NGC 3372 Lieder

ABOUT

“…for an unknown reason they set out for NGC 3372, in search of a new dwelling…. It was a long and arduous journey, but the bright images from the longed-for Dreamworld illuminated the darkness of the almost unbearable void… The closer the destination, the more the picturesque images dissipated… Arriving at the coordinates, there was nothing left of the envisioned beauty. Instead of the hoped-for New World, there was only blackness. Disappointed, despaired and disillusioned, they looked in all other directions. And suddenly, lo and behold, the most wonderful cluster of nebulae was at the place of their origin. The distances made the hardly reachable, distant clusters of worlds shine in all their nonexistent splendor…”   

The NGC 3372 Lieder is a sequence of sound-poems and sound-passages, that attempt to represent the permanent quest for the seemingly tangible, but ultimately undiscoverable, as described by the prequel. The songs have been composed from 2006-2011 and can be perceived as a work in progress. A motionless singer takes on the role of narrator. Each sound poem can be perceived as a psychological Flashback. Though it permits a presentiment of a superordinate totality, there is no ultimate revelation. The sound passages are to be understood as conceptual connecting bridges between the sonic representations of mental states and fragmentary reminiscences (=memories). The modified repetition of some, in linear time “already traveled” sections, symbolizes the impossibility of an escape from oneself.

The language underlying the NGC 3372 Lieder is a deformed variant of Serbo-Croatian (the only exception is song “Al Falaq”), but the lyrics are still understandable without too much effort. The adjective absent occurs in the most diverse variants – as a word, morpheme, word formation – just like the personal and reflexive pronouns, as well as the nouns nightmare, night, heart and the adverb always. To clarify various differences in pronunciation (these are of great significance for a differentiated interpretation), diacritical marks foreign to the language are attached to various letters.

[Belma Bešlić-Gál | 10/2011]