Before meeting Hidgi Chuan I was used to musicians who would play either blues-, pop-, reggea-, rock- or classical music etc, but Hidgi was the first person I met who is just playing music. Despite his blindness he has a huge number of music pieces that he still remembers through all the years of his life. He collects these musics, he keeps practicing them and he plays them to create the vibration that they carry.
I heard Hidgi play beautiful musics on the recorder like the Lord of the Rings, Musics of Bach and Mozart, The Last of the Mohicans or musics of Peter Deunov and many more.
Hidgi Chuan is the first person that I met who consciously chooses and uses musics as carriers of a certain content, a certain vibration and this taught me to choose musics from my heart, for the the joy and for the pleasure instead of choosing musics for reasons of perfection, reputation or appearance.
I grew up in an environment where music was practised to reach a very high level in skills and techniques. In this world the teacher would „give“ you a new music instead of you choosing a music from your heart (wich sometimes, of course, needs to be done for example if the student chooses a music that is way too difficult for his level). In the world of music that I grew up every one was trained to play any kind of music with a very high level of perfection. And even though I really loved the act of playing, the topics and conversations of music were always connected with performance and output rather than with joy and love.
With Hidgi Chuan I learned that the important thing is not to be able to move my fingers in an arpeggio of three octaves in less than a second. My fingers are very able, very responsive and very trained.
The important factors are not the fingers, not the arms, or the vocal chords. Neither is the problem to be found in the inspiration, the magic impulse, the vision, or the talent.
Hidgi Chuan taugh me that the important factor is „the one who is in between“, that is to say: Me. The person who is playing the instrument or singing the song. The device that is right in the middle between the inspiration and the technique that is needed to create a correct outcome.
Is this person, the one in the middle, a clear, responsive device? Is he or she ready to be used by the inspiration? Or is this device a chaotic system where the left hand is playing C major in 12/8 while the right hand is trying to play a Rage Against The Machine – Riff, and where the mind is wondering at the same time how to solve the problem that I am having with my boy-friend?
Hidgi Chuan taught me to work on this device. To optimize it. To make it an orchestrated entity that is singing, or playing, or speaking with a clear direction, and, therefore, with a clear sound.
Today I know what I can do and what I can not do. I have the courage to take an honest look at what I still need to improve. I am able to define what i want to say and to understand deeply the rules that I need to follow to not get lost in the temptations of wrong motives.
By learning and practising with Hidgi Chuan I learned to see things that I wasn´t able to see before: In a world like this is it very easy to loose track of your direction as an artist. On every corner we are tempted to do the opposite of what we are saying in our songs. This is a very difficult situation for an artist. It is a problem for many people in this world of today but as artists we do have a certain responsability: As we are sending out a specific vibration into the world we have to be conscious of the reaction that they will evoke once they reach the people.
By working with Hidgi Chuan I started to understand that there is a difference between a mere production / reproduction of music on the one hand side, and on the other side: Art.
In production / reproduction we „produce“ or “reproduce” a music. We play the right notes, we play the right rythm, we might even be able play with a perfect technique and we might even play with a certain amount of heart because the player just lost or won a love, or he is high or drunk (wich results in some strong but uncontrolled emotional reactions). The production might even display a lot of knowledge, a lot of effort and a lot of fantastic technical skills.
But when we speak about art it goes further: we start to BECOME what we talk about. Therefore we will find areas inside where we have to be honest with ourselves and to say: „Wait, here I need to change in order to be able to become coherent. I need to work on myself.“
This is why art can change our lifes.
Production and reproduction can fill your pockets with money, but they will not be able to change your life.
With Hidgi Chuan I learned that even the mere inspiration cannot help us if we are not willing to change. The inspiration will come at times (when the musician gets emotional because the musician just won or lost a love or because he or she is high or drunk). But in order to BECOME an artist instead of „playing the artist“ only when we have a gig or when we write a song, we need to become coherent in our lifes. Stable inspiration needs coherence.
And coherence is something we can only gain if we start to become honest with ourselves, and if we start to be willing to change the parts of ourselves that are not coherent.
Hidgi Chuan taught me that inspiration and techniques are empty tools if there is no stable actor in between, the operator in the middle, the medium. Hidgi showed me how important it is to develop a coherence in my life so that a) inspiration, and b) the doer and c) the technique can be ONE in music.
Despite of being a musician since more than 30 years of my life Hidgi Chuan changed my whole outlook on art. Today I believe that it is only in this moment that we can speak about art. And as we need to stretch, as we need to change and as we need to do an effort to reach this place we can say that art can really change our lifes.
In the world of today thre is always a certain destructiveness that is automatically assumed for the life of an artist: Most artists of this worl cannot even enter a stage without having a couple of beers before, some need to be really high to do so. Most people cannot even imagine to go to an art event / concert / festival without having their beer / wine or even other drugs. If you go to a music festival today you will find that almost everyone is having the habit to destroy their bodies by smoking cigarettes. This is very sad, indeed. From Hidgi Chuan I learned that there is another way in music, and in art:
What makes your art alive is not what you think, what you believe or what you feel:
What really defines the vibrations that we are able to create in art is the change that we are able to manifest in your personality. The path to leave and to unlearn the doctrines and authorities that formed us until now, to kick them all out of our life, and therefore, to meet our heart, and maybe even our soul, our true self.
Hidgi Chuan showed me how to start this process. It is a tough road and there are many traps along the way. But ist is a beautiful process, also, because then, and only then we can live, act, speak and feel as a true being, and, therefore, we will be able to create true art that will be able to speak through us, through us as true beings.
Playing Music with Hidgi Chuan 