The Journey Itself Is Home

The third leg of the tour has started. It is a little hard. I spent almost four sedentary weeks in Iceland and I find the different tempo now difficult to deal with. But I’ll soon get used to it!

I have been strangely absent minded today. I forgot my reading glasses on the plane today. And my headphones. And something else on the hotel I spent last night in…

I hate it when I lose things. But Björk told me recently that one has to just accept it when one is touring. When you keep changing hotels you are bound to be forgetful at times.

We have now arrived in Nimes in France. The Brass Band, Mark Bell, Númi and me flew to England yesterday, spent a night there and then flew to Montpellier today. Björk had arrived a bit earlier; in fact, I haven’t seen her since the inauguration of the music club I keep mentioning!

I took a walk around the center of Nimes today. I was pleasantly surprised when I came across a Roman amphitheatre, the Arena of Nimes, which I didn’t even know existed. And was even more surprised when I saw a poster with a familiar name: BJÖRK. Under her name I could see that WE are actually playing in the Arena!

I will get to play a gladiator, it seems…

For those of you who are interested in hearing the magic voice of Ásgerður Júníusdóttir (the founding member of the music club I just mentioned), check this out.

The third leg of the tour is about to start! I’m leaving Iceland next Sunday… We are going to France for three concerts. The last one will be in Paris.

I studied for four years in Paris, mainly with a wonderful teacher named Monique Deschaussées.

I love Paris… when I go there I always feel like I’m coming home.

I have just returned from a delightful stay in our summerhouse on the south coast of Iceland. I went there mainly to review two concerts, but also to experience a little bit of the Icelandic countryside, before embarking on another trip with Björk et al.

See a photo below, which I took there this morning.

I left Reykjavik last Friday. The evening before saw the birth of a music club of which I’m a very proud member. We intend to meet as often as possible (which due to circumstances will not be very often in the next months), play CDs for each other and discuss music.

The evening was a success. It began quietly, with a great dinner and marvellous music. Then it got rowdier… and I’m not sure how it ended!

It was Sjón’s wife, Ásgerður Júníusdóttir, who had this brilliant idea. She is a fabulous mezzo-soprano, in case you don’t know.

Identities tend to crumble to dust unless they are reinforced on a regular basis. And music is involved in that process. We listen to a song hundred or thousand times. It becomes a part of our identities. As a consequence when a music critic makes a derogatory remark about that song, it seems that he is not only attacking the song, but ourselves as well.

This is why being a music critic is such a delicate job! It is also the reason why a critic should write in the first person so the readers may know where his taste-preference lies. Writing in the first person is “autobiographical music criticsm and it helps make the readers “aware that the music critic’s position of authority does not make her or him an arbiter of absolute taste. In this sense, autobiographical music criticism can be described as “consciousness-raising.”

Here is more.

A friend of mine sent me the following article:

“Adolf Hitler, the most notorious champion of Richard Wagner and “racially pure” German music, banished Jewish and Russian musicians from the concert halls of the Third Reich — but apparently listened secretly to their work.”

Read the entire article here.

I’m reminded of the fact that Hitler also banished music critics, or rather, forbid them to work. Here is an official announcement by Goebbels, quoted in Classical Music Criticsm by Robert Schick:

“As the year 1936 has passed without any satisfactory improvement in art criticism, I herewith forbid the practice of art criticism as it has been practiced to date. From today on, the art report will replace art criticism. During the period of Jewish domonation of art, art critics violated the concept of “criticism” and assumed the role of judges of art. The art critic will now be replaced by the art editor… In the future only those art editors will be allowed to report on art who approach the task with an undefiled heart and National Socialist convictions.”

This resulted in the following: “But of the… terrible events that occurred in Germany between 1933 and 1945, there is hardly a trace in the hundreds of illustrations that Mr. Hinz has mustered [a collection of German paintings in the Third Reich]. A perennial petit-bourgeois taste prevails throughout. Young love is always wholesome, family life is an earthly paradise, manual labour is pleasant and redemptive, all battles end happily, nature functions as a friend…”

The government should never be allowed to dominate art. Artists: Declare Your Independence!

The other day I went to my first classical concert since April. A very small gathering, just a hundred people or so in the audience. A pianist gave a recital of Chopin, Mozart, Debussy, etc. It was a debut, pretty good really. I reviewed it, quite favorably.

Nonetheless, after experiencing the excitement of a Björk concert several times - and being on stage as well! - it was a dull affair, even though it was a fine concert in itself. There is so much stagnation in the classical world. Why do people insist on playing Mozart and Chopin and Debussy, when you can get much better CDs of their works in the next record store?

Since I mentioned Debussy: Stephen King, who isn’t much into classical music, once said that on the few occasions he does listen to it, he prefers something powerful, like Wagner or Beethoven. Apparently he doesn’t understand people who listen to Debussy.

As he puts it: “Why fuck around?”

Of course, playing the classics is often quite a challenge for talented musicians. And hearing a really skilled pianist play Liszt or Rachmaninoff live beats any Die Hard movie. Nonetheless the most interesting concerts are those that feature new works, at least in my opinion.

Fortunately, the pianist whom I listened to played an impressive piece by a modern Icelandic composer, Snorri Sigfús Birgisson. It was a delightful composition, complex at first but becoming progressively more and more etherial and otherworldly. At the end it seemed to merge with a great void, dissolving into nothingness.

An overture to George Crumb, perhaps?

(Now, that is a composer I truly adore!)

I have now been in Iceland for ten days. I have mostly “kept a low profile”, basically staying at home and not doing much, except writing a very long article that will appear in an Icelandic cultural magazine, Tímarit Máls og menningar.

I met a few members of the Volta group in a party yesterday at Björk’s place. And Ghostigital was there! Everybody seemed VERY relaxed.

I’m still a bit disoriented. Occasionally I wake up in the middle of the night, not knowing where I am. And I repeatedly dream that I’m somewhere on my journeys. But I don’t mind!