Bendik Hofseth - POLLEN AND LEAVES (Forest Quadrology)

Pollen and Leaves: Some Track notes

1. SUN

Whereas concerts and fandom in Western countries have increasingly turned into secluded events for specific sociological groups, in Africa everyone is invited. The entire community takes part. Look at music videos from Africa. Western music videos portray artists as remote and externalized, someone that is above and apart from the community. Often in the role of someone with a lot of power, be it in bling or be it in shaman-like qualities. In Africa the artists step down and are amongst people. And people of all kinds: children, old people, handicapped and other demarginalized people are also included in a very natural way. They are not antagonists to improve the standing of the artist; they are part of the fabric of the society in a very natural way.
So, in simple terms Western popular music seems to go in the direction of in-groups and out-groups, but African popular music seems to be closer to an all-groups mentality. Perhaps because exclusive is easier to monetize than inclusive? But when music becomes inclusive, almost en par with food and drink as necessary composites and key drivers for human sociability, it probably is closer to its source. It is probably closer to the “Sun”.

2. The Flesh of the berry

Musical intelligence can be of great use to society at large, musicians are equipped and trained to know that consensus is the “greater goal”, but that it emerges organically as a sum of all the individual voices. To speak musically is to express something deeply felt, deeply emotional, in a way that corresponds with your specific personality, your temperament, your limitations, your strengths, your training, your instrument. This unique voice then must tune in to the collective discussion, the matter-at-hand. Paradoxically the more personal and distinct each musical voice is, the stronger and more unified the sound of the collective often becomes.

Master musicians know where they are coming from, they respect and are proud of their roots, their patrimonial cultural heritage. Master musicians know their instruments and their musical predecessors. But they are also aware of the limitations of both. They can transcend and put aside tradition if the music and the moment call for it because they know and accept the delimitation. They can and must transcend it because the interaction, the interplay is what matters most. Master musicians are osmotic and malleable, always listening and tuning in to what goes on around them, they are always inside the discussion, they challenge form and subject matter, they bring their own contributions, at the same time as they know their tradition, they are aware of the audience and even the world at large. They are continuously changing, yet something in them stay the same.

Master musicians remain true to themselves but at the same time always adopt, hence they are constantly working in-between the traditional roles, they are working as a composer as well as musician. The two activities, creation and performance are tied closely together, to the degree that it becomes hard to distinguish where one starts and the other ends. Great musicians take responsibility for the whole as well as their part, their separate contribution. It is the multitude of voices and the diversity of expressions that creates the whole, not the other way around.

What intrigues me about music making is the unique possibility of changing the basic parameters at the core of the musical practice. In real time. It goes beyond genre politics or audience expectation, and certainly beyond most of what I read from reviews of music. It starts with me as a listener: all the musicians that I really admire have this in common, that they are actual innovators that have found a place in the collective for their personalities, their singular expressions. A great musician does not play a solo or accompany a soloist, a great musician creates a new genre when performing, a genre for and to themselves.

3. Super-a-bun-dance

It is truly amazing how much creativity and ingenuity the music coming out of Africa continues to display. The continent has a young population and music plays an integral part in the forming of their many identities. To attend concerts there is a privilege. Playing them also feels different. It is so much fun! Music is a joint and collective phenomenon; it is shared and works first and foremost through the engagement of everyone. Yes, there are artists, and they are revered and famous but the distance between the hall and the stage seems smaller somehow. There is more emphasis on communication and less of the propaganda and cult-based intentionally directed messages of the Western superstar industry. More bottom-up, less top-down.


4. Endless possibilities

Helge Iberg – on Coronas impact on the Forest Project

Marcel Duchamp spent 8 years creating and producing “The bride stripped bare by her bachelors, even”. The fragile piece then partially shattered in transit. He later declared the symmetrical pattern of cracks an improvement.


