From: Bettina Heick
Date: 20 January 2022 at 18:25:51 GMT
To: Penkiln Burn
Subject: request for an interview
Dear Penkiln Burn
I’d like to ask Mr. Drummond if he can imagine doing an interview with me.
I am no journalist but only a private person who got that idea in my head of having an interview with him. I know that he usually gives no interviews but sometimes interviews people. If he likes, that would work for me as well.
Kind regards,
Bettina Heick
From: Bill Drummond
Date: 21 January 2022 at 09:06:29 GMT
To: Bettina Heick
Subject: Re: request for an interview
Morning Bettina,
Thank you for your email.
What line of work do you do?
What are your main interests?
What city do you live in?
If you could ask me one question what would it be?
Once I have your response to these four questions I will set four questions for you and that will be the beginning of one of my Forty Minute Interviews.
Yours,
Bill Drummond
Sent from my iPhone
From: Bettina Heick
Date: 23 January 2022 at 12:11:20 GMT
To: Bill Drummond
Subject: Aw: Re: request for an interview
Hello Mr. Drummond,
Thank you very much for your positive reply, makes me really happy.
To answer your questions:
I’m working for an engineering office which does environmental surveys and since some years now I am mainly working on bat monitorings in context of planned or already running wind turbines. These monitorings work with detection of the ultrasound calls of the bats, so you could say, I am listening to what the bats say.
I am now for 14 years in the same company.
I started my professional life with something completely different (did a commercial education and worked at a jewellery shop). Got bored of it and went back to school and later university when I was 25 years old.
I always was interested in language.
And I say language not languages.
I took English and French at school and later a bit of Italian language, because my first boyfriend was Italian. I soon noticed that every language has some words you can never find proper translation. In English one of these words for me was the word “beyond”. I am fascinated by this word.
There are many other aspects of language very interesting, I think.
I want to mention one other thing, I am no good writer but sometimes I do write some short text and then I prefer writing in a foreign language, manly English.
I also like to invent stories. Alone or in co-work with my sister. Unfortunately, we are both no good in writing, so these stories exist only in our heads but is okay for us. We enjoy them ourselves.
Other interests of mine are philosophy, sports, hiking.
I live in a village very close to Hamburg in northern Germany, but I work about 200 km west near the border to the Netherlands. I commute every Monday and Friday.
One question I would like to ask you is:
On the website of Penkiln Burn you wrote in 2019, and I think it’s on page 5, about a work in Aulus-Les-Bains. There is a list about what this work includes. The last item of content is predicting the past.
Some years ago I wrote a little text about a fictitious award ceremony. There I announced a guest speaker giving a speech on the topic…
Why the past is easier to predict than the future.
Can you explain to me what do you mean with
predicting the past?
Maybe I can than better understand what I meant.
I guess that’s it.
Did I wrote to much or to less?
Is my English too bad?
I don’t know but that’s it.
I hope my English is not too bad.
I really want to say thank you again.
I already had much fun in writing this.
Yours,
Bettina Heick
From: Bill Drummond
Date: 23 January 2022 at 18:39:47 GMT
To: Bettina Heick
Subject: Re: request for an interview
Good Evening Bettina,
Thank you very much for your very engaging response.
On beginning to read your email I thought my four questions for you would be on the subject of bats, but then I got to your part about language.
I have never learnt to speak another language. And for most of my life I naïvely assumed all languages were just mirrors of all other languages but…
Since my now partner for sixteen years and counting have been in partnership, I have learnt more and more from her that her mother tongue – Bangla, is everything but a mirror of English. And from that have learnt the language we use can so influence the way we see the world. The example you give, amplifies this in my imagination. Thus, the four question I would like you to spend no more than forty minutes in answering are…
What is Beyond?
What is Beyond for?
When did you first become aware of Beyond?
When might Beyond disappear from your life?
I very much look forward to receiving your responses to these four questions.
