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Part 2

Many writers have claimed that as soon as they enter into the process, certain aspects of the narrative are out of their hands. Do you like to keep strict control over the process or is there a sense of following things where they lead you?

That’s another interesting question and it relates to my observation in the last answer around determinism - though I don’t really mean ‘determinism’ in its strict definition.

Rather, what I mean is that for me at a certain point I often feel like a piece I’m working on will start to ‘speak back to me.’ To show me which way it wants to go even if I’ve been pushing in a different direction. Then I really have to listen to that and try to work out what it’s saying to me. I actually really love those moments because I think what is being revealed is a logic that is bigger than just my thoughts.

Often, while writing, new ideas and alternative roads will open themselves up, pulling and pushing the creator in a different direction. Does this happen to you, too, and how do you deal with it? What do you do with these ideas?

Certainly ideas get discarded on the way to completing a composition. I have a file of ideas and sometimes when I’m looking for inspiration I flip through them and occasionally something that I haven’t touched for years all of a sudden finds a place in something new. Also the ideas that I sing into my phone can be really useful. If I get stuck on something I’ll go and listen to a whole lot of those recordings and see if there’s anything there for me.

In fact the ending of Diomira (from Crossed and Recrossed) came about partly through that process. I was going through old recordings on my phone and I found this recording of my son sitting on a balcony on a warm evening in Sydney. He was probably only about four years old. He was playing with this music game on a phone, and he calls out to me. And something to me in this moment captured in that field recording is poignant to the time when he was little. And many years after the recording was made I was working on Diomira and I dropped it into the piece just to see what it would sound like and it all seem to fit perfectly.

For me the feeling of that recording relates really strongly to the sense of longing that is a part of the experience of time passing that is central to the place Calvino describes in Diomira.

There are many descriptions of the creative state. How would you describe it for you personally? Is there an element of spirituality to what you do?

To be honest I don’t really know how to define spirituality. But what I would say, is that when I am working on music there are moments of truth. Of authenticity. I think sometimes I can reach part of myself in music that I can’t in other spheres  of life. Those moments are really special; time changes or drops away and I do feel a sense of connection.

With what? I don’t know. Perhaps myself. I don’t follow any particular spiritual path or religion but I’m also open to the possibility of something more than the dimensions we perceive. Perhaps creativity is partly about cultivating an awareness of whatever it is that is beyond our conscious perception.

Especially in the digital age, the writing and production process tends towards the infinite. What marks the end of the process? How do you finish a work?

I feel like recognising when something is finished is a skill you develop that can be refined. At this point, I usually know when something is reaching a point of resolution, whether that’s in a live improvisation with others, or in a composition or recording.

When I’m recording and post producing the temptation to fiddle for ever. But as I’m approaching resolution I tend to bounce out a mix and leave it for a little while. Then I listen to it in all kinds of different settings: driving in the car, cooking dinner when there’s lots of ambient noise around, on really really good speakers, on earbuds while I’m riding my bike.

And I listen to the piece in sequence with other music that I really like. I try to trick myself into hearing it with the kind of ears I have for other people’s music. And sometimes I hear things do you haven’t heard before that I really like. Other times I hear things and realise that the piece I’m working on - that I was hoping was finished -actually needs a lot more work.

Once a piece is finished, how important is it for you to let it lie and evaluate it later on? How much improvement and refinement do you personally allow until you’re satisfied with a piece? What does this process look like in practise?

I just answered the first part of his question but with regard to the second part: I allow as much time as it takes. Sometimes things take years to finish and other times things resolve themselves quite quickly. But I actually really love the process of refining something that is close to finished.

What’s your take on the role and importance of production, including mixing and mastering for you personally? How involved do you get in this?

Post production for me is almost as big a part of the creative process as writing and rehearsing and recording. Because I’ve become so interested in electroacoustic techniques I spend ages in this phase working with the sounds, editing, re-recording and processing and then overdubbing gain. I really love it and I’ve worked very hard on building my skills over the last couple of years. I have a solo album coming out on the wonderful Australian label  Room40 in a few months and I worked on that like a demon during Covid.

I hasten to add that I don’t do the final mixes on my albums though. I really enjoy having other people’s input at that stage of the process. I often work with Jem Savage who does a lot of stuff with the Australian Art Orchestra. Most recently he mixed Sometimes Home Can Grow Stranger Than Space (an Australian Art Orchestra album that features a long form composition of mine called Shape Folds), Hand to Earth which is the album made with David and Daniel Wilfred, and Closed Beginnings which is an album with Zimbabwean spoken word artist, Tariro Mavondo.

I also work a lot with Joe Talia who is another guy from Melbourne who does a lot of stuff internationally including Oren Ambarchi and Eiko Ishibashi. He mixed Crossed and Recrossed and really brought something else to that album, actually something I wasn’t expecting, a real cinematic quality. For my solo album I’ve been working with Lawrence English (Room40) and that’s also being a real joy.

[Read our Lawrence English interview]
[Read Lawrence English talk sound]

[Read our Oren Ambarchi interview]

After finishing a piece or album and releasing something into the world, there can be a sense of emptiness. Can you relate to this – and how do you return to the state of creativity after experiencing it?

To be honest I don’t give myself that much time to experience it. I have a very busy life, perhaps too busy. Perhaps I’m a little bit work addicted. I’ve usually got two or three things on the go at any one time and I just move from one thing to another and work every day. Not all of the work I do is creative, but there’s lots of other stuff that needs to happen around creative work to bring it into the world to give it a context to get people to hear it. I also enjoy this work (most of the time!)

Creativity can reach many different corners of our lives. Do you personally feel as though writing a piece of music is inherently different from something like making a great cup of coffee? What do you express through music that you couldn’t or wouldn’t in more ‘mundane’ tasks?

Certainly creativity comes in many different forms, or rather, creativity is necessary for many activities in life. But making art is different in important ways from other things. To make art you have to be prepared to embrace the discomfort of not knowing. As an artist it’s your job to bring something into being that doesn’t yet exist, to bring forth an idea from nothing. There’s real intellectual sweat involved in that. It can also be hard on you emotionally as well.

You have to be prepared to be unproductive. You have to be willing to sit with being unproductive. Sit with failing. And work through feelings of insecurity and feeling like everything is shit. In other kinds of work I do I just don’t experience these feelings. If I have a practical task to do the task is much more known and I can sit down and just work out how get it done and I know if I sit down and work at it for a certain number of hours I will get it done. Practical tasks may require creative thinking but there’s something different about making art - at least for me. I’ve said I approach making art like a practical task with a minimum of fuss partly because that’s my way of facing it in a sense, but it’s not really a practical task at all!

To be honest, after being creative for a while sometimes I really long for practical tasks! And even though I said earlier that I find writing music nourishing, sometimes I find it really hard and actually feel like it’s the last thing I want to do! It can be at an emotional roller coaster. It’s the best thing to have done, and it’s an amazing feeling to finish something and to feel like you made something worthwhile, or something true. But the actual making itself can be quite hard in a very particular way.


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