Accumulating music equipment is may way of subconsciously telling myself that I’ll be in the states a while. A Modal Argon8 is on the way, as well as a Subdelay phaser. I spend a small chunk of each day researching ways to expand my sound, which involves sitting in front of the computer watching videos on Youtube. I much prefer reading technical reviews, as I can go through them at my own pace. Videos force you into the pacing of their author. Video producers, no matter their intention, are a type of conductor. You must settle into their rhythm or simply abandon it.

Back to the accumulation: As I mentioned recently, the sensation and method is similar to my first forays into guitar sound sculpting, during which I was buying, reselling and trading pedals at a pace that would snap a stick figure back into its component parts. It excites me! And why shouldn’t it? I must be careful, however, to not let the fascination for acquisition of new hardware overtake the love for making music itself.

This sort of excitement for materialism is common. I’ve looked it directly in its cyclops eye many times in my life. One that springs to mind is whilst hanging out with Tomaš (Doot) in the winter 1998-1999. Oh yes, the very earliest of Praha-times. He posited that acquiring hi-fi equipment to blast punk music on was the ideal solution for heartbreak. He was trying to help his semi-depressed acquaintance, of course, and offered his method. It as a method that many men use. Yes, I’ll stereotype and say men here. I may be partially using it at this very moment, in fact, though apart from pangs that hit me at arbitrary moments during the day, I’m mostly through the longing for my place and life in Logroño - especially when I pause the chemical whorl of emotion and perceive my situation (and its contrasting past situation(s)) logically.

I pause to install a Neovim Lsp (Language Server Protocol) for Markdown. Yes! Another distraction. I’m full of um these days. I’ll follow up on that thought in a bit.

And TailwindCss is now thurking my markdown. It was already installed, actually, as it is (obviously by its title) the LSP for CSS (and Less, Sass, etc) and unfortunate me has to deal with stylesheets often. I simply had to place a certain file in the base Martenblog directory to let TailwindCss know to activate itself. Oh, happy me. It’s giving me quite a number of completions, as well, or is that nvim-cmp? Who knows? The whole Neovim setup process is partially still a mystery, which leads me to the topic of distractions.

I find myself wandering in circles, as it were, quite a bit these days. I place too many tasks within my mental agenda each morning and somehow get few of them completed to my liking. This contrasts sharply the way I lived in Logroño. I never rushed through my days. I placed practise time at a priority, but I knew that I would get there eventually, and if not, at least improve my playing greatly on the way. Seminole has an haze of stress that lingers. Do I feel like I’m aging too rapidly? I am not sure. Maybe. I don’t want to waste a modicum of my working hours. I find myself getting impatient with my mother when she constantly interrupts me whether I’m programming, practising or composing. I feel bad for her and am not happy with my reactions.

Adopting my Logroño attitude once again is a goal. Making some sort of task list would help, but not one with deadlines. Simply having the list would be beneficial as I could see my plodding progress. I shall begin now.

Daily

• Guitar practise from the book: attempt one hour and a half
• Current piece: just always get a few things added for the next morning’s analysis
• Experiment with new equipment: Do a short improv?

Weekly

• Elixir / Erlang: learn something
• Elixir: start rewriting the vDNA polling apparatus using Postgresql (& Ecto - much to learn there)
• Supercollider: stick with the videos. Experiment and improve. An eventual objecting is a complete piece in Supercollider

As a start, that is ok. It’ll be easier to accomplish the daily goals because they are more present. Weekly is harder since time is diffuse. Perhaps an after-the-fact bullet journal can come into play. I used to take notes of my daily activity, what all occurred to me, every evening. That is a slightly different methodology, but I should do BOTH. In my handwritten journal, I’ll scribe what I’ve accomplished each evening. I’ll also scribe instants that made impressions on my throughout the day.

I have made my organisational beginning. A new one! At last. We’ll see how long it lasts.

Oh, and every morning, type something into this grey box that some call Neovim. Any and all blather can be seed for future Martenblog entries.

Scott Walker’s Bolivia drones from my telephone to my left. I’m sitting up in my bed typing at 5.38. Upon awakening, I scrolled through my feed on Mastodon, came upon a toot mentioning @mailtape@masto.mtcrew.org, so I put their newest collection on. The music was selected by both the Guatemalan cellist Mabe Fratti and by the Mailtape crew themselves. So far so good! It’s yet another way to discover new music. Apart from the Scott Walker track, none of the other music is familiar.

