In the section of my website or gopherhole, whichever you like, entitled apocrypha, I “jotted” this note a few days ago:

Fashion is the imposition of the aesthetics of a figured few onto the sheeplike masses. It overrides and sometimes completely obliterates the personal aesthetic of an individual.

The “obliteration” part is a bit more nuanced, methinks. I do believe that anything born of marketing, of which fashion is certainly, is purposely created to impose its aesthetic. That is its reason to exist. It proliferates. It takes the reins of opinion in those who are either easily swayed or generally undecided. Does it obliterate, however? I “jotted” another note into my apocrypha a few minutes afterwards:

Aesthetic preference can be simply the superficial manifestation of yearning to belong to a peer group. In this sense, it makes little sense to call said aesthetic preference “one’s own”.

In this sense, fashion (or any marketed asthaetic) can, indeed, obliterate an aesthetic that already exists in a person. My time in high school was a tortured time in my life. And one reason for that was everyone’s old pal peer pressure. In a way, peer pressure is a form of marketing. Or at least its efforts are parallel to marketing. In my tortured adolescence, fashion, musical taste, manners of speaking, “literature” preferences and even goat worshiping rituals were somehow enforced by peer pressure.

What was the origin of this peer pressure? Who or what originally created each “proper” aesthetic that my classmates and I were obligated to bow to? As far as fashion is concerned, I can confidently say that the origin, again, was marketing. Films portrayed actors donning “proper” attire and “proper” hairstyles. I recall there were women’s magazines. There were men’s magazines. A senior in my high school (when I was a whinnying freshman, still troubled in mind, still partially impressionable) named Albert implored me occasion upon occasion to get my hands on one of those men’s magazines so I could spruce up my wardrobe. Did I ever? I don’t recall that I did, though I may have flipped through one at one of the Allsups round Fort Stockton, grimacing politely in the process.

The point here is that peer pressure seeks to obliterate any opposing aesthetic view. It’s the conform or be cast out line from that song by Rush.

Musical aesthetic has always had its origin in marketing. During my life in the 80s, the radio was omnipresent and the radio had a specific, repeating playlist. Those were the songs that mattered at that moment in history. Listen to anything lying outside that bubble and risk being hurled into the pit. Of course, this didn’t stop me from listening to whatever I damn well pleased. And - in addition - trying to market what pleased me to anyone around me that would give me a bit of attention. I’m sure I was very irritating to a number of my peers in this regard.

I drift slightly from the main topic here: I recall listening to many of the albums that tooted my muffin during those days and thinking to myself how could anyone not like this? I grimace politely as I write this. How could anyone not share the same aesthetic as I do? Seriously? Listen to this! It is amazing. I hadn’t quite grasped the idea that Jim Scott attempted to show me multitudinously: Taste is a funny animal. I grew into the idea over decades and now it is one of the ruling aspects of my point of view. There is no universal aesthetic (as much as marketing would have you disbelieve).

So how does one claim one’s own aesthetic? A so-called puro aesthetic? An aesthetic formed uniquely from ones own innards? Impossible, you say! In fact, I think a chunk of the aesthetic I had in previous epochs (that, samozřejme, has influenced my current aesthetic) was born from my rejection of the bland (in my view) aesthetic of my surroundings, of Fort Stockton, Texas, of my parents and of the majority of my peers. I saw their mute conformity, turned about, and ran in the opposite direction. I certainly don’t regret it. I forced myself to introduce myself to ideas, concepts and forms that were abhorrent to (especially) my parents and to my peers.

I did run in the opposite direction aesthetically, but at the same time felt the pain of rejection. I was from a small town. There was no real escape. I simply couldn’t spend all of my time in my room listening to music and reading books, as much as I’d’ve liked to. And, admittedly, some of my aesthetic, especially musically, was formed with the help of people like Jim Scott (and later Tony & Bender-boy), who introduced me to music I’d’ve never otherwise heard, but more importantly encouraged me to be exploratory in my tastes. That was the key. Be exploratory.

I must be honest with myself. I can no longer work with people like Martin. His lifeblood is marketing and the way of marketing is to impose one’s own aesthetic views upon another’s and ideally upon the masses. So, to me, marketing is a form of proselytism, a practice I particularly abhor. So, go ahead and share your aesthetic ideologies with me. I’ll surely consider them openly. But if you begin underhanded ways of converting me, I shall walk away - metaphorically, spiritually and even physically.

On our walk this morning towards Ladronka though hardly abrading its border in the end, I stepped in psí hovno. Well, I assume it was psí hovno. It could well have been lidské hovno, but I suspect not, as most people clean up after their pet humans when they leave waste product on the sidewalk. After stepping in said psí hovno, I spent many minutes shuffling along the gutters of our street (since the event happened close to our home on the way back from hardly abrading the border of Ladronka) scraping the front portion of the sole of my shoe across as many dew-laden, unsuspecting plants and grassy tufts as possible. It was a classic moment of absurdity like Camus described in The Myth of Sisyphus.

Regardless, I suspect that the reason that characters like the plumpest humorist of our time get killed off early in stories is because they are the “funny guy” who, if he stayed around, would irritate the other prominent characters to the point of murderous rage. However, since characters such as the plumpest humorist of our time are killed off early, their essence mellows into a gentle nostalgia for the other prominent characters. The ideas and anecdotes of the dead flow through the remainder of the story as undercurrents, as deeper thoughts. In this sense, though he was far from the plumpest humorist of our time (yes - he did have his moments), Lee experienced the same fate. He was killed off early in my story. Likely, had he lived, given his attitude towards the world and humankind in general, he would have irritated me to the point of murderous rage. Instead, his ideas and anecdotes flow as undercurrents in my life, giving deeper resonance and meaning to many situations.

