Co-creation – Into the Light
Returning to Thonon-les-Bains for the last week of July 2009, it was the height of the French holiday season. From the upstairs of my apartment, the windows looked out over several restaurants with terraces overflowing with happy, hot, holiday-makers. For a short period every year, the quayside on Thonon-les-Bains on the edge of lac Leman becomes a merit un detour destination, as described in the guidebooks. There was ‘music’ thumping out from all directions, creating the noisy ambience, which has somehow become associated with summer enjoyment, widely-accepted and sought.
On one restaurant terrace, slightly off the main thoroughfare but facing directly onto rue du Funiculaire and opposite but just below the apartment, a series of big loudspeakers had been installed. This barrage of bass blasted out ‘disco’ music from 10.00 pm. It was awful. In the week we had been away at the Deep Listening Retreat in Dartington, Thonon-les-Bains had been transformed into my least favourite type of place. Noisy, with insistent thumping out of low frequency bass tones, the vibrations of which I could feel in every cell of my body.
But thankfully at midnight the electronic sound stopped, and there was a steady building up of silence. By 1.00am there was almost quiet as bistros closed, patrons floated out elsewhere and at last, gratefully, one became aware of the silence. And it was only with this transition that the idea of recording was feasible.
The recording project, for which J had come over specifically, was undertaken in one week. Seven sessions – each lasting about an hour – were completed in this time of silence, usually between two and three o’ clock in the morning. Extraordinary really, when one thinks of Thonon and France in the last week of July, and then listens to the seven hours of music which flowed through me spontaneously captured by J behind his ‘mobile recording studio’ – in reality this a desk with his computer and the ‘metric halo’ he had brought from Cape Town, and a large screen borrowed for a week from the local computer shop, its owner Patrick touched by the story and interested in the recording project.
The silence, captured in the recordings, with rich harmonics circulating, spiraling up into the voluminous space above the open piano without its lid was/is extraordinary. ‘A masterpiece of piano recording’ as it was later described.[1] Extraordinary, particularly given the context and time frame within which this recording process took place. Magic.
Our programme during this intense and highly creative week was held in a disciplined framework by J, with his determination to achieve the desired objective. In a way, floating as I was and enjoying the charge of our co-creative energy I was perhaps less committed to the outcome. Content to play my piano as I always had freely. But, with some simple instructions written on a yellow ‘post it’ sticker by J stuck to the shelf with the candle near my piano, which I glanced at each time I sat down and went into the silent state, the outcome this time was certainly different.
Our working session started around 1.30 to 2.00am, when I would hear a gentle knock on my bedroom door, having had a good couple of hours sleep already. ‘Are you ready?’ and in a trance-like state, I would move to the candle-lit piano and sit quietly for at least a minute or maybe more, while the actual silence was recorded… and then at some point a note would ring out. I had no recollection of these evening sessions. But they seemed to last for about an hour on average. And then I would return to bed and continue to sleep, almost where I had left off when I had been summoned.
Then abruptly the visit was over, and J had to return to Cape Town. I was still in an altered state. I remember Ronald’s birthday a few days later on 3 August, when he would have been 59. On a Skype call from Cape Town, J suggested I try and record myself that night sure that my state of ‘connection’ would be powerful. So, positioning my own Zoom system in the centre of the piano according to his instructions, I did so. The track is indeed powerful.[2] And indeed I did so again, recording the music when Ronald’s siblings came from Zurich a few days later. Actually, all three – his brother and two sisters – lay on the floor under the grand piano while the music came through, healing all of us. Later on, it was necessary and technically possible to actually mute the sounds of soft sobbing from below.
A few months later when we were in the post-production phase in J’s studio in Cape Town, and the events in those weeks in Thonon were becoming blurred, I remember wondering whether we had actually managed to record anything at all? Finding seven hours of recorded piano music was a huge surprise to me and working through this rich material was a wonderful creative experience, as I realised the complexity in listening deeply, over and over, selecting and then structuring the various musical components which would eventually make up the fina; CD.
I recalled my amateurish MP3 recording of Liquid Light and earlier CDs, marveling now at what J was able to do with the music… It was still recognisable as mine… but had another totally different quality somehow. An inaudible quality, but one could feel these vibrations in the huge ‘field’ just outside the body. Some refer to this as our emotional body. And clearly this non-physical emotional body is where the major impact of music is received and translated into feelings, feelings which leave us vulnerable, in tears and with expanded heart centers.
A fine process of post-production and ‘mastering’ took place over several weeks, involving some professional sound experts in Cape Town. The inclusion of several of tracks recorded on my simpler Zoom system after J left, was seamless. Only someone with the audial finesse and J’s sound mastery could distinguish the difference. The actual package for this little masterpiece was designed by Andy, my tenant and beloved young friend who had sat in vigil with me that night only four months before as we waited for news from Air France.
In mid-November 2009 Into the Light was launched at a house concert in Thonon-les-Bains, where I played for a large number of friends, neighbours and colleagues from Geneva. At the same time there was an event held in Rio for family members of the victims, which I had decided not to attend in person, although Ronald’s brother and sister did. Several tracks of music from this CD were played during the ceremony in Rio and echoes and sound waves holding love and light floated in the ether from both sides of the Atlantic.
[1] David Hykes…
[2] Ton parfum