So, I’m sitting up typing at 5.42. A routine has set in and, as it was in Logroño and even partially in Praha, it affects my perception of time. Yes - the feeling of time rushing! I dislike it and even though I get montones of things accomplished each day, by each evening everything seems a blur.

The only way I knew to break up this meta-monotony before was filling my lifestyle with chaos. If every hour brings a shock, a surprise or a goat headed into the void, time stands still. My mind sticks at each moment. The strategy of chaos will not work if I follow regular walks in the morning, guitar practise, debugging vDNA, Cribbage with dad, composition and refinement of a current piece, etc - the same each day. Is there a middle path? If so, I am unable to come up with it at the moment.

I already feel the weight of Seminole and its small town circle running monotony. I’m sure it contributes to my perception that time accelerates as well as the aforementioned routine. My objective is to get out as soon as possible. Soon is relative, of course. Ruidoso is my immediate goal. Ruidoso or thereabouts. A trip to Praha is in order, also, by or around the end of the year.

Seminole is also devoid of friendships. I shall write Sandy a message after I thurk this paragraph asking when she’d like to have dinner. Nothing contra my parents, but I need to communicate in person with other people from time to time. Communication via internet is also vital but somehow insufficient if it is the only conduit during vast spans of time, or apparently even throughout three weeks. The gaze of another human onto my form’s fleshy bulk refreshes my psyche from time to time. I am still an introvert, por supuesto, but not quite a hermit.

Not yet.

I started an idioms Lakife page - gemini://thurk.org/lakife/idioms.gmi - though there is only one idiom there currently, one that I created yesterday. Behold:

• I’m going down in a blaze of glory.
• Et mifek tul li jezor kez pelis nulu.
• I’m going downwards similarly (as) a goat towards the void.

As I walk each morning in Pagan Park, Seminole, Texas, I’ve been jotting down into Joplin snippets that spontaneously appear in my mind. This I do during each morning’s journey. I laughingly call it a “journey”! These jottings could be thought of as aphorisms. At least some of them could be thought of as aphorisms. Now that the word aphorisms appears in writing, or rather in font, I ask myself why an aphorism is an entity I instinctively find more important than an observation. The brief phrases I type into Joplin each morning are mere observations. Aphorism and observation are simply labels. The opinion that one label, because of its uppity associations, has a higher aesthetic value than another isn’t essential at all. In fact, I have no idea why I’m writing about it. Fuck um.

But to linger a moment - obsessive-compulsive wordsmithery reminds me of the conversation I had with Christián the other day. He was buggered by my use of the word thusly in a blog entry. He had learned, or spotted, or imbibed that thusly was not a word at all. Upon investigation, he found it was indeed regarded as a superfluous word by many. Me? I don’t mind. I’ll use it if its sonority in my mind fits with a phrase. Christián, however, had to investigate, as the conundrum of thusly from his past niggled at his cerebrum. Perhaps I was exhibiting a portion of this sort of obsessive-compulsive behaviour, as well, during the previous paragraph!

But -

As I walk each morning in Pagan Park, Seminole, Texas, I jot down into Joplin snippets that appear in my bleary brain. They are either observations of the environment around me, including other humans behaviours, or extrapolations in my mind concerning minutiae surrounding me. Some of these are imaginative and allegorical. Whatever their nature, they all improve my already light mood. I always have a certain light mood when I’m bleary and simultaneously strolling.

My intention is to have Tim recite the observations in his eloquent voice. I shall scatter them throughout the album I’m basing on the Morning Ambience recordings from June of this year. Aunque - the observation I want to discuss in this Martenblog entry is one that has little to do with observations within Pagan Park, Seminole, Texas. It is this:

Folk musics, or, rather, musics rooted in a singular cultural style, convey the sensation of remaining in a single place. Hybrid musics, in contrast, convey the sensation of a journey from place to place and not necessarily in the end returning to the point of origin.

For me, folk musics exist in bubbles. They certainly are appreciated outside of their bubble, but most of the actual development goes on within the bubble. By bubble here I mean cultural bubble. A cultural bubble doesn’t have to reside in a singular physical location. Its hollow tentacles can reach out amid the galaxy. But the fundamental, or beating heart of the bubble is rooted in one place. In this manner, folk musics remind me of centralised networks - or single server architecture - where all information passes through a core intelligence. Christian’s sacred Flamenco, produced in Cadiz or at the tip of a tentacle in Nuuk, will be filtered through the central server that is Andalucía.

Perhaps I am incorrect in stating that folk musics must have their server situated in a particular physical location. When Andalucía is an uninhabitable crust of parched and cracked hardpan, a forecast quickly rushing at it, the spirit of Flamenco, or, to keep with the nomenclature, its server will remain in virtual space - meaning within the many minds of its practitioners and aficionados. But the idea remains. Every falseta will be filtered through the server.

