Cosmeana: Swamp Lantern

Navel-Gazers #62 is an interview with Tatyana Waldron a.k.a. Cosmeana who is going to talk to us about Swamp Lantern. This is an album which managed to come along just at a point when I was looking for something new and different. What got my attention - as is so often the case - was a cover image, in this case an artwork of Tatyana’s. It depicts a pair of outlandish figures, painted in cold, iridescent colours of a shade I’d wager anyone rarely encounters outside of the subconscious, mired in what one assumes is the titular swamp. And the music in turn seems to transport us to that very place. In fact an album like ‘Swamp Lantern’ causes me to stop and reflect on the wonder of sound-making: how is it that an artist using only the production, placement and presentation of sound can seem to conjure something so similar to tangible, observable space in the ears of the listener? Knee deep into track 3, Unrecognised flowers it’s as though I’m right there in the marsh with those lantern creatures, just like in a fantasy or an illusion… I wonder how something like this comes into being? I’m guessing that Tatyana can trace ’Swamp Lantern’ - her first solo album as Cosmeana - to a recent burst of creativity. Perhaps she can illuminate us as to its origins…

AC: Thanks for joining me on Navel-Gazers! Before we venture into the swamp, why don’t you tell us about yourself, who are you, what is your background?

Cosmeana: Thank you for your wonderful feedback, Andrew!

I'm a visual artist and this album is my first solo attempt. It's been prompted by curiosity and sheer fascination that lingered and grew, having stumbled upon some unexpected twists and turns of shady mossy pathways in a musical landscape that were thoroughly hidden from me for eons by a four-toed toad.

How to describe myself to someone who have never met me?.. It's not an activity I usually engage in! Like a tree by a road-side, stretching its tangled bare limbs out to the sky in such an awkward manner that no passer-by would find its shade refreshing nor fruit appealing: I tend spread my maroon-bellied seeds in silence! My circle of friends is a chipmunk and a few flies. But must say... I do love them very much, and I think at least the little furry guy seem to truly appreciate my company as well.

As a kid I used to like staring out of a window. Not because it was interesting, it was helpful while waiting till the school is over. Somewhere in a rural Russian town, in a two-story yellow building behind the tall doors, I'd be positioned at a desk, away from the first row, preferably at the back, wearing a brown uniform dress with a white collar and an orange triangular silk scarf, tied around my neck. It wasn't clear to me why it was necessary, but the entire country was doing it, it was a symbol of Something... Then one day, suddenly, they said it was ok to wear what I like, but they still wanted me to come back to look out of the window for a couple more years. It was a truly remarkable experience that left a big imprint on my life, to know where not to go and where not to belong.

And then there was a cloud. A dense blurry cold-wet substance made of forever and daring venturings into various micro-climates, sometimes uninhabitable, sometimes peculiar, but more and more carpeted with green. I kept my sketchbook with me to reflect on the happenings. Watercolor and ink were followed by pencil and charcoal, and stayed. They allow flexibility and room to change one's mind mid-way or add an unexpected detail without having to be very precise and having a final plan.

It's more of an adventure than execution, you never know what you'll see and it's fun. I think that's the point when it all ended and started...

There was a day when I decided to look up an artwork that caught my eye a while ago, scrolling through Bandcamp trying to find something interesting to listen to. It was an album cover of Doom in Bloom by Botanist. I was so intrigued, I bought a t-shirt with that design on it. A black and white drawing of a small forest creature with roots instead of feet, an Azalea flower instead of her head, sitting comfortably on an edge of a man's ear, she's sticking her hand inside of his ear into the darkness. Simple but so strange!.. I remember the moment when I almost distracted myself from what would later change my life: a nagging thought of suddenly getting up and going out into a crisp Autumn air, plucking a few fresh Lilium superbum with their long filaments of the stamens from a nearby field to dislodge the dangly anthers with my finger to watch the pollen fly. I firmly suppressed that urge into the subconscious, turned on the PC, typed in a few words on a keyboard and a minute later the soggy-grey-wet was over.

I discovered Mr. M...

In recent years I have found a few artists whose work is speaking a language that's enchanting to me. It's familiar, but distant and mysterious, like the stars. I could feel with my skin and deep in the heart that the sound I'm hearing is coming from a special place and the words are truth.

