Day seven and there is still a proliferation of random objects in arbitrary locations around my place of “work”. The word work is a slippery one, especially on the lips of the American humans I grew up around. Though it never quite implied the same thing each time I heard it, it was almost regarded as sacred. Our indoctrination during childhood was to always focus on work. Work was the road to a “successful” future. Work was the path to salvation.

From the perspective of adulthood, this shifty word comes across as an quasi-religious form of self-enslavement. And I’m not just referring to being employed by another person or entity. The guilt that our indoctrination induced when we were not constantly doing or in the search of doing something that generated income indicated that no matter our form of work, we were subconsciously electing enslavement.

Of course, this has to do with class hierarchy, a concept that came into play millennia ago when striations had to be created for the good of agriculture. The lack of machines in that epoch created machines from men and birthed the peasant class, not to mention middle management. Yeah. I’m not a fan of anything relating too strongly to sociology, so I’ll leave it at this:

Humanity perished with the advent of agriculture. It’s been slow decay since.

The idea of work ethic my father tried to instill within my trembling spirit had nothing to do with the work I do when I am focused on music or even programming (for money!). The work ethic my father tried to instill within my shuddering spirit had nothing to do with contentment and everything to do with participating in a system too large for him to see. Well, I can’t say for sure that he never thought about the sauntering beast that was / is Western Culture and its insistence that we all be cogs within its machinery. He might well have, though somehow I don’t think he was trained up that way. In any case, when I went against this work ethic, I was punished. As a child, I was punished by my father, and later by a series of institutions: elementary school, high school, university, and employment after employment after employment.

Yes, following the work ethic kept me out of trouble, which is a form of contentment, but it never made me happy. I suppose glory be to the man or woman or machine entity that can BE a cog in the machinery within the sauntering beast that is Western Culture and BE that cog with contentment. Glory be! Of course, there is the question of indoctrination, brainwashing, whathaveyou with reference to said individual, but still - Glory Be!

The concept reminds me of the show Severance. The system (Lumen) is researching a manner to create cogs that know nothing other than the work itself and therefore have no comparison to how it may be like to exist in another manner. I’m certain their downfall will be ignoring the power of the human imagination. Well, unless they figure a way to suppress that, as well.

Backing up a moment - of course, had agriculture never come about, it’s likely humanity and thus society would not have evolved in a way that would have allowed me to be typing this. Probably I wouldn’t have even existed, at least not in this form. Whether humanity / Earth / the universe would have been better off is another speculation. The idea touches on something I’ve thought about more and more in recent years - that of systems evolving to be what they are in the same way that life evolved on Earth from simpler constituents. Humanity, at its base, is a system. And it is made up of other systems. That is, political states, empires, religious organizations and oxen like me making music that no other oxen will likely listen to. Each of these systems, including humanity itself, change constantly. They evolve. At some point, it is likely they reach a threshold and beyond that threshold they are an abomination. And they begin their decline.

As they say in the old lands: Fuck um.

Today is day nine. I shall pour myself some Houjicha - another reminder of Japan. I mentioned Japan the other day not only because Christopher is there but because to me it is a vague concept. Yes, it is a concrete land-mass, but the reality of actually being there is just an abstraction. This points back towards my resolve to not make plans that are, as it were, etched upon the surface of my skull, or upon the surface of anyone’s skull, for that matter. Leaving future ideas abstract creates multitudinous agreeable future senderos.

The idea is coupled closely with my rejection of expectations. To have absolute goals is to create narrow roadways into the future. If deviated from, the results is a sort of emotional devastation. This devastation can be so powerful that it becomes a stasis of disillusionment throughout a gelatinous chunk of time. Time ultimately spent mourning something that never existed in the first place except in one’s mind: said expectations. This is a condition I seek to avoid. I also encourage anyone reading this to also seek to avoid it, which means not placing one’s goals in the terms of the exceedingly specific. Keep the future vague. Don’t let the haze clear completely until arrival.