In contrast, hybrid musics are a cross cultural phenomenon. They are interbubble. They create their own meta-bubble and they exist as a distributed system, much like a peer to peer network. Informed by not only multiple folk musics, but by concepts outside of music altogether, a single server filtration system is too genre-focused for them. This is the reason they evoke a feeling of travel - of a sojourn. They gradually or rapidly pass through mores and meme-pools, wading and pondering some and sweeping through others.

One can opine that these hybrid musics only superficially skim over various cultural ideas, merely dipping their beaks briefly through the skin of various folk bubbles. Much like my ideas of politics and religion - that is, to take the bits that interest me from each flavour and discard the rest - hybrid musics do much the same. Sampling the single server rooted musics of the galaxy to combine them with ideas outside of traditional musics is the objective. The aim is to build something satisfying and new. Each composition isn’t necessarily a restructuring of a core idea or even a companion to other compositions within the same meta-bubble. They are journeys through the skein of consciousness collected from myriad sources.

I am perpetually reminded of something Mr Bender once said to me, simplifying life to a dichotomy, but still in a manner that resonates. He said that there must be people who stay in the villages they grew up in. They are there to continue its culture, it’s heritage, it’s bubble, if you will. They are the folk musics. Others will come from the outside to reside with them and learn their ways, of course, but they’ll never be the majority.

In contrast, there are the ones who leave, the ones who journey and live within multitudinous other cultures and eventually make their own. They are the hybrid musics. Their sojourn is usually fraught with difficulty because they don’t have the infrastructure the folkies have. Their support group is nothing more than the experience and exploration of the new and of their own imagination. Perseverance most usually results in beauty, however, or hideousness alike - depending on what one prefers.

I was going over in my mind whether it was important to share similar taste in Music and Art during a relationship. I suspect that it’s not a problem for most relationships, though when one of the participants of said relationship is passionate about particular arts or musics, it is a problem.

Creating art or music is a deeply personal pursuit and lack of appreciation from a partner, even if said partner is supportive of the activity (as Marisa was), can debilitate the whole partnership, creating a silently widening rift. It happened with Marisa and myself. Well, it was one of the factors that led to my leaving. The rift widened over time into a ravine and then bottomless gulf. On one edge I stood with my music. On the opposite edge, she stood, not interested in listening.

Understanding another’s artistic objectives is essential. Sitting with the art and pondering it is essential. This I say in the context of marriage, long term partnerships in general, and any sort of relationship where two humans are cohabitants, sharing significant blocks of time together.

It’s 6.26. I shall carry on with my typical morning routine (of these bleary times). I crawl to the kitchen, psychokinetically peel, de-seed and chop up half an avocado. Continuing during the few morning minutes during which I am a psychokinetic variety of creature, my mind opens a jar of Kalamata olives, a packet of cherry tomatoes and a tub of leafy spinach. They are sliced as if in a universe of knives too thin and sharp to be seen with human vision. The spinach seems to shred itself. All mixes together in an ever-patient porcelain salad bowl.

My psychokinesis wanes but I need not worry. The bottles of olive oil and Balsamic Vinegar (of which I only partake a few drops at a time) float out of the cupboard by their own accord. They are brilliant motile creatures, much like the erstwhile Shambal Brambel, who is now sadly sessile - rooted within a dome built from blocks of sod at the center of a wasteland marked by ever widening concentric circles. The bottles drift to the bowl into which my previously taut mind placed the vegetable and fruits. They pour themselves of the correct quantities into the bowl, which itself begins to vibrate and heave, mixing the contents within as flax seed appears out of aether and sprinkles itself upon the undulating vegetable and fruits.

Unseen by me, a pan has come to sit on a burner, filled sparsely with coriander and cumin seeds. A glop of olive oil seeps among the seeds, ostensibly from the very same motile bottle mentioned in the previous paragraph, as Portobello mushrooms rush from the gaping refrigerator, self-slicing during transit - in the kitchen’s airy space - and landing in the pan, in which the coriander and cumin have begun to sizzle.

A pair of emus named Vlad and Michaela prance from a darkened tunnel leading from either the void or Australia. With prosthetic pincers, they offer a precious egg, apparently just laid. Instead of taking it myself, I continue splayed on the floor to where I originally crawled as Vlad cracks the beastly, ovoid thing and lets its contents run into the pan. Pincers become spatula-like appendages and proceed to whip the eggs with the seeds and mushrooms. Machaela eructs a breath of salt that settles into the concoction.

