Words are meaningful sounds - even Aristotle could not deny that. But rarely both components, that of sound *and* meaning, are coming together so beautifully as in these poems by @evelina-miteva and @Augenmerk

While  their voices and ways of phrasing make them come alive as musical pieces in their own right, I'm very grateful for the opportunities to converse with them.

Poetic Conversations - with Evelina and Augenmerk

Between Fall and Autumn: Greatest Hits

Moin

Lyrics: Friedrich Engels

Guitars and vocals: Eden Young and Going Loopy

Opportunism (Eden Young & Going Loopy)

Improvisation in Bb minor

The original guitar improvisation is now changed by some added synthesiser. 

***
This is what I wrote about the piece seven years ago: Around midnight, stuck in this fancy bar by a forest path, we ended up having this long conversation about songs we used to like, now distant songs ... You know, you can do this really well, in a kind of ping-pong manner, each song you name trumping or complementing the former, moving up and up and up, while trying to keep the flow going...
A week later this improvisation materialised and seemed like a pertinent comment. It still does.

Meta-Music? Well, sometimes a piece is more about other music than 'resting in itself'. Perhaps this is a case in point.

Distant Songs (Remix)

Today my daughter surprised me with her entirely new way of playing chords. So I looped the first 20 seconds into 2 minutes.

Hannah's Waves (my 6-yo daughter improvising freely)

In the late 80s and early 90s, I occasionally spent whole days and nights with a four-track recorder, improvising, tinkering and recording things just as this: "Nostalgia" (recorded 1989)

Instruments: a nameless drum machine, a Yamaha DX7, and a Tokai Stratocaster

Nostalgia (1989)

What is philosophy, really? - A snippet from a conversation

Voice: Masha W.
Guitars and keys: Going Loopy
**

Wenn die Möpse Schnäpse trinken (James Krüss)

 


Wenn die Möpse Schnäpse trinken,

wenn vorm Spiegel Igel stehen,

wenn von Föhren Bären winken,

wenn die Ochsen boxen gehen,

 

wenn im Schlafe Schafe blöken,

wenn im Tal ein Wal erscheint,

wenn in Wecken Schnecken stecken,

wenn die Meise leise weint,

 

wenn Giraffen Affen fangen,

wenn ein Mäuslein Läuslein wiegt,

wenn an Stangen Schlangen hangen,

wenn der Biber Fieber kriegt,

 

dann entsteht zwar ein Gedicht,

aber sinnvoll ist es nicht!

"Wenn die Möpse Schnäpse trinken ..." (Masha W. & Going Loopy)

Meandering

Flow

Fading Covid

Seven years ago, I recorded this sketch. Today, I just added some silly notes. Back then I wrote: 

"You might know this, too. There are phases when I don't get any proper writing or playing done. Paradoxically, the longer these phases last, the higher the expectations to come up with someting really good or new. That's silly of course, but telling this myself doesn't help.
What can be really soothing, though, is to repeat something you know (or hope) will just do. Repeat your favourite idea, and just enjoy that rather than trying to come up with something new. Just do the same old stupid thing again. And repeat!

After my daughter was born, I couldn't play anything for quite a few months. This piece was the stupid thing I came up with. For me at least, it's quite a lovely reminder.

Btw., the voice is taken from an interview with the great Eric Whitacre​."

That Stupid Chord - Remix

More than 30 years ago, I went to a concert of a band from the neighbourhood. If memory serves, they played a tune called "Tanz der Spurrillen" - a stub of which I vaguely remember. Or so I think. That stub now became the theme of this piece.

Reminiscing

Chilling

The story of the hammer

A man wants to hang a painting. He has the nail, but not the hammer. Therefore it occurs to him to go over to the neighbor and ask him to lend him his hammer. But at this point, doubt sets in. What if he doesn’t want to lend me the hammer? Yesterday he barely spoke to me. Maybe he was in a hurry. But maybe the haste was just an excuse, and he has something against me. But why? I didn’t do anything to him. If he would ask me to lend him something, I would, at once. How can he refuse to lend me his hammer? People like him make other people’s life miserable. Worst, he thinks that I need him because he has a hammer. This has got to stop! And suddenly the guy runs to the neighbor’s door, rings, and before letting him say anything, he screams: “You can keep your hammer, you bastard!”

