Allerseelen Interview Herz und Geist

Allerseelen Interview Herz und Geist

Lately you are performing rather often in Italy. How is your relationship
with the Italian audience? Which is your favourite place, city or site you
visited in Italy?

Allerseelen performed in the last two years two times in Venezia and this year in February in Roma. We always had a very good atmosphere, either it was very spartanic, like the first Venezia concert or very dionysic like the concert in Roma. As usually I had a very good impression of the people I met or who I got to know during our magical mystery tours - which shows that obviously I am on the right way with my music. Music is always a field of force, and a live performance is a field of force too - if it is successful it gives power to the audience as well as to the artists on stage. I know and love various parts of Italy. I do not have a favourite place as Italy is a quite manifold country basically consisting of dozens of smaller states. But I have some very strange and intense memories of the volcanoes in Sicily and near Napoli which still are very vivid in my mind. I already visited Stromboli, Etna and Vesuvio two times in my life, the first time when I was still in school. I stayed over night in my sleeping bag on top of the still active Stromboli - which was a great experience.I also tried to climb into the crater of the Vesuvio which was quite a dangerous adventure - I got wounded there as I had there a small accident. I was also on the Etna and filmed there with an old camera, maybe one day we will use this footage for a volcanic Allerseelen video. With all these volcanoes which I visited twice I have special experiences and I intend to visit all of them again, maybe already this year. I was also impressed by Pompeji, maybe one day we are able to perform there like Pink Floyd did many years ago.

The last time we met was for your 2003 Winter Solstice concert in Mestre,
Venezia. How do you remember that special live experience?

This concert was a very special event. Allerseelen performed on stage with two boys from the Austrian country-side holding torches in their hand. The idea was to have - like in the Mithras ikonography - Cautes and Cautopates on the left and right side of the stage. But around midnight the two boys already were very tired, so they were holding their torches just for some songs. We have some very beautiful images of these two young torch-holders, one of this I used for the Allerseelen digipak Flamme (Flame) which came out last summer. This first concert in Venezia changed also my private life very much, I got to know a young and beautiful muse who keeps me inspiring with her beauty and wisdom. The day after the concert, my bassist Jörg of the Austrian neofolk group Graumahd and the drummers Axel and Mario of Hekate returned to their cities. I went by train to the Austrian mountains and had there a winter solstice fire with some close friends and the parents of the two boys who had joined us on stage. This was also the last concert with the Hekate percussionists on stage as they had decided to make some holiday from all the touring around with Allerseelen. For the next Allerseelen concert in Venezia, Allerseelen already consisted of the two drummers Balazs and Gergö of the Hungarian group Cawatana and again Jörg.

In his poem F. Nietzsche compares Venice to Music. In Ecce Homo he also
wrote: "If I try to find out another word for the music, I always find out
only Venice" It's for the same reason that you have released an album about
this city?

I think I could find some other words for music too, words like Vesuvio, so I could also do one day a double lp or cd about volcanoes - which might be a great conception for the future. I have been various times in Venice, already when I was travelling by train to Sicily to my beloved volcanoes in the school holidays around Easter or in summer. One day I had the idea to create music for this city with its surreal atmosphere which appears so oriental and yet is very occidental too - without knowing this quotation by this volcanic writer. Then I was searching in my books for poems and other texts which my favourite writers - Anais Nin, Hermann Hesse, Alexander Lernet-Holenia, Rainer Maria Rilke and various others - had written on this insular state. In some books by Friedrich Nietzsche I then came across these words. I used his poem Venedig for the Allerseelen CD Venezia and recorded it also in italiano with the voice of the Italian industrial artist Gaya Donadio - this will be published on the Allerseelen DoLP version Venezia which we will release on Ahnstern around winter solstice. This song has already been published on the Steinklang Disco cd compilation which came out some months ago.

In your works you often use lyrics taken from Nietzsche poems. According
to you, which is the most important heritage left by this great German
poet/philosopher to posterity?

It is difficult to say what I should consider as the most important heritage by Friedrich Nietzsche. Maybe his misanthropy, his hatred against all kinds of hypocrisy in politics and religion, against all the beautiful slogans like democracy, freedom, humanity, peace which already in his epoch - and even more in the twentieth and twenty-first century - brought so much misery and pain and terror to many populations. I am fascinated by the power and violence of his poetry. I also like some of his music very much. It was published some years ago on two cds. I like his sentence in Zarathustra that you have to write with your own blood to finally find out that the blood is spirit - some words which were often misunderstood by those who have no idea about mythology and symbolism. He was a real outlaw, a real adversary of the modern world. He was in love with the antiquity, with Greek philosophy, and maybe this intense love and passion was the reason why he had to leave this world at an early age. I like the ritual which he describes in one of his letters - drinking some red wine with friends and sacrificing a part of the wine to the demons with the words "Chairete Daimones" (be greeted, demons). Nietzsche is not dead - he just stopped writing. Everyone reading his words is holding him alive. Maybe even his enemies hold him more alive than his followers - there is a beautiful sentence by Martin Heidegger that some philosophers are more successful when they are attacked by public opinion. Nietzsche was for me and still is a volcano which is never really dead - a volcano is always dormant, you do not know when the next eruption will happen - I am sure that there will be other eruptions by this volcanic writer whose ink were blood and fire. Friedrich Nietzsche is another field of force with a lot of corrente ad alta tensione. With each artist, philosopher, writer and others fall in love with just one word of his writings, blood-red sparks will flash over again and again. He was exploding at an early age, and the first part of this explosion took place in Torino. I already used various poems by Nietzsche for my songs because his language is so powerful and beautiful, so full of symbolism, at the same time very German and very mediterranean in the sense of antiquity. I hope to have some of his blood and fire and lava in my works. I think I had his Zarathustra with me when I was visiting Sicily for the first time.

