As the days creep towards the arbitrary division between one year and the next, I am somewhat culturally forced to think about a few things that I could pay more attention to in the upcoming cycle around our waning sun. I feel like I have grown apart from the “random”, or what I call in my personal shibboleth, and in the shibboleth that some close friend share, Sweet Entropy. When aleatory ideas blow by on the breeze, I must catch them far more often than I do.

I believe I used to catch these aleatory snatches more frequently, but one grows older - into decrepitude. One settles and becomes metaphorically sessile. The path to decrepitude is, ironically, sitting still, intellectually as well as physically. This year’s quarantines have aged me slightly and I don’t like it one bit. Neither does Sweet Entropy, who is ever beckoning, normally subtly, but now with wild gesticulations.

I do believe I used to snatch these aleatory breezes more often. Sometimes it is as simple as just taking notice of the thought as it passes in that occluded module of the mind that forms most of the daily background noise. It’s the antithesis of concentration, but upon it also floats those aleatory snatches I need to reach out and grasp. Mostly, they appear as response to outside stimuli - a fly buzzing in the speaker cone, or a shred of carrot hurled from a food processor. Instead of ignoring them as oddities or passing phenomena, each can lead to interesting pathways and eventually to fecund groves. Capture um, stick um in a book of notes (digital or no), peruse um again and again, unite um with current creativity, and let um shunt a creative thread this-a-way or that-a-way.

In other words, follow threads that appear randomly throughout the day, or at least note them. Let fewer escape. Each one, no matter how disparate from an arbitrary unifying factor, can become part of the tapestry. Or - alternatively - buy a bottle of vodka, down it all, lie sessile in stupor, and ignore the passing breezes, aleatory or not. Fuck um.

I shall expunge more and more empty conversation from my life, as well. I realise that the concept of empty conversation differs depending on whom you ask, and mine may be too strict for many, but since I’ll be lying in a drunken stupor for all of 2011, in any case, these words can be taken with a grain of cesium salt. Or - since my journaling music this morning is Weird Tapes 6 by Hawkwind and the current track happens to be Master of the Universe, I am reminded that I, in fact, am the master of the universe and therefore, whether I’m lying in a drunken stupor or not, all must heed my idea of empty conversation and conform. Those who do not will be consigned to the pit.

I shall expunge more and more empty conversation from my days. Most of what I term empty conversation stems from mundane events that happen in the streets, the markets, in lunar orbit or even in the pit. One takes an event and uses it as impetus for a conversation, be it to pick up a chick at a hospoda in Nusle or pass time with a colleague whilst sucking down a bocadillo during a brief lunch between shifts in the ward. Such an impetus doesn’t have to become an empty conversation, of course. It can be used as an aleatory idea snatched from the day’s breeze to symbolise something more profound in one’s thoughts, or as a haiku back and forth, or as a metaphor for another concern. What bothers me is that my experience has seen most of these impetuses solely become seed for a flurry of complaints about aspects of the daily grind. They immediately mire themselves in a negative quicksand, pulling anyone involved into its depths.

A bloke arrives at hospoda in Nusle after nearly being cut into three pieces by a speeding tramvaj. He begins a conversation with the aforementioned chick. It quickly spirals into a negative morass concerning the inhumanity of tramvaj drivers, the poor state of public transportation, the aimless, destructive arc of government and the heat death of the universe. Now, I don’t want to disparage the heat death of the universe, but the other three topics don’t strike me as constructive.

Why not turn the event into a haiku writing marathon where each three line piece of brilliance details the different decorative configurations of head, torso and abdomen after being severed in three sections by a tramvaj?

Why not expound on the possible thoughts said driver was having during the lapse? Surely the driver was fantasising of sentient vegetative life in a symmetrical sphere in orbit around our moon, connected telepathically to other symmetrical spheres of sentient vegetative life orbiting the very same moon.

Why not just skip to the end and discuss the heat death of the universe at length? Even at such length that one reaches the heat death of the universe!

Why not just circumvent the whole situation by lying listless at home in a drunken stupor?

And December progresses. Blather is transcribed directly from neural circuitry to VIM. Tea steeped. I fetched it and imbibed it. All this is part of another morning in Logroño. Mornings in Logroño are, by now, a routine, or each morning routine is chosen from a selection of those I have at hand. The only consistent facet in the selection of routines is the tea. All praise Tea.

Most importantly, writing, which is part of a number of the aforementioned routines, gives me a sensation of accomplishment. Other facets also do, even including Tea, but writing more than any of the rest. The sense of accomplishment fosters peace and this sense of “accomplishment” is the act itself. The content, in the end, doesn’t matter much. I recall the turbulent April of 2000. I was alone in my hotel room in München. Malaise had crept into my days. I felt it tangibly like a film coating my skin. I whipped out the old “Woodnotes” journal (sadly lost forever in the bowels of Aleksandra) and added a few pages to the end. Or perhaps it was in the leather bound journal (a gift from Brynn) that I still have. It is stationed in the bookshelf behind me. Whichever of the two journals it was, writing in it calmed me. That calm emanated from having a sense of purpose. What sense of purpose was that? The writing itself? Sure. It was ethereal, a sensation. The film evaporated from my skin. My chemicals churned differently simply because I placed words on a page.