Paul Watzlawick: The Pursuit of Unhappiness

**
Die Geschichte mit dem Hammer

Ein Mann will ein Bild aufhängen. Den Nagel hat er, nicht aber den Hammer. Der Nachbar hat einen. Also beschließt unser Mann, hinüberzugehen und ihn auszuborgen. Doch da kommen ihm ein Zweifel: Was, wenn der Nachbar mir den Hammer nicht leihen will? Gestern schon grüßte er mich nur so flüchtig. Vielleicht war er in Eile. Aber vielleicht war die Eile nur vorgeschützt, und er hat etwas gegen mich. Und was? Ich habe ihm nichts angetan; der bildet sich da etwas ein. Wenn jemand von mir ein Werkzeug borgen wollte, ich gäbe es ihm sofort. Und warum er nicht? Wie kann man einem Mitmenschen einen so einfachen Gefallen abschlagen? Leute wie dieser Kerl vergiften einem das Leben. Und dann bildet er sich noch ein, ich sei auf ihn angewiesen. Bloß weil er einen Hammer hat. Jetzt reicht's mir wirklich. – Und so stürmt er hinüber, läutet, der Nachbar öffnet, doch noch bevor er "Guten Tag" sagen kann, schreit ihn unser Mann an: "Behalten Sie Ihren Hammer, Sie Rüpel!"

Paul Watzlawick: Anleitung zum Unglücklichsein

Watzlawicks Geschichte mit dem Hammer

Video on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WPjVk6lcqOQ

Kleine Improvisation zur Nacht

The pianist has been drinking

Video on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jgzeTcHubII

Abendliches Fragment

I forget the name of the tune (remix)

Video on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UuhY6UuISl4 

Fun with the Metronome

Dim and Diminished

Video on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=REEKukIdAU4

Jamming after teaching (excerpt)

winds

Get two pieces for the price of one!

This is of course not the first attempt to capture two different moods in one improvisation. The cheap 'trick' I'm using is to play one rhythm (3/4) while singing another one (4/4), i.e. playing 3 against 4.
What I like about this piece in particular is that it is reminiscent of some of the pieces I recorded after returning from Bucharest in April, which was quite a productive time, if I may say so. So it turned out to be a kind of "sister piece" of the "remainders #1-4". Never mind the bum notes and turn up the volume!

twilight

trüb

Voice and Words: @Augenmerk
Guitar: Going Loopy

I was and am absolutely thrilled by many of the collaborations between Karin (@Augenmerk) and other musicians. (Here is one of my favourites:  https://soundcloud.com/augenmerk/stay-open-for-the-farewellbleib-fur-den-abschied-offen-peter-vigl-sax)
Karin's poems are very moving in themselves, but her voice and phrasing make them come alive as musical pieces in their own right.  I am often stunned how her collaborators manage to join or transform them. Thus, I found the prospect of contributing to this open collaboration enormously exciting, but also a bit intimidating. So I am very glad to see your friendly responses.

***

Here is a translation from the German:
"These days I am swamp, I’m mountain and dale.
I’m deep, I’m steep, I’m dumb and deaf,
my word gets lost on me.
Landslide is, the year of power passed.
Screens of fog run through me
till blind and dark I touch the ground,
still resisting.

How may my shield break away
without pervading sun,
without meadows floating me green
and water that allays?
Who climbs free, once my vision has gone
and my strength has turned?
Where to tears me the war?

Scarce years at the bottom of breath -
I’m clouds, I’m abyss and sea.
Demons and angels rise
My light fades and glints
Years run through me
Caught in a circle I surround me
The world’s beauty mere sensing
Busy life far away.

Has the wall penetrated me,
leaning me bare against the cleft?
I’m falling not knowing the end.
But in the thick of it you cannot get out.
At times the world reaches hands to me,
at times a river flows through,
sometimes voices.
My inner eyes still weighty with tears.

You filled me full, life, glass from which I drink,
Now I’m the mountain that I ascend.
I’m the canyon into which I jump.
My own dance has changed and emptied me.
Silence yet.

Are you quiet, world?
Another door is opening, another view.
Accordance now
between soles and the ground,
Confine myself to one step, in which I’m whole.
And within me one wakes up,
whose dance is not exhausted yet,
but innocent and loud.

Here, this bird is mine and his tone am I.
I extend these wings, I paint him colourful.
I throw him the flight.
I raise him out of flames, out of calm waiting.

Behind the dark horizon there is the sun.
The sun-hour clears and the nightbark lands.
The silent sea sets me free
into a new measure of time.
My step has got other tracks."

Diese Tage (Augenmerk & Going Loopy)

Words and voice: @Augenmerk
Guitar and piano: Going Loopy

Translation & Text (Augenmerk)

Part 1:
My head a swaying dance ship, and I am a passenger, a dancer on the high seas with swell, which has already driven the other guests, if they exist at all, to the railing to disgorge. Rather, I am still the only remaining passenger on the ship, who realizes that the crew has disappeared and now all tasks are to be taken over by him as soon as possible, because otherwise? Otherwise? I don’t know. Day, what else?