"Traveler now reach the stream. The astral flight adapter. From the pain-sheath life ascends - the Non-returner sees..." Listening to Al Cisneros, I've marveled at the spiritual, meditative, growling and low rumbling, cinematic, and goofy at the same time. Of course, not everyone would agree and may laugh it off as gibberish and nonsense, but I know!.. It was enlightening. Of course, I had to go out and get myself a bass. Only, at that time I didn't know there was such a thing, a guitar look-alike, so I ended up bringing home an 6-string electric guitar instead and exchanging for the real thing a week later.

Mr. M, Matthew Waldron, an extraordinary artist whose work is mind-bending and very much inspirational to me, also turned out to be a musician... The only member of irr.app.(ext), which stands for Irrational Appendage (Extending), is a creative force of unseen nature. I didn't know it's possible to materialize an orchestra-like sound of a grand magnitude with soul-disquieting qualities by a help of a kitchen whisk and a recorder! And then combine that with a bouncy interlude of tantric drums featuring an intermittent appearance of a door spring, occasional bird chirp or a floorboard groaning. It was the first time being introduced to immersive organic sound that's expanded my universe.

Of course, I had to marry Mr. Waldron right away...

On our long walks in forests, swamps or empty fields we would talk about things we like the most: dangleberry, milkweed, sleepy catchfly, and the rosy underwing. We would go out and sing into a giant metal pylon we'd come across on one of the night outings or let the wind sing and turn on the recorder... It was fun, we created many stray bits and pieces like that over the last few years that we have yet to combine into a finished composition. Though, we did manage to complete a public performance together at a small venue in Portland, Oregon. At the time it was under a working name "Two Masks", which stuck, unfortunately.

Hearing Matthew talk about sound-engineering, mastering, tips and tricks of recording, unconventional and unusual instruments, stories about Nurse With Wound, a band he was previously a part of -- and especially Steve Stapleton and his unique approach -- all made me want to dive in and wade the vast waters of sound myself.

AC: I like the suggestion that there’s a special language to be detected. Upon seeing that Botanist cover - which looks like something right out of the world of irr.app.(ext) or Cosmeana - it occurs to me that we’re not just talking about a sound language here but a whole audiovisual language. Perhaps that’s even too narrow to describe it.

One reason I wanted to speak is that you’re clearly clued in to this language, with a close connection to someone who’s been exploring this kind of thing for many years, but you yourself are just starting out. That’s an interesting perspective. How did you find your feet with sound-making? Has it been through instrumental performance, field recording, composition or what? And when did ’Swamp Lantern’ begin to develop?

Cosmeana: You're right, pointing out the visual side of it. When I listen to Spiral Insana, it begins with a sparse sound that has this particular quality to it that my mind is immediately precipitating a shabby dressed man in a dusty fisherman hat walking along a roadside after dark, dragging behind himself a beaten-up rusted shovel. His face is grim, his thoughts are heavy -- something that could easily belong to the dark landscapes of Eraserhead!.. Of course it's silly and not at all based on factual reality, someone else will have a different narrative or none at all, but I like imagining spaces and feelings that unfold in front of me because I believe they are coming from something real, though symbolic. Living through an artist's personal experience without knowing the specifics, while decorating with your own detail.

I think bringing in field recording, day-to-day non-musical familiar sounds, alongside more traditional melodic development of a piece, creates cues for triggering memories and impressions, something tactile that our mind recognizes and presents us with an image or a situation that alters the reality for a moment. When there are several of them fired all at once your mind probably slaps together something truly bizarre... There was a program, an AI based algorithm, where you could input a phrase and it would paint a picture for you. The more abstract the input would be, the weirder the interpretation would be as a result, like bone-chilling imagery of Hieronymus Bosch or a mysterious alchemist drawing from Opus Magnum. I had fun playing with it when it came out... Sadly, I heard they made it "better", it no longer understands the open-ended.

I may be just starting out with sound, but I was exploring emotion long before that. Music is just another way to describe your internal state and thoughts in an artistic form. It's a matter of getting familiar with the tools... Luckily for me, my instruments don't require years of diligent practice. Unlike the common assumption, one can start creating sound that makes sense right here and now. Understanding this was one of the biggest things that made me much happier.

