I enjoyed thoroughly one of my favourite pieces of music last night. Soubresauts by Univers Zero from the fantastic album Clivages. I invited my friend to listen, as well. His opinion of the piece differed drastically from my own. Initially he queried if it was made in a DAW. He seemed shocked that it was a band. He said the recorded suffered from sounding like banging on cardboard boxes and called one part American, pathetic like 80s or 90s rock fusion. Now, I respect his opinion greatly, but I’ve never heard any of these facets in Soubresauts. But, in the end, that’s fine. I listened to the parts he pointed out again trying to discern what he was hearing. I failed. Why? The reason could be that I have heard the piece multitudinous times, but I don’t think so. I believe it is the approach with which each of us listens to something - at least initially.

I’m fascinated by harmonic and rhythmic interactions. The “presence” of the recording in reference to it sounding like it’s in a room, a hall, a vacuum chamber or a foreign star system is immaterial initially to me. I ignore it. This may stem from the fact that I’ve spent epochs of my life listening to “badly” recorded music, not to mention bootlegs of live recordings. The “presence” of the recording comes to me later usually, after I’ve absorbed the harmonic, melodic and rhythmic details. I posit that it is similar to the fact that the weather doesn’t affect me at all. Sure, I sense and know that it’s hot, tepid, cold, freezing, raining, sleeting, slowing, howling with demonic winds, etc., but the sensation and knowledge do not change the way I go about my day. They colour the way I go about my day, maybe, but overtly change it, no. I’ll incorporate my sense and knowledge of the weather, if only subtly, in what I do. The “presence” of a recording is much the same. I sense the way something is recorded, but it rarely affects how I approach the music. Or, using the weather analogy further, I may move through the music slightly differently depending on the “presence”, but I carry on through it, regardless.

One could then ask - Bobbus, why don’t you just listen to midi files run through a generic synth to grok these things? Well, the timbrel variety that comes with wielding an actual instrument interests me greatly, as well, and thereupon creates the fourth facet of music that fascinates me: texture. I understand that texture can be closely related to the aforementioned “presence” or production value of a recording. Narcissist assholes speak of using the studio as an “instrument”. I get it. But back to the original theme.

My friend and I obviously differ in our approach to listening and I believe we also differ in our expectations during a listening session. Despite what myriad of my friends, ex-friends, lovers, ex-lovers, family members, ex-family members and always present bacterial colonies think, I don’t require music to be completely bizarre for my enjoyment. I seek the middle path in all things. I don’t need something to be overtly avant-garde to be thrilling. I derive joy from jazz standards, string quartets, progressive rock epics and folk ditties alike. Well, I derive joy from selections that fit into each of those categories, of course, and obviously not EVERYTHING. The point is that I don’t openly reject something just because it seems to be “fitting in” to a specific genre. And so - it bothered me when my friend claimed that a section in Soubresauts was American, pathetic, blah blah blah. The section is question brings me joy and even if it DOES evoke to someone 80s American rock or whatnot (I personally don’t hear it), I highly doubt Daniel Denis planned the piece out so that those phrases would FIT that template. No. I’m not saying that said friend necessarily asks for something ‘avant’ every time he listens. It’s doubtful that anyone is so extreme. Approaching any art with expectations is a danger.

I’ve encountered a certain point of view especially with other musicians many a time during my patchy existence. Immediately these people will latch onto a phrase or even a sound, timbre or single chord and pinpoint where they have heard it before. The rest of the piece, especially the context, is then abandoned. And in most music, excepting pastiches and satires, these connections are incidental. When I’m composing something, I don’t sit back and re-analyze - does this sound like such and such or such and such that has already been done in the past. Hm - maybe this sounds too American or Ukrainian. Should I change it to create something more original? Being that the point of my music to to compose and record something that I’d personally like to listen to, I don’t see the point of such analyses. In any case, if one fights ANY sort of conformity (especially incidental conformity) in every step of the process of creation, it’s basically doing the same as conforming in every step of the process of creation. You’ve just done the opposite. You’ve made a sort of conceptual mirror image.

I re-listened to Soubresauts a number of times trying to discern everything that pertained to our conversation last night. I guess i can see where my friend is coming from in places concerning the “presence”, but none of that changes the overall sensation, ebb and rush of the piece for me. It’s brilliant. In the end, opinions differ.

One thing that we do agree about, and is reserved as a topic for wholly separate Martenblog entry, is that when something is strikingly different about a recording - in its “presence”, it makes us take notice, probably him more immediately than me, but still. Whether that difference is something I would incorporate into my own work is another matter entirely.

