Flavigula - the Martenblog

Flavigula - the Martenblog 2026-04-02T14:41:00Z Bob Murry Shelton https://flavigula.net/ The Theoretical Pool of Molten Lead https://flavigula.net/static/blog/202604021441.html 2026-04-02T14:41:00Z 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: <ul> <li>Dobbs revisited - the closest to being done.</li> <li>Dissolving pool - all the pieces need to be revised, but I believe the composition part itself is done.</li> <li>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.</li> <li>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.</li> <li>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.</li> </ul> <hr /> 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 <ul> <li>My poems</li> <li>Spontaneous ideas that I throw to my personal nostr server</li> <li>The legacy blog posts</li> <li>All the mostly static content that is translated from markdown by my own special method and placed within various templates</li> </ul> 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. Everybody's Gotta Elevate from the Norm https://flavigula.net/static/blog/202603160608.html 2026-03-16T06:08:00Z <h3>Three random ideas that come to mind (mostly unrelated)</h3> <ul> <li>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.</li> <li>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</li> <li>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</li> <li>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</li> </ul> <h3>Four things that should occupy my day (unrelated)</h3> <ul> <li>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!</li> <li>Call my love in a few minutes to make sure she got home ok, and of course to hear her voice.</li> <li>Look in on Peiločja at every airport stop (if possible). I’ll be in Denver for quite some time.</li> <li>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</li> </ul> <h3>A haiku (possibly)</h3> <ul> <li>Discover Praha / Subsume the tomb as it blooms / Regurgitate blood #haiku</li> </ul> <h3>Anything else, vole?</h3> 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. What is Music but a Jumbled Set of Events? https://flavigula.net/static/blog/202601011021.html 2026-01-01T10:21:00Z 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 &amp; 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”! Let Each of my Atoms Find Its Place https://flavigula.net/static/blog/202512070843.html 2025-12-07T08:43:00Z 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. The Parchment of our Age https://flavigula.net/static/blog/202512061135.html 2025-12-06T11:35:00Z 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 -&gt; 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. The Only Czech People There https://flavigula.net/static/blog/202511240623.html 2025-11-24T06:23:00Z Yesterday was the anniversery of Lee’s demise. It’s been 32 years and it still affects me, though more these days in a nostalgic way. The melancholy doesn’t hit as hard as it used to. Humans pass out of this world all the time, I am aware, as is pretty much everyone since an early age. I just scribed a rhetorical statement. Though what a rhetorical statement might be is any human’s guess besides my own. Technically it would be a statment that requires no “reply”, or perhaps requires no comment or followup. What I meant was in the vernacular of so-called “dichos” that Lee used to use, although he, as well, knew that his usage was not technically correct. He meant a statement that needn’t be uttered in the first place. I’ll keep his usage for nostalgic and not so melancholic reasons. Also, Lee recognized that “dichos” are simply shortcuts. They are sloppy thinking. Instead of thinking deeply about a matter, one can spout a platitude and be done with it. Communication via “dichos” is an immediate sign that those communicating tak are to be evermore avoided like a plague rat or a frat boy (same thing, really). So what did I do to “celebrate” his demise? Well, I broke my diet for a meal by going for Thai food with Ivanečka at the spiffy resaurant Noi near Ujezd. The food was exquisite but I think we were the only Czech people there apart from the serving wenches. I had my eternal favourite, Tom Kha Kai and a ground chicken speciality that reminded me of something similar I had with Jeremy in April at another particularly good Thai restaurant in Orlando. Also of note is that at said place with Jeremy, it seemed like we were also the only Czech people there. I did not bring Lee up during, before or after our dinner, but Ivanečka was obviously worried about my state of mind a bit during the whole of the day. It is still bizarre to have someone with me that actually thinks and cares about my mood, mental and physically health in a selfless manner. I probably don’t deserve it, but as we all know, the universe has no ethical, moral or value system. We exist and live our lives. There is no deserve. Deserve is a human construct created to maintain a hierarchical structure in society. It’s a control mechanism, as has been all moralistic “reasoning” since the beginning of time. Unfortunately, the need for so many people to find exterior meaning in life (as opposed to creating meaning for oneself) obscures the path to contentment. Of course, I did think of the music I should be creating that is associated with Lee. His “album”, as it were. It will be a gradual process, as I’ve only sketches to two pieces so far: the first and the last. After I finish the new Dobbs, the Alfred IV “tribute” and the thing that has the working title Dissolving Pool, I’ll get back on track working on one album at a time until it is finished. My personal experiment working on three or four at the same time is far less satisfying - it brings much less contentment. Though this is certainly a fragmented entry into Martenblog, perhaps it will encourage me to get back on track concerning writing. It creates quite a sensation of contentment. For me, life is about looking and moving forward and being content doing so. Gone are the old ways of suffering to gain more creative ground. Perhaps that worked in my twenties and even perhaps in my thirties, but as I look back on those times (something I really have no business doing as it contradicts what I just stated that life is about), they seem like vast wastelands. Revisiting the past has very little merit. What some would call the Outskirts of Vinohrady https://flavigula.net/static/blog/202509020902.html 2025-09-02T09:02:00Z A rose and its stem, or its lifeline, stretches from the base of a pitcher two thirds filled with water up into the still atmosphere of this flat and blossoms a radiant red at its zenith. I’m sitting at the table of work, amusement, victuals and study in Ivanečka’s flat in Prague 2 or in what some would call the outskirts of Vinohrady. It’s been just shy of seven weeks from the first time I met her in person. As these nigh-seven weeks have passed, we’ve become more and more consumed with one another. I say this in a decidedly non-cannibalistic way. I’m not going to attempt any predictions at this moment for our future together, but I will say that we’ve already made extensive plans for the remainder of this year. I’ll also state that there have been no fights, no disagreements and not a single so-called red flag. Some would say that our relationship seems too perfect. I’d say to those who’d say that fuck um. There is near silence in what I’d call the obývák. She is organizing the contents of the suitcases strewn about the floor and the piles of clothing on the sofa. I don’t mind the silence. Were we at my flat, music would gurgle from some possibly obfuscated source, but here, the distant drone of tumbling laundry and her soft, padding footsteps make sense. There was also near silence yesterday in Stromovka as we sat slightly overlooking a “lake”. The rustle of the leaves above our heads was enough as we kissed and spoke softly of our present life and a few of the troubles she’s had recently with her family. Why has she had troubles with her family, you ask? Well, because of me, of course! Lack of sufficient sleep since Saturday or even earlier has me bleary and with a slight pressure behind my eyes. The last few days have been weeks. The last seven weeks have been years. May it always remain so. Of Course, It Wouldn't Be Life https://flavigula.net/static/blog/202507190531.html 2025-07-19T05:31:00Z During the last five days, my life changed drastically. One expected and a number of unexpected things turned my mental state inside out. Or rather, chopped my mental state up and reassembled it in a manner that cannot be derearranged. My mother died. This was the expected event. She even predicted it herself when she sat in her chair in the weeks before I left and yelled I just want to die! over and over. It was not a pleasant situation, as many might imagine. I have no intention of going back until a much later date for a number of reasons, the foremost being that after living in a hellish situation for eight months, I have no intention of returning to the same so soon after getting away. Secondly, there is the cat. I’m assuming most of the paperwork can be done from here - my part anyway. Thinking about it, the foremost reason is not the one I stated. The other day I spent twenty-one hours with someone who will potentially become a very important part of my life and for this reason I’m simply not vanishing back to the states. Connections, for lack of a better word at the moment, like this do not come along often in life. No sleep was involved during that twenty-one hours. I still feel the effects. We related to each other on levels that I have not felt for a very long time. Of course, it wouldn’t be life if the situation wasn’t somewhat complicated. More explanation will surely come along in this puttering blog-thing eventually. Stay “tuned”. Wheels Are Moving Beneath Me Once Again https://flavigula.net/static/blog/202507051022.html 2025-07-05T10:22:00Z Wheels are moving beneath me once again. How long has it been since I wrote that or a similar line? Years, for sure, but the last time must have been in Spain when I was last alone on a train. To Madrid? That would have been 2016, then, and the same day that I was arrested for pissing off a policeman, which is another reason that Spain is inferior to Czechia. Czechia! What a name! But I must have been alone on a train since then, no? No memory manifests in this quivering, sleep deprived brain. So, wheels are moving beneath me once again. Though I am not exactly sure when the last time I wrote that line was (besides in the previous paragraph, of course, vole), I know the first time was on a train from Praha to Ustí nad Labem to visit Hela. The long lost Hela. In fact, I believe I began most all of my journal entries on the way to visit her with that or a similar line. That being said, I hope I shall not be writing it many more times in the future. Sleeplessness and possibly repressed anxiety leaves me lately with the feeling that I do not want to travel. I ask myself what sort of adventure did you believe you were getting yourself into? Do you really like camping? What the fuck is wrong with you? You are no longer the person you were when you first came to the Czech Republic in 1998. Your tolerance and stamina have both decreased. And, more than anything, these careening days, I need a sort of central point of stability. I’ve searched for this central point for quite some time. I believed I had it in Spain. In Logroño. I did have it in Logroño, but I abandoned it for some psychologically and most likely physically obscene reason. I wrote as an obsidian fragment earlier that the more people I meet, the more time I want to spend with my cat. This is truth, and very likely the entire universe’s only pungent truth, especially after meeting Helena last night. There is nothing “wrong” with Helena, per se, but I found it difficult to express myself, to capture what was within my mind and convey it to her in a, for lack of better clarity, gesticulatory manner. Looking back to when I was first in this country, I realize that much of my outgoingness was fueled by alcohol. And now, I both do not want to drink as much as I did and cannot handle drinking as much as I did. Drinking no alcohol at all would be ideal, even if it would mean leaving the veil of extroversion in tatters. My feelings about leaving Peiločja alone for a day and night as I wheeled away from my new home this morning were frightful. I did not want to leave her alone. The more people I meet, the more time I want to spend with my cat. Can a cat provide as fulfilling a relationship as a human can? Well, that depends on the expectations. On the fucking očekávání. I’d say that for me, yes, or so I feel at the moment and have all morning. My original plan for Praha was to spend time with the cat and to spend time with music. Yes, I’d see Michal and Richard and Ivana and some other friends from time to time, but they’d never be the primary focus. So am I making a mistake going to see Anna? I’d say yes, but the day will tell. Best to start with nízké očekávání and go from there. That’s what Peiločja told me this morning, and I’m a good listener. And that cat has been through so much that she deserves the bulk of my attention. The fact that I am already thinking about my return tomorrow more than what will occur later today does not bode well. We shall see. Or, as they say in the old lands, fuck um. My Sense of Self was Particularly Intangible https://flavigula.net/static/blog/202505261441.html 2025-05-26T14:41:00Z <blockquote> The bench before the Trinity tree is occupied. It is occupied by me. My shadow doesn’t reach it. Perhaps my shadow is an illusion cast by the illusory sun. The Trinity tree is the only living thing left on the moon. I don’t consider myself in the set of living things since I am simply an extension. </blockquote> I wrote that long ago, as the trinity tree no longer exists. Or, rather, it exists in a different form, that of stump. My associative mind reminds me of when I was a child, or during my imagination of being a child, as I am uncertain I was ever a child, during which I would create origami platonic forms, such as rectangular prisms, pyramids and such. I’d gaze at my creations for a time and then crush them much like the piece of music entitled drtič will eventually crush every living being that hears it. I was fascinated by the concept of something existing first in one form and then in another, altogether different form. Truly, it was the same object, but at a splendidly different state in its existence. Though we all know that not a single cell in our body existed even eight years prior to now, as we self-regenerate, conceptually, I am the same object that existed eight years ago. I am now, however, in an altogether different form, and especially psychologically. My self-regenerated neural structure did not self-regenerate in a selfsame manner, vole. When I wrote the above quote, it seems to me now that I was questioning my connection to the place in which I’ve been now, presently, for over seven months. No, I haven’t been sitting on the bench in front of the stump of the trinity tree for just over seven months, but I have been in its vicinity. If I was a mere shadow cast by a sun that was but an illusion, I think my sense of self was particularly intangible in that time. Has it become more concrete in this place during just over seven months? I think there is no better definition of Limbo than West Texas. I suggest you try it. You may even, like I seemingly did, find your very existence become tenuous. However, at the same time, I likened Pagan Park to the moon and the moon, indeed, is a lifeless place, or so I hear. If I was an extension of the moon, a lifeless place, was I a protuberance of that lifelessness or the likening of life emerging from inorganic material? In the same sense, were people like Bender-boy and I living growths spawned by the perpetual lack that is the desert itself? As I can’t claim the two of us to be the only growth from the large bleak plain of West Texas, I could possibly better liken us to spores that were birthed here but drifted outwards, taking with us the arid genetic makeup of this place. I’d liken the multitudinous other “growths” here to a fungal infection, but that would be slightly nasty and unsociable of me. Electro trans-pacific https://flavigula.net/static/blog/202505242124.html 2025-05-24T21:24:00Z Today I had lunch with Bender-boy and Anne, his wife. We ate at an establishment in Andrews that exhibits properties of an excellent tex-mex restaurant, though it could be a brothel in Kazakhstan for all I know. My general perception of the world around me is coloured my delusions of being in another place - ANY OTHER PLACE. Though, interestingly enough, Bender-boy and I emanated from this area of the world. Perhaps we even defined it. I can’t say that it defined us, as there is an alien psychology in any other “human” I meet from these parts. At least there has been recently - meaning within the past few epochs. Today I had lunch with Bender-boy. I hadn’t seen him for 22 years, give or take a month. The cliché holds that our communication was quite like it was back then, as if no time had passed. Of course, we have communicated via electro trans-pacific means during the meantime, so the cliché doesn’t have the same weight as it might were we to have had no communication at all. Sudden memories rose in my mind of time we defined together, and we did define time itself, as time itself was frozen within those memories. They are photographs and static. They are photographs - a far better medium than video. In a