(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.

Lately, mornings have been painful yet fruitful. My early waking insomnia continues. I attempted to go to sleep last night at approximately midnight, and that worked well. I awoke several times during the night with a dry throat and wondered if I’d had too much sugar the day before, but could not recall what would’ve contained sugar that I’d consumed. I fell back asleep quickly each time. Came 6.30, however, and I knew it was all over.

Now I sit in front of Tahr (my Cirrus7 desktop PC) and type.

I added the part that Christian insisted on to Motiv Dilerněkův, though the timbre and playing is somewhat different than the original track, but, hey, who wants to repeat themselves and / or attempt to clone past actions verbatim? Not me, honeybuničko. I also incorporated Rob’s F. He apparently has a Chapman Stick and played a few of said Fs on it and sent them to me to place wherever I wanted amid our album. I like the idea. He owns the record label, after all, so why not “demand” an amusing scenario where each artist has to place his single bass note at one or multiple positions on their release?

As I mentioned sometime within the last 48 hours or so and in an entry in this very Martenblog, a time of change has come once again. And thought it’s not exactly a Sweet Entropy level of change, I will specify it as Semi-sweet Entropy. The long and medium of it is that my parents need my help. They’ve been saying so for years, of course, and I’ve resisted. I shall migrate myself and much of my possessions to Seminole for a time to be there with and for them. Hopefully I won’t perish of aggravated and acute stress induced by my mother’s partial madness. I’ve written on that topic extensively in the past, so I won’t go into details now.

I leave on the 31st, spend a night with John in Houston, then the next day, take the air carriage the rest of the way to Midland, where said parents will fetch me off to Seminole. Ah - the desert again! Well, it’ll probably be a relief from Prague’s hateful August humidity. Bastard climate. How long will I stay in West Texas (and the surrounding area)? I don’t know. Until I get sick of it, I suppose, which in the past hasn’t taken very long. Only Semi-sweet Entropy knows.

On a distantly related topic, as I go through things to toss into the eternal garbage heap, I came across the following scribbling, probably done sometime during the first part of 2016:

I used to think Vienna was the loudest place in the known universe, but I was incorrect. It is certainly Praha. They keep pounding and pounding. Well, really, what should I expect? Life is absurd, anyway. Time is a tempest. I miss Marisa so much now that I have cried. Where is she and what is she doing? I love her. I want to communicate, but I am blacked out. I know there is nothing. Fucking bastards. Funny. The reason I went to see Star Wars was because it was popular when I was a child. Funny that my phone was stolen during the film. I guess I deserve it.

I’m wrong about the timeline. That was written in December of 2015, in the cheap hotel near Bertramka. I had no phone. As I scribbled - it had been stolen. I had no internet access. I had a few days before smashed the screen of my laptop whilst wondering the city out of my head. That was certainly a low point in my existence, especially when my nose started bleeding copiously on the morning I had determined I must finally leave. I finally got to the airport with a clot of blood plugging my left nostril, apparent to all. In my bleary state, I finally managed to purchase a new air ticket to Barcelona (Madrid was not available on that day - perhaps it had been temporarily removed from the universe) and from there took a six or seven hour bus (I don’t recall) to Logroño, struggling with alcohol withdrawal and acute boredom and then finally arriving in the middle of the night.

I would prefer to never repeat such things. The intensity of my solitude during that “sojourn” was near debilitating.

So what’s the plan for the rest of the day? I meet Michal at 18.00, possibly dine with him, then see Nils Petter Molvær at some sala near Karlovo Náměstí. It will be pleasant. Until that time, I’ll practise what I’ve come to think of as a guitar, program, and walk through the neighbourhoods suffusing the three kilometre radius radiating from my current (but not for long!) place of residence.

Kenji Kihara weaves a tapestry of sound about the room as I type into an (almost) empty Vim buffer once again. It’s been quite a while, or so it seems. The impetus for this entry was actually my joining of a small Virtual City called Nightfall City. I sit disconsolate on the moors of Dusk’s End, or rather, any entry that ends up in my Gemini feed does. Can blog entries be disconsolate? I posit that they can emit a sensation of disconsolateness. I’m not sure this one will achieve such a feat, however, as I’m rather bleary from only four to five hours of sleep during each night of the last week and a half. Big fun!