I began with one-on-one bass lessons, but shortly dropped out. Something wasn't fitting, I felt trapped and cornered. I sold my red quilted maple Schecter and built my own bass from scrap walnut wood and an old neck found at a thrift store and burned its edges. It was alright, I liked how it sounded and how imperfect it was: I didn't have to be anxious leaving fingerprints or slamming strings too hard. The second, and the one I currently use, is based on a broken vintage Japanese guitar that I've modified. I never finished that project completely. It still has a hole in the top from where a little red wi-fi light used to be embedded (it was one a the first cordless guitars on the market back then). The custom acid-on-metal little pictures that I designed for it were abandoned, and the 12th fret buzz hasn't been addressed. I like it... And it was a great timing -- just as I discovered the concept of a prepared instrument. On Swamp Lantern I freely indulge playing my bass with a cheese grater and a candle extinguisher. I speculate that Omphalopticon understands the joy!

When I decided to make my first track I wasn't familiar with how things worked and what to expect. From some random experimenting, I knew that placing layers of various pre-recorded sounds can create interesting unexpected results, but how to combine them in a coherent composition wasn't obvious. I ended up knee-deep in hundreds of little sound bits, scattered in dozens of layers in my program. It took me a year to arrange them in a way that spoke truth, not a lie! Now that I've done a few more pieces (not published yet), I do it a little faster with a better sense of what's needed to phrase my thoughts.

With this album I wanted to translate and preserve my experience of the past few years. Feeling close and safe, fascinated and amused in contrast to the usual: disoriented, lost, and disturbed! Going on our little adventures every day, encountering new places and things, I wanted to document some of that. I embedded recordings of foot steps on sand, night ocean at Yaquina Head, behind-the scenes snippets from our film project that we're working on for a few years now... Things like that!

A mysterious light rising above the cold murky waters that guides me, softly blinking, inviting -- a swamp lantern! Which is the common name of a plant Lysichiton americanum, something I got briefly entangled with on a recent trip to the dense outskirts of Stagnum Mirabilis...

AC: The process you’re describing - collating hundreds of small pieces, gradually figuring out how they fit together - is familiar to me personally and would be to other Navel-Gazers I’ve spoken to. Among artists in general though, perhaps surprisingly rare!

‘Swamp Lantern’ uses remarkable transitions between passages. There are two in ‘Unrecognized Flowers’ I particularly like. First there’s a section from around 5:30 where all the previous sounds are replaced by dripping water, some breathy loops, muffled laughter. Before we know it we are somewhere new.

There’s another bit around 12:15… you have something happening on a fretboard which gets interrupted by this shuffling. The shuffling then gives way to a choral-sounding vocal passage. Somewhere new again.

What can you tell us about the successive sounds we’re hearing here?

Cosmeana: When it's time for the transition, I like to sit back and take a moment to feel what's missing and what's natural for the situation. I usually don't come up with an exact answer, but when I get a hint on a direction to take, I go check my archives for something similar or record a new sound that has the quality that I'm after. Then I can expand on it or change it up a bit... I also believe in the power of random. Doesn't always work, but once in a while I grab a sound that I like regardless of my original intention and see what happens, it really helps in finding unexpected solutions. I think this is my favorite method. I have lots of fun, merging the un-mergible -- It feels great not to take it too seriously and let it guide you somewhere new.

As for the sounds themselves, the first portion you mentioned contains a boiling kettle, a chemist flask that's being dipped in water, various vocal loops, us laughing -- I had a recorder running... Then it goes to a bass that I played with the glass flask (somehow!). That combines with a layer of a repetitive sweeping sound of fresh cypress brunches, a soft breathing though a drinking straw backwards, some growling, and more boiling water. At last, it changes into what I picture as an odd home-made apparatus whose engine is tricky to fire. That sound is made of me playing balalaika merged with rubbing together a few hollow stems of rough horsetail (Equisetum hyemale). I don't remember how these two ended up sounding so far from the origins!

In the second, the bass is joining up with a glass again, and the shuffling you hear is sorting through sea shells in a tin box while my kettle is getting up to speed, making me a cup of tea, which leads to some indistinct singing and the very very sleepy crickets begin rubbing their wings together. Whew!..

AC: Previously you described “a cloud” as an early catalyst for creativity when you were staring out the window as a child. It seemed like an important comment, what were you getting at there? What do you think really motivates you to do this stuff? Is it about venturing in to explore your surroundings and pick them apart? Or, constructing a fantasy? A form of expression to connect with others maybe? Or, just a total mystery, following your nose?

