Trivial hair things
I went to see The Smile at Forum Karlin the other week with a couple of friends. It was wonderful, but this is not about that.
In the moment when the band walked off stage (for the first time), I turned to my friends and said:
"I want to grow out my hair!"
To which my friend responded with:
"Even Thom Yorke is doing it, and he's older than me!"
This whole situation has now lead me to buying bobby pins, and then realising that I never learnt to use them. Operate them efficiently.
I'm not entirely sure if this experiment will last, as I might just find myself standing in front of a mirror, with hairdresser scissors in hand, cutting off the ear tickling hair first. And then the rest, of course.
We did later discuss that Thom Yorke might have actually cut his hair to be this length, that he had longer hair before. We also agreed that cutting my hair to shoulder-ish length is not something I could do at the moment.
3
Kae
23..2024. / 11.52
If you can manage to pull it out of the void, let me know!
The Neighbour
23..2024. / 13.48
Oh come on, it's literally _almost_ there, "Well, Mick Jagger does it, and he's older than me"
Phone shortcut to DND mode
Today's voice recording session.
I often enough practice sitting down, especially whilst figuring out what am I doing here with my voice. Kitto had just woken up, doing her afternoon little tasks. She likes to wake up, eat a bit, and do some kitto stuff, before going back to sleep before the evening.
As I stood up to record, kitto went under the bed.
When I stopped recording, she came back out. She's sitting here next to me and demanding attention. So, I'm going to do that now.
Perceptions
Kae: I cleaned the bathtub today! That's how I found I'm low on the cleaning product.
Neighbour: **looks at me for a bit** I presume there's a story there. It's not like you just wanted a cleaner bathtub.
Kae: Actually, it is just that, I just wanted a clean bathtub.
Neighbour: Oh. I thought you had showered one of your plants, or did something messy and chaotic again in the bathroom.
Kae: Nop, not this time!
This is more of a casual battle than sound
One thing that I keep coming back to in my mind during the past week, is the thought about how much I love working on concepts. Hands on, head first, dive in.
And when the concept is done, it has become a Real Thing, in a lot of situations I will immediately lose interest. This applies to my interest in technology, and a few other subjects I would generally refer to as things I like.
It is not the case with my writing. But it does explain in part why poetry, hehe. Poems, especially mine, can be seen as concepts of life situations with the "I" and the "you" as stand in examples of any humans. However, I never lose interest to keep working on them, writing new ones, stealing my own ideas from old shit poems to be turned into a shiny new poem (hopefully a better one).
As it happens, this week I have fallen ill. Which I find extremely frustrating, btw. And this time around, for reasons (yet) unknown to me, I can't seem to be able to sleep much. For reasons that are pretty clear, I am also not able to do much. This leads me to a lot of awake time I wasn't entirely sure what to do with.
Until, in between the moments when kitto has decided to be Helpful To Hooman by demanding my full attention, I went on a weird quest: Browsing Music Theory Videos on youtube.
My today's favourite is Why Ben Shapiro Is Wrong About Rap.
The 'Interesting Only Whilst Concept' thing seems to not apply to my fascination with music either. Even if I am not really going the music producer route, but instead focusing on playing my MIDI keyboard as a piano. Not too bothered about perfecting my ability to play other people's music, rather than trying out chords, melodies, progression, etc., all whilst mostly sticking to the instrument that Bitwig calls Grand Piano.
I don't know if I will ever want to produce whatever I might compose eventually (or not). All I know now, is that I can do my hobby lying down on the sofa, struggling with the health hazards of my flesh prison, and finding music more fascinating by each fact.
(If anyone out there reads my blog and for some reason happens to know good music theory youtube educators, please let me know in comments. I'm definitely interested.)
I need a holiday to spend with my piano
As a long time music listener, first time composer, I find myself going through stages of:
Ooohh, there's something there, fuck wtf was I thinking, ah, I'll just record this as a note to self, hmm, there's really something, but not it there, arrgh, no, just no, well, I'll give this idea a go.