way, we are ageless as our memory between us is, indeed, static. It is, indeed, a series of photographs. We pass through incremental stages of concrete recollections bordered on each side by hazier half-scenes from possible pasts. It occurs to me that unless I specifically created a concrete mental signpost for one reason or another, my recollections shared with others are the most vivid and significant. Anne mentioned a death. At first I didn’t know what she was talking about, but finally it occurred to me that Bender-boy had mentioned the dead friend from the past at some moment or another. And perhaps at multiple moments. Lee, of course. So it has been decided that we’ll take a road trip to Pecos and to the grave. We’ll buy a pack of Marlboro Reds on the way. Amusingly, Bender-boy gets monthly or bi-monthly messages from West Texas oil fields about work opportunities. Best would be he work a rig, lose a few limbs and, much later, after the fourth accident, live in a vegetative state for the rest of his existence - an existence of a mere seven further epochs. It occurs to me that I only have a superficial overview of the myriad stories Bender-boy has told me about his working life, though from what I know, him toiling at the zenith of a rig amid the dizzy heights in the baking petrol suffused heat isn’t all that far-fetched. After all, he did work at the zeniths of many smokestacks testing the toxicity of their emissions whilst inhaling the fumes and managing not to tumble to his death. He worked at a nicotine “factory” in North Carolina where he absorbed the drug from the atmosphere whilst adding to its potency by smoking. Did I mention that we are going to buy a box of Marlboro Reds on the way to the grave? Tumbling and Whorling in the Tomb https://flavigula.net/static/blog/202505132223.html 2025-05-13T22:23:00Z As the brussels’ sprouts bake, I play with the “cat”. Though before I went to the lengths it takes to actually play with the “cat”, the “cat” joined me in the so-called office. Why is it called the office and why was I in there? The room is dubbed the office because that is where my grandmother, hereafter known as Katie, did all the paperwork pertaining to the so-called farm and other parcels of land that were in her “care”. To this day, in the office, there are reams of paperwork stashed in grey, towering filing cabinets - the same type that I locked myself and my brother in when we were children. These days, my mother is (mostly) in charge of examining and shuffling the paperwork pertaining to said parcels of land. One day, portions of those parcels of land - well, let me clarify here: they are not actually parcels of “land” as most would imagine, but in reality, they are the “minerals” that lie below the surface of what most humans would imagine when the phrase parcel of land is voiced or scribed - yes, as I was saying, or scribing, portions of those parcels of land, or, rather, the minerals beneath, will be mine. Though my ancestry will tumble and whorl in their tombs, I shall immediately sell every one of them. Fuck um. As the brussels’ sprouts bake, I play with the “cat”. Though, to be specific time-wise, that was in the past. Or, as they say in the homeland v minulnosti. I sat in the office on the same chair on which I sat on or around 23 December 2005 and read The Long Walk, now a feature film starring Ed Harris and Jim Sturgess. Christopher Bender, whom I will see for the first time in 22 years in less than two weeks, send me the tome and I returned it to him, via post, upon completion. I sat in the office on that very same chair and the “cat” approached me. She uttered a meow utterly unlike anything I’ve heard from her previously. In fact, it was hauntingly similar to a meow that Molly uttered once and only once in the hallway in the flat in Logroño as Marisa and I walked by. We stopped, startled and wondered what Molly was on about. What had passed through her mind? I had similar thoughts when the “cat” uttered this peculiar meow. Bloated and Vomitous https://flavigula.net/static/blog/202503261941.html 2025-03-26T19:41:00Z Approximately a year ago, I was wandering the sometimes broad and much too sunlit and at other times twisty, tenebrous and narrow streets and paths of Siracusa in Sicily with Marisa. It was a city in which one could find a Jesus in practically every other alcove. <img src="/images/blog/20250326/alcove-jesus.jpg" alt="Jesus in an Alcove" /> By means of almost universal contrast, I am in the exceedingly American city of Orlando at the moment, albeit sitting on Jeremy’s sofa and thus not exposed to the elements in the dreaded exterior, within which one could waste away in any number of seconds. I don’t write about the decimating plague that has wiped most of the population from the east cost of the states, but of the stifling heat that staunches any impetus for creativity. Unfortunately, I’ll arrive to Praha in June during the mere beginning of its hot season. Oh, I’ll suffer! However, I’ll also exist in a sort of hazy bliss for the first few weeks. It will be the sensation of being back at home. Praha always yields that sensation. Logroño did, as well, for years, but I think it was more because of the specific people who lived in Logroño rather than the place itself. If I’m ever there again, I’ll have to make note of the suffusion of sensation (or lack thereof). In any case, by means of almost universal contrast, I’m in the exceedingly American city of Orlando where any number of stereotypes one picks up about various “types” of American humans comes to life like a surreal comedy skit as one strolls the streets and parks. <img src="/images/blog/20250326/dog-cat-sculpture.jpg" alt="Dog &amp; Cat Sculpture" /> The only similarity that Orlando has to Siracusa, or, more specifically, the only coinciding event has been the consuming of pistachio ice cream. I sucked down two huge scoops of the stuff a few nights ago and I felt bloated and vomitous afterwards. The bloat did not even wane after purging myself multiple times into the open sewers that run alongside practically every roadway in the city. That being said, it was pistachio ice cream, which is the only worthy ice cream, and was therefore tasty. Was it as good as the pistachio ice cream I consumed in Siracusa that did not leave me feeling bloated and vomitous at all? I don’t believe so, but memories of a year prior are not an accurate phenomena. Marisa and I hung out at the corner of a huge Piazza that I refuse to specify. In that corner was an excellent, small establishment that provided us with ice cream. Specifically, it provided us with pistachio ice cream. We drifted through the canals meant for human traffic for hours each day, stopping at cafés and a few restaurants, lapping foam from espresso-based beverages. We enjoyed the odd and liberating experience of not understanding or only partially understanding what the yammering locals were saying to the point that we stopped hearing the sounds as speech. They became a portion of the unique harmonic structure that specified the genetics of Siracusa. Tomorrow I return to Seminole and begin the endgame. In three months, I shall be in Praha once again. The shapes that drift through mist that becomes more dense with each week will solidify into a directed graph of my immediate future, formulated especially for me by Miss Sweet Entropy. They Were Known for Boring https://flavigula.net/static/blog/202503122108.html 2025-03-12T21:08:00Z There were three main trails we took when we were paseando just outside of Fresneda. <h2>Trail One: La Cascada</h2> We took this trail the most often. In fact, Michal and Mirka accompanied us to the waterfall at one point. Michal took a dip in the frigid pool into which the water cascaded. <img src="/images/blog/20250310/michal-enters-the-pool.jpg" alt="Michal enters the pool" /> Michal is fond of “taking a dip”. A portion of his mind feels he is doing a sort of cold therapy. A portion of my mind feels he is just attracted to being enveloped in liquid, much as he was in the “womb”. Or in the “test tube”. These two things are one in the same when it comes to Michal. He was birthed in a womb-like test tube, or a test tube-like womb. It was translucent and one could see his bulbous, quivering form incrementally taking shape within. The walk from Tres Aguas to la cascada is one of many sensations. Yes, they are sensations of a past and also that of a past which is rapidly filling with holes. Such is the memory of an ancient creature like myself. There is little that I can do but type out the tatters that remains into this and future blog entries. Butterflies butterflies the way was decorated with butterflies. One bright memory is that of caterpillars spinning silk from branches above so that at any point, were one not to pay attention, collision with sticky lines came about. It was their breeding season and Marisa was furious at them, or at nature, I suppose. They were known for boring into and destroying certain types of arboles, though which ones I cannot recall. Let’s say beech trees for the sake of their supposéd death. On the patterned earth armies of caterpillars marched to whichever tree was elected for destruction. It wasn’t yet time for cocooning. The butterflies that decorated the atmosphere on that paseo were still months away. On our initial sojourns to the site, Marisa brought her camera. She had quite a good camera, or so I think, as I am no expert. More importantly, she knew how to use it properly and framed fantastic photos. Even more importantly, it contented her to do so. She reveled in its creativity. These were still the early days of our relationship. Or, rather, the early years. There was still vigour and youth within our bubble. Her creativity waned over the following years, but never completely, though she seemed to more and more fill a good bit of her time with worry and in this manner unfortunately reminded me of my mother. In contrast, my creativity blossomed and never stopped its upwards climb. Perhaps this disequilibrium added to the general unease that accompanied intermittently and then more and more often the years following - um - oh, let’s say 2019, roughly. <img src="/images/blog/20250310/marisa-of-the-stone.jpg" alt="Marisa of the Stone" /> Another recollection is of the stones we walked across (I, warily) to get to the “other side”, the side not approachable without forging the river. In fact, to get even to the cascada itself, one had to clamber over a portion of a rocky face holding various branches of ostensibly stable trees to balance one’s way to the edge of the pool. Marisa is sitting on one of the stones that decorate the “other side” - the “forbidden side” - the side that Bobbus had trouble getting to at times when he was wobbly after a difficult few days alone in the flat on García Morato. There a few infinities of photos of this area of the world in various directories shared between my so-called “devices”. I don’t normally enjoy sharing photos as I feel they detract from the general sensation of reading, but I’ll make an exception on this occasion. <h2>Trail Two: Al Tejo</h2> I have a photo somewhere in the archive of a torre of stones that someone build beside this trail. We encountered it several times and one of those times I took said picture. Tres Aguas is a spot at the terminus of a dirt road riddled with potholes that pierces the main highway out of Fresneda and towards the border of La Rioja and eventually Escaray. From this dirt road riddled with potholes sprouts the three trails I write about. Tres Aguas has a few picnic tables overlooking the river on one side of the terminated dirt road riddled with potholes. On the other side is a small house intended as a refuge for anyone walking, hiking, sledding, tobogganing or stumbling around blackout drunk four miles from the closest village (Fresneda). There was always freshly cut firewood on the front porch and inside, home to multitudinous spiders, I suspect, so I suppose it was maintained by the province (Burgos). Instead of continuing straight towards la cascada, one veers left around the refugio and keeps veering until about 160 degrees later. After over half an hour of walking, passing tricking water on the right and remnants of landslides, the path opens up to a place were one could park a “car” were one to have a “car” with the ability to traverse the pitted track. To the right, the trail continues sloping upwards towards the mythical tejo. This place is where we usually stopped. To the left, the trail slopes downwards to the river, where we picnicked time and again. <img src="/images/blog/20250310/descent-to-the-picknicking-place.jpg" alt="Descent to the picnicking place" /> We often (often meaning two or three times out of 23) went with Marisa’s sister Marijose on this “hike”. Though she was usually a cheerful sort, her health problems did not allow her to follow the pace that Marisa and I usually set. The advantage of this was, of course, as anyone reading my blog would know, that it gave me time to pause and write a poem, several of which are “featured” in the poem section of this very website. As Marijose rested and chatted with Marisa about what I would term as trivialities and they certainly would not, I’d pull out my “phone” and pluck at it with my index finger, eventually creating a series of words from nothing at all. As is with most of the people I’ve met in my life, Marijose and Juan (Marijose’s spawn, featured in the photo below) did not want to stray from the well trodden path. Marisa was a bit of another story, of course, or we never would’ve got along in the first place. Whilst the three of them were traipsing ahead towards the mystical tejo (to which no-one actually ever arrived), I clambered up with the dog (Uriel or Charlie - take your pick of a name) a shallow divot off to the side of the trail and discovered a steep descent on the other side that eventually led down to the river. The dog was eager to explore! So was I! And whilst I don’t specifically recall how I convinced everyone else to retreat into my newfound space, they all adored it once they were there. <img src="/images/blog/20250310/uriels-hidden-grove.jpg" alt="Uriel’s Hidden Grove" /> <h2>Trail Three: El Pinar</h2> The way to the so-called Pinar was the most difficult. It was rocky and usually drenched in oppressive sunlight. Strangely, though, it was my favourite. Also strangely, during the last few years I lived in Spain, we never returned to it. In fact, the ultimate time we ascended that rocky dirt road and turned the nigh 180 bend to ascend even more into the shade of the pines and finally to a clearing that was possibly the most beautiful place in the region was most probably before the first time I abandoned my marriage and fled to Praha. Marisa always returned the same way we came. A few times, however, I continued after the clearing to a path that became increasingly twisty and overgrown. At one point, there is a sharp turn to the left (another nigh 180 degrees) though it is quite possible to continue straight - which I did one time, much to my increasing consternation. Thorned bushes whipped at my bare arms, aiming for my face and eyes, surely. Rotted trunks of giant tree-things crisscrossed the path, forcing me to climb, shimmy and scoot further on. I realized after quite a long time, perhaps as much as 30 minutes or five days or even a whole epoch, that I had made a wrong “turn” and had to double back. As the stunted one says: fun!. I always had the wish, in fact, that the stunted one accompany me on this back trail and we with us had a wad of marijuana, puffing as we strolled, speaking of absurdities and the fact that we’d never make it back after the totality of epochs under the reign of the elements. Speaking of Praha and specifically Velká Chuchle, portions of the “Pinar” reminded me of the ascent on another dirt track, potted from rain and combustible goats, namely in, well, Velká Chuchle. It’ll be an ascent I’d like to once more take soon. Fuzzy Frontiers https://flavigula.net/static/blog/202502261702.html 2025-02-26T17:02:00Z Music plays a big part in my recollection of scenes from my past. Though I can divorce myself from the phenomenon when concentrating on a piece or song, I can easily swap out the chip (as they say, and I am paraphrasing, in España) and have myriad musics hurl me back into certain swaths of time. This assists me in recalling the whole event surrounding the listening “session”. The remembrance extends to fuzzy frontiers that are quite likely different for each “song”. The strength of impression varies. A good example, and one I often for some reason come back to is during a walk from a shop somewhere in Galicia back to the tent I was occupying with Jana One in late summer of 2002. The music was the first few songs on Sometime / Anywhere by The Church. Now, these remind me of another prominent time in my life, also, and it seems contextual which nostalgic event washes over me - meaning the context of my situation in the present as I’m listening. In any case, I’m walking back to the tent along a dirt road that runs along one side of the whole campground. There were signs marking off the distance to the entrance. 