Name: Djurre de Haan aka AWKWARD i
Nationality: Dutch
Occupation: Singer, songwriter, composer, producer
Current release: AWKWARD i's album UNALASKA is out via Excelsior.

If you enjoyed this AWKWARD i interview and would like to know more about his music, visit him on Instagram, and Facebook.  



Where does the impulse to create something come from for you? What role do often-quoted sources of inspiration like dreams, other forms of art, personal relationships, politics etc play?

This question reminds me of something I recently heard L.Cohen say: “if I knew where songs came from, I’d go there more often.” Who knows?

In my own words, on “Jimmy Stewart Museum” I sing: “if I knew where I was going I wouldn’t be on board.”



I will say that it gives me great pleasure and consolation to finish the miniature universe of a song every once in a while. I’ve had the urge to do so from when I was about twelve years old and imagine I’ll keep it until the very end. Without it, life would I think lack something crucial.

So maybe I’m just trying to fill a void, an emptiness and that gives me some sort of necessary, yet temporary fulfilment. It’s addictive magic.

For you to get started, do there need to be concrete ideas – or what some have called a 'visualisation' of the finished work? What does the balance between planning and chance look like for you?

Well it’s mostly intuitive and playful at the start and from that usually emerges the outline of something new somewhere on the horizon that I can almost - but not quite - see. I crave to see something new, so I pursue it.

Afterwards I often see the pattern in these ideas, but not usually beforehand.

Is there a preparation phase for your process? Do you require your tools to be laid out in a particular way, for example, do you need to do 'research' or create 'early versions'?

I like to soak up new experiences. They can be books, films, or just real, lived life. I take notes. I just try to be mindful about ideas and to record and write them down without letting my ego interfere. Then after a while I go back and see what I’ve been thinking.

I believe Emily Dickinson said: “I never know what I’m thinking until I read it in one of my own poems.”

For your latest release, what did you start with? If there were conceptual considerations, what were they?

Well in addition to what I said earlier about the creative process, with this record it started to become clearer what I was doing when I stumbled upon the words ‘Unalaska, Alaska.’ Words that seem to deny or cancel themselves

This ambiguity opened up a whole range of poetic meaning and ideas for me. When I saw the word ‘Unalaska’ I knew that it was the album I was working on. The songs then sort of clung to the title like a magnet and everything for me just clicked, like the clicking of Dorothy’s heels that transported her to Oz.

A bit later on in the process I found what ended up being the cover of UNALASKA on a Viewmaster stereo photo from the 1950s that I bought as a present for my daughter after doing some shows during the Indieweek in NYC.

Tell me a bit about the way the new material developed and gradually took its final form, please.

The song ‘Body As A Meadow’ got written I suppose because I kept thinking of a little unfinished poem that I scribbled into a Moleskine book in 2008.



At the time I didn’t know what to do with it, but I liked the words. Without doing anything with it actively, for years it kept itself alive somewhere on the periphery of my memory.

So at some point I was curious and went back to those old journals in early 2020. I reread what I’d written in 2008 and just finished the poem and put it to music in no time at all.

It’s rare when that happens. I’m not sure if you can say I wrote it very fast or just really slow, but it felt like that was something that had to be done, so I felt very fulfilled for a very little while.

What makes lyrics good in your opinion? What are your own ambitions and challenges in this regard?

Again, if I knew I’d go there more often. I love ambiguity and the unusual.

Robert Bresson said beauty isn’t beauty if it isn’t new. A sense of the “new” is what attracts me to any form of beauty. It comes in many disguises.

What are areas/themes/topics that you keep returning to in your lyrics?

Water (that’s probably an evolutionary thing seeing that we come from there.)

Once a piece is finished, how important is it for you to let it lie and evaluate it later on? How much improvement and refinement do you personally allow until you're satisfied with a piece?

I try to write without thinking and come back at a later point in time to work/ refine that if I’m not satisfied.

After finishing a piece or album and releasing something into the world, there can be a sense of emptiness. Can you relate to this – and how do you return to the state of creativity after experiencing it?

I guess it’s a bit like farming: it’s good for the soil to lay fallow for a while. It’s difficult for me to be patient; the magic of creation, for me, is addictive. But it takes a while for things to materialize, for things to grow.

Also, it’s not like it ever really stops, it’s just that sometimes you realize that you’ve collected enough crops for an album and then afterwards you might only have very little. So then you just try to create conditions in which you are likely to cultivate more.

Creativity can reach many different corners of our lives. Do you personally feel as though writing a piece of music is inherently different from something like making a great cup of coffee? What do you express through music that you couldn't or wouldn't in more 'mundane' tasks?

A well prepared meal or coffee give can be very satisfying. But it doesn’t fill that emptiness that a new song can occupy.