06-08-2009, 12:00 AM
Your album, being an act of war, demands a super-careful selection.
It is a precise collection of the unforgettable moments of your life, and
everything that led you to them. Concentrate in it what has been and will
be meaningful to you. A warrior's album is something most concrete,
something so to the point that it is shattering.
Sit down, alone, and let your thoughts, memories, and ideas come to
you freely. Make an effort to let the voice from the depths of you speak
out and tell you what to select.
The selection is not an easy matter. This is the reason I say that
making this album is an act of war. You have to remake yourself ten times
over in order to know what to select.
Don't include stories that relate exclusively to you as a person who
thinks, feels, cries, or doesn't feel anything at all. The memorable
events of a shaman's album are affairs that will stand the test of time
because they have nothing to do with him, and yet he is in the thick of
them. He'll always be in the thick of them, for the duration of his life,
and perhaps beyond, but not quite personally.
In my time, not only did I not know what to choose, I thought I had
no experiences to choose from. It seemed that nothing had ever happened to
me. Of course, everything had happened to me, but in my effort to defend
the idea of myself, I had no time or inclination to notice anything.
The stories of a warrior's album are not personal, not assertions
about you as the center of everything. You feel, you don't feel; you
realize, you don't realize. All of that type of story is just you.
The memorable events we are after have the dark touch of the
impersonal. That touch permeates them. I don't know how else to explain
this.
It is a precise collection of the unforgettable moments of your life, and
everything that led you to them. Concentrate in it what has been and will
be meaningful to you. A warrior's album is something most concrete,
something so to the point that it is shattering.
Sit down, alone, and let your thoughts, memories, and ideas come to
you freely. Make an effort to let the voice from the depths of you speak
out and tell you what to select.
The selection is not an easy matter. This is the reason I say that
making this album is an act of war. You have to remake yourself ten times
over in order to know what to select.
Don't include stories that relate exclusively to you as a person who
thinks, feels, cries, or doesn't feel anything at all. The memorable
events of a shaman's album are affairs that will stand the test of time
because they have nothing to do with him, and yet he is in the thick of
them. He'll always be in the thick of them, for the duration of his life,
and perhaps beyond, but not quite personally.
In my time, not only did I not know what to choose, I thought I had
no experiences to choose from. It seemed that nothing had ever happened to
me. Of course, everything had happened to me, but in my effort to defend
the idea of myself, I had no time or inclination to notice anything.
The stories of a warrior's album are not personal, not assertions
about you as the center of everything. You feel, you don't feel; you
realize, you don't realize. All of that type of story is just you.
The memorable events we are after have the dark touch of the
impersonal. That touch permeates them. I don't know how else to explain
this.