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Nico Huijbregts

Starting with the end.

This morning my girlfriend and I bought a second hand caravan for a fair price: a twenty-five year old Kip Rainbow, in particularly good condition. We picked it up in Eerbeek, where not a blade of grass is crooked, and drove it to a camping site in the forest between Berg en Dal and Groesbeek. Where everything is crooked. While writing this, my hands still hurt from pushing and dragging our new refuge over one sod after another!

You've noticed: I'm procrastinating. Indeed, I'm browsing through my mind for the first small scrap of my life that I can remember, but I'm drinking the wine I've just poured, I can feel my hands tingling, and I'm blocking the information in my head that you might want to read: years, places, successes, awards, developments, statements, interesting contacts.

It's so tempting to fill out the list: at that point in time I became, I wrote, I met, I got, I achieved. To look upon an event as an absolute indicator for anything that follows, or as the result of something preceding, actually creates a prison: I like to see life as an unbounded whole where everything is possible within the limits of a never ending one-hundredth of a second.

It's a blessing that bad paintings can be hidden under a new layer of paint. But the unsuccessful old painting and the successful new painting are two different events with a specific meaning, having their value at the moment of actual creation, free in any next moment to sublimate and resolve in the infinite nothingness, which is no bigger than the tip of a finely sharpened pin.

I remember a soprano missing her first cue at the premiere of a new piece I wrote which still had twenty minutes to go. It took a half a minute before singer and ensemble came together in the right constellation. Thirty seconds, thirty agonizingly slow seconds. The full concert hall, completely unaware, was not in the least uneasy. I, at that moment, kept my eyes fixed on the nearest emergency exit.

Yesterday, however, I played a concert for an audience of four people and it was wonderful. In both contrary cases, life, your present-day biography, flows right through you, and that is all that matters.

So I say "Stop!", because I'm tempted to travel backwards. The time trip from this 'yesterday' to my no doubt interesting life as a zygote happens in the blink of an eye.

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"This is a solo piano record, 14 short improvised pieces, lots of grace and spirit. There are light preparations on some tracks, with a focus on resonance (“Mission” is superbly subdued). What a treat it is! Beautiful music for prepared piano, very inspired, full of surprises and moments of pure esthetic ecstasy." (About "Free Floating Forms" - vindu 20091)

"With little more than 30 minutes of music, this is intense and satisfying. Plus it comes in a really intriguing package - multiple times folded cover that seems like a little labirynth itself. Highly recommended!" (about "Ka Da Ver" (vindu20111), the CD with my quartet Premier Roeles)

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