This morning I submitted to listening to The Shutov Assembly by Brian Eno once again. I chose to enjoy it, though I didn’t follow it in depth for very long. It got me thinking about the concept of hero worship.

As a quick aside, I typed I chose to enjoy it on purpose in the previous paragraph. This is a concept I’ll attempt to write about in depth in a blog entry during a not too distant epoch. Anyhow -

In the ambient music community, Mr Eno can be thought as a sort of pioneer (especially if one ignores the countless German artists and ensembles before him). I’m sure many of his works are revered by ordinary dudes like me who make ambient music from time to time and by other ordinary dudes who create goopy drones every single moment of their waking lives. Sure, like The Shutov Assembly, the works are revered. But are they preferred?

At this moment, I’m listening to another ambient work by an artist that is very far from being revered. In fact, he is practically unknown. I’m enjoying the music just as I enjoyed The Shutov Assembly. I’m also choosing to enjoy it. At this moment, I prefer it. An important question to me is this: Do listeners in general place the works of those revered in a genre of music above works by people less known simply because the former artists are revered? Another way to state this would be: Do the works of revered artists have more value than the works of lesser known artists simply because the artist himself is revered?

I try to imbibe art out of context as much as possible. That is, I want to affect me in whichever way it may without outside influence. Thus, at least consciously (who knows what my bastard subconscious does?), I don’t differentiate a piece of ambient music by Mr Eno from a piece of ambient music by the hobo living under bridge on Taborská Ulice in Praha in regard to who made the piece. I believe I do good job not having prejudice in this manner (but, again, who knows what my bastard subconscious does?).

But there is this: Were I to remark that a piece by Flavigula - say, any drone piece from Hap Jaum Sima Liz - is a preferable piece of music than The Shutov Assembly by the revered Herr Eno (yes - I’m aware they are not necessarily very similar in intent), I know myriad people who would guffaw before even listening to the former piece. I selected myself as an example, but I am sure it applies to multitudinous lesser known artists. The culprit here is a fading cultural hangover everyone knows as Hero Worship. Eno has had the “good fortune” to exist as a media highlight for decades and to work with a number of other high profile artists doing atmospheric soundscaping. His cultural value seems higher. I emphasize the word “seems”.

Personally, I do like Eno’s music quite a bit. I also have the good fortune to know of and know personally many lesser known artists that I listen to voraciously. Thus, I discard the idea of cultural value and go back to my personal favourite listening philosophy: each piece stands on its own and what I’m listening to at the moment is the preferred piece, be it The Shutov Assembly, a drone piece by an acquaintance from the fediverse or a sprawling ambient epic by the hobo living under the bridge on Taborská Ulice in Praha.

Over the last few epochs, I’ve noticed a tendency in people to go to great lengths to justify the things they do, be those things hobbies, work, ways of thinking or even the amount of Leche de Cabra Semidesnatada they place in their English Breakfast tea in the morning. I ask myself why. I suspect it has to do with one of the greatest contradictions of occidental culture I’ve noted. As an infant, I was taught, as I am sure many others are, that we are innocent of any crime until proven guilty. I’ll abstract the word crime here to any action that one goes to lengths to rationalize TO OTHERS. Seemingly, as our infancy peters out, we grow into a culture that pushes us to justify our every preference, our every move.

Does this spring from the idea of currency? We live in a society of currency. Perhaps it is impressed on us that our deeds must have a sort of value and since most hobbies, ideologies and tea additive preferences are not compensated by a lump of cash, we feel they must be justified in some other way. So we babble on and on about why we do what we do.

One goal I’ve set for myself over the last said epochs is to not give excuses for my actions, preferences and especially hobbies. If something makes me happy and it is not impinging on another’s well-being or happiness, why do I have to elaborate? I don’t. And I’d rather not hear your drawn out elaboration, either. Let’s raise our hands to the sky together and chant the mantra: fuck um.