I bought the Woodnotes journal at a bookstore when I was living in Austin in 1995 or 1996, I think. My memory’s mottled film shows me a few frames of Craig commenting on the journal, so it may have been before that. 1994? Maybe, but I don’t have any recollection of having it during my “outing” with Melanie. So I retract that. It had to be spring of 1996. A year before, I filled a spiral notebook with jabber. In fact, that very spiral notebook is sitting to the right of my keyboard. I need to finish transcribing it. Those were the days of the University of Houston in Clear Lake and of Marcie. Poor Marcie.

In any case, simply having these journals calmed my mind and writing in them, even more, including if the result of said writing was nothing to, er, write home about. I believe it was a form of meditation. I gave up on “real” meditation after a bout with it during the spiral notebook spring. So I was left with writing. And although I am not really a victim of anxiety in general, I think that at least the beginnings of that demonic sensation creep up on me when I haven’t written in a while. Just another reason to keep stream-of-conciousness writing frequent in the morning routine. Words are moderators of the hara and diffusers of the spirit.

And believe me, spirits need to be diffuse. Density is not a pretty personality trait, especially for a spirit. Dense spirits tend to pile at the bottom of the cosmic cistern. They become clutter.

Messages from Kris on Mastodon yesterday detailed the difference between approaches in Flavigula music and Youstuva music. The latter is a fusionish project he’s been working with for longer than I’ve known him. He wrote:

When working on your material, it is very Melodically/Harmonically complex compared to playing bass with Youstuva. For my parts, Youstuva tends to be more focused on rhythm. (Time signature changes/polymeters/polyrhythms.) Not that your material doesn’t have those aspects as well but it’s a different take on the same aspects for both. (If that makes sense.) That’s one of the reason I love doing multiple projects.

He’s a very versatile player as the two projects are sonically incredibly different. I suppose one could say they are both vaguely steeped in a Jazz / Progressive Rock soup, Youstuva much more than Flavigula, but that’s where the similarity ends. That reminds me that I should listen to Youstuva today. It’s been a while.

I’ve been exchanging email with Kris concerning Nolju Tafiz (The Second Instant), formerly titled Sas Tafiz (The Second Breath - though the meaning was originally the same, the word sas experienced semantic drift). In my notes that I’m referring to as I type this, I state that the “album” is mostly done. That is untrue. The album (which will end with Nolju Tafiz) is very far from done, even in the composing department. At the time, I thought I’d just cobble together the tracks I had as demos and titled collectively A Cupboard of Moors or Bricked-up Cupboard, revise them slightly and have a coherent musical statement. Instead, the revising has become a meticulous recomposing process. It’s marvellously enjoyable. You should try it. It will bring diffusion to your clunky spirit.

Nolju Tafiz and another piece bookend the pieces I am revamping, congealing them into a type of suite. These bookends will feature Christian’s vocals, if he ever gets around to it. Otherwise, they’ll feature extended kalimba solos that are unrelated to the rest of the musical content. I suspect Christian’s “tardiness” in his Flavigula tasks is a combination of slight loss of interest (after all, Flavigula is no longer a fresh concept) and a life in South Carolina that is littered with family commitments, lettuce preparation / cultivation, house remodelling, hag and escort impregnation, and spending hours every morning and evening watching Youtube. His desire and effort to learn FL Studio (or any DAW at all) is impressive, though. The tenuous void around space-time quivers with the harmonic content he eructs from such experiments.

Of course, the tea has steeped and has been ready for consumption for some minutes now. To be completely honest, I’ve already consumed two cups. In contrast to yesterday (or yesteryear, for those of you in the throes of severe time dilation from marijuana or other assorted psychedelics), I’ll be drinking English Breakfast today. It’s wondrous bitter tinge overtakes whichever metaphorical warmth I’m feeling at the moment.

In my musings from over a month ago now, which were meant as the raw material for the blog entries that now sit lacklustre in MongoDb, waiting to be served on either a Gemini or Http platter, I continued my thread of thought concerning concentration. I wrote this:

The theme for the past week has been thought dispersion. I’m having problems concentrating even now. Possibly, this is because I just looked at the word count of this thurk and found it was ~100 shy of my daily goal. This, in itself, is rather unproductive. Instead of being in the writing, my mind is looking at the end of the session, to whatever comes next. Living in this moment becomes harder when the mind goes into a holistic jaunt concerning the hours or whole day surrounding the moment. The moment is a pinpoint, or, as we say in Lakife, tyk that is immeasurable in its tininess. It moves along the plane of time. I inhabit that tininess, but my mind wants to float above and contemplate the whole plane. There are advantages to both ways of thought, but during a writing session, tyk is where I want to be. Et mitin af tyk nis. I want to be inside the point, the dot, the atom. It is the point of the blade that etches. The mind that controls that blade has sensory apparatus uniquely at that point and nowhere else.