The final dream I had before beginning my day around 6.45 concerned Michael Denison. I had just met a human I’d never seen before at a library. It appeared to be a library. It was shabby. Strips of filthy cloth hung from the rafters and from the bookshelves. The books themselves were bound in tight leather or oiled metal, repelling any touch. This human I’d never seen before wanted to be my “friend”. He wanted to accompany me somewhere or perhaps anywhere. We began walking. It wasn’t a city, exactly, that we found ourselves in when we left the library. I suppose my mind wanted to recreate the campus at Texas A&M University, but the result was a ruin, perhaps reflecting the state of my dreaming mind or perhaps reflecting the state of the actual university campus after the bombs hit Eastern Texas late last night.

We started up a long, filthy, sloping alleyway (Damnation Alley?) and partially along its length, we came upon Michael in an alcove partially covered by more dirty strips of fabric. He was seated, as he always seems to be in my imagination, in a slightly leaning chair with a growing smirk on his lips. His dirty blonde hair still fell to his shoulders, or just past them, as it did in the good ol days. He had a notebook on his lap and a pencil in his hand. He was writing music.

Suddenly, we were transported to a hospoda where Michal was going on about a melody in his notebook to a pudgy, long haired guy sitting beside him. My point of view was floating somewhere between and slightly above them. The pudgy, long haired chlap sang the notes of the indicated melody, reading them from the page. Though I was just a hovering point of view floating somewhere between and slightly above them, they both fixed their eyes on me. I assumed they wanted my opinion. I, too, sang the melody, though my opinion dissolved into the air much as I, Michal and the pudgy, long haired kluk also did.

We were walking through the deserted campus. Michael still had the notebook in his hand. He was going on about his new livelihood. Apparently, the notebook was his new livelihood. Upon closer examination, the handwritten notes were “synchronized” to dialog printed above them. Apparently, the music was being written for a TV series or for a film or some other abomination. This is my way forward, he stated. We passed another library, but it was not the same library I started out in. This library was resplendent. The books glowed, basking the filthy street with a warm light through immaculately spotless windows. Just then I noticed that the library was the only source of light. Night had fallen and it also appeared to me, unsurprisingly, that Michael was wavering between himself and a Chris Cutler-like apparition.

Suddenly my mind was on Herr Bender. I knew he was somewhere in the library. He has always been a book fiend, of course, and much more than I have been. The dream ended before I could enter. The darkness took me. It sucked me back into a state of waking.

On 18 November 1993, Michael wrote this to me:

When I came to college, my intention was to distance myself from my parents, and try to reclaim a life I lost when I was 13. The relationships I made with people between those times were all superficial, and I knew them to be so. The ones I have made since then have held me up, and also thrown me down. It has felt like people care about me, but either grow tired of me, or have to let me go as they leave, like some sort of necessity no longer needed.

I’ve spent much of my life trying to bond with people in a manner that is not superficial. It is the very reason that even though I’ve passed through so many jobs, I’ve maintained a few close friends from those jobs. I’d say that employment, at least for some, and especially in the sort of contract oriented freelance type positions I had during so much of my “career”, consists of the work itself, which is given the highest priority, and then the social aspect. For me, it was always the opposite. Work was always a bit of a burden or at best amusement. What I spent most of my strength of will attempting to accomplish was create bonds with other humans. Lasting bonds. I never wanted acquaintances. I wanted from the initial conversation to speak about philosophy and the human soul. I found out early on that this is certainly not what most of my workmates wanted. Of course, that fact did not deter me. Fuck um.

Michael and I drifted apart. The last time I saw him was when I visited Texas for Jayson’s wedding. Michael and Dave and Bender picked me up at the airport in Houston. I was stumbling half out of my mind in an alcoholic stupor when Michael found me at the telephone attempting to get in touch with whomever might be close.

He wrote that friends grew tired of him. This was not the case with us. I kept leaving. I relocated and relocated until my homebound soul was tattered, ripped, scattered all over Europe and North America.

In the Three Subject Quotebook, Michael is recorded uttering this:

It is definitely interesting how people become so unhappy with themselves that they induce a change in their surroundings so that they can believe, in their minds, that they have changed themselves.

I’ve always wondered if, when he said this, he was referring to me. Každopadně, Michael’s ideas and thoughts and writings (of which I have many) continue to flow through my life as undercurrents.

Before I begin this entry onto one of the crumpled pages of the Martenblog, I shall do two things. Firstly, I shall list the ideas this entry should cover. Secondly, I shall go through the last eight bars of Memories of Tomorrow seventeen milliard, four hundred seven million, two hundred three thousand, thirty one times. Let it be known that this is a prime number.

• The transformation of flavigula.net into its corresponding Gohper site
• Progress on the album that is workingly called Bleary Snapshots
• My intense hatred of the plumpest humorist of our time
• Peiločja’s possessiveness
• Math
• The song that is stuck in my head and its ramifications
• Lee’s birthday
• Achieving “goals” before death

Since I summoned five small pieces of toast from the niggulum and slathered them with ajvar and chopped not exactly ripe enough avocado, I shall begin writing before guitaring. Peiločja makes her characteristic short mew then slightly longer major fourth downward mew in response to my typed thoughts. She’s quite the psychic today. Rather, she is quite the psychic every day.

