As I mentioned in one or another of my past lives, I recently completed An Artist of the Floating World by Kazuo Ishiguro. It is a fine tome and I recommend it to all. Of course, I use the word tome here in a virtual sense, as I did not hold the actual weight of the book in my hand. Rather, I held the weight of the apparatus that contained a digital version of the book in my hand. It did not once slip, despite its weight and its multitudinous contents.

Before I write a bit more about the contents of the digital version of the tome that forms a small portion of the contents of the apparatus on which I read, I’d mention that I’ve been in a rather nostalgic mood of late. Perhaps this is because of dreams that have recently haunted me. One thing that I’ve repeatedly escaped from in my life, much to my folly, is a stable lump of camaraderie. By this I mean a gaggle of humans I can relate to and thus spend time with mucking about with no particular objective in mind. Why have I repeatedly escaped? Many times, it’s been following a woman or even employment. Other times it’s been because of one silliness or another that came to my head to do that caused a rift in the posse. I now choose the word posse en vez de gaggle as it was (is?) John’s preferred word.

I can’t help but admit that this emptiness has been partially spawned by my intermittent communication with Loyal over the past epoch. Our personal rift, of which I regret possibly infinitely, happened because of a woman, partially. That woman had nothing to do with it, however. My personal obsession with her had everything to do with it. That and a “need” for a constant non-clarity of my senses, exponentiating the situation. What’s done is done, naturally, as they say, but regret is the bog one drifts in ever afterwards. Do they say that? Who are these they, anyway, and why do I speak of them? That is a discussion for another time, or for never, possibly.

Loyal:

What do you think of the idea that happiness is a by-product of fulfillment?

He asked me that in an email sometime in 1997. I was, unbeknownst to me at the time, about to drown in the bog of my relationship with Brynn. I only searched superficially, but could not find my reply to him back then. My reply now is immediate, however. I think that happiness for me is directly related to fulfillment. In an effort to achieve happiness, I constantly create small projects for myself to arrive at the sensation of fulfillment. These projects don’t need to be in any way complex, involved, or with greater purpose. Simply writing a blog entry is one. Going through an old document about programming my old HP calculator to re-learn part of the process is another. Setting up a patch on the modular synth that isn’t simply grating. Doing an ambient improv with Uruqi and its accompaniments. Worshipping goats symbolically by adding their precious lactate to my coffee.

I do get quite a bit of fulfillment from interactions online, and especially discussions about music, writing, literature, programming and worshipping goats. I cannot know whether it is a product of what I grew old being accustomed to or if it is something inherently natural, but I always feel more fulfilled when I interact with people I can relate to in person. I’d guess it is the former and that online interaction will eventually take the place of face to face communication for humans in even the most intimate contexts - but that is a discussion for another time, or for never, perhaps. During these somewhat desultory dreams, my subconscious is reminding me that I miss interaction with FRIENDS in small groups around cluttered tables filled with drained coffee cups. Unfortunately for me, these FRIENDS are scattered across several continents. Bastards.

When you are young, there are many things which appear dull and lifeless. But as you grow older, you will find these are the very things that are most important to you.

So I’ve reached the point in the entry where the Ishiguro quote arbitrarily appears. I must fit it in context. The first connection I espy is that appear dull and lifeless can be synonymous with are taken for granted. The hara of those things does not radiate the sort of capturing aura for youth that entices. I may be reaching here, but I perhaps took for granted my circle of friends. For a certain mental health, I relied on them much more than I thought. Were they dull and lifeless? No - so my analogy doesn’t exactly hold. But they were, in a way, taken for granted and sorely missed now.

What may have been seen as dull and lifeless were the seemingly insipid days whiled away with those humans. To have moments that I could while away similarly now that I’ve grown into decrepitude would be a treasure. To have the sensation of fulfillment simply from languid days would be a treasure. Was it the presence of the humans around me that made that time so special? Or was it that time itself moved differently? Or that I didn’t think about the passing of moments much at all (not necessarily true - but that is a discussion for another time, or for never, perhaps). Maybe the key to the Ishiguro quote is time, itself, and my perception of it. In this epoch, I’m always in a “rush” to fill ALL of the time with events that give me the sensation of fulfillment. If I’m idle, I feel a certain uneasiness. It’s true that IN A WAY, I’ve always been like this, but, as decrepitude encroached and engulfed, it became a way of life.

