Ephemerality Everywhere
disconnect 011/237
[8 December 2024]
-----------------------
I recently learned a new word - not in a foreign language, but in my mother tongue. The word describes a concept that can be observed pretty much everywhere in life and applies to almost anything you encounter or deal with. Given this perspective, it’s no surprise that this word and its meaning have accompanied my thoughts over the past two weeks.
As part of my current research for venues where I can present 40 Nights in Toronto, I came across a project room that I found interesting and decided to visit. I was more focused on the space than what they were exhibiting at the moment, so I only checked the opening hours before going.
When I arrived, the sign outside the space displayed the title of the current exhibition:
Schall & Rauch - über das Ephemere in der Kunst
(Smoke & Mirrors - about the ephemeral in art)
When I read it, I stumbled over the term das Ephemere. I had absolutely no idea what it meant, so I attended the exhibition without knowing what to expect. It primarily showcased various artworks, videos, and research documents related to sculptures and installations in public spaces in Berlin that had been removed or relocated. Yet, even after walking through, I still didn’t quite grasp the term’s meaning. Therefore, after leaving the exhibition, I curiously looked it up.
Ephemerality - The quality or state of being ephemeral
Ephemeral - Lasting a very short time
Even though (or exactly because?) it is such a simple concept, I was fascinated by it. Reflecting on the exhibition’s title after finding out what it meant revealed to me that ephemerality is an omnipresent aspect of art, especially of its creation process. And, after giving it another thought, I realized ephemerality isn’t just a common trait of art - it’s intrinsic to life itself. Nothing lasts forever, and whether something lasts for a short or a long amount of time depends entirely on perspective.
The next day, still caught up in this realization, I continued to explore the meaning of ephemerality. Among the many descriptions I discovered, the introduction from the Wikipedia article about ephemerality was the most interesting thing I found.
‘Ephemerality is the concept of things being transitory, existing only briefly.
[…]
There is no single definition of ephemerality.
[…]
Because different people may value the passage of time differently, ephemerality may be a relative, perceptual concept: in brief, what is short-lived may not be the object itself, but the attention we afford it. Perceptions of ephemerality vary between cultures, from melancholy and mitigation to embrace.’
After pasting this paragraph into my notes app, I scrolled down randomly and stopped at a short note I had saved in 2021.
‘You need to be willing to share anything/everything (people, things, what about thoughts and feelings?) and be ok with letting go at any given time. Nothing really belongs to you and can be gone forever from one moment to another.’
I couldn’t remember exactly when or in what situation I wrote down these thoughts, nor what specifically triggered them. However, I found it fascinating that the concept of ephemerality had been on my mind for quite some time before I first encountered the word itself. It seemed that it was lingering in my subconscious long before I actually had a term for it.
A couple of days before I visited the project space that showed the exhibition on ephemerality, I was about to start mixing the songs for 40 Nights in Toronto. After I finished arranging the last track, something unusual occurred, at least unusual for this production process that had been ongoing for about five months. While there had been periods of both high and low productivity, I never lacked motivation, energy, or focus to start working. However, at that moment, I found myself procrastinating.
I was somehow afraid to start mixing the songs, hesitant to accept that all the tracks for the project were finalized and that I would soon have to let them go. This triggered feelings of melancholy, maybe some hints of anxiety, originating in the realization of the ephemeral nature of the creative process that precedes the release of any artwork into the world.
As I procrastinated, I looked back at how I started producing 40 Nights in Toronto and realized that capturing the sense of ephemerality was essential in shaping the foundation of the songs.
Rather than depending on software synthesizers and rearranging notes and phrases like I typically did, I recorded everything I played spontaneously with a hardware synthesizer during 40-minute sessions. I then used fragments and sequences from these recordings as the foundations for my songs. Some of these recordings were not very well-timed, others lacked harmony - lots of them contained what you may call mistakes. However, if viewed from another perspective, these recordings are full of unique characteristics, representing ephemeral moments that I captured.
Then, during the forty nights I spent in Toronto after my brief stint in Montreal and before returning to Berlin, I set myself the goal of finishing all the songs for a new project by the end of the year. My process began with producing what I’d call now test songs to break down and track each step of my music production process. This helped me establish a master schedule aimed at completing songs more quickly, without overthinking whether they were finished or not.
Along the way, one of the most valuable lessons I learned is the importance of knowing when to step back and disconnect from what I am working on. In the past, I often spent countless hours making adjustments to my songs without actually improving them. Sometimes, the changes only made the songs different, but more frequently, I altered them in ways that were detrimental to both the music and my mindset. I found myself working on a piece for so long that I no longer liked it, which ultimately destroyed my motivation to finish.
Again, this is where the concept of ephemerality comes into play. Often, the best moments in life are temporary. Being aware of and embracing ephemerality makes life interesting, it is the key ingredient to beauty. If something were to last forever, there would be very little that is special.
As the German saying goes:
‘Man soll gehen, wenn’s am schönsten ist.’
(‘You should leave when it’s at its most beautiful.’)
Why? Because beauty lies in the ephemeral.
After reflecting on the concept of ephemerality, I accepted the idea of completing 40 Nights in Toronto and then moving on. While I was mixing the first songs, a vision for a follow-up project began to form in my mind. However, I set that idea aside for now and will return to it when the time is right. For the moment, I am focused on embracing the ephemerality of the final stages of creating this project.