Over the last few weeks I have omitted a comma after prepositional phrases where normally I would not have omitted a comma and greatly expanded the Rust code for the Martenblog. The goal is to have it spit out static sites not only in html, but in gopher-speak and gemini-talk. It has been quite a paseo and a marvelous cesta so far and will continue to be, as my love of programming has not diminished over the epochs. Nor has my love of Rooibos, which I shall sip now. Having sipped said Rooibus (infused with a gentle green tea), I continue my oblong handkerchief’s tale. I’ve been torn to pieces with a barbed morning star thinking about whether I should have the sites truly static or create my own server apparati for each. Well, the server apparatus for the http version of Martenblog is in place, but I realized the other day that the search functionality doesn’t work on the flavigula.net server because the site is truly and simply copied (by rsync, no less) as a static entity. The search functionality needs a so-called CGI endpoint. Ah - how I miss the internet of the early 90s. In my fumbling ignorance, rush or syphilitic stupor I omitted a comma after a prepositional phrase and also only tested the http version of Martenblog locally, on which I must have my own http server running. Of course, the CGI endpoint (1992-1994! The golden age of the internet!) works locally because the http server is built into the same system that creates the static site. Bastards. So, on flavigula.net, I am now running the same server apparatus as I do locally and using nginx as a reverse proxy to fondle it.

Whereas I could use an open source Gopher server (and Gemini, too), I’m building those into my splendid application. The Gopher serving pig-dog already exists. So, given that, it makes sense to simply run http, Gopher and Gemini servers myself. The most fun part of development, however, was creating Gopher pages (which, incidentally, are still not dokonalé). With html, packages exist to easily parse and transform markdown (I write my blog entries in markdown) to html. Polymorphing them to Gopher-speak has been a more transformative cesta. I suspect Gemini will be similar. And I love it. Programming has always brought me joy.

Besides pure joy, another goal of the project is to incrementally distance myself from the monolithic, commercial web. Yes, I’ve already done that to a great extent. Http Martenblog is quite clean, ad-free and minimalist. But integrating incrementally into the so-called smol-web with Gohper and Gemini is a step towards a community (that I am partially part of already via Mastodon and my ex-Gemini site) that has a philosophical view (of commercialism, materialism, the internet and related issues) aligned with my own. An antagonistic point of view concerning my migration could be that I’m stepping into a walled garden. My experience, however, is that the range of intellectual diversity on the so-called smol web is vast, and though by nature it tends to omit those that are less oriented towards independent computing, I’m willing to make that compromise.

Bleary Snapshots is coming along slowly. I’ll soon prepare the chordal sequences from Náčrt that envelop the vocal regions the piece to send off to whoever is interested on Mastodon. Given how long it is taking the plumpest humorist of our time to finish the vocals of Dobbs, something akin to seven times the amount it took the first time round, and that’s just so far (he isn’t done), and that’s also allowing for the fact that he’s just doing vocals for two pieces, as opposed to five. Therefore, I shall hand off the vocal duties for Bleary Snapshots to whoever is interested. Given the plumpest humorist of our time’s general mental state during this epoch, this may be the way for Flavigula going forward into the future’s unfeeling grey, but I shan’t make any firm decisions since the plumpest humorist of our time could well snap out of his funk and discover once again passion for music (and, indeed, for life in general).

Bleary Snapshots is looking like this at the moment:

• Protivný Pták
• Sandra
• Náčrt
• Shambal
• Qat
• Tundra
• Gallarza
• Song for Ivanečka
• Náčrt repríza Everything is “close” to a state of completion. Well, except for all the synth parts I need to redo on Encima de Gallarza and guitar parts I need to redo on Song for Ivanečka. Hm - also there are some compositional gaps on Sandra.

Každopadně - I trudge onwards.

Peiločja has a certain habit of late, or perhaps it is the escalation of a habit she has had since not long after I brought her to my parents’ place from the shelter in Midland, Texas. She makes her peculiar two note meow consisting of a short burst of sound and followed quickly by a slightly longer burst a major fourth below. She is usually sitting behind me or in the adjacent room. I go to her (or turn around to her) and caress her for some time. After a few minutes, three at the most, she has a sort of sensation overload and starts playful biting. If I continue touching her fur, it escalates to attacking, though she rarely breaks the skin. Rarely meaning once in a few epochs. Logically, I then stand up to leave her be. When I walk away, after a few seconds, she attacks my foot or leg. Mostly I am unshod, so my bare skin bears the brunt of either a call for more attention or admonishment for going about my morning, afternoon, evening or holistic ramble.

For quite a while some epoch or day or hour or picosecond ago, I had the song Stardom in Action stuck in my head. I had not listened to it since the day I sat U Smrťaka listening to choice albums on random play and writing about memories that appeared with each song. The song has left my head already, but I’m partially convinced that my thoughts are drifting more and more to Christopher and the intense experiences we had together during former epochs or days or hours or picoseconds. The album from which Stardom in Action comes was one we listened to quite often together. I’m sure I’ve stated that before in this journaling apparatus that I laughingly call the Martenblog.

I wanted to listen to the album during my morning preparation routine - preparation for my true morning routine - but something thwarted me. Perhaps it was the idea that it would cheapen the intensity of the memories or even cheapen the music itself to have it simply be part of a normal morning’s backdrop.

Bender-boy and I spoke on the phone on the morning of his birthday in New Zealand. It was the evening before his birthday for me. It always confounds me why some so-called higher power has imposed time zones on a planet that is submerged in enough confusion and chaos as it is. Why make life even more complicated? Ah! Yes - I know why. The higher power is convinced that the best for its underlings is to live in discrete bubbles with rigid borders and to have communication for the most part locked within those borders. Time Zones are simply one of many annoyances that the higher power puts into place to passive-aggressively encourage its underlings to stay put in said bubbles.