I’m listening to an ostensible improvisation by Jayrope’s Air Cushion Finish project. If you’ve ever heard anything by this project, you’d know that it distracts the concentrated mind. It, itself, demands concentration. Thus, I’m doing the exact opposite at this moment that my previous goal stated. I’m dividing my attention. Perhaps in this tyk, I’m resigned to that fate. And during this subsequent tyk, as well. Nolju is instant. Though another term might do, as well - tyk noliz. An atom, or seed, or singularity of time. Same idea, though different metaphor. As the book I’m currently reading constantly states - we are the metaphors we inhabit. That again reminds me of Vonnegut, though he’s not the author I’m currently reading, and also passes my mind back to an entry from a few days ago when I also mentioned Vonnegut. Ah, but my concentration drifts. Or am I riding the blade on a stream of conciousness wave? Fuck um.

I drift now back to my notes from early November.

I had just published Songs for Looptober (nine minutes before, according to said notes) and had begun listening to it, as I’m wont to do immediately after a publication. It begins with Christian claiming That’s because you’re a bad person, vole. Whether this is true or not is up for debate and has been for decades, centuries even. I’ll quote the rest. (Note - I was listening to Pôle by Besombes & Rizet immediately before putting on the Flavigula album.)

The first thing that strikes me is the loss of a bit of volume switching from Besombes & Rizet to the new Flavigula. Over the last few days, I’ve remastered the tracks, trying to let the max volumes hover between -11 and -12 LUFS. Possibly this is not enough. I want the compositions to breathe, however, having dynamics. The key may be not to just jam up the limiter, but carefully adjust each of the tracks’ volume to stay below a peak of -6db (headroom, ya know?), but to interact organically. All this before the limiter. I’m still an infant when it comes to the mixing and mastering process, I feel. And infants are only good for one thing - to be eaten. As Acy once said: Babies are high in protein.

I’ve since ended the mastering process by using ffmpeg (and its associated loudnorm) to normalise the track to -16 LUFS and somewhere between 12 and 16 LRA (loudness range) depending on the dynamics of the piece. This strategy has proven successful so far, or at least no one has made any comments regarding my mastering, though I wish they would, positive or negative. What are music communities for, if not that? Eh? On the piece recently (two days ago) finished for Quentin for today’s TwitchTV stream, I also wanted to add a touch of convolution reverb. Adding it before the normalisation process, however, resulted in muddiness. The muddiness was slight - a mere smear of filth on a thin, plastic plate, perhaps - but enough to make me remove the reverb. Adding the impulse response after normalization would be ideal, but the process’d be too convoluted (pun intended). Or, alternatively, my lethargy may defeat the process before it begins.

While I’m on the subject of sound design, I’ll blather a bit on the subject of Supercollider. My relationship with the system is tremulous. One grey, protruding half of my personality loves programming and programming for sound design seems ideal. The other grey, protruding half sees it as a mostly grueling routine that sucks away much more time than I’d like for it to. This complaint centers around the “programming” / “practising music” dichotomy. It’s a dichotomy that only exists, obviously, in my mind. Even wiring together patches on SBUP is a type of programming. All of this takes away from time I have my Telecaster cradled in my lap. So, in this querulous module of my mind, “programming for sound design” is lumped in with “programming in general”. The disillusionment arrives when something I bash out in Supercollider doesn’t sound remotely like what I had in my head. Usually this doesn’t bother me when I’m experimenting on “real” instruments, but with, for example, Supercollider, it’s programming. The machine should do as I say.

Yes, I realise that I must simply learn to speak the language better. Bastard machines.

In other news, my restlessness is piquing. I haven’t had the chance to have a “vacation” or trip to Praha since September. Am I stir crazy? No - I just need to feel that for some time there is NO ONE I need to answer to for anything. This is a difficult state to achieve when you live with someone. Someones are demanding. I am destined to live alone again. It’ll come sooner than I think. In fact, the knife’s edge of time, carried on an accelerating wave, speeds towards that very moment.

