It was posted on Wednesday March 29th in the Ego99Blog. http://ego99.blogspot.com.
MadreOceano: Conversation on the Bathtub.
Carlos E. Herrera G..- On March 15th we received an email from Esteban Gómez, (the man behind MadreOceano) who told us about his "Eleven Songs written and recorded on the bathtub" album : Eleven songs that multiplie themselves, and because of their composition and order give a different view of the landscape of Buenos Aires and of the "sea of Plate " ( refering to the Río de la Plata area ). Something unsual for the sound geography that we usually listen with references such as Spinetta, García, Páez and a long etc. .Something is happening down there...great! it is great that now we can listen to artists such as Guille Vadalá o a Gonzalo Aloras. It is great that now there are bands like Turpentine or MadreOceano, to remind us (once again) that "the south also exists".
But it wasn´t until March 22nd that listening to your songs, I decided to contact you and build a wind bridge that would lead us to the thoughts that were at that moment in my head.
Esteban, a few hours ago I watched a TV interview of Juan Gelman, where he spoke about "silence" and now that I´ve listened to your album, "silence" comes to my mind. Of course "silence" as a term, the concept. Silence become rhythm and space. What do you think? I believe that "Eleven Songs" has a silent consistence. How do you feel about it? How much silence there is in Esteban Gómez and on "Eleven Songs" ?
Esteban: First of all I´d like to thank the time you spent on listening to the album and writiting me these lines. Also I wanna thank your kind words about the songs. It is always nice to listen to new approches on the record.
I really agree with you on this point. The album it is full of "silences", conceptual ones, musical ones , space ones and rhytm ones.
I believe that silence is always an artist´s partner. A person that would, with simple and brief elements, dare to throw a small piece of rock into the calm water with the hope of fulfilling in the time that he sees small waves where there was nothing but "calm" before. But if we take that "calm" as "silence" we would realize that, as many as the things that surround us; time wise and space wise, it is part of a process that depends on a dialectical issue. So, silence is nothing with out sound, and calm is nothing with out movement.
I think "Eleven Songs" is dyed with this dialetical issue of possitve and negative poles. It is a small game in the fields of Silence and Sound. A shy and childish game, that I play through an impulse that I don´t understand, not at the moment of creating the songs and not even now. It is an impulse that I just accept and follow.
Silence is not only part of the record in the aestethics but on the concepts that tries to get into. Silence as the unknown, as the place where the simplest questions are asked and as the place that the we´ll-never-find-out answers lay. Just as the previuos image, we´re the stone thrown to the water creating small waves by ourselves. We don´t know who threw us there .. we only know that our journey is small and finite. And that when our small waves end... our journey would end and we would start becoming part of that silence of no-existence.
And on the other hand, I grab the silence of the words, as you refer, words that are "an absence themselves". There´s absence of words in silence, but isn´t there absence on the words themselves? You can play games with words, put them in a song, play with their order and meaning, put a tune on them until you feel satisfied. But is the control that we have in the words giving us some control on the actual meaning? My experience says it doesn´t. I write about life, love, death, fears and I live my daily life with the silence each one of them provides me.
I don´t complain, I just try to understand this game we´re in the best that I can; understand that all we have is this small wave on the water´s surface. We just gotta enjoy the ride. Each one of us would find their way... I´ve found mine through words and melodies. Each song that I write surprises me, it feeds me and it makes me warm. So with that I think I have my basic needs covered.
Now thinking of silence and lonliness, I think these are the first things I need at the time of creating. What else than that moment between a blank paper and you? the exact moment before listening on how chords, words and melodies live together.
Carlos E. Herrera G.- I remember a scene on the argentine film "El lado oscuro del Corazón" where Alejandra, one of the characters says "words don´t make love, they make ´absence` " I think now that this "absence" is a different type of silence. What silence, or absence do you confront? And following that same sense, was there any loneliness or desolated feelings at the time of making the record?
Esteban: I enjoy and happily live with that loneliness and not with desolation.
I believe it is really healthy to learn to be alone. It is something that makes you know yourself, and realize that there are things that can only be produced by yourself and be unique. The result of that loniless can after be share and actually generate new creations, opposite of what I find in desolation, that it is just an empty state in itself and gives no results at all.
And once that the original result is created there´s nothing more than to put it into shape, to give it the right form. Being this format paper, rocks, stones, magnetic tapes or binary codes.
"Eleven Songs.." speaks about this moment also from its title, the act of write and record, of putting into shape what´s been created. And in that process make the origin clear. In this case "the bathtub", the intimate, private, relaxed and warm place in reality. And the regression, the care, the purification in the metaphor. As a womb that contains us and feeds us and promises a place in a new world for us yet to know.
Carlos, Thanks a lot for the questions. And thanks for the fact that you made me re-listen and re-discover my own work once again from a different perspective. I hope with these lines to have come far from the expected answers and once more try to create new questions and doubts.
Sincerely,
Esteban.
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