Peiločja cleans herself on the corner of the bed as I lie supine typing this. I suppose typing this requires me to lie supine, actually, so my redundancy points its double jointed fingered stare at me and fills me with the icy knowledge that another evening is wilting. The air is dissolving from clarity into haze and soon the singularity of sleep will cast my present and my memory into pitch.

Peiločja lept away. Were I to summon the strength to look, she’d possibly now be curled on her chair, her bed, her blanket, her place of security where she purrs and kneads in the midst of the pitch and in the midst of the light equally. The flickering moods of my fickle circadian rhythm have no effect on her.

The dimming is almost complete and I shall pass into what Christian calls nightly death. This room is my membranal community and I shall shortly and for a brief time die within it. Peiločja will be the only living entity within its breathy, perforated walls. Or perhaps she will pass another way, as well.

I sometimes play a game with myself when I am walking long distances. I did the same in the past from time to time when I was driving long distances. I imagine a past version of myself, for example when I was seventeen and cloistered in the nefarious Fort Stockton, Texas. I imagine this past version of myself occupying my current self’s senses for a short while. I choose senses instead of mind because it makes the whole fantasy more intriguing. This ancient me experiences everything I am experiencing during my walk without the experience of the intervening decades. I ponder the bewilderment at having skipped those steps.

One specific facet I pondered this morning during the walk z Narodní Třidy přes Vyšehrad a domů was the bewilderment at an alien language surrounding my ancient self. How would he approach finding out what this language was once he returns to his own time? I lived in a world without instant access to the sum total of human knowledge held in the palm of one’s hand during my high school years. Would he go immediately to the Fort Stockton High School library or the Fort Stockton Public library and scour books on foreign languages until he found references to words he briefly glimpsed? And what would those words have been? Street names? Na Pankráci? Brand names? Škoda? Words or phrases repeated in advertisements or grafiti? Šetři peníze. Jdi do prdele, pičo.

It’s a fun game.

Yesterday in the early morning hours, meaning not approximately three and a half or four hours after midnight, but instead approximately an hour an a half or an hour before noon, we set off in the “car” from Praha to Jena with intent to see Gong play an intimate concert in a strange little “club” called “KuBa”. However, Before setting off from Praha to Jena, I had to set off from my flat to Ivanečka’s flat, which I did at approximately two hours and a half before noon. And, additionally, before setting of from my flat to Ivanečka’s flat, I spent some time with both my guitar and with Peiločja. I’ve been rather worried about her, in fact, as she seems a bit listless of late. I shall carve out larger chunks of time for play with her and insert them into my routine.

V každém připadě, yesterday, in the early morning hours that weren’t actually what most would term early morning hours, we set off to Jena from Prague in order to see Gong. We listened to Bright Spirit, Unending Ascending and Pulsing Signals on the way. Ivanečka was slightly amused at the lyrics of You Can’t Kill Me. It’s a telling song and it is, indeed, amusing! I am a fan of this combination in all sorts of art. During her early morning hours, she created for me hummus. I consumed it happily with chunks of celery, fennel and s červenou paprikou. It was delightful. We sped around the outskirts of Dresden and through a city that some might still call a just an open stretch of land called Chemnitz. One must remember that any “city” with a population of less than 750 000 (human) inhabitants is not worth living in or even considering in the terms of existence. Veering to the right, northwards, our destination grew closer and as we drove alongside a wide forest bordering a river, we knew somehow that we were in another open stretch of land called Jena.

Our vehicle descended into a subterranean parking crypt lined with metal teeth intended to devour unsuspecting automobiles whilst their owners slept in sterile chambers upstairs. We made love on the fluffy, contoured “thing” the developers of such building leave in the chambers, then gazed out the window onto what we suspected was the limply beating heart of downtown Jena. There was a Dmko. We bought dates, as usual, as it is Ivanečka’s preferred snack.

We explored the open stretch of land and in doing so encountered a university in front of which yakking and bellowing students gathered to parade their bravado at being chosen to study in such a metropolis. Two in particular were extremely loud. This disproves what I was taught by the monks of my youth: that Germans are without exception demure humans.

As an aside, I believe that in this section of my life, however slight, small, thin or diminuative that it is, the main purpose is not to necessarily be content or happy or jolly, but to make DRONES. I am, as I write this, currently creating a drone. It’s point of reference is the non-demure faces of the people we passed in the streets, in the squares, in front of the university with open mouths, screaming their vacant passion into the confines of the universe. The drone is them, in Jena still, as I sit před počitačem forming art from walls, corridors and oubliettes of sound.