I don’t want to come off as creating a critique of my friend’s critique. I will incorporate his opinions in how I listen to music in the future. Sure. I’m forever changed! Every conversation should forever change me, actually. I do think I should let the “presence” of a recording affect me more and not just let it “exist” as I do the weather, oblivious of the toll it takes on its environment. These considerations are especially important when they concern the music that I write and record, as I am still in a constant state of learning when it comes to mixing and mastering.

The manifestation of peasantry comes in many forms. It is impossible to avoid completely. It’s the tacit acceptance of the same five or six meals one dubs favourites. It’s the same radio station every day on the way to and from work. It’s watching the same several of genres of TV shows every evening before sleep. It is closely related to comfort. In a way, being a peasant is conforming to comfort or, better, conforming to a comforting routine. Reticence to breaking out of so-called comfort zones is what it means to be a peasant.

The English Breakfast is most likely steeped. My peasantry has me drinking it every morning these days. Or is simply drinking the same beverage (tea, in this case) every morning peasantry? Should I break from it and drink coffee or vodka some mornings? I’ll stretch my idea a bit and state that simply ordering different TYPES of teas each time I’m running low will absolve me of peasantry, at least in the tea zone. Logistical means have to be taken into account. I could, however, order a menagerie of teas and have a different one every day, chosen at random from a twenty sided die. It’s not a bad idea, actually. At what point would I be completely dissolving what I term as “peasantry”? I can spike the teas every morning with pinches of different spices. I can use different cups or indeed other types of containers - bowls, flasks, or rectangular lasagna dishes. At what point does fleeing from the concept of peasantry become another sort of obsessive-compulsive peasantry?

Perhaps the most important to me, besides absurd digressions concerning tea, are variations, even ever so slight, in all things. I once wrote in my ancient but still partially pertinent 100 Things About Me:

22. Changes (even small, seemingly superficial ones) in my lifestyle invigorate me.

I still subscribe to this “philosophy”. If routine is peasantry to me, then deviations, even ever so slight, abolish the peasantry. A routine of constant, subtle deviation. I chuckle at myself. Speaking of which, it’s time to fill my cup with tea, or, rather, abandon the filthy cup I’ve been using for epochs on end and choose another, fresh cup, of a colour that invigorates my imagination, and fill it with tea. I shall do so now.

I chose a red cup. The colour is not a brilliant red, but slightly washed out, like blood on the white tile spilled from a sample taken from an animal - a small animal, most likely a mink. I spiked the tea with Goat Milk, so my variance today is only in the form of a container. I shall do better, I promise.

I’m listening to an improvisation done by a fellow sonomu-mate known as June. It’s an exploratory jam, an improvisation, to get to know a new case and / or modules and / or configuration of modules. I’m not clear on that part. Last night, I performed my first ambient guitar improvisation in epochs. Long, dark epochs. Endless, droning epochs! I began with no expectations at all, but given the simplicity of my form, it came out fantastically. I concentrated on timbres between my two pedalboards, morphing long loops and listening to how they interacted. I even imposed a bit of harmony on the admittedly lugubrious result: I began firmly using C# melodic minor, centering on the augmented triad of E - G# - C, then slowly took the music into a more pure C# aeolean, changed the flat 6 (A) (again, very slowly) to an A# to create a sense of B major. From there, the drift was towards D major, or B minor, though it’s up to the judgement of outer entities whether I ever arrived.

June’s exploratory improvisation has ended. I enjoyed it immensely and need to force myself to create something frequently on my boxes full of modules. All creation, no matter how infrequently, is deviation from peasantry. Also, improvising is a deviation from another routine of late - composition. I’ve immersed myself in work on the new album and perhaps the rigidity of specifying part after part, detail upon detail weighs on me. I propose to myself a balance between the freedom of exploratory improvisation and the strictness of composition. Where is the middle ground, one asks? That’s a good question. Truly, I used to take ideas from past improvisations and incorporate them into what became composed pieces. Eg, Nomenclature and Una Palma De Barro. And, again truly and lately, I’ve found myself doing something I promised myself I’d never do again - bang out parts without having heard the numerous contexts they could simmer in. Is it impatience? Is it peasantry?

Take each idea and at least use it as a vehicle for short, exploratory improvisations. This is harder on SBUP, but doable with sequencing. We’ll see if I follow my own advice today.

My father phoned yesterday to inform me that my cousin, Amy, had perished in her sleep the previous night. Having stated that, I shall go make tea.

I have returned. I walked to the kitchen, found the water in the kettle not yet to the point of boiling, so I did not linger. Soon, I shall check it again and achieve my momentary goal of beginning the process of creating tea.

