, hijacked music is the next worst thing to constant noise.

Back to us, then, The Inner Listeners: I am personally convinced of the need to “re-enchant the world”, as CG Jung and others have suggested. Iain McGilchrist, the author of “The Matter With Things”, has talked about the importance of authentic right brain experiences and singles out music as one of the best ways to facilitate the same. I am further convinced that an intentional inner listening is vital to help us to wake up, or at the very least to have more interesting and life-affirming dreams :-) We can't take our connection with transformative experiences for granted; one might also make the case that we can no longer just be passive “consumers” of music. The mere act of listening, really listening, is an act that creates change; a co-creation.

The Offer

Putting all of this together: I am offering private concerts (your own private mytho-musical experience) for small to medium size groups in the comfort of your private home or venue e.g. meeting space, church, yoga studio, gym, tent, cave, forest clearing, workshop, farm etc. The size of groups I am offering to serve is anywhere from 3 people to 20 people.

The music will be 100% improvised and generated in the very moment that you hear it. In this way the audience becomes an intimate part of the co-creative space as I “read the room” and aim to connect the inner experiences of the listeners “in the field”. The music will not be recorded, it will never be repeated, it will have a finite lifespan that is shared by us in this particular constellation just once.

Do you or someone you know have a home or space that might suit such an experience? If so, I'd like to hear from you and work together to create something special. With the right conditions in place travel is possible. There are also extra parameters that I have not discussed here which would bring even more ownership and creative energy into your hands, should you wish to have it.