Rejection of expectations also serves to create life satisfaction on shorter time scales. Don’t approach a film or a book with a portion (or all!) of the expected story already scribed in one’s mind. Don’t listen to a piece of music while thinking intently on how it evolves or devolves from other music by the same or similar artist(s) or weighed by bias from its presentation. Don’t impose whole or part of a theatrical experience from one’s past or even from one’s imagination onto a situation one is involved in later in the day or later in the week or even later in the present epoch.

The uncertainly of existence is one of the only constants. Imposing strict guidelines onto the haze approaching from the opposite direction of time’s arrow does nothing but invite disappointment.

The ancient tapestry (I laughingly call it a tapestry) that habitually covers the Raspberry Pi with attached mini-screen whose name is Yak and to whom I am connected now writing this was on the floor at the base of the monitor stand earlier. Yak sits on top of the monitor. Possibly it’s not the best position for him / her / it / zubby, but I chose it for its proximity to the 12TB hard drive that is filled with backups from various parts of other machines round the household. Oouh, baby. Now what was the purpose of this opening salvo? Ah - yes. It was the cat. It had to be the cat. It’s always the cat. The cat is to blame.

Bender-boy is in Japan at the moment. He’s sent me various photos and brief commentaries. I said that I should join him. This is truth. I should. And I will. Or, rather, I’ll join his wraith because his corporeal being will be long gone before I show my presence there. Yes. I shall head west. Go west, my son and all that rot.

It will be an intense change for me, casting off the European shroud that has held me in its nervous comfort for twenty-six years. And as time and moth eaten as it may be, it will be painful to cast it off, but ALL change has a delightful flavour. I won’t go to extremes. There will be no burning of the shroud or leaving it to rot on some shitheap in the Seminole landfill. I’ll carefully place it in a strong-box to be picked over carefully and incrementally as epochs pass. And I’ll head west. West is refugees’ home, as the song says.

So, once again I can say that I’ve been influenced peripherally by Christopher, though I felt the pull even a decade ago when he was in Vietnam and spilling to me his mental flow about the beauty there. I wonder if he fell asleep in the sun and nearly died of sunstroke like fair Lucía did one time? I think Lucía was in Thailand, actually. Same thing. If he did die of a sunstroke in Vietnam, and it’s highly likely as I’ve not actually laid eyes on his corporeal being since May of 2003, then his wraith is ALREADY wandering Japan and, being a clever wraith, has learned to interact with the “physical” world, at least enough to send me messages. Or perhaps said wraith interacts directly with the flow of electrons that surge and ebb throughout the internet.

Yes, I can visualize the scenario. He “dies” of a sunstroke in Vietnam in a suitably remote spot. A few passing “scientists” steal the fresh corpse in enough time to preserve the brain. This brain has its consciousness injected as a wraith to ride the surge and ebb of electrons. Yes. This is what happened. It all makes sense.

Day 12.

I just played with the cat a bit, and, as the song says, or at least implies, I’ll miss my cat. After all the trinkets, feathers and simulations of twine we’ve bought for her, in the end, the most effective device for pay is a long, wobbly, flexible (but not too much so) wire attached to a handle that has a piece of real twine tied to its end. Goes to show you that some ways from the ancient epochs are the best ways. Or at least the most effective ways.

As is usual when a threshold is approaching in the mid-distance, my perception of time creeps. Well, it usually creeps, and especially when I have diverse offerings for my mental modules each day, but right now it creeps in an even more lugubrious fashion. Well, good for it, then. I’ll take advantage of the perceived extra time and attempt to get as much music done as possible. I may even do some programming along the way, and not just for myself.