Mein Kopf ein schwankendes Tanzschiff, und ich Passagier, Tänzerin auf hoher See mit Seegang, der die anderen Gäste, falls es sie überhaupt gibt, längst schon an die Reling vertrieben hat, sich zu übergeben. Eher noch bin ich am Schiff einzig gebliebener Fahrgast, dem klar wird, dass auch die Mannschaft verschwunden und nun alle Aufgaben von ihm selber schnellstens zu übernehmen sind, denn sonst? Sonst? Ich weiß es nicht. Tag, was ist sonst?

Part 2:
And answer me: Nothing. There is no doom, only the well-known happenings, which slowly and rowing with my fears take me out into the open sea, where octopuses expect me in many-armed symphony of perdition. However, it is time to change the perspective / line of gaze, pushing a draft obliquely through layers into the not yet painted. A weather condition which changes the course, in which as under hypnosis, the captain, taxwoman, instructor, the beating, fearful heart, blinded in the fog only face with a narrow view of the tube to exactly that sea cutout, that predicts the doom dark and menacing.
Enlarge the tube. Remove the restrictive monocular. Recognize that any small section that was considered a reality, a point only, tiny zone in immeasurable variety of possibilities. That I was deceived, hypnotized on exactly one thing, to inflict the greatest possible damage to me.
And now? I turn slowly around my axis and let my eyes wander. Everywhere my gaze clungs to, it goes deep into it, and I see that in the respective point entry into spheres, zones, layers, which bring life, my life-boat, no longer in logical references causally from one point to the next. It seems, …

Und antworte mir: gar nichts. Kein Untergang, nur das bekannte Geschehen, das langsam und an meinen Ängsten rudernd ins offene Meer hinausführt, wo mich Kraken in vielarmiger Untergangssinfonie erwarten. Doch ist es an der Zeit, die Blickrichtung zu ändern, schräg durch Schichten ins noch nicht Gemalte einen Entwurf zu schieben. Eine Wetterlage, die den Kurs ändert, in dem wie unter Hypnose die Kapitänin, Steuerfrau, Instrukteurin, das schlagende, ängstliche Herz, im Nebel geblendet nur mehr einen engen Röhrenblick auf genau den Meeresausschnitt richten, der Untergang dunkel und bedrohlich prophezeit.
Die Röhre vergrößern. Das einengende Monokular weglegen. Erkennen, dass jeder kleine Ausschnitt, der als Wirklichkeit galt, ein Punkt nur, winzige Zone in unermesslicher Vielfalt von Möglichkeiten. Dass ich einer Täuschung unterlag, hypnotisiert auf genau Eines zusteuerte, mir größtmöglichen Schaden zuzufügen.
Und jetzt? Ich drehe mich langsam um meine Achse und lasse den Blick schweifen. Überall, wo er sich festhakt, geht es tief hinein, und ich sehe, dass im jeweiligen Punkt Eintritt in Sphären, Zonen, Schichten, die das Leben, mein Lebensschiff, nicht mehr in logischen Bezügen kausal von einem Punkt zum nächsten bringen. Es scheint, …

Es scheint (Augenmerk & Going Loopy)

Voice sample from an interview with Tracey Thorn
Guitars by Going Loopy

"I just fear exposure I suppose. You know, that fear that you stand in front of people and you're really, really vulnerable ..." Tracey Thorn

Recorded: 26 November 2017

Exposure

Voice & Words: @evelina-miteva
Guitars: Going Loopy

***
From the Bulgarian by the author:

Bread for dreamers

Someone has sown wheat.
Then another man passed and sawed ​​poppies.
And those winds,
swaying poppies and wheat,
Who sowed them?
I don't dare imagine what shall we will reap
and what bread shall we make
from wheat, poppies and wind.

***
earth in earth
palm in the palm
line into line
road in the road

world in the world
fire in fire
language in language
snake in snake

heart in apple
apple in milk
milk in the seed
seed in the dust

***
Home Witch

I wanted to learn
how to make spells. Like this.
I breathe love -
exhaled wind,
stir potions.
Mint, lemon balm and honey.
I make spells, love, stars,
banats, laundry, warm soups.
The wind blows me, the leaves chase me,
but I do not give in - I put those too
in the cupboard with the memories and the tea.