I recently realised that I didn’t have a copy of Peter Hammill’s X My Heart. I quickly remedied the atrocity and then listened to said album. I find it glorious. It was released around 1998, around a time of great change for me. The song A Better Time was on some compilation or other that I was listening to in those days. Such compilations were one way to discover new music, just as hanging out on Mastodon is today, though slightly less dynamic. The “gap” in my psyche that not having this album produced brought about a sentimentality I didn’t know I had for those days. That’d be the “pre-leaving-Brynn” period, of course, not the “I escaped from a hellish marriage then spent a month doing insane things with Mr Bender then found myself in a huge, empty flat in Praha” period. In any case, the “gap” in my cerebral draining pit that not having this album produced spawned a sentimentality I didn’t know I had for those days. That sentimentality was short lived, though, as the last time I clearly remembered listening to the actual CD was either in the Petra Rezka flat, most of the furniture gone, one of my last days there. Or, alternatively, a few months later in Jeníček’s flat during my visit over Xmas 2000. That CD might have ended up with Aleksandra and is therefore lost forever. Bastard me.

In the notes I am revising for this blog entry, I wrote:

Today, the third Noisevember cut begins. The starting point are the four tones - Ab G E C#. I will implement a crude granular synthesis of my guitar playing these tones in various octaves. I still consider myself a Supercollider amateur, but I know enough to cut up samples into buffers and then play the buffers in sequence with gaps between them. This should create granular note after granular note. Perhaps I should have them actually played in random order, or in fact, harmonized in random order. A linear counter point of two. I like this idea. I’ll go with it as the backdroop. The BACKDROOP. The thing that hangs in the grey landscape behind all things. The backdroop. The prominence that is not prominent but always there. The hunk of flesh lolling from the sky. The uvula of deities. Fuck um. The tea must be steeped by now.

The tea is indeed steeped by now. I shall fetch a mug.

I am now listening to the resultant track, Tyk Jena Tin Nulu (Solitary Seed in the Void) in all its mixed and mastered glory. It’s very sparse, as I set out for it to be, and the four notes are respected, for the most part. They are distributed throughout the track in spurts by guitar, ukulele, Boris (the Korg Minilogue), etc. A C# drone ebbs in the backdroop, ever-present. Perhaps, in honour of this particular backdroop, I should have C# or even cis tattooed on my uvula. It’s not like I’m using my uvula for anything else. It might as well become a decorative object. In any case (the connective of the day), I am now listening to the resultant track, Tyk Jena Tin Nulu, for the second time. Even after scarcely more than a month, I wouldn’t know the granules are necessarily sampled electric guitar. Happily, I did not insist they continued throughout the whole piece, but only ebbed in and out of silence when they were “necessary”. Apart from the backdroop, nothing walks the sonic landscape constantly. Ideas hop from discrete point to discrete point. To me, the resultant mood is successful precisely because of this.

I think during my epoch of daily improvisation, I did not realise that parts that ebb in and out of a landscape create a better overall sonic painting. They serve better than broad, constant strokes of the guitar or synth brush. When sparsity did take priority over creating layers, it was accidental. I hope I’ve learned my lesson. Perhaps this is a factor that contributes to my idea that most “solos” in music are failures. Usually, the soloist wants to paint a bright stroke over a canvas that calls complete attention to itself when the narcissist asshole would better serve the piece with a middle ground between said swath and a type of discrete pointillism. Of course, soloists and improvisers alike tend to get lost in a moment, forgetting their environment. They will be consigned to the pit.

Returning to the nostalgia of 1998, or, in this case, 1997, the music I chose for today’s writing adventure was the first album by Lard Free. Its first track, Warinobaril, was also on a compilation I was listening to during the initial months of the failed, hellish marriage. That compilation, titled Supernatural Fairy Tales, provided impetus to explore quite a bit of music unknown to me at the time. With Lard Free, I’m sitting on the floor of our basement apartment on Dexter Avenue (I believe that was the name of the street) in Capitol Hill in Seattle, drinking in this music. I didn’t hear the entire album that contains Warinobaril until years later, living in Praha, lost in my decade of personal haze.

I have lost the thread. I am certainly out of practise, writing-wise. This is true even if I’ve been more or less consistent over the last month and a half. Or so I tell myself! I sit down and I find myself in a state of pause more than in any other state. The flying fingers of yesteryear are but nostalgia! Oh, woe! Fuck um. Similarly, my fingers stumble after being away in Praha for a week and I begin fumbling at the guitar again. Most past routines, once abandoned, reassemble themselves, perhaps not in the “ideal” form, but in some form or another. One moment, connectives do not exist. Sentences plod shambling one after another. Then, glue arrives from linguistic wonderland.

Connectives is a topic that “frightens” me in every language. They are the easiest to use clunkily. They are the easiest to use ephemerally. Or, rather, it’s easy to fall back on them when searching for a “proper” construction in which to place one’s thoughts. I see this phenomenon especially with people who only study a language up to a certain point, then proceed to “wing it” during the rest of their shambling, disconnected lives. I’ve been in those shoes from time to time. Certainly, it’s better to be cognizant of one’s linguistic constructions even if you are a native speaker. It allows one to avoid to falling into the “empty words” pit. It’s like… I mean… yeah… you know. Pravě. Peasants.

