Pale Blue Dot

That's the name of a very famous photograph taken by the spaceprobe Voyager 1 at 6 billion kilometers away from Earth. It shows our planet as seen from that distance.

Our planet is that tiny light dot you can see over the yellowish 

stripe closest to the right edge of the picture.

About this photograph, Carl Sagan wrote the following. 

From this distant vantage point, the Earth might not seem of any particular interest. But for us, it's different. Consider again that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there – on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam. 

The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that in glory and triumph they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner. How frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds. Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity – in all this vastness – there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves. 

The Earth is the only world known, so far, to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment, the Earth is where we make our stand. It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known. 

—Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space, 1997 reprint, pp. xv–xvi

A short poem

This is a poem by my favorite writer, Jorge Luis Borges. I think I made that clear already but just in case I say it again. Below the original in Spanish and my own translation to English.

LA LUNA
A María Kodama
Hay tanta soledad en ese oro.
La luna de las noches no es la luna
que vio el primer Adán. Los largos siglos
de la vigilia humana la han colmado
de antiguo llanto. Mírala. Es tu espejo.

THE MOON
To María Kodama
There is so much loneliness in that gold.
The moon of the nights is not the moon
that the first Adam saw. The long centuries
of human wakefulness have filled it
with ancient weeping. Look at it. It is your mirror.

The future

I was watching a documentary called Into Eternity, which is about a place called Onkalo that is being built in Finland to store nuclear waste until it stops being dangerous to the environment, which will be in 100.000 years. I haven't yet seen the whole film, but I think one of the great problems the people involved in this project are facing is how to let the future generations, in 10.000, 20.000 or more years that this place is not safe, that they haven't found one of the great marvels of the Ancient World, but one of the most dangerous places in Earth. How to send a message across de millenia? In what language will they speak? Certainly not the one we speak now. How, then, can we communicate with them, if they don't even exist now?

It also made me think that we live in a tiny world, and we don't want to see beyond it. We don't want to understand the vastness, the infinity of time and space, the passing of millenia, the death of stars, the creation and destruction of life in millions of planets around the galaxy and in the most remote parts of the Universe. We live in this tiny, tiny world made of illusions and ghosts, of tiny gods that created the flowers and the blue sky, of tiny laws, our tiny concerns. I am not saying they are not important, we live in this world, we have to deal with it every day. we wake up, we go where we have to go, we do what we have to do, we eat, we cry, we worry about our waistlines, we take the subway, we walk, we walk more, we talk to friends on the phone, we worry, we suffer, we love, we are loved, we pray to our own gods, we sing quietly, we die, we resurrect. All this happens in this tiny tiny tiny tiny speck that floats quietly in the void. 

We hate each other just based of false ideas. We live behind masks because the systems we created have no space for difference, for truth. The systems we created are built to deny the void, to deny meaninglesness, when it is part of everything we do, it is the very essence of our beings. If we have a soul, then it is intimately connected to this void, to this meaninglesness. If there is a life after death, then it is nothing more than a return to this void, a complete embrace of the ultimate oblivion. But we choose to deny this entirely, convincing ourselves that there is, indeed meaning, that "everything happens for a reason," that after death we will be in a "better place, up there." We cling onto the hope that gathering once a week and repeating some ancient formulas (is 1500 years anything compared to the great ocean of 100.000 years that we are facing?) that we hope will bring us closer to some entity, and have it play in our favor. 

What is the pain of one day compared to 100.000 years of nuclear waste? What is the life of Christ? What is the hatred of one man? What is winning the lottery? What is writing an opera? We do the things we do because we hope some kind of recognition form them. We forget that our world is microsopic, that the rest of the universe is completely oblivious to our existence. We earn money because we have fear of dying alone and poor in some corner of a forgotten city. We marry because we want to have children that will populate the Earth and give us the illusion of some sort of immortality of our body. We kill and destroy everything that we don't understand. We spread hatred towards those that play against our own interests, even if they don't do us any harm. Why can't we remember every day of the void? Why can't we realize that the only thing that has any meaning is love? Why can't we realize that the only gesture that will give any meaning to the utter insignificance of our race is a hug, a kiss, an honest gesture, coming from within, from the willingness to connect with one another? Why can't we remember that that which unites us is much stronger than that which divides us? Why can't we remember that we all live crammed in this tiny rock, and that we might as well get along with each other?

100.000 years. The only remain of our civilization will be a cave, a huge cave, full of the most dangerous type of waste ever conceived. Is this the summary of what we are? Will this be our legacy for the future? All the destruction and suffering we have caused on our world will be reduced to this, a single cave full of our excrement.

Beautiful melodies

I am always impressed when I losten to music that has beuaitufl melodies. I really can't understand how that happens, how anybody can be able to write a melody that, with just a simple succession of rhythms and pitches can grab you by the heart and just drag you anywhere, while you just follow, half drooling, half smiling, half crying, in a state of blissful half-consciousness.

It almost seems to me that these melodies are impossible to write, that one does not write them, one discovers them. They are hidden somewhere behind this palpable reality, maybe just taken from the void itself. Maybe we just come accross them casually, as one would meet a good friend in the street, a friend one has not seen in a really long time so one wants to have the longest conversation with this person, afraid to lose her again in the whirpool of the world. Maybe melodies are also like that, once you find one, you have to cling to it with all your might, because if not you will lose it and it will never return to you, but will be lost forever in the void.