200m. 150m. 100m. I thought about the length of time it takes to walk such distances and I wondered if slowing my pace would let me enjoy the moment more thoroughly. I had a bottle of beer with my purchases and knew it would irritate Jana One, but didn’t let it bother me much, as I was listening and strolling. I recall the air, the humidity, the track and the crunch from the soles of my shoes. I remember Jana’s surly impatience in everything as we travelled from San Sebastian to the western tip of Spain. Music is very important to recollection. Because of this, I am saddened by the fact there is little music that I shared with Marisa. Nothing directly reminds me of her. Perhaps if I heard some of her favourite songs, they may, but there certainly won’t be many situations that come up that involve such a thing. On the other hand, much reminds me indirectly of her. They were all private listening moments for me - as I was in a headphone universe - but she was there in the room and / or we interacted intermittently concerning trifles. A good example was whilst we were in Siracusa and we both lay in bed doing our own things. I was reading (as usual) and listening to Hawkwind’s newest album Stories from Time and Space. Much of it, if I am not active listening, hurls me right back to that bed in that hotel, reading Geddy Lee’s biography. Marisa was beside me, doing her own things, writing, going over plans and thinking about painting. It’s possible that this lack of musical context with Marisa during our time together will make our times dissolve more quickly - memory-wise. I find the thought rather disturbing. Even though I left in the end, the ten years we spent together were filled with amazing moments. BUT I say to myself again that many of those moments were, even though I was with Marisa, spent alone, doing and creating things alone with her somewhere else in the flat carrying on in her own fashion. Music also sings association with the fetid place that I am in now, of course - Seminole, Texas. And, en realidad, some of those associations are extremely positive. The epoch from 2009-2012 is a bright moment in my mind. I should probably go back and reread Martenblog entries from that period for perspective. Numerous musicks bring it flooding back into my brain. Kiss the Anus of a Black Cat, Carla Kihlstedt (solo stuff), Tin Hat (also Carla related), Phaedra, The Mountain Goats, Incident era Porcupine Tree, some Radio Massacre International, etc. The brightness comes from the idea that I was very prolific creatively during the period. It’s true that Tony and I began working together again (for the last time physically together, unfortunately, I predict). Ajitter came to light and though listening to it now is not a very pleasant experience, the ideas are amazing. More of it will be remade in the future. And Fold will be remade again in the future. I also began writing my so-called “book” in the midst of this epoch. I’m not sure it’ll ever be finished, but, as with Ajitter, some of the ideas are fantastic. During those years, I was in Seminole, Prague, London, Tallinn, St. Johns, and Seaforth. The road trip from Texas to Newfoundland also occurred. Plus, I hung out many times with Justin. Yes yes - The Shostakovich String Quartets! They were part of that epoch. Though I still have twinges, my feelings for Marisa (and unfortunately for Molly) have receded. They exist, but are distant. I can peer at them, evaluate them, sense them from afar. But the ache is gone. Tony always called me a romantic because after an emotional shock, such as leaving one’s wife or having one’s soulmate (I guffaw) do the abandoning, I am intensely wretched for weeks, months, even thirds of years, but then the ache fades and I am well again. I move on. Tony, on the other hand, never seemed to be able to follow suit. He most likely still pines for Melanie. Being cured https://flavigula.net/static/blog/202502051759.html 2025-02-05T17:59:00Z <blockquote> This society hasn’t changed one bit. People who don’t fit into the village are expelled: men who don’t hunt, women who don’t give birth to children. For all we talk about modern society and individualism, anyone who doesn’t try to fit in can expect to be meddled with, coerced, and ultimately banished from the village. </blockquote> This topic has been the subject of conversation throughout my life with multiple posses of friends. Bender and I went over time and again the idea of his that there are two types. Yes, I know it seems a bit black and white given my love for the grey and the muddled, but given the subject matter, the memories came to the surface and float there still, and besides, it’s certainly not a poor concept. Bender and I went over time and again the idea of his that there are two types. There are those that stay. There are those that leave. The former remain to keep the traditions and some might say rituals of the village alive. They perpetuate its legacy. The latter are the banished. Well, according to our original conversations, not exactly the banished, but the ones who choose to leave (or are self-banished), though in the context of the quote above, I’d say the choice is heavily influenced by the cognitive dissonance involved in living and / or growing up in said village. The latter may choose to leave, but their choice is in line with their “rejection” by the former of the two types. One important point here is that those of the latter type - the banished by their own freewill - are not all of the same mind or, shall we scribe, type. Their only commonality is that they do not wear a skin that suits the village. This by no means indicates that these banished are able to relate psychologically amongst themselves. Most recently, Christian and I have touched on the subject time and again. And it is clear to me that I am one of those black aardvarks who is indeed, in the end, banished from the so-called village. Well, one must just go out and start one’s own village, then, eh? When the topic emerges from the morass of conversation, I’m always struck by the fact that I am much more interested in those that are on the verge of or have already been banished from the village. The ones who are out. These are the people I relate to. Or at least I relate to their context. As mentioned above, I may not be able to relate to all of them or even the majority of them personally or ideologically. They are, in a sense, my “extended family”. They are the ones who either couldn’t stand to or couldn’t be bothered to conform enough to fit the role or wear the skin. Biologically, some would say, and you know who I’m talking about, when those who are out are tossed from the community, only the void awaits, but I am in disagreement. Sociology be damned. Sociology is a kick the pregnant woman in the belly sort of pursuit, in any case. Those busy with riding on the raft that drifts in a straight line down the only river said to be correct by the sociologists are seeing a narrow slice of reality. The jungle springs up on each side of said river and within it seethes creativity - a deviant procession of fractured routines. We, the out, even at times watch as the raft wafts along. And, of course, there are hangers on. Those who tread beside the raft as quickly or as slowly as it goes and keep track of its goings on no matter that they are out. They are the fools of the out. Traipsing through the jungle at our own rhythms, polyrhythms, ever external from that miniscule capsule of so-called “order”, we live on the love to create. How long is it possible to subsist with no “support village”? I’d say eternally, but most would disagree. I may even disagree with myself at times, and especially during the days after a binge has left me weak of body and of mind. When depression sets in like any illness, the brain behind the forebrain pines for the village. It yearns for support - a structure to uphold it. The solution is to never put oneself in the situation where depression (weakness) reigns. As there are more situations in life than extended hangovers that weaken one’s spirit, the solution is to move to Greenland. It’s obvious. So what can uphold someone other than the village? The solution that I see, besides or possibly including moving to Greenland, is the richness of an inner life that resembles a village. It’s a virtual world within one’s mind. One lives in it, eventually, more completely than in the so-called “real” world. It becomes one’s village. It becomes the village (or, more specifically, collection of villages) in which those traipsing through the jungle live instead of creating their own sort of “raft” to let float on some offhand tributary but not along the main stream. “Mainstream”. Queue the song by Kansas. Keiko in Convenience Store Woman found a trickling tributary to build her own raft on. It was a microcosm that was the Convenience Store. She could relate to no other environment. She spoke constantly during the book about how her family and friends wanted to cure her. This simply meant that they wanted her to reboard the “raft” that floated down the widest river. Unbeknownst to them, however, and even to her until the end of the novel, she had already found a smaller stream that suited her just fine. <blockquote> As long as you wear the skin of what’s considered an ordinary person and follow the manual, you won’t be driven out of the village or treated as a burden. </blockquote> The personaje Shihara is the voice of the out in the novel. He even reflects it in his “appearance”. He is unwashed, voices his thoughts directly without any “filter” and obeys none of the unwritten cultural rules. So he’s basically me. Interesting that he is the “author” of the above quote, but he follows none of its “advice”. He wears only his true skin. He won’t lower (in his eyes) himself to wear the skin of the masses and therefore be accepted, or at least tolerated. His outcome is to find a place to hide from society. He wants nothing to do with it. He doesn’t want anyone to bother him or even communicate with him. So he’s me, or at least me when I’m on a boat in the middle of the Pacific with nobody but the “cat”. I have severe psychological issues when I feel I have to wear a “skin” to fit into any given situation. I know it is uncommon and one of the major reasons that I am out. I discuss it with Christian often. I also discussed it with Jeremy when last I visited him and perhaps also the time before. If you pluck any arbitrary human from the seething masses, or at least mark him, you’ll observe that depending on the environment he is in, he quickly covers himself with a “skin”. His gesticulations, articulations and diction changes subtly and sometimes not so subtly depending on with whom he is. The portion that strikes me as rancid is that it is a plea for acceptance. It is a form of begging. For without said skin, he would be regarded as someone who does not belong. He’d be rejected, detained, jailed or even murdered, depending on context. Is the need for acceptance a survival instinct? It most likely grew from survival. Humans originally had to belong to groups to “make it” in the so-called savage world. Some (including Shihara) say that we haven’t changed much in the intervening years, decades, centuries, millennia. I disagree. The simple fact that one can become a hermit and get along fine “in the world” denies the deniers. The ache to be alone can be fulfilled. It has been able to be fulfilled for centuries now. Memetic inheritance may push against the wish to be alone. It may scream at us from our so-called primal brain, chastising even the thought of ceding from society. I’ve certainly learned to ignore this so-called primal brain. I suggest you do, as well. <blockquote> You eliminate the parts of your life that others find strange - maybe that’s what everyone means when they say they want to “cure” me. </blockquote> Being in West Texas, I can’t help think from time to time about growing up, though not in Seminole, but in a similar place - the fetid dump that was (and surely still is) Fort Stockton. Why was it a fetid dump? The smell? The stench? Well, the metaphorical stench was very difficult to abide. The strangeness that I inhabited in my natural skin opposed the idea of elimination of the stench by wearing a new skin, albeit a false one. It would have been a skin that would not just have camouflaged me but would have created of me a new being altogether. Being that it was High School, I naturally got the curious stares and even the “why are you so weird?” from the token “popular girls” that I shared some classes (notably Journalism) with. They didn’t know it at the time, but they wanted to cure me. Or perhaps they did know it on some level that wasn’t only unconscious. In their universe, the day-to-day was all about fitting in. It was all about conforming. It was all about manicuring the skin that allowed one to flow fluidly with the masses. The masses here meaning the hip crowd, for lack of a better phrase. So what could I have eliminated during that portion of my life to become something more fluid with the mainstream? An obvious one would have been to stop listening to weird music. Stack all my Pink Floyd, Blue Öyster Cult, Nektar, Jethro Tull and Klaatu records in a heap in the back yard and start a bonfire. I could have invited Sharon Weber over. She would have embraced me and yawped for joy at my new persona. Or at least she would have died of smoke inhalation. I hear that burning vinyl exudes toxins. Fuck um. And, hey, from where I sit now, Pink Floyd, Blue Öyster Cult, Nektar, Jethro Tull and Klaatu really aren’t all that weird. It’s all about context, vole. I would have eliminated my apathy towards fashion. I’d’ve gotten me some trendy threads. I’d’ve eliminated my desire to read long form Science Fiction and fantasy and taking joy in solving mathematics equations. I’d’ve eliminated my apathy towards sports and joined the polo club. I’d’ve been number one, vole. Number lippin’ one. Numerous other items’d come to mind were I to sit here and muse. And I’d’ve been cured. My skin’d have been fluid. I’d mingled and melded. I’d’ve been whole. Cured == whole. Fuck um. Some Sort of Transit Station https://flavigula.net/static/blog/202410140934.html 2024-10-14T09:34:00Z Today is day ZERO! Amazing! I can only gawk at the implications! And very appropriate is that day ZERO lands precisely on Lee’s birthday. My subconscious also acknowledged this small nugget of “truth”. I dreamed last night of Lee. We met in a commodious transit station full of diaphanous haze. Yes, my dreams often feature ostensibly open spaces with walls or barriers or even membranes in the receding distance instead of pressing against one’s senses. This may be a reflection of my claustrophobia. <blockquote> Hey, Brother. </blockquote> That’s what the song just said. I am cleansing my “main” phone. Rather, I’m changing its cache of music. A new epoch demands new listening habits. The music I’ve been binging this whole year has Logroño infused within its rhythms, textures and questionable melodic leaps. It must be put to rest for a time. <blockquote> I must be cleansed from all my sins. </blockquote> So says the song. I agree, in a very abstract sense. I dreamt (consistency is for the weak) last night of Lee. We met in a capacious interval of space-time. It may have been some sort of transit station, as possibly all places in dreams are. It had been years or decades or epochs since we had last seen one another. In fact, he didn’t even recognize me. Of course, Lee looked exactly the same, his youth unchanged, the same as it was at the age of 23, in November of 1993. Many things rush back at me from that epoch. Lee’s presence among us was one of the most piquant of those things. He and I’d take a synth and his guitar and some sort of amplification device from the Enfield house (why didn’t we work on music there?) to the Bright Building on the A&amp;M campus, into an empty, spacious lecture hall. The only concrete memory of music toil was the guitar solo of Yesterday’s Train, but it’s quite possible that we also explored A Fool Fancying Cliches, a tune that will be remade by Flavigula soon, along with its companion piece Sonata for a Sombrous Spirit. We did record the guitar solo to Yesterday’s Train at the Enfield house on that battered 6-track, a machine of which Tony has a replica. If I’m not mistaken, and I may well be, I have the cassette containing that “take” and that cassette is ripped, sitting somewhere on pCloud. Sounds like something I should listen to tomorrow. Something to etch into my charcoal scorched spirit. Lee’s login on the server called Picard at the Statistics Department at the University was <code>leel</code>. He was fond of palindromes. The piece of cardboard or paper or plastic hanging on the door that entered into the most claustrophobic room in the Enfield house read <code>Otto</code>. It was his place of repose. A very temporary place, for sure, as he stayed with us for perhaps six weeks at most. <blockquote> Still looking for the hat peg you can hang your hat upon. </blockquote> That is what the song says. Lee would have enjoyed Peter Hammill quite a bit. Unfortunately, I didn’t discover his music until half a year or epoch after Lee’s demise. One simple but deep regret I (still) have is the evening of Lee’s or my birthday, or even the day in between them, during which we were going to get drunk together. Unbelievably possibly at this point in my life, but not from the point of view of my 23 year old self, it would’ve been the first time we would have experienced such a thing. It did not happen, however, because Marcie called and kept me on the telephone for hours. I chose badly. My days with Lee were numbered. My days with Marcie were numbered, as well, but in a different way, a more capricious way, a more essentially pointless way. What I should have done and would do as my present self was just begin drinking whilst on the phone with my nubile teen until I didn’t give a fuck enough to continue the conversation. An excellent strategy! In fact, it can be