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An excerpt from "Sound itself, full of silence, of dust, of endurance",
a foreword by Lars Movin in "Stilhedens cymbaler" ("Cymbals of Silence"):
"... In many ways, this book is closely related to Terninger, tonefald – as a continuation of that play or exploration, as well as a further unfolding of the thematic (which may be boiled down to a poetics of the moment). The two works thus may be considered siblings, or perhaps rather echoes of each other, but still clearly enough next of kin – parallel in thought, even if inverted in structure (where the first book begins with the root texts and from there rolls out the improvisations, this time it starts out with the permutated lines, the root texts at the end).
"Here again the play of language is, in a sense, unfolding in a musical landscape. But where the texts Terninger, tonefald sought to bridge two conceptual worlds, an athletic and a musical – via a returning trope: when the ball comes – the new texts seem to enter more deeply into the very structure and textuality of the music. So much so that the music almost ceases to be music, or ceases to be only music, to become sound stretched out in time. A searching and exploring movement of language into the pulsing circulation of sound and silence – ever deeper, into the textures of sound itself. And, simultaneously, an opening out towards a larger, even perhaps all-embracing universe, where the movement of sound in time and space becomes a metaphor for existence itself and its grounding conditions, and our attempt to put to language those experiences that we make along the way – while waiting for the sweeper, we mutter a word or two.
"All this may seem abstract or a bit far-fetched, but the texts of both books proceed from contexts quite concrete and closely connected to Ulrich's other activities and interests. Seen from above, all his lines take their source from a steadily growing body of texts, a work-in-progress called Songbooks. And if we zoom in a bit on some of those different areas where Ulrich has been engaged up through the years - diverse forms of athletics and ballplay, jazz and other musical categories, painting and film, literature and poetry, philosophy and Buddhism – we will see that the lines seem to be touching all these areas. First and foremost because, content-wise and thematically, they operate with core aspects of Ulrich's manifold activities; and furthermore quite concretely, in the sense that the lines have entered as elements in paintings, film and music (or have been published as "poetry", even if he himself does not use that word). ..."
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