As far as social media and Virtual Cities go, I’ve been pleased over the last few years with the Sonomu.club community on Mastodon. I’ve found like-minded humans (and possibly mustelids) there who share love for music and poetry and are purveyors of positive reinforcement as opposed to the good old American negative reinforcement I grew up with and which pervades much of what I’ve seen of Western Culture. Oh, the psychopathy of passive aggressive manipulation and chantaje emocional. Big fun!

As for the colossal changes that are about to crescendo in my life, I’ll get to them soon. I simply wanted to add an entry like stabbing a small flag into the crest of a moor before I rise again to walk to the next, even higher one.

My coffee consumption this morning has possibly not been healthy. I can feel the jittery roughness in my mind from over-caffeination. Yesterday was much the same, but from a combination of black tea throughout the day and a shot of Michal’s special cold brew coffee. Replacing one addictive substance for another doesn’t seem very intelligent. In my case, that’d be replacing alcohol with caffeine. The concept reminds me of Christian and his nicotine gum. I shall limit myself to two servings of caffeinated beverage a day for a while to see if it deletes the mind fuzz that comes from over-consumption.

Last night, whilst going through what results in picking exercises but also what will result in the actual part in a new composition, I fought with myself psychologically because what I was playing was too pretty or normal or somesuch. Well, it could be, but I do find the progression (and even the individual chords and their picking patterns) quite beautiful. It has that distinct sound that comes from adding 9ths to many but not all of the chords in a series. The aural shock of 9ths not being in some of the transitional chords (mostly quartals) is where the gluey mystery comes from.

So, I fought with myself. Mentally. My lifelong desire to break from the mould is still present. It has not diminished a whit. This contradicts my so-called purpose for Flavigula. What is that purpose? It’s to make music that I enjoy. As I’ve mentioned before, all this hovno I put to “tape” is ultimately for me to drown in during my decrepitude when I am broken and alone living in a shack in Ulaanbaatar. Others’ appreciation is a bonus. A very pleasant bonus, indeed, but, in the end, just a bonus. The trouble I have psychologically is that this perpetual rebel that some fundamental module of my being carries around with it like a banner second guesses every thing I do creatively. In a way, it asks me - What would Chris Cutler (or fill in whichever avant-garde artist you wish) think of this?. That’s ridiculous, of course. I mean, fuck um. Who cares what some arbitrary avant-garde artist would think of my output? If my hara spews forth a chord sequence and picking pattern that that contentious module immediately labels conventional or even pretty, why should I listen? That module needs to quiet itself. Sure, it’s useful in some contexts, but in this particular one, I find it detrimental. Bastard thing.

In any case, I’m going with the chord sequence and picking patterns I’ve developed during the last few days. The whole thing is rhythmically interesting because I’m playing straight triplets over 90bpm, but the picking cycle is a sequence of 4. I also toyed with a sequence of 5. These provide nice cyclical polyrhythmic sensations. As I lay in bed before drifting to troubled oblivion last night, I figured I could provide sequences of 6 and 7 for the picking cycles, as well, going up the ladder in a way. The six, since I’m playing triplets, will be the most conventional and perhaps where I should give Michal his guitar solo. I look forward to what he comes up with.

A additional idea is to thurk synth sequences “out of time” (at least accent wise, or even metrically - say doing 2, 4 or 5 against the triplets) as counterpoint as the piece proceeds. I’m not yet to that stage in my thinking, except for vaguely.

Today I may piece together a rough sketch of the whole in Ardour. Of course this depends on if I am devoured by a grue or not on my way to Kaufland after my shower. I have been told throughout my lifetime that grues lurk generally in darkness, but I rarely believe what I’ve been told throughout my lifetime by much of anyone. Deceivers are rampant in this thorn strewed universe. One best watch out.

The slight heart palpations from the caffeine are waning. Soon it will be time for a shower then off to be consumed by a grue. Let’s hope that this last entry in Martenblog will remind the universe that though mental modules waving the flag of rebellion are useful in many contexts, they should, like all things, be tempered with the “middle path”.

I got what I wanted, after all. And what was that? I got what I wanted - to be alone. And here I sit on the bed in James’s guest room, alone with the eidolon who writes words into this online journal. He pops up from time to time, but not as frequently as I’d like. Of course, James is in the other room, so I am not as “alone” as I will be in less than a week when I move to my own flat, and if I really wanted to, I could walk over there and talk to him, but I don’t think it’d quell my mental storm. Or perhaps it would, but only for the instants the talk lasted. Then I’d be back here, sitting in the bed in James’s guest room, alone.