The two retreat back to the tunnel that leads either to Australia or the void as I finally rise. The smell is enormous. Using my own limbs which are not yet prosthetic, nor pincers, nor spatula-like appendages, I empty the pan into a plate that was conveniently placed in the place where plates ought to be. I carry both vessels to a breakfast bar, at which I feast for centuries.

Thusly the morning routine concludes.

(The first draft of this was written 2021-01-27)

So, along with the current daily tea, which happens to be English Breakfast these days, I’ve selected Popol Vuh’s Letzte Tage - Letzte Nächte as this morning’s writing music. I’ve had this album sitting around on one hard drive or another since the mid ’00s. I’ve never once sat and listened to it actively. In fact, the only album that I’ve listened to actively by Popol Vuh is In Den Garten Pharoas, which is incredibly different in style than this one. A good question is whether I’ll actually, at any point in my future, listen to Letzte Tage - Letzte Nächte actively. I’d say the probability is between 15 and 20 percent. So, Herr Florian Fricke, you’ll probably be saddened to hear such a declaration. Being that you are a corpse, however, you may be well acquainted with the expression Fuck Um.

As I was preparing the aforementioned English Breakfast tea, I was thinking about the conversation I had with the narcissist asshole Christian Newman yesterday. Well, it wasn’t so much of a conversation but I declaration of my own whilst he wallowed within his own inner dialog. I shouldn’t be so hard on him, actually, concerning the inner dialog problem that has plagued him throughout his existence. He’s kept it under control, at least whilst conversing with me. Or at least whilst conversing with me lately. No such thing can be said about our other narcissist asshole, James Csaszar. Anyhow, back to the topic at hand. I was “conversing” with Christian yesterday and eructed the following paragraph into Telegram for him:

I find it amusing, or to you what you’d probably say - “meta-amusing” - that bubble-thinking people often will go to great lengths to share what they find as humorous to EVERYONE around them. I’m not accusing you of this, so don’t be an ego-centric asshole. I am just reminded of the phenomenon. Anyway - they’ll demonstrate something they find hilarious. If YOU don’t find it hilarious or even AS hilarious as they do, they’ll claim that you don’t UNDERSTAND the humour, especially if it is from a culture that is not of your particular origin. NOW - that’s pretentious and condescending, actually. YOU UNDERSTAND IT FINE. YOU JUST DON’T THINK IT IS FUNNY, OR AS FUNNY.

To be more general, I think most people choose what to believe. If some Spanish narcissist asshole decides to show me a video that is steeped in Spanish cultural humour and I don’t find it amusing, usually said Spanish narcissist asshole will label me as someone who just doesn’t understand Spanish humour. This was equally evident when I lived in the Czech Republic and Czech narcissist assholes would do the same. Even more ironic is that said Czech narcissist asshole would go on to explain that Czech humor is very dark and since I’ve lived a different kind of life, I wouldn’t get it. What pretentious nonsense!

So, continuing to be more general, I think most people choose what to believe. But they don’t necessarily to do consciously. A defense mechanism is in place to reject criticism. If I don’t find someone’s humour funny or I don’t find someone’s taste in music aligned with my own, it’s not that I don’t understand the humour or music. It’s simply because I don’t like it. Or, to be diplomatic, it doesn’t toot my muffin the same way that it toots the narcissist asshole’s muffin.

That being said, there are times when a narcissist asshole can be correct. A humorous video, a song, a poem, a film, a book, or the etchings on the skeleton of a Byzantine prostitute can be so steeped in a certain cultural more that it is impossible to get without sufficient knowledge of the context. Christian (a self-admitted narcissist asshole) had shown me a video of an Andalucian yodeler satirising about homeless beggars instead of lamenting lost love or spiritual decay poetically. Though the idea appeals to me, as does much satire, I found the manner in which it was executed crude. Thus, it did not humour me. I GOT it, but I didn’t think it was especially funny. I opened this paragraph by stating the opposite of what this example represents. It is true I may have found it slightly more funny were I to live in Andalucía and experience the daily shamblings and mumblings of the homeless there, but the crudeness of expression that did not jive with my taste in humour would still prevent me from chuckling with the same fervour as Herr Narcissist Asshole Christian.

