Robert van Heumen Composer Improvisor Laptop-Instrumentalist Sound-Designer
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Time stand still

Between Christmas and New Years - as if time stands still in that period. I wonder how much that has to do with the dark weather, and if I'd perceive it in the same way on the southern hemisphere. Finally finding time (or disregarding time) to get away a bit from the rush of the freelancer with the parttime job on the side. Waking up slowly, drinking coffee while listening to Messiaen's 'Quartet for the end of time', doing some reading - philosophy mainly. What better words to make time stand still...

Finally I've also made (found?) time to work on an idea I've had for a while: making an 'ambient' cd. Late at night, as well as on those silent mornings, I like to listen to the really quiet work of Biosphere (Autour de la lune), but also to the more soundbased work of people like Gal, John Hudak, Jacob Kirkegaard. After finding an interesting and high potential soundsource in Supercollider, and inspired by the winter in Amsterdam, I decided to start a new project, based on minimalism in sound, using mainly that soundsource in Supercollider. I'll post some snippets later.

So I've been trying to wrap my mind around french philosopher Alain Badiou. His essay 'Ethics' is halfway between a political pamphlet and a philosophical discussion. I find it quite a difficult read, also because of this duality: should I read certain statements as his political opinion (with which I generally agree) or should I try to read it as logical conclusions of philosophical reasoning. Not trying to summarize his philosophy, his political statements are about how Human Rights are in today's world used as a mockup of political games, as a tool to keep the Western Lifestyle dominant. I've written and erased a couple of sentences here, as I'm terrible in putting these complicated issues into words. But I highly recommend reading Badiou yourself.