5. The seed to your own heart

Left-over from “Branches” recording, an introduction that we took out with Eivind Aarsets beautiful guitars and Mats Eilertsen remarkable bowing technique. Re-cycled, re-used, refreshing music from these two masters.

6. The moon won’t tell

The social revolution of the 1950 and 1960s in the US and Europe where music came to play a key role, had such good intentions, and started up so well. It was a creative age with a myriad of new expressions, filled to the brim with experiments and a hunger for cultural diversity. Many of the pioneers from way back then is now reduced to a facsimile of the “Mona Lisa” effect: They are so famous that we must see them before we die. (Or sometimes before they die but that is something that seems increasingly unlikely.) As the arts industries increasingly started to go steady with the market-economy of the 80s and 90s, many artists became boxes to tick off in our path to become first-class consumers. They are the prestigious social events, medals that we hang on our “shopping uniform”, the suit most favoured when we dress up for awkward social occasions with a lot of people we have not been introduced to yet.

The revolution has been monetized! Seen from a distance it is weird that we continue to accept the terms of these interactions. Because the message from these artists is pretty evident and the recurring hook-line is not unlike the one in the traditional hold-up: Give me your money! But we are in the business of buying experience, money has become a most active ingredient of the creativity that we use individually to mould our lives. If we cannot shape our own personalities with our hands or our minds, we can always create a persona with money.

A case to consider: a major US superstar recently played two shows in Oslo, my hometown. The turnover of those shows was like 10.000 concerts with my band at our usual fee.

7. A falling leaf as a tender kiss

Exactly that, Helge Iberg.

Tree trunk – integrity – intreegrity

Unlike the multitude of roots and the many outlets in the crown of the tree: branches, boughs and twigs, the trunk, when gazed upon from the outside, glares solitary. The trunk is unable to hide it’s individual character, even in a forest of trees. The trunk is the part of the tree that delimits it to one single organism.

The trunk can be described as “the core” of the tree. The core of the trunk, the core of the core, is scientifically known as “heartwood”. Although dead, the heartwood will not decay or lose strength while the outer layers are intact. A composite of hollow, needlelike cellulose fibers bound together by a chemical glue called lignin, makes it, in many ways, as strong as steel.

Venice in Italy is built on a foundation of millions of tree trunks. To stabilize the marshy lagoon floor, ancient builders drove timber poles—mostly alder, oak, and larch—deep into the mud. Submerged in oxygen-deprived water, these wooden foundations petrified and hardened like stone over centuries.

8. Still

It is a rare thing when one finds a groove that puts you into an immediate state of flow, a groove you succumb to immediately, that you cannot resist. I think this goes for me as a listener as well as a musician. It is rather like one of those awe-inspiring experiences in nature. You are instantly immersed in it, you give in, stop thinking, you accept the physical reality as well as your mental state, your body syncs up with your mind and they make a deal between them to stop disagreeing, to stop pulling in different directions and swoop…. In one nanosecond your entire system falls into one whole being. It’s an intravenous experience and sometimes it lasts as long as the music lasts. That feeling of wholeness, of belonging, of joy that only music and nature has been able to foster, at least in my life, must be the closest thing to the feeling of love, bliss? In any case: a truly Orpheic moment.

9. Lennart von Post

Ernst Jakob Lennart von Post was a Swedish geologist and is best known for inventing quantitative pollen analysis and establishing palynology as a scientific discipline.
On Svalbard there is a glacier named after Von Post.

But it is not named after Lennart, but rather another famous scientist, Hampus Adolf von Post. Lennart was the grandchild of Hampus’ cousin.


10. If Jizz is jazz

Is there an etymological link between jizz and jazz? In that case it would explain a lot.
Jazz is often just a seed of a simple idea used as a trampoline for interplay between skilled musicians. It has not received a fully-fledged form, but may venture into many directions. Jazz can be seen as the expression of “potential”, excitement and uninhibited performance.
Hence it is difficult to fence the music in, to de-limit it. That doesn’t mean that people don’t try.