"Abenteuerliches Herz" (Adventurous Heart) is inspired by the Ernst Jünger novel of the same
title. Whom do you recommend reading this book?

I am not just recommending this book with its surrealistic and sometimes decadent descriptions of dreams and flowers and landscapes. I love the symbolism of the adventurous heart. I recommend almost everything by Ernst Jünger but I am not sure how much has been translated to italiano. I enjoyed a lot his Eumeswil with its symbolism of birds, with its anarchic and at the same time aristocratic statements. Some of these statements I used for the booklet of the Allerseelen CD Neuschwabenland. I especially recommend Ernst Jünger´s Heliopolis with its symbolism of fire, honey on a Mediterranean island - this book may have been inspired by Sardegna where Ernst Jünger spent a lot of time. Those who call this writer with his many facets, with all his knowledge and wisdom concerning art, drugs, literature, nature and many other topics - right-wing or fascist, clearly indicates that they have no idea about this essential German writer. But again, here the same seems valid what I said about Nietzsche - many enemies, much honour. Obviously enemies are a necessity for an artist, a philosopher, a writer - they are the friction (attrito, frizione) which is necessary for energy, electricity, for sparks to flash over. Maybe it is impossible to write something of value in a torre di avorio? If I compare writers like Friedrich Nietzsche or Friedrich Hölderlin or Antonin Artaud to dormant, unstable volcanoes which so far only partly erupted, Ernst Jünger, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Hermann Hesse, could be eternal holy mountains with easy and difficult paths and subterranean caves for those who dare to enter them. The peaks of these mountains allows a much clearer survey of everything around this mountain. Volcanoes do not really have peaks, their peak is actual a vertical cave. The caves inside the sacred mountains might refer to the drug experiences about which Ernst Jünger wrote in his book Annäherungen - I do not know if this book about his adventures with LSD, magic mushrooms, peyotl and other toxic substances was translated to your language. Meditazione delle vette - I like this book by Julius Evola which I have in italiano. I once bought in Torino a book named Il regno perduto with various essays sul simbolismo tradizionale della montagna - but I still have to read this. So I am living a life surrounded by real as well as symbolic mountains and volcanoes´.

Why did you adopt the ancient poem "Vino e Cuore" for the new
"Sturmlieder" re-release on vinyl?

I did not adopt an ancient poem as I wrote this poem myself last year, inspired by some ruby-red wines. Vino e cuore is the Italian translation of my song Ob auch mein Herz so funkelt on the Allerseelen CD and DoLP Flamme. Some friends in Italy helped me to have a perfect translation of this poem. The voice on this song comes from Gaya Donadio, an Italian lady who was born close to one of the Italian volcanoes. I like wine and I like poetry, so I decided to dedicate a song to the ruby-red wine in the glass which appears from its colour and size like a human heart. The flame and the heart are for me essential symbols, I like to play with symbols, and very often the symbols like to play with me. Sometimes I am considering myself to be the heart of Allerseelen - but maybe I am just one drop of blood in the veins of an organism that I do not really know. Maybe all the human people are only drops of blood of one large organism with a heart named God or sparks of an eternal flame. René Guénon writes in one of his books about the symbolism of a heart inside a mountain. I am also thinking of recording this poem in other languages too, hopefully in Catalan with the singer Rosa Solé. I already recorded a Portuguese version with the bagpiper of the Portuguese group Sangre Cavallum which turned into a completely different song. This will appear on a special wine-red 7" edition on the Austrian label Ahnstern later this year.

The song "Wir Tragen Ein Licht" is dedicated to John Balance. Which is
your memory for this artist?

Obviously John Balance was another surrealistic and symbolistic volcano too. His zodiacal sign was Pisces, and artists who have this sign must be very careful when dealing with the fields of force they find in art and drugs. It was John Balance who introduced to me the powerful symbol of the black sun with ten rays, five straight and five twisted ones, which Coil used on their record Scatology. When I got this record, I fell in love with its music, especially with the songs Tenderness of Wolves with the amazing voice of Gavin Friday and Solar Lodge, and I fell in love with this black sun. Some days I went to a tattoo shop in Wien to have this symbol tattooed. This symbol changed my life. I told John Balance about another black sun - the marble symbol with twelve rays of the German castle Wewelsburg which Allerseelen used for the Gotos=Kalanda cd. Probably it was good luck for Coil that they did not use this symbol too. It might have changed their life too. It was strange as some weeks before his death, we were trying to set up concerts of Allerseelen and Coil at the Pier Paolo Pasolini festival in or close to Roma. I also got to know the Chilenean writer Miguel Serrano in a booklet by Coil. This writer changed my life too. I like one quotation by Miguel Serrano in his book El Cordon Dorado: "In this fight one does not change the side. Only during death one is offered a short rest. Because the fighters are eternal, immortal." I think this is valid for a dionysic and volcanic artist like John Balance too.

Anything to add?

"The price of existence is eternal warfare" (Coil)

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Friedrich Nietzsche: Venedig/Venezia

Stavo sul ponte
poco tempo fa nella bruna notte.
Di lontano giungeva un canto:
gocce dorate scorrevano
sulla superficie tremante.
Gondole, luci, musica –
ebbre si perdevano nel crepuscolo…
La mia anima, un suono di violino,
a sé cantava, toccata da dita invisibili,
segretamente, un canto di gondolieri,
tremando di felicità multicolore
- L’ha udita mai qualcuno?...