All nicely balanced with the stubbornness that all I have to do is practice, practice, practice.
I knew I needed a new tag
Designer:
!
Do you still have your mic on 'n you're taking requests?
I need the sound of crumpling of paper, that's what I need here!
Something slow, well, not too slow, but not crumple and done. :D
Kae:
Yeah, sure. Do you want a process of this, or crumpling for a result.
Also, what kind of paper?
D:
Process that leads to a result, I guess? :D
And not too sure, maybe a newspaper could do.
K:
OK, let me try.
[10 mins later]
Will this do? Or should I adjust the mic settings to make it louder?
I need a new tag for the blog now
Because I got myself a new MIDI keyboard.
This event is not entirely unexpected, nor it is really a beginning of me being interested in sound. As some might know, I've been recording my voice for a while now. Which lead me to learning voice support breathing, which then lead me to watching some music theory explanation videos and such. I have also found the most convenient metronome app on my phone.
And when my designer got his MIDI keyboard, which is actually a mini one, I was increasingly consumed with the thoughts of how much fun it could be to play the piano again.
I don't have the space (nor the budget, including upkeep) for a piano. I quickly realised that MIDI keyboard vs synth is an obvious choice, and after weeks and weeks of drowning in research I ordered a Nektar MIDI keyboard.
The challenges of the delivery of this item are a separate story.
I have found a tremendous amount of joy playing it. Obviously, as I hadn't played anything for over 20 years, I am now immersing in playing exercises designed to get the key layout in the muscle memory of my fingers, and also some free sheets of traditional kids' songs.
And I think I am ready to attempt playing an exercise or two whilst having the metronome app.
However, this has lead me to a conclusion that 3 speaker setup, is just inconvenient. Things sound wrong, sound feels a bit displaced at times. Especially Re chords, btw. Even the Re major triads.
Before all of this, I would have gotten Edifier music speakers. Those are good. But I currently have Edifier headphones. And the (once a tester always a..) tester in me says that I should diversify and get a different brand. Which makes me think of the next weeks and weeks of research.
Anyway. I'm going to have some coffee, and then I'm going to see if I can record a poem today (just voice, no piano). Or, at least some sound samples for my Designer.
Be brave, spiral into your hobbies.
Happy second birthday, my dear
Another year, another The Book I Owed to Myself birthday.
Be well, darling.
And a poem from the book for anyone reading.
***/retail
introductory offer on kisses today
life seems to be flashing in colours
but I’m not epileptic, ha
don’t you dare shout at me
either way, she didn’t do it
or is that the issue here
chilling with sunglasses and songs
running away is anyway towards
are they watching them smile
here are the souls on sale
if you just need a cheap one
for short term usage
Battles indeed
There's a new cat in the building. How do I know this?
The new beast has very loud cold wars with the older cats at odd hours in the morning.
Upd.: also during the day.
A timeline of a restaurant
At some point in the past (facebook implies November 2017) a restaurant gets opened, and for some reason gets named Cik Cak.
October 2018 I move in a flat in the same building.
Later on I try out the restaurant and find that it serves Únětické pivo 10,7°.
And quite nice food.
The restaurant becomes a place where I would go quite often. It's a nice change after the local pizzeria. I'd even have dates there. Invite friends to meet up there.
I over time learn the menu by heart and have a strong set of favourite dishes. Their vegan dish choices are nicer than a lot of other non specialised Prague restaurants.
They change their ribs recipe to a less nice one.
I'm not too sure now, but I remember it being closed only on Mondays.
They move the creepy painting from the wall just by one of the tables, to hanging in the corridor to the bathrooms.
After a while, they change the ribs recipe back to the previous one.
A rather stalker-ey woman who fancies me waits for me at Cik Cak, hoping to catch me when I exit of the building. As it happened, by some coincidence I was down by the river by that time already.
The opening hours change, and the restaurant is now closed on Sundays and Mondays. As a consequence, I happen to go there a bit less. Turns out, I prefer to dine out on Sundays.
During the lockdowns, the restaurant operates as a take away.
