that which travels through the wastelands

is a bubble

for want of a word better suited to describe it's form, or rather openness of form. What I mean is that the form changes, and may also be angular. It is not necessarily transparent, nor is the surface necessary smooth. A queer bubble. It may be textured and pleated like a cloth of linen, it may also be smooth. In short, a bubble.

I knew I had to spend a night in Hamburg in order to streamline my connections between Helsinki and Glasgow. I could've stayed in Copenhagen until the Swedish night-train from Malmö to Hamburg on a day that it runs, but yesterday it didn't.

I had contacted an old uni friend who settled in Hamburg, with whom I have stayed with previously, and who's company always cheers us both up – but she was away on a trip.

Remembering a Finnish friend who is doing an Erasmus in Hamburg, I queried after a place to stay and they suggested trying the Finnish Seamen's Mission.

Now this brought back some unusual memories I wasn't sure I had had.

Growing up in Belgium since 1989, my parent's took the principle of avoiding the tendency to remain in the Fenno-Scandinavian bubble, a path that many Nordic families took in the 1990's in Belgium. Me and my younger sibling went to a Belgian French-speaking school, and later joined a youth orchestra of the French speaking community in Brussels. My sibling was also involved in the local fencing community. I preferred solitary sports.

In short, the Finnish bubble wasn't really the scene for us. The least we did, was to allow for our phone numbers to be printed in the phone book of the Belgium-dwelling Finns. And this mostly for convenience revolving around the occasional birthday party logistics.

I think we went to play community baseball at Midsummer once. Maybe gave us all the shivers and we never returned.

But we did sometimes go and buy Finnish candy and rye bred at the said Finnish Seaman's Mission, at their Brussels office. Later we also gave concerts there.

Hamburg has one of the biggest offices, complete with a chapel, a sauna – and very conveniently for me: accommodation for passing travelers at a very reasonable price.

The dorm I stayed in had no-one else. The atmosphere of the place felt like I had been stranded in Hamburg perhaps because my ship had been suddenly quarantined, or delayed because of a storm on the North Sea. Like a friendly night-storage for a weary body.

Perhaps I had lost the keys to my house and my partner didn't answer the phone.

Where do you go?

Here of course. The dorm of the Finnish Seamen's Mission. Even the sauna was still warm.

The host mentioned the word 'jälkilöylyt' without explanation.

I had entered the bubble.

Next to the Finnish, was the Norwegian and the Danish Seamen's Missions. And down the street next to the conveniently places S-bahn station the Swedish Mission.

A chain of bubbles.

After the sauna I walked over to a birthday party my Finnish friend was playing records at. A very friendly atmosphere, and a drink on the house.

We ended up catching-up with my friend for over an hour, talking only Finnish amongst ourselves, and exchanging occasional friendly looks with other guests at the party. We did have a lot to talk about. I wanted to learn of the scene in Hamburg, and they were happy to share their experiences of a scene they seem to have integrated in at impressive speed. I had just come from a festival where one of their teachers presented an immersive multimedia work, so they gave it some local context and insight which was interesting to hear.

We talked about how diligence in composers looks different to the observer than performers diligence.

I'd like to think that I can sometimes work also lying down.

When leaving the bar to get a decent night's sleep before catching an early train in the morning, I waved a friendly goodbye to the guests at the bar that I hadn't exchanged almost a single word with. I was stuck in visions of a wasteland.

I walked back to stay with the sleeping Finns.

I started wondering whether I had just forgotten to board that train and that ferry the day before, and that I was in fact still where I had started.

The bells at midnight around the gigantic statue of Bismarck surrounded by barbed wire.

Another colleague of me wrote a short travel post when attending the Mustarinda residency in northern Finland. The residency that I have also attended for a total of two months in 2021-2022, has an explicit ecological dimension.

They favouritise land & sea travel, a venture they also channel extra funding towards. In exchange they ask for a short piece of writing relating to the travel.