We begin with a simple fourth - B & E.

I sip my ranní napoj as the drone continues. I’m at about fifty minutes now and for the majority of that, I’ve neglected to note here the details of the transition between A melodic minor to A melodic minor. It’s been splendid. Just marvelous. Static changes are the types of changes that the questionably demure student population of Jena could probably relate to. Although one of the warmest compliments that anyone ever gave me was When I’m talking to you, Bob, I feel like I’m on LSD, some readers of the nigh-eternal Martenblog might have noticed that I am not very fond of small membranal communities. Or should I say small membranal civilizations. I’ll call Jena a small membranal civilization because, in my estimation, it is, indeed small. The population is between one and two hundred thousand humans. There are far less statuettes of goats. I find this not worthy of any claim of pseudo-lsd nor even of the real thing, though the difference in negligible, I assure you.

Smaller membranal civilizations tend to have much less permeable bubbles surrounding them, though, I admit, the university culture does allow for slightly more breathing. The nigella seeds, whipped and mutilated in my new coffee grinder, are exquisite in the ranní nápoj. In my humble opinion, an equilibrium must be struck somewhere regarding the permeability of the membranal lining of such civilizations. Or, really, of any civilization. On one extreme, there exist feedback loops that breed hatred of ideas or humans or both that originate outside the membranal lining. On the other extreme is a flattening of what makes the membranal civilization itself, gives it purpose and identity.

But enough pigswill.

On our wanderings, we also encountered a botanical garden that we could not enter. Well, probably we could have entered it for a price, but who wants to go see “plants” for a price? They were probably all plastic, anyway. It’s Germany, after all. Finally, we walked up to where the concert was to be held, and the walk itself did not take long at all. Did I mention that Jena is a miniature of a “city”? Well, it is! It’s no bigger than your great aunt’s tooshie. The place in which Gong was to play seemed more like an abandoned refuse center or even warehouse than any sort of recognizable concert hall. This disturbed me slightly, but I carried on with my day without partitioning my consciousness with an osmium blade. So did Ivanečka. We were enjoying the walk, as we are wont to do. We had an abstract concept called “time” on our side, so we started back towards our place of residence. Our only aside was in a “bio” shop where we picked up datle. We consumed these on the way back. Or were they fiky? One of the two, both serving the same purpose, though Ivanečka usually prefers the former, as I previously mentioned, and especially of the Medjool variety.

At our place of residence, we quickly prepared for departure once again since I have a bizarre obsession with being early to any concert I go to. This possibly originated in Dallas when, every summer, we’d go see Kansas play live at some open air thurk. By we, I mean Acy, Lee, others and I went. There are plenty of stories surrounding those concerts, but they are for another epoch, another blog entry, another space-heater tale on a hot-dog-less autumn evening. Acy always did his BEST to not make us exactly late, but to certainly never make us particularly early. I was so excited about seeing the music that the situation caused me anxiety. I was not used to anxiety. I’m still not used to anxiety. I’m not one that copes with anxiety well. Anxiety is not for me. Happily, I very rarely encounter things in my life that cause anxiety. But, even after all the epochs since Acy and that bizarre clump of individuals I was intimately a part of, I still get a slight anxious rush when I am due to see a concert (or even a film!). So we were off slightly early to get back to the sprawling shack-like structure that was to house the concert.

After arriving at the sprawling shack-like structure, we were informed by humans unloading beverages that the concert was not to be. It had been cancelled. Bastards! As with most things in my life, I took it in stride. We returned to our place of temporary residence and went to sleep early after having an extended german lesson (as Ivanečka is studying the language) by watching a badly produced tv flick about coppers chasing robbers. The ironic contrast of an evening watching a B police TV series versus seeing Gong only amused me further. Life oozes on.

The next day, we awoke at six, cleaned the filth from our living corpses and drove to Leipzig where we managed to make love in a dressing room at Cos and snack on various edible artifacts on a bench sitting in the sun near the Steigenberger hotel. It occurs to me that one without a specific mission has nothing to accomplish and therefore enjoys each event as if it were a goal in itself.

