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Part 2

Take us through a day in your life, from a possible morning routine through to your work, please. Do you have a fixed schedule? How do music and other aspects of your life feed back into each other – do you separate the or instead try to make them blend seamlessly?

I don´t have a fixed work schedule, because I work with so many different projects at the same time, and also split my work between touring and working in my studio.

But when I´m home in Oslo, I keep a schedule because I´m married with two kids. I get up around 7 AM, make breakfast and tea for the family and see the kids off to school at 8:30 AM, then I bike the ten minutes to my studio. On the way I mentally prepare and make a schedule for what I´ll be doing that day, be it practising, composing, recording or anything else. Point being that I know where to start when I arrive and which tasks I need to get done during that day. When I arrive, I make coffee and start to work. Sometimes I spend half an hour playing or studying chess first. I take a lunch break around noon, and most days leave around 4 PM to go home to family obligations.

I keep a couple of instruments at home for pleasure, but I separate work from family life. My family life influence my work in the sense that it dictates and limits work hours, which I hope and believe makes me more effective when I´m working.

But of course I listen to music, read, watch films and so forth on my spare time, and as a creative worker I´m obviously not able to do that passively. So there is some bleeding going on.

Can you talk about a breakthrough work, event or a performance in your career? Why does it feel special to you? When, why and how did you start working on it, what were some of the motivations and ideas behind it?

I think I have to say making «The Third Script», the first collaboration album with Ólafur Björn Ólafsson (released on Hubro in 2017) feels like a creative breakthrough where I figured out a lot of stuff for my own sake. Both in the way I want to play the double bass, but also in terms of what it takes to make a collaboration feel mutual, what matters on a recording and then later how to be able to recreate this music live.

To me, the music on that album feels like the most intuitive, direct, honest and effortless I´ve made. It was a new beginning, or to me, the real beginning of stating my artistic identity.

This project started when I was living in Reykjavik in 2014, where I met Ólafur through our common friend Alex Somers. He introduced us and said he had the feeling we should work together. He was right, Ólafur and I are a really good match. Our music comes easily to us, it feels like there´s a readymade creative space between us that is very easy for us to inhabit together. It´s hard to describe exactly what it is, other than this feeling in itself being the motivation for working.

The actual recordings for this album where done in 2016, after I had moved back to Oslo. We spent four days recording it, with the idea of making one track every day. Those four tracks are on the album.

The standout track to me from this release is the title track, even though this is the most abstract and silent one. It´s a fifteen minute duo improvisation with double bass and Farfisa organ, played together in a big room without headphones. It felt like diving really deep, going behind and beyond the sounds. I´m sorry, this is hard to describe and might sound a bit esoteric, but I believe music has the potential of being a gateway to the divine, and those minutes felt like finding the map there.

There are many descriptions of the ideal state of mind for being creative. What is it like for you? What supports this ideal state of mind and what are distractions? Are there strategies to enter into this state more easily?

To me, it´s about being very focused and losing yourself at the same time. Quite the contradiction. I often don´t know it has happened until afterwards, when I realise I forgot myself and worked on behalf of something bigger.

The feeling is that what I create shouldn't be about me, I´m a tool for channelling something I didn't know existed. I´ve read and listened to lots of interviews with authors, and so many of the ones I like return to an idea of not knowing everything about the story and the characters they are writing about, that it takes shape along the way. This is a good place to be.

When I´m composing, I often enter a state like this through mechanical practising on one of my instruments. Doing scales or etudes on the double bass, starting from a very specific place that I get from somewhere outside of myself. Almost every time this triggers something for me to work creatively with, and something new, which to me feels more inspiring than going in circles with something I already know about.

Before going on stage, (or right after going onto the stage if the venue is small), I spend a couple of minutes rewinding myself to what I think of as my point zero. I do this by a meditation exercise focusing on relaxing everything in my body. It helps me get the feeling that I start from somewhere good and secure. Then I start playing. Mental techniques like this are very helpful to me.

Music and sounds can heal, but they can also hurt. Do you personally have experiences with either or both of these? Where do you personally see the biggest need and potential for music as a tool for healing?

I don´t have experiences with music physically healing or hurting, even though I´ve read theories on this. On the subject I can deeply recommend The Mysticism of Sound and Music: The Sufi Teaching of Hazrat Inayat Khan

On the mental side of things, I think it´s obvious that music has a huge potential of altering people and their mood. Either spontaneously or over time.

I think music can take an important role in slowing people down and making them be more contemplative in their lives. Everything is moving too fast now in my opinion and that is in the longterm damaging to the wellbeing of human being.

There is a fine line between cultural exchange and appropriation. What are your thoughts on the limits of copying, using cultural signs and symbols and the cultural/social/gender specificity of art?

Very important question. I´ll answer this with a personal experience.

I´ve travelled from Western Europe where I´m from to Iran to study music three times after becoming increasingly fascinated by classical Iranian music and especially how improvisation is used as a major feature in the interpretation of that music. It´s never been a goal for me to perform that music in public, to me that feels inappropriate. But if I respectfully can use ideas from this music that resonate in what I bring from my own culture, that´s something else and a method I believe both cultures can benefit from.

I think the key is to adapt influences in a respectful manner and educate yourself on the history of the cultures you´re borrowing from. It´s worth remembering that a culture is a dynamic entity that has a developing nature.

Our sense of hearing shares intriguing connections to other senses. From your experience, what are some of the most inspiring overlaps between different senses - and what do they tell us about the way our senses work?

I must admit I don´t experience any particular links between hearing and my other senses. For me hearing is very much connected with memory, places and emotion. A sound or a piece of music can instantly take me to a very specific place and/or time in my mind. Sometimes though a visual impression can become a direct influence on an auditive idea, this happen quite a lot to me when I create music.

The most inspiring overlap for me in the way I work with music is between my intuition and sense of hearing. I don´t know if it counts, but my sixth sense is very much at work both when I listen and perform.

Art can be a purpose in its own right, but it can also directly feed back into everyday life, take on a social and political role and lead to more engagement. Can you describe your approach to art and being an artist?

Wow, this question could be a Ph.D. thesis by itself!

To keep it short, I think of art and being an artist as a unique gateway to get a glimpse of how other people experience the world and how they see it. Art can convey perceptions of the world in a way that words cannot. This being said, I think it´s important to keep in mind that it´s not necessarily a divide between art in its own right, and the possible instrumentation of art.

Sometimes the artist´s intention can be an instrumental one, but the receiver can focus on the aesthetic experience - and the other way around. What I mean to say is that as an artist I should accept that my intentions as the artist shouldn't dictate a «correct» way of experience my art. People are different and their different reactions and interpretations are valid.

What can music express about life and death which words alone may not?

Music can convey feelings and states that are more complex than words.

Imagine a typewriter when you type several words on top of each other but instead of them blocking each other out as you type, you´d be able to read them all and see the relations deeper an deeper at every turn. Music has this multidimensional potential.

As an abstract form of art, it doesn't´t have to have a right or wrong way of experiencing it. On the contrary the same piece of music can tell different truths about life and death and give way to a deeper understanding of the nuances of the world and how we life. This is the main reason why I spend my time making and listening to music, to get a glimpse of what the world is like to someone else, experience that, learn from it and expand my own life.

I hope this expansion never ends.


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