I think most people choose what to believe. I’m sure a reader with an adroit mind can extrapolate this idea to current social and political situations. I personally shall not. I’m more interested in the phenomenon as an abstract living strategy. When someone, be it a narcissist asshole or not, chooses what to believe consciously, I’m convinced that it can story said narcissist asshole’s life from then on. The effects of the choice can weigh on the people around in different ways. This touches on my idea of fundamentalism, as well. My view is that someone can choose whatever they want to believe and I’ll have no problem with it unless they try to force this belief onto me or onto others around me during the multitudinous social occasions I attend. This is the evangelistic facet of my idea of fundamentalism. I don’t groove with it.

When I muse over what to choose to believe, I am usually musing over ideas that will not wrap groups of people in virtual fences or build virtual walls between groups or even individuals. I choose to believe in the Heat Death of the Universe or the Many Worlds or Many Minds theories. I can do this and explore my own inner world in the context of these ideas. I choose to believe in certain aspects of Taoist philosophy and certain aspects of Communist philosophy. I explore my own inner world in the context of these ideas.

My thoughts drift now to pigeonholing. I sat down on our balcony the other day and, of course, the three generations of women there were talking about politics. Kind of. I claimed that I agreed with parts of communist philosophy, but not with anything and certainly not with much of the implementation. María, another narcissist asshole, immediately tried to pigeonhole me and immediately started talking over me (in that uniquely Mediterranean manner) and asking me if the actions of - insert arbitrary Spanish communist figure here - were fair to - insert arbitrary group of Spanish peasants here - during - insert arbitrary time period in recent Spanish history here. I get it - most people need simple archetypes to be able to think clearly. Most people need to categorise everyone around them into one of these simple archetypes. I calmly explained to María, after I duct-taped her hands, feet and mouth and sequestered her to a damp cellar in Manchuria for several months, that I don’t subscribe to any particular political position or political philosophy. When I have time, I read and inform myself about certain things and take the bits I find fascinating, interesting or telltale and consider, but ultimately discard the rest.

I choose to believe that narcissist, pigeonholing assholes should indeed be duct-taped and sequestered to damp cellars in Manchuria. Fuck um.

(Original draft 2021-02-20. Heavily edited and added to today.)

I’ve just run out of tea. I remedy that by getting up from my half-lotus position and walking from “my” room into the kitchen. I refill the red cup perhaps 4/5 full of Earl Grey. I add Almond Milk. I return to “my” room and resume the half-lotus position. I sip the tea. I contemplate the next paragraph.

I shall now carry out those steps.

The tea is good. Saturday morning is quiet, as all others are sleeping. It’s my preferred state of the world. Roger Hodgson was right. Fuck um.

I just put on the album Traj Njim by Troissoeur. I had forgotten what it was. And, alas, that is the reason I activated it. It was a mystery. Mysteries aim to be solved, correct? Else why would they exist? Troissoeur is a collective that includes the double bass player (and composer) from Aranis. I could look up his name, but I shan’t. His initials will suffice. They are JV. The music is classically tinged folk to a fault, including vocals. To tell you the truth, though I admire the level of skill needed to produce the music fluidly, I am unsure if it “touches” me or not.

So why do I listen to music, anyway? If I peer back into my past, I can solidly say that during my teenage years, I was fixated on music that “spoke” to me. A gurgling infant could guess from this statement that I was focused more on lyrical themes. Complex textural and contrapuntal themes came into my liking, also, but I’d say that initially they were part of the backdroop. Yes, the backdroop. Perhaps the mathematical me, or the module that contained the mathematical me, inside, hovering in the backdroop, relished complexities within timbrel texture and counterpoint. I can only guess. We are not the masters of self-knowledge. Modules float, interact, lurch against one another, and submit and prevail. Regardless, I was more consciously focused on lyrical themes during my adolescence.

They “spoke” to me.

It did not seem like a conscious choice. The music chose me more than I chose the music. More, specifically, the music chose that I liked it. I didn’t do the choosing.

In my early twenties, especially after delving into more instrumental-friendly rock bands, I found that even wordless music “spoke” to me. It chose me. I remember lying in that broad waterbed I had in Clear Lake and not being able to sleep until my mind was quenched with Larks’ Tongues in Aspic Part I. I hauled out the old boombox and listened to a cassette of it. It spoke to me, therefore I liked it. I did not choose. It chose me.

Those were halcyon days for music discovery. I was ecstatic at every CD purchase. I listened without any other distractions. I advocated and shared the music that “spoke” to me. I hoped it would speak to others. In fact, I was baffled when it didn’t speak to others.

