Screaming Their Vacant Passion
Yesterday in the early morning hours, meaning not approximately three and a half or four hours after midnight, but instead approximately an hour an a half or an hour before noon, we set off in the “car” from Praha to Jena with intent to see Gong play an intimate concert in a strange little “club” called “KuBa”. However, Before setting off from Praha to Jena, I had to set off from my flat to Ivanečka’s flat, which I did at approximately two hours and a half before noon. And, additionally, before setting of from my flat to Ivanečka’s flat, I spent some time with both my guitar and with Peiločja. I’ve been rather worried about her, in fact, as she seems a bit listless of late. I shall carve out larger chunks of time for play with her and insert them into my routine.
V každém připadě, yesterday, in the early morning hours that weren’t actually what most would term early morning hours, we set off to Jena from Prague in order to see Gong. We listened to Bright Spirit, Unending Ascending and Pulsing Signals on the way. Ivanečka was slightly amused at the lyrics of You Can’t Kill Me. It’s a telling song and it is, indeed, amusing! I am a fan of this combination in all sorts of art. During her early morning hours, she created for me hummus. I consumed it happily with chunks of celery, fennel and s červenou paprikou. It was delightful. We sped around the outskirts of Dresden and through a city that some might still call a just an open stretch of land called Chemnitz. One must remember that any “city” with a population of less than 750 000 (human) inhabitants is not worth living in or even considering in the terms of existence. Veering to the right, northwards, our destination grew closer and as we drove alongside a wide forest bordering a river, we knew somehow that we were in another open stretch of land called Jena.
Our vehicle descended into a subterranean parking crypt lined with metal teeth intended to devour unsuspecting automobiles whilst their owners slept in sterile chambers upstairs. We made love on the fluffy, contoured “thing” the developers of such building leave in the chambers, then gazed out the window onto what we suspected was the limply beating heart of downtown Jena. There was a Dmko. We bought dates, as usual, as it is Ivanečka’s preferred snack.
We explored the open stretch of land and in doing so encountered a university in front of which yakking and bellowing students gathered to parade their bravado at being chosen to study in such a metropolis. Two in particular were extremely loud. This disproves what I was taught by the monks of my youth: that Germans are without exception demure humans.
As an aside, I believe that in this section of my life, however slight, small, thin or diminuative that it is, the main purpose is not to necessarily be content or happy or jolly, but to make DRONES. I am, as I write this, currently creating a drone. It’s point of reference is the non-demure faces of the people we passed in the streets, in the squares, in front of the university with open mouths, screaming their vacant passion into the confines of the universe. The drone is them, in Jena still, as I sit před počitačem forming art from walls, corridors and oubliettes of sound.
We begin with a simple fourth - B & E.
I sip my ranní napoj as the drone continues. I’m at about fifty minutes now and for the majority of that, I’ve neglected to note here the details of the transition between A melodic minor to A melodic minor. It’s been splendid. Just marvelous. Static changes are the types of changes that the questionably demure student population of Jena could probably relate to. Although one of the warmest compliments that anyone ever gave me was When I’m talking to you, Bob, I feel like I’m on LSD, some readers of the nigh-eternal Martenblog might have noticed that I am not very fond of small membranal communities. Or should I say small membranal civilizations. I’ll call Jena a small membranal civilization because, in my estimation, it is, indeed small. The population is between one and two hundred thousand humans. There are far less statuettes of goats. I find this not worthy of any claim of pseudo-lsd nor even of the real thing, though the difference in negligible, I assure you.
Smaller membranal civilizations tend to have much less permeable bubbles surrounding them, though, I admit, the university culture does allow for slightly more breathing. The nigella seeds, whipped and mutilated in my new coffee grinder, are exquisite in the ranní nápoj. In my humble opinion, an equilibrium must be struck somewhere regarding the permeability of the membranal lining of such civilizations. Or, really, of any civilization. On one extreme, there exist feedback loops that breed hatred of ideas or humans or both that originate outside the membranal lining. On the other extreme is a flattening of what makes the membranal civilization itself, gives it purpose and identity.
But enough pigswill.
On our wanderings, we also encountered a botanical garden that we could not enter. Well, probably we could have entered it for a price, but who wants to go see “plants” for a price? They were probably all plastic, anyway. It’s Germany, after all. Finally, we walked up to where the concert was to be held, and the walk itself did not take long at all. Did I mention that Jena is a miniature of a “city”? Well, it is! It’s no bigger than your great aunt’s tooshie. The place in which Gong was to play seemed more like an abandoned refuse center or even warehouse than any sort of recognizable concert hall. This disturbed me slightly, but I carried on with my day without partitioning my consciousness with an osmium blade. So did Ivanečka. We were enjoying the walk, as we are wont to do. We had an abstract concept called “time” on our side, so we started back towards our place of residence. Our only aside was in a “bio” shop where we picked up datle. We consumed these on the way back. Or were they fiky? One of the two, both serving the same purpose, though Ivanečka usually prefers the former, as I previously mentioned, and especially of the Medjool variety.
At our place of residence, we quickly prepared for departure once again since I have a bizarre obsession with being early to any concert I go to. This possibly originated in Dallas when, every summer, we’d go see Kansas play live at some open air thurk. By we, I mean Acy, Lee, others and I went. There are plenty of stories surrounding those concerts, but they are for another epoch, another blog entry, another space-heater tale on a hot-dog-less autumn evening. Acy always did his BEST to not make us exactly late, but to certainly never make us particularly early. I was so excited about seeing the music that the situation caused me anxiety. I was not used to anxiety. I’m still not used to anxiety. I’m not one that copes with anxiety well. Anxiety is not for me. Happily, I very rarely encounter things in my life that cause anxiety. But, even after all the epochs since Acy and that bizarre clump of individuals I was intimately a part of, I still get a slight anxious rush when I am due to see a concert (or even a film!). So we were off slightly early to get back to the sprawling shack-like structure that was to house the concert.
After arriving at the sprawling shack-like structure, we were informed by humans unloading beverages that the concert was not to be. It had been cancelled. Bastards! As with most things in my life, I took it in stride. We returned to our place of temporary residence and went to sleep early after having an extended german lesson (as Ivanečka is studying the language) by watching a badly produced tv flick about coppers chasing robbers. The ironic contrast of an evening watching a B police TV series versus seeing Gong only amused me further. Life oozes on.
The next day, we awoke at six, cleaned the filth from our living corpses and drove to Leipzig where we managed to make love in a dressing room at Cos and snack on various edible artifacts on a bench sitting in the sun near the Steigenberger hotel. It occurs to me that one without a specific mission has nothing to accomplish and therefore enjoys each event as if it were a goal in itself.