On our plans and the Higher Powers

"Do you love planned days?"

This question was recently addressed to me by a close person. I could not unambiguously answer this question "yes" or "no", but during our dialogue we just came to the conclusion that it is often necessary to plan the days, because otherwise I will forget half of those things that I have to do. The probability of an enterprise quite often depends on various factors, and plans start branching out, because in fact you could not know which branch will work and which one will fail. Sometimes it happens that something intrudes into a carefully planned schedule, something which forces us to move away from all schedules and plans, or be more and more late for each of the subsequent meetings. In any case, it seems to me that the planning of the day is a kind of discipline, by following which we just learn to be prepared for any surprise, be it an unpleasant coincidence, a pleasant meeting or an amazing adventure.

There is also a category of disruptions of our plans called force majeure. These are situations when we are forced to submit to the will of the Higher Powers. Such situations are specially noted in official papers and legal documents, with special reservations that, so to say, in case of force majeure, this or that side is not responsible for the consequences. The situation is not pleasant, so when we hear "force majeure" negative associations unconsciously appear in our minds. However, sometimes the Higher Forces create small, sometimes insignificant or inconspicuous force majeures, which cause some surprises to happen.

This year the annual Armmono Festival was held from April 29 to May 3. Fortunately, these dates basically coincided with the days off and holidays celebrated in our country, and so I dissolved in the theater halls, running from one to another in between performances to catch up with the start. As always, regular viewers managed to make friends, maintained interesting conversations, made the atmosphere of the festival even more festive.

A couple of weeks before the festival, one of my new acquaintances, a promising young actor, invited me to attend their graduate production. I'd just seen some photographs of the stage layout, and I was very interested in what will come out of it all. I promised to come, and so I was waiting for the announcement. And so, a few days before the festival, I am getting an invitation from this very actor, I am agree to attend, I am opening the schedule for the upcoming week to add a note... and I realize that the premiere falls on the very middle of the third day of the festival – May 1. "Well, I'll have to miss three performances: a mono-opera (I have not yet seen such performances yet), a performance by a famous actress from Ukraine, and one of our debuts, which were quite many this year.

No. The play to which I was invited was not that force majeure I am going to talk here about. Those were a bottle of beer with a nourishing cheburek (deep-fried flat patties filled with minced meat), which I, having got hungry, bought after the planned visit of the first of the 1^st of May performances. I was sitting on a bench in the garden near the Republic Square, I was eating and drinking without any rush, and during that process something somehow made me believe that between 17:00, which was the end of the very debut that I was going to miss, and 17:00, which was supposed to be the start of the play, which I had to visit, there were enough minutes and seconds for me to have time to run from the Sundukyan State Academic Theater to the National Theater. In reality, the distance between them is 0.87 miles, which usually can be traversed in 17-18 minutes.

So now I had to hurry to make it to the beginning of the debut "Վերադառնում եմ, մոռացեք..." ("I am returning, forget about it..."). Fed and happy, I was ready for any continuation of the day. After all, I could get out before the end of this performance, to be in time for the beginning of another one. Having got into the space under the main stage, I realized that I would have to stand behind a massive beam that would cover 80% of the view I got if I had to sit. But I could move freely, and so I kept track of what was happening on stage. And on the stage a young actress Nvard Dudukchyan (Նվարդ Դուդուկչյան) was telling the story of a woman who lived in those cold and hungry years in which I happened to live. She painted images and situations so accurately that I was going from bitter memories into optimistic laughter, out of admiration for the beauty of the human nature into the darkness and cold of that time.

The only thing I did not quite understand was her age: the debutante looked very fresh, young, but she was about thirty years old, no less.

And I understood all the rest, I accepted it, and accepted again and so for an hour, while she was devoting herself to her play. I liked what I see more and more, and I realized that I would definitely be late for that another performance, but I did not resist. I increasingly believed in what I saw, more and more often repeating "Yes! Yes! Yes!" inside of me, my spirit was calm, and I felt euphoria of happiness, when suddenly ...

... someone’s cell phone rang.

