I am walking from a small town in north-western Spain with this song playing in my ears. Ah, the whole album, not just this song. The most telling and touching one comes next. The sign says 100 metres to the turnoff to the campsite and the beach. I count steps along with the 4/4 of it. I am glorified in my solitude. I am not looking forward to reaching the tent, intend to purchase a flask of beer before arriving though I know she’ll be angry, questioning the reason though she knows it gives me temporary escape - pleasure even. The songs still echo through my brain as I explain to her one of my goals - my dreams - to own a cafe which plays music winding up an atmosphere of deep sentimentality. Is it for me, or is it for the patrons? For the former, I am sure. Though the dream is perhaps the best - a way to love what I own and project it onto others, let them share what in my rotten soul may be names as Love.

I am in El Paso. Perhaps this is playing in the background. Acy is on the phone. I am running up a bill that I’ll never be able to pay. We speak and laugh. We always laughed at our absurdities. It healed me whilst I was alone. I lie on that small, uncomfortable bed. Papers are scattered on the floor around a keyboard on which I wrote the bass part for ‘Tomorrow Never Came’. Tony played it pretty much to perfection. He is always diligent in that manner. It plays also in my truck, uncared for but functional, as I drive semi-randomly around west El Paso, perhaps in search of Maggie’s mansion. I find it. I sit. I drive on - back to the house adjacent to Lacey’s place to listen again and again to ‘The Blurred Crusade’.

I am on my bed in Jester Hall in Austin … the University of Texas. John is not with me in the room. I am alone with his posters of Stryper and other hair-metal bands of the day. (Days long gone.) The chords Marty Willson-Piper fades in and out grip me with their raw value. I would say power, but this is not metal. Acy introduced me to this album and it remains etched even to this day. But I am flying to the future. I wonder were there days when I wandered around the campus listening to this very song - the whole album - as I did ‘Pleasantly Disturbed’ by Simple Minds. This is healing music, a reprieve from the loneliness which engulfs me. I drift from past to present tense. I suppose the latter is better. Other albums come to mind which had the same healing power. The aforementioned Simple Minds and ‘Fugazi’ by Marillion.

It is a commentary on progress and the way it rots closeness and intimacy. It is still valid to this day - an eternal hymn. There is no ambiguity. Our destination is self-oblivion and detachment from all who were or could have been close.

I struggle with the guitar part in my flat in Seattle whilst Brynn does other unknown things in the bedroom. When my guitar sits in my lap and my lips try to force the syllables which churn from my breast. I don’t complete it. But the sentimentality of the piece coats me senses as I begin again and again. Brynn enters and I show her the chords and the melody. She dares not play, so I do it. She sings a bit. We retire to hear the original (the same which plays in my ears at the moment, sometime in the future).

I decide to record my own version, a cover of it. It never comes to be, but the chords come to my fingers on many upon many times as time flashes by.

It’s 1991 and I am in my room in College Station. It is only a few minutes walk to Chris and Jayson’s place. I am staring blankly at the white walls adorned with a few posters (one of Kate Bush). This song plays and I am melancholy, as the music demands. Kindle floats through my mind and ideas of a liaison with her taunts. It is an unrequieted future. I should have known from the outset.

I cannot understand it, though many years I have listened to it. It is grand, but bizarre. I calamyty.I grant my soul as a bitch. Scratching pages don’t matter. I am wasted.

Clap your hand because you want to die. Every victim is searching for his hangman. Sigh.

Listening to Amon Duul now takes me back to 1997 where Brynn and I were stoned out of our mind listening to music of my choice. One night is most rememberable, however: She was stoned out of her mind and collapsed onto the bed (or pretended to, perhaps) and I put on Operation: Mindcrime by Queensryche (an awful album, as I have come to see). I undulated to the singular unadorned riffs whilst she slept. As an aside, highchool brought this album to presence. Miller and Ira were obsessed with it. Well,maybe only Miller. I recall him playing it to me at his place in Fort Stockton. It is empty and disgusting: An idol to American ignoance.

Can it be? Shall it be? Will it be? Is it inevitable?