During this time, however, the slow migration began. By slow I mean decades long. This migration was from the music choosing me to me choosing the music. At this point in my life, I’ve passed over completely to the other side, or so it seems. Nah - not completely. Some music still “speaks” to me before I decide to choose or not choose, but it is more and more rare. I posit that when people reach this point, and I also posit that most people migrate much quicker than I did, they abandon new musics specifically because these new musics do not “speak” to them. Perhaps they don’t understand that they have lost the ability to listen for that “voice”. Have I? Or, an even more complicated question - do I prefer to do the choosing?

I also posit that most people that have migrated rebel against the “choosing”. They feel that music has lost something essential. The music of their youth spoke to them, and the music of the present does NOT. They don’t realise that they simply migrated. If one speaks about musicians, the current creators of music, and this phenomenon, the result is that they create music based on the music of their youth - based on the music that “spoke” to them. Nostalgia is strong. And I think nostalgia is intensified by this migration. The ability to choose instead of being chosen is simply rejected. It makes no sense.

The fundamental fallacy here is the idea that there is a fundamental quality in art and that we are able to perceive it. Or, using the same vernacular as before, we are able to “hear” that fundamental quality when it “speaks” to us. To me, the vast diversity in taste in art over the swath of humanity rejects this idea. One would then argue of the contrast between popularity and esotericism, but writing a dissertation concerning my ideas of the lowest common denominator is not my objective at the moment.

I want my ability to choose what I incorporate into my musical life to be relevant to “taste”. I want the music I listen to to reciprocate and “speak” back to me, even though I am the one choosing it. I’ve come to the conclusion over the last decade that I basically choose what I do and do not like. Perhaps there is an initial hint of the music “speaking” to me, but I don’t think it’s entirely there any longer. I simply choose what I want to concentrate on and incorporate into my current listening habits. Will these musical realms will become the “nostalgia” of some later years of my life? Perhaps. Perhaps not.

So, I’m listening to Troissoeur. I’ve decided that it is relevant. I simply have to put it on often. It will grow into my life. That’s what’s always happened with every music. Did the music of my youth “speak” to me because I didn’t know myself well enough to choose or not choose it for myself? This is certainly my conclusion.

I awoke again at four in the morning. And again, it did not come without a warning. Oouh, baby. After reading a bit and then musing over the newest composition, I consumed breakfast and prepared to go out for a walk. To where did I go? Well, to Pagan Park, Seminole, Texas, of course. This is also the name of the composition I am in the middle of. And it is coming along nicely, thank you very much.

I had wanted to take my Zoom H5 out with me into the wilds of Seminole for the whole of my stay so far here, but I had been occupied with listening to the endlessly tweaked master of Krandenc Kopců in order to get it, well, not perfect, but as close as I could given some of my recording methods over the last year have not been the best. There is still a muffled feeling resulting from the lack of > 5000hz frequencies. Absolutely nothing can be done about this particular failure, however, so I am taking the results into consideration for all future recordings / releases. It’s all I can do at this time unless I want to rerecord the whole album and my philosophy of looking forwards will not allow me to do so. Also, this is a deviation from the topic I arrived in this space to discuss. Bastard orthogonally flowing thought streams.

The crashing of machinery and the yelps of passers-by with brains at half mast was an onslaught during my last weeks in Praha. I walked along Malešice after the heat wrung the water from my body, after perhaps trudging through the cemetery after shopping at Flora or just wondering about Vinohrady for a few hours. I walked along Malešice often. Stabs of sonic trash lept over the fences from Nakladové Nádraží Žižkov. I came upon Penny Markt finally, picked something up and made my way the last two or three hundred meters home. Normally, I was exhausted. Was it the chaos? Is it even chaos, really? It is the semi-organised hubbub of multitudes going about their day.

And so I am in a quiet place now. As I walked along Malešice, I thought repeatedly that what I needed was to be in a quiet (or at least quieter) place. Like Seminole, for instance. Better would be Ruidoso, but we’ll leave that to a small leap into the future. I walked along Malešice and believed that Seminole would be tranquil.

At Pagan Park this morning, I noticed a hum. I have known it every time I’ve been there, but it’s been under the surface of my consciousness. And, many times I’ve had headphones on, so there is also that. Absolute silence, of course, does not exist. Where does it, really? It doesn’t lie is places occupied by humans. I was acutely aware because I was recording with my Zoom H5. The backdrop ambience was like a haze of mist. It was like a fog I walked through. It muted the few birds who called through the bushy branches of one of the only green patches in the village. Those birds were trying, though. They will feature in the new composition.

Even when I was not listening to the endlessly tweaked masters of Kredenc Kopců, I had grown used to the ambient noise that pervades the village. I laughingly call it a village, as no one uses that term around here. Not that I am from around here - not anymore, anyway. I had grown used to the ambient noise that pervades the pueblo. As for many things, the act of observing - with my Zoom H5 - made this ambience leap to my attention. It was suddenly everywhere - inescapable.