Cosmeana: I have a memory of standing by a flower bed in a city park at age 3. It's Autumn, yellow maple leaves cover the ground. I wear a checkered coat and an odd colorful hat with a long top and a pompom hanging at the end of it. My mom and my younger brother have ventured away to look at the eternal flame memorial on the other side of the courtyard. I feel a mild anxiety and confusion because I'm alone and I don't know what's around me, how it all works, and what I should be doing. I begin studying the cracks in the pavement and notice an intricate pattern. Then my attention switches to the white mounds of allyssum, growing next to my feet. I reach out and pick a small cluster. The tiny flowers have powerful sweet perfume that is complex and puzzling. My mom comes back and takes a picture of me... I try to smile, but I don't know how to look cute, I just hope my mom likes me.

On the way to our garden, lead by dirt roads lined with wild grasses, I'd spot a delicate nodding blossom and ask her about its name and she'd say "Bluebell!" Next time I'd crush a yellow disk shaped thing on a stalk with a strong medicinal smell, she'd say "Tansy!" I think I've picked and smelled and tasted almost every plant that came my way, including my mom's houseplants. Those succulents in a red triangular plastic pot tasted awful, but our garden and nearby forests have become places I've been drawn to since -- myriads of unknown worlds speak to each other quietly, radiating an unimaginable intelligence I want to listen to.

Yesterday Matthew and I went for a walk and there was a yew tree on our path. This is the only tree of this kind I've seen, an evergreen with poisonous foliage and plump red berries. Mr. M told me a story.

It was at a music store, he had an unusually looking package in his hands, credited to The Hafler Trio, whom he wasn’t familiar with at the time. It was sealed, keeping the mystery inside. For a while he couldn't decide whether to get it or not. It was very tempting to find out what have could have included in there. Of course, there's a chance it also could be something disappointing... It turned out to be pretty special. Alongside the CD there was a story that one only could read with a mirror, it was about a yew tree that went on a vacation to ride a double decker bus...

Once in a while, rather rarely so, I encounter something like that, too. Completely unexpected, so different and unique, that it makes me stop and stare in awe and excitement. This is how I felt discovering Matthew’s ‘HCA' and 'The Hairless Communique'. The mind-tinglingness in a detached, solemn, almost scientific manner, depicting a very detailed world of urging fuming beautiful nonsense.

So to answer your question, I want to stumble across something magical, linger in there and keep the memory… It’s interesting to see what happens when photosynthetic gelatinous elements with numerous finger-like projections are unanticipatedly set in motion!

AC: The discoveries you’re talking about sound like an intensely personal thing and in creating something of your own, you can impart that experience to others. That’s certainly the case with ‘Swamp Lantern’, it struck me as quite singular and rare in the same way you describe.

What’s next for you? Was this a one time thing or will there be further Cosmeana releases?

Any parting comments for our readers?

Cosmeana: I'm looking forward to what's next. Making this album was a good experience for me, I certainly want to explore and learn more. I have a new album in the works, but wandered off to make a contribution track for Come Dig My Garden, Stranger -- a selection of raw material from the irr.app.(ext.) archives where anyone is invited to shape or mis-shape it to create their own track. Mine is called To The Sun For About 10 Days And Back. But then I got carried away and one track grew into several, so now a third album currently is in the formation.

Aside of music and trying to get on with my drawings, I spend a good amount of time on our film. The crew is just two people. It takes longer to do everything because you're a director, an actor, a writer, a prop maker and a camera man. It can get stressful to manage at times, but we also have lots of fun. Initially, the idea was to create a visual for one of my favorite music compositions, which is about 50 minutes long. As time has passed, new ideas came along. Now it's grown weirder and weirder while expanding to three episodes, about an hour each. We just came back home shivering, completely soaked by an icy rain... I noticed that the more uncomfortable and miserable our working conditions are, the more convincing the footage comes out!.. I'm looking forward to the day when I sit down to begin seaming the pieces together, it'll be exciting to see what kind of a creature we have created.

I have a theory that I call 'Aliens are talking to me'... It's about an awful time when people around you don't take you seriously and no one thinks what you do is meaningful or your ideas have any value. But one day, surprisingly, contrary to the usual helplessness, you find yourself energized and want to stand up for yourself by indulging in doing what you think is important. Coincidentally, that's precisely the time when luck of a mysterious nature suddenly shows up, too. A peculiar kind of luck that keeps following like a silent shadow. Soon you find yourself in a much better place that you didn't think was possible. I've tested this theory a handful of times by now and wholeheartedly recommend... Or maybe it's just aliens, talking to me!

I want to thank you, Andrew, for inviting me. I appreciate the thoughtful questions and the kind words. Keep in touch! I'm found in damp soil, especially eastward.

Cosmeana (Tatyana) can be found at https://bleakimagery.com/.