Someone suggested that Suss Müsik repost our contributions to the weekly Disquiet Junto projects, because they enjoy reading the explanations of the tracks. While you’re reading the original post, make sure you check out the other contributors’ works as well.
“Women’s cycles are controlled by the moon,” someone recently told Suss Müsik. “After all, the word menstruation is partially derived from the Greek word mene, which means ‘moon.’ Obviously there’s a connection, right?”
Data science suggests otherwise. Menstrual cycles do not sync with the phases of the moon, according to researcher Dr. Marija Vlajic Wheeler, who analyzed 7.5 million cycles and found no correlation between the two. Then again, perhaps the connection is not so much scientific as romantic—less empiricism, more mythology. Consider the following passage by Helsinki poet Paavo Haavikko:
You marry the moon
and the sea and the moon and the woman: ear less, all. ·
You’ll listen to their voices, you’ll talk to them
and they say
it’s a game.
You Marry the Moon is an example of “Haavikko’s awareness of the complexities of communication involved in any sexual relationship,” according to translator Anselm Hollo. Such acute awareness is “gained through the realization that only the particular is worth the attempt. It is there, a world, waiting for others to discover as much of as they can.”
Perhaps the lesson we take from this is to think of the moon as a transient being. The phases of the moon are defined by its position in the sky, fleeting and always temporary. Our lives resonate in proximity to heavenly bodies, the paths we cross subconsciously intertwined. As Haavikko wrote:
in sleep nothing exists, only the moon is full,
the moon your silver mother
sleep on
and the moon’s path will cross the sky of your sleep
be at rest
no-one will come, oh, no-one else, only the moon
crossing your dream sky on its way to earth’s.
For this weird piece, Suss Müsik sought to explore phases of sound that concentrate on “the particular” while crossing one “dream sky” with another. Human sounds are passed through a grain synthesizer at the same frequency as recorded static, their individual “phases” overlapping in cosmic synchronicity.
The piece is titled Haavikko. It was recorded live to 8-track in January 2020.