It is a good morning. It is a good morning despite having the feeling that Marisa is irked at something. Of course, I could be placing the origin of her being irked upon myself, which makes me an egocentric offal ball. More likely, and I’m thinking positively here (but again, thinking positively means that somewhere in my sodden brain, I am searching for what I may have done to cause the irk), she is irked because of her need to go to work early. She always needs to go to work early. Shouldn’t she be used to it? Or perhaps she just didn’t sleep well. Nightmares? She gets um.

Occidental culture trains humans to complain. I’d say that a significant chunk of the occidental population feels uncomfortable if they cannot complain. And surely the greatest source of complaint concerns daily toil. I could be a simpleton and say (and surely I have in the past) that Marisa chose her line of toil. Didn’t she know what she was getting into? But of course she didn’t know what she was getting into. Any line of toil that deals with a swath of the public is in a bureaucratic flux. Any ideal one had of working with people is incrementally eroded by constant friction against the system. Smatterings of joy are further and further apart. One becomes disillusioned and jaded. One wakes up every morning dreading spending another day fighting against or even just accepting the direction one’s toil has taken, further and further removed from that original ideal of working with people. A hunk of each workday is torture. Respite comes in the evening, but is clouded with thoughts of the next workday. Weekends are false liberation for the same reason. Stress mounts during Sunday since on the following day, the cycle continues.

I agree that it is depressing. Knowing what she does now, possibly Marisa wouldn’t choose education as a career, though I am uncertain, as during earlier epochs of life, idealism is much more likely to win out over discursive evaluation of an unclear future.

In any case, the contrast is plain. I wake with joy every morning, delighting in my routine. I am happy to be alive another day and tread through it accomplishing various creative and cerebral goals. Marisa is grumpy. I don’t blame her. I wish her life had taken a path more marked by contentment and especially inner peace. She is also ridden with anxiety and although that is an altogether different topic, it’s related because her daily toil exacerbates this anxiety.

I hear her milling about after her morning shower. Hopefully, when she opens the door to greet my morning, a smile will light her face, even if it is the ghost of the ancient idealism that originally set her upon her life’s path.

Which song was singing in my head as I awakened prematurely a bit before six? Ragamuffin Dumplin’ by The Stalk Forrest Group. What song shall I listen to when the album containing the song that was singing in my head as I awakened prematurely a bit before six is successfully transferred from the Fairphone to Myx Nulu? That’d be Ragamuffin Dumplin’ by the Stalk Forrest Group. I’ll even send it via Telegram to Christian so he can ignore it but without fail joke, jest or assume that I am drunk! What a morning it will be!

The early waking was inspired by a quantities of figs (higos y brevas) that I ate yesterevening. I am aware that my body doesn’t deal with any sort of sugary substance well, and especially doesn’t deal with any sort of sugary substance in the evening. By not dealing well, I mean that I am awakened frequently by the need to urinate and thirst, not to mention bizarre sensations throughout my living corpse. Over the last year, I’ve had numerous tests performed. I’m apparently free of any blood-borne evidence that I have diabetes. No allergy afflicts me. Next I shall visit a so-called internista to verify that one, seven or all of my organs are failing. What excitement! I’ll tip my hat (which I need to search for, for I fear it lost!) at the idea of failing organs. Of course, most of them will be replaced by mechanized replicas as I extend my life into a droll immortality, as it should be. Hey, vole - anything just to be around for the Heat Death of the Universe.

Two days of routine so far. Well, one day of partial routine and a second day of begun routine. If it continues in any reliable manner, imperfect or slightly scattered, I’ll be pleased. I’ll be so pleased, in fact, that I’ll pen a poem about it. In fact, I’ll pen a poem about it at this very moment!