used in multitudinous contexts! I shall etch it into my charcoal scorched spirit. <blockquote> Bow down to the Jargon King. </blockquote> So the song states. We walked along a passage with translucent mamparas to each side, again allowing washes of light. I said how are you doing, vole? and realized that I’d have to integrate thirty years of accumulated shibboleth into Lee’s vernacular. What was his response other than the sardonic grin he always wore, even in times of deep displeasure? The dream becomes vague. Or its pellucid light is dimming in my mind. Either way, much like the human, it is gone. It was a glimpse of a parallel reality, as perhaps all dreams are. <blockquote> I say “Nothing is nothing!” </blockquote> Bellows the song. The restlessness is peaking and has the savory smell of anxiety. I welcome it. It comes rarely enough that even its unpleasant edges are a stimulus. At this time tomorrow, I’ll be on the way to Soria (or, rather, Rollamientas) with Dani to shoot the last scene I’ll most likely ever have within his productions, soundtracks not withstanding. On seemingly infinite occasions in receding epochs, I’ve chosen to let life displace me from everything I’d previously known, or at least displace me from everything within a defined chunk of time I’d previously known. I don’t mind. Take Sweet Entropy’s hand. Let’s go. Fuck um. Surface Forms are the Only Forms that Matter https://flavigula.net/static/blog/202410130833.html 2024-10-13T08:33:00Z The problem with day ONE is that there is still 48 hours to go, vole. Well, counting is for the weak, in any case, so I shall take it in stride. I just created a rather pedestrian improvisation using the Syntrx II. My original intention was to explore the so-called Holloway Melody that I plan to use in heavy repetition and with moderate modification ongoing throughout the yet to be named 40+ minute piece that the semi-primate that calls himself “Christian Newman” will have to do some singing over. What kind of singing, you ask? Well, we are going to go full Zeuhl on this one. Zeuhl, you say? Well, not full Magma Zeuhl, but more along the lines of Weidorje Zeuhl - a type of Zeuhl that drifts through my mind in dreams and supplicates to be scribed into a long form composition. The Holloway Melody will play a vital role in the chant. Speaking of Zeuhl, I’ve written one Zeuhlish part within Řeka (working title) that the aforementioned semi-primate will also be forced to sing. He’ll do it with all the eagerness of a wingless, caged raptor. That piece will be saved for the original electronic album that won’t be very electronic at all, at least on the surface. And surface forms are the only forms that matter to the gobbling hordes awaiting their musical meal. The pedestrian improvisation I mentioned as recently as two paragraphs ago is playing again. I’m not too impressed, though that is to be expected. The days leading up to Sweet Entropy’s smack on the back of the head are always fraught with creative problems. I don’t feel specifically distracted, nor do I have a sense of anxiety or kinetic imprisonment. The hidden mental modules that feed my need to create are somewhat muted. The restlessness, not apparent when I practise guitar, perform household duties, walk to &amp; fro about the neighbourhood or worship the local ministry of ungulates, plays havoc with my creative prowess. Thus the pedestrianism of the improvisation. I’ll juice a few ideas from it, though the quantity may be meager. Not much is left to do before my departure. One large box will go containing clothing, books, cds and miscellaneous knickknacks. I’ll buy another roll of bubble wrap to ensure the Yamaha monitors are safe during transport to Dani’s place. The original boxes vanished at some point. Since my “Decksavers” never arrived, I’ll be constructing cardboard cones to tape securely over the joysticks on both the Syntrx II (whom I need to name) and Gutter Fiend. I have excellent BAGS for the both of them. However, one must always care for joysticks. Joysticks are essential. I may need one at some point for the Modular system (which also needs a new name). “Perhaps”, as the semi-primate going on lumpish putty sometimes says. Oh yes - I must copy my static Flavigula site over to nuevo thurk, my current cloud server. Why? Yak, the Raspberry Pi that hosts the flavigula site, its gemini counterpart and the Dobruszka bot, will be packed in one of the three suitcases that fly with me. After doing so, I have to temporarily change the Openresty config that points to Yak along the wires of my mesh network and point it instead directly at a directory structure on nuevo thurk itself. Oouh baby. After my ostensible final entry on Day ZERO, meaning tomorrow, I’ll perform this duty. Now to urinate. The Grand Evening-Out https://flavigula.net/static/blog/202410120729.html 2024-10-12T07:29:00Z The dream found me, or the eidolon of me, in a diaphanous and capacious space like a high school gymnasium that extended to infinity in all directions. A song by Tears for Fears sauntered into my ears from the sound system. It was nothing that I know on this side of the dream reality, but my eidolon had it placed on the first album, despite the fact that the lyrics had something to do with “happy endings”. I’m aware that Tears for Fears has an album with a title that has something to do with “happy endings” and that my eidolon twisted the origin of musical sources. I’m not very familiar with that album, as opposed to their first, which I know intimately, like I knew Melanie’s skin during the months we lived in that hovel in Washington Heights. Oh, the nostalgia! Not that we listened to much Tears for Fears back then. But I have desviado, as they say in the ancient lands. A human who was a combination of Jesus (not the historical figure) and Rostej (the historical figure) was at my side in the dream. Other humans were dotted around the shadow dappled interior. Whether these other humans were historical figures or not is open to interpretation. The Jesus-Rostej insisted the song that flowed around us had an aura of positivity and that it lifted his charcoal scorched spirit. As I am wont to do, and sometimes without adequate rationale, I disagreed. As if I could disagree to whether something was lifting his charcoal scorched spirit or not. I disagreed because the lyrics were in contradiction to any conceivable positive message. Anyone familiar with Tears for Fears’s first album can do a mental verification. What followed was a discussion about how each person hears music differently depending on many factors. Rostej-Jesus argued that because of the physiological sameness of humans, everyone has the same listening experience. The intervals and rhythms are all interpreted by the brain in a way that could not result in anything but equality. As anyone with more than a brain stem knows, and as my eidolon knew, the experience of art involves much more than the physiological. The emotional place a human is in within that human’s existence is essential. That is, the emotional place one is in at the very point in the day / night / crepuscular haze plays a role. But that emotional point doesn’t play the most important role. The sloshing chemicals that interpret music into both emotional and intellectual responses are subtly different in each human. Sometimes much more than subtly. Listening to a song by Tears for Fears and it having an affect on both the rational and wubby wubby parts of a charcoal scorched spirit is an extension of every experience one has had up to that point in one’s life. Humans who have similar taste in music have either had very similar experiences since birth (such as growing up and never leaving the same pueblo or even state or país or bubble) or have arrived to where they are by convergent evolution. The latter is much more likely in the case of me and my compatriots. But despite my point, Jesus-Rostej continued his insistence and introduced into the conversation a range of homogenizing therapies and especially drugs. He was a proponent of today’s psychology, a rat-ass pseudo-science if there ever was one - and you can quote me on that - and of today’s psychologists and psychiatrists, a rat-ass pseudo-human collection of entities if there ever was one, and the propensity of today’s psychology to modify the perceptions of humans chemically. And especially to modify the perceptions of humans chemically so that humans all perceive the world in the same way. The grand evening-out. The grand evening-out is blasphemy in the face of the individual charcoal scorched spirit. It is repellent to me. The beauty of humanity is its diversity and especially the ability to interpret art (and to interpret, well, just about anything) in a manner that arises from the intellectual and emotional accumulation of a life’s unique path. I’m going to shank the next psychologist I meet. Roast Upon the Charcoal https://flavigula.net/static/blog/202410090812.html 2024-10-09T08:12:00Z Day five. Amusingly, I miscalculated on Day 14, which should have been Day 15 if I planned for Day One to land on the day before I depart. It turns out that the day before I depart will be Day Zero. Well, why not? As my departure approaches, my emotions churn, as I knew they would. They are affected by everything from what I have for breakfast (or if I have breakfast at all) and lunch to the temperature of pockets of air I walk through as I make my way from the building that houses “our” flat to my guitar lesson or to the supermarket or to the post office. In an ancient epoch, let’s say sometime in 2004, I was drinking wine on an embankment overlooking the Vltava with a certain Zuzka. This certain Zuzka was the same Zuzka that was in a relationship with Michal and who also was the “best friend” of my then girlfriend Jana One. This certain Zuzka expounded at me about emotions. Feelings are the only thing that matter. Act upon them. Act upon them at the moment you sense them welling in your blackened spirit! She left out the blackened spirit part, but I’m sure it was implied in her delivery. I admit that I have left my spirit to roast upon the charcoal for far too long and far too many times. Be that as it MAY, this certain Zuzka insisted that I should obey impulses of sensations the chemicals sloshing around in my head give me and at the very moment they give me these sensations. Right now, I cannot think of poorer advice from anyone I’ve known. But I have taken this advice, subconsciously, time and again, and especially during the throes of recuperation from an alcoholic binge. Alas, those are the moments when my psyche is most fragile and I am wont to obey impulses spawned from quickly shifting emotions, mostly of sadness and solitude. In fact, I’ve made decisions that drastically changed the course of my life several times in that state. Were I only to wait a few days for my mind to clear and for discursive thought to reign again! My point is that that certain Zuzka’s words were poison. I’m not in the throes of recuperation from a binge, but I am feeling doubts, twinges of despair and other slow oscillations between questioning myself completely and knowing there is no other way forward. Discarding the hillocks and valleys, I strive to focus with the precision of my mathematical mind. It sorts through every event of the last ten years and makes comparative analyses. The conclusion is, of course, that there is no other way forward. The extreme would be to say that sloshing chemicals should never be one’s guide, but I understand what is happening now is an edge case and emotions have to be discarded. In so-called normal life, I attempt to temper them, but not necessarily consign them to the pit. Exuvia by The Ruins of Beverast bellows from my studio monitors. Black metal is certainly cathartic. Beyond that Threshold is an Abomination https://flavigula.net/static/blog/202410071015.html 2024-10-07T10:15:00Z Day seven and there is still a proliferation of random objects in arbitrary locations around my place of “work”. The word work is a slippery one, especially on the lips of the American humans I grew up around. Though it never quite implied the same thing each time I heard it, it was almost regarded as sacred. Our indoctrination during childhood was to always focus on work. Work was the road to a “successful” future. Work was the path to salvation. From the perspective of adulthood, this shifty word comes across as an quasi-religious form of self-enslavement. And I’m not just referring to being employed by another person or entity. The guilt that our indoctrination induced when we were not constantly doing or in the search of doing something that generated income indicated that no matter our form of work, we were subconsciously electing enslavement. Of course, this has to do with class hierarchy, a concept that came into play millennia ago when striations had to be created for the good of agriculture. The lack of machines in that epoch created machines from men and birthed the peasant class, not to mention middle management. Yeah. I’m not a fan of anything relating too strongly to sociology, so I’ll leave it at this: Humanity perished with the advent of agriculture. It’s been slow decay since. The idea of work ethic my father tried to instill within my trembling spirit had nothing to do with the work I do when I am focused on music or even programming (for money!). The work ethic my father tried to instill within my shuddering spirit had nothing to do with contentment and everything to do with participating in a system too large for him to see. Well, I can’t say for sure that he never thought about the sauntering beast that was / is Western Culture and its insistence that we all be cogs within its machinery. He might well have, though somehow I don’t think he was trained up that way. In any case, when I went against this work ethic, I was punished. As a child, I was punished by my father, and later by a series of institutions: elementary school, high school, university, and employment after employment after employment. Yes, following the work ethic kept me out of trouble, which is a form of contentment, but it never made me happy. I suppose glory be to the man or woman or machine entity that can BE a cog in the machinery within the sauntering beast that is Western Culture and BE that cog with contentment. Glory be! Of course, there is the question of indoctrination, brainwashing, whathaveyou with reference to said individual, but still - Glory Be! The concept reminds me of the show Severance. The system (Lumen) is researching a manner to create cogs that know nothing other than the work itself and therefore have no comparison to how it may be like to exist in another manner. I’m certain their downfall will be ignoring the power of the human imagination. Well, unless they figure a way to suppress that, as well. Backing up a moment - of course, had agriculture never come about, it’s likely humanity and thus society would not have evolved in a way that would have allowed me to be typing this. Probably I wouldn’t have even existed, at least not in this form. Whether humanity / Earth / the universe would have been better off is another speculation. The idea touches on something I’ve thought about more and more in recent years - that of systems evolving to be what they are in the same way that life evolved on Earth from simpler constituents. Humanity, at its base, is a system. And it is made up of other systems. That is, political states, empires, religious organizations and oxen like me making music that no other oxen will likely listen to. Each of these systems, including humanity itself, change constantly. They evolve. At some point, it is likely they reach a threshold and beyond that threshold they are an abomination. And they begin their decline. As they say in the old lands: Fuck um. Multitudinous Agreeable Futures https://flavigula.net/static/blog/202410051001.html 2024-10-05T10:01:00Z Today is day nine. I shall pour myself some Houjicha - another reminder of Japan. I mentioned Japan the other day not only because Christopher is there but because to me it is a vague concept. Yes, it is a concrete land-mass, but the reality of actually being there is just an abstraction. This points back towards my resolve to not make plans that are, as it were, etched upon the surface of my skull, or upon the surface of anyone’s skull, for that matter. Leaving future ideas abstract creates multitudinous agreeable future senderos. The idea is coupled closely with my rejection of expectations. To have absolute goals is to create narrow roadways into the future. If deviated from, the results is a sort of emotional devastation. This devastation can be so powerful that it becomes a stasis of disillusionment throughout a gelatinous chunk of time. Time ultimately spent mourning something that never existed in the first place except in one’s mind: said expectations. This is a condition I seek to avoid. I also encourage anyone reading this to also seek to avoid it, which means not placing one’s goals in the terms of the exceedingly specific. Keep the future vague. Don’t let the haze clear completely until arrival. Rejection of expectations also serves to create life satisfaction on shorter time scales. Don’t approach a film or a book with a portion (or all!) of the expected story already scribed in one’s mind. Don’t listen to a piece of music while thinking intently on how it evolves or devolves from other music by the same or similar artist(s) or weighed by bias from its presentation. Don’t impose whole or part of a theatrical experience from one’s past or even from one’s imagination onto a situation