I’m in the midst of recreating Dobbs Rakes His Knuckles Across the Wooden Fence. In fact, just this morning, for the section of pulsations in which that mass of bacteria and filth that I occasionally call “Christian” chants about some pseudo-religious fetishes, I replaced one of the repeating melodic synth lines with the Scarab Fuzz. It’s an exciting time when one gets to recreate one of the genre’s most iconic of albums! Dobbs revisited! Or somesuch. In the original, there are many murky things lurking in the backdrop, but this time round I’ll try to keep it cleaner and let the mass of bacteria and filth’s vocals belch themselves into whatever constitutes a foreground in the end. These plans may change slightly, however, as they often do.

Dani and I spent a bit more than an hour in Café Antiguo “round the corner” and had a grand time drinking coffee and talking animatedly about film and music. It was almost as if I were revisiting that other epoch when we regularly met at London Café, consumed bad hamburgers and talked animatedly about film and music. I do find it a bit triste that most (but not ALL) of my best, or at least solid, memories of the last decade in Logroño are those when either I was with Dani or with Matthew or when I was alone. Most of them, yes, but fortunately, not ALL.

Radiofreefedi gurgles in the backdrop. The show is “RFF in the Atmosphere”, though it should be called “RFF Plays Music that Squats in the Middle of a Commodious Chamber Humid with Almost Infinite Reverb”. Oh the reverb the musicians use! It’s almost a disease. But - I do like reverb. It’s utility in many contexts is clear to me and I’ve been known to slather a few pieces of “music” with it, as well, though not as often as the aforementioned mass of bacteria and filth has. But, VOLE, it’s ubiquitous on the squatting music channel! Well, nearly.

Now I shall unsheathe Uruqi the guitar from its capsule of stale atmosphere. After all, soon enough it’ll be in others’ hands.

As I just wrote to the swarm of protozoa that infest my “friend” Christian’s living corpse, the new album (the one about greenhouses, if you are curious) is now published on Mirlo, Jamcoop and my own Faircamp. In celebration, I’m listening to the album. I thought I might have burned myself out mixing and mastering it, but I am enjoying the run-through. The Yamaha HS5 monitors gurgle forth its mellifluous recital. Speaking of the Yamaha HS5 monitors, they must be taken care of. Taken care of not in the sense of a hit by some mythical mafia but in the sense of being sold off at an exceedingly reduced price to some lucky individual - probably a human.

This morning was my second to the last guitar lesson with the best guitar instructor I’ve had so far. He expounded at length on the importance of solos interpreting the melody of a piece of music. We’re talking Jazz here, but I’m sure the idea can be applied elsewhere, though possibly not in the context of hits by mythical mafias. He subjected me to this barrage of words after we went through Memories of Tomorrow a few times, which I FUCKED UP. Admittedly, its pace and it’s twisting chord sequence make things slightly difficult, or at least more difficult than Corcovado or Out of Nowhere. My strategy for this week, and onwards (including after our FINAL lesson), is to slice up the piece into sections and concentrate wholly on subtle variations of the melody. As everyone who’s hung about the moons of Neptune will know, one of my favourite variation strategies is to modally shift melodies as well as rhythmically shift them so they cross over bar-lines that they possibly shouldn’t.

I shall also imbibe a new Jazz Standard, one I’d never heard of before this very morning entitled Alone Together. It is riddled with ii V goopiness, all of which resolve to the minor I. It is a sound I am fond of.

After my lesson, I strolled to the Pošta to mail a box to Seminole. What was in the box? GARBAGE, I SAY! Nothing but garbage. Truly, it was filled with things I hardly use at all and I was reminded of another conversation I had briefly with the aforementioned swarm of protozoa about knowing the border between:

1. Things one use almost constantly
2. Things one use often
3. Things one use often enough to have value
4. Things useful, but only taken out of the receptacle from time to time
5. Things that should not exist in one’s possession because they are never used

The box I mailed today was in the soupy grey area between #4 & #5. There was a fuente de alimentación by the marvellous (ho ho!) Joyo and actually it was the first fuente de alimentación for guitar pedals that I ever bought, back in the years of Flavigula infancy. A pair of glasses was in there. And the rest GARBAGE.