11. It can lead to anything

Mats Eilertsen and Helge Iberg points towards a direction. But they do not tread the path. Will the listener dare to see where it leads?

12. Carbon Capture

Most musical instruments are made from some kind of wood. What is musicianship but a brilliant example of how we can co-exist with nature, immerse ourselves respectfully into an ecology where we belong without dominating it or destroying it?

13. Recycled midnight

Who knows what jazz is? The biggest potato sack where anything goes, and where freedom exists to experiment and try out new things? Or an Afro-American academy with clear pointers towards a long line of canonized musicians. Both?

14. Fly away

Palynology is the scientific study of contemporary and fossil pollen, spores, and other microscopic organic microfossils (palynomorphs). Because these tiny particles are incredibly resistant to decomposition, palynology is widely used to reconstruct past climates, date sedimentary rocks in energy exploration, and analyse trace evidence in forensic investigations.

Useful in climate restoration, archaeology, crime-solving, energy exploration and in tracking seasonal airborne pollen, hence aiding people with hay fever and asthma.

15. All the pretty blossom

Engineers today are the constituents of a new elite that has replaced the previous torchbearers: the papacy and clergy of the Middle Ages, artists and authors from the Renaissance and onwards, Hollywood actors and superstar musicians from the 1960’s until the 1990’s. All these previous elites from the strong symbiotic relationship between religion and arts are now more or less castrated or obsolete. They are replaced by hipster engineers. Curation of music, previously an activity that was carefully constricted to an enlightened few, is now done by machine code on streaming platforms. Machine code developed by engineers, not specialists in music. Logical/mathematical intelligence is on its way to appropriate musical intelligence.

These engineers are busy developing applications, writing algorithms, designing toolkits that are ever more all-encompassing. But beyond the trivial chores of their workday, they have access to money, they have access to investment. They also seem to be the new custodians of integrity, they are the it-people, they constitute a prestigious and glamorous community that youngsters dream about and aspire to become a part of. This is a shift in power, a shift in elites, in spiritual elites, in hard power as well as soft power elites. Perhaps is it also a shift in which elite holds the dominion of appropriation?

As in the gospel of Matthew: “Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and unto God the things that are God's". We have already rendered the technology companies the power of Caesar; now should we also render them the power of God? Should we let them undertake that mission, that appropriation too? They could do it without us noticing it, their world is one of opaqueness, to us as users they operate in a complicated, impenetrable, and non-transparent world. We don’t want to know too much about what they are doing, we want to be helped, served, and empowered. Through accepting the infantilisation caused by their lack of accountability; we are no better than a 5-year-old believing me to be John Coltrane.

We are believers on the outside who have faith in the glory that they are producing, because their wonders and our belief in them makes our existence easier to bear. We are believers on the outside who stands by them despite of their predatory and kleptomaniac tendencies because they offer connections between us, consolation, and an apparent strengthening of character. We feel democratised but are we really, are we truly? We believe and place our trust in them to the degree that when they tell us that the “minor” issues, the “irrelevant bugs”, will be fixed in the next upgrade, we believe that too.

16. Can I really take it

On appropriation in the ecology of the creative community

“Les bons artistes copient, les grands artistes volent.”