one is involved in later in the day or later in the week or even later in the present epoch. The uncertainly of existence is one of the only constants. Imposing strict guidelines onto the haze approaching from the opposite direction of time’s arrow does nothing but invite disappointment. I'll Join His Wraith https://flavigula.net/static/blog/202410030837.html 2024-10-03T08:37:00Z The ancient tapestry (I laughingly call it a tapestry) that habitually covers the Raspberry Pi with attached mini-screen whose name is Yak and to whom I am connected now writing this was on the floor at the base of the monitor stand earlier. Yak sits on top of the monitor. Possibly it’s not the best position for him / her / it / zubby, but I chose it for its proximity to the 12TB hard drive that is filled with backups from various parts of other machines round the household. Oouh, baby. Now what was the purpose of this opening salvo? Ah - yes. It was the cat. It had to be the cat. It’s always the cat. The cat is to blame. Bender-boy is in Japan at the moment. He’s sent me various photos and brief commentaries. I said that I should join him. This is truth. I should. And I will. Or, rather, I’ll join his wraith because his corporeal being will be long gone before I show my presence there. Yes. I shall head west. Go west, my son and all that rot. It will be an intense change for me, casting off the European shroud that has held me in its nervous comfort for twenty-six years. And as time and moth eaten as it may be, it will be painful to cast it off, but ALL change has a delightful flavour. I won’t go to extremes. There will be no burning of the shroud or leaving it to rot on some shitheap in the Seminole landfill. I’ll carefully place it in a strong-box to be picked over carefully and incrementally as epochs pass. And I’ll head west. West is refugees’ home, as the song says. So, once again I can say that I’ve been influenced peripherally by Christopher, though I felt the pull even a decade ago when he was in Vietnam and spilling to me his mental flow about the beauty there. I wonder if he fell asleep in the sun and nearly died of sunstroke like fair Lucía did one time? I think Lucía was in Thailand, actually. Same thing. If he did die of a sunstroke in Vietnam, and it’s highly likely as I’ve not actually laid eyes on his corporeal being since May of 2003, then his wraith is ALREADY wandering Japan and, being a clever wraith, has learned to interact with the “physical” world, at least enough to send me messages. Or perhaps said wraith interacts directly with the flow of electrons that surge and ebb throughout the internet. Yes, I can visualize the scenario. He “dies” of a sunstroke in Vietnam in a suitably remote spot. A few passing “scientists” steal the fresh corpse in enough time to preserve the brain. This brain has its consciousness injected as a wraith to ride the surge and ebb of electrons. Yes. This is what happened. It all makes sense. A Threshold is Approaching in the Mid-Distance https://flavigula.net/static/blog/202410021149.html 2024-10-02T11:49:00Z Day 12. I just played with the cat a bit, and, as the song says, or at least implies, I’ll miss my cat. After all the trinkets, feathers and simulations of twine we’ve bought for her, in the end, the most effective device for pay is a long, wobbly, flexible (but not too much so) wire attached to a handle that has a piece of real twine tied to its end. Goes to show you that some ways from the ancient epochs are the best ways. Or at least the most effective ways. As is usual when a threshold is approaching in the mid-distance, my perception of time creeps. Well, it usually creeps, and especially when I have diverse offerings for my mental modules each day, but right now it creeps in an even more lugubrious fashion. Well, good for it, then. I’ll take advantage of the perceived extra time and attempt to get as much music done as possible. I may even do some programming along the way, and not just for myself. I’m in the midst of recreating Dobbs Rakes His Knuckles Across the Wooden Fence. In fact, just this morning, for the section of pulsations in which that mass of bacteria and filth that I occasionally call “Christian” chants about some pseudo-religious fetishes, I replaced one of the repeating melodic synth lines with the Scarab Fuzz. It’s an exciting time when one gets to recreate one of the genre’s most iconic of albums! Dobbs revisited! Or somesuch. In the original, there are many murky things lurking in the backdrop, but this time round I’ll try to keep it cleaner and let the mass of bacteria and filth’s vocals belch themselves into whatever constitutes a foreground in the end. These plans may change slightly, however, as they often do. Dani and I spent a bit more than an hour in Café Antiguo “round the corner” and had a grand time drinking coffee and talking animatedly about film and music. It was almost as if I were revisiting that other epoch when we regularly met at London Café, consumed bad hamburgers and talked animatedly about film and music. I do find it a bit triste that most (but not ALL) of my best, or at least solid, memories of the last decade in Logroño are those when either I was with Dani or with Matthew or when I was alone. Most of them, yes, but fortunately, not ALL. Radiofreefedi gurgles in the backdrop. The show is “RFF in the Atmosphere”, though it should be called “RFF Plays Music that Squats in the Middle of a Commodious Chamber Humid with Almost Infinite Reverb”. Oh the reverb the musicians use! It’s almost a disease. But - I do like reverb. It’s utility in many contexts is clear to me and I’ve been known to slather a few pieces of “music” with it, as well, though not as often as the aforementioned mass of bacteria and filth has. But, VOLE, it’s ubiquitous on the squatting music channel! Well, nearly. Now I shall unsheathe Uruqi the guitar from its capsule of stale atmosphere. After all, soon enough it’ll be in others’ hands. Crossing over Bar-lines that One Possibly Shouldn't https://flavigula.net/static/blog/202410011407.html 2024-10-01T14:07:00Z As I just wrote to the swarm of protozoa that infest my “friend” Christian’s living corpse, the new album (the one about greenhouses, if you are curious) is now published on Mirlo, Jamcoop and my own Faircamp. In celebration, I’m listening to the album. I thought I might have burned myself out mixing and mastering it, but I am enjoying the run-through. The Yamaha HS5 monitors gurgle forth its mellifluous recital. Speaking of the Yamaha HS5 monitors, they must be taken care of. Taken care of not in the sense of a hit by some mythical mafia but in the sense of being sold off at an exceedingly reduced price to some lucky individual - probably a human. This morning was my second to the last guitar lesson with the best guitar instructor I’ve had so far. He expounded at length on the importance of solos interpreting the melody of a piece of music. We’re talking Jazz here, but I’m sure the idea can be applied elsewhere, though possibly not in the context of hits by mythical mafias. He subjected me to this barrage of words after we went through Memories of Tomorrow a few times, which I FUCKED UP. Admittedly, its pace and it’s twisting chord sequence make things slightly difficult, or at least more difficult than Corcovado or Out of Nowhere. My strategy for this week, and onwards (including after our FINAL lesson), is to slice up the piece into sections and concentrate wholly on subtle variations of the melody. As everyone who’s hung about the moons of Neptune will know, one of my favourite variation strategies is to modally shift melodies as well as rhythmically shift them so they cross over bar-lines that they possibly shouldn’t. I shall also imbibe a new Jazz Standard, one I’d never heard of before this very morning entitled Alone Together. It is riddled with ii V goopiness, all of which resolve to the minor I. It is a sound I am fond of. After my lesson, I strolled to the Pošta to mail a box to Seminole. What was in the box? GARBAGE, I SAY! Nothing but garbage. Truly, it was filled with things I hardly use at all and I was reminded of another conversation I had briefly with the aforementioned swarm of protozoa about knowing the border between: <ol> <li>Things one use almost constantly</li> <li>Things one use often</li> <li>Things one use often enough to have value</li> <li>Things useful, but only taken out of the receptacle from time to time</li> <li>Things that should not exist in one’s possession because they are never used</li> </ol> The box I mailed today was in the soupy grey area between #4 &amp; #5. There was a fuente de alimentación by the marvellous (ho ho!) Joyo and actually it was the first fuente de alimentación for guitar pedals that I ever bought, back in the years of Flavigula infancy. A pair of glasses was in there. And the rest GARBAGE. Before I sign off, I should remind myself of something that came to mind earlier: Do not mistake a system that has evolved over epochs and epochs for intelligence. “Nature”, for example. Or the universe. Movements of such systems feel intelligent because we assign the status of “intelligence” to them without any deep understanding of the system itself. Such systems do the things they do because they have multitudinous moving parts that have fallen into a synchronous equilibrium. That’s all. I Trundle Not Along the Inside of a Fossilized Skull, but Onwards https://flavigula.net/static/blog/202409301230.html 2024-09-30T12:30:00Z Today is Day 14. I didn’t really want to do it, but a part of my mind insisted. Yes, I do not have complete control of all of my mental modules. Such are the days. So today is day 14. I didn’t really want to do it, but one of my mental modules began a countdown. At least I got to choose to name this day fourteen as opposed to fifteen, making the day when I actually depart day zero instead of one. It makes more sense to the majority of the remainder of my mental modules this way. I shall create a short sequence on the Argon8, which I am yet to name, even after three years - oh silly me - to accompany this writing. It will be of the chord sequence I was practising yesterday. C melodic minor to B dorian. For future reference, if, indeed, there is a future apart from the next few moments, I played a C bass, then a g b ees g arpeggio above it. I repeated the C bass and followed with a f a d ees arpeggio. Oh, the dissonance! D comes next in the bass, the minor 3rd of the “chord”, and above it fis a b e, throwing in the 11th for a feeling of uncertainty. D repeats in the bass and we then sense ourselves at ease, almost, with e gis b and cis. But oh the 13th! What tragedy! A photo of the façade of Spice India graces the background of my desktop. It’s a photo that his come up often lately. This may be because of the poor algorithm I wrote for choosing background photos at random. Whatever the reason, I wonder if I’ll ever be there again. As the old song goes: Everything seems to be up in the air at this time. I do love the feeling, and adore it even more since I haven’t felt it for so long, but with it comes the lurking uncertainty. It is possible I’ll never be in Spice India again. It’s also possible I’ll never be in Prague again. Or Europe, for that matter. Oh, I plan to return - to visit - but I have the quaint (I say quaint because it is, of course, just an emotion) feeling lately that Europe and I are parting ways for a good while. Nevertheless, I plan to visit Michal with that pasty, foetid gutter fiend of a friend that I at times call “Christian”. When? I suppose sometime next year. But, unlike that pasty, foetid gutter fiend of a friend that I at times call “Christian”, I am not wont to make such long range plans. The chord sequence repeats, emanating from the Argon8 - a synthesizer that I have never named, though I’ve had “it” for three years, más o menos. So, I christen it Gutter Fiend. I shall even now create a label for it so it sports its moniker. Done! And the chord sequence still plays. People repeat often to me, of places they have enjoyed in life, I will go back there. I will visit there again. I will LIVE there again. I have repeated similar things - and often. But I’ve come to the conclusion that there is a point in life when you know you are over the hill. It doesn’t matter how pristine a health you are in or how much peníze you carry inside of that hump on your back that you hollowed out once you realized you couldn’t get rid of it and filled it with booty. Simply the remaining time you have is limited. And more limited each day. So as much as I’d like to live in Prague again, at this juncture of my life, I’m pretty sure it won’t happen again. Also, moving in straight (or semi-straight) lines or at least in hyperbolas makes more sense to me that in circles. My six month or so episode in Praha in 2021 can be taken as a reminder. Even though many “beautiful” things happened during that stretch and I wrote quite a bit of music that would have emerged differently written in other places and I etched memories of my friends into that ever-corroded memory-module, by the end, I was convinced that it was no longer a place in which I could generally flourish. Some of this could be rationalizing. Even so, it’s my view now. I suppose many get to a sort of comfort zone in life (or stagnation point) and in such a position they have settled on the places, people and situations they would persist for the remainder of their ever-slowing trundlings. I am simply not “programmed” that way. Oh, I’ve fought with my mental modules throughout the decades and tried to shove some sort of “conformity” down their gullets. It always works for a time, but that time is over. My time is over. As the song says. At least HERE. Logroño is a place I chose and persisted. I’ve felt the comfort and its pull. I’ve felt the stagnation and its pull. But it’s not enough. I doubt it will ever be for me. Thus, adelante. Nereid https://flavigula.net/static/blog/202408040824.html 2024-08-04T08:24:00Z There’s certainly something about freneticism that fascinates. In any case, thinking about it is my only pastime other than playing backgammon with myself. I know there are others here, proximous, but my cloister is sealed. I’m told - or rather, I’ve read - that the original vegetative experiments quickly got out of hand, thus my mention of freneticism. The stems and stalks wound and warped themselves through the diameter of the moon, in one side and out the other, looping back around to make further plunges. Of course, all this happened in slow motion. In the end, the radius of the moon itself grew by nearly a kilometre. Blossoming into innumerable divisions and doubling back on itself, by the time “we” (meaning whoever was in charge) regained control, the organic matter had left looming spaces like surrealistic sanctuaries for unwilling monks. These were sealed off and made into independent, atmosphered pockets. And that is where I work. I’m allowed outside on furloughs at regular intervals. I always spend them getting blasted. It’s an endless cycle, but it suits me. Shambal Dreams Surrounded by Radial Ruins and Sessile on Triton https://flavigula.net/static/blog/202408030725.html 2024-08-03T07:25:00Z Shambal Brambel was part of the first group that arrived. The goal was terraforming and experimental neutronium injections to increase the moon’s gravity. He observed and was nominally a part of the quick rise and fall of a cobbled topography that at its peak consisted of pragmatically identical structures for housing, processing or atmosphere production. The so-called city was webbed with motorways. Vehicles of every sort streamed along them almost like fluid, casting whorls of grey waste in their wake. The processing centers dappled the landscape, imbibing incoming material from other moons, coordinated within a space where administrators, like Shambal himself, were rooted to machines that stretched throughout the crust. He observed the decline until only he remained, still rooted yet connected to nothing, staring out at what once was. Neso https://flavigula.net/static/blog/202407211942.html 2024-07-21T19:42:00Z My implants must be malfunctioning again. The ones that control subtlety of hearing and touch. I usually get them calibrated before each cycle, but immediately following the end of the last one, I ran into a clone of my old friend Acy from back in pre-school and primaries for the eighth colony in-vitros. Turns out this version of him is over on Nereid. Or in Nereid to be more specific. We got shitfaced on ostensible White Russians on the temp base. I dare not think too hard about what passes for “Kahlúa” in these parts. Back to the implants, though. The whole of the greenhouse and its extensions oscillate in a way that transforms something I don’t quite understand into living matter. The machines crawling through brain dampen the effects of sonic attack emanating from below. The sinewy undulations of the structure plugged into what we call “the guttering orifice” are helices of melodies that ever repeat, stumbling drunkenly across the circle of minor thirds and major seconds. Fortunately, I have drugs that knock me out during off shifts. At times I even dream and am always taken by a cascade of diaphanous arpeggios that eject me far, far into and then beyond the Kuiper Belt. Larissa https://flavigula.net/static/blog/202407201614.html 2024-07-20T16:14:00Z My companion, or rather my ex-companion, had to be removed from the project on Larissa for attempts at sabotage. Most of him was unmade and joined the particulate matter flowing through ducts between algae farms. I maintained his skin to create