So, my father phoned yesterday to inform me that my cousin, Amy, had departed the entorno of the living the previous night. Before I elaborate on my feelings concerning this, I shall check the tea-water again.

I found that the tea-water had just finished reaching 100C, the adequate temperature for steeping English Breakfast tea. Thus, English Breakfast tea is now steeping.

In any case, my father phoned yesterday to tell me that my cousin, the oldest cousin I had, had become a corpse during the previous night. The last time I recall spending time with Amy was March 2013. I could be wrong about this date, but that detail isn’t very important, so I’ll leave it at March 2013. I spent the night at her place on the way, driving, from Seminole to visit Victor in some backwoods pseudo-city in east Texas. From there, I’d go on to Nashville to spend a month in Lisa’s apartment whilst she cared for her terminally ill mother. Amy and I drank whiskey and watched The Departed. I also recall making her listen to Present, which I am incidentally listening to right now. She claimed it gave her a headache or somesuch, which is perfectly understandable given the music’s relation to all things “contemporary” and even given Amy’s experience with 70s classic rock and even with a bit of weirdness. I don’t remember much else from the evening. The whiskey did its job well.

It strikes me that since that evening, Amy has already been metaphorically dead for me in the sense that I have had absolutely no communication with her since. My parents mentioned things about her from time to time, but nothing stands out in my memory. Basically, the entity that was Amy “stopped” after that evening with Present, whiskey and The Departed. So do I mourn her departure (pun certainly intended) at this moment? No. I felt nothing upon hearing the news from my father. Nigh-eight years of absence had already released whatever feelings I had for her.

Of my cousins, she was the one I could relate to most, for sure. She was the most direct, the most “present” (pun certainly intended). This is in contrast to her sister, Emily, who was pretentious, backstabbing, passive-aggressive and scurrilous in general. From what I hear from my parents, still is. I still have psychological scars from relations with Emily during my childhood. Thusly, she’s been metaphorically dead much longer than Amy. I suppose the conclusion is that looking back, Amy was a positive influence in my life. I could relate many nostalgic anecdotes, but I’m sure most already exist elsewhere in this or some other journalling apparatus.

I shall detail a single episode, actually. I had just purchased In Absentia by Porcupine Tree and Happy With What You Have to be Happy With by King Crimson earlier in the day. Amy and I were doing various errands around the Dallas area and we were stopped at a strip mall where I had run in to snatch something. I was re-entering the passenger’s compartment of Amy’s car. She was listening to the first of the two mentioned albums. We had been listening to it during the drive. As I sat beside her, Prodigal was in progress. She told me she was glad I had got back in time as I was going to like the song. That was December 2002.

Now I shall pour myself a cup of English Breakfast.

So, I received my Fairphone 3 yesterday. Sure, I could have bought a Fairphone 3 Plus, but I decided I’ll grab the camera and audio upgrades a bit later and install them myself. Why? Well - to get into the spirit of Fairphone! Open hardware! Imagine that! Fuck Samsung.

The first thing I did was unlock its bootloader. This essential part of removing stock Android and placing a Google-less system on the phone is detailed here¹. However, once I enabled developer tools, entered into developer tools, selected USB debugging and OEM unlocking, and navigated to the page² describing how to get a so-called unlock code, I encountered a problem. You may have already guessed what he problem was. The unlock code I received after inputting my IMEI1 and Serial Number did not work. The next three I tried also did not work. I was not deterred. Well, I would have been deterred had not I rooted around a bit on the web and discovered that the unlock codes were generated by an algorithm that can be downloaded (a PERL script!). Additionally, a kind soul put a webified version here³. The unlock code it generated worked.

I followed this⁴ up until the last instruction of step 2 in the section Installing /e/ from the bootloader. I did not re-lock the bootloader. The reason will become clear soon. Anyone who is reading this and wants to go ahead and install Magisk (and TWRP) to root the phone will have to go through the whole ordeal of unlocking the bootloader once again IF said human bought a phone with /e/os pre-installed or used the Easy Installer provided by the e Foundation. Unlocking the bootloader will erase the accumulated narrative of said human’s existence, or possibly only the data on said human’s phone. Be warned! But - unfortunately, to continue, it is mandatory.

So, I performed everything up to the command that should not be entered:

fastboot flashing lock

(prosím, do not execute this command because it will re-lock the bootloader)

In continuation - I booted into /e/os. No problem!

