I love my Daughter Sienna very much, and I am in love with the music, soul and beauty of Polish pianist, instrumentalist, singer and composer Hania Rani. The two loves are intertwined.
A Judge has told me that some unjust and painful issues are intertwined, which bothers me, because the word intertwined is an elegant word that has a romantic connotation to it. Also the ramifications of that Judge’s statement are very damaging. At least, my love for my Daughter and my love for Hania Rani’s music are also very much intertwined these days. They hopefully always will be.
The beauty of Spotify is that its algorithms enable us and lead us, to stumble across music that we wouldn’t otherwise be exposed to. I love that about Spotify. It’s a very, very cool coincidence that Spotify led me to Haina Rani’s debut album Esja and her follow up album Home, during this very difficult time.
Esja and Home have been the soundtrack to my custody dispute and separation from my Daughter over the last three months. It’s the soulful mournfulness in her music that resonates so powerfully with me during this time when I miss my Daughter’s presence very much.
I don’t love very many people these days. But I when I do love, I love quite intensely. My love for my Daughter currently feels quite bittersweet. Bittersweet in the sense that we are being separated and kept apart by the State bureaucracy, by lawyers, and by someone that I used to love (quite a long time ago).
My love for Hania Rani’s music is slightly bittersweet because there is very little likelihood that we will ever meet. It is also beautifully bittersweet because her music often feels a little melancholy, and I am more than a little melancholy these days.
I would love to chat to her over a coffee or a wine, in a café or restaurant, maybe beside a lake. There is so much soul in her music. It would be very cool to meet her, to get to know her a little. But, of course, the likelihood of that is extremely low.
I feel that her music is evocative of nature. Of the wildness and beauty of nature. Her video clips capture this duality between the magnificence of nature and her echoing sound extremely well. This feeling, this vibe of meandering, wandering, being in awe of and part of natural beauty – marveling at the spectacle of our landscapes.
I’m sure she would enjoy filming a performance here in New Zealand’s great outdoors – perhaps up on a mountain ridge in Queenstown or playing on the deck of a boat in Milford Sound. With the waterfalls falling in the background and the atmospheric mists drifting across the fjords.
There is an ethereal beauty about Hania Rani’s music. It is achingly beautiful, delicate and mournful. There is a remarkable seamlessness about the album Esja. It is a musical journey; it soars, it races with urgency and it occasionally whispers softly and delicately as well. Songs blend and merge brilliantly from one to the next.
Home has this same quality in abundance but without the driven momentum of Esja. To me, Home is a more meandering album. Not mesmerisingly stormy like Esja, it is definitely warmer in places, delicate and soulful as well. It is still also a little bit brooding at times, mercurial and beautiful through-out, just like its other half. They are two beautifully complimentary halves of a whole.
She describes her first two albums as two parts of a story. A beginning and an end.
On her website she describes the spirit of Home (paraphrased):
“I strongly believe that when being in uncertain times and living an unstable life we can still reach peace with ourselves and be able to find ‘home’ anywhere.”
“The song (Home) is about building a new home, in a symbolic meaning, after a devastating event. It’s a composition full of light and hope for new things to come.”
That’s what I am focusing on at the moment, that sense of light and hope as I look ahead.
Hania Rani’s music brings me a peace with myself that I can’t find in anything else at the moment. Her music has maintained my sanity during these most painful and frustrating times – that music has been my home. At the least, until my relationship and custody with my Daughter is fully restored to its rightful wholeness. At that time, Sienna and I will toast Hania Rani’s music together, and for many years thereafter.
Hania Rani has just released another soundtrack album: Music for film and theatre.
It definitely stands a part as a separate musical entity. It is beautiful and different – as she promised.
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