Connectives is a topic that “frightens” me in every language. And, to illustrate my fright, I haven’t explored the topic much in Lakife. I’m in the process, but it’s a slog. Subordinate clauses also fall within the realm of linguistic horrors. I realised last night whilst naming the new Flavigula piece that the use of a subordinate clause, required in this case, is ambiguous (and possibly ill-conceived). I’ll elaborate.

Hapa fela liz li min nutzen mija == The fire of creeping (or crawling) joy. Whereas in English, one can simply qualify joy with creeping, Lakife’s current grammar insists on a subordinate clause. The main clause hapa fela liz is simply “fire joy GENITIVE-PARTICLE” and could also be stated joy’s fire. A subordinate clause that modifies the closest noun phrase starts with li, but li nutzen mija (which means “THAT along-the-ground moving”) could refer to hapa (fire) or to fela (joy). I invented a new connective particle - limin or li min, perhaps - that indicates that the subject of the subordinate clause is the closest genitive. So, hapa fela liz li min nutzen mija would be, literally, (the) fire of joy that (the) joy creeps. I like it, and it reminds me a bit of Toki Pona structurally.

If the phrase li nutzen mija is used enough, it could reasonably be compressed into a single adjective. It happens as languages evolve, and if you don’t believe me, you can consult Lyle Campbell’s Historical Linguistics. You have it over there on your nightstand. It’s not just decoration. Read it. So, compression - reasonably, li nutzen mija could be compressed to nutzenja, which would simply be “activity along the ground”. Hrm. I like that. This would simplify the title, as well - hapa fela liz nutzenja. If you wanted to make the fire creep along the ground, instead, you’d state hapa nutzenja fela liz. Joy’s creeping fire. Now that I consider it, I like that title better. Funny how pondering something moulds it. Bastard brain.

Voy a retroceder un poco.

Connectives is a topic that “frightens” me in every language. It’s one that I have mastered in no language - not even in my native language. I purposely leave out connectives. My sentences rest on their own. The flow is implied. Chords connecting phrases are only in the mind of the reader. The style reminds me of Vonnegut, vaguely. It also reminds me of how I sometimes write music, and of some music that I immensely enjoy. I create a patchwork of modal colours, sewn together. The thread binding them place them side by side, and the thread’s colour is itself vague, an unclear indigo grey. Traditional harmonic movement is usually not part of my agenda. Like traditional harmonic movement, it’s important for me that the thread, no matter how vaguely hued, does exist. The connective tissue can be a single phrase, even a single note, or lack of phrase, or even lack of a single note - something implied. However, I do find myself pondering vi bII i cadences frequently. Ah ha! My assholery has been revealed. I used a connective two sentences ago! I should be tortured for my lack of consistency. The weed that is my core neural binding should be ripped from its metaphorical earth. That reminds me that I wanted to explore tertiary dominants, or a similar concept not using necessarily dominants.

Speaking of James -

Well, that is an odd way to start a blog entry, isn’t it? Speaking of James - has no context. Actually, considering that I do look back over old entries from time to time, given my writing history, it’s not a very odd way to start a blog entry at all. So, I’ll begin again.

Speaking of James - and possibly drifting into quejica mode - he is wandering more and more often into the sea of marketing. I do understand why, naturally, and don’t necessarily blame him, though that doesn’t mean I won’t make a coffee cup or tea mug or other receptacle from his cranium. He’s spent the last two years involved more with getting what we do out and into the eyes of prospective clientele. This is in contrast to doing development, which is my principal role. He is wandering more and more often into the undulating waters of marketing, submerged in a mentality that I’ve been trying to escape since before my birth. For example, he frequently asks for architectural changes that he declares must be simple. He has lost perspective on the time it takes to morph and debug code. The marketing mentality is a curse.

I pine for simple days when I sat around plunking in programs that burped forth absurdities to entertain myself and my friends. Those days are mostly gone. But there is Gemini. Gemini is good. Perhaps I’ll see a resurgence of the spirit of those simple days. Perhaps I’ve already seen its beginnings.

Speaking no longer of James -

Some dude that I met at RIO last year plucks away at an acoustic guitar or some other such acoustic instrument. The results flow from my near-field monitors and buffet against my tympani. The music has a quaint British folk quality that used to entice me but now does almost nothing for me. Renata, the spirits of the netherworld take her soul, still follows a similar path. Perhaps my tastes in music are narrowing. Is it a factor of decrepitude? Surely, it is a factor of other narrowings I’ve consciously performed in the last few years.

I’ve made it a point to try to cut out parts of my life that I find distract too much from the important tasks. What are the important tasks, the mustelid in the corner asks? Well, making music, for one. I’m pretty satisfied with my results concerning that. In fact, I probably spend more time on practising and / or composing or recording music than anything else summed. Writing is another important task, though I’ve only recently taken it up again.

