It’s not at all clear who finds it harder to keep still here: the relaxed-looking musician Clueso was once considered “overly energetic”. And with Barbara, who is always switched on, sea water seems to have an effect.
Barbara: Clueso! We’re both in noisy, slightly overexcited jobs. One could therefore think that our topic today is one that does not suit us at all.
Clueso: Well, I really like it when it’s quiet. But when I look at you like that, I sense a certain ambivalence in you. Do you have a problem with silence?
well That’s an amazingly complex question. I think the point is, I feel like it’s kind of being foisted on me.
how?
By being constantly approached by people who suggest that I need nothing more than a good dose of silence. They then say: You’re always on the go and so funky and loud, but you really have to calm down…
And does that bother you?
The message behind it annoys me. As if I’m in a lower incarnation because I’m living a life like mine. That I can only arrive at myself when I start meditating.
what you don’t see
Anders: I have no need for it. But the indoctrination still works, I try it out sometimes and sit down for half an hour.
In absolute silence?
nope My surroundings are then calm, but I am not.
Rather?
I sing. And not just in this half hour. All day. I belt out opera arias and other stuff, and when I don’t feel like singing anymore, I talk to myself, I imitate dialects…
Really! Which ones are you particularly good at?
I’m working hard on Saxon and Swabian. Gladly also German with an Italian accent. And then I tidy up the quiet, deserted house. For this reason alone I can confirm here: I have never experienced total silence. But let’s come to you. And I have a guess.
Which would be?
I’ve been watching you for 20 years now and I know your work. I imagine that you even need the moments of absolute silence to throw something nice out afterwards.
That’s correct. Thing is, it’s completely limited to the music, and I’m really glad it’s got these phases. But other than that, I’m kinda like you.
You imitate Italian women?
That’s still missing. But I often can’t stand silence. I like to make myself comfortable, but then I don’t use it. Or on vacation at the beach: I choose the most chilled spot and set it up perfectly…
… awesome towel, accurate umbrella alignment, best beach book, snacks and drinks …
Exactly. And I’ll go a long way to do it. Then jump up after five minutes and decide: Okay, thanks, that’s enough – what comes next?
The route is the goal.
For this jitteriness I just need a counterpoint. And that’s the music.
Sounds like a contradiction to me.
But none is. Sometimes I just sit there and strum my guitar, with no intention, for nothing or nobody, just for myself all by myself. Then there is this stillness in me that I seek and celebrate. But I also have to consciously create these moments.
And how do you do that?
There’s this room in my apartment that’s just there for that. When I go in there, it’s absolutely clear: Nobody can disturb me now.
Really now? Do you have a quiet room?
Yes. This is a large, spartan room. Although, the Spartan runs through the whole apartment. My father recently asked me if I wouldn’t want to start buying a closet.
And do you want?
nope I hate closets. I don’t like anything that can’t be quickly and easily moved around. But I have a few more, as you said so beautifully: quiet rooms.
In your flat?
One is enough. But I come from and live in Erfurt, I once read somewhere that there is the highest density of churches per inhabitant. In the city center you see nothing but church towers! In many of these churches there is actually a “room of silence”. And I go there every now and then.
For religious reasons?
nope To listen to my recordings. Then I know: Nobody talks to me, it’s absolutely quiet.
OK. So there you sit down with the headphones…
No. I lie down on the floor. Kind of weird, I know, but you usually have these rooms to yourself. I need that to turn the screws: here the voice is louder, there the drums are quieter… I’ve just noticed that we’re not so dissimilar there either.
How so?
I need silence for my music, you for your in-house Barbara Schöneberger show.
This is true. But when I think about it more closely: I also have something like your Erfurt churches.
Where are they?
I’m in Sweden every summer in a place where definitely no one can hear me scream. I’ve disappeared up there, untraceable for the world and somehow untraceable for myself.
for yourself? I would now like to explain that.
I haven’t quite understood that either. But it actually feels like this: I drive there as loud, funny Barbara Schöneberger, and after a few days I realize that I’m in a world without language, without loud noises. And this realization covers me like a warm shell, and indeed, suddenly I can stand silence well and don’t have to maniacally babble about it. Weird, is not it?
Not necessarily. Places change you. I once spent six weeks on an Ayurveda cure in Sri Lanka, up in the mountains.