Každopadně, Bender-boy and I spoke on the phone on the morning of his birthday (in New Zealand). I want to make it a point to speak more often. It was amazing.

One idea and practice I’ve thought about and written about over the last few years is narrowing. In specific, this means narrowing of interests, or better narrowing of interests that I pursue. My interests in creations of barbaric nature and geometric humanity alike are vícemeně limitless. As I pass into a state of increasing geriatric existence, however, mortality looms over me like an ill constructed, creaking, wooden fire hydrant, or at least an ill constructed, creaking, wooden obelisk from the time before. Multitudinous interests themselves are quite jolly, of course, and do their part in keeping the ill constructed, creaking, wooden menhir in its looming position. Placing multitudinous interests on the same priority creates a paucity of time or at best a type of artificial framework for attention deficit and failure. I don’t want to become like the plumpest humorist of our time and lay myriad interests beneath the ill constructed, creaking, wooden spigot so that I am paralyzed by indecision. So, I crush the majority of my uncountable interests into a small, compact cube and leave them in part of my mental space reserved for passive learning. The remainder, including composing music, practicing instruments, writing, cooking and worshiping goats, are indeed spread beneath my personal, ill constructed, creaking, wooden sepulcher. I feast on them every morning and every afternoon. I sate myself with them. I grow fat and pungent. I merge with the soil.

On our journeys north into Germany, we tend to choose a departure time that is, as I would term it in a former life, too early to be alive. My former self who lived in this so-called former life would be shocked to know that in reality, my present self tends to get up quite early, or at least much earlier than the so-called former self did. Many hours earlier. Days, even. Epochs, even. As they say, the early pteranadon snatches the busily scurrying rodent from its so-called orderly life and into the shabbily assembled nest of doom.

As I was writing, on our journeys north into Germany, we tend to choose a departure time that is slightly earlier than my usual time of suctioning myself from the limbo of sleep and into a waking world of wonder. Yesterday, or, as my mind perceives, several weeks ago, on my birthday, this awakening happened v půl páté. I scrubbed the filth accrued during my time in limbo from my body after lumbering to our capacious kitchen to create and quickly gulp down my ranní napoj. Ivanečka concocted lemon water. Peiločja watched from either my studio, the předsín, the obyvák or from all three possibly wondering about our intentions. She always seems to sense when we are “going away” for a while. Indeed, even if a while is only between twenty four and thirty six hours.

I misinterpreted the schedule of the bus that takes us from (near our) home to Švandovo Divadlo, so we walked through the silent, tenebrous morning to U Palaty where we discovered that the bus actually comes thirteen or fifteen or choose-another-teen minutes later. We trudged on along the long curve that is the route of bus 176 to the next stop. There we waited a mere four minutes before boarding said autobus and riding another four minutes to said Divadlo. Tram 9 then whisked us to Hlavní Nádraží.

I had stuffed a few Tesco pitas, avocados and a hunk of lactose-free hermelín into my batoh. At the present time, as I write this, one of the avocados still remains uneaten. It sits in the dark, constrained space of my batoh, waiting. Waiting to be consumed. Most of the listed victuals, however, were transferred from the shaky folding table in front of my during the train ride into my digestive system.

Ivanečka had also prepared a fantastic salad before our departure from home, also rife with chunks of avocado, that we consumed together mostly whilst waiting at Südkreutz in mid-south Berlin. One must always remember that no matter how punctual České drahy might be, once one enters the territory of the German Empire, any train, no matter how efficiently scheduled in its home empire, will be plagued by arbitrary delays. One must also remember that no matter how much one is enjoying the delightful salad that Ivanečka prepared, Südkreutz is much closer to one’s destination at Hotel Schöneberg than one is when one continues travelling along the rail to Berlin Hauptbahnhof.

Hotel Schöneberg is in an ancient building from the time before. Though the bulk has been renovated, the sensation is of still being in the time before. The balcony overlooked the street and had a view towards the center of Berlin to the right and towards the southern wastelands to the left. When sealed, no sound could be heard from the outside. We didn’t stay long. After I communicated our day’s intentions to Janek (and he his day’s intentions to us), we set off for the center, or at lest for Potsdammerplatz, which isn’t exactly the center, but close enough for our purposes. What were our purposes? Our purposes were to find a few design oriented shops where we could buy drobnosti for our new home. After an abortive start in the shopping arena near Potsdammerplatz, I found that there is a design oriented area in Charlottenburg. Charlottenburg! Isn’t that where the plumpest humorist of our time used to live? Indeed it is where he used to live, but I didn’t spend much time trying to figure out exactly where the plumpest humorist of our time used to live. I simply felt his residual energy (some would say stench) dwindling, but still present.

After perusing many establishments, we returned to the first in the area that we had entered to emerge with two vacuum-sealed pillows that will soon grace the lenoška in Ivanečka’s activity-room. Not much else suited our fancy besides a župan she wanted to purchase for me for my birthday. However, it wasn’t quite perfect, so it did not end up among our possessions upon exiting its shop.

As we walked, vacuum-sealed pillows in hand, we grew hungry. Our need was satiated at an asian place, vaguely vietnamese. Ivanečka had a Buddha bowl and an immensely strong ginger tea whilst I settled for a udon chicken stir fry and a mango lassi. The latter was enjoyable to slurp down, but I shall not have anything of its ilk for a quite a while, as the sugar content was high. Janek soon afterwards informed me that he would not be coming to the gig, as he was not guaranteed a seat. It was unfortunate, but at least he came by the hotel and its neighborhood this morning so we could spend a bit of time together.