Not only people in our audience do not turn their phones off prior to the beginning of a performance. This disease is inherent in all. I remember how during two out of the three Peter Hammill concerts in London this year at the very beginning of the songs (with quite a dramatic content) someone’s cell phone started ringing. But then the person in the audience, embarrassed, interrupted the call, turned the phone off and tried not to meet the eyes of those who were there until they forgot about him (or her). But in our case, a man collapsed in his seat in the middle (!) of the first (!!) row answered (!!!) the call and, as if nothing had happened, began to find out his relationships with someone.

This was the force-majeure that was due to happen to Nvard, and it depended solely on her through which of the branches of the unforeseen, unplanned situation she would get out of it. "Hold on! Hold on! Do not break! Take it! He will finish his stupid conversation soon..."

...

I had to hurry after the performance, but the audience kept on and on and on applauding, congratulating, wiping away tears and glowing with smiles, but I had to tell her one phrase, and only after that I could leave the theater. "It was a debut worthy of Triumph," I said (this is the name of a certain category of the festival awards).

Nvard is an unusual person (as well as each of us). The range of her interests is really pleasing, the desire to create commands high respect, and the openness with which she challenges the new, gives confidence that our youth deserves admiration and attention. Confusion with age was resolved when I found out that she was not yet twenty. She was among those who came to my concert at the end of June and we even had some time to briefly talk in "how are you doing?" manner.

A week ago, I learned that a slightly modified version of the same performance was to be played on the 3^rd of July in the Winter Hall of the Sundukyan State Academic Theater. "Winter – that would be great with our forty-degree heat!"

Despite the evening time, the heat was still persisting, but we somehow coped with it. This time I was lucky with my seat: I was sitting in the first row next to the left side of the stage, so I could see everything that had escaped me on the first of May ... But were there, during the debut, those very tears, real tears, tears alive that I was seeing now? I do not remember, but it was not important now, now, when she was once again telling the story that happened in the years when she was not even born, and when listening to it, we were crying, smiling, weeping again, then laughing – and applauding! She was talking about those cold days, wearing a few woolen sweaters, a hat, gloves, winter boots, a handkerchief (yes, we clothed like that in those years!), and understanding how unbearably hot it was now for her, we still felt that cold of the early 90's. Ropes in her hands came to life and became people with different characters and destinies. She was creating pictures, she was working, she was trying...

... and only after the performance did she learn that on the same day, the first of May, when she appeared before the real audience, many of whom did not understand a word of what she said, when she masterfully turned into a woman who could had a daughter of her age, when she did not break down in front of an indifferent audience occupying the most privileged place – on that very day she had grown to become an actress, and as confirmation of this came the news that she had received an invitation to take part in an international theater festival, about which we soon, I hope, will learn firsthand.

Nvard did not make plans for the future prior to her debut. She correctly assessed her strength and worked conscientiously on here and now basis. She read her role, she did everything right, but added a little touch of Life – and so she was able to stand the force majeure, which was specially created to test her for strength. She made everything as it should on last Monday, but she invested even more Life. By the way, this time there was someone with the phone among the audience again (more than once the phone rang), but Life does not like to repeat itself, and so this call had no more power over Nvard. Life is already preparing for her and for each of the Young Generation something new, something special, something that they all have to face and not to break. Then the new horizons will open for them.

In the meantime, I want to wish them all to love what they are doing and to do what they love. They are so good at it!

The Higher Powers laugh at us when we are planning our days. So, probably, I would say I love the planned days, because on such days so many unexpected things can happen.

Tribute: In Retrospect

Being overloaded with various tasks and due to certain circumstances, I missed the right moment when I could illuminate the process of completing the work on my tribute album, on which I've been talking for two years. Editing and mixing multi-channel raw material into the final stereo version and applying sound effects, mastering, getting and preparing the necessary paperwork, disc duplicating, developing and printing the artworks – all these important processes were mapped onto two and a half months which have passed since my last publication here in my Journal. It would now be very difficult to me to bring together the expressions from all those time-consuming yet necessary steps, but I will try to finish this essay having left some memories on these pages.

In retrospect, I realize that the title of the album – “Something Deep Inside Me” (a line from one of the songs from Peter Hammill’s first solo album “Fool's Mate” (1971) - I Once Wrote Some Poems, which has been included into my album) – suits it the best. It really contains something that lies somewhere deep inside me (most likely, it was always there). People mentioned on the pages of the booklet also live deep inside me, even if they are not with us already. The songs played, sung and recorded on the disc also came out of the depths to which they were immersing during long years of listening, thinking, performing, and, of course, reliving. Even the artwork design – every part of it! - carries some embedded meaning.