I grabbed the newest Magisk⁵, which actually isn’t the absolute newest, but peasants can’t be philosophers, can they? I also grabbed TWRP⁶ for Fairphone 3. Whilst in normal /e/os operation, I plugged the phone via usb (implying that I did not use a DB-25 over RS-232, for example) into my PC (Arch Linux). I pulled down the overlay menu from the top of the screen and at the bottom of the notifications, I was notified Android System - Charging this device via USB. Tapping on the notification, I was told Tap for more options, which I did. To be able to transfer the Magisk zip and the TWRP img to the phone using adb, I changed the USB preferences to File Transfer.

At this point, I assume that whichever human is reading this is already aware of adb and fastboot. Of course, this is most likely a faulty assumption. So, depending on platform, download and install these two tools. They are part of the Android SDK. On Arch Linux and its derivatives, they can be obtained with the android-tools package. The commands I used to transfer the two files to my phone were:

adb push twrp-3.5.0_9-0-FP3.img /storage/emulated/0/Download
adb push Magisk-v21.1.zip /storage/emulated/0/Download

The steps for getting TWRP⁷ onto the phone were clear, but I read them through twice before starting because of problems I’d had in the past with bootloops. Ironically, the only part that seemed to go awry was when I got to the paragraphs that read:

Once booted, navigate to the Advanced > Install Recovery Ramdisk option. This will ask you to select the image you want to install TWRP from. Select the TWRP image you just downloaded and copied into device storage. Proceed to install this image.

You also need to use the “Fix Recovery Bootloop” option present in the same Advanced Tab. Use that option after you have installed the recovery ramdisk successfully to avoid boot loops happening from installing TWRP Permanently.

I did both after performing a temporary boot into TWRP, but the second one - specifically about bootloops - gave me an error. But that did not matter. Everything worked. So don’t worry!

I backed out until I saw the Install option in the upper left corner and pressed it. I then found the Magisk zip and installed it.

Rebooting the phone, I was back in normal /e/os operation. Magisk Manager was installed, rather magically, so I opened it, updated the manager, but NOT Magisk itself. At this point, I installed all my banking apps. I have two, specificaly - Revolut and CaixaBankNow. Neither would get past an opening screen without the following steps:

• Install both apps but DO NOT OPEN THEM
• Open Magisk Manager
• Tap on the cogwheel in the upper right
• Find Magisk Hide and activate it
• Immediately above this item is Hide Magisk Manager or something similar
• Activate it and choose the new “name” of the app (just accept the default Manager)
• Back out and select the shield from the floating rectangle at the bottom
• Tap MagiskHide and find my banking apps
• Tap um

Bliss was achieved.

My adventure yesterday with my Galaxy m30s ended in disaster! Yes! I didn’t even get to the “installing TWRP” part. Because said phone is famous for being difficult to modify and even though the bootloader has been unlocked since the dawn of the multiverse, flashing it was obviously not a good idea. I used these¹ instructions to patch the latest m30s firmware with Magisk so that Magisk could live in the recovery partition on the phone. On this magical Samsung device, Magisk can ONLY live in the recovery partition. And perhaps Magisk now DOES live within the recovery partition, but I’ll never know, will I? Why will I never know? Because the magical Samsung device is more concerned with bootlooping than what resides in its recovery partition! Yes! I followed instructions magnanimously, using the quaint heimdall to do the flashing itself. No dice, as my mother would say. No puréed peanut butter and nanner sandwich, as erstwhile Scott Lentz would say. No heat death of the universe for you, as Shambal Brambel would say.

I ordered a Fairphone 3. It arrives soon and whereupon I’ll begin a /e/os adventure. Fuck um.

I’d really like to install LineageOS on my current phone - a Samsung Galaxy M30a - as I’ve been inspired once again to rid myself entirely of Google¹. I was nearly there next year. An olden phone, made of charred wood and reptile sinew, was running LineageOS. My only contact to Google was using IMAP to gmail. Alas! The universe conspired against me and I received the M30a as a gift. LineageOS was not available for it during that ancient October.

Before, of course, I could not thurk banking applications on LineageOS because it was considered “rooted”, even if it was not actually “rooted”. Bastards. At the time, it wasn’t an issue because web access was enough. Now, however, I use Relovut for much of my money doings in my contracted universe. Revolut refuses to function on my old Moto G5 which is still running LineageOS and, indeed, sitting at my side, atop a notebook of scribbled sheet music. I shall at this moment reinstall LineageOS on it from the foundations of its being and see if then, using some magical being called Magisk, I can get Revolut to work. If so, I shall proceed tomorrow to destroy my M30a with LineageOS. May the great GOAT be praised.

A few days ago, I began the journey of migrating flavigula.net to static-generated. So one could say that now my blog, music meanderings, poetry abominations and various other diddlings are now generated directly from the primal static of the universe. The primary file of code that accomplishes this feat is here. The generation “engine” (I laughingly call it an “engine”) is pretty specific to my personal needs. It could be generalised, but I’d have to have a pretty large dollop of impetus to follow through.

