Yesterday, I asked Christián for his opinion of the percussion in a short piece I’d written for Dani’s short film. At one point, he asked me, What are you trying to accomplish? I made up some bullshit about a statue of the Buddha with a pistol on a beach on the Baltic Sea, waves lapping at its base. A module in my collective mind reacted before my more mature modules could stop it. It feared that without an initial #narrative to back the piece of music up, the whole process was meaningless. Even after other #modules caught up, I didn’t back up and correct myself. Only later in the evening did I write something pertaining to my more mature thoughts on the subject.

From far back in my cultural education, I was progressively etched. If there is no compelling narrative as the impetus for a piece of #music, then it has no substance. Why? Why can’t a piece of art stand on its own without a story to back it? I respect Abstract Expressionists in this regard. And, in fact, for myriad works I have completed and are in the process of completion, no underlying narrative exists.

Many of my modules carry this cultural etching. The ones that do not, or on which the etchings are fading, become more and more dominant.

I think it is inevitable that for music humans bother to delve into, narratives are created, sourced from personal experiences and from emotions that surface during immersion. These pieces of art do not require an initial narrative, though. No #meaning is necessary. They can be personal sounding boards. They can be spaces where reverberations create unique narratives.

What remains, in my mind, in the soundtrack to Dani’s newest short film, austerely entitled Sheriff, is one more short piece. I’m not counting the two #SirAlfredIV remakes that still have to be done. Forcing Christián to sing A House of Strength and Love will be a chore. Oh, he’ll sing it well and be willing, but he is anything but timely when collaborating on #music. His main problem, obviously, is that he has no access to Romanian Prostitutes in South Carolina (subsequently known as The Pit). Being of the ignorant farmboy type, he’d not notice the Guress Jewel inside each Romanian Prostitute, sense nothing of the underlying richness of Elixir or its regular expression syntax, and simply toss her to the dogs (or to his brother) after profaning her.

Actally, Christián is the Sheriff in Dani’s newest short #film. And a fine sheriff he is, untimely imp or not.

The latest piece and the remaining one are both based on melodies I wrote for Insensetez, the July tune in my Jazz course. The melodies are wholly original, though other parts of my arrangement were based on the original melody of the piece. As I showered earlier, I put on Rain Tree Crow at a volume that created an ambience, as it should be. In specific, New Moon at Red Deer Wallow struck me as the sort of environment I’d like. The pace is hollow. The synth rolls like moonbeams made to dapple a forest floor in vaguely geometic abstractions. The melody itself drifts in and out almost as if it were peeking occasionlly around a stone but mostly keeping to itself. I’ll keep this all in mind for my recitation (as Robert Calvert would say, were he not dispersed into the roots of various vegetables).

The initial purpose of this entry is to test a new #blog functionality. An astute reader will notice the hash symbol in front of the word blog in the previous sentence. After reading about the Linux / MacOS command line application JRNL, I decided that dispensing with my ubiquitous topic header shall be done today. The original format of these entries, all written in either Emacs or Vim, of course, since I am old school, is a series of headers terminated by newlines. One of them is Topic, after which is listed a comma delimited list of topics an entry pertains to. I’ve come to realize that being old school, though attractive to all the Romanian Prostitutes roving these parts, isn’t always the ideal state of being. Indeed, the ideal state of being is ever changing, or progressive, if you will.

Speaking of Romanian Prostitues, I’ve been made aware that they may be of help with #Elixir regular expresions. Growing up in Romania, especially in the cluttered berg of Deva, has its advantages, you see. Young girls are raised to be one thing or another. That’s an inclusive or. The first, as the peruser of Martenblog may have guessed, and given its references in this and the previous paragraph, is a Romanian Prostitute. The second, as the peruser of Martenblog, being swift in mental capacities, should have assumed by now, is a Elixir Regular Expression Guress. Guress is the feminine of Guru. As their male counterparts swelter on mountainsides and in Slivovice distilleries, these soon to be defouled innocents are schooled rigorously in both trades.