As I mentioned in one or another of my past lives, I recently completed An Artist of the Floating World by Kazuo Ishiguro. It is a fine tome and I recommend it to all. Of course, I use the word tome here in a virtual sense, as I did not hold the actual weight of the book in my hand. Rather, I held the weight of the apparatus that contained a digital version of the book in my hand. It did not once slip, despite its weight and its multitudinous contents.

Before I write a bit more about the contents of the digital version of the tome that forms a small portion of the contents of the apparatus on which I read, I’d mention that I’ve been in a rather nostalgic mood of late. Perhaps this is because of dreams that have recently haunted me. One thing that I’ve repeatedly escaped from in my life, much to my folly, is a stable lump of camaraderie. By this I mean a gaggle of humans I can relate to and thus spend time with mucking about with no particular objective in mind. Why have I repeatedly escaped? Many times, it’s been following a woman or even employment. Other times it’s been because of one silliness or another that came to my head to do that caused a rift in the posse. I now choose the word posse en vez de gaggle as it was (is?) John’s preferred word.

I can’t help but admit that this emptiness has been partially spawned by my intermittent communication with Loyal over the past epoch. Our personal rift, of which I regret possibly infinitely, happened because of a woman, partially. That woman had nothing to do with it, however. My personal obsession with her had everything to do with it. That and a “need” for a constant non-clarity of my senses, exponentiating the situation. What’s done is done, naturally, as they say, but regret is the bog one drifts in ever afterwards. Do they say that? Who are these they, anyway, and why do I speak of them? That is a discussion for another time, or for never, possibly.

Loyal:

What do you think of the idea that happiness is a by-product of fulfillment?

He asked me that in an email sometime in 1997. I was, unbeknownst to me at the time, about to drown in the bog of my relationship with Brynn. I only searched superficially, but could not find my reply to him back then. My reply now is immediate, however. I think that happiness for me is directly related to fulfillment. In an effort to achieve happiness, I constantly create small projects for myself to arrive at the sensation of fulfillment. These projects don’t need to be in any way complex, involved, or with greater purpose. Simply writing a blog entry is one. Going through an old document about programming my old HP calculator to re-learn part of the process is another. Setting up a patch on the modular synth that isn’t simply grating. Doing an ambient improv with Uruqi and its accompaniments. Worshipping goats symbolically by adding their precious lactate to my coffee.

I do get quite a bit of fulfillment from interactions online, and especially discussions about music, writing, literature, programming and worshipping goats. I cannot know whether it is a product of what I grew old being accustomed to or if it is something inherently natural, but I always feel more fulfilled when I interact with people I can relate to in person. I’d guess it is the former and that online interaction will eventually take the place of face to face communication for humans in even the most intimate contexts - but that is a discussion for another time, or for never, perhaps. During these somewhat desultory dreams, my subconscious is reminding me that I miss interaction with FRIENDS in small groups around cluttered tables filled with drained coffee cups. Unfortunately for me, these FRIENDS are scattered across several continents. Bastards.

When you are young, there are many things which appear dull and lifeless. But as you grow older, you will find these are the very things that are most important to you.

So I’ve reached the point in the entry where the Ishiguro quote arbitrarily appears. I must fit it in context. The first connection I espy is that appear dull and lifeless can be synonymous with are taken for granted. The hara of those things does not radiate the sort of capturing aura for youth that entices. I may be reaching here, but I perhaps took for granted my circle of friends. For a certain mental health, I relied on them much more than I thought. Were they dull and lifeless? No - so my analogy doesn’t exactly hold. But they were, in a way, taken for granted and sorely missed now.