By the way, the design. I really wanted to create a product that would be a pleasure to hold in one’s hands, to open, to read, to look at, and even to unpack. I was well prepared for hearing statements such as "who buys (listens to, collects, etc.) CDs today?" and "Better tell me where can I download the album from?".... Nowhere, unless someone rips it and shares over the net. But in the downloaded files you will not get all of the particles that "are deep inside me" and which constitute my work. Therefore, if you are interested in the album in its full sense, I would recommend to buy the original. You would spend on it some five hundred times less than I did, and you will get 73 minutes and 59 seconds of music, cardboard gatefold cover, one wing of which holds the disc placed in the inner cover with a commemorative photograph (taken during the last hour before my trip to Madrid concert by Peter Hammill in December 2015) and information about the albums on which the submitted songs were published for the first time, and in the other you will find a 12-page booklet with colour photographs of musicians and brief information about them, with introductory essay and notes on each of the fifteen songs represented on the album. "Didn’t you invest too much in the design?", I was recently asked. No, not too much – well enough to proudly offer the diligent work of seven people, done during the last two years. The front cover picture is a slightly modified photograph taken by me in London in 2013. I wanted to capture myself reflected in the window of a passing London red bus, which I finally did not far from Wood Green Tube Station. Trying to find a way to give a hint on “who is the author of the songs” at a first glance at the cover, I replaced the transport logo with the Hammill monogram (of course, with his personal approval). On the back side – those five of us who were in town at the time of the photo session, selflessly conducted by a professional photographer Lilianna Hakhverdyan, with the Northern Avenue recently erected in the heart of my city in the background. On the inside gatefold – London as viewed from the heights of Alexandra Palace. I used a photo taken my eldest daughter for the first page of the booklet, and on the last page I put one of the photographs taken after the Van der Graaf Generator London concert in 2013. If my memory serves me well, the shutter button of my camera was pressed by a beautiful Brazilian female fan… or was that someone from the band or the crew?

Each of the songs carries something that prompted me to include it on the album. I am not going to repeat what is already written in the booklet, but rather refer to the subject discussed on the pages of my Journal earlier: Tribute. How has my Tribute been expressed?

In one of the 1994 interviews Peter Hammill was asked about his attitude towards tributes. Having said that he personally had nothing against it, he presented his personal understanding of "tribute version" and "cover version" concepts. According to it, when one is playing a song in its canonical form to which the listeners are used to, we deal with tribute versions. When doing a cover version, the performer “should mess around with the song and make it sound completely different”, i.e. the song should be performed in an unusual manner for the listener, "reworked" in the good sense of the word, reinvented, reinterpreted, relived. In other words, cover versions should contain the personality of the artist. Following this formula, my album contains both tribute and cover versions, therefore I decided to use the encompassing «homage» for the subtitle.

The first category can be represented by Afterwards, Celebrity Kissing, I Once Wrote Some Poems, Nadir's Big Chance, Happy, Easy to Slip Away, Sitting Targets and The Future Now. They all repeat their original structures and the manner of performance. However, each of them contains something that makes it "new".

In the instrumental part of Afterwards, only the first phrase of the 1969 original piano solo was borrowed, after which the baton is being handed to my electric guitar, Sat Sargsyan’s flute and Rima Mirzoyan’s violin – two charming "classical" musicians and good friends of mine. Celebrity Kissing demonstrates a dialogue between two solo guitars, one of them performed by the main drummer on the album – Ashot Korganyan. I Once Wrote Some Poems is presented here with minimalist acoustic ending, transforming into Nadir's Big Chance with loose 'home' vocal. Happy is introduced by a brief theatrical either introduction or rehearsal, and Easy to Slip Away and Sitting Targets combine elements borrowed from different versions performed during several decades. In addition to this, The Future Now has a small but important time shift.

The songs from the second category deserve more detailed coverage, but again I will hold to a concise form, as much as this will be possible.

