This work draws freely from "The Book of Imaginary Beings" by Jorge Luis Borges.
From what was originally conceived and known as a Manual of Fantastic Zoology, I have chosen four creatures: Swedenborg’s demons, the nymphs, the catoblepas, and the banshee.
My intention is to build a sonic habitat for each of them: musical environments where these entities can once again move, breathe, exist — presences suspended between dream and memory.
They are monstrous figures, certainly, but also somehow familiar: we find them in myths, stories, travel journals, and ancient bestiaries.
They are fragments of our collective imagination, and this music aims to offer them a different kind of space to inhabit.
These musical creatures are just a preview of a larger work, which benefits from the extraordinary collaboration of BAUTArs — an artist who will transform the descriptions found in The Book of Imaginary Beings into visual signs and illustrations, and who is also the author of the images in this small presentation.
Telling stories of imaginary creatures, I hope, may help those who still struggle to recognize and distinguish the real Monsters — the flesh-and-blood ones — who walk our world. Or those who, even when they see them, stubbornly refuse to admit what they are.