A misshapen skull
Flopping in sync to
Acoustic ramblings far
From mayhem leaks sugary
Residue that
Solidifies into architecture
Stone polygons trace a treasured
Routine back towards unconscious
Birth

Is it quality poetry, the massed critics question? The idea of absolute quality has always bothered me. It’s drifted in and out of my life for epochs, coming to some kind of head during my early 20s when my group of friends (known as the posse) collectively read Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. As anyone worth a hunk of stepping stone knows, that book proposes the idea of absolute quality and elaborates on the it at length. If you are a semi-sentient animal and you are reading this, which you are, of course, and you have not read Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, I certainly recommend it. You may be like me and not believe any hogbuffery about absolute quality or you MAY believe it. Most likely, since absolutes are certainly hogbuffery, you are somewhere on the tri-terminal axis of belief, unbelief and apathy regarding the subject. One doesn’t have to believe to enjoy learning another point of view.

So, is it quality poetry, the massed sheep question? The idea of absolute quality has always bothered me, or at least it has been an intermittent aggravation (an itch!) in my existential existence. I have a quality threshold and this umbral varies depending on the substance at hand. I laughingly call my poem substance. I laughingly call many things various other things. My quality threshold differs wildly from other humans’ quality thresholds, as well. Much comes down to the funny animal called taste (thank you Herr Jim Scott). How is taste formed? Upbringing has quite a bit to do with it and especially the balance between acceptance and rebellion in one’s upbringing. Furthermore, acceptance and rebellion concerning multitudinous peer groups during life shape it. Though for most, methinks, taste solidifies by the early 20s or even late teens. I like to keep my own’s plasticity as malleable as possible during any given epoch of my immortality. How successful am I, I ask the massed ungulates? That’s not for me to say since I am quite biased.

So, is it quality poetry, the hoofed miscreants ask? I like it. Others of similar structure appeal to me more. It was joyful to write, but not particularly intellectually satisfactory, which brings me full trapezoid back to morning routines. Before beginning to write, I was squaring 36 and adding 8 to it within the item that leaks the sugary substance through cracks in my cranium. During a pee break, I completed the calculation. Thus, my morning of writing comes to an end.

It’s morning in Logroño. For a Logroño morning for me, habitually, it is an early morning. During dim epochs, I’d fall back to slumber for at least an hour after Marisa awakened, arose and began to prepare for her working day. Well, not today, sonny! My time in Seminole was an inspiration in this way. I was truly content with the morning routine that I created. I want to in part duplicated it in Logroño. Perhaps duplicate isn’t the best word. I want to interpret it in a Logroño context. The process begins today with a half complete morning exercise, ear training and this scribbling. I laughingly call it scribbling, as Robert Calvert laughingly called one of his songs a composition or some such. Which reminds me.

Last year, in the flat Za Vackovem, I prepared for creating a version of Calvert’s Test Tube Conceived. I even began recording ideas for The Rah Rah Man, but eventually abandoned them. Why? I distantly recall none of the sonic possibilities working out. Perhaps now, with my aim towards a more electronic pallet, I can find my way towards that winding sendero once more. For the first month and a half Za Vackovem, my creative juices dripped readily from the maw. The Morning Ambience series, some of which spawned four compositions on Pagan Park, Seminole, Texas, was another fecund fountainhead. I awoke each morning, much like I am awake this morning, put on some tea, much like I have not done this morning, sat down in my studio seat, and improvised with SBUP.

At the moment, meaning this morning, during which I have no tea, SBUP is disemboweled. SBUP will remain partially disemboweled for the foreseeable future. The next few days, I’ll use its machinery to toy with new modules, but it will soon entirely be replaced by the wooden monstrosity created for me by a couple of Spanish frikis living in a hollowed out menhir in Extremadura. I assume it will arrive before the week is out.

Incidentally, why is it said that the week is out? I’d prefer to remark that the week is exhausted. We all know, since we are the masses and the lowest common denominator and sheep amongst mottled hoards of other sheep, that week is a historically arbitrary measure of time, based on some superstitious mumbo-thumbery that still has bleating followers (a horde which includes my parents! ha!). In any case, I shall attempt to use the phrase the week is exhausted instead of the week is out from here on exhausted. Fuck um.