The sensory dispersal of common life takes its toll on me no matter my narrowing goals. As much as I try to ignore it, I’m also a “victim” of social media idleness. I’ve eliminated most everything except for Mastodon, but I still take a look at Facebook occasionally because there are still stubborn souls there who REFUSE to migrate to anywhere else. I pity them. Perhaps I should make coffee cups or tea mugs from their skulls. That way, I could abandon Facebook altogether.

I used to think that megalomaniacal entity could be useful for “marketing” Flavigula music, in the sense that more people could know about it by some sort of promotional (marketing) magic. I initially considered it a test. Now I consider the test done. Though there are various ambient and electronic groups on said megalomaniacal entity that I’ll comment to when Flavigula has a new release, I’m done with megalomaniacal magic marketing systems. I’ve seen no noticeable results. Word of mouth, Mastodon, flavigula.net and thurk.org gemini suffice. Oh, and Submarine Broadcasting when and if I submit future “main sequence” albums to them. They can market um up if they wish. I consider that part out of my hands.

Anyhow, again, the sensory dispersal of common life takes its toll on me no matter my narrowing goals. I’m not exactly angered, as I don’t commonly experience that emotion, but frustrated. Or perhaps the emotion is a gradient flowing between frustration and resignation. Part of it comes from being in a relationship and having to spend time every evening watching television with Marisa. Not everything we watch is drivel, and some films / series that we choose pique my imagination, but for the most part it’s a waste of my time. For her, it’s mindless downtime after dealing with children all day at work and dealing with stress-oozing family matters via telephone at home. And I understand the need for this. However, consequently, she usually doesn’t want to watch something intellectually stimulating. Over the months, there have been trends of shows concerning lawyers, political uprising, getting one’s head bashed in with a lead pipe, herds of goats lecturing on script writing for the masses, and the fertility of Spanish ogres. With all that in mind, my opinion is that movies, shows, books and tales about trials, courtrooms and the social lives of lawyers and lawyer types can marinate in a tub of feces. I dig a good detective flick, though. Those are different beasts.

Today is the first day in a few epochs that I’ve awoke without a headache, however slight. My final conclusion is carbohydrate intake within a certain number hours before going to sleep and slowing my metabolism. My main crime is eating something in bed before retiring. Pistachios are culpable. They will be banished.

Yesterday’s experiment, which I shall repeat today, that resulted in a morning without a dull, cerebral ache, involved having NOTHING to eat at all after approximately 15.40 except for the lassi I made in the evening. Strangely, the lassi included honey and I was not affected. This leads me to believe that sugar itself is not a culprit. Further tests are needed. And the lassi was delicious.

I’m in the throes of mixing and mastering the new Noisevember album. Unlike last year’s adventure, I consider this year’s musical journey a substantial album. It jerks. It burbles. It trickles. It undulates. I think the pieces are worthy of something other than naming it just another month-long sonic experiment. I’m leaving the final title up to a narcissist asshole, however, so it’s possible I’ll be punished for the sheer fondness I have of my musical adventure’s results.

The original concept was to attempt to complete a piece within every two days. Since the result came to 15 tracks, I’d say I was successful here. The second concept, one that I only followed for the first third or so of the month, was that each “miniature” was based on a series of between three and five notes randomly chosen by a Bash script I wrote whilst sitting in the passenger’s seat of Marisa’s car on the way back from our small getaway to Agoncillo. Agoncillo is a small, frightening village in the deserty mini-mountains of south-east La Rioja. You are not required to visit. In fact, you are prohibited from visiting. The coffee is awful and there is not a single mustelid in sight.

Anyhow, the original concept was to write “miniatures” based on a series of between three and five notes randomly chosen by a Bash script. I subconsciously abandoned that idea after running through the groups of notes I’d generated during the aforementioned journey. To me, there is a stark harmonic contrast between the pieces that began as such and the later ones, composed from whatever my hara eructed at inception. I’ve shuffled the playlist a bit, so anyone trying to discern which track started with which compositional method could be flummoxed and in their flummoxed state find me and bludgeon me with a small length of lead pipe. I won’t blame them. In fact, the bludgeoning(s) can serve as inspiration for further experimental material.

After starting the first piece, epochs or a month ago, I wrote the following:

I began the first piece yesterday. It starts with a bang - a bang from the dust from the Plaits, crumbling quickly into particle matter. I will create minimal drones that interact harmonically and spatially over a few minutes. They will act more as a backdrop than anything else. Spooky resonances will bubble! Moderate or even sparse “melodies” will pepper the drones! The aforementioned notes will form these melodies. Will they be true “melodies”? Of course. Even two notes repeated endlessly is a melody.