We walked the entire way from Hotel Schöneberg to Zig Zag Jazz Club, past a yawning U-Bahn station that threatened to swallow us up were we to drift to close to its event horizon. We successfully skirted it. The line of people at Zig Zag was short, though the man checking entrance passes, otherwise known as tickets, was extremely chatty with each of the club’s clientele, making for a slow moving queue. When finally it was our turn, he also began a conversation with us. Ich spreche kein Deutsch, I mumbled, and he cut short whatever he was going on about and let us pass rather more quickly. Once just across the threshold of Zig Zag, we once again had to wait to be seated, and we more or less quickly were on a more or less comfy sofa with a lateral view of the stage to our left.

A waitress moved among the crowd asking for orders. I requsted a Carlsberg Pilsner, which I liked more than the “original” Pilsner Urquell - it reminded me more of a slightly sweeter Radegast (desítka). Sometime later, Ivanečka requested a non-sparkling (her preference) water. We paid nothing at the time. This surprised both of us.

The Pete Roth Trio began playing at 20.31 - one minute after their allotted time. Being that Bill Bruford is in the band, the punctuality wasn’t that surprising. I muse to myself that this is the last of a trilogy of performances I’ve seen of Bill Bruford in my life. I may be wrong, but his age and logistics of travel (mine and his) may not allow me to see him perform again.

The first time was in Austin. That was the Thrak tour with King Crimson. I saw the concert with Loyal, Craig and a few other people. Loyal and I actually met Bill Bruford after the show in the alleyway behind the theatre. Tony Levin and Adrian Belew, as well. They all signed the cover of my Thrak cd. I’m not sure I still have it.

The second time was ProjeKct One’s improvisational madness at the Jazz Café (I think that is or was the name of the place) in London. That was 1999.

The third time was on my 56th birthday.

I enjoyed the show immensely, as I figured I would. The highlight for me was a highly Crimsonoid piece they did about midway through the set that turned out to be from BLUE (Bruford Levin Upper Extremeties). The three players seemed to be enjoying themselves and had lots of visual communication throughout. Their playing itself was immaculate, crimsonoid or not. Pete Roth chatted with the audience many times in both English and German, giving me the impression that he’s a pleasant fellow. Ivanečka also enjoyed the show but made the comment that she enjoys Jazz with saxophone more. Or, rather, that she missed the saxophone. It certainly would be interesting to hear a saxophone in the context of the music we heard last night. There was room for it. Though parts of the compositions were dense with both energy and counterpoint, there were many moments of peace, ambience and space.

We walked home, holding hands, pausing occasionally to hold each other. We were exhausted from another day that was several weeks long. Several very pleasant weeks long.

Radio Massacre International sings in my ears. Naturally, they don’t literally sing since the three of them have been bereft of voice since before the dawn of time. The instruments they wield with their nimble limbs like sekerky and krumpáče sing to me, as it should be. The human voice itself I’ve always found to be slightly overrated as an instrumental force.

Time has been eking along at a plaintive, deliberate pace, as if to demonstrate to me and to anyone else who may be paying attention that the ripples that ease us forward during these indeed plaintive days have a frothiness proportional to our perceptions as individuals. Along the paths these ripples have driven me, I have relocated into a more spacious living quarters - a living quarters that includes my most ambitious of music-making studios to date. Ironically, I keep selling off equipment in an effort to align the immediate world around me with my minimalist aesthetic. I’ve spent a good deal of time within my new studio, but not nearly enough time as I would have liked as I have been and still am whisked round to part tras portion upon the residual maelstroms in the aftermath of the move. I ache for tranquility. Music has been made. More music will me made. Universes will be punctured by the krumpáč of destiny.

Everyone needs a krumpáč of destiny. Everyone needs to be impaled upon a krumpáč of destiny. I suggest when the time comes, and I guarantee ya that it’s just around the “corner”, you chose your own krumpáč of destiny to be impaled upon instead of that of another.

I’ve elected to take part in this week’s Disquiet Junto and shoved some chordings into Ardour in my first efforts to be poetic. Ya see - the theme of this week’s Disquiet Junto is do something poetic. Ya can guess the first form of poetry that came to mind. Of course! The scrumpy, whittly haiku. Will the musical result of this poetic seed-spawn of creativity contain voices reciting such a poetic aberration? Oh no! What did I tell ya about the overratedness of the human voice earlier? Ya must remember your lessons, vole! The poetic seed-spawn of creativity bid me not to drawlingly voice such aberrations into the virtual tape machine. The structure itself of haiku is the key to endless variations of musical joy.

Now I shall return to sitting not within my mind and beside my perpetually shifting thought patterns, but within this fantastically unpatterned apartment.

In the dream, I took Ivanečka to visit Tony in a sort of limbo. It was not Austin, but a version of Austin existing suspended in a haze of tiny particles, partially shimmering, partially absorbing the greyish light. We arrived in some sort of topless vehicle. It appeared at first glance to be a narrow car with one seat for the driver and behind one seat for a passenger, but its sensation was that of a fleshy tube. Superficially, it had an illusion of antiquity, but my mind knew this was no antique place. I was to one side, looking down onto the “vehicle” and Tony was in the driver’s seat, looking back at Ivanečka. I told him This is my wife.

They wormed their way out of the “vehicle” and then he was ushering us into his domicile. Tony had changed dramatically from the last time I’d seen him in 2011. He wore a tank-top. He looked relatively “in-shape”. He had no gut. He wore a queasy mustache. His accent was a vague blend of latino and slav. I thought nothing of it. Time had passed, of course. I hadn’t realized yet that the particulate universe we inhabited was a limbo.