Where are the languid days passed with (or without?) laughing, petulant friends that resulted in fulfillment? Sure, they exist in a hospoda here or a café there with Michal or Dani, or even walking in Pagan Park whilst talking on the phone with that shattered husk of a human, Christian. I’m guessing it’s more the sloshy chemicals in my brain creating a sensation than it is reality, but the frequency of these languid moments of fulfillment have decreased. They’ve become a diminished speck.

I read the book Behold the Man by Michael Moorcork possibly twice when I was approximately 21 years old. I recall suggesting it to various friends. They also read it, though most likely only once. One friend was Raun, and he told me that it was not to his taste. Those were not his exact words. He related that the style of the novel didn’t emulsify his gravy. The style is indeed choppy, but so is life, in my opinion. In any case, it works for me.

In specific, this morning and yesterday, I was thinking about Karl and his short time with the Essenes. Though their ways were meditative and peaceful, he considered them “clinically” insane. Their belief that God’s kingdom was soon to be again on earth is startlingly similar to that of sects that spring up again and again in the modern world. Those sects, of course, and especially after any act of extremism, are considered to be at least led by a madman.

How the actions of a small group of insane individuals led to an extreme result (the crucifixion) and furthermore to a mythos surrounding said crucifixion isn’t really what I was thinking about, however. At the point in history when the Essenes existed, there didn’t exist (ostensibly) organizations or institutions to contain those afflicted by such insanities. The unchecked spread of their actions, therefore, and extreme acts and subsequent mythos, were more widespread.

The cultures in which we live have created measures to make sure such things no longer happen, I suppose squelching the birth of further mythos. I’ve not been known to be a big fan of mythos in general, anyhow. So fuck um.

I recently finished An Artist in a Floating World by Kazuo Ishiguro. It was the only novel I’d never read by him. I’ve read others multiple times, especially The Unconsoled, which remains one of my favourite pieces of literature.

How so much more honourable is such a contest, in which one’s moral conduct and achievement are brought as witnesses rather than the size of one’s purse.

I’m reminded of the film Ghost Dog where characters often remark that ancient Japan must have been a strange place or somesuch. I posit that the mentality stated in the above quote would be out of place in much of the modern world. I’ve lived in a universe where one’s place is established by either financial success or a type of success created from a vague sort of social status obtained in various manners rarely relating to ethics. My attitude, even though (or possibly because) I am a rebel, has been wholly tainted by this “ideology”. People on Mastodon write again and again about late capitalism and that’s as good a name for the financial part of it as any. As for the other part - that vague social status - its ranks are filled with obsequious crowd pleasers, to be generous (and very general).

There are rare occasions where works of artists, artisans and scientists grant their makers positions of status, but mostly if the results, in the end, make money. I’ll put this down to late capitalism.

There is rarely an occasion, however, when those achievements walk alongside the ethical behaviour of said artists, artisans or scientists. The only glaring examples are the retroactive destruction of the career of an artist, artisan or scientist when some moral foible is publicly brought to light.

The Ishiguro quote, especially in context, is more concerned with one who rises above the surface scum because of comparative analysis of how one has lived ethically. My father used to talk about integrity during my childhood and adolescence. Only later did I find out that he had a double standard. I suppose that’s not abnormal, though that’s a discussion for another epoch. Integrity, in the sense he used to use, is close to what Ishiguro is referring to here.

One must note that Ishiguro is not attempting to impress his ethical views on the reader. He is just an observer of how cultural customs rule and adherence to them can destroy one’s life.

I was pretty bad at integrity as an adolescent. As a rebel, I discarded any advice my father handed out (and there was much) and followed my own ideologies, cobbled together from lyrics, literature and my limited view of the universe from Fort Stockton, Texas. Were there a contest at the time based on ethical behaviour, I would not have risen above the surface scum. Though I doubt the drug addled alcoholics and religious zealots alike surrounding me at the time would have fared much better. But who am I to judge? I never liked hierarchies anyway. Let’s all be surface scum.