This morning, as we walked a circuitous route to EduJoy, where Ivanečka works occasionally on Saturday and Sunday mornings to early afternoons, the subject of Switzerland came up and the fact that I have no intention of ever living there. Why, you ask? Well, that is a theme for another time, so you must wait. I apologize profusely. V každém připadě, the conversation drifted to the subject of change and more specifically to the fact that her sister almost violently dislikes change. Her reaction to change seems almost visceral. She swipes and snaps and claws. Her fundamental fears take control.

Ivanečka mentioned to her that we may move to Germany in the autumn because Luki will most likely be relocating there for University and it is not his wish to initially be dropped into a situation where he must cope completely alone - without a whit of family or friend around. Now - I’ve done this sort of thing multitudinous times in my life, but I realize that certainly not many people are like me. Being in difficult situations for the sake of being in difficult situations isn’t everyone’s cup of goat bile. Yes. I realize this. But back to the “story”. Lenka (Ivanečka’s sister) doesn’t think we should move to Germany, despite Luki’s need for a bit of companionship and / or moral support at the beginning of his journey onward into life. Why, though? Well, because she is shockingly against change of any kind. Any deviation from what she perceives as the norm rattles around in her head unceasingly until she is blithering. Her life seems to be propped up by rickety legs of others’ stability. She is used to Ivanečka being in Praha. It is an unmoving point on her mental graph of the way things should be. Even if it logically makes sense for us to go to Germany to support the nephew, it knocks away one of the struts holding up her sense of stable reality.

The situation reminds me also of Christian’s current lot in life, though I must admit that Christian deserves every bit of suffering that comes to him. He stole my green ethernet cable, after all. He is surrounded also by people who, from his descriptions over the years, object to change. He is surrounded by people who are mired in routine on a small and very large scale. His ideas of his place in life in the future don’t really suit their vision of what should be. They, too, cannot cope well with change.

Another observation is that after a certain point in life (an arbitrary number), one is expected to be settled and not bop constantly about as if one were in one’s early twenties and visiting the goat patch every evening. One is expected to stay put. One is almost expected to stagnate. The social norm is to, after a certain age, sit in a single spot and accumulate “stuff” until death. Everyone should pick up their copy of Grendel now and read the chapters concerning the dragon.

‘He shook his head. “My advice to you, my violent friend, is to seek out gold and sit on it.”’

Well, my opinion about following a social norm is fuck um, of course, and happily Ivanečka is of the same view. Whether Lenka or Christian’s family will ever be able to understand our deviation from the norm is currently an unknown. At times, thinking about it can be slightly distressing, and probably more so for Christian than for the two of us because he is constantly swaddled within it. However, in the end, it shouldn’t be such a great concern since, after all, the Heat Death of the Universe is right around the corner.

Christian Newman, the plumpest humorist of our time, sent me the photo of a t-shirt that states If life gives you demons, make demonade, or somesuch. It simply reminded me of a time during my first year of University. I was in Austin at the University of Texas and spending more time programming drum machines and playing Risk than “studying”. Black students were often seen wearing t-shirts that had variations of the slogan Black by Popular Demand parading upon their fronts in colossal, static letters. So, probably given to my mood and my seething hatred of anything pervasively popular, I had an artist I knew by the name of Amy Young create a t-shirt for me that paraded in colossal static letters upon its frontmatter the slogan Plaid by Popular Demand. Looking back, I’m surprised I wasn’t beaten up.

The aforementioned artist made me a number of t-shirts, actually, including a Hawkwind one based on the cover of Acid Daze II. I wish I still had that, though it surely wouldn’t fit now. She also created a few Sir Alfred IV shirts, most notably the three scoops of ice cream one with the Sir Alfred ship sailing upon the upper scoop. What happened to these t-shirts? They are lost in time.

I just walked home from Ivanečka’s place to my filthy domicile with the “cat” stowed “safely” in the backpack I use to transport her. It is supposedly especially made for transporting such creatures though I am uncertain that she likes the experience very much. Being “uncertain that she likes the experience” is actually greatly understating the rage she feels when she is placed in said backpack. She seethes! Or at least she does during the first seconds of being placed within its narrow confines. After we are moving, or, rather, after I am ambulatory, she seems to quieten, to calm, to seethe in silence. When finally the journey ends and she is released from the suffocating womb, she is, once again, jolly ol Peiločja.