We were inside and his three children were, there, all sitting on the floor, except for perhaps Emilee, who was standing with a dumbstruck look on her face. They were all suspended in age, suspended perhaps in the ages I last knew them. Ginger, in specific, was a teen. She sat on the floor with her back to us, playing with some sort of children’s construction apparatus. Dull clanking could be heard. A low, greasy odor came from a closed room beyond and to the right.

Indicating Ivanečka, Tony said to me I’ll show her around. He stood at an elevator inside a recessed section of the wall. Brilliant, I replied and turned to do my own thing for a moment, though I don’t even know if in the dream I had any idea what doing my own thing could have consisted of.

I emerged from the state of doing my own thing and began to realize that Tony and Ivanečka had been gone quite a while. I began investigating. I started with the room that was the source of the low, greasy odor. Inside were three black women of indeterminate age, each in front of a bowl of gruel. The liquid of the gruel was moving, disturbed as if below their surfaces living things churned.

Finally, I simply decided to call Ivanečka, even though I realized that the call would be “roaming”, as this was certainly not the Czech Republic. It was certainly not Europe at all. Nor Austin for that matter. However, the phone call did go through. A man answered. I was dumbstruck. I asked Where is Ivanečka. He was silent for a bit and then replied she is sleeping, or something like that. The feeling that washed over me was immediate and overwhelming. It was a feeling of utter helplessness.

I quickly returned to the main room of the domicile. Tony was back. He had a large, rubberized flashlight in his hands. It took both of his hands to carry it. I stared at him, again dumbfounded. Where is Ivanečka? He simply stated She’s just a demon. I grabbed the closest thing I within my reach, also some sort of flashlight, a metal bludgeon. I started towards him, foamy with inchoate rage. Despite the two-handed burden he moments before held, he had snatched up a pair of scissors and then he was upon me, struggling to drive them into my chest.

Banshee! An unexpected formality! Banshee!

The card will eventually be there, as we know. My love, Ivanečka, picks withered spinach leaves out of a bag of bio špenát. She tenderly passes healthy leaves into the container that has a slicing rotor at its base. These healthy leaves will soon be spindled and liquefied so that we can easily drink their sustenence into our living corpses. This is the way of the morning, or, rather, it is one of the ways of mornings, or, rather, one of the manners of the morning because manner of the morning is much more alliterative even to a mummified menhir such as I.

I sit on our bed in a hotel near Werksviertel im München. We attended this sprawling city beginning in the early hours yesterday for two reasons.

1. We had appointments to view two flats. Formerly, we planned to move our living corpses from Praha to München (as well as Luki’s and Peiločja’s living corpses) because of Luki’s attendence at TUM. We recently discovered, by word of Luki himself, that he would not be attending TUM this year. There was a confusion in the paperwork he had to submit to the university as the instructions on the web were not particularly clear. We shall, therefore, stay in Praha. Happily, I add. Každopadně, we had two appointments to view flats, or rather, we had appointments to view two flats. I prefer the latter wording, as evidenced by how this paragraph began. One was cancelled in the early hours of yesterday as it was ostensibly “rented”. The second was in Berg Am Laim and turned out to be quite impressive to me, flat-wise (as opposed to plane-wise or two-dimensional infinite space-wise). We played our roles as normal, wistful humans hoping to soon find a marvelous place to live. The experience was amusing and quite fun. We then proceeded to walk for several hours under a light and then less light drizzle to view the neighbourhood the “cancelled” flat was in and then to the biergarten we were at our last visit to München.
2. In the evening, a gathering of Germans who either taught Czech (actually, in fact, a few of them were Czechs living in München) or were learning Czech clumped together in a restaurant called Bohemia near Rosenheimerplatz. We entered, finally sat down, and were mildly transported in spirit back to the Czech Republic itself. The restaurant is a small portion of Czechia within the morass of Münich. I even consumed smažený sýr and three Pilsner Urquells. So much for Münchner Helles this trip. Ivanečka is employed by Kateřina, the director or owner or something unidentifyable of a Czech school in München, and this Kateřina was there to direct affairs. Most of the evening, however, consisted of speaking with Czech learners in Czech about each others’ places of residence, travels, jobs, etc. Or, rather, that was what most of my evening consisted of. Ivanečka’s evening had more to do with interacting with her future students and imprinting on all involved that she is the most adept Czech teacher in existence v tomto vesmíru a v každým ostatní.

I was just reminded strangely because of Peiločja and a conversation with Jeremy and perhaps because of a sampler sitting unused on my sofa in the other room of a “scene” when I was living in Spain. I had purchased a Warm Audio BUS-COMP from someone on that buy/sell thurk that cretins in Spain use. What was it called? Something with W. Wallaby? Wombat? Wurst? Whataburger? I just CANNOT recall! Since Peiločja didn’t exist at that time of my life, it is fair to not recall. Každopadně, the guy selling the BUS-COMP to me wrote me at some point explaining that on the way to correos he stopped at a supermarket (possibly Mercadona, may the vestegial testical curse its narrow files full of over-eager, hungover breakfast hunters) the unit was stolen from his car. He gave me a refund. I feel bad for him even to this day.

I’m sitting U Smrťaka quite near my current home in Nusle. I have a pivo. It is a Radegast. I greatly prefer it to Pilsner. The music listening adventure begins. Let’s see what each song brings.

