After a week wandering around the city, sharing visions, and intimately connecting with Hugolin regarding what the nature of music is for me, it’s now time to let every one of those words and sensations be set free from our intellectualization and to let the invisible we are looking for bloom into their own embodiment… The whole process doesn’t have anything to do with the final destination we may be presently envisioning or desiring from a distance, but it's about personally abandoning ourselves to the instinctive motion that will define our collective journey and therefore determine wherever we will land once enfranchised from our ambitions to create something special. This, for me, doesn’t have anything to do with expressive art; it’s honesty and intentionality that I’m interested in, whatever it means at any given point in time. That’s also what determines the voyage and why I'm never worried, nor ever care, about what the manifestation of the pilgrimage lying ahead of us could be — or not. Group creation is about embracing the living organism that it is. There's no hiding, and it's only about being disposed or resistant, engaged or passive, collectivizing or controlling that will reveal the true nature of that so-called organic entity, always. It's one that needs everyone involved to completely surrender itself to the immutable spirit of the moment in order to experience its intemporal corporeality…
Consequently, that’s why establishing our experimental writing camp in Tangier is incredibly significant for me. I didn't want to rely on the comfort of our top-of-the-line HQ/studio back in Montreal… Having less “stuff” to play with makes us more creatively resourceful… We can’t count on any of your old usual “tricks” to compensate for lack of commitment or overcompensate for the absence of purpose. Here, we are deprived of any comfortable disguises and pretentious masks, and attempts to camouflage ourselves into a zillion pedal effects to cover the absence of soulful voluntarism are vain. That kind of trickery doesn't work here. We are exposed for what we are, not illusionarily celebrated for who we want others to think we are. And that freeing context is the reason we are either enthusiastically swimming against the current of our nature or selfishly determined to sabotage the unfettering stream of a new life motion for the sole benefit of our own status quo's miserability. Those two distinctive elements just can't coexist in an inceptive flow. There's no "fake it till it looks like it". Well, not anymore, there ain't... We have to be consequential.
The city’s distinctive character plays a massive underlayering role of great influence through the impalpability of its tidal-like movements, creating a daily sense of death and rebirth, a mythical passage between the conceptual notion of self-revision and the liberating manifestation of reality acknowledgement unshackling heart and mind towards what it is to “be” in the otherwise wide ocean of your illusions… I believe that its unique geographic location, that has it standing at the convergence of two continents (Africa and Europe) and two seas (the Atlantic Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea) while being close enough to the desert to feel its warmth on your skin, contributes to perceiving its subtle yet colossal presence through the wind it’s been carried onto. It all has an undeniable effect on anyone willing to lose their self-control, to lose their sense of gravity, their directional insurance necessity… Here, as much as your feet may be grounded on an endless source of earthly energy, your drifting psyche will inevitably converge its dreamy reminiscence into a floating, weightless traveling beyond the physical realm of self-imposed frontiers… If freedom is mainly a matter of the heart and mind, Tangier is a redemptive deliverance for anyone willing to find unbridling extrication in its midst.
That’s why the city plays a major role in the explorational identity of the studio. The word “Fajar”, which means “dawn” in Darija, evokes that ever-renewing sentiment, the endless measure of possibilities brought by every new arising morning. As for the “Soul Dweller” image, it represents an intentional state of inner anticipative evolvement and an inmost eagerness for migratory significance. The rest is determined by how deep we are all willing to dive into a real expressive disinhibition… And the most exciting of all privileges for me remains that you’ll be on the first line to partake in such a display of our yearning self-abnegation… of our spiritual hunger for intangibility.
And as our collective movement keeps evolving and transforming, sounds are slowly emerging from our longing bosoms…
Life creates life,
Your Brother and Friend,
Alex
PS: Make sure to pay close attention to the upcoming posts in my community “A View From Within” if you want to be part of the creative process… Get the secret out ;)
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