AN INTUITIVE EXPERIMENT BY VISUAL ARTIST SOÑA LEE & COMPOSER AART STROOTMAN

Q: Let’s move to the ‘real music’ of Nyctophilia. Would you like to recall the first time you listened to this composition, Soña? What happened then?

S: From the beginning it felt like I was sleepwalking alone at night. Then this story came into my mind … A boy is lying asleep on his bed. A kind of darkness in the room is getting closer to him. Its shadow is spreading all over. Then, all of a sudden, the darkness comes to the boy’s bed. In his sleep he is very aware of this dark feeling. Finally the boy opens his eyes, he looks at the furniture in his room, the closet and the book shelves. Everything is shaking. The closet doors are opening and closing. Books are falling on the floor …

A smile of surprise becomes visible on Aart’s face.

Then there is the climax in the play. I enjoyed that part very much.

Soña continues.

The boy is sleepwalking towards the door of the room. The door opens. He can feel, he fears, that something is getting into his room … but he can’t see it. There’s a mirror opposite the door. The boy looks at it. The boy is really scared and somehow he is also very fascinated. Then he sees himself in the mirror. All of a sudden he wakes up … All the furniture in the room is leaving the room. The boy follows. He reaches the forest …

Silence. S is delving into her memories.

There is more, but [slightly hesitant] … I can’t catch it now.

Aart looks honoured by Soña’s description.

A: Wow, generally, when I write a composition, I’m not so much searching for a story line. It surprises me when it happens.

Q: Can you give a glimpse of how you did create Nyctophilia?

A: Well, it started with an invitation from Gaudeamus. I was asked to prepare a piece to be performed by a large string ensemble. I intuitively added percussion, guitar, bass guitar and the recorder trio. Then I started to rewrite a piece that I already had created before, but about which I wasn’t completely satisfied yet. I intended to write a really wild virtuoso solo for the first violinist of the string ensemble. I also wanted to explore the unknown explicitly, find a way to bring the unknown to life. Meanwhile there was very limited rehearsal time. So I came up with a different way of conducting. I incorporated certain cues in the score, and each cue meant something different for everyone. In fact it was another kind of language with its own syntax. In a sense it’s very dark material to handle. Even at the premiere we didn’t know how everything would come together at the very end.

Aart starts gesticulating.

If you look at the video, at certain points you will see me show three or five fingers. It corresponds with the cues. Different musicians then respond to each other … I built my own house of cards, as it were. It could easily be destroyed if someone missed a cue or wasn’t listening. So the performance itself is ultimately about not knowing what is going to happen.

Aart notices Soña visualising his words in her mind. He waits two seconds.

There was a great atmosphere. I really liked the kind of tension that it brought onto the stage.

Deep silence. To break the silence, S, A and Q briefly laugh heartily.

Q: And how do you feel about Soña making an artwork as a – yet unknown – response to the recording of Nyctophilia?

A: It’s actually the first time that someone, you Soña, is going to interpret a recorded performance instead of the score. Every time a score is performed, the musicians give their interpretation to it. Once an interpretation is recorded, it gets in fact fixed, while I prefer the liberty to make each performance sound differently. ‘Records ruin the landscape!’ said John Cage already in the sixties. This time is different. I’m very happy that the original openness of the score is passed on through the recording.

Aart says this with modesty and a kind of understated excitement.
Soña takes over smoothly.

S: I agree with you that creating is hard to grasp as a process and needs genuine openness. If I try to visualise a story too hard, then somehow it runs away from me. It’s delicate. I just always have to wait for the moment that it comes to me naturally. I’m still figuring out if there is some kind of trick, a way to let the inspiration come to me at any time I want. But I haven’t found it yet. So I feel like it’s just magic, this moment when all of a sudden I can clearly visualise a feeling to make an illustration.

I once heard an interview with the actor Joaquin Phoenix. He got questions like: what was your intention? What did you want to show? What made you act this way? He answered: I don’t know. I don’t know. I just was in the moment and I did it.

His reaction interested me, so I kept following his interviews. He always gives the same answers: I don’t know. I can’t explain. It was just the feeling. I like his answers very much. To me they explain a lot. You just make the best out of it within the moment.