Of course, Pete Townshend had to appear first floating in my ears. Stardom in Action. In fact, this song doesn’t bring anything specific to my mind. The album itself resonates on many levels, however. Levels, do you say? Why use such a word when one could easily say wireframes instead? The album in general places me in the apartment that I shared with Jayson in College Station from September of 1992 bis Mai 1993. He and I listened to it extensively. Not only he and I listened to it, but Bender-boy took quite a part in the experience, as well.

A few lines just stuck out, however:

I’m so angry that you let me see my totally futile destiny. I’m so angry that you interrupted my dream.

Do not admire anonymity!

That is the opposite of everything I’ve ever written in my blogs, journals, poems and tentative musings to the insect hordes who gather around my windowsills. Anonymity is something to be sought after. It is something to be admired. It is something to be absorbed into. In contrast, the things that one creates can stick out from the seething mass. They can poke and prick at the heavens like the symbols of monetary greatness that are skyscrapers raping the view of the horizontal.

Communication now plays from the same album. Marcie springs to mind. Of course, she was part of that era of my life. It was during those days that we first became close. Some would say too close. Tony certainly did - or if he didn’t actually say it, the look on his face was more communicative than most novels. The song expires.

Guyute was the ugly pig Who walked on me and danced a jig That he had learned when he was six Then stopped and did some other tricks Like pulling weapons from his coat And holding them against my throat He lectured me in language strange Then scampered swiftly out of range

What portion of my life that this song reminds me of at the moment is immaterial, though I’ll mention that the time period is December 1999 and there is an incident of attempting to urinate in someone’s sundry-filled closet whilst nigh-fatally stoned. Who is Guyute? Guyute is the ever pampered and now “powerful” manager of whichever franchise you can name, or, alternately, a purported self-made man from serfdom to tyrant who has the bureaucratic ability to take one of his subjects and walk on them and indeed dance a jig perhaps on them or after walking on them. Mostly, he is filled with threats if your behavior isn’t one he exactly condones. In fact, he will pull out said weapons even if your beliefs are not ones he exactly condones. He is not a democratic entity. He is Guyute. The language he lectures you in is perfectly within your grasp, but only morphologically and syntactically. Certainly it is not within your grasp semantically.

He scampers out of range. They always scamper out of range. Bullies, when there is even the remotest chance of them losing the upper hand, scamper.

As the Moma Dance plays, I shall contemplate the sticky sweat embracing my living corpse. As I grow further and further into decrepitude, my tolerance of heat decreases. The industrial revolution, which began only a few years before my “birth”, was conceived to snuff me from this earth. The planning itself is exquisite. Well designed. As my skin slides into the molten plastic the ocean has become, I feel at last one with Miss Entropy. Oh! And I feel I’ve never told you The Story of the Ghost.

Two tables to my fore, a family dines. The father and two children have smažený sýr. The mother eats a hamburgerish concoction. They appear satisfied with the way my skin slips greasily into the molten plastic of the ocean.

Miss Carla now sings cacophonously. A hint of recollection comes to my addled brain, especially on this second one. You see - two songs in a row play from 2 Foot Yard. I am walking around Acy’s neighborhood in Austin. S. 3rd Street. Acy’s place. I miss that place. He spent so much of his life on it! The effort was unbelievable. Or, alternatively, all of his projects that were additions to the landscape were just that - projects. They kept him sane. Given that he abandoned all of it with out an ostensible shine of lament, that may be so.

Stop Hurting People by Herr Pete now sings in my ears. Lee and I once discussed this song. It must have been when he was at the Enfield house with all of us - Tony Melanie Craig Jayson Me - and sharing our bizarre “harmony”. He was especially impressed by the line:

So you, without question, know your first love is your last. And you will never, never, never love again.

He mocked such melodrama simply because he had been there himself. And he knew at once that Herr Pete was mocking the same melodrama, that the whole song was sitting staring red eyed and hungover at the masses who need to justify the cracks in their psyches with episodic melodrama. He understood, and I admit far before I did myself, that gyrating emotion is a passing dance. The chemicals settle into an equilibrium. That equilibrium differs per person, of course. His equilibrium was more heightened than most - more heightened than all, in fact. Thus, he stole his boss’s truck. He stole his boss’s gun.

Fraulein Carla sings and wails on her violin. I am standing at a bus stop in Austin. It is a bus stop near the Sierra Madre or Sierra Sestra or Sierra Panchita Mall. I don’t remember the exact title of the institution. Why had I visited it again? Did I want a nostalgic kick in the rectum? Perhaps. So here we go. Tony and Acy and Lee (maybe?) and I went there one day. We drove either my truck or Lee’s car or Tony’s “vehicle”. While we were doing whatever fuckups like us tended to do in shopping centers during that era of our lives (hint - it had nothing to do with gyrating emotions or unevenly shaven buttocks), Tony somehow lost the power of speech. So after hours of doing whatever fuckups like us tended to do in shopping centers during that era of our “youth” (hint - Acy was accosted by the police for both not having shoes and dressing “inappropriately”), we walked around the expanse of the starbaked parking lot searching for the “vehicle” because certainly it was Tony’s and he was no longer speaking nor giving any reactive indication of which way to go.

Fun!

The congenial servírka mě přinesla druhé pivo. She’s Moved On by Porcupine Tree. In San Sebastian, atop the hill in the park above the flat I lived (if one could call it living) were a few lounge benches made of wood. I’d procure a few beers or a bottle of vodka and climb up to them, sit on one or the other or the other and sometimes fall asleep. Once I awoke with a vagrant going through my backpack. Was he a vagrant? Perhaps I mistook him for a vagrant and he was not. He was going through my backpack, however. I scared him away by giving him a lecture on The Unconsoled and how it relates to human disconnection and specifically how it relates to Spanish disconnection beneath the amicable exterior they have that sates them with so much pride. I listened to Lightbulb Sun every time I was up on that hill. Sometimes, when I wasn’t accosting wanna-be vagrants, I’d sit and gaze over Egia and Gros and perhaps over and out onto the Cantabrian Sea and into the gloppy mist of the future.