V každém připadě, I just walked home from Ivanečka’s place to my filthy domicile. During the walk through Folimanka, which undulates at a glacial pace, across the small community “under the bridge”, under another bridge, then up countless steps, I listened to my most recent version of Protivný Pták Nad Bouřícím Oceanem. One of the greatest joys I have in life is the point at which I am working on a piece of music and, during a listening session, I am struck by the reality that both I created this thing and that this thing is becoming something that I shall soon regard as exceedingly fantastic. In fact, in part, it is already fantastic, even if all of the parts are not yet in place and even if all of the parts that are in place are not yet “perfectly” played. This joyous moment is when the piece of music begins to cast the shadow of the fantastic thing that it will become.

I had myriad ideas for additions (and even subtractions!), of course, but I have gotten out of the habit of stopping a walk every thirty seconds to jot something down about the piece. This is certainly a habit I should reattain. However, the main conclusion I came to dealt with melody and voice leading during the last portion of the piece. I wonder to myself, and now to the Martenblog in which I now write, whether I should write a simple part with fantastic voice leading (because I already hear a portion of it in my head) for Christian to sing or whether I should just go ahead and make it a vocal-like synth line. My original idea was to give him a clump of the chords and let him do some la la la over it and use whatever he came up with, but the voice leading possibilities are too amazing to not take advantage of.

I also have reached an ideal configuration on my pedal board with its two marvelous audio pathways that entwine within Herr Scarlett to paint wide swaths of primary colors and then jagged, geometric figures in rambling, fluorescent combinations upon the aural canvas of my filthy flat. This means that Drone Day approaches and I should begin creating the “material” which will spew from https://drone.thurk.org/stream when the, as they say, “time” comes.

That time is soon.

Over the course of my music making “career”, I have explored different avenues of actually creating music. Or, rather than avenues, a more concise word is methods. I began simply - with an electric guitar and enough pedals to wall off seven European elk for half of the majority of eternity. Synthesizers came next. I bought a few Doepfer semi modular thurks and used them mostly for lead lines though were I to return to that period, I’d spend more time working on low end textural ideas. Too late now, however, as they were sold epochs ago.

Still, these two methods involved actually playing most of the notes that arrived into Ardour and comprised whatever piece I was working on at the time. Ok - that’s not strictly true. I actually wrote Lilypond scripts that spit out midi files that I played the semi modulars with. So there was a bit of sequencing going on občas. I ended up expanding into an actual modular set up and subsequently procured hardware sequencers.

So the second method was sequencing.

I then got into Supercollider for a few years (though I never really came close to mastering it). So, programming the “sound design” (synths) and sequencing and whatnot came next. That was the third method, and I eventually abandoned it completely (I think the last album I used it on was Pagan Park) as I felt I lost much of the immediacy I craved in music making. One might argue that Lilypond would be much the same, but one would be incorrect. I never had the immediacy loss sensation whilst using Lilypond. Why? Sometimes there is no why.

The point is that I kept trying new things and I’m actually, at this point in my career, not sure if it was or is currently a good thing to diversify so much in this manner. In fact, I feel like I have stifled my progress over the last year and a half or so because of this and because of another reason that I shall detail in a bit.

I decided sometime in the not too distant past to learn Renoise because I’ve always been particularly fascinated by the concept of Trackers and using them for composition. I’d never taken the plunge into the theoretical pool of molten lead. Now I have. And I am certainly of two forebrains about it. I took a very simple ambient improvisation through a fixed sequence of chords and fed it into Renoise with intent to add to it with the synths therein, creating repeating, hypnotic patterns that would cause even the most infidel of humans to turn back to a life under the Buddha’s tutelage.

I must admit that it is fun and I like what I have done so far, but the overreaching result is that the entire process has taken me away from actually sitting down with my guitar and writing and recording music. Yes - I know that were I to dedicate a chunk of time every day to Renoise and were I to be disciplined into maintaining a similar chunk every day, I’d eventually get to the point where I’d be proficient enough to quickly sketch ideas and then expand on them without fumbling about like I do now. And even thinking about the prospect gets the bile pumping through my lungs - at least a little. But, bohužel, I feel the crushing weight of time upon the crown of my head too often these days. I need to follow my own advice and narrow the methods in which I make music to a few and be as creative as possible with them. There can be always room for different compositional or improvisational methodologies, but I feel I am just being stalled by seeking new ways to “get the notes from my head into the machine”.

