In the Beginning was a Good Advice

When I turned sixteen my Grandmother used to tell me off: “You will never be happy this way, my dear. You have only parrots and cats on your mind! Be sensible! Stay in Germany and find a decent job. Then you will make good money and will soon find a beautiful girl who wants to marry you.”

Since then I have raised fish in aquariums, collected budgerigars and cats, learned to play the oboe at the conservatory in Weimar, was a rock singer in three bands, performed to tonal and atonal music in quite a few ensembles, showcased my own photographic art in galleries, wrote music on commission for the ballet and wrote short stories, made futile attempts to emigrate to Bulgaria, Greece, and New Orleans, before I finally resigned, starting to produce commercials for German TV stations and properly accepting a position in a chamber orchestra as an oboist. Thereby, the good money did indeed come but with it two massively unpleasant questions: Why the hell didn’t come happiness and where was the beautiful girl to marry me?


Contemplation

The sugary image of a decent professional life with regular holidays and pension fund, nicely framed within the stolid everyday life of social conventions was making me less and less euphoric. Something personally meaningful was missing. Passion, energy, and the melodramatic taste of freedom was missing in what I was doing. So, without more ado, I gave up all my jobs and sat on a park bench in Berlin, Prenzlauer Berg. I closed my eyes and tried to find out why I was sitting there. Existential questions came to me: Who am I? What am I? What do I want at all? Or: Am I really hungry, or do I have just appetite? Do I laugh because I’m truly amused or just for small talk? Am I really alive or do I just live as is expected from me? Was my life up to this point just hypocrisy? Bla, Bla, Bla...

Thus my thoughts were wondering around in the rough city and childhood scenes came back to me: How my Grandmothers radio wakes me up every morning at 5 with Bulgarian folk music. How I steal the neighbor’s soft kitten to rub it on my belly. How we children spelled our names backward and so "rednaXELa" was born. How I win 500 GDR-Marks in a oboe talent competition and use it to buy me two Alexander parakeets, much to the horror of my mother. How, one day, the front door of our house in Bulgaria is sprayed with a swastika because we live in Germany. How I lock the obnoxious kindergarten teacher with the group of children in the shower room to run off to Bulgaria and how I get expelled. How alien starships land on aunt Rosie’s cornfield. How I knew from early on that artistic creativity will be my destiny. How I felt constantly torn between Germany and Bulgaria... When I was really far away with my thoughts, a mother with her screaming child pushed me back to my Berlin reality. She tried to calm down the little rascal with a soothing song and with a remarkably melodious voice. And then it hit me:


Music as Meaning

Could the missing answer be one’s own sound, one’s own music? What is the sound of a person? Does every person has a tune, accord, or melody?

Music was always part of my life. When I was five my mother forced me to music school to learn to play the piano and the flute. I had fun not only playing music, but also composing. I did this beyond any rules: inspired by baroque counterpoint, Bulgarian folk, hardcore metal, 12 tone music as well as the twitter of the birds, pop or even the rhythmic sound of railway-cars. Interesting sounds were all over, even in my dreams.

All I had to do was to choose the things I liked and to leave out those that I didn’t. Slowly a personal style emerged.

It was obvious: over all the years I had created my own sound, my own music! It was there, I had forgotten about it distracted by the trivia of everyday life. Or, it just needed the right time to come back to me.

Now I needed two things: exorbitant boldness to bring my music to live. And musicians, who would be skilled and crazy enough to play my sound and to enjoy it. And there they came:

The first one I met at the line in the supermarket was Tim Neuhaus. Soon we found out we had a great deal in common: Bulgarian women, funny insights about relationships, growing up and staying a child, Italian food, and the understanding of the drum set as an independent musical instrument. Moreover, he is the drummer of the BlueMan Group, a very promising versatility. I played my demo to him. “Cool shit, man! If you need a drummer, I want to

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