What may have been seen as dull and lifeless were the seemingly insipid days whiled away with those humans. To have moments that I could while away similarly now that I’ve grown into decrepitude would be a treasure. To have the sensation of fulfillment simply from languid days would be a treasure. Was it the presence of the humans around me that made that time so special? Or was it that time itself moved differently? Or that I didn’t think about the passing of moments much at all (not necessarily true - but that is a discussion for another time, or for never, perhaps). Maybe the key to the Ishiguro quote is time, itself, and my perception of it. In this epoch, I’m always in a “rush” to fill ALL of the time with events that give me the sensation of fulfillment. If I’m idle, I feel a certain uneasiness. It’s true that IN A WAY, I’ve always been like this, but, as decrepitude encroached and engulfed, it became a way of life.

Where are the languid days passed with (or without?) laughing, petulant friends that resulted in fulfillment? Sure, they exist in a hospoda here or a café there with Michal or Dani, or even walking in Pagan Park whilst talking on the phone with that shattered husk of a human, Christian. I’m guessing it’s more the sloshy chemicals in my brain creating a sensation than it is reality, but the frequency of these languid moments of fulfillment have decreased. They’ve become a diminished speck.

I read the book Behold the Man by Michael Moorcork possibly twice when I was approximately 21 years old. I recall suggesting it to various friends. They also read it, though most likely only once. One friend was Raun, and he told me that it was not to his taste. Those were not his exact words. He related that the style of the novel didn’t emulsify his gravy. The style is indeed choppy, but so is life, in my opinion. In any case, it works for me.

In specific, this morning and yesterday, I was thinking about Karl and his short time with the Essenes. Though their ways were meditative and peaceful, he considered them “clinically” insane. Their belief that God’s kingdom was soon to be again on earth is startlingly similar to that of sects that spring up again and again in the modern world. Those sects, of course, and especially after any act of extremism, are considered to be at least led by a madman.

How the actions of a small group of insane individuals led to an extreme result (the crucifixion) and furthermore to a mythos surrounding said crucifixion isn’t really what I was thinking about, however. At the point in history when the Essenes existed, there didn’t exist (ostensibly) organizations or institutions to contain those afflicted by such insanities. The unchecked spread of their actions, therefore, and extreme acts and subsequent mythos, were more widespread.

The cultures in which we live have created measures to make sure such things no longer happen, I suppose squelching the birth of further mythos. I’ve not been known to be a big fan of mythos in general, anyhow. So fuck um.

I recently finished An Artist in a Floating World by Kazuo Ishiguro. It was the only novel I’d never read by him. I’ve read others multiple times, especially The Unconsoled, which remains one of my favourite pieces of literature.

How so much more honourable is such a contest, in which one’s moral conduct and achievement are brought as witnesses rather than the size of one’s purse.

I’m reminded of the film Ghost Dog where characters often remark that ancient Japan must have been a strange place or somesuch. I posit that the mentality stated in the above quote would be out of place in much of the modern world. I’ve lived in a universe where one’s place is established by either financial success or a type of success created from a vague sort of social status obtained in various manners rarely relating to ethics. My attitude, even though (or possibly because) I am a rebel, has been wholly tainted by this “ideology”. People on Mastodon write again and again about late capitalism and that’s as good a name for the financial part of it as any. As for the other part - that vague social status - its ranks are filled with obsequious crowd pleasers, to be generous (and very general).

There are rare occasions where works of artists, artisans and scientists grant their makers positions of status, but mostly if the results, in the end, make money. I’ll put this down to late capitalism.

There is rarely an occasion, however, when those achievements walk alongside the ethical behaviour of said artists, artisans or scientists. The only glaring examples are the retroactive destruction of the career of an artist, artisan or scientist when some moral foible is publicly brought to light.

The Ishiguro quote, especially in context, is more concerned with one who rises above the surface scum because of comparative analysis of how one has lived ethically. My father used to talk about integrity during my childhood and adolescence. Only later did I find out that he had a double standard. I suppose that’s not abnormal, though that’s a discussion for another epoch. Integrity, in the sense he used to use, is close to what Ishiguro is referring to here.

One must note that Ishiguro is not attempting to impress his ethical views on the reader. He is just an observer of how cultural customs rule and adherence to them can destroy one’s life.

