C. Newman / H. Zerlett

• Do I have

• Shoe

• Day

• We love

• I miss

• Night

• This is (Farah)

• These are (my songs)

• Pirate

• I can’t

• I couldn’t

Our experience of creating songs together was an on-off occasion. They were the result of a situation. They were not planned or intended. They issued froth as they occurred to us, I would say more like found than invented, though they don’t in any way use quotes or consciously borrowed material. In a way it’s as if Helmut created a surrounding for my body to lie in, a bedroom of musical furniture, rugs, paintings on the wall & so forth, an environment, so that it is inevitably ‘fitted’ with my vocal spoutings, & embedded the surrealistic rhymes. It was not like the writing of writing songs, maybe more like improvisation – this is something I’ve never indulged in – but we were not developing a theme, there was no safety-net, though the on-the-spot creating situation obviously is similar. Also we were not delivering something for an audience – this went straight onto computer. Also there was not written material around, & the nowpublished songbook of these efforts (Verlag Neue Musik Berlin) is the first time they’ve been made visible through our efforts to transcribe them 25 years after the event. There is in no way of course that the original occasion can be replicated; ironically it is as if this live version is the equivalent of the C.D. & the C.D. is the thing itself & the live version is what’s come out of it.

C. N.