"The Wind In Kirtipur is a piece in two parts using normal and treated location recordings, pitched Tibetan thigh bone horn and singing bowls. Recordings were made at the Bagh Bhairab Temple in Kirtipur, at the Swayambhunath Stupa in Kathmandu and inside the walls of the Kumari Ghar where the 'Kumari Devi' (Living Goddess) lives in Kathmandu, Nepal. The title is inspired by a text written by poet Ira Cohen as a foreword to a book of early texts/poems by Angus MacLise entitled 'The Map of Dusk': “I remember when we [Cohen and MacLise] went together to Kirtipur in Nepal to listen to the wind.”
Thanks to a thoughtful gift by my wife along with several friends, I received a plane ticket destined to Nepal from them for my birthday in 2016. I didn’t have any intention of composing or creating any kind of art or music on this presumably, enjoyable trip, but as I read the written words quoted above by Cohen at Thamel’s ‘Hotel Moonlight’ and again at the ‘Himalayan Café’ in Kathmandu’s Durbar Square, I became inspired; compelled to dedicate a work to these two great friends and poets. I never had the opportunity of meeting Angus MacLise in person, yet I know that any layman can obtain a wealth of referential material based on his body of work. I have a great appreciation for his sincere relationship to his role and life as an artist as well as remembering his untimely passing in a Kathmandu hospital in 1979. I also can acknowledge the fact that he, alongside LaMonte Young, Marian Zazeela, John Cale and Tony Conrad, laid the foundation for what is now termed 'minimal drone' music as well as his brief stint as the first percussionist in the infamous rock group known as 'The Velvet Underground'.
Together with photographer and collaborator, Ulrich Hillebrand, we met and visited with Ira Cohen in his New York City home in July of 1989. Apart from saluting and dedicating his life to poetry, photography, film and publishing, I could also appreciate Cohen’s generous ways of supporting, promoting, loving and even quoting literary works by his fellow colleagues of the ‘Beat Generation.’ Yet I also noticed at this time that he was giving way to and working with newer, contemporary, sometimes even younger poets, visual artists, film makers, musicians and magicians" - CMvHausswolff