The above quote is often attributed to Pablo Picasso and in English reads something along the lines of: “good artists copy, great artists steal.” It raises eternal questions: When is art or science groundbreakingly innovative and when is it merely repeating other people’s ideas within established norms? And who gets to decide?
It seems impossible to verify that the quote stems from Picasso or that it was ever expressed by him. So that the quote is attributed to Picasso might well in itself be an appropriation, a cunning and untraceable theft. Some sources claim that the origin of the aphorism lies with Igor Stravinsky, or William Faulkner, some claim that the creator is T.S. Eliot. Eliot did write something similar in his 1920 publication “The sacred wood: Essays on Poetry and Criticism”:
“One of the surest of tests is the way in which a poet borrows. Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal; bad poets deface what they take, and good poets make it into something better, or at least something different. The good poet welds his theft into a whole of feeling which is unique, utterly different from that from which it was torn; the bad poet throws it into something which has no cohesion. A good poet will usually borrow from authors remote in time, or alien in language, or diverse in interest.”
Another source goes even further back to an article titled “Imitators and Plagiarists” published in “The Gentleman’s Magazine” in 1892. The author was W. H. Davenport Adams, and the terminology he used was uncannily like that of Eliot, although turned upside down: “to imitate” is commendable, but “to steal” is unworthy. Adams is describing the British poet Alfred Tennyson’s assimilative method: “when he adopts an image or a suggestion from a predecessor, and works it up into his own glittering fabric, I shall give a few instances, offering as the result and summing up of the preceding inquiries a modest canon: That great poets imitate and improve, whereas small ones steal and spoil.”
What these quotes are describing is an unabashed sense of privilege and the arrogance of someone in power, certain of it and unafraid of it. The quote, especially in Eliot’s version, is itself an affirmation of elitism. The better cultured people, who are in the know, can more appropriately reference, and better see the relevance of thoughts coming from alien or older sources. An artist with a specific standing, based on a thorough education in the history of cultural practices, is more qualified for authoritative curation. Such a person can better place old ideas, that long since has fallen out of copyright, into a relevant context that make these ideas chime true and new today. Such a person is better. It comes with a responsibility, yes, “noblesse oblige”, but with the right kind of background, formation and character that trade-off carry little weight on broad shoulders.

17. Cells of abscission

Abscission cells form a specialized region called the abscission zone at the base of plant organs like leaves, flowers, and fruits. Triggered by seasonal changes, stress, or maturation, these cells actively secrete enzymes to detach the organ safely and seal the plant to prevent infection.

18. Entangle me

This is an example of reuse or recycling, based on an older song from a previous recording (“Cosmopolitan” from “Children and Cosmopolitans” (2012)). I fell in love with this groove immediately and wanted to explore it further together with the other musicians. We recorded this in one take, they had never heard it before but reacted intuitively and came up with extraordinary contributions, very well suited to the purpose.


The lyrics are playing with a specific Norwegian word, or rather two: “utvikle” og “innvikle”.
“Utvikle” means something along the lines of “develop”, but it’s etymological root implies “rolling something out”, to accrue, aggregate more. Now the contrary term: “innviklet” implies that something gets more complicated but etymologically the implication is more towards “rolling something in”, developing something inwards. In English I guess the nearest equivalent would be the terms “Entanglement” and “Disentanglement”. Entangle means something along the line of twisting something together into a usually confused mass.
By a combination of the Norwegian “innvikle” and “Entanglement” the lyrics imply the twisting together of something into a mass, but not necessarily a confused one.

Could we use the musical experience to learn how to musically entangle ourselves with nature, learn to live with it, rather than being culturally programmed to control it, stay on top of it? Can we “step down to it”, manage that transition of entanglement without being confused?

Is this a romantic and naïve vision? Or is it one where the arts can lead the way? The arts as an aggregated reservoir of collective and individual experiences where we accept and integrate the physical world and our own bodily experiences with our intellectual endeavours?