My colleague titled their post 'Travels across the intermediary wasteland'.

In our subsequent friendly banter this has come to (lovingly) mean Sweden.

The trip I am currently on, Helsinki-Turku-Stockholm-Copenhagen (soon to be complemented with Hamburg-Brussels-London-Glasgow) is strange even by my standards of land-travel.

Once my obligations in Helsinki done, the task was to get to Glasgow as quickly as possible to attend 2 days of planning next year's Nordic Music Days, the curator team of which I was asked to join through a recommendation by the Finnish Composer's Society. Once the work in Glasgow would be completed, the task is to return back to Helsinki as soon as possible inorder to attend the Helena marathon skiing competition by the Holy Lake Pyhjärvi on Sunday.

Two nights to get there, three to get back, with a mere two nights at the destination.

Considering speed of travel needed for this venture, there is a danger for the intermediary countries to become wastelands.

I imagine swimming through a tube, holding breath until exiting the other side to rise back to the surface to draw breath. The tube and the water are a hindrance, not an adventure. I'd rather already be at the surface, not needing to pass through this submerged tube.

Contributing to this feeling of distracted transition, is the fact that I have made this trip numerous times in recent years, as part of my practice of committing to land-travel wherever possible.

Nothing is new.

On the other hand, everything is, of course. Both the observer and what is being observed. Another season, perhaps new human and non-human animal encounters.

New ideas.

Time to dwell into thoughts forming, the focus aided by the nonchalance of the moving landscape saying: 'nothing to see here, please get back to your thoughts'. Or: 'look over here, do you notice this lack of snow? we're giving you a pre-order package of the spring  soon coming on show to theatres near you'.

For me this particular trip is a necessary transit between two points, and the amplitude of the travel time caused by land & sea travel is much more about mental space than anything else.

I'm practically avoiding getting in touch with my friends and family that live on my itinerary, because I know I don't have time to meet them.

Normally I would put aside at least 2 weeks for a trip like this, so that I could vibe with loved-ones in London, Belgium, Hamburg and Copenhagen.

Not to mention the possibilities of creating and nurturing also professional ties in these locations, in view up an upcoming album release and upcoming concerts.

So the territories crossed by my trip are wastelands only insofar as they are necessary evils of fast transit.

As facilitators of mental space they are positively teeming with life.

yesterday I coined the term in describing a recurring phenomenon in writing music.

I was sitting in my favourite pizza joint in Helsinki, where I had taken my Estonian composer colleagues after a night at the Musica nova festival.

Musica nova saw many ebullient discussions about how composers, as well as other frequent listeners of the festival, position themselves with what they heard here and now. Many of them were quite short from my part, since I had a busy week simultaneously workshopping and planning a choral percussion concerto with video, due for premiere in September. This week as been a Composing week with a big C. I never felt like I had sat the evening until its closing arguments. I was more engaged in internal mushroom-picking.

it seems that I have been under the charm of the fertility of doubt especially poignantly this week.

sitting down for pizza with like-minded practicioners of a shy yet voyeuristic craft – with observers in introspect – acted as a reminder of what composing means for me.

composing is for me a conveyor belt meandering it's way slowly through a whole arcade of doubts of different sizes and colours. it's an activity that happens in a forest ecosystem of doubt.

the main attribute of doubt in this vein for me is, however, fertility.

a fertile kind of doubt is like a question that opens up to more questions, perhaps questions that appear to be further down the line – being the living proof that one has indeed gone further down the line.

I find myself welcoming this spawning of doubt, the gradual distribution of doubtful humidity, as an act of prospecting for interesting compositional questions.

fertile doubt is an occurrence of the leaf-litter – it's not a determined flyer occupying the space between moss and canopy

opening up to the fertility of doubt is a discreet practice, one that is done in silence and in a forehead-wrinkling state of quietude.

trusting the fertility of doubt is a act of turning the tables on melancholy.

I always have the vegan Pinato.