During that time of integrity, it was still the ones that came from families with money who were regarded as la creme de la creme. In concentric circles moving away from the tantalising centre, were the athletes, then the academically successful. The amount of social interaction, another indicator of success, waned with distance from the centre, or existed because of that distance. Or were in balance.

Besides my father’s ramblings about integrity, the only other moral centerpiece I grew up with was religion. In specific, Presbyterian upbringing and being surrounded by other protestant denominations during daily life. However, their ethics seemed more like lines in pages in a rulebook that could be discarded if it interfered with social status.

That was my culture. How was it like the one Ishiguro described in An Artist in a Floating World? The microcosm that produced the contest of moral conduct and achievement invented (or not) by Ishiguro couldn’t have existed in West Texas in the 80s. Moral codes taught by protestants were flimsy. Status was inevitably achieved by familial position (dinero, honeyboničko), athletic prowess, or - a distant third - academic achievement in school. Though I may have ended up seething with the rest of the scum on the surface, or even sinking below at the time, a West Texan world evolving from such alien ideology is an intriguing hallucination.

I began a new routine. I’ve noticed over the last years that I don’t listen to music as deeply as I used to. I am speaking of music that is not related to my own, of course. I used to spend intimate hours with albums. They converted to fluid pumping through my living corpse. Though it is a wholly different story, this routine began very late in my life - let’s say at the age of 14. In any bag of box cutters, in recent years, music that is not of my own creation has been relegated to the backdrop. I find this unfortunate because this fluid, delivered by the aural syringe of a pair of sound delivery apparatuses, used to, apart from other malformed garbage, be the lifeblood of my living corpse.

To return to this routine, I’ve chosen an album to become intimate with. I shall choose another every fifteen days or so. The first one is Katy Lied by Steely Dan. I’ve probably listened to it eleven times through at this point, and the second half even more. Why the second half? Well - take a listen! Doctor Wu and Your Gold Teeth II are especially brilliant. Their use of modality and surprising shifts in tonal center appeals to my oscillating lizard brain.

The new routine has forced me to pay attention a bit more to all music that is going on around me, derelegating it a bit from the backdrop. For example, the new Ikarus album has been signing in my ears from time to time and its style is especially inspirational. Also, whilst intimately scouring red sand blown from another continent onto our balcony yesterday, I employed the types of sound delivery apparatuses that cling to one’s noggin. Steely Dan wasn’t in evidence (nor Ikarus), but much Tangerine Dream crossed my signal path. More importantly, a track from Sirius and the Ghosts by Daniel Denis was a highlight. I find it a bit odd that I am not particularly familiar with the album. Or, rather, I am not intimate with the album. Why do I find this odd? Various people have heard me babble from time to time about how Herr Denis is my favourite composer. So Sirius and the Ghosts is next.

Sitting at Katr, waiting for a hungover James to awaken from his hibernation, I’m mildly shocked to hear There Was a Little Boy by Toy Matinee dribble down from the sound system buckets. It’s been centuries since I’ve listened to it, though I recognized it almost immediately. Normally, I’d be filled with nostalgia and start ordering beers, but I’ve been trying to work past normality for a good while now.

Fuck um.

As I have noted, I changed the architecture of Martenblog. Specifically, I rid it of MongoDB, opting for a filesystem storage. Even the topics themselves are represented by a colossal json that occludes the memory of several partial universes. I’m content with the new form. Form is a word that our happy-go-lucky chum Christian often uses to describe structures created and maintained since antiquity, and mostly in the realm of musics and arts. He is very happy-go-lucky. In fact, he is so happy-go-lucky that he has no idea of the architecture change which envelopes Martenblog. No superficial modification is apparent. The form between the fundamental and the surface blundered into a new reality. In this respect, we are all happy-go-lucky.

Each entry is a separate file. New raw input can be placed anywhere as long as it adheres to a proprietary form. Said proprietary form is quite simple and consists of a header and body like this:

Subject: The Heat Death of the Universe
Topic: relationships,entropy

Babble burble blather in markdown.

