“Language is the true homeland” are the words of Romanian philosopher, Emil Cioran (1911-1995). Cioran led a reclused life in Paris and published both in Romanian and French. His perspectives on language are core to his work, bringing light and solace to his otherwise nihilistic philosophy. These words always send shivers through my body. Let me tell you how I found my way back to my homeland.

In spring 2024, as part of my odyssey with wholeness, I self-published An Archaeology of the Personality, an autobiographical account of the first fourteen years of my life.  The stories tell of my childhood encounters with core aspects of the human experience. More specifically, they focus on my exile from England when, aged seven, I am abruptly uprooted and moved to Switzerland.

Writing these stories as songs of lament and pain was cathartic and helped me stay true to my vow never to forget the life I knew in England. My version of paradise lost? Little did I know at the time that the hidden purpose was to return from the exile from my homeland, the English language. All the hours shaping the stories worded by a bewildered child facing chaos and disorder carefully retrieved the past I was holding too tightly in my heart for fear of forgetting them.

Publishing them was the first act of letting go and freeing the unconscious grip the stories had on me. I know that this sounds like a well-trodden cliché but nonetheless the image helps me engage with the sincere work of emancipation from the past. I am glad that I opted for self-publication because it meant that I could open the cage and let the stories fly off with no expectations. No need to go on a round of promotion of the book. No need to capitulate to self-indulgence endlessly going over the stories in a solipsistic loop. No need to be concerned about readership and if my voice is being heard. None of that mattered any more.

I have always been aware that my move to Denmark was an opportunity to reclaim my love of the English language and step aside from the French culture I had been immersed in for fifty years. So, let’s move forward and find out how that came to pass.

I have just come back from my latest cultural trip to Copenhagen. This time I went to the radio concert hall, a top class concert venue, to hear the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande (OSR), my home orchestra from Geneva. This is the orchestra I worked with in my youth and years of singing in a professional choir.

The programme began with Brahm’s (1833-1897) second piano concerto (completed in 1881)  performed by the prodigious Georgian-French pianist, Khatia Buniatishvili, followed, in the second part, by the three-movement orchestral suite, Escales, by French composer Jacques Ibert (1890-1962) premiered in 1924 and ending with the famous Bolero of 1928 by Maurice Ravel (1875-1937). The programme swept us away to high German romanticism an on to early French modern music exploring diversity and minimalism. Khatia Buniatishvili elegantly ushered us into this second part with her encore when she played Claude Debussy’s (1862-1918) Clair de Lune from the suite bergamasque published in 1905.

I was mesmerised by the whole performance with the shift in the music from German to French idiom through what is known as songs without words. I perceived the transition from the yearning of romanticism to the inquisitive mind of early twenty century music after the Great War. I could feel the whole orchestra, nestled in the well at the heart of the concert hall, pulsing like a living entity sweeping the audience up to join the dance, in particular during the Bolero, a French dance that I could recognise in so many ways as mine, too: layer upon layer of instrumental voices, winds and strings conversing through carefully crafted lines using only thirteen notes and repeating a simple rhythm.

The following morning I went to the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, a fine art museum, home to the private collection of the Carlsberg family who made their name and fortune in beer. I found myself naturally drifting towards their collection of French Art from 1870 to 1925. There was a special display on one of Degas’ paintings of ballet classes using state-of-the art techniques to scrutinise the different layers. Above, in a large room, there is a stunning collection of French impressionists. Immersed in the beauty of the room, I suddenly realised that the music that I had heard the previous evening had grown out of the paintings I was gazing into, art forms flowing into and out of each other.

I was experiencing, in real time, the creative crosspollination between painting and music at its best, bringing alive the idea that beauty is, indeed, in the eye of the beholder. And the same can be said about generative art that knows no boundaries and flows towards the receptive heart regardless of language. As a validation of my epiphany, the following day, I heard the British composer, Thomas Ades (b. 1971), explain that his early compositional pieces had emerged from the art work scattered around his childhood home. His mother is an art historian whose main focus is surrealism and he grew up among an abundance of prints of Salvador Dali’s paintings. Ades perceives a direct connection between surrealism in painting and minimalism in music and has explored this vein throughout his career.

My recent immersive experiences in art have got me thinking about the profound nature of language without words. Beyond the words, beneath the syntax, the mastery of idiosyncratic vocabulary and the impossible grammatical rules that took up so much of my energy in my first years of learning to be fluent in French, there is much more to enjoy. Having released the stories that speak of my transition from English to French, I can go beyond the rule-based order and enjoy both idioms in their fulness. This feels like a true second half-of-life inner voyage to master the language of love.

I know that I am not the only one here practicing an art form to polish a contemplative mind. I am curious to hear about your own immersive experiences with art. Please share below.