As any perpetual reader of this meandering blog knows, I have sunk into the wondrous well of Ambient Music over the last decade (or more!). Much of it also creates a haze for one to stroll through, or just bask in. The industrial and automotive ambience in which my current aldea floats is the same, yet distinct. It’s distinct in that it is generative. Not only that, it is collectively generative by decoupled processes that are, on the surface, unaware of each other.

My idea for the introduction of Pagan Park, Seminole, Texas (Part II) is inspired by this idea. Instead of decoupled, exhaust belching cars and trucks or poison gas spewing pumpjacks, my processes will be Supercollider driven. I’ve already the first one in mind and have partially coded it.

Burbling decoupled ambient haze.

The trinity tree rises before him. Well, it’s not exactly before him, but before the pale, fleshy thing he sends out into the ringed desert that unfurls concentrically out from where he has sat, sessile, for centuries. In any case, why should one get up if one has a pale, fleshy thing at one’s disposal?

He sends the pale, fleshy thing out to the trinity tree weekly. He only perceives it as weekly, of course, as he is still attached to the old ways, the ancient ways, the ways that passed on even long before he inhabited the moon, alone but for the pale, fleshy thing and the lumbering, spotted and sometimes striped creatures that lumber and lumber and resemble rodents, always seemingly aimless. From where do they get their nourishment, he wonders. He has no answer.

The trinity tree rises before the pale, fleshy thing. Shambal Brambel sees through its organs, senses the arid atmosphere through its sheath of skin, hears the silence of the still air with its distorted orifices. The trinity tree seems to rear. Shambal doesn’t know how long it has reared, though it seemed complete in its growth even when Shambal could himself shamble about the concentric desert. Before he was sessile, that is.

When those distant times still mouldered, he’d sit in the trinity tree’s scanty shade and think of its meaning. The goat, the ukulele and the vortex. The trinity. He’d heard in stories from a neighbour that passed on and is surely only dust now that goats appropriating prosthetic limbs with opposable thumbs lived beyond the last concentric ring in the low hills. Those were the beginnings of the rise to a plateau. Shambal could not go there. The humidity would kill him. Of course, he could go there now, or, rather, send the pale, fleshy thing there. And he had.

Goats with prosthetic limbs playing ukuleles had not been found, though. Still were not found, if he doesn’t count lucid dreams.

The pale, fleshy thing crouches in front of the divine trunks. It seems to tarry, contemplating. Shambal the Sessile tosses his mind through the pale, fleshy thing, through its organs, to the essence of the trinity tree. He contemplates. He imagines a land with only this tree and its meager shelter. Everything surrounding, indeed all else, is void. To step out of the trinity tree’s solace and into that void means returning to nothingness, to before the womb or before the test-tube, whichever one’s class. Shambal doesn’t remember his own class, though he guesses the latter.

Squatting easily on its own trinity of many jointed legs, the pale, fleshy thing passes a blunt hand along the crease between the desert floor and the base of the trinity tree. As always, there is a thrum there, as if the object of worship is drawing nourishment up from deep below the sand like a mechanical pump. Is the tree alive? Is it a machine? If so, who built it? Or is it a type of cyborg plant? Could the flesh of a tree cover a complex apparatus?

The pale, fleshy, blunt hand pushes away sand, digs a bit. Shambal always has it do so, though the result is always the same. Loose sand quickly becomes hardpan. The level of the thrum never changes.

Rising from its crouch, the pale, fleshy thing begins to circumnavigate the trinity tree. Its organs light on the sign round the other side, as they always do. Shambal sees it, as he always does. It reads Kez zipikum isiz. It never changes.

I awake again at four in the morning. A hair metal band whose name I’ll not mention distributed to me (by means of a convoluted series of exchanging hands) a cassette in 1984 that had a song on it claiming that four in the morning came without a warning. I was sitting in my first dead grandmother’s house, in some sort of sitting room reserved usually only for me, when I first listened to this piece of music (I laughingly call it a piece of music). I disagree with the sentiment. Four in the morning did not come without a warning. I was expecting it.

I believe this was my first full, or at least refreshing, night’s sleep since I left Prague. I went to bed around seven, woke up my usual three times to peer groggily around in the murk then fall back into slumber, and now here I am, sitting upright, cross legged in the bed, typing.