(here)

Besides taking the blog entries from MongoDb and spitting them out using Elixir’s EEx templating library, my primary aim was to follow my Gemini site as closely as possible, mirroring it, más o menos. This involved parsing the Gemini files and attending to several peculiarities. One of those peculiarities that I’m particularly fond of is taking footnoted links and placing them within the html document.

A practise from bygone epochs was to place links at the bottom of a page of content. The bygone epoch I refer to is circa 1993 or 4 when I starting writing text-only web pages. I only had a DUMB terminal in my apartment. Nope - no computer for me! I just used the DUMB terminal to dial up to Neosoft (a Houston ISP) and use my shell account there and at Texas A&M University Statistics Department (via telnet, perhaps - did we already have openssl in that bygone epoch?). I had a guest account at said Statistics Department and, curiously enough, said guest account didn’t vanish from the rostro of the internet until December 1999. In any case, I had a DUMB terminal. I connected to Neosoft, then to TAMU, and wrote text-based web apparati. Fun times.

A practise from the initial throes of the web was instead of placing all links inline, to place the ones that would be obtrusive at the bottom of a page of content. I do exactly this on my Gemini pages. The challenge was to suck up all those links and relate them to their references within the page content. An example:

On the main music page of flavigula.net and also on gemini://thurk.org/flavigula/index.gmi, the following line appears:

Secondly, the thurk.org funkwhale[f] is brimming with both current and antique Flavigula. These include Omnivorous Expanse[g] (also on Bandcamp[h]), a project with Tim Rowe, and Bricked-up Cupboard[i], a collection of tunes that may or not be refined for future “release”.

At the bottom of the page are the following footnote links:

=> https://funkwhale.thurk.org f. Thurk.Org Funkwhale
=> https://funkwhale.thurk.org/library/albums/14/ g. Omnivorous Expanse on Funkwhale
=> https://timroweflavigula.bandcamp.com/releases h. Omnivorous Expanse on Bandcamp
=> https://funkwhale.thurk.org/library/albums/7/ i. Bricked Up Cupboard

As the page is scanned, a map is built with the letters f-i referring to their line in an array (it’s not actually an array, but that’s not important). These lines are modified when matching footnotes are found. I played around with various configurations of text and link and finally found that since there was no easy way to place the anchor around the text the link referred to, I’d just place all the links unobtrusively at the end of each paragraph. I like the way it came out.

Main Flavigula Music Page

(Main Flavigula Music...)

I’m certain there are oddities and errors in my static-generated implementation, but I feel I reached my objective. Well, since my objective was a very fuzzy target, and I gave up on being a perfectionist long ago, I’m ecstatic. Oouh, baby.

Another change from my vue-powered ex-site was ditching Bootstrap. Why? There is no why. I trundled through a few micro css frameworks and finally happened upon Chota. I am very pleased with Chota. I encourage everyone reading this, and also everyone not reading this, to leap from the Bootstrap, Foundation, Bulma or Ichthyosaur wagon and begin rolling anew with Chota.

(Chota)

Yes sir ee.

This morning, I was supine and reading various Gemini feeds. I cannot seem to find the one I want to refer to with this entry, however, as the space is still slightly disorganised. Probably I took sloum’s Spacewalk page as a starting point, found an article about Gemini feeds that inspired me to update my own Spacewalk instance, got up, sat at Tahr (the mighty desktop!) and simply could not find said article again. That sent me on a quest. The quest has been a failure, but I did find another fault in my own Gemini Server setup. My pages recently used to all terminate in .gemini instead of .gmi. If I search in GUS for lakife, for example, I get a series of pages on thurk.org that have the old extension. What must I do? I must teach Molly Brown to rewrite Gemini urls. I shall add that to today’s “bullet journal”. I laughingly call what I do by hand a “bullet journal”. Anyway, that’s another topic.

I downloaded the Spacewalk software some time ago and added a collection of feeds that I could read through every few days - things of interest, not just technically, but in a sense of content itself. If Gemini-space remains wholly tech-oriented, even I would tire after some time. I have a systemd timer set up to re-launch (ie, update) my personal Spacewalk thrice a day. It’s a good enough start for now.

=> gemini://thurk.org/smafco.gmi My Spacewalk / Aggregated Gemini Feed List

As the days creep towards the arbitrary division between one year and the next, I am somewhat culturally forced to think about a few things that I could pay more attention to in the upcoming cycle around our waning sun. I feel like I have grown apart from the “random”, or what I call in my personal shibboleth, and in the shibboleth that some close friend share, Sweet Entropy. When aleatory ideas blow by on the breeze, I must catch them far more often than I do.