The primary question of interest is Was it worth it?

My talk to Marisa today was bewildering. It went against the resolutions I made to myself when I woke up on the morning of 28 March and quickly organised my things in anticipation of Dani’s arrival to whisk them and myself away.

What was that resolution? It was to never look backwards. It was to proceed from then on hour by hour facing forwards. Perhaps it was an idealistic outlook, denying my existence as an emotional beast. Emotional in part, though surely not as much as I was 20 years ago, but emotional in part. Or I have learned to manage my emotions more pragmatically. The end result is the same.

In any case, many conflicting emotions whorled during the conversation. They are still astir. Hopefully I’ll be able to sleep later. This was the first time since my departure that she’s been genuinely angry. I suppose the ancient psychological thesis is right, in part. First disbelief and grief. Then comes anger. She claims I simply used her, from the beginning, to get European residency and to solve the many personal problems I had dragging behind me like anvils. I do admit that she helped cure me of a dire obsession with my interior life and the results of that obsession, including overindulging in the drink. I also know that were it not for the stability I had within the relationship and homespace, I would not have had the courage to begin composing and performing music again. The relationship brought myriad positive things.

Although we did many fantastic things together and I have numerous happy memories, in the end, as always, the stagnation crept in. Is it my eternal “curse”? Perhaps I’ll always feel stagnant no matter where I am or who I am with. As much as I’d like to be in complete control of the so-called modules that flow and interact within my headspace, I have never been in control of the one that feeds me the impulse to move on. So, I can honestly say that in the end, the fault is all mine. So when she called herself a victim during our conversation, or, rather, she said she felt like a victim, she is one. One could even say that she is a victim of caprice. That is a dire way to put it. She is a victim of my caprice. She is a victim of Sweet Entropy - that uncontrollable module hovering, flitting and all the while scheming in my headspace. So, consequently, Tony was right when he said it all those years ago. I am very capricious, not to mention selfish - at least in this context.

But if the alternative is lifelong deep inner dissatisfaction, what is one supposed to do?

I know what she would say.

Go to the psychiatrist and have them prescribe anti-depressants. Anti-depressants. And I also wrote her in a message a few days ago how afraid I am of such chemicals. I’ve seen how much Chris Bender has changed simply because of them. There are remnants of his creative, wacky and incisive self still, but they are subdued. And that is what anti-depressants do. They take the edge off. More specifically, they file down the edges of your personality. Oh, to be smooth! But I don’t want to be filed down. I don’t want to be smooth, nor do I want to be subdued. I want to be Bobbus.

And that means that I have to move forward. And that is what I am doing. And that is what I shall continue to do.

Fuck um.

Concerning Roger Trigaux’s death:

Alas, one of my favourite composers has died. His music has been an assuaging and alarming factor in my life since 1998. During the latter years of the 90s, what some would call the golden age of web pages, both Univers Zero and Present had crude websites up detailing this and that about each band and dubious information about current events. These sites also hosted samples of the music itself. I don’t recall actually listening to anything from the Present at the time, though surely I did, but I was captured by what I felt was mystical darkness in a fragment by Univers Zero. In particular, it was the bit of La Faulx as the chaos begins to subside at 8.50 and transforms into the beginnings of a theme on bassoon. Listening to that bit still takes me back to sitting at the antique computer that I STOLE from the Microsoft offices and being rapt by those sounds.

In my young mind, Univers Zero were not people, but wraiths incanting simultaneously forbidding and alluring rituals. The mystical darkness image muted itself over the decades, though it still lingers when I listen to Heresie. I ordered the CD from (probably) Wayside in the spring of 1998. I still have every motif of Jack the Ripper imprinted in my mind. Staying an entire night once at Microsoft to finish some forgotten task, I had it blasting from my office. I wasn’t the only night owl and got a few curiously alarmed looks from passers by. The last piece, Vous le Saurez en Temps Voulu, of which Roger was the sole composer, captivated me like the other two, and ESPECIALLY the ending bit. The instruments breathed like creeping things aurally surrounding me and exuding an exhausted refrain. I still love it. In fact, after the live version of Ersatz from the live disc of the 2014 release of Le Poison qui Rend Fou ends, I shall put it on.