It’s good to be typing again so early, or, rather, creating an entry for Martenblog this early. I am reminded of an old book that I never got all the way through called The Artist’s Way. It was a mainstay in the tremulous spring of 1995. Unfortunately, I doubt if I’ll make a habit of writing first thing in the morning, as habits, or routines are hard won by me.

Yesterday, I finally got flavigula.net and thurk.org back up (on Tahr) after finding out that Yak did not survive the trip across the Atlantic. A pity, that. A new Yak will surface shortly. I only have to order from the glorious United States Pi shop. I’ll get the 8GB model this time. I’ll miss the old Yak. I already do, actually. It was my perfervid lover on days of rarefied air in Logroño and evenings of bewildered displacement in Praha.

I’ve just discovered that the client certificate for Molly Brown (the Gemini server) is out of date. Bastards. I’ll refill that road-rut after this entry is complete.

Actually, I did it just now. Hallelujah! I had copied the TLS certificate straight from Marmota and hadn’t noticed it was expired (for thurk.org). I really should automate these things. At one point, they WERE automated, but my life again descended into Chaos. Ah, Sweet Entropy, you bitch! I wished to embrace you, but I was mistaken in my lust. Though that is another topic altogether.

I’ve been practising solely on Horace, the name I’ve just given to my Kala Ukulele. Its four strings limit what I can do, but as they are tuned exactly as the high four on the guitar are, I practise all the possible shapes there that I can. In fact, my plan for today is to go over both Beautiful Love and Alice in Wonderland using alternative forms. What do I mean by alternative forms? Well, simple chord substitutions, of course. One may substitute Fmaj7 for Dm7, for example, or, to make it more interesting, Fmaj7sus4. One can use Bm7b5 instead of G7. And so on.

I await my new mixer / soundcard from Sweetwater, as well as my Bastl Kastle and Kastle Drum. When they arrive, I can get to some serious recording of the piece I’ve been sketching the past few days. It’s a Supercollider + Uke journey named Pagan Park, Seminole, Texas. It will (in its two forms) bookend what I take from Morning Ambience to be released in the near future. I’ll be adding subtle Uke and noise to the edited versions of those pieces, as well. The result will be so enjoyable that anyone listening will eject themselves into the cold, empty void of space.

Kredenc Kopců is nearly finished. I’m speaking of mastering. Currently, I’m in the middle of Namodralý Opar. The rest of the album is more or less as I want it. Today, I’ll transfer everything to what some, including myself, or perhaps only myself, call the master roll, adjust final levels and apply normalization. Several careful listens later and perhaps a few more tweaks and it’ll be off to Rob and Submarine Broadcasting.

Life will be bliss. Arid bliss, as I am in Seminole at the moment, but bliss just the same.

Despite the very productive and positive initial two months of my stay in Praha, the resultant displacement and depression that followed taught me that I no longer belong there. My primary goal was to relive a portion of my past that, though incredibly fecund with lasting friendships and well-remembered lunacy, in the end, led me down a path of self-destruction.

Since my exile in 2009, I became something very different. Yes, my core of positive cynicism remains, as well as my absurd sense of humour, but the need to create an environment of beautiful chaos receded. Returning to Praha let that dangerous part of my nature grow again and it absolutely ached for the old ways. It craved them. I say it, but what it is is a module of my personality, of my mind. It had receded to a background lull, but living in Praha, and especially alone in Praha, brought it to the foreground.

Praha is no longer my home.

So, what does that mean, exactly?

I suppose I am between homes at the moment, and that is fine for a time. I readjust. The plan to be with my parents for an undetermined amount of time sets a lightness to my mind. I’ve always been very productive creatively there simply because there is little to do. Seminole is the anus of the universe, prdel světě, el culo de la galaxie. There’s nothing to do for me but be bored or be creative. I choose the latter.

Looking back, musically, my time in Prague was fecund, especially during the first three months. I completed two compositions (to be refined, of course) and have good chunks of two others written. The Morning Ambience “series” was very satisfying, and I participated in another Drone Day.

Where, musically, do I go from here? First, complete Kradenc Kopců. That is essential. The first two pieces are mixed and mastered to my liking. The rest I can work on one or two a day upon arrival al culo de la galaxie (after getting Tahr set up, providing it survived the journey in two cargo holds) and have the album to Rob by 10 September at the latest. That’s a good deadline. I also had the idea of taking the best parts of Morning Ambience and two Supercollider + Ukulele experiments and release a pay whatever you want or just suck it down for free experimental album.

Otherwise, practise, work on Lakife lyrics to Fool Fancying Cliches, and sketch out how the next album will snake through its own riddled labyrinth.