Process

The Walking Brain- poem

‘‘The Walking Brain is always in Pain,

Thinking too much, keep losing touch,

with the ground.

Analysing every move and sound.

The walking Brain is bound to get grey.

The best would be for the legs and feet,

to disobey, and run away!’’

From poem into a song

From the small poem the ideas for a bass line and layered voices evolved. The so called ‘walking’ of the brain would be expressed in the continuous loop of the bass. The idea of constant ‘noise’ of thoughts and many different voices in my mind would be expressed in different loops with effects from the Boss VE-20 pedal.

Performing ‘The Walking Brain’ within the performance ‘Arriving’ (2017) with dancer Leila Bakhtali in Art Gallery Home of Art, Amsterdam.

Collaborations and changes

Apart from solo I performed this piece in trio (Double Bass, Guitar and Drums). After performing the piece with Leila at home of art I added a part to the composition with more lyrics.

The very end is a simultaneous STOP/START after having heard ‘the only way out is in’ twice. My idea about it is that there is no way to stop unless starting something else. Or every Stop is a Start simultaneously and vice versa.

Lyrics

The minds conduct to deconstruct the intuitive,

musing mumbling questions tumbling,

circling chasing my tail. 

I’m on a trail of noise

consisting of complex findings piled onto alternate options.

Buzzing crowd, reasons loudly, firing, spinning, storming, tiring 

consideration trips over calculation rips apart the mystery of the

now,

I commit treason with reason.  

Growing

In many ways this song is about overthinking. The way it was created was quite overthought and conceptual (after the playfulness of the poem and drawing of a brain with legs came the long episode of creating in a more ‘brainy’ way!). Then when deciding on making a videoclip with Leila Bakhtali I had second thoughts about the composition as it was and started to compose more and rearrange the piece. This took time and I was about to leave to India. I wanted to use the small time frame in the autumn of 2017 where both Leila and me would live in the same place (Amsterdam. To be clear: this is rare, we didn’t live in the same country for 17 years then) to shoot the clip, but the actual final audio version was not there yet! While in India I realised I had been too impatient and hasty. Other than that: who does this in this order?! First visuals then audio and just before travelling. I would rather change the order for next time! So I decided to make a new recording in Lisbon after coming back from India to Amsterdam and deciding to move again. This recording took a while due to technical difficulties. Finally with collaborations from abroad (Brazil, Portugal, The Netherlands) the clip came into being. There was one crazy episode where a final mix had to be collected in the strangest way…What caused the long timeline for this one song/clip to come into life? Guess what; mostly my own overthinking and analysing!