crude, flappy percussion instruments. I spend some of my downtime practising them. In the flat space, they sound more like bangings on hard rubber than what they are supposed to be, but that may be the fault of the resonating chambers or the general lack of acoustic conductance within the tiny, atmosphered living chamber. Unfortunately for me and for the project, the algae is failing. Despite the effort, most shielding from debris and radiation is useless. When the last farm is converted to waste, I’ll, too, be unmade. Perhaps the drums will remain to be discovered by another generation. Galatea https://flavigula.net/static/blog/202407191050.html 2024-07-19T10:50:00Z The structures that now adhere to an erstwhile rubble-mound were a dream I had epochs ago when I gazed from our station orbiting Neptune outside the Adams Ring with one eye closed like a cyclops through my telescope. If the rifts and crags are poems scrawled across the so-called surface of the moon, my greenhouses are diacritics and vowel marks that allow them to be deciphered. The sprawling atmosphere machinery is calligraphic accretion and wheezes rhythmically like the bellows of an accordion in time with a truncated metrical pattern. As with the other inner moons, I ship the vegetable matter to Triton, vacuum packed on automated airless shuttles. I haven’t heard anything back for over eighty-six thousand passes around Neptune. Affairs in the Valid Universe https://flavigula.net/static/blog/202407080852.html 2024-07-08T08:52:00Z A slightly modified version of Thalassa sings in my ears via my filthy Tuxedo speakers that are devoid of bass response. Or practically devoid of bass response. I’m following, perhaps, and perhaps not, Christian’s need to “test” mixes on as many reproduction devices as “necessary”. Of course, this is just his excuse to remain in a state of sloth. One’s life of extreme lujos can’t be bothered to move from the bed or sofa to engage in unity with high fidelity headphones when one can simply play music through the speakers of one’s “device”. I am filled with rage at these antics! His death will be prolonged during centuries of torturous neural procedures. He’ll know the true Christian vision of the lake of fire. Fuck um. The last few days, I’ve noted in myself a resurgence of Lakife-related activity. I’m certainly happy about it. Once upon a day which most likely was never a holiday in this or any other related political state, I found a list of sentences that were translation candidates for “fleshing out” a conlang. I realise that there is an arbitrariness to such lists, but upon finding it once again two or three days prior to today (a day that was also not likely a holiday in this or any related political state, or at least an any that are important to affairs in the “valid” universe), I’ve continued translation work, hoping to be persistent at at least one a day until they are exhausted. One of the recent ones is <blockquote> Tul tzuf tafju les liz topen tetyk soletiz jo miloka texotz li anjo ar misyt. </blockquote> Though Lakife phrases are a bit more loose than their English counterparts, I’ve maintained a more or less consistent structure throughout the epochs. <blockquote> Tul </blockquote> The sentence begins with an adverb. Tul actually means low, but in this case, it could be interpreted as low-wardsor downwards. Perhaps of the lower portion. In some cases, I’ve prepended fe- to words to give them adverbial quality, but I’m questioning the decision if the meaning is clear. I think in this case it is. <blockquote> tzuf tafju les liz topen </blockquote> One of the original decisions concerning the language was to have closed prepositional phrases. That is, the phrases would have a pre- and postposition. In this case, tzuf and topen, the first of which means between or through or among. Topen is directional and means vector on its own. Tafju les liz is branches of tree (literally). Plurals are usually assumed (or not) according to context in Lakife. The whole phrase, then, gives the sense of movement through the branches of the trees. If you add the aforementioned tul, it’d be down through the branches of the trees. This adverbial phrase comes first in the sentence. I attempt to always front-end such information. Why? I suppose it was an arbitrary decision which speaks deeply of my disturbed psychology. I want to know the context of a situation before the activity begins. <blockquote> tetyk soletiz jo miloka </blockquote> I’ve not invented a word for the “Sun”. It’s simply star (tetyk) our (soletiz). Works for me. I’ve taken a chunk of granite out of Toki Pona’s stone tablet in that I’d like the vocabulary to be minimal (for now). So if I don’t absolutely have to invent a word, I’ll use combinations instead. Were Lakife a “living” language, the expression tetyk soletiz would possibly contract to something more manageable throughout the epochs. Miloka is a continual form of to look. It’s also volitional, as opposed to miloku, which would be the more passive to see. The jo after tetyk soletiz could be placed after tetyk. It’s the ergative marker. Miloku means to look at. No following preposition (or postposition!) is needed. <blockquote> texotz </blockquote> Child or children. Again, explicit plurality is for the weak. There is no marker, but this is the absolutive case. <blockquote> li an(jo) (ar) misyt. </blockquote> Here’s a part of Lakife that I still am not completely certain about - subordinate clauses. This one is not so murky because it directly follows texotz. Li is the connector. Possibly, an is not necessary. It means “it” or “he” or “she” or “they” and refers to the child or children which is / are referenced immediately before. Misyt is the continual form of the verb to entertain. In a language such as Spanish, the verb would be reflexive, thus the clitics in parentheses. To say They are entertaining themselves, an would be in the ergative case and ar would indicate “reflexion”. This illustrates another ordering choice that I prefer for Lakife. Subject Object Verb. I don’t always hold to it, but ambiguity is removed because the ergative particle jo is placed after the subject. Sao https://flavigula.net/static/blog/202407080746.html 2024-07-08T07:46:00Z The moon had been hollowed out for as long as anyone could remember by the time I’d arrived. What the mechanized diggers found during the process is still a mystery. We call it the pulsing mind of the moon. It throbs in regular time that has, as far as anyone knows, been consistent in interval to the microsecond. There are lengthy pauses, however, that spawn myriad conjectures. My theory is that the moon exists in a graduated, localized bubble perpendicular to the outside fourth dimension. The pauses are perceived proportionally to one’s distance from the central pulsing mind. For if one is close enough, no cessation occurs at all. Originally the purpose was to experiment with zero gravity plant growth, but the resulting labyrinthine maze now only serves as a meditation point. We only maintain Sao as a point of rest and recreation as the organic life itself cannot be consumed. The regularity of the beats creates zen-like experiences for any who descend close to the pulsing mind. A few of the first died of thirst because they forgot where or even who they were. Since, alarms have been placed to revive those in a state of recreation so that, refreshed, they can return to the surface and then to their work on Neso or the inner moons. Multitudinous Levels of Coping Mechanisms https://flavigula.net/static/blog/202405101145.html 2024-05-10T11:45:00Z A good deal of people I know or have known have Anxiety Hangovers. Or Anxiety Anticipations. Or even Anxiety Flashbacks. Or the horrifying Anxiety Nostalgia. Or combinations of them. The hangovers I can understand. They are a lesser form of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. And in that case, the flashbacks are related, and are also understandable. The worrisome part is the degree to which these flashbacks occur and how debilitating they are. None of the humans I’m referring to have been in a war or associated “level” of trauma. I realise that said “level” is relative. A human born and raised in a BOX who knows nothing else may receive its first anxious moment whilst crossing a busy street or peeling a banana, for example. This experience could scar them for life! For even three or for lives. Imagine it! Perhaps I’m being callous, but in my experience, life is episode after episode containing multitudinous levels of coping mechanisms. One learns to observe, experience and detach oneself. There may be a genetic component to anxiety and if so, shame on those finicky genes mucking up various human existences. I personally believe, however, that the majority of anxiety and how it’s experienced and dealt with is an environmental issue. Our species, if nothing else, is adaptable. Just as one improves on a musical instrument or at mathematics or at worshipping goats, one can improve at moving that anxious blot in one’s head into a convenient mental bath of acid. Goodbye, anxiety! Perhaps I’m being callous, and perhaps I was not as observant in the past as I am during this epoch of my existence, but what I term as Anxiety Nostalgia is a plague nowadays. I see, before my eyes, time and again, humans close to me experiencing “trauma” (it’s all relative, you know, especially for the BOX PEOPLE and their BANANA) and then re-experiencing it over and over again, sometimes in diminishing echoes and sometimes endlessly repeating full-force. And what pocks my patellas is that these humans seem to relish the experience. They go over said “trauma” again and again in their minds, with their voices and with gesticulating limbs as if retelling an amusing anecdote from their last banana peeling match, but with the anguish of anxiety plainly typewritten on their faces. I highly doubt this behaviour is genetic. A deeper examination may call up perpetual exposure to sensationalist news and the truncated emotional depth of social media, all of which may contribute. But the seed is in BOXING during youth, metaphorically, of course. And, furthermore, BOXING during adolescence especially in cloistered peer groups or an isolation from cloistered peer groups that are perceived as favourable. Perhaps I’m being callous because I offer no solution besides the omnipresent fuck um. I have felt like I needed to point out this modern human feature for some time, so there we go! When this concerns regard people close to me, I certainly have enough empathy to feel the echo of Anxiety Nostalgia and por supuesto it smarts, but I state again that I have no immediate solution. In any case, the heat death of the universe is just around the corner. I have a couple of minutes left, so I’ll peel myself a banana. Thalassa https://flavigula.net/static/blog/202405091140.html 2024-05-09T11:40:00Z Never mind that I must mostly remain inside the structure that is affixed to the planet’s so-called bedrock. It’s preferable to suiting up and tethering oneself during an occasional outdoor repair. The building straddles a long ravine that, in my estimation, descends at least 12 kilometres. The organic forms (that I assume are more plant than animal or fungi) respire helices that are entirely shades of grey. They rush upwards, almost violently, dancing in the false atmosphere like brutish ballerinas before finally clinging to the walls or ceiling in repose as they dissipate. The “creatures” themselves also are entirely shades of grey. Upon entering this ecosystem, it’s as if every cone cell has fallen dormant. I First Walked Its Pitched Sidewalk https://flavigula.net/static/blog/202405081151.html 2024-05-08T11:51:00Z I once wrote: <blockquote> A bone-red heart beats beneath a slope. Weeds grow to voice displeasure at stiff winds that wither it. It beats once an epoch. It beats once a time I sit on this bench and will it to life. Weeds clutter the slope. They spell the echoes of past beats, reverberating in the witchy breeze. </blockquote> My iterations in Pagan Park map the manner that my psyche has grown throughout the last 19 years. I believe I first walked its pitched sidewalk during the xmas season of 2005, a few months after my parents moved to Seminole from Fort Stockton. I have no prior recollection of being in the park before then. My parents took over my grandmother’s house here, so I had been to Seminole before, of course, upon hundreds of occasions. However, as a child or even a teen, I’d never been allowed to wander. I was either in the house reading a book or listening to music or both or with my parents and some extra-solace locale. They never strolled in Pagan Park. They never strolled in any park, as far as I know. They weren’t big strollers, you see. Again from just my personal recollection, their only forms of entertainment were television and gambling. I guess not much has changed in that realm. The bone-red heart. The metaphor of a heart is a metaphor of my, shall I say, meditative life. It beats only when I stroll and when I sit on the myriad benches to think and jot thoughts. I can mark the rings of my growth as laps along the winding walkway in Pagan Park, at least from 2005, the year Christopher Bender called me on the antique phone in my parents’ “office” and also the year he sent me a stack of books that he checked out from a library in Raleigh to read to Seminole even though I was only to be here a few weeks. One of those books was The Long Walk, later made into a film, about escapees of a Siberian Gulag traversing the Gobi and then the Himalayas. It was a very enjoyable read. I still recall the moments lost in its paragraphs. Weeds grow to voice displeasure at stiff winds that wither it. The winds wither the heart when it doesn’t beat. That is, when I am absent. It all sounds a bit solipsistic, but in essence, the beating of this heart are the pulsations that lunged me forward through life. I’m not saying that my time in other places were not also involved in my psychological evolution, of course, but these static epochs here have always been ones of meditation, as evidenced by the fact that I make quite a bit more blog entries whilst visiting. I’m unsure what duration I’d have to be away for the heart to wither in its entirety. I suppose I’ll know once my parents trade their consciousness for peace and my visits become sparse. Weeds clutter the slope. They spell the echoes of past beats… I imply that my thoughts, gestating from their spilled contents originating upon one of the myriad benches or another, grow as weeds among the “carefully” manicured park. I agree (with past-self!) that “progress” or, rather, movement forward in time erodes all things. Well, that’s pretty auto-apparent, eh? An axiom, as the kids these days say! The implication that my incipient ideas seeded malas hierbas that perhaps hurl spores into the semi-desert breeze is a captivating one. If they are still swirling round, I could re-capture a few, much like I’m doing here, and enlighten myself. One of the main reasons I write is for my future self, in any case. I cannot remember every lesson life has taught me - obviously, as time and again I still stumble into wretchedness. The “scribblings” in Martenblog are more lumpy and weighted than the diffuse spores outspread from the aforementioned metaphorical weeds. I can review and learn more easily from past horrors (and other milder forms of experience). I admire humans (and a few choice insects, too) who are more methodical that I am at organizing their thoughts in writing, revising and updating their lives. They are an inspiration yet I don’t necessarily strive to be like them. This may seem like a paradox, but so might my contempt for “efficiency” in general. Fuck um. A Stroll Amongst the Stasis https://flavigula.net/static/blog/202405071135.html 2024-05-07T11:35:00Z Tuesday morning and I’m sitting half-lotus in my bed in Seminole. Yesterday was my first real day of absolute productivity and the productivity was all in the form of music. Naiad threatens to be a great piece upon completion, even if I toss aside some of my bolder noise experiments because I simply do not know how to get them to function in the mix correctly. Perhaps I should take a page (as the Druids said back in the day) out of Thalassa with its sudden drop in volume to create contrast. I’ll go with my churning gut later this morning. On the subject of productivity, my days have been so far devoid of it in the form of programming. I know I should introduce myself once again into Martin’s projects, but I’m finding it difficult to emerge from the so-called “programming stupor” after a week of torpor. Perhaps completing a smaller personal project first could be motivation. Unfortunately, not a ONE comes to mind, volečku! Ha! Getting back into a semblance of routine writing is also a chore. My mind doesn’t want to direct itself to the task. One might ask whether I have anything worthwhile to write about to begin with and if this is the seed of struggle. One might also ask what is the measure of worthiness. If I read back, some of my most enjoyable blog entries have been concerned with the absurd and I’ve told myself time and again throughout life that self-amusement is one of the primary ways to hold the existential dread at bay. So, those “one might asks” are rendered rhetorical. In fact, I just reminded myself of a task I’d set myself last time I was in this parched berg that some of its denizens surely call a settlement. I was going to go through my jottings during walks in Pagan Park over the epochs and elaborate on any flashy or spiky insight that occurred to me. Any