I was pretty bad at integrity as an adolescent. As a rebel, I discarded any advice my father handed out (and there was much) and followed my own ideologies, cobbled together from lyrics, literature and my limited view of the universe from Fort Stockton, Texas. Were there a contest at the time based on ethical behaviour, I would not have risen above the surface scum. Though I doubt the drug addled alcoholics and religious zealots alike surrounding me at the time would have fared much better. But who am I to judge? I never liked hierarchies anyway. Let’s all be surface scum.

During that time of integrity, it was still the ones that came from families with money who were regarded as la creme de la creme. In concentric circles moving away from the tantalising centre, were the athletes, then the academically successful. The amount of social interaction, another indicator of success, waned with distance from the centre, or existed because of that distance. Or were in balance.

Besides my father’s ramblings about integrity, the only other moral centerpiece I grew up with was religion. In specific, Presbyterian upbringing and being surrounded by other protestant denominations during daily life. However, their ethics seemed more like lines in pages in a rulebook that could be discarded if it interfered with social status.

That was my culture. How was it like the one Ishiguro described in An Artist in a Floating World? The microcosm that produced the contest of moral conduct and achievement invented (or not) by Ishiguro couldn’t have existed in West Texas in the 80s. Moral codes taught by protestants were flimsy. Status was inevitably achieved by familial position (dinero, honeyboničko), athletic prowess, or - a distant third - academic achievement in school. Though I may have ended up seething with the rest of the scum on the surface, or even sinking below at the time, a West Texan world evolving from such alien ideology is an intriguing hallucination.

I began a new routine. I’ve noticed over the last years that I don’t listen to music as deeply as I used to. I am speaking of music that is not related to my own, of course. I used to spend intimate hours with albums. They converted to fluid pumping through my living corpse. Though it is a wholly different story, this routine began very late in my life - let’s say at the age of 14. In any bag of box cutters, in recent years, music that is not of my own creation has been relegated to the backdrop. I find this unfortunate because this fluid, delivered by the aural syringe of a pair of sound delivery apparatuses, used to, apart from other malformed garbage, be the lifeblood of my living corpse.

To return to this routine, I’ve chosen an album to become intimate with. I shall choose another every fifteen days or so. The first one is Katy Lied by Steely Dan. I’ve probably listened to it eleven times through at this point, and the second half even more. Why the second half? Well - take a listen! Doctor Wu and Your Gold Teeth II are especially brilliant. Their use of modality and surprising shifts in tonal center appeals to my oscillating lizard brain.

The new routine has forced me to pay attention a bit more to all music that is going on around me, derelegating it a bit from the backdrop. For example, the new Ikarus album has been signing in my ears from time to time and its style is especially inspirational. Also, whilst intimately scouring red sand blown from another continent onto our balcony yesterday, I employed the types of sound delivery apparatuses that cling to one’s noggin. Steely Dan wasn’t in evidence (nor Ikarus), but much Tangerine Dream crossed my signal path. More importantly, a track from Sirius and the Ghosts by Daniel Denis was a highlight. I find it a bit odd that I am not particularly familiar with the album. Or, rather, I am not intimate with the album. Why do I find this odd? Various people have heard me babble from time to time about how Herr Denis is my favourite composer. So Sirius and the Ghosts is next.

Sitting at Katr, waiting for a hungover James to awaken from his hibernation, I’m mildly shocked to hear There Was a Little Boy by Toy Matinee dribble down from the sound system buckets. It’s been centuries since I’ve listened to it, though I recognized it almost immediately. Normally, I’d be filled with nostalgia and start ordering beers, but I’ve been trying to work past normality for a good while now.

Fuck um.

