Van Der Toorn, S.: Vervlogenheden i-xi CS

The word vervlogenheden isn’t in the Dutch dictionary, but the first part is. Vervlogen is the past tense of vervliegen - bygone in English. So, the English title of this record could have been bygones. The meaning of the word vervliegen is ‘to evaporate’, which can be linked to the molecular state of a substance at a certain temperature. This phenomenon can also be applied to non-physical matters. Time ‘vaporizes’ in split-seconds, and the preservation of thoughts, feelings, actions, memories, actions is also limited. They dissolve into memories and in time memories become particles, patches of what they were in their present tense. The word ‘bygones’ tends to that. It wears a somewhat sad, bittersweet, and reversible coat in a fading color. It has that definite character to it: things won’t come back, and we know that. It is the melancholy of the past tense. These eleven recordings by S. van der Toorn may be soundtracks of vanishing. Tone poems of time sailing by; music to recollections, to moments together or moment alone; sounds of the way we were. Or perhaps this is how a dissolving thought sounds – the sound of life transcending into bygones, of is turning into was, now turning into then. These vervlogenheden may also remind somebody of a snorkeling adventure with sea turtles somewhere in the Caribbean, winter holidays 50 years ago, the hifi set of an aunt and uncle, great sports moments, or the rivers of their fathers. Whatever it is for you, chances are that vervlogenheden i - xi will make you travel the past, not the future, with a bittersweet sense of irreversible transience.