The Dynamic Manifesto

1. Read your manifest out loud everyday. Add, subtract and change parts or sections ad. lib

2. Start your day by taking a moment to connect your breathing with your belly region/hara. Unveil your thinking mind and bring your heart-mind into the foreground, if just for a split second. Find your inner child, your Original Nature, become the Immovable Mover — then move!

3. Bring yourself into harmony with your surroundings: Try shifting a diesis upwards or downwards, or try shifting octaves. If you can’t move into harmony, make it groove. If you can’t make it groove, embrace the dissonance.

Form is emptiness. Emptiness is form. Most people who have ever encountered Zen will have read this phrase somewhere. The emptiness referred to in Zen, however, bears a slightly different connotation than what we usually think about when we use the word emptiness in our everyday language. Emptiness in Zen refers not to nothingness, but should be understood as a state void of prejudice and expectation, ready to become anything. Emptiness is content always coming out of nothingness, and ideally always turning back to nothingness without any trace. 

We wake up. We gobble the latest news for breakfast. We see reports about horrors and atrocities. We read, we see and we hear. We understand the situation. We realize that we should care. And we do care. We talk about it at work. At parties. Around the dinner table. We confirm each other’s thoughts. We confirm to each other that we are keeping track of what’s going on. That we are up to date. That we are responsible people who understand that what’s going on is wrong, and that there are things happening in this world which is not good. We understand that people need help. We walk out on the street. We walk past everyone who needs help. Avoid all the people who are asking us to help. We are on our way, and we don’t have time for this now.

On the 1st of February 2016 I released my second solo album. It is entitled «Forms & Poses» and explores the connection between the human body and the double bass. In order to play any type of instrument, we have to apply our body. The body of the instrument and our own body is the ingredients that make up sound, so there is always an aspect of physicality involved, sometimes obvious, sometimes not so much. This is what I want to communicate with this album and here are some more thoughts about the topic:

Silence is something which interests me, both in- and outside of music. In December 2015 my band Nakama released its debut album «Before the Storm» which in essence is a comment on the phenomena of silence in music, using silence as building blocks for the four pieces on the record. I had some ideas about the topic before we did the record, but I have done some more thinking on the subject in retrospect and I decided to share some of these thoughts here.