As I have noted, I changed the architecture of Martenblog. Specifically, I rid it of MongoDB, opting for a filesystem storage. Even the topics themselves are represented by a colossal json that occludes the memory of several partial universes. I’m content with the new form. Form is a word that our happy-go-lucky chum Christian often uses to describe structures created and maintained since antiquity, and mostly in the realm of musics and arts. He is very happy-go-lucky. In fact, he is so happy-go-lucky that he has no idea of the architecture change which envelopes Martenblog. No superficial modification is apparent. The form between the fundamental and the surface blundered into a new reality. In this respect, we are all happy-go-lucky.

Each entry is a separate file. New raw input can be placed anywhere as long as it adheres to a proprietary form. Said proprietary form is quite simple and consists of a header and body like this:

Subject: The Heat Death of the Universe
Topic: relationships,entropy

Babble burble blather in markdown.

I simply execute a function on the filename and it is transformed. Existence becomes a bit more happy-go-lucky.

Why did I opt for MongoDB in the first place, an only semi-happy-go-lucky reader might ask? Well! I wanted to learn MongoDB, after all. What better way to do it than insert it into a personal project. Martenblog has blundered through a number of database forms during its existence since 2006. I believe the original was MySql. MySql is an abomination, of course. Perhaps some particularly happy-go-lucky humans in a few partial universes may disagree with this statement, but I stand by it. I stand by it in any number of partial universes.

Obviously MongoDB is a bit overblown for a blog. It’s taken me approximately 12 years to guide the blundering form into the simple nirvana of the filesystem. What tempered grace! What patience! I’ve read much discussion concerning data longevity, and in particular personal data longevity. I haven’t read anything about Martenblog’s longevity in specific, but I assure myself that the blunderings of a few partial universes need its persistence. It’s obvious to me that the less complex a system is, the easier it is to maintain its longevity. It follows that MongoDB is scrapped. This change is on the relative heels of making the whole of the codebase a so-called static blog generator with a few accessory items such as the creation of Rss & Atom feeds, as well as accessing a much maligned Postgres (only slightly less of an abomination than MySql) database for Lakife. I’ll eventually blunder away from the latter.

The new Martenblog system is in place. Rejoice. I’ve swiped the subject of this entry from the Peter Blegvad song dribbling from my immaculately white studio monitors. We all know the name of the specific song, so I shan’t go into details. The point now is to test an EDIT of an entry.

I’m in Ruidoso with my parents once again, at the Inn of the Mountain Gods. I’ve perused the area for a while and haven’t seen a sign of any actual Gods. However, they may be in a form that is not obvious to me. For example, they may be some of the duck-like creatures floating on the lake, waiting to smite anyone who gives them a passing, peculiar glance. I say so because I’ve heard that Gods are arbitrarily wrathful. Or, they may be one of the multitudinous microbes that infest the mouth of a screaming infant in one of the rooms of the Inn. Perhaps microbes can also be wrathful and smite the owners of said infant, or even the infant itself. Call me a ruffian, but at the least I’m honest in saying that I’m no fan of infants. I understand their purpose, of course, but it tries my tolerance to be around them. Ah well.

Speaking (or typing, or musing, or blathering in either spoken or typewritten form) of microbes, lots of people seem to be discussing them these days. The vast majority of these blatherers have acquired the information they blather about not from any sort of rigid and systematic study, but from hearsay or aggregators. That’s all I have to say (or type, or muse or blather in either spoken or typewritten form) about the subject.

I began this blog entry by stating that I am in Ruidoso with my parents once again. This is a fact. Or it is a fact in this specific infinity of quantum universes. The purpose of the entry is to discuss my parents and their relation, as I see it, to the modern world. So I’ll get with it.

In many respects, I think they are lost. I think of the stereotype that states that one begins a regression towards infancy as old age progresses. I think this stereotype applies to an extent. However, I’ve observed that the actual point of regression oscillates wildly between the 1950s and 1980s.