I simply execute a function on the filename and it is transformed. Existence becomes a bit more happy-go-lucky.

Why did I opt for MongoDB in the first place, an only semi-happy-go-lucky reader might ask? Well! I wanted to learn MongoDB, after all. What better way to do it than insert it into a personal project. Martenblog has blundered through a number of database forms during its existence since 2006. I believe the original was MySql. MySql is an abomination, of course. Perhaps some particularly happy-go-lucky humans in a few partial universes may disagree with this statement, but I stand by it. I stand by it in any number of partial universes.

Obviously MongoDB is a bit overblown for a blog. It’s taken me approximately 12 years to guide the blundering form into the simple nirvana of the filesystem. What tempered grace! What patience! I’ve read much discussion concerning data longevity, and in particular personal data longevity. I haven’t read anything about Martenblog’s longevity in specific, but I assure myself that the blunderings of a few partial universes need its persistence. It’s obvious to me that the less complex a system is, the easier it is to maintain its longevity. It follows that MongoDB is scrapped. This change is on the relative heels of making the whole of the codebase a so-called static blog generator with a few accessory items such as the creation of Rss & Atom feeds, as well as accessing a much maligned Postgres (only slightly less of an abomination than MySql) database for Lakife. I’ll eventually blunder away from the latter.

The new Martenblog system is in place. Rejoice. I’ve swiped the subject of this entry from the Peter Blegvad song dribbling from my immaculately white studio monitors. We all know the name of the specific song, so I shan’t go into details. The point now is to test an EDIT of an entry.

I’m in Ruidoso with my parents once again, at the Inn of the Mountain Gods. I’ve perused the area for a while and haven’t seen a sign of any actual Gods. However, they may be in a form that is not obvious to me. For example, they may be some of the duck-like creatures floating on the lake, waiting to smite anyone who gives them a passing, peculiar glance. I say so because I’ve heard that Gods are arbitrarily wrathful. Or, they may be one of the multitudinous microbes that infest the mouth of a screaming infant in one of the rooms of the Inn. Perhaps microbes can also be wrathful and smite the owners of said infant, or even the infant itself. Call me a ruffian, but at the least I’m honest in saying that I’m no fan of infants. I understand their purpose, of course, but it tries my tolerance to be around them. Ah well.

Speaking (or typing, or musing, or blathering in either spoken or typewritten form) of microbes, lots of people seem to be discussing them these days. The vast majority of these blatherers have acquired the information they blather about not from any sort of rigid and systematic study, but from hearsay or aggregators. That’s all I have to say (or type, or muse or blather in either spoken or typewritten form) about the subject.

I began this blog entry by stating that I am in Ruidoso with my parents once again. This is a fact. Or it is a fact in this specific infinity of quantum universes. The purpose of the entry is to discuss my parents and their relation, as I see it, to the modern world. So I’ll get with it.

In many respects, I think they are lost. I think of the stereotype that states that one begins a regression towards infancy as old age progresses. I think this stereotype applies to an extent. However, I’ve observed that the actual point of regression oscillates wildly between the 1950s and 1980s.

My father was born in 1938 and my mother in 1942, putting them in their teens in the 1950s. Stereotypically (again), many people return to this epoch of their life, airbrushing it into the so-called golden years. My father is one of these many people. In the 80s, my brother and I were youth and did the bidding of my parents, travelled with them and were basically under their (far too controlling, in my opinion) eye. Up to this decade, they were able to adapt to the changing landscape of the world. They did not have difficulties moving from village to city and back again, and though they preferred the tranquil and gossipy life of the former, the latter did not rattle them as it does now.

Now I cannot imagine either of them coping in a place like Austin, or even Lubbock. Though it’s true that Austin was somewhat smaller in the 80s, the main issue I sense is an intolerance from age. As time passed, they gradually lost their adaptability. I watch them struggle with interaction even with the waitress at the restaurant here at the Inn. One could also claim generation gap (in their case, multiple generations), but I don’t think generation gap is the base reason. My father seems to interact with the people around him as if they understand the mannerisms of a bygone epoch. Yeah - the 1950s.