I believe I used to catch these aleatory snatches more frequently, but one grows older - into decrepitude. One settles and becomes metaphorically sessile. The path to decrepitude is, ironically, sitting still, intellectually as well as physically. This year’s quarantines have aged me slightly and I don’t like it one bit. Neither does Sweet Entropy, who is ever beckoning, normally subtly, but now with wild gesticulations.

I do believe I used to snatch these aleatory breezes more often. Sometimes it is as simple as just taking notice of the thought as it passes in that occluded module of the mind that forms most of the daily background noise. It’s the antithesis of concentration, but upon it also floats those aleatory snatches I need to reach out and grasp. Mostly, they appear as response to outside stimuli - a fly buzzing in the speaker cone, or a shred of carrot hurled from a food processor. Instead of ignoring them as oddities or passing phenomena, each can lead to interesting pathways and eventually to fecund groves. Capture um, stick um in a book of notes (digital or no), peruse um again and again, unite um with current creativity, and let um shunt a creative thread this-a-way or that-a-way.

In other words, follow threads that appear randomly throughout the day, or at least note them. Let fewer escape. Each one, no matter how disparate from an arbitrary unifying factor, can become part of the tapestry. Or - alternatively - buy a bottle of vodka, down it all, lie sessile in stupor, and ignore the passing breezes, aleatory or not. Fuck um.

I shall expunge more and more empty conversation from my life, as well. I realise that the concept of empty conversation differs depending on whom you ask, and mine may be too strict for many, but since I’ll be lying in a drunken stupor for all of 2011, in any case, these words can be taken with a grain of cesium salt. Or - since my journaling music this morning is Weird Tapes 6 by Hawkwind and the current track happens to be Master of the Universe, I am reminded that I, in fact, am the master of the universe and therefore, whether I’m lying in a drunken stupor or not, all must heed my idea of empty conversation and conform. Those who do not will be consigned to the pit.

I shall expunge more and more empty conversation from my days. Most of what I term empty conversation stems from mundane events that happen in the streets, the markets, in lunar orbit or even in the pit. One takes an event and uses it as impetus for a conversation, be it to pick up a chick at a hospoda in Nusle or pass time with a colleague whilst sucking down a bocadillo during a brief lunch between shifts in the ward. Such an impetus doesn’t have to become an empty conversation, of course. It can be used as an aleatory idea snatched from the day’s breeze to symbolise something more profound in one’s thoughts, or as a haiku back and forth, or as a metaphor for another concern. What bothers me is that my experience has seen most of these impetuses solely become seed for a flurry of complaints about aspects of the daily grind. They immediately mire themselves in a negative quicksand, pulling anyone involved into its depths.

A bloke arrives at hospoda in Nusle after nearly being cut into three pieces by a speeding tramvaj. He begins a conversation with the aforementioned chick. It quickly spirals into a negative morass concerning the inhumanity of tramvaj drivers, the poor state of public transportation, the aimless, destructive arc of government and the heat death of the universe. Now, I don’t want to disparage the heat death of the universe, but the other three topics don’t strike me as constructive.

Why not turn the event into a haiku writing marathon where each three line piece of brilliance details the different decorative configurations of head, torso and abdomen after being severed in three sections by a tramvaj?

Why not expound on the possible thoughts said driver was having during the lapse? Surely the driver was fantasising of sentient vegetative life in a symmetrical sphere in orbit around our moon, connected telepathically to other symmetrical spheres of sentient vegetative life orbiting the very same moon.

Why not just skip to the end and discuss the heat death of the universe at length? Even at such length that one reaches the heat death of the universe!

Why not just circumvent the whole situation by lying listless at home in a drunken stupor?

And December progresses. Blather is transcribed directly from neural circuitry to VIM. Tea steeped. I fetched it and imbibed it. All this is part of another morning in Logroño. Mornings in Logroño are, by now, a routine, or each morning routine is chosen from a selection of those I have at hand. The only consistent facet in the selection of routines is the tea. All praise Tea.

Most importantly, writing, which is part of a number of the aforementioned routines, gives me a sensation of accomplishment. Other facets also do, even including Tea, but writing more than any of the rest. The sense of accomplishment fosters peace and this sense of “accomplishment” is the act itself. The content, in the end, doesn’t matter much. I recall the turbulent April of 2000. I was alone in my hotel room in München. Malaise had crept into my days. I felt it tangibly like a film coating my skin. I whipped out the old “Woodnotes” journal (sadly lost forever in the bowels of Aleksandra) and added a few pages to the end. Or perhaps it was in the leather bound journal (a gift from Brynn) that I still have. It is stationed in the bookshelf behind me. Whichever of the two journals it was, writing in it calmed me. That calm emanated from having a sense of purpose. What sense of purpose was that? The writing itself? Sure. It was ethereal, a sensation. The film evaporated from my skin. My chemicals churned differently simply because I placed words on a page.

