© Unknown @ time of printing come? That has to do mainly with time pressure. During that period I was doing my PhD at the Institute for Psychoacoustics and Electronic Music (IPEM), and that took up a lot of time. That’s why it took a bit longer than planned. On ‘The Breaking Waves’ you sing a bit in German in ‘Die Stille Totgeschwiegen’. Why did you do that? Was that a tough work, or do you have a good command of Goethe’s language? Have you ever considered singing in Dutch as well? I heard the sentence ‘Ich habe die Stille totgeschwiegen’ somewhere (wrongly) in an Après-ski bar in Austria, and it stuck ever since.The sentence simply sounds very good in German as well as in Dutch,but lacks power in English. I also have a great affinity with German. I had pen pals in Germany from an early age, loved to look across the border as a teenager, went to the Wave-Gotik-Treffen (WGT) in Leipzig every year, was a big fan of Goethes Erben and Das Ich, and also had a grandmother who, in addition to Polish (which I can’t speak at all),had German as her mother tongue. So it wasn’t that big a task. Even - 5 - the entire German version on the double album was written quite easily.Dutch is a language that doesn’t suit me for songs. I think more in English than in Dutch. ‘A Part Of Me With You’ is about your brother’s suicide. In a Facebook post about it, youwrote: ‘Ifyou feel down in any way, talk to someone. If you feel you have nobody to talk to, reach out even to me, even if we've never met.’Do you believe that we can prevent suicides by paying more attention to the mental health issues around us? I would have liked to hope so of course. It was and is an open invitation to keep talking about what you feel. I sincerely believe that more attention to mental suffering can prevent a lot of sadness. Suicide in itself is of course a very drastic act,but what precedes it is, if possible,even worse. I can’t really describe how it feels when you become a kind of expert by experience because of the suicide of one of your loved ones, but it is the thought of loneliness and not finding another way out that sticks with me the most. It is also that which I think of most when I think of my brother, which also makes me feel very powerless and sad. www.peek-a-boo-magazine.be
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