They, themselves - especially my mother - are not blind to this drift to the past. During a ride around town (meaning a ride along the twisty roads consisting of the scattered outskirts, among farms and mini-ranches), she lamented that my father was somewhat trapped in a sentimental bog form from an idealised (my word) adolescence. In fact, one of the main reasons they moved from Fort Stockton to Seminole was because he grew up here. He was convinced that he’d start seeing his old friends again, even reconnect with high school ex-girlfriends. Of course, sixty years on, those people, and yes, some still lived in Seminole, had created vastly different lives. I’ve never talked directly to my father about it, but I can imagine he was bitterly disappointed.

I imagine that it’s not uncommon to want to migrate from the speed of city life to a place with a more comfortable pace as one ages. Or, at least I can imagine it for some types of personalities. However, for my parents, it is extreme. Anything out of the realm of small town bustle is much too fast for them. In contrast, their patience has decreased exponentially. (Not that my father was EVER patient.) Again, I’ll go with the restaurant example. Big city restaurants (let’s pretend that Ruidoso is a big city for a moment) make one WAIT for service. To me, this is natural. To them, and especially after Covid lockdowns making restaurant visits even in Seminole more infrequent, service should be provided immediately after they sit down. The food should come a few minutes later. After all, they are the only ones in the restaurant, right?

This is not an exaggeration. Especially for my father, any sort of waiting is intolerable. This phenomenon of getting to the next thing as quickly as possible makes little sense to me. I’ve seen him savour the moment when playing a game (cribbage?), for example, or sitting in front of a slot machine (but only whilst winning), but this feature of his personality doesn’t extend past those and a few other activities. Everything else is rush to get on with the next timeslotted item. The paradox is grotesque. Retire from a bustle to begin a new type of bustle to get to where? Death?

No thanks, vole.

Though I ignore it as much as possible, I am at times hit in the face (or thorax, or abdomen) by the naked capitalistic greed of the country in which I currently reside. My glorious mobile service provider, AT&T, is going through a cessation stage for what they term as incompatible phones. What is an incompatible phone, you may ask? Well, my Fairphone 3, for one. Any phone that is not either bought blatantly with a Jaundiced Orchestration of Corporate Kibble (furthermore abbreviated to JOCK) or somehow registered as a phone subsumed by AT&T during JOCK processing is phased out. So the limp and brusque of it is that I had to purchase a new phone that corresponds to my JOCK yesterday.

Advantages do exist, of course, including the orifice melting speed of 5G, but one has to augment one’s JOCK to have the ability to tether to one’s phone or create a hotspot. Huh? I’m used to life in Europe. I had a phone. I put a sim card into it. That sim card was tied to some more nominally capitalistic enterprise. I could then do whatever I wanted with said phone, including simple things like tethering and creating a hotspot.

It seems the base JOCK is just that: as little as the service provider can provide and still call it a service. Everything else is extra.

When little (I laughingly dub it little) annoyances like this rear their noggins, I try desperately to hold to positivity. For now, I must remain in the good ol’ USA. Fuck um.

My ears are ringing, exacerbated by an unknown illness that has occupied my body for the last six days. Is it receding? I hope so, because along for a ride with it is a depression that is not quite crippling psychologically, but close enough to be a consistent itch. Do I like itches? I do not like itches.

The funk has not prevented me from composing, however. That being written, the newest piece, at first designed to be part of the Naviar Haiku challenge, is strangely lacklustre. Many ideas lounge about its corridors, but, though they share many roots, do not intertwine to my satisfaction. My current view is that it’ll remain as is or very similar, be “released” as the next Naviar Haiku challenge and then returned to during a future epoch for revision. Of course, future epochs are fickle as to whether they even choose to arrive. Bastard chunks of arbitrary time.