Oh. Was a relationship over? You don’t do something like that if something serious hasn’t happened before.
Ordinary burnout. Anyway: I came alone, it felt like there was meditation every five minutes, and the guy who led the thing was able to convey pretty well that silence is part of the body’s blueprint and healing …
freaky.
Yes or? I experienced, experienced and understood so much that I would have liked to share with others. But nobody was there for that, so I had to deal with everything with myself. Afterwards I didn’t have the feeling that it had changed me at all. But people at home saw things differently.
How come?
They found me more resilient. edible. And that showed me something: The question is not whether you need meditation or not.
Rather?
Whether you don’t feel like going through this always half-open door into your inner silence from time to time. Because that does something to you. You do it once a year in Sweden and feel it yourself, I walk through this door before concerts by turning on my meditation app. And then it’s mainly the others who notice it.
That’s correct. But do you know when even the deepest inner contemplation would not help?
N / A?
In an uncomfortable silence.
Which type?
This situation, when you introduce two people to each other at a party: Kai, may I introduce you to Sabine – like you, she has a right leg, so you have a topic, now have a chat …
And of course they keep quiet.
I can’t stand it. I laugh away this silence totally unnaturally and say things way too loud like: I also have a right leg, how funny!
That means you’re on constant alert when throwing parties at home.
But really. When people don’t get along with each other, it kills me. I actually used to disappear into the toilet at the beginning of a party and didn’t come out for a very long time.
And today?
I’m a little more relaxed about it, and that really helps everyone. And if not, I’ll just talk everyone to death.
What was it like when you were a child? Have you ever had moments when you had to be quiet?
Not at home. But my dad is a classical musician and I spent large parts of my youth in opera houses and chamber music halls. I learned the hard way, much to my disbelief, that “Psssst” really means “Psssst”. You can’t say anything there. Not a small sentence, not a word, that always annoyed me greatly. And you?
I was born in 1980 and spent my early school years in the GDR. Silence was brought to me in several ways, let’s say: brought it closer to me.
And how?
On the one hand through the fiercest discipline. On the other hand, it was made clear to you very early on which topics you shouldn’t say anything about.
Awesome.
Nice. Especially if you have a bit of trouble sitting still and shutting up. Like me.
Oh. have you been hyperactive
I don’t think the word existed back then. All I know is that people have always said about me: He’s so over-energetic, we have to catch him now. In fact, my teachers made sure that I was admitted to child psychiatry in Erfurt.
How terrible. Really stationary?
Also. However, my parents quickly got me out of there. I’m back in today.
I’m sorry, what?
My studio is in there now. That’s great, the rooms are extremely well soundproofed. Just don’t get too clear on why that is. When I took over the rooms from the city, there were still tiny handprints on the wall. I had to paint over them, I couldn’t stand them.
I couldn’t stand it, I don’t think. That’s too dark for me.
Yes, I can do it. I always tell myself: We musicians are the first crazy people who are in there voluntarily. But speaking of gloomy…
Yes?
How do you actually deal with darkness? For me, that is the visual equivalent of silence.
Here we are again in Sweden. I’m usually there in the summer, when it doesn’t get dark at all. But I still remember driving through the woods there with my son one autumn. Left and right and above and below: total darkness. And my son says: Wow, is this nice, can we stop, get out and spend the night here?
I assume you were excited.
I asked him if he’s completely insane now. I was so scared, and I was still in the moving car.
Funny actually, isn’t it? I mean, it’s not like Swedish forests are full of dangerous animals now. And your boy wasn’t scared either. Why you?
Maybe that’s my cultural edge. He has never read anything by Henning Mankell and Stieg Larsson. Me, yes. I’ve seen bodies of women dangling from trees in the dark everywhere.
This is exciting. Jürgen Domian once told me something similar, he also rented a hut deep in the forest in an area in the far north. He told me he couldn’t stand it at night when the curtains weren’t drawn. As if the world weren’t there anymore if you couldn’t see it.
But you’re different, aren’t you? You wouldn’t be afraid!
Are you crazy? I would pee my pants.
Stephen Bartels, the always silent observer of this conversation, has married into a family with a holiday home on a Holstein lake. Above all, he loves the absurd calm there.