Reading back on this blog entry, I am complaining quite a bit, so I shall augment that with another complaint! I curse my need to work on many albums at the same time. Yes - I am old school and I work towards chunks of music that are analogs of albums from all those epochs ago when artists or bands released vinyl platters or even compact discs. Bohužel, these usually comprise of groups of pieces that are thematically bound and can’t be separated out, though I’m changing that idea up a bit on something I’m devising at present, as the pieces of music are really not related at all. Thus, it will be lump after lump of music that could be listened to in discreet lumps or even in sequence or shuffled or reversed or spindled, garbled and played through a widening, interstellar funnel. That being stated, working on too many albums at the same time prevents me from actually finishing one of them so it can be released. What does being released mean? I’ll leave that to the imagination of whomever is reading this.

There are many albums in process:

• Dobbs revisited - the closest to being done.
• Dissolving pool - all the pieces need to be revised, but I believe the composition part itself is done.
• Sir Alfred IV revisited - I’ve done demos of three pieces. This one’ll be another lump after lump of music that could be…, as well, but I don’t know when I’ll get back to it.
• Lee’s album - two demos are done. Since Christian has to sing on basically everything here, it probably won’t be released until 2637 or so.
• The new lumpy one. I’m on the third piece. They are simpler, compositionally, excepting the piece I wrote for Ivanečka, but that one is done. I’ll just work on this album incrementally until I have enough that makes me feel as if release is imminent.

In other news, I’m rewriting my static blog and website rendering software from scratch in Rust. In fact, this will be the first blog entry that is not processed by the engine (I laughably call it an engine) I wrote in Elixir (and revised multitudinous times) epochs and epochs ago.

I began perhaps four days ago and have six Rust Crates that together take care of

• My poems
• Spontaneous ideas that I throw to my personal nostr server
• The legacy blog posts
• All the mostly static content that is translated from markdown by my own special method and placed within various templates

Rust is amazing, I must say. I’m still learning, but improving every day. Soon I’ll be a Rust wizard! Imagine that! I’ll instantly oxidize anything I come into proximity with.

Oh - I just made a bad pun. Puns are the lowest form of humor. I shall be punished.

Three random ideas that come to mind (mostly unrelated)

• There was no one in line for “check-in” to my flight to Frankfurt. What does this mean? Will I be alone on the flight? I quite hope so. In any case, I’ll pretend I’m alone, or at least with my lovely Ivanečka and with my furry Peiločja, both of whom love me unconditionally.
• The bleakness of an aeroport morning. Again, I don’t mind. People mill about without a destination. The ironic and possibly quite eerie atmosphere that aeroports have is just this: People have fixed destinations, by definition, but the all appear lost, or at the least bewildered. #airports #dislocation
• An ill wind comes arising. No swimming in the heavy water. No singing in the acid rain. I’m listening to the “Grace Under Pressure Tour” that I downloaded the other day. I’m not sure what this song reminds me of besides when I was 11 or so and in El Paso and I watched the video on television with Mark and possibly Todd and possibly Ben. Ok - so it reminds me of that, though I have no clear memory of the music itself from then. Otherwise, it is vaguely nostalgic. It’s a great song. I like it quite a bit. I like “Red Sector A” Even better. #rush #music
• What about the isolated trees in the airport? What do they mean? What sort of semblance of nature do the overlords want to portray in this case? Do they want to remind the lost people milling about here that at some point in the past, white halls and sterile tiled corridors like these did not exist at all and instead green proliferated the world to the horizon? Or is it just “humble” gesture to give a vague connection to life for those (like me) with a clear destination but may be internally and eternally wandering the white, tiled corridors of their mind? #dislocation

Four things that should occupy my day (unrelated)

• How much can I get done on Day 9 on the airplane from Frankfurt to Denver. This is a good question. Of course, I’ll have to be able to CHARGE my laptop. That may be possible, given that this is the 27th century and electricity drools from the very seatbacks of every boat that flies through the atmosphere to its ostensible clear destination. Renoise is still much of a mystery to me. I have the manual, though. So, read it, vole! No excuses!
• Call my love in a few minutes to make sure she got home ok, and of course to hear her voice.
• Look in on Peiločja at every airport stop (if possible). I’ll be in Denver for quite some time.
• Read a bit of the first Amber novel. It’s intriguing so far, though the writing style may be a bit terse for me. I don’t recall such direct writing from Zelazny in the first novel I read (Doorways in the Sand). I’ll give it the first novel to impress me. I know that during my misspent youth, Tony was enamored with these novels. Given that, I’m sure there is something I will be able to get out of it / them. #zelazny #literature

A haiku (possibly)

• Discover Praha / Subsume the tomb as it blooms / Regurgitate blood #haiku

Anything else, vole?