19. Potentials

A very sophisticated version of a tree: A musician learns to play through imitating past and contemporary masters. As the musician becomes more accomplished, he/she will be able to shed new light on the roots, he/she will be in constant dialogue with the roots. If the musician becomes a master musician the musical trunk, the stem has thickened over time. This growth allows for further growth. A crown will start to emerge, a crown of a myriad of expressions based on the trunk that the master musician represents. These expressions can go in all directions, they can be commercial, artsy, pedagogical, silly, wise etc. Some will be antecedents for new musical trees, some will be ephemeral, and some will even die before they can take off. The master musician lets it all happen without interfering or passing judgement. The master musician remains still, in constant dialogue with the roots below that make up the foundation. The master musician remains still, in constant amazement over the fertile decadence that happens above, it keeps feeding upwards to keep all the passers-by content: birds, butterflies and insects, bigger animals that need to rest for a while on the biggest and most solid branches. The master musician passes no moral judgement but
remains still to let the energy pass from below to above, from above to below. The master musician allows all impulses to pass through, each signal will be observed and delivered to the right instance. The master musician is organically connected to all the different parts of the tree. The master musician is osmotically connected to the outside world.

The master musician carries it all, has the spine to carry it all, has the integrity to carry it all.

20. An orchard in a single seed

Fertile decadence. If The Sade, Baudelaire, Foucault, Robbe-Grillet, Houellebecq, combined their united decadent powers – they still would not come close to the power of potent debauchery constituted by pollen from a single twig on an old oak tree in some godforsaken part of Normandie. Neither the pollens potential for katharsis.

21. Cornucopia

The trunk stands between the crown and the roots, connecting the two parts, tying them together. When we gaze upon a collection of trees it is apparent and obvious to us that the trunk is the solitary part of the tree, it is the feature that best enable us to distinguish one tree from another.

Roots are most often referred to in the plural: as a multitude of integrated tentacles that spreads out downwards and sideways in the fertile ground. Roots become a web of roots, each root starts from nearly nothing at the very onset, then grows bigger and stronger on its way towards the trunk. At some point each root dissolves and becomes indistinguishable. It surrenders its distinctiveness as a traceable root to the unity of the singular trunk. Many roots melt into one trunk. It is almost as if the elders have chosen to transfer their powers to one leader. As if the historical antecedents are just there to exist in this one erect, living creature. The group has become one. History has dissolved into the present.

Yes, history can dissolve into the present, as in music: The many musicians and composers from history are still part of the concert you hear today, but they have melted into each contemporary performer, each contemporary musical performance. A multitude of unalike voices have merged into a distinct unison represented by your favourite artist. You need to decompose, analyse, and scrutinize, you need to be an expert to disentangle the trace of a J.S. Bach or Coltrane from what you hear. But the traces are there as every musician stands on the shoulders of giants. It would be insupportable if we were to have musicians that didn’t, that reinvented the wheel for every performance. Most of such creations will not, on their own, stand the test of time of time. They will struggle to persevere. Feeble offshoots and vulnerable sprouts have difficulties when they encounter the merciless forces of nature: winds, cold weather, drought, and competition from other and stronger initiatives.

Many roots melt into one trunk. Seen from above the ground, the many contributors are invisible and indistinguishable. But for a listener who is willing to look under ground, who is willing to dig deeper than the obvious, the roots will become apparent. A listener who is motivated enough or curious enough to brush of the first layer of earth can uncover the origins and limits of a musical tree. This listener will have the satisfaction of being able to see the roots for what they are: necessary and indispensable. Such a listener will also be able to observe that roots grow into one tree represented by one tree trunk, but also that the opposite is going on: that one tree trunk develops and grows into even many more roots. As the tree grows bigger, heavier, it needs more support, it needs stronger roots, a wider set of roots. So the process of a tree’s growth is simultaneously bottom-up and top-down: roots grow into a stronger and more erect trunk, a trunk seeps down into stronger and wider roots.

22. Don’t change a thing:

One day I received an SMS in my rehearsal studio from someone called Sidiki Camara. I was familiar with the name because some 2 years earlier I had received some percussion tracks from my friend and long-time collaborator Paolo Vinaccia. Paolo told me that he had recorded the tracks with a musician from Mali that was currently residing in Oslo named Sidiki. I remember that I tried to get a name and a phone number to the Malian musician from Paolo but for some reason it never happened. He jokingly said that Sidiki was so good that he did not dare introduce me to him. So, I had these sparkling percussions tracks that I worked with and integrated into the “Children and Cosmopolitan” album. But no sense of the man that had performed on them together with Paolo.