Returning to the topic, absolutely no pun intended because I despise puns and find them the lowest, peasanty humour available, bubble-like and crude, is that a #hashtag in the body of an entry creates a topic much like the aforementioned comma delimited list. Now to test. Go fetch yourself a Romanian Prostitute.

Whilst chatting with Herr Neumann earlier today, I was reminded of something I used to think about often: Relationships fail when they begin with the partners pretending to be something other than they will be in every day life later on.

Christián’s current obsession with Isa reminds me of this truth - a truth that is evident when one steps outside of the circumstance. Many people go into the dating game, which is just a shortcut to saying an entraceway into a romantic relationship acting utterly unlike they are in every day life. They try to impress. They take pains to cater to every need of the potential mate.

When such a situation does develop into a routine, and then it escalates into living together, and then proceeds to other morbid rituals, the flashy sheen that was so apparent at the beginning of the dating process fades - sometimes quickly. They are left with another human different from the eidolon they first encountered. Dissolution ensues.

The most successuful relatioships I’ve seen began with the pair in situations mirroring their normal habits. They were part of the same group of friends, all knowing intimate details about each other, before romantic notions developed. Or, they worked together and saw many sides of one another before feelings escalated. Later in life, there are fewer surprises. Isa doesn’t disembowel Christián with a kitchen utensil when he begins spouting rubbish about how granting women equal rights was the beginning of the downfall of mankind, for example.

Yesterday, as the baleful sun began its descent across the jagged horizon, I walked with Marisa along the dusty road to Tres Aguas. She’s been preoccupied lately because one of her tenants in the apartment on Madre de Dios has lost his job and thus is expelling himself from Logroño. Worry eats at her. She fixates on worry. It’s a genetic burr in her family, methinks. I doubt it can be removed and in any case, I’m done with trying to alter peoples’ personalities. That was the Bobbus of fifteen or more years ago. Fuck um.

An aside:

Marisa just rose from her pained slumberous morning malaise to introduce me to the phrase que te den morcilla, which is equivalent to vete a la mierda. The phrase toots my muffin.

The soon to be ex-tenant is a lawyer of sorts, or has aspirations to be one, and of the technology variety. I’m unsure if his knowledge of the ways of specific TCP and UDP ports on his laptop is profound, but I’m sure his heart is in the right place - that is, pumping circulatory fluid throughout his living corpse. Apparently, he wants to advise Spanish companies and individuals in EU law regarding various transactions across the internet. Somehow (I’m not completely clear on this point), his employer, another of these lawyers, dismissed him from his position. This jefe specializes in what the youth - I’ll call him Aitor from here on out - aspires to. So he’s fucked, eh?

I’m also not completely clear on the next point. To be placed in a pool of humans who could be selected for a position given his credentials, an authority informed him that he has to have some sort of technology certification to accompany the pretty paper that declares him a lawyer. He applied to a program in the University of La Rioja to take a degree / certificate / whatever of this sort and was rejected. Universities in Spain have a limited number of agujeros open in any given field of study. He was not inserted into one of said agujeros because, I paraphrase, the agujeros are reserved for humans who do not already hold another degree / certificate / whatever.

Aitor has multiple paths from which he can now choose. Unfortunately for Marisa, none coincide with him being anything other than an ex-tenant. The central bulb of our communication yesterday sprang from my insistence that Aitor abandon attempts to find his passion in a small city / region like Logroño / La Rioja and migrate to Madrid or Barcelona, both hubs for tech activity in Spain. I regurgitated my repetitive theme to discard the hunt for university credentials and to forge one’s own path. Learning is a personal, intimate affair, especially in the realm of technologies. My experience certainly tells me so.