And furthermore:

The only concern I have is the new VCO I have. I abandoned the 2hp VCO for this Złob dual VCO which is so far not satisfactory. It just doesn’t play well with my filters. Of course, before abandoning it, I shall put it through the rigors of being a part of Shambal Brambel’s Undulating Platypus. Or was it “ululating”? Only the deity that sits sessile on a (mostly) abandoned moon circling an anonymous gas giant in an unnamed solar system would be able to say. Let’s ask him. Let’s not wait for a response.

Herr Złob VCO has received much use, in fact. I’ve had success modulating one of the oscillators with the other. Well, not directly, because that’s not possible, but by tossing the signal into the WMD/SSF MMF and having the other oscillator modulate the cutoff frequency. The resulting frequency modulation can be used for delightful percussion sounds and nefarious drones. Also, its triangle wave does great LPG bongos. Herr Złob VCO will remain in my toolbox for an epoch or two.

I have an empty cup that used to contain tea sitting before me. It was Earl Grey.

The confusion before the word / preposition before is astounding. Before it irks me further, I’ll expound, as it was fucking with my development of Lakife. In English, before can mean temporally in the immediate past of whatever temporal theme is being discussed. It can also mean spatially immediately to the front. This ambiguity is not amusing to me. It is an abomination. My solution for Lakife is to clarify the difference for myself and for the table of pre- post- positions.

Originally, the table had the spatial before and the temporal before in the same row, associated with the preposition tin. When I first began the design of the language, much of the work was done on 20+ hour bus rides around the southwest part of Australia. Possibly I was hungover during part of that time. Excuses aside, Lakife’s fur signifies before, in the literal aspect. Spatially, the English equivalent is behind. Fur … pot is the temporal version and fur … nis is the spacial version.

Etjo tex anja liz fur noz sopen pot.

I will eat her child before nightfall.

Since noz sopen (nightfall) already indicates time, the pot at the end there is optional. I suppose behind nightfall or towards the back of nightfall could be useful metaphoric or poetic concepts, but I’m sure you get what I mean.

Solan qotzifur neimolja tel topen.

They went towards the back of the boat. Nothing surrealistic in this one. I apologize if you were expecting otherwise. On the other trembling paw, expectations are poison.

Topen possibly is not required, either, since movement is obvious by verbalizing fur (with qotzi, which indicates past tense, perfect aspect, vole).

Similarly, potom, just like in Czech, indicates something that comes after something else temporally. In Lakife, it also indicates to the front or in the front spatially. I’m sure that toots the muffin of the universe. As it should.

Ambiguity in language is useful for poetry and quirky prose. It’s also useful for one of my most hated things - puns. Though I’m trying to create grammar that is very delineated in Lakife, quirks of vocabulary and derivation will surely make ambiguity reign. Ambiguity should reign. Let our queen by Sweet Entropy. She is an androgynous “queen”. We’ll simply use the pronoun an to refer to her / it, as it has no gender.

I’ve always been of the opinion that gender in language enforces gender roles and stereotypes in a culture. The machismo of Spain and the festering bowels of Latin America seems to support my view. I’m aware that linguistic gender possibly arose from actual roles that men and women played in society back in what a narcissist asshole would call the good ol days. Since I am unflinchingly progressive, I say fuck um to the good ol days and so-called natural roles of anyone. Let’s shatter traditions, habits and long standing prejudices.

Like Estonian, Lakife doesn’t really have gender. Certainly, there are no gender markers on nouns nor adjectives. Add -ju or -ja to the pronoun an to create “he” or “she” respectively, for convenience. However, those suffixes have very different meanings in other contexts, which is another break from gender roles. Specifically, -a (and sometimes -ja) shows an active state of an idea or entity whilst -u (and sometimes -ju) indicates a passive or resting state. These are not my personal commentaries on the roles of female and male. No. It just happened as such, as sometimes the development of Lakife feels out of my hands. I set many rules in place and continue to do so, and given those rules as, um, let’s say axioms, the whole system grows. It is, in a sense, generative.

What I have come to think of as the oblivious nature of the Spanish or simply the Spanish behaviour, just occurred outside my apartment, in the stub of a corridor, in front and partially inside of the lift. That last bit is very important. Our new neighbour, whose name is Juanco or somesuch, stood in the stub of the corridor speaking to another human who stood partially in and partially out of the lift. This latter human was therefore blocking the lift and preventing anyone else in the building from using it. The conversation carried on for at least ten minutes.

Since living in Logroño, I’ve noticed this type of behaviour in locals in general, and especially when it comes to the less than elegant process of saying “goodbye” to someone or a group of someones. An impromptu congregation manifests and seals itself inside a bubble. This frighteningly localised bubble does not admit any stimuli from beyond its membrane. A tendency also exists, when in a more public place, for this bubble to block or divert any pedestrian traffic in its proximity.

