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The fascinating thing about music history is how it can intertwine with all the hidden forms and facets of inspiration and influences and how it manifests, and it isn’t as expected. I had been dragging a virus for days — a weird one, a bit delirium-ish as well. After days of brain splitting on the human condition and daydreaming of a possibility that our collective consciousness might recover and human amnesia might end, overthinking and not being able to physically follow, somehow, I am finally finding the juice or the fever to pick up the guitar and work on a collaborative piece, not that it is humanly and collectively useful at this time or is contributing to helping and changing the world, but for the time being, it’s my way of coping.
For ages, I had been looking for a missing link, a puzzle piece. When inspiration kicks in, it means I hear everything playing loud in my head. It often results in my thinking that I nicked something off someone else out there who wrote it before. I was told I might have impostor syndrome and that it could easily happen when we have a decent auditory memory. I’ll digress here with regard to inspiration. I have also learnt to work differently, meaning to sit down with an instrument even if I hear nothing and also work for something to happen, which often turned out to be great practice for taking responsibility, not sinking into self-indulgence, self-pity, and composing; inspiration can and should also be worked for it to happen.
But let’s go back to influences, inspirations, and the missing link between my influences and the music education puzzle. I often hear growling, noise, and speed; harmonies are one of my obsessions, but the rhythmics that I hear are not from the same world, not from extreme metal, not from techno or industrial, though it feels like it is, and on the parts that I am currently working on, that question and topic came back magnified: what is it? What is the fuel behind the rhythm; it isn’t tribal, and what tribe anyway? That scream, that frequency? I have heard it before. A memory, not extreme metal, not industrial, but that voice is screaming in rhythm, and I heard it before? In childhood? While playing the part I am working on and building on, I am starting to hear words, sentences, and the rhythm. “Tak tak tak taka takata tak tak tak tak taaak!” and suddenly “tah tah tah tah TAAAAAH.”“ In a cold sweat, “tah tah tah tah TAAAAAAH,” and here he screams, and I suddenly remember another piece I worked on from the Eyriahrk Nunshkar Ep; on one part I kept hearing, “He’s lost!” WOW!!!! It was James Brown screaming!!!!!!!!!! He was the missing link, the piece of my puzzle!!!!!!! I had forgotten!!!!!!!! Of course f…ng course!!!!!!!!
I am not here to discuss the controversy over James Brown or his code of conduct or ethics. I don’t care; I didn’t know him. I wasn’t even born when he was musically active, but as a musician, he was part of my music education, and I still find it fascinating how this education can manifest itself later on in life while creating. Regardless of what kind of man he may or may not have been, I still acknowledge teachers in their respective crafts and acknowledge where the influence or inspiration comes from.
Eucalyptus, lemon ginger, and back to recording…
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