Jeremy says You’ll probably be arrested and be thrown into the Linux-user concentration camp where you’ll be forced to assemble iPhones and sleep in your own feces. I don’t doubt his prediction, at least eventually. Hopefully by that point, I’ll be well established in Europe (Prague or Munich?) and have no intentions of ever going “back”.

I’m not sure if the extremity of his claim is valid or not, but certainly the underdogs, the outsiders, the non-conformists are more and more suppressed in the world of today. Hades itself informs me that during my misspent youth, I was also rejected by the majority. I never lived within the cliques of the accepted classes. Why is this? What could possibly have made it so? Is this also a mystery? I was raised by Christian parents who did their best to mold me in their rural and archaic ways. When did I begin to rebel? When did I start to simply REJECT everything I was taught?

I recall a turning point in my upbringing. I must have been 12 or so, though this is simply a guess. Given my spotty memory, it could have been my eleventh year, or thirteenth. I’m sure it was before I was a proper “teenager”, however. I lay in my bed after intensely reading perhaps Corinthians or maybe Daniel (the one I am drawn to the most when I pick up the “good book”) or even Acts, though I doubt it was that one and even wonder why I typed its “title”. Hm. Bastards. V každěm připadě, the intensity of my “study” and subsequent appeal to the higher power had tears running freely from my eyes. The bedclothes and pillows were soaked. Where were my parents? Who knows? As a child I was suffering because the thing I was told to believe in the whole of my existence to that point didn’t touch me back though every tentacle of my mind sake to touch “it”.

It sounds a bit silly once I write it, but the feeling at the time was as poignant as any a martyr or hippie chick with an acoustic guitar could possibly experience. I’m not sure if that moment was the actual break from my indoctrinated past or not. At this moment, it is the one that pervades my thoughts. I can still even taste the tears, and they were endless. Where were my parents whilst I was attempting to understand myself, the universe and my place in it? Oh - watching TV. Of course.

Calendars and clocks are yet another thing that humans have devised or, more aptly said imagined up, to set the “world” into a line. Humans love forcing events into linear existence. Humans love to categorize and to even imagine capricious lines that are drawn through an arbitrary construct (time). Their craving for order and reason is obsessive. The ambience I just crammed loopingly into El Capistan also unfolds over so-called time and in a so-called linear fashion. I wonder sometimes since we all perceive (or vnímat, as they say in the ancient lands) time slightly differently if we also hear music differently. I suppose so, said the naked vůl sitting plucking away at his mechanical keyboard. Perhaps it is as we see events as a whole (for what is music but a jumbled set of events?) unfolding in a discreet or overlapping manner depending on our mental state and ability to concentrate.

Naturally, these thoughts were spawned from the turning of the solar “clock” last night. We walked aimlessly to Vyšehrad and watched exploding powder create color in the sky from multitudinous sources. I commented to my lovely Ivanečka that I am happy that there is no centralized firework site controlled by the nefarious state that sends up mesmerising signals in the form of colorful fire to brainwash the Czech folk into thinking that there is some defined line between 2025 and 2026 instead of a wholly imagined human construct that has little to do with “natural” reality. Instead, to my pleasure, we got rozmanité firework displays undertook by private individuals who possibly had equally as much intention as the “state” to brainwash the fine Czech folk into believing that there is some defined line between 2025 and 2026 with their elegantly aleatoric exploding powder extravaganzas.

A good “New Year”’s resolution is to not sit or stand or run or jog or saunter or stumble around placing events into linear frameworks in my mind to “make sense” of the world. One form of bliss is the release from understanding that obsessing over rigidity is a precursor to general stress, unhappiness, destitution, death and pestilence. In the selfsame way, music should be touched by the concept, as well. One can blur linear forms into tiered and overlapping ideas. I’ve experimented with such things before, but I must admit that a great deal of my composing, though quite satisfactory to me in many ways, over the last epoch has resulted in pieces consisting of discrete parts tied together by melodic and harmonic ideas. Um, and also rhythmic ideas as rhythmic modulation has been tooting my muffin for quite some time now. This may involve bouts with polytonality given my penchant for modal composition. Fuck um.