That being claimed, or mentioned or otherwise chipped deliberately into the hollowed out menhir in which live and work a couple of Spanish frikis that will soon provide me with a monstrosity of a synthesizer case, SBUP will soon be for the buzzards. The disemboweled workvůl will rest. That wasn’t exactly the point of what I was typing about, however. My typing concerned morning modular synthesizer improvisations. I shall begin them again. I suppose I have, on a limited basis, as I’ve created some soundscapes using a few modules run through the virtually cavernous innards of Desmodus Versio and about which Christian has yet to breathe (typewrittenly or otherwise) a single comment. Perhaps he finds them below him because the timbres are not to this taste. For him, it’s all about timbre. To the exhausted wolves with chordings, melodic structures and even rhythm. One epoch soon, he’ll know better. He’ll be lopped to pieces at the heel of the altar to harmonic greatness.

My intention with morning journaling wasn’t to journal, per se, now that I’ve situated myself in Logroño once more, but to write más o menos stream of consciencely each morning for an arbitrary number of days between four and eight, then go through, elaborate on, then compile the results into one, two, seven or less blog entries. In the case of this meandering prattle, I’m sending it directly to the celebrated heat death of the universe.

Before I do that, though, I’ll relate a dream I had immediately before my final awakening. I was in a hospoda in Praha. I assume it was Praha. I sat at a table and though I wasn’t alone, I don’t recall the others who accompanied me. Their faces are erased. I believe I had food. I certainly had a beer. By the end of the dream, I had a small beer - and not a Small Czech Beer, but a Small Spanish Beer in a four centimeter (approximately) tall glass similar to those I first encountered in San Sebastian and were ubiquitous in Madrid. This was the one I was sipping on. There were also two normal half-litre beers, on of which was partially sipped. The crux of the dream was that Jeníček entered with his family. Yes, there was even a little Jeníček. I had to repeatedly try to get his attention. He seemed more drawn to the faceless others that accompanied me and the even more wholly faceless remaining patron s of the hospoda. Finally I succeeded and he was shocked. We embraced and I felt tears coming. I suppose it’d be the same in so-called real life. The core sensation was the rushing chemicals in my brain that bore the need to comprehend all at once, emotionally, everything the two of us had experienced together once upon a time. Of course it’d be at least momentarily overwhelming.

He slowly melted away after we sat and exchanged words. Words that meant little after the rushing chemicals. My form persisted, but that of Jeníček flowed, melted or otherwise merged into the hospoda crowd. As is best, as we all move on. Holding on to ghosts is never healthy.

As I was previously typing this paragraph, Pennanti burst into white and green, copper-like flames and engulfed the house, a portion of the manzana and the pumpjack around the corner and then consequently reduced several infinities of quantum universes to the entropic state to which they rightly belong. As I am re-scribing, I’ll attempt to reiterate. I sit at a card table, an ancient card table, on which sits the ZEDi. The table uplifts the mixing apparatus from the filthy carpet. By writing filthy, I’m not implying that the carpet is filthy by my doing or by my parents doing, but that carpets, rugs and any other sorts of fabric floor covering are filthy by nature. Owning any of the above indicates severe lack of discursive thought. One should be pummelled for doing so, or strung up like those Mennonites in Pagan Park. They must be getting a bit smelly by now. I observe the white tipped Fender cables that wait to carry electro-magnetic hoopla from the pedalboard below into the ZEDi, through the ZEDi, into a gold tipped cable and finally into the auriculares that upon occasion cover my earfolds. This is the current moment.

This is my last morning in Seminole until (so I currently plan) mid to late winter. I shirked slightly on my mathematics routine, but all else is in place. Now I shall stroll.

Christian lately has been talking about the subject of what he calls memory drift (as good a term as any) and it being one of the reasons for keeping a journal. It was certainly one of the reasons that I originally began writing and especially continued to write. Well, I also started to write to make myself appear to be more of an elitist scum than my peers. I’d peer at them from my plinth made of strung together phrases joined by tenuous punctuation. I’d guffaw at their lowliness. Peering down from the plinth of journaling, one observes that all others are earthbound morsels consumed by insects.