Here we almost reached an impasse. I came up against the nearly impenetrable wall of Spanish rootedness. She described to me what seemed like folklore but that she assured me still ran deep in Spanish mentality. The son who stays rooted in place and thus grows family fields into abundance is a success. He is rich. The son who departs onto paths leading him away from the home patch is a failure. Obviously, this mentality doesn’t sit well with me. I have no want or need for roots. I am a spirit of the air, not of the earth. We did not hit an actual impasse because we both agreed that Aitor should strike out if his intention is to explore all possibilities of “success”. Marisa is simply insistant that because of Spanish rootedness, he is unlikely to do so.

Pegado.

The word is used often. A human is stuck to a place. A human is rooted to his past and to his surroundings. A human is likely only to search for possibilities within this bubble. A human is unlikely to stray outside of it. A human who does stray outside of it is regarded odd.

The mentality isn’t unique to Spanish culture. It is a seed within all pueblo culture, worldwide. Bubbles vary in sizes, of course, but they are always there. It touches on a duscussion that Monsieur Bender and I had time and again contrasting those who stay within pueblo culture to see it grow and those who flee from a pueblo culture to take seed in other parts (usually bringing along facets of the origin culture). Even in this simplification, a third option is obvious. Spirits of the air may not take seed anywhere. They drift, finally never taking root in any locale except their tomb.

The question the idea begs is this: Is it really important to take seed anywhere? Is it necessary? Or is it just human nature or, further, animal nature to biologically and psychologically repopulate one’s bubble? I feel no pressure to do so. I posit that it is a freedom that few have. Perhaps that is a lofty or elitist proclamation. Fuck um.

As I mentioned, I’m finished with attempting to change peoples’ fundamental natures, so the case of Aitor is in his own hands. Actually, it’s most likely in the hands of not only Aitor, but of his family and closest friends - that is, the ones what make most of our decisions for us. Aitor’s bubble will make the descision for him. But, like Monsieur Bender and like myself, spirits of the air thrive in reduced, yet highly permeable bubbles. I shall continue to thrive in my own.

Perhaps the subject of this entry should be An Ever Enveloping Cage instead of An Ever Expanding Cage. The latter, an unfortunate mistake that I could easily reach up and change with my agile cursor and typing skills but shall not since it would eliminate the need for this sentence, signifies the same as what scientists of the modern age bark when they refer to the expansion of the universe. It’s stretchy. If my cage is also stretchy, then it doesn’t move to accompany other philosophies, ideals and lumps of garbage left by so-called neighbours who have trundled along. No! It stretches like our universe, becoming larger but keeping the same contents. Its contextual surroundings never change.

I’d like to think that my mind is not estrecho like that of a pueblo-bound palurdo. I’d also like to think that as the universe stretches, it becomes so diffuse that each of my neurons becomes an individual Boltzmann Brain. Oh, they will, Herr Cynic! By that time, however, the stretch will have rendered the concept of distance useless and each of those brains will be its own universe, divorced from contact with any other. Fuck um.

I’ll start again.

I’d like to think that my mind is not estrecho like that of a pueblo-bound palurdo. An expanding mind only becomes bloated on its own feces and beliefs. An enveloping mind absorbs new concepts, has the ability to create abstractions between disperate elements of ideology, philosophy and culture.

This brings me to the primary topic of this entry. I appreciate art more when it is can be decontextualized without damaging its meaning. As a unit of art, it can stand apart and shine, like a Boltzmann Brain out of contact with any other so-called sentient cloud of vapour. If, in other palmistry rites, an obra is steeped in its context to the extent that it cannot be separated from it to be appreciated, it will be diminished for me. I will not appreciate it. It becomes a painting hung on the outer wall of a stone bubble. I have to travel to that bubble’s whereabouts, observe the lines and swirls, then enter the bubble itself and glean ideas about what’s going on inside, re-emerge, consider the coloured forms once again, possibly repeat, etc.