Yours,
Bill Drummond
From: Bettina Heick
Date: 26 January 2022 at 17:40:01 GMT
To: Bill Drummond
Subject: Aw: Re: request for an interview
Hello and good evening, Mr. Drummond,
Here are my answers to your four questions.
I must warn you.
The following contains the word Beyond in excess.
What is Beyond?
I indeed tried several times to describe my idea of this word. I always failed. Maybe it was because I tried it in German, which perhaps is not possible. And I always tried to explain it to Germans. The dictionary says the German translation for Beyond is the word Jenseits.
It’s similar but in the end not the same (for me).
Beyond is more.
This is my feeling about Beyond. Maybe a native speaker would say, what does she make a fuss about Beyond. I think the word Beyond is, in case of using, picked out with a specific intention, to make something clear. The talking is about something special, far of reach or even unreachable. It’s never used in ordinary content like this:
The supermarket is beyond the bridge.
In German:
Der Supermarkt ist jenseits der Bruecke.
Jenseits has the meaning of behind in this example. You can say that in German. It’s maybe a bit old-fashioned but possible to say.
(Sounds like a German lesson. Sorry, I found no other way to show the difference between these two words.)
But there is a second translation in the dictionary. Beyond can be translated with darueber hinaus.
But darueber hinaus is more to translate with the word furthermore.
For sure, both German translations can have a deeper meaning too. But this comes only out in the content in which the words are used.
When I hear or read the word Beyond, for me it’s like a pointer to something special if not even magic. It points to something you can’t locate here and now.
The expression, it’s beyond imagination, shows it very well: You can’t reach it.
Some years ago I went to the cinema to watch Star Trek Beyond. I looked forward to this. Wasn’t there promised that we will go beyond?
At the end of the film I was quite disappointed. From my point of view, they just forgot Beyond.
What is Beyond for?
It is for widen the world. Beyond stands in opposite, or makes a difference to words like behind, before, after, in front of. These words describe things can be located on maps or in time.
Things Beyond have no coordinates.
When did you first become aware of Beyond?
Wasn’t there a band Brother Beyond?
Yes, I am quite sure there was. I guess that could have been the first time I heard the word. But at that time, I was a child with no, or only few knowledge of English language. I can’t remember what this band was about. It would be interesting to know, why they had chosen the name. Maybe it was only because it sounded good to them.
I wonder when we learned the vocabulary Beyond in school. As much as I remember it meant nothing to me at that time.
I first thought my interest in this word has to do with Alice in Wonderland. But when I looked up the name of the second book, it is Through the Looking-Glass and not Beyond the Looking-Glass, as I thought. I have a wrong memory here.
Or maybe not. There is another book with the name Beyond the Looking-Glass which got to do with Alice in Wonderland. I had to look this up in the internet, so this is besides the 40 minutes, but I dispensed looking up Brother Beyond.
When might Beyond disappear from your life?
When I first read this question my first thought was, maybe it disappears directly after answering question one to three.
After thinking so much about this word it could have loose its magic. Maybe I figured out that there is nothing special in Beyond, or simply find a translation I haven’t seen all the years.
It did not happen. I described Beyond quite good to myself without getting to the very bottom of it.
I’m very curious what I will tell next time I read or hear the word Beyond. I think of using the word whenever something for me is Beyond.
Additional:
You are the first to read.
I did it this way:
I wanted to give every question about 10 minutes, but the first question took me a bit longer. I wrote the answers by hand first. I wrote in English, except the words I had to look up later. All thinking was done in English (or sometimes kind of fantasy English). I could not prevent thinking of the questions before answering totally, because since I read the questions first on Sunday evening and finally answering them, some time passed away.
I am a synesthete. In my case that means that I see the numbers from 0 to 12 in colours. Every number got it’s own colour. For example, the 2 is red. (This year is a very red year to me) This phenomenon sometimes pops up also with letters or whole words. Beyond is such a word. I see a bright yellow (be), than a colour I can’t even give name (y) and a dark nearly black end (ond).