I don’t remember actually acquiring a disc by Present until my visit to NYC with Magdalena in December 1999. At Downtown Music Gallery, after showing her of both Triskaidekaphobie / Le Poison Qui Rend Fou and Certitudes and asking her to choose based on the covers, I went back to Praha with Certitudes. Admittedly, it took me longer to get into the music than I first thought it would. And admittedly, the reason was the vocals. They were certainly difficult to digest. These days, though, Delusions blows me away every time, INCLUDING the lurching, rasping vocal saturated first half. I haven’t given the rest of the album as much time as Delusions, but will revisit the whole thing in the upcoming days.

My true obsession with the band came when I received the next album, No 6, in early summer 2000. My days became saturated with it. I imbibed and re-imbibed every phrase. It’s brilliant. I don’t go back to it as often as I should, and that’s most likely because the long pieces are cut up into parts. I have an assembled version that I made ages ago, 320 kb/s mp3s. So what I wrote isn’t really an excuse, is it? I’ll thurk it onto my phone now. Done. I saw them play Ceux D’en Bas at both shows I attended, and The Limping Little Girl at the first. I still remember Kerman yelling Didn’t you hear what your mother said?!? and Vesna looking at me with wild eyes. In fact, she loved the concert. Take THAT, all you other girlfriends / wives that have made me suffer through countless hours of mindless pop and classic rock.

Delusions from Certitudes reminds me of sitting on a couch in mine and Vesna’s flat in Mũnchen smoking pot along and listening … just listening. Vesna was out somewhere. Our relationship was in its final days, so I don’t think I was too bothered. In any case, I was stoned and listening to Present, so all was well. A few months earlier, we were in Würzburg at the Freak Show Festival seeing the band. I hung out with Dave Kerman during Magma, him notably telling me that Theusz Hamtaahk is his favourite because of its compositional curve. I spoke with Roger briefly about the opening band (Anekdoten) and near the end of the evening again when he signed my High Infidelity CD.

That gig was a long time coming, actually. In the frat house I lived in with Vesna during the early fall of 2000, I scoured the internet using Nataša’s bumbling PC (that’s Nataša of Linux is not so difficult. Actually, it’s the same, just in green fame) for where the purported concert was going to be held. As I noted earlier, their website at the time was sketchy. Dates and venues changed as frequently as Nataša changed boyfriends. The process continued until fruition in June of the following year.

The most fruitful event of the Freak Show Festival was meeting Frederick, however. Unfortunately, I lost touch with the blond, bearded Norwegian addict of Italian Prog Rock long ago. We took him back to München with us, and fed and housed him for a few days. I acted as tour guide of the city. Imagine that. He introduced me to Franco Battiato and Pharoah Sanders. I introduced him to After Crying. Hardly a fair trade, was it? Well, he had free food and shelter, so fuck um.

Returning to the subject of frequency of listening, Maloja tells me that Present has only been in my top fifty in 2011, 2014 and 2015. This could be because of the length of their pieces or simply that they demand attention when one listens. Most of the peasants I know who wander through local fields of existence usually throw on music (sometimes in the form of a pseudo-aleatory radio station) to fill up the space around them. It produces a sort of familiar clutter that lets one sit more comfortable amongst otherwise stark environs. Putting on Present instead produces circling, semi-sentient forms instead of familiar clutter. These forms poke and prod at you. Comfort was never the goal of Roger’s vision. A tenebrous solace, maybe, but never comfort.

Promenade au Fond D’un Canal begins it’s 20+ minute oppression regime and I again think back. The first time I listened was at John’s in Queens. And yes, Nataša was there. Well, it’s possible I have the years mixed, but according to a previous paragraph, I bought Certitudes on my Xmas 1999 NYC adventure, so I most likely grabbed Triskaidekaphobie & Le Poison Qui Rend Fou the following year. The wild part that just began parading from my speakers made John shout “23/16!” or some other absurd time signature. It’s not actually in 23/16. I’ll leave it up to the reader and future Present listener to figure out the actual time signature.

Mr Trigaux’s music is a passenger sitting at my side, poking and prodding, as I casually drift towards the place to which he’s recently gone. I’d like to think of that place as a sort of endless canal through which march fumbling forms who grunt and wail from time to time in 23/16. I look forward to it.