I bought the Woodnotes journal at a bookstore when I was living in Austin in 1995 or 1996, I think. My memory’s mottled film shows me a few frames of Craig commenting on the journal, so it may have been before that. 1994? Maybe, but I don’t have any recollection of having it during my “outing” with Melanie. So I retract that. It had to be spring of 1996. A year before, I filled a spiral notebook with jabber. In fact, that very spiral notebook is sitting to the right of my keyboard. I need to finish transcribing it. Those were the days of the University of Houston in Clear Lake and of Marcie. Poor Marcie.

In any case, simply having these journals calmed my mind and writing in them, even more, including if the result of said writing was nothing to, er, write home about. I believe it was a form of meditation. I gave up on “real” meditation after a bout with it during the spiral notebook spring. So I was left with writing. And although I am not really a victim of anxiety in general, I think that at least the beginnings of that demonic sensation creep up on me when I haven’t written in a while. Just another reason to keep stream-of-conciousness writing frequent in the morning routine. Words are moderators of the hara and diffusers of the spirit.

And believe me, spirits need to be diffuse. Density is not a pretty personality trait, especially for a spirit. Dense spirits tend to pile at the bottom of the cosmic cistern. They become clutter.

Messages from Kris on Mastodon yesterday detailed the difference between approaches in Flavigula music and Youstuva music. The latter is a fusionish project he’s been working with for longer than I’ve known him. He wrote:

When working on your material, it is very Melodically/Harmonically complex compared to playing bass with Youstuva. For my parts, Youstuva tends to be more focused on rhythm. (Time signature changes/polymeters/polyrhythms.) Not that your material doesn’t have those aspects as well but it’s a different take on the same aspects for both. (If that makes sense.) That’s one of the reason I love doing multiple projects.

He’s a very versatile player as the two projects are sonically incredibly different. I suppose one could say they are both vaguely steeped in a Jazz / Progressive Rock soup, Youstuva much more than Flavigula, but that’s where the similarity ends. That reminds me that I should listen to Youstuva today. It’s been a while.

I’ve been exchanging email with Kris concerning Nolju Tafiz (The Second Instant), formerly titled Sas Tafiz (The Second Breath - though the meaning was originally the same, the word sas experienced semantic drift). In my notes that I’m referring to as I type this, I state that the “album” is mostly done. That is untrue. The album (which will end with Nolju Tafiz) is very far from done, even in the composing department. At the time, I thought I’d just cobble together the tracks I had as demos and titled collectively A Cupboard of Moors or Bricked-up Cupboard, revise them slightly and have a coherent musical statement. Instead, the revising has become a meticulous recomposing process. It’s marvellously enjoyable. You should try it. It will bring diffusion to your clunky spirit.

Nolju Tafiz and another piece bookend the pieces I am revamping, congealing them into a type of suite. These bookends will feature Christian’s vocals, if he ever gets around to it. Otherwise, they’ll feature extended kalimba solos that are unrelated to the rest of the musical content. I suspect Christian’s “tardiness” in his Flavigula tasks is a combination of slight loss of interest (after all, Flavigula is no longer a fresh concept) and a life in South Carolina that is littered with family commitments, lettuce preparation / cultivation, house remodelling, hag and escort impregnation, and spending hours every morning and evening watching Youtube. His desire and effort to learn FL Studio (or any DAW at all) is impressive, though. The tenuous void around space-time quivers with the harmonic content he eructs from such experiments.

Of course, the tea has steeped and has been ready for consumption for some minutes now. To be completely honest, I’ve already consumed two cups. In contrast to yesterday (or yesteryear, for those of you in the throes of severe time dilation from marijuana or other assorted psychedelics), I’ll be drinking English Breakfast today. It’s wondrous bitter tinge overtakes whichever metaphorical warmth I’m feeling at the moment.