In any case, Christian lately has been talking about the theme of what he terms memory drift (which is a rather good description, though memory decay might even be more accurate). The most curious thing to me, however, is what exactly one ends up journaling about and what is therefore preserved. For example, this morning my plan is to pack. I shall stuff the cadavers of the Mennonites I strung up in Pagan Park over the last two weeks (I gathered them during my stroll) into my handy infinite corpses suitcase. By the way, I recommend the infinite corpses suitcase to everyone. It’s endlessly useful for transporting dead things one might later use for decoration, food, billiards or whathaveyou. So, my plan is to pack. During pauses in my packing, I’ll practise arpeggios, a few parts of Sketch #3, picking patterns to various chord progressions, etc. When my fingers are numb with pleasure, my Seminole Studio will go directly into the wooden chest to my right. The ancient card table and its compatriot, an ancient wooden pedestal that I use for the Argon, will go to the storeroom. The room will convert once again into an empty environment occupied only by dust mites and the occasional wraith of a melody it may have heard over the last two weeks. Back to what I was journaling about: What will be remembered by the words I scribe RIGHT NOW? These words will create an impression on my future self, placing pictures and movements into the circuitry of my mind simulating this moment. It won’t be accurate, but it will be much closer than had I not written anything.

How does one choose what to journal about? How does one choose what will produce a more lucid memory to one’s future self? Ideally, journalling every day is the solution. For me, personally, because my routines, though I may treasure them, are often ruptured by travel, by aleatory actions committed by those close to me, and by the general hogbuffery that comes about as a consequence of not living the ideal life, journaling every day is nigh impossible. What is the ideal life? The ideal life is living alone in a cave (metaphorically or not) and having nothing ever impinge on one’s creative pursuits and routines.

To any marmot, stoat or badger who has read my journaling extensively, it is apparent that I write about writing itself and the consequences of not writing extensively. I chastise my own lethargy. At the midpoint of my life, however, or perhaps a bit over the third-point of my life, I realise that it doesn’t matter exactly what I type maniacally or lugubriously about. The meditative state that comes with the actual doing is more important than the results. Surely, I’ll get a taxidermied goat full of chuckles when I read much of it back in some far flung future epoch, and even recall what to do and not to do in situations similar to ones I’ll’ve already experienced. Mostly it’ll just be for chuckles, though.

It’s about the doing. The moment. The meditative aspect. The future will reduce it all to ashes in any case. And, as they say, the Heat Death of the Universe is just around the corner. Fuck um.

A simple query in SQL has turned into a semi-frustrating learning path in Ecto. Specifically, I need to write a macro to interpolate a sequence of equalities joined by ors. As I have never written a macro before in Elixir, badgering it doesn’t seem to work. Or it only works momentarily and then causes a ruckus. I realise that macros are thurked at compile time. This is not the issue. I’m befuddled about the actual interpolation process. So, today I’ll dedicate time to reading and experimenting. My omniscience has proven ineffective for this task.

I shall fetch tea.

I have fetched tea. It is Earl Grey this morning, much like most mornings here in Seminole. Previously, meaning on my extended stay between September 2021 and February 2022, I sucked down mainly coffee instead of tea in the mornings. My mother’s coffee production apparatus has developed a manner of creating coffee that is unpleasant on my palate. It is burned. How that could be, I am not sure, knowing how the machine producing the coffee functions. I pointed it out. My mother claimed it tastes fine to her, so, not to cause a ruckus, I switched to tea.

One should not cause a ruckus.