I am very bad in punctuation. And in English language I simply have no clue in punctuation. For that some sentences, I am sure, are difficult to read. I am sorry for that.
By writing this email I have looked up Brother Beyond, only to make sure they really had exist.
Yours,
Bettina
From: Bill Drummond
Date: 27 January 2022 at 09:36:49 GMT
To: Bettina Heick
Subject: Re: request for an interview
Morning Bettina,
Thank you for your responses. Totally inspiring. Even if the band Brother Beyond were not for me. I was hoping their Wikipedia page would explain why they were called that name. But no luck there.
But you have given the word for me more value.
Give my regards to the bats.
Yours,
Bill Drummond
From: Bettina Heick
Date: 27 January 2022 at 10:49:54 GMT
To: Bill Drummond
Subject: Aw: Re: request for an interview
Hello Mr. Drummond,
Thank you very much for your words and of course for your attention anyway.
You inspired me.
As for the bats, I don’t think they are very much interested in what Humans say, but of course I will send your regards.
Yours,
Bettina
From: Bettina Heick
Date: 27 January 2022 at 12:02:30 GMT
To: Bill Drummond
Subject: Aw: Re: request for an interview
Hi again,
After reading your email again, there is one thing you got me maybe wrong. In relation to Brother Beyond I was only talking of hearing the word for the first time. They played now further role.
Thank you again.
Yours,
Bettina
From: Bill Drummond
Date: 27 January 2022 at 15:39:40 GMT
To: Bettina Heick
Subject: Re: request for an interview
Afternoon Bettina,
Totally understand…
But…
How does this work in German, which I guess it was written in originally:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beyond_Good_and_Evil?wprov=sfti1
?
Yours,
Bill Drummond
From: Bettina Heick
Date: 28 January 2022 at 08:11:13 GMT
To: Bill Drummond
Subject: Aw: Re: request for an interview
Good Morning Mr. Drummond,
I don’t quite understand what you mean. What do you mean exactly?
Yours,
Bettina
From: Bill Drummond
Date: 29 January 2022 at 09:15:12 GMT
To: Bettina Heick
Subject: Re: request for an interview
Morning Bettina,
Not that I have ever read it, but I grew up being very aware of the book Beyond Good & Evil. Which I knew had originally been written in German. And have just noticed the title in German includes the word Jenseits. What does that word mean?
Yours,
Bill
From: Bettina Heick
Date: 31 January 2022 at 17:22:50 GMT
To: Bill Drummond
Subject: Aw: Re: request for an interview
Good evening Bill,
The preposition jenseits means ‘on the other side’ or ‘behind’.
In connection with numbers for example, it can have also the meaning of ‘over’ or ‘more than’.
In a figurative use of the word jenseits, it can have the meaning of ‘outside of’.
That is what every dictionary tells us.
Jenseits can be used to express something in a more poetic way. For example:
Jenseits der Alpen. (On the other side of the Alps.) The intention here is to point out the longing for the Mediterranean Sea for those who come from more northern regions.
To Nietzsche.
As far as I can tell, what he meant is described quite good in the wikipedia article you sent me.
I haven’t read Beyond Good and Evil neither nor any other of his writings. But I have read a book in which he played a significant role.
When you say you have been very aware of the book, was it because the book was somewhere very exposed on a shelf for example? Or was it the content of the book, because the book was quoted or mentioned often?
Yours,
Bettina
From: Bettina Heick
Date: 3 February 2022 at 11:43:41 GMT
To: Bill Drummond
Subject: Aw: Re: request for an interview
Good afternoon Bill,
I hope my answer regarding the word jenseits wasn’t too poor. In fact it was. But even now I can’t think of anymore. Either there isn’t anymore or I don’t like the word.
Yours,
Bettina
From: Bill Drummond
Date: 3 February 2022 at 12:02:20 GMT
To: Bettina Heick
Subject: Re: request for an interview
Afternoon Bettina,
It is all good.
Thank you for all your response.
All very much valued.
Will put it all together and send you back next week.
Bill Drummond