My father was born in 1938 and my mother in 1942, putting them in their teens in the 1950s. Stereotypically (again), many people return to this epoch of their life, airbrushing it into the so-called golden years. My father is one of these many people. In the 80s, my brother and I were youth and did the bidding of my parents, travelled with them and were basically under their (far too controlling, in my opinion) eye. Up to this decade, they were able to adapt to the changing landscape of the world. They did not have difficulties moving from village to city and back again, and though they preferred the tranquil and gossipy life of the former, the latter did not rattle them as it does now.

Now I cannot imagine either of them coping in a place like Austin, or even Lubbock. Though it’s true that Austin was somewhat smaller in the 80s, the main issue I sense is an intolerance from age. As time passed, they gradually lost their adaptability. I watch them struggle with interaction even with the waitress at the restaurant here at the Inn. One could also claim generation gap (in their case, multiple generations), but I don’t think generation gap is the base reason. My father seems to interact with the people around him as if they understand the mannerisms of a bygone epoch. Yeah - the 1950s.

They, themselves - especially my mother - are not blind to this drift to the past. During a ride around town (meaning a ride along the twisty roads consisting of the scattered outskirts, among farms and mini-ranches), she lamented that my father was somewhat trapped in a sentimental bog form from an idealised (my word) adolescence. In fact, one of the main reasons they moved from Fort Stockton to Seminole was because he grew up here. He was convinced that he’d start seeing his old friends again, even reconnect with high school ex-girlfriends. Of course, sixty years on, those people, and yes, some still lived in Seminole, had created vastly different lives. I’ve never talked directly to my father about it, but I can imagine he was bitterly disappointed.

I imagine that it’s not uncommon to want to migrate from the speed of city life to a place with a more comfortable pace as one ages. Or, at least I can imagine it for some types of personalities. However, for my parents, it is extreme. Anything out of the realm of small town bustle is much too fast for them. In contrast, their patience has decreased exponentially. (Not that my father was EVER patient.) Again, I’ll go with the restaurant example. Big city restaurants (let’s pretend that Ruidoso is a big city for a moment) make one WAIT for service. To me, this is natural. To them, and especially after Covid lockdowns making restaurant visits even in Seminole more infrequent, service should be provided immediately after they sit down. The food should come a few minutes later. After all, they are the only ones in the restaurant, right?

This is not an exaggeration. Especially for my father, any sort of waiting is intolerable. This phenomenon of getting to the next thing as quickly as possible makes little sense to me. I’ve seen him savour the moment when playing a game (cribbage?), for example, or sitting in front of a slot machine (but only whilst winning), but this feature of his personality doesn’t extend past those and a few other activities. Everything else is rush to get on with the next timeslotted item. The paradox is grotesque. Retire from a bustle to begin a new type of bustle to get to where? Death?

No thanks, vole.

Though I ignore it as much as possible, I am at times hit in the face (or thorax, or abdomen) by the naked capitalistic greed of the country in which I currently reside. My glorious mobile service provider, AT&T, is going through a cessation stage for what they term as incompatible phones. What is an incompatible phone, you may ask? Well, my Fairphone 3, for one. Any phone that is not either bought blatantly with a Jaundiced Orchestration of Corporate Kibble (furthermore abbreviated to JOCK) or somehow registered as a phone subsumed by AT&T during JOCK processing is phased out. So the limp and brusque of it is that I had to purchase a new phone that corresponds to my JOCK yesterday.

Advantages do exist, of course, including the orifice melting speed of 5G, but one has to augment one’s JOCK to have the ability to tether to one’s phone or create a hotspot. Huh? I’m used to life in Europe. I had a phone. I put a sim card into it. That sim card was tied to some more nominally capitalistic enterprise. I could then do whatever I wanted with said phone, including simple things like tethering and creating a hotspot.

It seems the base JOCK is just that: as little as the service provider can provide and still call it a service. Everything else is extra.

When little (I laughingly dub it little) annoyances like this rear their noggins, I try desperately to hold to positivity. For now, I must remain in the good ol’ USA. Fuck um.