Yesterday, I drove my father to a hospital in Lubbock for his revisión concerning all things heart related. The trip itself glided by quickly. I mostly observed the low hanging clouds and their shifting shapes. The uniqueness of atmospheric phenomena in the vast flatlands is almost enough to redeem them from the utter desolation of their “cultural” landscape. In fact, I did much the same when visiting the cemetery last week to observe the graves of my grandparents on my father’s side, both who died in the early 80s, when my mind was only beginning to take on its later barbed form. Also on display was the grave of my parents themselves, all prepared, including headstones. All I’ll have to do when they snuff it is etch the date of their passings into the stone with the bone protruding from my thorax. A combination of the tomb, the future tomb and the beauty of the clouds was surreal.

In any case, yesterday, I drove my father to a hospital in Lubbock for his check-up concerning all things pertaining to the corazón. He is a pitiful creature. The contrast to his chulo posturing during my youth is stark. Though his mind remains acute, his body is something he must painfully drag here and there with exhausting results, both for him and for anyone accompanying him. Getting in and out of the hospital was a lengthy affair. His chulo banter with the doctors and nurses wrapped in a ruidoso demeanour would have been embarrassing if I cared even a single chip of the bone protruding from my thorax for what other people thought. His need to introduce me as his eldest son to people he only just met because he can’t sit still socially is aggravating, though I do my best to not show it. His impatience whilst waiting for the nurses and doctor is puzzling. In fact, most people’s impatience is puzzling to me. Have people in general lost the ability to entertain themselves? Why, immured in boredom, do they have to cause a ruckus?

Enough complaining. I enjoyed playing cribbage with the old man before retiring to my sleeping quarters to fiddle with Elixir. Unfortunately, it is one of the few actual pleasures I share with him. After my Elixir fiddling, I watched an episode of The Walking Dead. The television series reminds me inevitably of Lisa, as she first provided me with several of the initial graphic novels back in 2013. I’m surprised it took me so long to watch the translated to video version. There are touches of greatness here and there and overall it is enjoyable, though the directing appears to be going slowly downhill since the beginning of Season 7. If it doesn’t pick up, I may have to impale each of the directors, not to mention their wives, girlfriends, brothers, sisters, hyenas, kobolds, paramecia and screaming infants on the bone protruding from my thorax.

The elephant is eating wafers. I just bought another Eurorack module. It occurs to me that I don’t have an infinite amount of money. I won a good amount at the casino during these last days, but I should watch myself. If I also purchase a new laptop for 1723€, funds will be well diminished.

I rarely worried about money issues during former decades, but living in stability introduces the concept of money concerns more tangibly. It’s a large part of the domestic life. Living from meager pay stub to meager pay stub and voluminous flask of alcoholic liquid to voluminous flask of alcoholic liquid during my days, weeks, years, epochs in Praha erased any issue from my brain. It was a free life. I was poor, but content. Fucking stability. Is it worth it?

It’s a compromise. The introduction of money concerns as well as myriad other details that arrive with stability come alongside the ability to have a place to consistently create. During the days, weeks, years, epochs that I lived from pay stub to pay stud and voluminous flask of alcoholic beverage to voluminous flask of alcoholic beverage, I certainly created - oouh baby - but the process was in bursts or in spurts. There was no organized manner involved. Thus the results were likewise fragmented. To be diced by the whorling metal blades in a positive way, the introduction of money concerns is part of a mental model that allows me to have a consistent PLACE and consistent ROUTINE in which to create.

That being scribed, I worry about money much less than the typical swaddled, drooling infant, even though I was raised with the idea that financial success is the only path to true happiness. I must hand it to my intense psychological rebellion during pre-teen days, weeks, years, epochs and adolescent days, weeks, years, epochs. It not only rejected the social (and cultural) customs of my youth, but also the hardened teachings of my family.

Oh! To be a misfit!

Tangerine Dream’s Exit drools, swaddled from my mobile phone that is placed slightly left of Pennanti. It’s a pleasant album, but not one I return to often. Among Progressive Rock and Krautrock fans, this is around the time that the band started to lose the magic. Some blame it on the migration to digital synths. That could be, but not because digital synths can’t do amazing things - they certainly can, in the paws of those willing to understand end implement their quirks - but possibly because the lepers in the band were still in an “analogue” mindset at the time. Their approach to synthesis may not have migrated successfully with the hardware. It’s a conjecture. Or maybe they just wanted to change their sound and I don’t like the results as much. That’s Occam’s razor, vole.