In my musings from over a month ago now, which were meant as the raw material for the blog entries that now sit lacklustre in MongoDb, waiting to be served on either a Gemini or Http platter, I continued my thread of thought concerning concentration. I wrote this:

The theme for the past week has been thought dispersion. I’m having problems concentrating even now. Possibly, this is because I just looked at the word count of this thurk and found it was ~100 shy of my daily goal. This, in itself, is rather unproductive. Instead of being in the writing, my mind is looking at the end of the session, to whatever comes next. Living in this moment becomes harder when the mind goes into a holistic jaunt concerning the hours or whole day surrounding the moment. The moment is a pinpoint, or, as we say in Lakife, tyk that is immeasurable in its tininess. It moves along the plane of time. I inhabit that tininess, but my mind wants to float above and contemplate the whole plane. There are advantages to both ways of thought, but during a writing session, tyk is where I want to be. Et mitin af tyk nis. I want to be inside the point, the dot, the atom. It is the point of the blade that etches. The mind that controls that blade has sensory apparatus uniquely at that point and nowhere else.

I’m listening to an ostensible improvisation by Jayrope’s Air Cushion Finish project. If you’ve ever heard anything by this project, you’d know that it distracts the concentrated mind. It, itself, demands concentration. Thus, I’m doing the exact opposite at this moment that my previous goal stated. I’m dividing my attention. Perhaps in this tyk, I’m resigned to that fate. And during this subsequent tyk, as well. Nolju is instant. Though another term might do, as well - tyk noliz. An atom, or seed, or singularity of time. Same idea, though different metaphor. As the book I’m currently reading constantly states - we are the metaphors we inhabit. That again reminds me of Vonnegut, though he’s not the author I’m currently reading, and also passes my mind back to an entry from a few days ago when I also mentioned Vonnegut. Ah, but my concentration drifts. Or am I riding the blade on a stream of conciousness wave? Fuck um.

I drift now back to my notes from early November.

I had just published Songs for Looptober (nine minutes before, according to said notes) and had begun listening to it, as I’m wont to do immediately after a publication. It begins with Christian claiming That’s because you’re a bad person, vole. Whether this is true or not is up for debate and has been for decades, centuries even. I’ll quote the rest. (Note - I was listening to Pôle by Besombes & Rizet immediately before putting on the Flavigula album.)

The first thing that strikes me is the loss of a bit of volume switching from Besombes & Rizet to the new Flavigula. Over the last few days, I’ve remastered the tracks, trying to let the max volumes hover between -11 and -12 LUFS. Possibly this is not enough. I want the compositions to breathe, however, having dynamics. The key may be not to just jam up the limiter, but carefully adjust each of the tracks’ volume to stay below a peak of -6db (headroom, ya know?), but to interact organically. All this before the limiter. I’m still an infant when it comes to the mixing and mastering process, I feel. And infants are only good for one thing - to be eaten. As Acy once said: Babies are high in protein.

I’ve since ended the mastering process by using ffmpeg (and its associated loudnorm) to normalise the track to -16 LUFS and somewhere between 12 and 16 LRA (loudness range) depending on the dynamics of the piece. This strategy has proven successful so far, or at least no one has made any comments regarding my mastering, though I wish they would, positive or negative. What are music communities for, if not that? Eh? On the piece recently (two days ago) finished for Quentin for today’s TwitchTV stream, I also wanted to add a touch of convolution reverb. Adding it before the normalisation process, however, resulted in muddiness. The muddiness was slight - a mere smear of filth on a thin, plastic plate, perhaps - but enough to make me remove the reverb. Adding the impulse response after normalization would be ideal, but the process’d be too convoluted (pun intended). Or, alternatively, my lethargy may defeat the process before it begins.

While I’m on the subject of sound design, I’ll blather a bit on the subject of Supercollider. My relationship with the system is tremulous. One grey, protruding half of my personality loves programming and programming for sound design seems ideal. The other grey, protruding half sees it as a mostly grueling routine that sucks away much more time than I’d like for it to. This complaint centers around the “programming” / “practising music” dichotomy. It’s a dichotomy that only exists, obviously, in my mind. Even wiring together patches on SBUP is a type of programming. All of this takes away from time I have my Telecaster cradled in my lap. So, in this querulous module of my mind, “programming for sound design” is lumped in with “programming in general”. The disillusionment arrives when something I bash out in Supercollider doesn’t sound remotely like what I had in my head. Usually this doesn’t bother me when I’m experimenting on “real” instruments, but with, for example, Supercollider, it’s programming. The machine should do as I say.

Yes, I realise that I must simply learn to speak the language better. Bastard machines.

In other news, my restlessness is piquing. I haven’t had the chance to have a “vacation” or trip to Praha since September. Am I stir crazy? No - I just need to feel that for some time there is NO ONE I need to answer to for anything. This is a difficult state to achieve when you live with someone. Someones are demanding. I am destined to live alone again. It’ll come sooner than I think. In fact, the knife’s edge of time, carried on an accelerating wave, speeds towards that very moment.