Lately, and possibly because I’ve been reading the book Sapiens, I’ve been musing over imagined social constructs and their different levels and interconnectedness. The books relates that all social constructs are birthed from human imagination. I’ve had this thought before, as well, and actually discussions with my long lost friend Jayson on the very topic. I’m unsure if we put it as succinctly as the book has, however. Congratulations to the author. In recent years, I have referred to the whole scumduggery as bubble-think and the bubble-think I’m most interested in now is that of family.

The shibboleths of large familial clans are, to me, the most dangerous. They tend to attempt to enforce their own bubble-think on anyone entering their realm, even temporarily. They come to believe their way of dealing with every day events is the norm for the rest of the next-level-up shibboleth (usually a political group such as city or state) and come to question why outsiders perform daily tasks in any way differently. In other words, they become their own fundamentalist bubble concerning daily routines. Those who try to escape from a familial bubble are questioned and sometimes castigated. They are certainly gossiped about. In fact, intra-bubble gossip is what most tightly holds a familial bubble together. Bonds are stronger when people have common negative views to “trade” with each other about others behind their backs. Assholes.

I put the word trade in quotes because what the intra-bubble denizens are doing is not actually trading, as they share the same negative views. Rather, they are mutually reinforcing them. It’s another feature of bubble communities (though not so much for the large familial clans type) that they contain mostly people with similar viewpoints and mutual reinforcement is a wheel.

Extended families are a problem for me not only because I’ve always pretty much rejected my own, but because the link that exists is such a transparent imaginary construct that at times I’m unbelieving that people choose family over others simply because they are family. The bond of blood or even adoption is so limp, in my mind, that I am even offended when it happens (even if it has nothing to do with me). I take offense at the stupidity. I can’t choose someone I have little or nothing in common with over a friend that shares common interests, motives and ideas for existence simply because the imaginary construct of family exists.

Now it is time to get some TEA.

Actually, I was incorrect. NOW is the time to get some tea.

I’ve consumed over half of the mug of tea even before typing these words. What gluttony! Does the word gluttony apply to liquids, as well? I’d think so. For example - Christian is considered a glutton by his familial bubble for his consumption of uncountable light beers every evening. They don’t relate this opinion to him, however, but only to each other behind his back, as that is how the bubble-gossip works. Because of their shared opinions of Christian’s light beer gluttony, they are bound closer. The bubble walls thicken. Opacity threatens!

My dead cousin Amy once related an anecdote from my own familial bubble to me in 2002 or so (I’m assuming the date). We were possibly listening to Porcupine Tree. One never knows. She was 10 years my elder and therefore closer to the so-called adult circles. Adult circles are simply other bubbles, still translucent, but always with a share of opacity, of course, within the familial bubble. Bubbles within bubbles. Bubbles like Venn Diagrams. All sorts of bubbles exist. She’d be allowed to sit with my mother and her mother (otherwise known as my aunt) as they gossiped about the wild girls in high school and how their corrupting influence, being against the gossiping Christian ethic, should be stopped. The distaste for those completely outside the bubble strengthens bonds within the bubble even more. It’s exponential and built of hearsay and imagined situations and is the source of all prejudice and, on a large scale, war. I suppose Amy was in high school at the time and probably knew more intimately the goings on of her peers. She became accustomed to the negative bonds and began unknowingly (or not) doing it herself later in life, relating to me what she didn’t like about some collection of agents outside our personal bubble as we drove around Dallas listening to Porcupine Tree and stopping from time to time at the Hare Krishna commune to gobble down tasty cuisine. Was I surprised that she was doing the very thing that she complained to me about, making her a hypocrite? No - I wasn’t surprised.

People love to use the word hypocrite as a derogatory term labelling others, but excuse their own actions that could fall under the same label. I term it disassociation by abstraction. Since the number of connections one makes on higher and higher levels of abstraction are limited, the stopping point usually doesn’t envelop one’s own deeds. Ie, talking shit about peer groups behind their back can be viewed as slightly “wrong” (there’s those quotes again) because they are people who one spends time with frequently, but talking shit about random groups of people on the streets obviously behind their backs is okay because one rarely if ever associates with them. On some level of abstraction, of course, it’s the same.

Fuck um.