Aluminium Can Player (with a wooden stick, a table, and seven empty 50 cl aluminium beer cans. Different things are inserted in different cans such as small paper balls, sesame grains, spaghetti, and coins.)

Together with “space” and “dimension”, the concept of “time” can be considered as a part of the fundamental structure of existence.  “Time”, which is infinitely continuous, linear, and non-measurable, simply exists – nothing more.  “Time” can also be considered as a platform in which a sequence of events and happenings move through, and is like frames of a filmstrip spread out across the time line. 

An event starts somewhere and ends somewhere.  Something is beginning in order to end.  Something is ending in order to reflect the beginning.  An event does not let itself drawn out; it only makes sense when it ends.  How do we define event, happening, and/or adventure in life?  How do we know when an event, different from ordinary day, has started?  Or has it?  Has it ended now? Or now? …Or now?

Telling story is a verbal presentation of an event.  The storyteller skilfully (he/she thinks…) decides instantly where the event starts and ends by picking out the most essential elements of the story so that the listener can grasp the core idea of the story.  But the truth is:  the event can never be presented correctly because there is always something lost before, in-between, or after “the most essential elements” the teller has picked out.

Throughout life experience, one consciously or subconsciously selects vague ideas of such events, and collects (or sometimes damps) them in his/her library of memory in the back of his/her brain.  Each memory has a clear label on the cover page, but if you read carefully, the first page is blank.  Actually it turns out, all pages of all memories in the entire library are blank!  Just like a carriage of train, going through a tunnel in 300 km per hour, the sense of arrival to a new city comes only when the train comes out of the tunnel and see the name of the station.  Everything between two stations is lost in the darkness of tunnel.  But we can still feel the existence of the lost matters like cloud…

Cloud Beyond the Carriage explores performer’s perception of musical events through notated music and improvisation. Performers have certain freedom to make different choices according to rules and patterns decided by the performers collectively.