Like virtually everything in the world, life can also be seen as a process. I mean life understood as the history of an individual human being, which is a process made up of many smaller processes, most or even all of which have primarily an adaptive function, allowing one to persist and navigate in the world. Again, some of them fade out over time, others last longer, merge with one another, or function rather separately, yet all of them together make up some more or less coherent narrative that constitutes what is called a person. I am convinced, by the way, by the understanding of mythical and religious superheroes as embodying a set of optimal processes and their imagined ideal maximums. But that is another story. Also by the way, at many points in history and in many places on Earth, there have been claims that this narrative that sums up processes, as well as the very concept of person, are merely handy, though in various ways problematic, illusions. Today, the term simulation appears here and there, which can mean roughly the same thing. But that is yet another story.

In any case, it seems that around the midway of average life span for many there comes a point at which it is possible, and perhaps even advisable, to look at the processes that make up one’s own person and verify whether they function, and then decide whether to maintain or try to phase out some of them, weighing up the gains and losses of the decision. This is not a simple thing. The very identifying of the functionality of processes itself can present a problem, let alone implementing any decisions made, and you have to factor in the costs of maintaining or phasing out processes that are a good adaptation strategy from one point of view - but harmful from another. In fact, to be honest, those that would be positive regardless of the point of view are few and far between at this stage of life. Perhaps the very nature of the process implies imperfection as a driver and promoter of improvement. Any movement comes at the expense of something. Hell as infinity and heaven as eternity and between them processes along upward or downward trajectories, falling into time and so on, but that is also another story.

Baczynski has sounded. Tomasz (Konieczny) and Adam (Dudek) created an audiovisual monodrama with elements of stage design and movement. Minimalist and sophisticated. I am unable to put any distance between myself and these works to even try to assess the result objectively. But I was moved. Death announced, death remembered, death here and now. And in addition to this (or this as an addition to) Mahler's Kindertotenlieder. Among the artefacts, photos and stories about the insurgents (the thing took place at the Warsaw Rising Museum), what, when taken all together, is just a little bit too much, but perhaps this combination is the right and relevant one. (The entire video can be found here.)

Before me is the orchestration of these songs. It actually worked out neatly, because after the very first performance they still resonate in my head. I think I know what I want to do tone-wise, it will be the metrorhythmics what will pose a bit of a challenge, but no matter, work will commence soon.

And next Tuesday, also in Warsaw (Lutosławski Studio S1), the String Quartet no. 3, for the first time with a live audience.

(transl. Magdalena Małek-Andrzejowska)