I have never been able to write a melody like that. I am still young, though, and just beginning a more dedicated life as a composer, so I might still have my chance. But it seems such an impossible task, when you listen at the music of other, greater composers like Sibelius, or Wagner, or Tchaikovsky or Grieg, composers that just seemed to breathe melodies, to dream melodies, to be melodies, these sweet sweet melodies, that just make you yearn for something unknown, that take you so many different places, to appeal to the last filament of your being.

Jean Sibelius

I have sometimes had the impression that the era of great melodies is over, after the old generation, those that were born still with one toe in the 19th century, died, we were left with a huge vacuum of meaninglessness. We didn't know what to do, we thought everything was lost. After the Great War everything was lost forever, and have had to rebuild everything again. We have had a few prophets since then, there was Stockhausen, there was Cage, there were many others, they opened new doors to new sonic universes.  There is, maybe, no other way but to just continue our own divergent ways, to find our own universes, to create our own sounds, and to look back and up to these great monuments of sound, to these immense abstract creations of light that were left to us from those older days, and be inspired by them, or reject them.

Karlheinz Stockhausen

There have been great moments in our new era after the Great War, after we decided to destroy our planet. we have been granted with beautiful visions of light, which maybe gives us hope of a brighter future. But we are too often too afraid of accepting these visions, of realizing them, and often we choose not to listen to them because the light they show is too blinding, or too incomprehensible for us now. 

Jean Sibelius - Kullervo op. 7

Karlheinz Stockhausen - Inori

Program notes

It is a very interesting experience to write program notes for one's music. I had to do it yesterday for the accordion pieces. It is always the question of how much to say regarding the intention, the content, etc. of the pieces. The ideal for me is not to say anything, but at the same time it is always nice to throw at least a little bit of rope to the listener, so that s/he can have a more interesting experience. In the end what I wrote is very brief, it says a lot (to me, at least) but it doesn0t say anything at the same time.

This work consists of a cycle of three smaller pieces, each of which explores a simple, concise musical idea.

The emotions we don't understand, the ones we cannot control, are, to me at least, the most honest part of our beings, of our souls.

The second part, for me, is the one that says most. I didn't know how to phrase it without making such a direct reference to the whole story behind the pieces. There is a story, there is something there, but I don't want the audience to know, or at least, I want them to convey their own stories  into the music, or not. I don't want to force anything. This is not late romantic music, this is me. It was my own story, but I think the music says enough, and the titles already say too much.

On another note, it's spring in Europe! I love spring, I love flowers everywhere, the warm wind that finally came after the darkness of winter. I love winter too, don't get me wrong, I love darkness, but I also love the sun, the heat, the flowers. There are so many flowers! I even took pictures during a walk yesterday. There are some trees close to my house that have pink flowers. Here are some of the pictures, sorry for the quality, but my mobile phone has a terrible camera (first world problems...).

This is a beautiful tree right next to my house

A canal in Rijswijk

Same canal

A very weird street on my way back home

The old town in Rijswijk

Some more beautiful trees

And the tree with pink flowers I mentioned, of all the pictures

I took, this one was the only one that came out well unfortunately...

Vocal piece finally recorded

Last week I finally recorded my vocal piece... it was an interesting experience to have this opportunity because a lot of things appeared that I didn't expect, some of them good, some of them not so much.

The final title of the piece is Pavamana Abhyaroha (follow thelink for the recording), which is the actual name of the mantra I chose as its text. It means "prayer of purification."

Some observations:

• The singer was most of the time out of tune. This is not because he couldn't sing in tune because he was a bad singer, but because in general he didn't have any reference in the piano. This problem mainly arises, I think, from the fact that I have perfect pitch and, in writing this piece I unconsciously assumed that a potential singer would be as easily in tune as I could be singing the same thing (of course, with the great difference of voice quality). I discovered, though, that the fact that he is singing out of tune is not so annoying, but what is annoying is the fact that he is singing the wrong intervals, or not reaching the right intonation in terms of interval (singing minor ninths too high, or singing the wrong melody at the end). After this I asked him to take this into consideration, to try to sing in tune, but if this is not possible, to at least sing the correct interval.
• The performers wanted to play all the time. This is normal coming from the 19th century-based musical education most performers get at the conservatoires. The idea of not playing at all during a full section of the piece is completely outrageous and out of the question, it is not even an issue I think, it just is not a thing. I wish to change this mentality in them, to make them see that not playing can sometimes be even more powerful.
• There is actually a climax at some point of the piece, which defeats completely the purpose of it. I even wrote what for me was a very clear instruction for this, but apparently it's not so much. 
  As a general performance advice, don’t let yourself be taken away by your emotions. Even though intensity and expressivity are valuable, you should always keep things in perspective. I think maybe it was too philosophical this explanation, and I might need to be more clear. 
  
  
  I forgot the singin bowl with which the piece ends... that was my bad. :( 
  
  
  
  A tibetan singing bowl
  
  
  And I have the greater existential doubt that I really don't know up to what point does the piece work in general, I don't know up to what point it defeats its own purpose, but then again what's its purpose? Did I really have a purpose in mind other than the musical idea? I didn't want to be preachy about the message of the text, I didn't expect anybody to become enlightened by it, I just wanted to write a musical piece that explored a different area, an undiscovered territory for me. 
  
  
  Did I fail? Maybe, I don't deny that the whole piece might be a failure, wanting to do too much. But I did learn a lot of things, in terms of notation, of possibilities of combining materials, of giving more freedom to the performers and all that that entails. In that sense it was not a failure. If the music is unendurable, then be it thus, next time I shall not fail, or maybe I will, maybe I will fail my whole life, but I don't think it will be a worthless journey if by failing constantly I learn more and more about music, about myself, about the world, about the sky, about sound, about humanity. If I must fail, then let me fail again and again.