It’s been five years since we published our first interview at Bstudio Style, and it began with an amazing story: our friend Andre Van Hooren, artist and author.
Today, we find him reinvented and no longer writing alone. We’re delighted to introduce Andrea Tanner, an accomplished author in her own right.
It is our honor to present this remarkable couple, who share with us their journey into what they love the most.
We hope you enjoy this interview as much as we did.
Sincerely,
Miguel A. Briones
“The Power of Thoughts”
1. Mindful journaling is often presented as a way to organize our thoughts, but writing can also reveal things we didn’t know we were thinking or feeling. How can we use journaling to move beneath the surface of everyday life and hear our inner voice more clearly?
AvH – Thanks for asking. That’s indeed what I became to experience over the years. I basically journal every day and every day again, my notes start with the ordinary but rapidly go to places I couldn’t imagine before I started. I see it as a reflection of the soul.
AT – In fact you are in dialogue with your inner voice, a voice that is not always heard, but speaks to you from a great understanding of who you are. A few weeks ago, we had the solar eclipse here in Europe. I decided to walk up on the Alps, were we live, and started journaling about the light, the nature, the tranquillity of the moment, and within 15 minutes I touched on something deep as the purpose of my life.
2. You’ve experimented with many forms of writing, from journalism and essays to fiction and poetry. What has this process taught you about finding your own voice? And how can we distinguish our authentic voice from the voice we think we are supposed to have?
AvH – That’s actually an interesting question. I now wonder whether everything that can be read by someone else will ever be your authentic voice, or that it will always be the voice that fits in that situation, or publication. And whether you are the most authentic in your personal journals. On the other hand, I would argue, my voice has become much more authentic since I practice writing, as it learned me to express myself clearly – empathic or compelling, depending on the situation.
3. In our first interview, you said that an ordinary life can become fiction. What makes an ordinary experience worth writing down? How can we become more attentive to the seemingly small moments in our lives that may contain a much bigger story?
AT – May I answer first? We met on an international train, a train that was greatly delayed, meaning we had lost our seat reservation. When I came on the train there were very few seats left and a sort of magnet pulled me to the seat opposite André. Since we were in a quiet zone, we couldn’t speak for two hours, but our inner voices were constant in conversation. André then gave me has phone number, handwritten on paper, of course, and I texted him the next day. I wanted to stay in touch, I said. He had responded with a poem he had written over night about our encounter on that train. It moved me. It was a beautiful poem. Smiling Eyes!
4. You’re interested in exploring the idea of the “hero’s story” through journaling. How might we use our own experiences — our challenges, turning points, choices and moments of change — to begin seeing our lives as a story of transformation?
AvH – That was funny indeed. After we left the train in Basel, we spoke for about an hour in a little coffee house, before Andrea had to continueher travels. She asked me whether I knew about the Hero’s Journey, a concept she was studying during the weekend that required her to be in that international train. I told her that I’d tried to capture my own life as an hero’s journey, to understand why I ended up living off-grid in the Swiss Alps.
AT – We then kept talking about the essentials of an hero’s journey, how it can help you to see your call to action, why you refuged to take that call for quite some time, and how you can at one point master two worlds and find real beauty, or happiness, or satisfaction, in the daily interaction between those two worlds.
AvH – Just by listening much better to your inner voice, as you always state!
5. Your own writing often explores longing, relationships, abandonment and the connections between people. Why do you think that certain experiences — particularly difficult or unresolved ones — stay with us and demand to be written? And can writing change our relationship to those experiences?
AvH – I think so, yes. It learned me that what looks like a successful professional life and a very satisfying personal life still can suffer from a lack of personal connection, from love, if you wish, from the notion that you missing that one person in your life that makes everything else relevant.
6. Writing by hand — the physical experience of pen, paper, rhythm and handwriting — is an important part of your creative process. What happens when we slow down enough to write by hand, and could that slowness itself become a form of mindfulness?
AT – If you listen to your inner voice and are willing to contemplate your hero’s journey you will find inner peace. In that process you will also become more mindful and being mindful accelerates your path to inner peace. Since we are together I see Andre very often opening his notebook and start scribbling, im most cases the beginning of a new poem. It’s beautiful to see his concentration, how much he immerses in the moment, finding the words, using words that I used in passing. Once I said, I don’t like the wind so much. A line that literally made it to his next poem.
AvH – Although the poem had nothing to do with the wind. It became more of a love poem, don’t you think, a moment in our lives that never could be touched by the wind, as were we in a vacuum.
7. You’ve imagined the idea of a writing café, a place where people can simply sit, write, read and observe. If you could invite someone into that café for an hour, give them a blank notebook and no instructions other than to write, what would you hope they might discover about themselves before they left?
AvH – Their call to action
AT – The ability to listen to their inner voice.
You can follow and contact Andrea and Andre at:
https://www.instagram.com/innervo.ice
https://www.instagram.com/adrianus.writer
https://www.instagram.com/icebreaker.2026
you can reach us on +41 79 124 4016 or adrianus@icebreaker2026.com
About Mariana Briones our collaborator
Mariana Briones is a Mexican US based journalist and producer. She has published articles for magazines including Newsweek, Elle, Marie Claire and Cine Premiere, and has worked as line producer for Canal + and Television Espanola among other networks.
Throughout her career she has interviewed over 100 international personalities including Sir Anthony Hopkins, Richard Gere, Julia Roberts, Clint Eastwood, Diane von Furstenberg, Bradley Cooper, Alex Wang and Oscar de la Renta.
You can contact Mariana for collaborations, editorials or advertising at marianabriones@me.com