El Capistan still spouts the ambient idea (taken from bits of Mouth of the Mammoth) I crammed into its maw before beginning to type. I jacked up the Wow & Flutter just now so it more quickly mangles itself into something unrecognizable and possibly even more pleasant. In fact, I think I’ll sample it into Herr James Burgess and further mangle it with the Morphagene. Oouh baby! What a way to start an imaginary human collection of events based loosely on the planet’s movement around the “sun”!

I’m sitting at the Grand Chalice Hotel in Brno. Is it called the Grand Chalice? I don’t think so. So, I am sitting in the Grand Chakalaka Hotel in Brno. Is it called the Grand Chakalaka? I don’t think so. So, I am sitting in the Grand Chortle Hotel in Brno in my and my fantastic woman (Ivanečka!)’s room after a trip to Boby Centrum to “drop her off” and then a similar return trip on tram 6. After her zažítek today, we shall return to Praha by train. Peiločja and Luki will be awaiting in their respective domiciles.

Since I am wearing my Church of Hawkwind shirt, I thought I’d put on Church of Hawkwind as background during this journaling session. It’s music that has accompanied me during many work sessions in my life. Well, maybe just one other that I can think of, actually, and that was at Microsoft in 1998 during an all-night work binge. But I’m sure I’ve used it in other similar circumstances. Why wouldn’t I? Songs like Star Cannibal always conjure up a work atmosphere. In fact, that particular song should be the anthem of work worldwide. Let it be so.

Ivanečka was also at her zažítek during the whole of yesterday, and even longer than we planned, or than either of us expected. She thought (or was told?) it ended at 18.00, but when I showed up to “pick her up”, she informed me that it was but another pauza. Of course I told her that we were in Brno for her, so she should stay for the remainder and I’ll return to “pick her up” once again at 20.00. I was delighted when, an hour later, I had arrived to our hotel room (the very hotel room and indeed in the very place I am sitting as I write this now), my “telephone” lit up with her image and after asking me where I was, informed me that she had left. She wanted to be with me. If that is not pure joy, then let each of my atoms find its place among the heat death of the universe this very day!

We spent the next series of endless moments exploring the centrum of Brno in its Xmas season state. We visited three náměstí, all of which were packed with humans milling and standing about holding bramboráky that dripped oil into puddles about their feet, marking those instants of their lives evermore. Live bands created music in each náměstí, a mish-mash of Ameri-British 80s pop with a smattering of (what I assume were) Czech hits thrown in. Everyone seemed like they were digging it, so why the FUCK not?

Ivanečka was quite impressed by the centrum, actually. She commented quite a lot about the architecture and also the relative cleanliness of the buildings themselves. Relative to Praha, I assumed. I, myself, was impressed by the atmosphere and how modern the interiors of many of the buildings were, especially those that housed restaurants, kavarny and dimensional gateways to far away solar-systems. The atmosphere also made an impression on my lovely Ivanečka. Of course, we must take into consideration the effort the city itself must have made to create a certain atmosphere during the time of Xmas. They really did their best to put the X back into Xmas.

One thought that came to mind and that the two of us discussed during our stroll is that samozřejmě Praha must have the same sort of “activities” and “atmospheres” during the Xmas time, but we sort of miss um because we don’t go out as tourists in Praha. In fact, I can’t recall the last time I was at Vaclávské Náměstí or Staroměstské Náměstí during late evening or night. I did relate to her the tale of my first Silvestr in Praha during which Loyal, Suzie, Craig and I left a trail of destruction, littered glass and ruined lives on New Year’s Eve. Praha’s centrum was indeed filled with people, but I have the impression (even though it is just a distant memory now) that most of the Praha crowd were not in fact from Praha, but were, like Loyal, et. al., just enjoying the general debauchery of a distant land during the “holiday” season. Our tour of Brno last night gave me a wholly different impression that the people enjoying the evening were locals, or at least most of them.