I’m aware that this behaviour exists in places other than Spain, but its existence has announced itself much more strongly in this country than in any other in which I’ve lived. I’m also aware that in my decrepitude I may becoming more easily irked by the ways of the masses. Enough of caveats, though. These actions are empty of empathy, show a lack of observation skills, and promote general bubble-thinking. My rage only intensifies when these denizens put on the mask of joy or drink and the excuse of fiesta to excuse themselves.

They need to die.

Speaking of Michael Achenbach, I should attempt to look him up. My first question to him will be Did you ever get around to making your own music? He was the intuitive type, musically, though he studied to be a mechanical or electrical or some other sort of engineer. He’d pick up a stringed instrument and it just made sense to him. Though, admittedly, I did hear him spending long hours practising in his disheveled hovel-room in the Enfield house. Intuitive contrasts with me, one who struggles with every phrase. Or, I could say that I am musically intuitive but not mechanically intuitive. I’m certainly intuitive with abstractions, and music appears in my mind as an abstract force. The truth sits somewhere in the vague middle, as always. Fucking axis thinking. Fuck you, Brian Eno.

Music is a process borne on wings of intellect but accelerated by emotive force - and the resultant vector is what I call the hara.

I finished the mixing and mastering of the tenth Noisevember this morning. A disappointment that runs in tandem with these “compositional” challenges is that it seems that the participants are more concerned with timbre and sonic variety than harmonic studies. This goes for the narcissist asshole who is my “partner” in diabolic deeds, as well. So, what happened to interest in harmonic diversity, or should I not be surprised in this case since the “challenge” is entitled Noisevember? Whether I’m surprised or not, I muse once again: What happened to interest in harmonic diversity? What I hear is incredibly creative in the timbral universe, and I do admit that timbral composition can be amazing. What I also hear is the recycling of suspended chord patterns and minor drones in the harmonic sphere. Melody, when even apparent in this realm of music, waddles along the same cadence paths as usual since baroque times.

It seems harmonic complexity reached an apex mid-20th century, plateaued and then fell into a gradual decrescendo. Pockets of creativity still exist. Hey, there’s Flavigula, for example! And I am always drawn towards those pockets and they exert powerful influence over my creativity. Run of the mill suspended chord patterns need to DIE. Or at least I really don’t need to hear them dribbling from every “experimentalist”’s corner shop.

A stalk of bamboo hovers over me in eternal vigil. Eternity is the span of its existence, of course. Isn’t eternity the span of any entity’s existence? Does it take eternity to pass from the burp from the womb into the sudden state of decomposition? Does it take an eternity to pass from a smooth seed cradled in sod into the sudden state of decomposition? The span of life, this eternity, passes in a flash. Every detail of its presence evaporates. He / she / it who perceived the passage no longer exists. So why my moaning about paying attention to each nuance in the wrinkles that form my day? When my conciousness decomposes or passes on or finally gets to hang out in that vast, yawning gulf between the walls of the edifice in which I live, surely my memories will pass with it. But even when I’m living in my mini-yurt in Mongolia and the only thing of note I do is play cribbage with Jeremy every few days, I’ll be able to pour through the collected details of my life and thus be in a state of evolution. Life itself is a composition. And compositions should always refer back to themselves. Otherwise, they are just a string of loosely connected riffs, themes, melodies and syncopations. Whether or not someone gets to experience the composition that is my life secondhand doesn’t matter. Fuck um. It’s the composing itself that toots my muffin.

Following that thread, at times I do muse about death. It’s a comfort. Upon this passage, I will no longer be dragged behind the will to be creative, or the will to do anything, really. A relief! A breath! There will not be competition, cooperation, absurd ambition or anything at all. When death comes, I’ll have time to sit around and listen to and read all this hovno I’ve stirred up from the mud of my lower mind.

Also speaking of death, I continue to take freezing showers to spur my telomeres into action! I will live forever! Actually, I’ve come to like the freezing showers. They awaken not only my telomeres, but send me fresh into my studio to dream up more noise, be it sonic or typewritten. From time to time, I also do work that relates to mine and James’s project, but don’t tell the Dean of Creative Science that. He’d have me flayed and tossed into the vat of kumquat juice he keeps handy in the smaller interdimensional place in the middle left-hand drawer of his oaken desk.

But, yes, I will live forever! I cry so like I am 16 again, or even 17. Immortality is only ever a very introverted goal. For narcissist assholes, this statement may seem counter-intuitive. They want LEGACIES, after all. They think that a LEGACY will buy them immortality. Bah! Immortality is an internal state that allows one to wander among the crevices of everyday invention. It is the passing of the dust motes and etchings on the walls of those crevices from short-term to long-term memory. It is a personal quest. It is life seen from within. Immortality is in the domain of the living, not the dead. LEGACIES! Bah!