Part 2

Tell me about some of the feedback you've received from listeners about how your work has impacted them.

Someone recently commented on the “Friends With Oranges” Video that it made them think about their friends who were all so far away these days and that it made them want to hang out again. This moved me. Thinking about this stranger’s life, about friends growing apart, about missing people and times spent together.

My friend Julie texted me that she was waiting for the train at Kottbusser Tor, feeling overwhelmed, and that she listened to “Pairs“ because it calmed her down.



Little messages like this, from friends, from strangers, mean a lot to me. I think I still find it quite miraculous that people are actually enjoying listening to my music. This is not false modesty, I’m honestly delighted, I think it’s because it’s still quite new to me, having my music out there like this. How wonderful that people can find comfort in my music, that they can find a moment of rest with it, or even allow themselves to dive deep into their feelings.

When the “Melted Being” video came out, some people said they cried watching it. It’s a very simple video — just me and Ralph Heidel standing across from each other at different places, then running into each other’s arms. It’s something we started doing in our friendship, a joyful greeting where Ralph jumps into my arms and I spin him around.

I think maybe they could feel that — the honesty of it.

What are some of the goals and ambitions you have for your music?

I’ve never been a person to think far ahead. Sometimes I get a flash of a feeling about the future but I’ve never had a greater plan, a big concept, a strategy, a specific goal.

I do have ambitions though, they are part of what drives me to create — giving me a sense of purpose and a reason to dedicate my time to it. Joining, of course, the inner necessity and joy for creating itself, as an ongoing attempt at articulation and coping. I have an inner trust for my work, because it fulfills and consoles me, and I have ambitions that make me feel like it will get me somewhere, that make me want to get somewhere.

I want to continue this way, putting things together as they emerge, finding connections and meaning in each step, not completely knowing what something will become, but knowing that it will become something.

What kind of music/art do you feel the world needs right now - does it need “healing,” “shaking up,” “an escape from reality,” “consolation,” “a sense of community,” “holding up a mirror,” something else?

I think, as with everything, the world needs music and art born from a genuine, honest urge to create — without concern for what it should be or what it could be, but simply allowing it to be exactly what it is.

I think humans have a sharp sense of authenticity. When something is authentic all of what you listed in your question can come to work at the same time. I’m repeatedly amazed how something truly personal and specific can suddenly feel so universally impactful.

Next to genuine expression the world needs an understanding of complexity, of the coexistence of opposing thoughts and emotions. Nothing is ever just one thing. And everything needs to be found out new.

I would think that if we didn’t put so much energy into shame and trying to cancel out all the bad, but instead spent some time with our own bad, then we would listen to each other much more and would not become so defensive, which is just a total dead-end.

What are some of the non-musical topics and causes you feel strongly about? Do you keep them separate from or try to connect them to your creative work?

I feel strongly about many things. Often very banal things.

Just the same as I ask myself: Why must there be such cruelty? Why can’t everyone and everything exist in peace and equality? Why is there so much hate for some people’s mere existence. Why would’t you want to be kind and just? Why are people abusing their power? For a grown-up, these questions might sound rhetorical or naive — questions a child might ask — but I mean it, just like the kids mean it.

I think the answers lie in the very small and expand from there. Maybe I’m wrong about that. Maybe I am just concerned with the very small — the things that happen between the people I know and within myself. But it makes sense to me, that studying small patterns can tell a lot about langer structures as well.

I keep nothing separate, everything is endlessly influenced.

It is possible for someone with an entirely different world view from your own to love or appreciate your work. How, if at all, is it possible to use this power of sound and music to enter into a dialogue?

I think that is the art, that’s what I long for, what I so much enjoy: finding ways to translate something deeply personal and specific into something of a different form — music, film, poetry — that becomes a form of itself, both specific and broad. And in that way it can feel personal to anyone who is open to it, by connecting it to their own life.

I guess it also depends on how much we censor ourselves before experiencing something. That’s where music and sound have a special quality, because they enter the body quite immediately, on an emotional level, before all of the thinking can take place.

I think we often don’t allow ourselves to experience something fully, because it doesn’t seem appropriate, or doesn’t align with our moral beliefs or tastes. It’s so easy to judge immediately. To engage in a dialogue one needs to be open to the other, to take in new truths, move them around a bit on the inside and then, only after a while, combine them with what’s already there. I need to remind myself of that as well.

In human history, music is a universal across cultures and eras of development. Still, musicians are possibly being exploited more than ever. How do you feel they can see beyond their personal limitations, and form bonds and communities capable of tangibly furthering their cause? How can we get people to listen?

I try not to focus on how to “get people to listen“ or “further a cause.“ As a musician, that is not my concern.

In any art, as soon as I sense that something was made with an agenda or intention beyond the pure act of creation, it doesn’t move me as deeply. I can appreciate it as important work, support it, confront myself with it. But in art I’m always looking for something that makes me feel deeply.

I guess that makes me quite pleasure driven — because feeling is much more pleasurable to me than thinking. For me, there are things in life one can only feel, not explain or rationally understand. Maybe those things are more important to me than the rational rest.

Communities are vital — I don’t know how I would live my life and make my art without the immense support of the people around me. To have that is a gift. And wonderful art can blossom when different minds and skills come together.