Fuck um.

Vincente Amigo warbles from my Motorola phone. I’d transmit his warblings to my headsets, but I don’t really feel like it. I’ll enjoy his acoustic bumblings from a bit of a distance. As my amigo, Christián, is obsessed with Flamenco, the genre of music that Vincente “belongs” to, I choose to listen and (attempt to) absorb such artists time and again. I haven’t been too successful, truthfully, though on third listen, elements pattering around me during these moments do have their moments. That is, Herr Vincente is more interesting to me than most have been. I recall that Manuel Molina also had a tight and well formed gulag to imprison oneself in for the duration of an album, but somehow, the details of his music escape my remembrance at the moment.

And my theory as to why the details of Manuel’s music escape me is that his, Vincente’s and the music of Flamenco in general has very little intellectual slant to it. One should not be surprised as it is a folk music and had origins in rhythm and especially dance. It’s attractiveness to most, I’d imagine, is on a visceral level. Christián would argue that the technical aspect of the (guitar) playing represents an intellectual facet and he’d be partially right, though I could argue that most of it consists of patterns hammered into muscle memory over years, decades, centuries, epochs. In the future, they’ll be injected directly into the cerebellums of gitano infants - and into the cerebellums of anyone else who might be interested, including into the cerebellums of the Mennonites strung up in Pagan Park. Those guys and gals get Flamenco. Or they will. Fuck um.

In any case, a vast swath of music that appeals to me (and by vast, I mean fucking vast, vole) does appeal on a visceral level. It must. It is music. But the intellectual element - the ability to dissect it especially harmonically and texturally - is present in a degree that is (mostly) wholly absent in Flamenco and folk musics in general.

As I scribed the last paragraph, inevitably, a piece trickles from my Motorola phone in which Vincente has placed an excellent alto saxophone part. You see? Perhaps this will be the most memorable Flamenco album for me of the epoch. Vincente uses a bit more extended harmonic language in his guitar thwakkin, as well, greasing up the air with several scents of ancient jazz. Familiarity is also a factor. Sure, it’s only the third time I’ve listened to this, and this time only semi-actively, but truthfully, and in most cases, one tends to enjoy what one listens to most by choice.

Listening choice brings me back round to thoughts about bare music. I still haven’t gotten around to writing a treatise on the subject. My original notes are virtually lying around somewhere. I’ll revisit when the wind is at my back, the sun is high in the sky and my destination is once again unknown.

Insomnia. It must be either something that I ate or an interior psychological taint that awakened me at four and leaves me sleepless. So, instead of moping or stringing up more Mennonites, I’m sitting in my bed in Seminole and writing. Thus, my morning routine begins early.

On the topic of routines, the deadline for the new Disquiet Junto is today and it is all about routine. Specifically, the resultant composition should follow a daily routine, or, rather, be an interpretation of a daily routine. That was my first impression. Scrolling downwards, however, in their instructions, they give more detail. I am told to break the chore into phases and record a bit of audio as each part of the chore is re-enacted. Then, I am told to combine the sounds, supposedly in sequence, to create the composition.

I have a few of my own ideas.

First, I shall grab the KO Pocket Operator and sample myself typing into Pennanti. KO has been fetched. Now to record. aeoueo.oeuo.poaeuopoeaeueuoeuou.afuduieeuouoeueuoeu and now with the other hand, honeybuničko: ththcstrlhchnthssssththrcgddd hhr rtnh -nthnhr nhrsnth Fantastico! I have two samples of the typing into Pennanti now and shall place them arbitrarily into the composition.

My overall strategy is somewhat different than the actual instructions. My morning routines are intertwined in my mind and therefore should be intertwined within the music.

