2 September 2024
Hong Kong, HKSAR

The beginning of the semester has been slightly more eventful than ever previously. Taking on the role of Acting Director of the Academy of Music has clearly brought new responsibilities, challenges, and surely opportunities, too. Later this week, I will moderate a conversation between myself and the creative team behind the new Wayne McGregor production, the Academy Award-winning Nicolas Becker (who did the sound design for one of my all-time favourite films, La Haine), and LEXX. The rest of the month will be spent preparing for the world premiere of Otherhood (2022) in Helsinki in early October, time still to be fixed, but date certainly the 6th, and venue- the venerated Musiikkitalo. And that’s just a taste of what’s coming.

I got to spend a couple days in Myanmar, once again, and the visit did not come without significant trepidation. The headlines are increasingly ominous, but the situation, even in the perpetually politically unstable Shan state, was absolutely peaceful- having a chance to enter the Danu self-administered zone, specifically to see Pindaya, one of the most sensational Buddhist sites in the world, was a privilege I’ll surely never forget, and clear evidence that, once again, like always, never believe what you read. The reality is always different, and depends as much on worldly circumstances as it does on the numinous ones.

Somehow all this inspiration has run up against the wall, or rather, the reality of responsibilities. There is simply so much to be done in every aspect that the space to create the completely new has dwindled- I remember with surprising detachment the first weeks of the pandemic when I sat down to write Russia: Today (2020), until then the longest piece of music I had ever attempted to write. And then, ARIA 空氣頌 (2020), all eighty minutes of it, directly after. How to find that moment again? How to find another one like it? The work on the horizon will demand a substantial shift in this sense, a forced widening. But without grace, or at the very least the good fortune of circumstance, I wonder what that creation might look like. Will it even still be?