***
Хляб за мечтатели

Някой е посял жито.
После е минал друг и посял макове.
А тези ветрове,
разлюляли макове и жита, 
тях кой ги е сял?
Не ми се мисли какво ще жънем
и какъв хляб ще месим
от жито, мак и вятър.

***
земя в земята
длан в дланта
лния в линията
път в пътя

свят в света
огън в огъня
език в езика
змия в змия

сърце в ябълка
ябълка в мляко
мляко в семе
семе в пръстта

***
Домашна вещица

Исках да се науча
как се правят магии. Ето така.
Вдишвам любов – 
издишвам вятър,
забърквам отвари.
Мента, маточина и мед.
Въртя магии, любов, звезди,
баници, пране, топли супи.
Вятър ме вее, листа ме гонят,
но аз не се давам – прибирам и тях

For Dreamers (Evelina & Going Loopy)

Rick Beato recently outed the "Four Chords that Killed Pop Music" - so I made sure to use exactly these chords in this latest sketch... (Here's RB's vid: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nuGt-ZG39cU&list=RDMMnuGt-ZG39cU)

December Lights

Voice and words: @Augenmerk
Guitars: Going Loopy


Foggy looks
Push the wall away,
that comes too close to me, binds me.
Probably rather: extinguishes ?!
Spoil of space, where nothing escapes.
Sucks, devours.
Ground fog creeping into feet and rising,
the head does not separate from itself anymore.
Am I misted? Woozy? Am I fog?
Am I the child in clouds?
My buzzard is circling,
Mood that creates my will.
There is lack of space and free seating

German text:

Nebelblicke
Die Wand wegdrücken,
die mir zu nahe kommt, mich bindet.
Wohl eher: tilgt?!
Flächenrausch, dem nichts entrinnt.
Saugt ein, verschlingt.
Bodennebel, der in Füße kriecht und steigt,
den Kopf nicht mehr trennt von sich selbst.
Bin ich umnebelt? Benebelt? Bin Nebel?
Bin ich das Kind in Wolken?
Mein Mäusebussard kreist,
Laune, die mein Wollen schafft.
Platznot ist und freie Platzwahl

Nebelblicke (Augenmerk & Going Loopy)

"Yes and no" - playing around with my voice while working through an argument.

Did it work? - Well, I stopped taking myself seriously

Jain

A collaboration with Jeff Wiedenfeld from April 2018. The song was basically ready before it reached me. Jeff kindly sent me his track, letting me add some guitars. - Make sure to go to his site and check out his work!

Keyboards, samples, mix: @jwiedenfeld
Guitars: Going Loopy

Stir (Jeff Wiedenfeld & Going Loopy)

Having had a bit of an early-evening drink, I took the liberty to reharmonize this a bit...

Silent Night

Voice & Words: @evelina-miteva
Guitars: Going Loopy

https://soundcloud.com/evelina-miteva/sets/march

March

I return to my body -
The rain and the distant sound of the bells
Fall into the soft earth.
The field, drenched with the winter grey,
Is uneven, clods and matted herbs.
The rain, gray and warm,
Falls on me and evaporates,
The field is wrapped in spring vapors.
I return in my body,
soft and elastic, gray by the winter
warm by the spring
wet by the rain -
silent and wise.
***
/Март/

Връщам се в тялото си –
дъждът и далечният звън на камбани
падат в меката пръст,
полето, подгизнало от зимната сивота,
е неравно, буци и залинели треви.
Дъждът, сив и топъл,
пада по мен и се изпарява,
полето е обгърнато в пролетни пари.
Завръщам се в тялото си,
меко и еластично, сиво от зимата,
топло от пролетта,
мокро от дъжд,
мълчаливо и мъдро.

March (Evelina & Going Loopy)

Pink Bossa

Emma Young: vocals, guitar
Going Loopy: knick-knacks

'"The End of the World" is a pop song written by composer Arthur Kent and lyricist Sylvia Dee, who often worked as a team. They wrote the song for American singer Skeeter Davis, and her recording of it was highly successful in the early 1960s, reaching the top five on four different charts, including No. 2 on the main Billboard Hot 100. It spawned many cover versions.'

The End of the World (Eden Young & Going Loopy)

Welcome! If you stick around a bit, you'll find some sketchy sketches of a looping guitarist, interested in minimal music, jazz, fusion etc.
 
I wish I would have thought of saying the following about me, but it was Robert Fripp, and he seems to have had himself in mind: “Music so wishes to be heard that it sometimes calls on unlikely characters to give it voice.”

Oh, and you might wonder why I call my sketches "meta-music". Well, since I am always inspired by others,  I think of my improvisations as music *about other music*, thus meta-music.

Going Loopy

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