My version of The Boat of Millions of Years includes all three verses written by Hammill at the time, but only performed live during the early concerts. The official studio version contains only two of them. Pictures formed by the characters from the Ancient Egypt mythology were being drawn in my mind by some divine voice, soft and powerful at the same time, sounding everywhere and making it impossible to find its source. However fantastical it might sound, Leslie Diaz had brilliantly played this role through just a few takes. Much more had to be done in perception and further implementation of the role of the rhythm section. You say East – OK, let’s do East, so the drum set was replaced with congas, tambourines, toms and cajon, all played by Levon Hakhverdyan, and gong completed the culmination. You say Egypt – OK, let’s do Egypt, so a talented singer, composer, sound designer (and many more) Aidin Davoudi sang in a geographically correct (not the one that we thought of as an appropriate) oriental singing manner, and provided “martial respiration“.

Too Many of My Yesterdays – my debut as a director. I’m not sure how to call the resulting piece – audio film, sound play, song theatre… The song that is known for thirty years already as one of the Hammill’s classics, has been taken by me out on the stage, where the protagonist whose life was broken once but who hasn’t lost himself finds himself in a telephone booth hoping to reach the woman occupying an important place in his life. In the original – voice and piano, in the cover – voice and bass (or rather a few basses). As you can see, the original concept of "one voice, one instrument, one pass of one pair of hands on the instrument" has been affected slightly, while the form has undergone almost total change. Some musical passages are tightly coupled with sonic patterns of everyday life, the play has its beginning and end. "You're a good director, Mik!", Leslie Diaz told me after the recording. "The recording hour was fantastic, Les!", I say right now. Thanks again!

The Birds is easily played alone, so I did play it quite often before Levon Hakhverdyan said: "Record is on!" But when the piano part was ready for the initially planned canonical version, I asked to keep on the recording, and started playing this wonderful song as I heard it in my head and how my fingers wanted it to be played. And of course – the birds had to be there. Maybe the resulting song is similar to the original, but the testimonials made by those who heard it give me reason to leave it in this category.

Necromancer can also be called a cover because of its theatricality, the materialization of the image of the White Magician fighting against evil, and, in a way, due to the electrification of the sound produced by a few electric guitars and the metal of bass.

Changing of the underlying instrument has been used for creation of my version of The Top of the World Club. Interestingly, when I analyzed the chords of the song, it turned out to be more convenient for me to do it on guitar rather than piano. At some point during the process of creation the international project "All of Us Pilgrims" (double album, produced by members of a Facebook group ‘Top of the World Club’ – I regularly mentioned that project in my publications) I thought it would be nice to offer a version of the song which could be a kind of a symbol of the group. Somehow I wanted to have the accompaniment of only one guitar. But I am not a good guitarist, and if something should be done it must be done conscientiously. So the idea of ​​a studio version was eventually implemented, but with total exclusion of piano and replacing it with sounds of different guitars and very low synthesizer low-ends.

Finally, Tintagel by the Sea – a song written in 1979 for Play Away children's programme on British TV. It was never released officially, so when one of the members of the above-mentioned Facebook group had found, digitized and posted it to the network in the end of July last year, we decided to bring it to our double album, thus remembering the tribute album of XX Century – "Eyewitness – a Tribute to VdGG" (1995), which also contained a surprise – Squid One, a version of ‘Giant Squid’ song from the vinyl version of The Aerosol Grey Machine album, at that time only available in private collections and virtually unknown to the wide audience. During the preparation of the original demo version, synthesizers were overdubbed, vocals remixed, some sound effects added. The demo version would have remained in my personal collection in case if there wouldn’t had left some six minutes of free time after the main assembly of the album material was finished. I thought "Let it live!", as well as its second creator did – Levon Hakhverdyan who was responsible for recording, mixing and mastering of my album (on this track he also played all the drums and percussion). "But let it not affect the overall impression of listening to the album!", added we and put a half-a-minute pause in between. The right solution in such a situation.

I deliberately did not mention Vision – the only one of all the songs, in which nothing was changed. This is my personal tribute to everything clean and bright, to all that keeps us in this troubled life, to all heavenly and eternal like Love, good and bright as Dream. This song was one of the two most beloved VdGG/pH songs of my (now late) friend Jamie Fogg, who played an important role in my life, who together with all other mentioned people lives somewhere deep inside me, where the idea of ​​creating this album was conceived and where my own songs were born and already get their forms to appear on my next album. This will be discussed later, for sure. In the meantime, you get a piece "of something deep inside of me" in the form of a seventy-four minutes of “pure digit”, packed in cardboard and paper, and supplied with all the necessary information.

