SU YONO: „Wellen (engl. waves) – listening and dying“
Marcus sends me recordings of a new Munich-based band, asking if I have any
ideas for a name. „Susi“ is the work-in-progress alias under which Marcus and Pola
have arranged to make music together. So, I suggest using their real first names
instead of Susi and combining them to create a new stage name: Marcus Pola. No,
that won’t work, because there’s still Chris! In the beginning, it was Marcus and
Chris. So, Susi is a trio, but none of them feels so important as to turn their own
name into the band’s name. Okay.
After that, I don’t hear from Susi for a while. Weeks later, Marcus contacts me,
saying Susi is „dead,“ gone. The band now has a new name: Su Yono. And Pola
Dobler, the Erythropoet, sings: You must go and don’t know when. You must live
and don’t know for how long. And further: Today, I lie awake in my bed. And
tomorrow, they will carry me away. They carry me out, but not in anymore. They
carry me into the cemetery forever.
Death is a motif that runs through all the pieces, and I initially read the new name
as Spanish, „Su yo no“ – „You yourself not“ or „You I not,“ and find it very fitting. No
first name, no self, only death. And the music is beautiful like angel hair and
stardust.
Water is another motif. So, we hear water and death, and I think of a sentence I
read from the Milanese poet Chandra Livia Candiani: „The sea drinks me.“ The
salty sea from which all life springs. And the Mediterranean Sea, which takes the
lives of so many people dreaming of a new life in Europe. In the freshwater of
Bavarian lakes, however, only kings die. Thus, the waves (germ. „Wellen“) of Su
Yono sound like Rococo and Romanticism. But in them, the spirit of Herbert
Achternbusch also swims, practicing for the Atlantic crossing in Lake Walchensee.
Again and again, I immerse myself in the music, swim laps. And then, I bathe in the
music. Something happens to me. The waves have the same effect on me as
neroli. All the annoyance relaxes, becomes calm, dissolved. I melt away. Neroli,
precious essential oil named after the Sicilian princess Nerola, who loved this
scent. Its heart note is petitgrain, obtained by steam distillation from the leaves,
branches, and unripe green fruits of bitter orange. Its base tone is also found in true
catnip, nutmeg, black elder, lavender, and roses, but especially in wormwood.
It is the experience of ecstatic confusion that I know from absinthe, and it is
attributed to its main component, an extract of wormwood:
While listening, I encounter it again in the form of déjà-écouté. Perhaps the reason for this is that the
music breathes the oxygen content of high-altitude air. And maybe I am about to
lose myself in a fish-green daydream, with a burning candle next to a skull and
other vanitas motifs on the kitchen table. A memento mori made up of masks,
mirrors, fruits, cans, an hourglass, and an echo: Remember mortality – Yesterday
me, today you!
Or perhaps flute, clarinet, trumpet, and string arrangement penetrate through the
door crack. „I want to fade out in the sun. I don’t belong to anyone.“ To listen, not to
belong.
The reciprocity of „Mutuelle.“ The ebb and flow in making music as reciprocity,
comparable to Kula, the exchange system of the inhabitants of the Pacific Trobriand
Islands.
These Melanesian islands are arranged almost circularly, with soulava, necklaces
made of small red shell discs, exchanged clockwise between them.
In the opposite direction, counterclockwise, mwali, bracelets made of white shell
rings, are exchanged. All gifts must be further exchanged after some time.
Thus, in the „Waves“ of Su Yono, I hear the complex, non-profit-oriented barter of
the Trobrianders. I hear how the givers and receivers constantly maintain a position
of hospitality towards each other. After all, a good melody is indeed valuable. Thank
you, Su Yono!
(Pico Be, January 2024)