Before I sign off, I should remind myself of something that came to mind earlier: Do not mistake a system that has evolved over epochs and epochs for intelligence. “Nature”, for example. Or the universe. Movements of such systems feel intelligent because we assign the status of “intelligence” to them without any deep understanding of the system itself. Such systems do the things they do because they have multitudinous moving parts that have fallen into a synchronous equilibrium.

That’s all.

Today is Day 14. I didn’t really want to do it, but a part of my mind insisted. Yes, I do not have complete control of all of my mental modules. Such are the days. So today is day 14. I didn’t really want to do it, but one of my mental modules began a countdown. At least I got to choose to name this day fourteen as opposed to fifteen, making the day when I actually depart day zero instead of one. It makes more sense to the majority of the remainder of my mental modules this way.

I shall create a short sequence on the Argon8, which I am yet to name, even after three years - oh silly me - to accompany this writing. It will be of the chord sequence I was practising yesterday. C melodic minor to B dorian.

For future reference, if, indeed, there is a future apart from the next few moments, I played a C bass, then a g b ees g arpeggio above it. I repeated the C bass and followed with a f a d ees arpeggio. Oh, the dissonance! D comes next in the bass, the minor 3rd of the “chord”, and above it fis a b e, throwing in the 11th for a feeling of uncertainty. D repeats in the bass and we then sense ourselves at ease, almost, with e gis b and cis. But oh the 13th! What tragedy!

A photo of the façade of Spice India graces the background of my desktop. It’s a photo that his come up often lately. This may be because of the poor algorithm I wrote for choosing background photos at random. Whatever the reason, I wonder if I’ll ever be there again. As the old song goes: Everything seems to be up in the air at this time. I do love the feeling, and adore it even more since I haven’t felt it for so long, but with it comes the lurking uncertainty. It is possible I’ll never be in Spice India again. It’s also possible I’ll never be in Prague again. Or Europe, for that matter.

Oh, I plan to return - to visit - but I have the quaint (I say quaint because it is, of course, just an emotion) feeling lately that Europe and I are parting ways for a good while. Nevertheless, I plan to visit Michal with that pasty, foetid gutter fiend of a friend that I at times call “Christian”. When? I suppose sometime next year. But, unlike that pasty, foetid gutter fiend of a friend that I at times call “Christian”, I am not wont to make such long range plans.

The chord sequence repeats, emanating from the Argon8 - a synthesizer that I have never named, though I’ve had “it” for three years, más o menos. So, I christen it Gutter Fiend. I shall even now create a label for it so it sports its moniker.

Done!

And the chord sequence still plays.

People repeat often to me, of places they have enjoyed in life, I will go back there. I will visit there again. I will LIVE there again. I have repeated similar things - and often. But I’ve come to the conclusion that there is a point in life when you know you are over the hill. It doesn’t matter how pristine a health you are in or how much peníze you carry inside of that hump on your back that you hollowed out once you realized you couldn’t get rid of it and filled it with booty. Simply the remaining time you have is limited. And more limited each day. So as much as I’d like to live in Prague again, at this juncture of my life, I’m pretty sure it won’t happen again. Also, moving in straight (or semi-straight) lines or at least in hyperbolas makes more sense to me that in circles. My six month or so episode in Praha in 2021 can be taken as a reminder. Even though many “beautiful” things happened during that stretch and I wrote quite a bit of music that would have emerged differently written in other places and I etched memories of my friends into that ever-corroded memory-module, by the end, I was convinced that it was no longer a place in which I could generally flourish.

Some of this could be rationalizing. Even so, it’s my view now. I suppose many get to a sort of comfort zone in life (or stagnation point) and in such a position they have settled on the places, people and situations they would persist for the remainder of their ever-slowing trundlings. I am simply not “programmed” that way. Oh, I’ve fought with my mental modules throughout the decades and tried to shove some sort of “conformity” down their gullets. It always works for a time, but that time is over. My time is over. As the song says. At least HERE. Logroño is a place I chose and persisted. I’ve felt the comfort and its pull. I’ve felt the stagnation and its pull. But it’s not enough.