at all. This I shall follow up on. Later today, I drive to Seminole to deposit my casino winnings into my bank so they can swim the tiny wires to Europe, as is the way of things. Now shower. Breakfast. And to Pagan Park for a “stroll” amongst the stasis there. Naiad https://flavigula.net/static/blog/202405061130.html 2024-05-06T11:30:00Z I’ve been on Naiad for approximately forty days and forty nights now, enough to see Thalassa looming through the sky twice, and I must admit that more than anything else, I miss my cat. My “office” is adjacent to the greenhouse and atmospherically controlled at a temperature much more to my liking than when I’m strolling among the flora. Humidity has never been my bag, having grown up in a parched wasteland. There are some scabs of youth one can never quite pick away. We designed the greenhouse here to capture the eerie glow of Neptune and bend its light into something akin to a living metrical pattern. That is to say, it pulses like arrhythmia and the flora, on their alien stalks, sway to the pattern and apparently flourish. I’ll count out its repeating phrase time and again though mostly in my subconscious. I’m fairly sure it will persist in my dreams even after my return to home and to my cat. That’s still fifteen passes of Thalassa away. The Great Achievements of Humanity https://flavigula.net/static/blog/202404040840.html 2024-04-04T08:40:00Z The idea has been lurking in the recesses of my mind for multitudinous epochs now, but it’s just at this moment that I shall come out and state it. I have no interest in human history in general. Walking around the Valle dei Templi yesterday sealed the idea in stone. Fossilized it, even, and given the multitudinous fossils embedded in the once sunken remains of rock near Agrigento, it’s an apt analogy. What most would term history in the “educational sense” has little to offer me. Mostly my disinterest revolves around the “great achievements” of humanity. In contrast, geological and astronomical history do still have something to offer to my weary mind and I will likely be found on one of my many deathbeds perusing various tomes concerning those topics. The overall achievement of our species seems diminished in contrast to their grandeur. Or at least to their SPAN. Thus, it’s the general history of the deeds of mankind that has not held my interest for generations now. Possibly for epochs. Millennia. The walk through Valle dei Templi did turn my mind to more narrow bands of history that do tug at me, and in some ways, very forcefully. I’m deeply invested in the history of music - very much a deed of mankind, I realize, but a very SPECIFIC one. I’m willing to invest myself in the history of certain technologies, and especially the history of computation. I can read about the history of computation for generations on end, or even epochs on end, or millennia and never tire. Therefore, as I’ve scribed before, as I merge with the age of the decrepit and frail of body and mind, I narrow my range of interests to dive deeper into the ones that are important. One reason why general history may not be of interest to me any longer (was it ever? - possibly) is that it is a history of the victor. Our lovely ancestors had the tendency to gouge from the earth itself any trace of the ones they conquered, leaving only their story for future folk to ponder over, as if it was the only tale to be told. This CONCEPT, or shall I be so bold as say PRINCIPLE, bothers me. (Has it always? - possibly) - And this is una desvía from the theme at hand, though I am wont to desviar, fuck um. It’s true that the history of music has also had its “victors” and “downtrodden”, but much more has been recorded to posterity, especially in the age of modernity (meaning post 1885 or so - of which I’m even more interested than in music in general). There is less bias towards forms that have only appealed to the Lowest Common Denominator or that have only appealed to the posh. Bulbous Lowest Common Denominator. Bulbous Posh. In the end, our adventure amongst the temples was rewarding, because I was reminded of some of the things that I do wish to explore in depth. And, besides, I am a fan of long walks amongst whatever type of ruination, simply because the decay of ancient cities into a more natural state - that of higher entropy - always brings a slight smile of satisfaction to my scowling mug. The Existential Boltzmann Brain https://flavigula.net/static/blog/202404020743.html 2024-04-02T07:43:00Z In times of youth, I relished moving my living corpse about the world from city to city, discovering alehouses, ruined castles, cappuccinos and random still lives constructed spontaneously from arbitrary passer-bys’ droppings. In times of youth, times that are now long in my past, I enjoyed entering a train or even an airplane and finding my living corpse in a state of movement in space. The unknown called me, even though much later I realized that the unknown was actually variations on a gelatinous mass I’d already accumulated from a combination of limited travel, observation, reading and simple perception. I’m “vacationing” with Marisa in Sicily during these days. Though there are enjoyable moments, strolling about the city, munching on sugary objects and commenting on what an asshole Apollo was, a stone resting at the back of my mind weighs any event down with its pressing mass: what am I doing with my time? And what’s worse is that it’s not the travel necessarily that is the source. For months now perhaps even a year, I have heard the call of this stone. I have heeded it. It’s pulsing and rushing my days forward. I feel if I’m not using every moment of my time to learn something new and especially to work in my “art” (meaning music), then I am wasting my time. The stone generates stress that I never had before. The stone is a sense of mortality. How can it be anything else? And more importantly, how do I escape it whilst still retaining the necessity to create music yet not have that necessity overwhelm me when I’m attempting other “diversions” from the existential Boltzmann Brain? I’m learning ChucK paragraph by paragraph, example by example, and I feel I’m making little progress. It’s surely the bad taste left on my tonsils from my failure to create goodies in Supercollider years back. I abandoned it. Impatience doesn’t help. I have brilliant ideas, but to program them in a fairly new architecture tires me rapidly. Thus, half formed, the sequences and counterpoints I seek to replicate from my endlessly streaming brain come out compromised. Possibly no one else will notice, but surely everything can improve. Betterness can be achieved. But what is betterness but the rejection of the results of my impatience? The stone combined with the lack of detail oriented discovery at the moment is destroying my sense of HOW to proceed in my musical projects. My sense of mortality compounds the situation. I look at the reality of how long it takes to create an album, even when working alone, and the number of years left until I possibly SNUFF IT, and despair. There is still so much I want to accomplish, but innumerable possibilities are more limiting than liberating. I need to limit my range of expression. I need constraints. I can’t use every tool that exists to make any sound that enters my mind. The results would be a mishmash of half-baked ideas. They somehow already are. I have too much equipment. I have too many possibilities to compose and record with. Constrain constrain constrain. And melt the stone. Ironically, a metaphorical stone is not an anchor, but acceleration mechanism towards the inevitable blackness of death where all ability to create ceases. Now to try to enjoy my “vacation”. Now to attempt to shut off my mind. Rows of Rhombuses https://flavigula.net/static/blog/202403101038.html 2024-03-10T10:38:00Z I had another dream concerning Jeníček last night. It was one of the final dreams before rising from the bed and into my daily routine (I laughingly call it a daily routine). Much of the dream has faded, but several scenes remain vivid. We went to a shop, ostensibly in Praha, to buy a window covering for Jeníček’s house. House, I say? He has a house. Well, why not? Why wouldn’t Jeníček have a house? He was rising on a crescendo into the realm of the well-off last time I interacted with him (not counting the bizarre messages from a few months back) and that was 16 years ago, más o menos. We went into a shop, ostensibly in Praha, to obtain a window covering for Jeníček’s house. We ended up with a type of lattice that folds by pressing on the width-wise sides until the whole is compressed into a narrow, vertical series of bars. Upon unfolding it, rows of rhombuses emerge from between the bars as they move apart. Thus, a lattice. How exactly this could cover a window I distinctly recall wondering within the dream. The shopkeeper also kept a bakery of sorts in the back. Jeníčěk asked me Are you ready to do Czech, vole?. The shopkeeper looked at me and, in a thick accent, said We share this kind of joke. The pastry in consideration began with the phoneme g or k, but its morphology now escapes me. Music That Vomits Heartfelt Wailing https://flavigula.net/static/blog/202401070907.html 2024-01-07T09:07:00Z I recall a conversation I had with Jeremy in 2013 that can be vaguely associated with the so-called music of the spheres. Jeremy was searching for music with no emotional content. His reasons were slightly different than my own, but the search itself is similar. And in addition to the search itself, I aim to CREATE music without emotional content, or, rather, with an emotional content so vague or abstract that it won’t be something enforced onto the listener. I think Jeremy’s search originated in the distraction he felt from enforced emotion in music. He was looking for two things: music to work to and music for listening that was intellectually stimulating. I don’t discount the fact that he may also look for subtle emotional emanations in his listening preferences, especially those of a dark and disturbing nature, since he is also subject to the annoyance of sloshing chemicals in his brain, but it been clear to me since that time that music that vomits heartfelt wailing isn’t much to his taste. The connection I mentioned to music exuded from planetary movements is that they are types of bare music. I call it bare music because the lack of emotional content in the music is such that the listener must overlay, whether consciously or not, a layer of feeling onto it. No matter what the pseudo-philosophical poppycock surrounding the music of the spheres might mention, planetary (and even stellar!) movement music, interpreted, of course, by sensors made by mankind, is an extreme example of bare music. There is absolutely no implied emotional content. Any resulting feeling is placed upon it by the listener. Glancing back at one of the topics of the previous entry, a piece of bare music can be seen as a prompt. How the listener processes the music emotionally (whether they create something accordingly or not) is the result of following the prompt. Prompts are by nature vague, so bare music can be an ideal prompt. I suggest all of you poetry groups on Mastodon (or on / in any other environment) hand out poetry assignments with each Flavigula “piece” on the Gunge album - see the Flavigula Funkwhale - and each one in order. In fact, every piece is likely to inspire a week, a month or even an epoch’s worth of poems. So several lifetimes can be consumed by these bare music prompts. Get to it! <a href="https://funkwhale.thurk.org/library/albums/4/">(Flavigula Funkwhale)</a> For me, the process of creating music must be a vague endeavour. Any mental storyboard could taint the sonic outpouring with personal emotive landscapes, though in truth, I may be the only one to recognize them. Such terrain may be opaque to listeners of the finished piece, resulting just as well with a piece of bare music. So, I take that back. A mental storyboard might work well enough as a template for sonic exploration. I know that my fumbling “friend” Christian associates all sorts of visual and “plottish” elements to the atmospheric and wholly instrumental music he writes. None of these prepared landscapes remain in the results I’ve heard, however. Had he not told me about his composition process, I’d never imagine what he was imagining during the composition process. Thus, in these cases, he produces adequate bare music. The point is that the focus in composition should be elements that stimulate, though only stimulate abstractly. This is in direct contrast to any emotional wailing (and I’m not just referring to vocals). Avoiding common chord progressions and especially common cadences is recommended. Let melodic phrases be short, repetitious, transformed often and certainly not sing-songy. Sing-songy hovno distracts from abstraction. Sing-songy content has an altogether different purpose, quite distinct from bare music. That’s not to say that melodies should not be memorable. Of course, memorable is a term that differs in reference to music depending on the person and their listening “competence”. It’s certainly possible that a good chunk of the populace only gets sing-songy melodies stuck in their head. This chunk of the populace will soon be consigned to the pit. But, returning to the point - that’s not to say that melodies should not be memorable. A good rule is to just not have them follow too many sequential triadic tones. When I come back to a piece after one of its resting phases and its melodies call to me yet don’t strike me as saccharine, I am satisfied. And I write all of this whilst listening to Lifehouse! Ha! It’s certainly distracting. Ideas that I have of texture and rhythm are not as well formed in the context of bare music. Much like the aforementioned “friend”, I fumble about a bit when it comes to these two things. Perhaps fumble isn’t the correct word. A better description of what I do rhythmically, besides avoiding commonalities, is sparsity and subtle shifting of meter and tempo. I resist adding too much swing, as I find it brings too much focus to the rhythm itself. I also find myself revising rhythmic elements more than harmonic or melodic elements. I haven’t completely found my rhythmic style yet. Texture is another beast, best left to other writings. Or perhaps Lifehouse has defeated me! I've Always Jotted And Hopefully Will Continue To Jot https://flavigula.net/static/blog/202312301323.html 2023-12-30T13:23:00Z Ah - bandwagons! Bandwagons, I say! I shall jump on a bandwagon now. Which bandwagon is this, you ask? It is the prompt bandwagon. I’ve noticed that over the last several months, or perhaps over the last several years or even perhaps over the last several epochs, other humans react to series of words called prompts. These reactions become creations. For example, on the only social network on which I still participate, poetry prompts come up in my “home” timeline frequently. It seems that I follow a good number of other humans who are both fond of poetry and who write poetry. So, the prompt is a impetus for the creation - in this case a poem. Being mostly oblivious to all things “pop culture”, such regularities in others’ habits escape me. Of course, this concept of prompts isn’t entirely foreign to me. I’ve used such ideas in the past, though not as often as perhaps I should of late. A good example are Schmidt and Eno’s Oblique Strategies. I’ve been known to consult them from time to time even as far back as 1995 (the first time that I clearly remember). As elaborated on i the following paragraph, I’ve been mostly known to use my own prompts. Ah! A twist! A twist, you say?? So, I shall jump on the prompt bandwagon. The twist is that I shall use a “prompt” I wrote some time ago. You see, I jot. I’ve always jotted and hopefully will continue to jot during the remainder of my mottled existence. And the things that I jot can easily be used as prompts for later writing. I fact, when I am jotting, that’s what I mostly have in mind. So the prompt, then, which I jotted in Pagan Park sometime during the first three eights of last decade, is the following: <blockquote> People who go to great lengths to find studies and pseudo studies concerning things they like or habitually do to rationalize doing them or try to convince others that their way is “correct”. </blockquote> Generalizing this, I’ve known people my whole life who go to great lengths to find any error (even the most miniscule) that those around them make (and especially, I’ve found, in chats and emails) and point said errors out with an air of restrained pugnacity. I’ve done it myself, for sure, though I hope that in more recent epochs, I’ve desisted. It is a despicable habit. Sure, it is pedantry, but it is pedantry with malice. It is pedantry with the intention to beat another human down. It is pedantry with a need to make another human feel smaller. In many cases, I’d guess the reason is lack of self esteem in the culprit. For sure it was for me in epochs passed. In other cases it may be obsessive compulsive disorder, a desire to participate in a mythical intellectual aristocracy or even a direct need to make others miserable. Though I’ve never been obsessive compulsive, I confess the other two misdemeanors at points in my past. It’s a daily meditation to never commit such atrocities. Atrocities! As for the original prompt, there are those who wish to remain inside their bubble. You see - their bubble is safe. I’m writing of intellectual (and cultural) bubbles. Ideas that challenge the beliefs held within said bubble upset the status-quo. They upset