NEW POST FROM LAARNAS WEBSITE- VERY INTERESTING In an interview with Das Forkenstewen, Germany’s foremost music journal. Laarna Cortaan explains why she does not release recordings of her music. By Diane Ferk. Laarna agreed to meet me outside a coffee shop in Amsterdam, where I found her sitting in the corner, doodling on hamburger wrapper. A translator is sitting next to her, but she will never motion to him during the interview. Laarna Cortaan: So who’s going to start? Me or you? Diane Ferk: I wrote down a few questions, but if there’s something you want to say, go ahead. No, no, it’s your magazine. Okay. Well, I have to start with the question that everyone wants me to ask: why can’t we buy your music? Because my music grows out of a relationship, an interchange with the audience. Without them, I’m a tree in the wood, tipping over without a sound. It is only when my music reaches my audience’s ears that it becomes worthwhile, and that cannot happen in a recording studio. It’s a simple concept, which is why I’m so fascinated by the world’s inability to understand it. You can’t watch West End or Broadway shows on television, so why should my performance art be different? I think what makes this choice difficult for people to understand is that it must cost you an enormous amount of money to do these shows, but you don’t seem to take in a profit. There is some profit—only enough to go to the next show, and to survive. An artist is not a capitalist. An artist must never touch money. Money is a stain on the hand that will never come out. It turns the humblest of artists into misers, and my mission is too important for me to risk that happening. So do you literally never touch money? How do you travel and pay your bills? Music came long before money, and I think it should stay that way. Once money dictates where you go and what you do, you will never have enough of it. Money is dust in the air and a smudge on the window—pebbles on the vocal chords, even. It is a distraction that prevents us from breathing, seeing clearly, and singing for our own purposes. When I am traveling, I hardly see money, let alone touch it. Your fans want to have your music. What about them? I want my audience to have my music, but in the same way an improvising actor wants his audience to have his show. I would love for my audience to bring our music with them every single day, onto trains and into the workplace. But in their souls. That is better than iPods. iPod batteries go empty. The soul is limitless—and is not for purchase. A long time ago, Torvald, my lover, convinced me to record “Winged Chariot”. It was, at the time, my favorite song. I went to the studio and tried to sing, but it was stillborn. It came out dead. Every person in the room knew it was dead. So Torvald came into the studio and he sat at the end of the piano and said, “You sing to me. Look only at me and sing to me.” I tried to sing to him, or to sing his story through the song, but “Winged Chariot” was for strangers to sing to one another, and I knew Torvald too well. He could never fill the void left by my audience. So the song died. I killed it. I never sang “Winged Chariot” again. Every concert someone screams for “Winged Chariot” but I will never sing it again. I am not a murderer, I am an artist. So I sing for my people and I don’t make recordings. What about bootleg recordings from your shows that people produce? A copy of a copy is never as clear as the original. You listen to the recording and it’s achingly apparent. That person will lose the story in doing that, but he probably didn’t understand it was there in the first place. Otherwise he would not tamper with it. If they want to sell it, they did not understand why that journey was personal. If they want to remember the concert—well, it would feel like proofreading the final draft of a paper. Recently, a fan created a music video for you based on a recording he made at one of your concerts. How do you feel about that? Many of my audience members do this, because they were at the concert and were part of its creation. They are only further telling their own story, and I am the vehicle through which the story is relayed. At that point, the art has no author, and I think it is imaginative. More people should be so expressive.