Yesterday, I discovered an Indian restaurant close to Boby Centrum dubbed The Light of India and consumed Dal there. I also ordered Ivanečka Dal after being told by the kind Indian caretaker of said restaurant that what I actually ordered contained no lactose at all. Bitchin’ cookies. Originally, I had selected a type of palak for my love to consume when her lunchtime came ‘round at 13.00, but since palak is usually made with cream, they’d’ve had to modify it substantially. In the end, it was the marvelous Dal. Bitchin’ cookies once again. Also - I’m not sure why I didn’t think of it at the time - perhaps because I wanted to find a place I could sit with Lajdácký and program - I consumed my portion of the exquisite Dal alone instead of simply waiting for Ivanečka’s lunch and consuming the exquisite Dal alongside her. Today I shall remedy this mistake by going directly to The Light of India with her when she breaks for lunch.

My plan now is to continue listening to Church of Hawkwind (90s edition) as I pack every last crumb of our material possessions that are scattered about the hotel room. Then I shall check out of the Grand Chapped Buttocks Hotel and then take tram 12 or 4 or walk or shamble or stumble or crawl or ooze to Hlavní Nádraží to store the kufr and jidelní taška in either a storage locker or dimensional gateway, whichever I find first. As I wrote earlier, we depart this evening.

I am in Brno for the first time in a series of practically infinite moments. The trail that led me away from here and then eventually led me back is complex and not necessarily coherent. And, after all, that is life. We only desperately place together meaning in retrospect where, really, there is none to be had, only our yearning for something more than the twisting, looping, crooked and staggered path we trace through our existence. Here, then gone, briefly making scribbles already beginning to fade on the parchment of our age. Fuck um, I say. Obey no others’ rules but one’s own. Be slaves to duty and cultural pressure on longer. Discard your useless upbriging and peer directly into the only future you have with no baggage from childhood dreams, adolescent fantasies or a young man’s cunning but ultimately useless ambition.

I am in Brno for the first time in a series of practically unnoticebale moments. Memory is a jokester. Though I understand that many years have passed, what I recognize is minimal so far. Moravské Náměstí remains mostly intact after the weathered years. It was there I met the Smaller One after she performed an obscene alteration to her heady folicles. I suspose that memory is mostly intact. It was night, but the trams crissed and crossed the same as they still do today. The bookstore I used to spend days sitting at and reading Bukowski and McEwen is still there. When I say days, I mean during the day whilst the Smaller One was occupied by schooling or somesuch. It was a weird time. I was caught between by loniliness, an alcholism festering beneath, my desire to be with someone who at least partially respected me for who I was, and a suppressed creativity that threatened at any moment to burst through and swallow both me and everything in my vicinity both physically and emotionally. Perhaps it eventually did.

At the flat in Židenice that I refuse to let nostalgia lure me back to, I mused over the first versions of portions of Seven Draperies - the so-called Magnum Opus I’ve been waiting to finish since my first lyrical sketches in 1999 overlooking the Danube and waiting to board a ferry where now there is a bridge, obliterating again another “purity” of memory. Sometimes I get it when these old conservative assholes bitch and whine about how things used to be and how progress has erased everything “sacred” in the near multiverse. Humans long for anchors. Living life adrift is difficult. I well know because I did it for thousands of epochs and inbetween each of those epochs puttered about with temporary anchors whose tethers to my bone and hide eventually frayed setting me loose again. Ah, Sweet Entropy. I belive it is appropriate to lay that term to rest. It’s truly sad when you find yourself locking in conversation with those who hold on to anchors that are now in a mystical past which only is accessible by the motheaten cloth of memory.

So, for me, possibly my point is that Brno was the birth of the melodies that will result in my so-called Magnum Opus -> Seven Draperies. I’ll get to work on it sometime this decade, you can be sure, honeybuničko. The pseudo-indian dude who just asked me how my Dal was agrees with my assessment. Speaking of nostalgia and memory, I believe this Indian Restaurant, dubbed The Light of India, was once a restaurant called something akin to Aura. My tattered memory, however, could well be mistaken and I am not disturbed in the least by that “fact”. The Smaller One and I used to come to Aura “often”, or more like “občas”, but the only remaning possibly quite false memory that lingers is of a badly baked stuffed lilek. Since that time, the only baked lilky I eat are the ones I prepare myself. Fucking up baked liliek will furthermore be punished by amnesia. I believe it will create a troop of simply better people, not to mention better baking fiends. No anchors to remember. No ropes or twine or tethers, frayed or not. Move forward. No more baggage from childhood dreams, adolescent fantasies or a young man’s cunning but ultimately useless ambition.