It was a very unusual experience to me; I normally know the musicians I work with very well. In fact, I think of it as a precondition for making music over years that I stay loyal to “my tribe”. Music, to me, is something we make with other people, for other people again. It is a collective that develops and grows together. I have no particular interest in “soloists” that drop by to “skim the milk”. There are musicians that can top-up and add some extra touch on otherwise quite predictable musical pieces, musicians that can perform extraordinarily well within set structural boundaries. Such musicians can come to good use within well-established genres such as certain classical music styles, in standard jazz or formulaic pop music. Here they can thrive and impress me, much as I would be impressed by an acrobat in a circus or any craftsman excelling at his work. But I am often left with the impression that such musicianship remains on the outside of the actual music-making.

It’s rather like those people who come to meetings and political debates with rehearsed opinions, ideologically preconceived notions, and formulaic answers. They do no become part of the discussion; they do not really ascribe to the possibility and potential in the human gathering. They do not meet others in a real sense but walk out of the room with the same set of opinions that they entered with. The exchange (note the etymology of the word) has not changed them.

To me the challenge at the heart of music-making is to explore together, to collectively lay a new foundation for better individual developments. It might be naïve but I have often imagined this to be at the heart of a consensus also: that we attempt to meet challenges and solve problems through joint deliberations. But to make that work it must be ensured that everyone feels that they are part of the same discussion. This doesn’t mean that we necessarily must agree, neither does it necessarily mean that we must compromise.

I called Sidiki back at the number he left; we had a coffee and a conversation. Since that day I’ve played with him as often as possible.

23. Make it simpler

For a tree to survive and become a self-sustained unit, the grouping of roots have to become one. Not unlike we organize our societies: The many contributors, the citizens, have chosen their representatives, these representatives have gathered in their assemblies and these assemblies have chosen their one leader: a president or an emperor, a queen, or a king. The many has laid the foundation for the one. The many become the one, the elected singular leader carries in him/her the support of an entire community. Without the many roots there would be no single trunk.

The elected leader is now to be crowned. As a tree will be crowned, first with boughs and branches, then further on with twigs, shoots, leaves, berries, flowers and ultimately pollen, new seeds for potentially new trees. The crown is heavy, and the crown is unruly. The elected ruler needs a strong neck, a strong spine to withstand the pressure. As the tree needs a strong trunk to let the crown sway and swagger in the wind throughout the different seasons. Through blizzards and heatwaves. The trunk carries it all, accommodates for it all: it allows the crown to sparkle and shine, allows the crown to interact with other parts of nature, through tempting insects to visit and collect pollen from the flowers or the berries, through allowing the wind to spread its seeds, through allowing birds and animals to visit. The crown is fed and watered through the trunk, the trunk nurtures all the different parts of the crown, enables the crown to have energy and strength enough to do what it wants to do – the main wooden axis of the tree does all of this without judgement or condemnation. It nudges rather than command.

A crude representation of a tree: The medieval king became a ruler by subjugating as many subjects as possible to his singular power. This singular power, if used wisely, allowed citizens to thrive and live their lives without much interference. But with each king this process has to start again, subjugating citizens etc.
A more sophisticated version of a tree: Modern democracy elects its rulers. These rulers operate within an institutional framework that delimits their modus operandi, the scope of decisions they are expected to take on behalf of everyone. If democratic rulers have ruled successfully citizens can profit from peaceful times and good relations with their neighbours. It is also expected that institutions and legal frameworks are strengthened further than they were at the outset of the term of the politicians. Modern democracy tries to build on the same tree throughout generations by integrating different personalities, by allowing diversity in opinions to be baked into the thick main stem.

If you let us, we can run society in a good balance between bottom-up and top-down. We can make is simpler.