I think and deal in abstractions more and more as I inch towards decrepitude. One of my greatest ex-loves, lyrical and poetic forms, don’t entice me like they used to unless they are also floating in an abstract mist. Specifics ruin the experience. I used to be a big fan of musical storytelling. I was into Harry Chapin and such ilk. Perhaps my ever enveloping cage has enveloped too much. To appreciate art, I wish its context dismissed. I realize that is more difficult with narrative oriented poetry / lyrics. Thus, I distance myself from them. I float in an abstract mist. Music, being a more abstract form itself than language, fares better for me when its context is not immediately apparent or if it is a hybrid of many contexts all referring to one another in complex ways. When it can only be appreciated fully within one of the aforementioned stone bubbles, it’s not going to get my attention.

For me, art that has to be contextualized for appreciation is not arte puro. It cannot transcend its origins. I have to use a modifyer to name it accurately - folk art, pop art, or whatever. The age of complete decontextualization shall come, and it will be beauty puro.

I once wrote:

Regularity and routine and especially in the same small town makes memory monolithic, blurring similar situations from diverse times - the dragonflies tell me.

Dragonflies are known to be cerebral creatures, especially in pueblos dotted with drying puddles of foreign interference. The footprints of travellers fade quickly. Memory remains monolithic, steeped in cultural immobility.

These days, I find regularity and routine to be tools to various ends. My music making’s graph that was flatlined for years, or even decades, has taken on a mountainous nature once again. Regularity and routine are culprits in this enterprise. When I wrote the above quote, however, I was an observer of the quiet circular stitches made by the inhabitants of Seminole, Texas.

Monolithic memory in a way is like sedimentary stone. Layer upon layer are piled and atop is the culture. It’s also unlike sedimentary stone because the lowest layers still permeate the nature of those more exposed to the air. They both support and invade anything that builds upon them. They are despotic bastards. But aren’t all cultural mores, in a sense?

Monolithic cultural memory also inflicts what I call hearsay knowledge upon inhabitants that roam atop the outermost layer. Hearsay knowledge is in contrast with common knowledge and fundamental knowledge. It’s a set of customs and old wives tales based on myths and traditions. Some may scrape truths and realities in a shallow sense, but most are followed simply by sheer force of their cultural history. Examples would be closing the closet door before gonig to sleep at night or never placing a hot dish in a modern refrigerator. Both cannot be verified to be true in our modern age. The first springs from childhood fears, solidifies into unthinking habit. The second was moderately realistic at some point in the past, but has no bearing on recent appliances.

The pueblo mind and its monolithic memory is slow to change, almost immobile.

In contrast to hearsay knowledge, common knowledge is a grey area between easily proven facts (given our current technological and scientific state) and pure myth. It varies from culture to culture, though there normally is overalp. It varies more widely between bubbles. The group of friends I had in university and beyond (Tony, Jayson, Jeff, Christopher …) had a more erudite common knowledge than the fratboy ’sgitabeer types down the hall, though their common knowledge may have had facets we were unaware of, as well, to play the fucking abogado del diablo.

As an aside, it was always thrilling to find other small cultural bubbles (that I usually called shibboleths) that were regionally or socially disconnected but shared these erudite common knowledges. Bonding was usually quicker, like with the social groups I found in Praha after my eternal exile from the states.

Hearsay knowledge, in spite of its kinship with astrological, starry-eyed pseudo-religious hovno, does provide an almost endless wellspring for fictional interpretation. In fact, the impetus of this journal entry was my perusal after over a decade of Lovecraft’s tales. He took primal hearsay knowledge from recessed, haunted cultural memory and costructed a vivid, frightening universe. Most common knowledges state to not take such stories at face value. I’d imagine, however, even given their extreme, fantastical nature, there exist peasants who do.