I doubt it will ever be for me. Thus, adelante.

There’s certainly something about freneticism that fascinates. In any case, thinking about it is my only pastime other than playing backgammon with myself. I know there are others here, proximous, but my cloister is sealed.

I’m told - or rather, I’ve read - that the original vegetative experiments quickly got out of hand, thus my mention of freneticism. The stems and stalks wound and warped themselves through the diameter of the moon, in one side and out the other, looping back around to make further plunges. Of course, all this happened in slow motion. In the end, the radius of the moon itself grew by nearly a kilometre.

Blossoming into innumerable divisions and doubling back on itself, by the time “we” (meaning whoever was in charge) regained control, the organic matter had left looming spaces like surrealistic sanctuaries for unwilling monks. These were sealed off and made into independent, atmosphered pockets. And that is where I work.

I’m allowed outside on furloughs at regular intervals. I always spend them getting blasted. It’s an endless cycle, but it suits me.

Shambal Brambel was part of the first group that arrived. The goal was terraforming and experimental neutronium injections to increase the moon’s gravity. He observed and was nominally a part of the quick rise and fall of a cobbled topography that at its peak consisted of pragmatically identical structures for housing, processing or atmosphere production. The so-called city was webbed with motorways. Vehicles of every sort streamed along them almost like fluid, casting whorls of grey waste in their wake.

The processing centers dappled the landscape, imbibing incoming material from other moons, coordinated within a space where administrators, like Shambal himself, were rooted to machines that stretched throughout the crust. He observed the decline until only he remained, still rooted yet connected to nothing, staring out at what once was.

My implants must be malfunctioning again. The ones that control subtlety of hearing and touch. I usually get them calibrated before each cycle, but immediately following the end of the last one, I ran into a clone of my old friend Acy from back in pre-school and primaries for the eighth colony in-vitros. Turns out this version of him is over on Nereid. Or in Nereid to be more specific. We got shitfaced on ostensible White Russians on the temp base. I dare not think too hard about what passes for “Kahlúa” in these parts.

Back to the implants, though. The whole of the greenhouse and its extensions oscillate in a way that transforms something I don’t quite understand into living matter. The machines crawling through brain dampen the effects of sonic attack emanating from below. The sinewy undulations of the structure plugged into what we call “the guttering orifice” are helices of melodies that ever repeat, stumbling drunkenly across the circle of minor thirds and major seconds. Fortunately, I have drugs that knock me out during off shifts. At times I even dream and am always taken by a cascade of diaphanous arpeggios that eject me far, far into and then beyond the Kuiper Belt.

My companion, or rather my ex-companion, had to be removed from the project on Larissa for attempts at sabotage. Most of him was unmade and joined the particulate matter flowing through ducts between algae farms. I maintained his skin to create crude, flappy percussion instruments. I spend some of my downtime practising them. In the flat space, they sound more like bangings on hard rubber than what they are supposed to be, but that may be the fault of the resonating chambers or the general lack of acoustic conductance within the tiny, atmosphered living chamber.

Unfortunately for me and for the project, the algae is failing. Despite the effort, most shielding from debris and radiation is useless. When the last farm is converted to waste, I’ll, too, be unmade. Perhaps the drums will remain to be discovered by another generation.

The structures that now adhere to an erstwhile rubble-mound were a dream I had epochs ago when I gazed from our station orbiting Neptune outside the Adams Ring with one eye closed like a cyclops through my telescope. If the rifts and crags are poems scrawled across the so-called surface of the moon, my greenhouses are diacritics and vowel marks that allow them to be deciphered. The sprawling atmosphere machinery is calligraphic accretion and wheezes rhythmically like the bellows of an accordion in time with a truncated metrical pattern.

As with the other inner moons, I ship the vegetable matter to Triton, vacuum packed on automated airless shuttles. I haven’t heard anything back for over eighty-six thousand passes around Neptune.