• Journal entry (typing)
• Exercise (crunches and arm thurks)
• Mathematics

In addition to the samples I just recorded, I want to create a patch on Herr Argon that simulates typing and one that, with a slightly rising decay on the amplitude envelope, will transform into melodic material. I create a sequence based on the quartal harmony I’ve been hallucinating over for epochs. It floats in a pool of simplicity. The pool is rarely troubled by ripples. The sequence is triggered by gates from a midi stream I demurely ask Python to create, semi-random. It could morph into a more stable rhythm. I’m not sure yet.

As for exercise, I’m not going to sample anything, as all music created from samples is false music, made by posers who can only approach the ecstasy of oscillation through empty pseudo-spiritual dream-like rituals involving underhanded hogbuffery. Exercise is naturally a repetitive chore, so a sort of beat should emerge, though perhaps not one of precision. The chug of the ukulele may handle this metaphor. Can a ukulele chug? You bet your finest Pelt of Polish Prostitute that it can, leper-boy. A ukulele in sync with a increasingly swelling and somewhat dirty synth chugs even better.

I shall fetch my tea.

Duly fetched.

Transferring the abstraction of doing multiplication of double digit numbers (and various other operations) in my head to the sonic palette is more problematic. A benign melody, slow and sparse, quickens, becomes more dense and dissonant and painstakingly resolves, or perhaps even suddenly resolves. Mathematics, after all, is bliss.

I awaken from slumber thinking about Jazz Standards and analyzing their chord progressions with reference to their melodies. I’ve spent a good amount of time doing such things, though not in a while. When I was writing much of Jēmaraz, I was highly influenced my my studies of different Jazz Standards. Since then, I’ve drifted into a modal territory that is wholly my own. It’s time to take a step back and see how my new methods line up with studies of Jazz Standards. So I’ll put some time aside to go through a few of them now and again.

On the other simpering face of my personal block of sod, I have contrasting ideas about how to proceed with the forthcoming so-called electronic album. Apart from the three and a third pieces that are more or less written, I’m going to try something I’ve been aching and pining to try for at least a few epochs or a few hours. It is thus: Every progression is a series of chromatic dyads. They are all be descending. The time between each is brief in the context of both geologic and insectile age. These dyads form a part of four or five note chords that encompass the harmonic movement. During composition, the dyadic notes most likely fall on the outer edges of where I move my hands along the neck of Henderson or Uruqi. They are the (if open strings are not used in the middle) upper and lower notes of a chord. For now, the kind of chords are not defined. Let’s call the notes that are not of the dyads, and therefore in the middle of where I move my hands along the neck of Henderson or Uruqi, melodic peculiarities. These melodic peculiarities, as the name implies, supply a melodic dimension to the composition.

The harmonic idea is stated. I shall try to stick with it for the remainder of the pieces on the album. The composed three and a third, apart from The Fen, may benefit from mild adjusting partially into such dyadic chromaticism.

Molecules swarm about my face, like geologic insects. I bat them away.

Unique timbre in the electronic realm forms an aspect of each composition. Let’s try to focus on one particular aspect of timbre for each composition. The first that I envision is made up wholly of hits from low pass gates. Is that limiting? No, because the rhythm, speed and placement of these hits create an infinity of textures. I begin with static harmony as the textures evolve, then suddenly lurch into dyadic chromaticism. The listener, imprisoned in a two square meter cube (one has to give one’s prisoner room to stretch itself, of course - I’m not a monster), is enveloped in texture and gently descending harmony. This captive will forget completely about being a captive as bliss becomes the only constant.

Following this “model”, each electronic composition, apart from the actual notes and timbres, writes itself. Funny how that works, eh? I sit on the aforementioned simpering block of sod, which has solidified into an edifice, and I laugh and laugh.