Kant was very specific about the difference between a Phenomenon and a Noumenon. The perception of sonic information creates the phenomenon of music. I find this an initially clear view of the dichotomy. One could name the waves buzzing from my near field monitors the noumena, but they lack interpretation. To confound the issue, an oscilloscope, though distant from intelligent machines to come, interprets these noumena quite differently than our brains. The sensory apparatus of the machine is not unlike our eardrums, but the brain of the machine translates incoming waves into organized vector graphs. This phenomenon itself is a noumenon on a different level. Our eyes interpret it into a different phenomenon - that is, a representation of a sound wave as we know it with light. In this sense, there are endless tiers of phenomena interpreted from noumena. Is there a base noumenon from which all springs? I’d like to believe it’s an infinite recursion.

I mention to other humans from time to time that I dislike capitalism. I hold it in high disdain, actually, for its abhorrent nature. Asshole capitalists. Let them rot in a molten, golden soup. Some humans often shoot back at me something along the lines of well, you are selling your wares for money, too, so you are a capitalist. Either they are sealed in their own fundamentalist bubble so they cannot see the context of my existence or they outright refuse to believe that anything other than their own point of view exists.

Of course I sell my wares for money. I have to survive in the society that contains us. Ideals exist that I may pine for, but I do not simply abandon everything to pursue them. As much as capitalist scum want a free for all, our occidental world is one of compromise, not of extremes. I sell my wares for money but I don’t jump at the chance to monetize every grain that grows from the bosom of my brain or hara. We are all somewhere on an axis, not at an chuck everything and live an ideal or submit to the capitalist free for all extreme.

Axis thinking. Brian Eno wrote about it in his novel. I’ve talked about it for decades. I’m sure we are not the only ones. Consider it.

This article is one of many that claim that consonance and dissonance are cultural traits. Exposure to western music has trained most of us to veer towards perfect fifths and similar rot. Perfect fifths have their place, of course, but just not in the helpings that I’m usually presented. This concept of subjective evaluation of music bothers some people, especially those of the fundamentalist strain. I’m using the word fundamentalist in a broader sense than usual, indicating any who have steadfast points of views not easily swayed by counter-evidence.

(This)

Our hearing apparati has jointly evolved in a uniform way, so on a physical level, we perceive sound equally. We differ in the way our brain interprets and sorts it. Brains love to categorize.

I grew up fully exposed to western music. Moreover, the western music I was mostly exposed to as a youth was a very narrow slice of all that was available in the occidental realm. The western music of West Texas was, as you might guess, western music! The plodding one two of country was my introduction to a universe that envelops most of my waking and dreaming thoughts. My uncle was the only outsider in this respect, as I got a good dose of Baroque and Renaissance classical when I was in his presence when no-one was complaining about the racket.

My penchance for outsider tonalities surely has its roots in the rejection of my upbringing and the atmosphere surrounding it, though I’ve never disgarded western tonality wholly and probably never will. Working within its vastness will satisfy me for epochs to come, for I can contintue to harvest the partially abandoned corners of its sonority. On that note, I shall add some B flatness over a percolating F#m6 arpeggio.

Dani tasked me with writing the sountrack to his new short film Sheriff. I’d’ve picked a less mundane name, but it’s his project and I only assist, not interfere. My idea is to create a series of 9 - 12 miniatures between one and two and a half minutes each.

Thus the complication arrives.

My sense of musical movement is been set in gear that spins cogs at a glacial pace. I’m listening to Possible Planet by Steve Roach as I type and imagine he’d have the same problem that I have.

The first miniature is based on an improvisation called Suckin Down the Opium which sprang raw from my hara a few days back. It’s a solo, stark and bleak, over an F#m6 arpeggio. I used the Condor’s overdrive into my usual double Brothers boost (the initial with tone ascended into the ionosphere and the second with tone descended into the lithosphere), which adds to the spontaneous, raw vibe.

Anyone who isn’t an insect scurrying about my balcony at this moment will know that my improvisations tend to meander. Suckin Down the Opium meandered less than most, but still tended to draw itself out towards a blurred horizon. The miniature, now conditionally titled He Lumbers Forward, for reasons already stated, cannot do that. The goal is to capture the lolling feel of the improvisation in two minutes, roughly.

I’m disappointed with results so far.

Fuck um.