I think too much has been said, but it was necessary in order to complete the Tribute topic started two years ago. Everything else is there – in the recorded music. Listen to it. I begin to open a new chapter of my musical activity: creation of songs.

P.S. The album was created with kind permission and personal approval of the author of all the songs – Peter Hammill, whom I want to thank once again on this page of my Journal.

Potential Difference

Back in September 2014, I mentioned some creative idea (apart from the tribute albums) which was to be implemented. With a three-week delay, I'm still pleased to announce it is implemented and outline its essence in a couple of words. Most likely, this should have been done then, at the end of March, but those days were just overfilled with events related to the completion of the albums, employment in my main job, and some other enterprises of creative nature. Huge potential difference between the high creative activity and difficult conditions in which it takes place, yielded due results.

So, my literary labour has got crowned with edition of a book, called simply: "Tales. Poems." ("Рассказы. Стихи."). It consists of the three stories, written in between November 2012 and September 2015, as well as several poems, survivors of certain technological collapses, briefly described in the introduction.

Yes, speaking of another creative idea, I meant my book, which by that time had morphed from notes for personal use into certain narratives with plots, characters, actions.

Perhaps the name of the first of the stories - "Trade gifts" (“Торговля дарами”) - could have been placed on the cover of the book, for it is the most voluminous and full of characters and events. Its basic idea (which ​​unites, in fact, all three stories) was once discussed by me in a conversation with Armen Meruzhanyan, my friend and inspirer, whom I call "My Melchizedek," and to whom I dedicate this book: life gives us opportunities which, if not implemented, will be given to someone else. In the second story "Duo" (“Дуэт”) we become silent witnesses of a lengthy dialogue between the two protagonists. There are no more active persons acting in this story, but the stories told by them introduce many other actors and have a considerable degree of kinematics. During the "Interrogation" (“Допрос”) (the title for the final story) the investigator is doing his job, and his client is doing his human duty. Which one will eventually prevail?

While writing, I was guided, first of all, by feelings and sensations. There were moments when the imaginary curtain fell, and I had no idea of ​​what will happen in the next minute of narrative. The images remained frozen until suddenly a fresh doze of revelation arrived, and I was in a hurry to write all that was "received" both from above and from within. Naturally, I also took an active part in the treatment of the "delivered material", placing events in time, moving the characters from one scene to another, playing it all anew and changing scenery. I was the director of my own productions (another dream of mine), and I was aiming at doing three different productions. Repetitive is not interesting, even boring, hence different forms of my short stories. Those who have already read the book noticed the part (scenes) the first story is separated into (narrated in the third person), absolute secrecy of the personalities involved in the second dialogue, and, finally, the narration made in the first person by the main character of the third story, who even gets a surname.

"Cycles", presented with some poems, mark certain creative conditions in which they were created – from the "The Years of Shock" (“Годы потрясений”) to “Now in English”.

The photographs used in the cover design courtesy of Lilianna Hakhverdyan, a professional photographer, winner of various awards, and a wonderful personality. Even if my book is not read, the cover is seen for sure, and it is her work!

As for "the author's photo", I have chosen a photograph taken by my British friend, photographer Sean Kelly taken on 30^th of June, 2013 in London (before the Van der Graaf Generator gig), who kindly allow me to use it for this publication. By that time, I have already been immersed in the process of writing, and so I think this picture can be considered adequate for this edition.

I was invited to a morning broadcast on RadioVan last week. During half an hour we discussed various topics, including the subject of creativity. I introduced my book, and also spoke about what is happening in the field of my musical activities. There, I have already completed the work on my tribute album, which I am talking about in several posts in my journal, I am awaiting news about the release of the group tribute album from the UK, and has already begun working on my first solo album. We didn’t have much time, so only the first of the mentioned projects has been briefly touched, but one of the songs was aired (not included in the video version of the interview, but you still can hear the first few seconds at the very end of this video).

Therefore, I believe, within the next post here, once again devoted to a tribute, I will keep my promise and will introduce my album, which by that time, I hope, will have all the features of an officially released product, just like the book "Stories. Poems." does.