I bought The Story of a Ghost in Austin at a CD shop on Palmer Lane, somewhere near where Deleware Subs was or still is. I used to work at that Deleware Subs. It was a fantastic sub-shop. When I drove to that CD shop in which I bought The Story of a Ghost, I was in a rickety “van” that Acy borrowed me. Magdalena and I memorized much of Austin in that van. We also memorized that CD shop. I bought The Story of the Ghost there. Strangely, my memory of that trip with Magdalena is the opposite of atrocious. It was a gleeful time. She honestly enjoyed my friends. She specifically enjoyed Craig and Aimee. And they enjoyed her back. Upon my return to Praha, however, Loyal and Suzie wrote me a long email about the clash they perceived in mine and Magdalena’s personalities. Their evaluation, as important as I held it, had nothing to do with leaving Magdalena. I had already met the blonde Dana at the EIN adjacent Xmas party Hynek had invited me to. She had wished me a wonderful sojourn to the states for Xmas / Sylvestr.

On one of the evenings at Dave’s, I drank lots and lots of hard alcohol (most likely with Dave) and illness claimed me the next day. I was infected! Plagued! Every one of my multitudinous pores belched pus. I lay in a stench on the floor the next morning in Craig’s apartment. I bid Magdalena go with my friends to lunch whilst I simmered in the pool of fluids. She did so. Oh joy! She was certainly accepted within the group. In fact, several years later, when I was living v Mnichově with Vesna, Craig journeyed once again to this country (the one I sit in now, not the other in which I sat with Vesna). My relationship at that time with the Bosnian princess was cracked like a pristine porcelain bowl still being eyed by Child Entropy. I fucked over my friend Craig because I was too preoccupied at holding my current relationship together. How many times do we have to do such things before we know they are futile and simply STOP after the first eke in their direction? After his warranted disappointment, he traversed to Praha and stayed with Magdalena. They sent me several scurrilous messages. I probably have them written down somewhere.

Water From The Sky. This sequence of songs from The Story of the Ghost made it onto a CD I burned for the blonde Dana in January of 2000. I was in the obyvák where Viking was to spend much of his time during the next months, and listened to the mix I had made. She was a simple girl. Christian would use the word puro, but since that is in a language that I currently and will for the remainder of my next sixteen existences despise, I’ll go with simple, or even innocuous. Her honesty was a concoction of naivete and genuine forward pushing mental exploration. I often think of the last time I saw her. It was years after our goodbye. Randomly, we met on the metro. I don’t recall the words we exchanged, but I could see the lines in her face. In a few years, something had changed her from the fair-faced, idealistic youth into something more crumpled and jaded. Was I a portion of the reason for her withering?

If you’re just staring at your walls Observing echoing footfalls From tenants wandering distant halls Then this one is for you If children playing all around To you is noise not pleasant sound And you’d be lost on the playground Then this one is for you

I’ll just leave those lyrics as they are. I can and always have been able to relate to them mightily. Upon myriad moments in my wretched existence, I’d listen to this song. I’d repeat it. I usually had a beer or a bottle of Fernet in my frozen claw. There are too many moments to enumerate.

If you’re just staring at your walls Then this one is for you

Face Dances Part II and I am back in Jayson’s and my apartment. Unlike most humans, I only discovered masturbation in my early twenties. I was twenty-two, actually! Of course, I was pining for Marcie and at that point the fact that we couldn’t realistically have “sex” frustrated me. I’d seen pornography many times in the past. But, I’d felt nothing, which probably also perpetuated the push for a very late sexual awakening. During high school, I’d sit with some friends (Eddie, Sam - and even Joe once) and watch, but I only felt a mix of disgust and apathy. I tentatively began stimulating myself in the flat that I shared with Jayson when he was away at class. The first time I made myself come, the liquid spurted, pirouetted and fell directly into one of my open eyes, gluing the lids together. I lay stunned for a moment and then rose, went to the koupelna between mine and Jayson’s bedrooms and washed it out. Then I sat on my bed naked and laughed.

Lightbulb Sun. I am in Daniel Cuc’s flat, where I rented a room. In fact, that flat was also on Marie Cibulkové, though I cannot find it. The name Cuc is no longer on any of the “buzzers” on the ground floor of the buildings housing flats on the right as one walks from Pražkého Povstaní to the brána at Vyšehrad. I assume he sold it and moved to a village to raise a gaggle of geese, ovce or boats for various bacterial strains. I sat on the couch in that flat many an evening without internet but designing web pages condemning the company that Viking and I worked for. I also planned an alternate Czech dictionary, but that only partially came to pass. I also made Silvie a mix-tape on that couch. I included The Limping Little Girl by Present on it. I miss Silvie.

So Carla sings 50 Miles. This is the song I used to repeat until my neck stank of acoustic, nylon, quantum uneasiness. Tony and I listened to it only one time. It must have been 2009 or 2010 or 2011, the latter which was the last time I saw him. The only comment he made was something akin to:

What genre is this? Americana?

Fuck um.

The fact that I’ve seen Victor more recently in person than Tony crushes my evening jauntiness like a gleaming beetle beneath the bootheel of a bully.