the equilibrium, no matter how ill founded, of mind. They commit a kind of heresy. Thus, those living in such bubbles, and especially those living in such bubbles with a lower sense of self worth, feel they must find rationale for the ideology that maintains their status-quo. All of this is very historically familiar. No matter the origin or “credulity” of the rationale, it will be found, be it in a scientific article (peer reviewed or not), in a religious text, in the diary of a friend or respected family member, or from the cryptic scratchings on a stone unearthed in the field beside the sacred lettuce crop. Sadly, bubble-folk don’t want to expand the membrane bordering their existence. They want to be right. And comfortable. (Oh! the Peter Hammill song “Comfortable”.) Being a Sort-of Fluffy, Woolen Thing https://flavigula.net/static/blog/202312260849.html 2023-12-26T08:49:00Z My friend Christian speaks often of sheep. I’d say he mostly does it in the political sense and in specific concerning vaccines. He has a poor opinion of vaccines in general and this may stem from related illnesses he’s had because of vaccines during his lifetime. It may also stem from other things, but those are matters I’d rather not discuss as no thing political has any place in this blog. I’ll start again. My friend Christian speaks often of sheep. He’s mostly used the term in the context of someone “blindly” following a rule or vaguely authoritarian mandate. Since the inception of mine and Jeníček’s now ancient semi-absurd campaign of fucksheep.org, my idea of sheep has been more general and even more abstract than merely blindly following authoritarian mandates. Most likely Christian’s idea is more general, as well, but being a sort-of fluffy, woolen thing himself, one never really knows. Those whom I (and Jeníček “back in the day”) term as sheep are those who are slaves to ideals and / or aspirations formed during a “lost” childhood or adolescence that they refuse to let be malleable later in life. This includes anyone who follows a religion, philosophy, ideology or methodology without questioning it. Having stated that, there are many exceptions, primarily those who have thought deeply about one of said religions, philosophies, ideologies or whatnot in comparison and contrast to other religions, philosophies, methodologies or whatnot and have elected to follow one of their choosing in any case. Following without questioning is the problem for me. However, if one makes a decision after having considered alternatives and / or ramifications, even if I personally don’t agree with that decision, then that’s copacetic by me. Not an ovine presence within sight and perhaps not even within hearing. Maybe they choose a path that I wouldn’t choose, but so be it. Patches of Greasy Residue on Plots of Impotent Land https://flavigula.net/static/blog/202312090842.html 2023-12-09T08:42:00Z Vlasta called me. How she had my number is anyone’s guess. She called me and I was in Prague. Why I was in Prague is anyone’s guess. Come pick me up at the bus station. That’s what she said. Or it wasn’t exactly what she said, but it was close. How close is anyone’s guess. So I arrived to whichever place she had declared and I picked her up. What did I pick her up in? I picked her up in my arms with an embrace. After all, it had been 18 years since we’d seen each other. She had aged, but not as much as I’d’ve imagined. She was still fit and only mildly crinkled. A good portion of Moravian women age very mildly. Apparently Vlasta was one of them. The first thing she did was offer me a cigarette. I was surprised and guffawed in my socially inappropriate way, that way that the truly important people in one’s life don’t mind. When did you start smoking? I asked. She replied I never started. I bought them for you. Ah yes! During a portion of the epoch when we spent time with each other, I was indeed a smoker. No longer, though. So I guffawed again. Her Moravian village had been decimated and her family and friends liquefied. She was off gallivanting around in Zlín and therefore missed all the fun. The biggest question in my mind was Why did you choose to contact me instead of multitudinous others in Prague and elsewhere that you know? She said to me It was simply an arbitrary choice. I guess that my name came up in the Lottery of Vlasta. She said to me I’ve spent my whole life meticulously planning every year and every month and every week and every day. All of my efforts are now patches of greasy residue on plots of impotent land. From now on, I make each decision with the roll of a die and I will stay its course. Kino Aero had been transformed into a hybrid cinema / bar / hotel. We went there. Why we went there I certainly can guess. One of my most embarrassing failures of memory during that epoch of wandering which was my life in the early ’00s was in Kino Aero. I sat with Jana One awaiting the start of a film. Which film it was is anyone’s guess, but I’d bet on Almodóvar. There was an “Almodóvar” festival at the time and Jana One was obsessed with Spanish “culture”. Personally, I’ve come to find Almodóvar’s films irritating at best and repellent at worst, but that’s for some future blog entry (or not). I any case, we sat waiting for the film to start and our protagonist (Vlasta) was sitting with a few friends (who apparently didn’t win the Vlasta lottery) in the row directly behind us. She caught my attention and presented me with a question that I don’t remember after all these years. The point is not the question she asked, however, but the fact that I didn’t remember her at all. My mind was, as some hick in South Carolina that I know likes to say, fuzzled back in that epoch. It was an embarrassing moment. It still lingers with me. Vlasta and I sat in the lobby of the transformed Kino Aero. After only a few moments of tiny talk, we fell into a so-called passionate kiss. More like a lustful kiss. Passion and lust are entirely separate phenomena. One should remember that. So, after only a few instants of miniscule talk, we fell into a lustful kiss. We groped each other. We would have gone all the way were in not for the grunting and the clearing-of-the-throating of the receptionist, who then asked if we were about to hrbit. She offered us a room, which turned out to be more of a closet with a cot and I suppose we did hrbit, but that is where the dream terminated. Why it terminated there is anyone’s guess. Fuck um. A High Probability that I Believed It https://flavigula.net/static/blog/202311171931.html 2023-11-17T19:31:00Z On the drive up to Lubbock from Seminole today for my father’s surgery, I was suddenly gripped by the memory of lying on my back on the floor of Jenn DuBois’s apartment in Galveston. Dave was also present, and later that same evening he appropriated my truck. And luckily, my SHOVEL, which incidentally was one of my brilliant gifts for the beginning of the 23rd year of my life, was in the “toolbox” that stretched from side to side in the bed of the truck. More about that later. I was lying on my back in Jenn DuBois’s apartment in Galveston. Her stereo system was in front of me, or more accurately, in front of my feet. I was listening to, at some volume, most likely, Here Comes the Flood by Peter Gabriel (the version from his first solo album). I was addled by alcohol. I was proclaiming over and over this is the best song in the history of the universe or some such rot. There’s a high probability that I believed it during that series of moments. Though I am not completely certain, this was the same evening when Dave “borrowed” my truck to go driving on the beach. I was possibly too addled by alcohol to join him, so I hung out with Jenn. However, I have no clear recollection. During Dave’s adventures on the beach, he got my truck STUCK. That was when the shovel came into play. I miss that guy. A Way to Take Part in the Humanity Around Me https://flavigula.net/static/blog/202311141415.html 2023-11-14T14:15:00Z My name is Shambal Brambel and I enjoy spiking peoples’ urine samples with drops of vodka. You may ask why I would do such a seemingly cruel thing. Well, personally, I don’t find it cruel at all. I consider it one of the most benevolent acts I’ve ever participated in. Participate may be the wrong word to use since I carry out the whole shebang myself, but I shan’t edit the previous sentence because I can also consider the job (spiking peoples’ urine samples with vodka is no longer simply a thing or an act - it is my profession) a way to take part in the humanity around me. Those that are my victims, though victim may be the wrong word to use since these humans receive a blessing, bring urine samples into our lab for various reasons, but mostly because they are forced to by their employers because in the past they have either been accused of being a “drug” addict or some sort of diseased misfit. I ensure that the results from our “lab” guarantee that the employers continue to find the victims or the blessed soiled. Consequently, the blessed are terminated of their employment - an employment that wasted their time and energy in any case. So, you see, these humans now have all the time allotted them each day to spend with their loved ones or to make art or to worship goats. In other words, they are once again a beneficial part of society. A side affect of my calling (it is more than a mere job - in fact, it is a direct order for the almighty that I carry out my duty of spiking urine samples with vodka) is that the other “workers” in my lab, all of whom have been at some point in the past some sort of “drug” addict or diseased misfit, in the end cannot resist the temptation and binge on the vodka tainted urine. They stumble helplessly around the lab as I sit in my corner, contented that my deeds bring a soft, gentle glow to the galaxy. Eventually, these hapless lab-rats of mine wean themselves off the alcoholic urine by moving step by step over to alcohol-free urine. They’ve even opened a “bar” around the corner that sells it on tap. Where they get all that urine, I am not tangibly sure, but I can probably guess. The world and even the galaxy or so-called universe is a better place. Work Slopped into the Water https://flavigula.net/static/blog/202308260907.html 2023-08-26T09:07:00Z We extracted cases and cases of jars from the dispensa and from the two storage units on the other side of the finca. Some had been placed there nearly two decades ago. They were cherries and figs and myriad other comestibles preserved for an unknown future in this realm by a person who no longer lingers in said realm. She was a product of another time, of a generation and a mentality that never accustomed itself to an abundance now taken for granted. We forced each jar open with tines of forks and now cracked blades of cheap dinnerware. Contents were poured into buckets. One by one, I lugged these buckets to the stream that flows beside the house, that flows to river Tirón and finally is lost forever to the Cantabrian Sea. I tipped the buckets and hours and days and weeks and months of work slopped into the water. It was work with intent but in the end no purpose. It was work with no purpose but its own doing, and later, its own undoing. Perhaps They are Evolved Motile Barnacles https://flavigula.net/static/blog/202308050751.html 2023-08-05T07:51:00Z I listen to Arve Henriksen as I sit in the Sala de Estar in Frezzie. The house and its surroundings are brimming with various in-laws. There must be over a thousand here. I’m not sure what the food and / or water is laced with that allows them to breed in such a fashion. Now that I think of it, it may not be the food and / or water at all, but the over-exposure to radiation which is present in the Mediterranean environs. Whatever it is, in-laws sprout from every crevice. They don’t even have to pipe each other to create offspring. I suppose this is also an aftereffect of the radiation. Many of them breed by spores and / or budding. Perhaps they are evolved motile barnacles. Though I’ve waited until now to write about it, over the epochs I’ve considered what simplicities I need to stay content with life - to, as it were, keep the existential beast at bay. What is my metaphorical anti-depressant medication? Jesus and Allah and Ba’al help me were I ever to take the real things. They suck away individuality like a fat dude living in Myrtle Beach sucks away the meat of an oyster, leaving only its lustrous shell. Lustrous, maybe, but still a thing of pure surface aesthetic. Ah, but that is a subject for a future time, or, in fact, maybe for no time at all as I think I just summed up my opinion of anti-depressant medication. So! Over the epochs I’ve considered what simplicities I need to stay content with life - to, as it were, keep the existential fat dude living in Myrtle Beach at bay. I admit that it is not hard for me, as long as I am given enough leash by either my personal environs or any addictions that play havoc with me from time to time when I am alone. Yes, it is simple. But there is a very distinct division in my mind between planning the simplicities that keep the existential escalator ride to the pit at bay and the reality of making said simplicities come alive. I believe at one point in my chequered (in cheques of grey - no no - never just black and white or even the red and the black) past, I could lie awake on my floor or bed or couch in the morning and dream, wakingly, of what I might accomplish. I could be a sort of idea man, so to speak. The thoughts of the simplicities I could accomplish kept me content through at least the morning. I dare not think that just morning dreaming put me in some sort of euphoria, because most of the portion of my chequered past of which I am writing was riddled with “depression” - or at least malcontentment. Epochs passed. Yeah, I still lie for a bit on my bed or on my couch or on my bench or floor and wonder about the simplicities I could bring to life, but I do not do it for long. Best get up and write a poem. Best rise from the murk and compose a few bars of music. Best wrest myself from the morning’s fog and type this Martenblog entry. Having done any one of these things, everything else comes easier throughout the day - and this includes further creativity. I must stress one thing. I don’t worry too much about the “quality” (always relative to my view in any case) of the morning simplicities I bring to life. They can always be used as raw material no matter their “worth”. The act of not just being an idler - an idea man - but a being that forms a few simplicities from nothing, shuts the existential maw of infinity away. Shuts it away for at least a bit - though never perpetually. Possibly only the dreaded path of medication could shut it away perpetually, but then where would the fright and the friction be that is essential for morning frissons? It Wasn't Exactly a Stench https://flavigula.net/static/blog/202307220812.html 2023-07-22T08:12:00Z So, Mirka was driving. I don’t know the make and / or model of the vehicle because (one) I am oblivious to the automobile world and (two) everything else happening may have been a bit distracting. In the passenger’s seat was an abomination. What sort of abomination was it? It could have been a very kind abomination for all I know. I am unsure. Whatever personality traits it had, it was still an abomination, and I’m not only stating that in regard to its appearance. There was a particular smell. It wasn’t exactly a stench, but had a way of worming itself into the molecular structure of the atmosphere itself. It spoke from time to time, but only to Mirka, and in a guttural tongue unlike Czech or Spanish or English or any other language I’ve heard in the last few millennia. So, grunt grunt uggh nngh fffmmevv it said. It may have also said ffmpeg, pronounced as a single syllable, but I cannot recall clearly. So, grunt grunt uggh nngh fffmmevv indeed. Mirka always politely replied to the abomination, but in Czech, as it is her so-called mother tongue. In the back seat, where we certainly belong, sat Christian and I. We discussed Steely Dan. In fact, we were listening to Steely Dan. Steely Dan, much like the not-quite-stench of the abomination, wormed itself from an unknown sound source into the molecular structure of the atmosphere. The album was either The Royal Scam or Countdown to Ecstasy. At certain moments, we were both listening carefully, but at others, Christian insisted in singing some song from the Aja album OVER the music that had already wormed itself into the molecular structure of the atmosphere. Doesn’t this sound like?… and he sang a bit from Peg or Black Cow. At some point during this interchange between myself, Christian, the actual music that had wormed itself into the molecular structure of the atmosphere and Christian’s inner dialogue, Mirka, to whom I’d been oblivious for some time, assuming she was absorbed in the Czech-grunt exchange with the abomination, turned to me then indicated with a flick of her eyeballs Christian. She said, do what we talked about. So, I did! I quickly reached over Christian, who was still humming some other Steely Dan which was out of sync with the Steely Dan that had wormed itself into the molecular structure of the atmosphere, and opened the door. I gave him a shove and he went flying. Yes - flying. The outside was not a road or succession of fields or anything terrestrial, but instead a blackness dotted with debris. Christian joined this debris. Cut to some time in the future. Mirka and I are enjoying tea. It is Hojicha. She asks me, point-blank: Is Christian still jetsam? I say: Yeah - as far as I know. Good.