What is Pohanka, anyway? Destruction is all I have ever sought. It creeps in my stillness and energizes my manic times. I slithered to Karolina’s place, laced with vodka, the other night, and fonud myself unknowning of myself or of anything natural (though this is, in some ways, a transcendental state).

God damn it!

So I am banned from there for eternity. (Eternity is a very small amount of seconds for poor Karolina.) I tried to watch ‘Idiocracy’, but despite James’s and Christian’s lucid and adamant claims that the film is excellent, contemporary and telling, I found it pointless and tiring. Cynically, Perhaps I am growing into a toadstool of cynicism.

I was just thinking about lack of sleep and that sometimes you must make up for your downtime with uptime which dissolves, like salt does to water, whatever downtime you have made. Though the saline permeates, it can be driven away by other measures, such as piloting to the sea.

Though I don’t know if that is for me. I wonder how far the sea is right now. The UK. Hello, home.

My parents say that I only care about myself. But, actually, they care about me caring about them, which is caring about themselves. It is selfish beyond anything I have ever experienced. They are enslaving their young. They are the infants now craving young to care for them. It is a recipricol cycle.

It’s gone.

1. Do you think people have any misconceptions about you?

I think they all do.

2. Do you own shoes that cost more than $100?

Well, what is the exchange rate now? Um… I’d say yes.

3. What did your last text message say?

“What’s up, eh? I’m leaving the cafe in 15 short minutes.”

4. What show did you last watch?

The latest episode of Lost.

5. Do you wear Hollister?

I don’t wear anything which begins with the letter H.

7. Do you get shy around the guy/girl you like?

No.

8. Do you remember what you were doing a year ago today?

No, but I bet you remember what I was doing a year ago today.

11. Do you have family problems?

Very rarely.

12. Where are most people in your top friends from?

From or where are they now? If the former, then the USA. If the latter, then scattered over three continents.

13. Where’s 13?

It’s in my incense burner.

14. Who are there pictures of in the room you’re currently in?

Absolutely no one if I don’t count CD covers.

15. What are you doing at this exact moment?

Waiting for one of my fucking top friends to arrive.

16. Do you give special ringtones to certain people?

The ringer on my phone is always off.

17. What’s the weather like outside?

Ovoid.

18. Have you ever seen a 3D movie in theaters? >

Nope.

19. What is your favorite holiday?

Everyday is a holiday.

20. Have you ever ran away?

Yes.

21. Do you text with T9?

What the fuck are you talking about?

22. Have you memorized your social security number?

Long ago, but it is now forgotten.

23. Have you ever had a dream about people you love dying?

All the time.

25. What was the last advice you gave someone?

Don’t be stupid.

26. What radio station do you listen to the most?

I never listen to the radio.

28. Why are you doing this instead of something else?

I’m taking a break from shaving my buttocks.

31. What’s the last food you ate that had salt on it?

Onion, red lentil, pea and tofu soup.

32. What are you watching?

Too much whiteness.

33. What did you do last night?

Worked at a cafe with wifi for some hours, then walked to the market, bought a few things, then walked the remainder of the way here.

34. What’s your favorite sport?

Grinding peppercorns.

35. What piercings do you want to get?

None.

36. Have you ever seen your friends cry?

For sure.

37. Who was the last person you cried in front of?

I don’t recall exactly, but probably my girlfriend.

38. Can you do a push-up?

No, but I can levitate.

39. Have you ever had a panic attack?

Not a debilitating one.

41. Would you ever consider moving back to your hometown?

Ugh.

42. Describe your laugh?

Strangled and passionate.

43. What do you think about the person that last commented you?

That he has knobby knees.

44. Who sings the song you last sang?

Lou Reed.

45. Plans for this weekend?

Work.

46. How was last weekend?

Fantastic. I didn’t have to deal with any other human.

47. Have you ever been to California?

Yes, sir. Awful place.

48. What are you listening to right now?

Arvo Part.

49. What color is your underwear?

A stained and mottled bluish-purple.

50. Do you like anyone right now?

I mainly dislike people.

Current Location: Kačerov

Current Mood: scrunched

Current Music: Camel