The synthesist known as grüm~pé sings in my ears. Well, he doesn’t actually sing. His synthesizers sing. This is a preferable state of affairs as whoever said the human voice is the most beautiful instrument was a moron. He / she / it clearly knew nothing of synths. grüm~pé is an inspiration to listen to. Most of his music is done on Modular and his use of timbre encourages me to fiddle with the modulation parameters of my Argon8 until the pads of my paws are raw and running, and especially fiddle with them before activating the sequencer. Oouh, baby. On the other hand, I adore the Tangerine Dream approach from the late 70s where they obviously didn’t have as many (or ANY) automation options, so they modulated as the sequence ran whilst adding other layers. As usual, there is a middle road. That middle road is fuck um.

My mother gave me a box and a plastic bag on jewelry to give to Marisa. I recall some of it from epochs long past. My mother has always had an affinity for turquoise, and a slightly lesser affinity for red jasper. Plenty of both are in the box and plastic bag. Most are entwined with silver. None are really Marisa’s style, but in the end, that’s not important. The heat death of the universe approaches. It’s best to melt down any “precious” metal and sell it to the gitanos. While I’m at it, I can kidnap a few gitano children and put them to work on the plantation. Fuck um.

This morning’s walk beckons me. Has my morning writing run its course? Unless I begin writing about writing, I would suppose so. The dearth of ideas this morning contrasts my physical wellness. In fact, yesternight I felt I was on the cusp of illness. Part of me knew I’d awaken with a new course of Covid. Oouh, baby. Wouldn’t that be fun? I’d be sprawled in the bed for a week watching movies and basking in lethargy. Apart from the nothing I’d do, I’d possibly eat from time to time. I’d most likely urinate time and again. Programming would cross my mind. I’d not strap on the guitar and ROCK, however. There the tragedy’d lie.

On the subject of ROCK, my drift away from that sacred genre soothes me, in fact. As a child and teen, I had distant aspirations of playing in a ROCK band. They were pipe dreams, of course, and when University arrived and Tony and I did play in a ROCK band, it was done badly more than goodly over the years, though much of the writing / composing itself was strong. As Tony once famously intoned: If we could play our instruments, we’d take over the world. So - now I can play my instrument(s). Have I taken over the world, Tone Tone? Indeed I have. To prove it, I’m going to string up a few Mennonites on my walk in a few minutes. They’ll hang in Pagan Park until they rot and are consumed by coyotes. I’ll laugh and laugh.

Fuck um.

My alimentary habits have left my brain soggy this morning. I know there are certain things I should not eat, yet a voice from one of my internal modules tells another internal module that something would taste good. Or, and in the case of yesterday, that whispering module mentions to other modules that I should go with the flow and eat what everyone else is eating - join the crowd - be a part! So I accompanied my mother to Dairy Queen after our stint at the casino to procure three Hungr-Busters and two large fries. My Hungr-Buster also contained jalapeños and bacon, though it was obvious that the latter was largely missing from the finished product. With my parents, I consumed the food. Even before my plunge into the death-like state that is slumber, I felt the results of my folly. Mental acuity was muffled. Tingling sensations carpeted my living corpse. Were I a rat, I’d never eat a Hungr-Buster or anything resembling a Hungr-Buster again. Rats learn. Obviously, I do not.

Olšanské Hřbitovy is more or less done. By more or less done I mean that the current iteration is more or less done. I already know several parts will be updated again after said iteration is finished. These updates will be minor, however, in comparison to the work I’ve done over the last days. I write more or less done because there is a final part that needs revamping. It’s a problematic one because it is the climax of the first half of the piece and involves interlocking melodic structures and therefore must be done convincingly (to me and to the alien archaeologists who eventually find the remains of our species and come across the only piece of art left in existence - the very piece of music I’m writing about). A further complication is that my brain is used to hearing it as it is now. Familiarity tells me that’s the way it should be. I know otherwise. Most probably I’ll decompose the whole thing and replay it all with additions, subtractions and pummelling. Though I may appear to complain, I shall enjoy the process. Immensely.

The mist that occupies my forebrain bids this entry farewell. Fuck um.