Just before writing this, I finished mixing track number 9 out of 14. This is how the ephemeral synth recording layered with the background sounds from the video that accompanies the music for 40 NiT sounds like:
[media unavailable]
Enjoy your day or night!
glg Soda Paapi
Ephemerality Everywhere
disconnect 011/237
[8 December 2024]
-----------------------
I recently learned a new word - not in a foreign language, but in my mother tongue. The word describes a concept that can be observed pretty much everywhere in life and applies to almost anything you encounter or deal with. Given this perspective, it’s no surprise that this word and its meaning have accompanied my thoughts over the past two weeks.
As part of my current research for venues where I can present 40 Nights in Toronto, I came across a project room that I found interesting and decided to visit. I was more focused on the space than what they were exhibiting at the moment, so I only checked the opening hours before going.
When I arrived, the sign outside the space displayed the title of the current exhibition:
Schall & Rauch - über das Ephemere in der Kunst
(Smoke & Mirrors - about the ephemeral in art)
When I read it, I stumbled over the term das Ephemere. I had absolutely no idea what it meant, so I attended the exhibition without knowing what to expect. It primarily showcased various artworks, videos, and research documents related to sculptures and installations in public spaces in Berlin that had been removed or relocated. Yet, even after walking through, I still didn’t quite grasp the term’s meaning. Therefore, after leaving the exhibition, I curiously looked it up.
Ephemerality - The quality or state of being ephemeral
Ephemeral - Lasting a very short time
Even though (or exactly because?) it is such a simple concept, I was fascinated by it. Reflecting on the exhibition’s title after finding out what it meant revealed to me that ephemerality is an omnipresent aspect of art, especially of its creation process. And, after giving it another thought, I realized ephemerality isn’t just a common trait of art - it’s intrinsic to life itself. Nothing lasts forever, and whether something lasts for a short or a long amount of time depends entirely on perspective.
The next day, still caught up in this realization, I continued to explore the meaning of ephemerality. Among the many descriptions I discovered, the introduction from the Wikipedia article about ephemerality was the most interesting thing I found.
‘Ephemerality is the concept of things being transitory, existing only briefly.
[…]
There is no single definition of ephemerality.
[…]
Because different people may value the passage of time differently, ephemerality may be a relative, perceptual concept: in brief, what is short-lived may not be the object itself, but the attention we afford it. Perceptions of ephemerality vary between cultures, from melancholy and mitigation to embrace.’
After pasting this paragraph into my notes app, I scrolled down randomly and stopped at a short note I had saved in 2021.
‘You need to be willing to share anything/everything (people, things, what about thoughts and feelings?) and be ok with letting go at any given time. Nothing really belongs to you and can be gone forever from one moment to another.’
I couldn’t remember exactly when or in what situation I wrote down these thoughts, nor what specifically triggered them. However, I found it fascinating that the concept of ephemerality had been on my mind for quite some time before I first encountered the word itself. It seemed that it was lingering in my subconscious long before I actually had a term for it.
A couple of days before I visited the project space that showed the exhibition on ephemerality, I was about to start mixing the songs for 40 Nights in Toronto. After I finished arranging the last track, something unusual occurred, at least unusual for this production process that had been ongoing for about five months. While there had been periods of both high and low productivity, I never lacked motivation, energy, or focus to start working. However, at that moment, I found myself procrastinating.
I was somehow afraid to start mixing the songs, hesitant to accept that all the tracks for the project were finalized and that I would soon have to let them go. This triggered feelings of melancholy, maybe some hints of anxiety, originating in the realization of the ephemeral nature of the creative process that precedes the release of any artwork into the world.
As I procrastinated, I looked back at how I started producing 40 Nights in Toronto and realized that capturing the sense of ephemerality was essential in shaping the foundation of the songs.
Rather than depending on software synthesizers and rearranging notes and phrases like I typically did, I recorded everything I played spontaneously with a hardware synthesizer during 40-minute sessions. I then used fragments and sequences from these recordings as the foundations for my songs. Some of these recordings were not very well-timed, others lacked harmony - lots of them contained what you may call mistakes. However, if viewed from another perspective, these recordings are full of unique characteristics, representing ephemeral moments that I captured.
Then, during the forty nights I spent in Toronto after my brief stint in Montreal and before returning to Berlin, I set myself the goal of finishing all the songs for a new project by the end of the year. My process began with producing what I’d call now test songs to break down and track each step of my music production process. This helped me establish a master schedule aimed at completing songs more quickly, without overthinking whether they were finished or not.
Along the way, one of the most valuable lessons I learned is the importance of knowing when to step back and disconnect from what I am working on. In the past, I often spent countless hours making adjustments to my songs without actually improving them. Sometimes, the changes only made the songs different, but more frequently, I altered them in ways that were detrimental to both the music and my mindset. I found myself working on a piece for so long that I no longer liked it, which ultimately destroyed my motivation to finish.
Again, this is where the concept of ephemerality comes into play. Often, the best moments in life are temporary. Being aware of and embracing ephemerality makes life interesting, it is the key ingredient to beauty. If something were to last forever, there would be very little that is special.
As the German saying goes:
‘Man soll gehen, wenn’s am schönsten ist.’
(‘You should leave when it’s at its most beautiful.’)
Why? Because beauty lies in the ephemeral.
After reflecting on the concept of ephemerality, I accepted the idea of completing 40 Nights in Toronto and then moving on. While I was mixing the first songs, a vision for a follow-up project began to form in my mind. However, I set that idea aside for now and will return to it when the time is right. For the moment, I am focused on embracing the ephemerality of the final stages of creating this project.
Just before writing this, I finished mixing track number 9 out of 14. This is how the ephemeral synth recording layered with the background sounds from the video that accompanies the music for 40 NiT sounds like:
[media unavailable]
Enjoy your day or night!
glg Soda Paapi