I’ve been listening to Thelonious Monk repeatedly of late. Corollarily, I’ve begun to practise some of his pieces on guitar. I laughingly say practise. I go over the chord progression of Ask Me Now every day in various permutations, mostly using it as a basis for arpeggio studies. I like the constant return to Ebm7 / Ab7 / Dmaj7 (yeah - ii V I) after the fun, descending minor / tritone-sub 7 sequences. The B7lyd (which is what I call a lydian dominant chord) to Bb7 that sets up the aforementioned ii V I, which is really just another ii V I, albeit a minor one resolving to Ebm7 and having B7lyd substitute for Fm7. In fact, I just put the tune on now (from Solo Monk). Everyone is welcome to whip out their axe-flute, mandolin, jaw-harp, femur-whistle and 80s Casio keyboard to vamp along. Ready? Kar, Tir, Taf, Jen, GO!

I sip coffee and pause from writing at the moment to place my two newest improvisations onto Funkwhale, both of which involve experimentation with my newest pedal, the Pladask Elektrisk Baklengs. I encourage everyone to acquire and / or purloin one, being a granular synthesizer with highly interactive controls.

=> https://funkwhale.thurk.org Oh, the funk!

Accomplished. They are, as someone in the aether says, live.

=> https://funkwhale.thurk.org/library/tracks/1904/ Globular Cluster Blues

=> https://funkwhale.thurk.org/library/tracks/1903/ Preparar un Bizcocho para el Último Orintorrinco

I’m unsure of the origin of the funk. That sentence was the one that sprang to mind to begin this paragraph. Whence it sprang, I do not know, though I suspect from some “automated” part of my mind that enjoys beginning paragraphs with untruths. I know exactly the origin, or, actually, multiple origins of my funk, or shall I call it what it really is: minor depression. One of the origins is from consuming alcohol constantly for circa 36 hours last week. Just about this very time last week, in fact! The physical hangover was not particularly bad, but I contracted an advanced form of the sniffles during the physical low which resulted, and those sniffles have not yet left my fleshy bodice. Any sort of illness “helps” depression along, of course, and by “helps” i mean exacerbates it.

However, flashes of happiness, or perhaps contentment, especially whilst working on the aforementioned music have indicated that the sniffles (and therefore depression) are receding.

Other origins include dealing with my parents, and especially my father, on a daily basis. It is exasperating work. It is draining work. By the end of each day, my thoughts are blurry and subdued. Thus, early, like at this very moment, is the time where I can create, be in writing or music. The last weeks have seen woefully little of the former!

And yet other origins are the abandonment of my former life in Logroño, but I have already written about that extensively.

I drive the aforementioned father to Midland for medical reasons today. Big fun. A goal is to try to get some Monk practise in before the journey.

Wish me huck. Yes - huck.

The last two days, and including this morning, I have a marked lack of energy, both psychologically and physically. I presume the culprit is the wasting illness that has plagued me for several centuries. It’s a wonder that there are any cells left in me. I should be a grey wraith wandering in Pagan Park. Perhaps I am and thus hallucinating my current life, including typing on a laptop I named Pennanti. The fate wouldn’t be so bad, in fact.

Regaining semblance of energy today will involve imbibing commodious containers filled with various caffeinated beverages. It will also involve receiving my Argon8 synthesizer. I shall be so invigorated that I’ll not sleep again for centuries and the so-call wasting disease will be a thing of the distant past.

Which brings me to an only distantly related topic.

I’ve posited that in a time of extended sensory denial, the mind will create its own universe in which to live. The phenomenon may also happen at the brink of death or during the process of dying itself. And, like dreams are rarely cognizant of the way time passes in the real world, the process could involve experiencing a whole separate (but not quite completely separate) lifetime.

So, possibly in the real world, I am in a sensory deprivation chamber, or even have had my brain removed completely. Without sensory apparati attached to the brain, the result is the same. The universe I have concocted includes me typing on Pennanti. Oh, what solipsism!

But it doesn’t have to be complete solipsism. Each subsequent universe the brain creates, and universes within universes created by the created brain / mind again either in some state of sensory deprivation or in the process of dying, could be a modified form of the original universe I have lived (or am currently living - in a state of sensory deprivation or in the process of dying) through. Therefore, a sense of deja vu and even previous lives is intact. The creatures and objects I interact with are eidolons of the ones who originally shaped me. It is a re-experiencing of the initial course of my life, and variations on it.

Well, isn’t that grand!