EoD in a broader context
What is the significance of this work outside the sphere of artistic research?
How has my context changed in the course of my study?
I’m quite sure The Eisenhower on Drums project will continue after I graduate from the soloist programme. It feels to me like I have started on something of real significance for myself and the music I’ll be making in the future.
It still feels like I’m only just realising what the work is about, and I am at the very beginning of the project, and so there are no conclusions to draw. Except the fact of a strong sense of being on to something.
The project appears to speak to likeminded people, other artists especially. This makes me hope that, in time, my work here could turn into something very relatable, something that I can perhaps write a book on, or do workshops on.
Feeling drawn in the direction of relating things directly to others, is an entirely new experience for me. Like I have discussed, my creative energies, although powerful, have always been rather closed, inward turned. Music has been a safe zone for me; a room in which others were welcome as spectators and admirers, but in essence, a private sphere. Taking on the challenge of embracing the outer makes me more vulnerable, and I believe it also makes me stronger and more alive.
I find this a fascinating shift of contexts. When I embarked on the study in 2016, I thought I was going to be working mainly with technical aspects and concept. I had an idea, for instance, about making a sonic translation of a light phenomenon I had experienced. In general, I had a sense of kind of knowing who I was as a musician, and wanted to dig deeper into the paradigm I saw myself in, of emotional songwriting in aesthetically nuanced productions.
I will talk a bit more context in the next chapter.
Books like The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron, a 12 step course for unblocking creativity has been a great help for me. However, there are some parts of this approach that doesn’t speak directly to me, and often, a feeling like that points to areas where I have my own methods to unfold.
I believe that the process of staying alive as an artist is a very personal path, and this paper is only a description of the things I have been experimenting with myself the last years. However, I hope that I will be able to unfold these concepts into something that can really benefit others.
A note about amateurism and awfulness
I see these as possible bridges to shining beauty.
The artists I love never get lost in their skill. Even if they never sound awful, their skill always serves the message they’re delivering, and often you can hear them reaching into the uncontrollable.
You can deliver a very subtle message when you apply great skill, but you can cut through just as well on a simpler level, if you’re direct in your energy.
In my improvisations I often return to awfulness and cliché, and I have mixed feelings about it. My strongest intuition is to embrace it. It might at first be an attempt of hiding behind fooling around, but if I keep on going, I might reach interesting place that I couldn’t gain access to in any way other than looking like a fool. The drummer Kresten Osgood, is a big influence in this field. Kresten has always been fighting for a broad definition of free improvisation, to which I also subscribe. If you’re you’re inhibited by aesthetics, can you claim to be a free improvisor?
Other leading figures for me in this regard are Jerome Cooper, Robert Wyatt and Andy Kaufman. Although I think I am seen as an 'aesthetic' by my colleagues, I have a strong faith in these approaches.
Pondering time in a EoD perspective
I find it very fascinating to think about the concept of pondering time in a life perspective. My three years at the soloist provides me with an example:
At the beginning of the project, I knew the area of focus, but that was all I knew. The rest was complete reaching in the dark. Now, three years later, I haven’t found anything, but yet, I find it rather easy writing this long paper. The words come from a place of experience, not pretension.