I find out that they make marvellous kebabs.
When possible, the restaurant gets reopened as a dine in again.
The rib recipe is still good.
But the restaurant now is open only Tuesday - Friday.
I still some times go to dine there, but more often I would just get a takeaway.
They serve kebabs only during certain weeks and solely as a part of lunch menu. You can't get them at dinner time any more. Which I strongly disapprove of.
If there are additional public holidays during the week, I come to expect that the restaurant will be closed until the next week.
A friend from the UK visits Prague and I make him go all the way here. We share a meal, some quesadillas and beers, and he tells me how surprised he is to discover that I do actually live on a hill. I am surprised in return, as I have mentioned this a few times. He says he never imagined it to be an actual hill.
They have a TV and are showing the ice hockey championship. The place gets very busy on those days.
Summer comes and they put seating outside.
A sign appears that they are looking for a new chef.
When some friends from abroad come to visit, that day the chef is not there. Only certain basic dishes are available. However I was absolutely starving. The list includes quesadillas. Those are still good.
They are still looking for a new chef.
The Euro 2024 football hype comes. They now show those games.
Still looking for a new chef.
One Thursday night I'm passing by the restaurant on my way home. It's late, but there are some people inside still. Why not have a party on a Thursday, I nod approvingly.
The sign about looking for a new chef is still there.
Friday, the 28th of June 2024: there's a sign in the restaurant door that it is permanently closed, thank you for understanding.
At least that's over for now
This afternoon I stood up and finally cut my hair. No more of this growing it out nonsense. At least not today.
I lasted about 17 days.
Cometh and goeth
I keep forgetting to update this blog with very sad news: the birb has moved on.
In other news I could share that I have started making the marinated tomatoes again.
Why poetry, why
Why did I start writing poetry? A choice I made when I was just a young thing, and never questioned afterwards. Until today.
I was reading this article by Doc on common writer mistakes (like spending time sharing self deprecating memes instead of actually writing), and then my cat sighed when I was somewhere mid way through it. As my focus was pulled out of the article and back into the practical reality, it lead me to a realisation. Something that I should have known about myself, but in a stupid meta way I didn't because that's the whole point of it.
Do you know why I started writing poetry as a teenager?
Because I didn't know how to talk about the stuff that was happening inside me. I don't even want to use the word "feelings" as it wasn't just that. I didn't know how to talk about the things I was *thinking*, let alone feeling.
I was born and grew up in a complicated place during complicated times. Not saying things was a common survival technique. Politically and socially.
But as a new human being on this planet, I had to cope somehow. Even more - I had to figure shit out. So, I read. I read a lot. I read books given to me, books I found, books that were being hid from me. Anything with words in it (which includes a book on preserving fruit, and let me tell you, it was a bit of a downer as far as expectations about cool stories with cherries go).
I tried writing my own stories. But I wasn't ready for that yet.
So, I kept reading and it worked. I was starting to see and realise that human non-tangible inside stuff. But the more I read, the more I felt the need to also get to know my own self. Who am I? What kind of a person am I? What do I like?
Amongst the books I had devoured were also plays and poetry collections. For some reason I decided to try and write a line. Followed by a different line, not necessarily logically and chronologically related to the first one.
Before I knew it, I was buying more and more notebooks. Turns out that there was (and still is) a lot to process in lines, verses, and free form formatting or all those words. Not explaining myself, but sorting my more elusive shit in a way it makes sense to me.
Not having to coherently and logically explain and prove my arguments stated was the relief I found in writing poetry.
All the things I never learnt to talk about, all the observations about the world that I don't know how to voice, secret thoughts, unexpected feelings, reasons for my anger, all of that goes in the poems that I can't stop writing.
And as far stories go, I'm learning to write those, too.
Local nature news
At the end of my balcony, there is a thick matte glass screen in a metal frame screwed on to the wall as a balcony divider between me and my next door neighbours.
Recently there is a little birb sleeping on the top of that screen. The little buddy seems too fluffy to be an adult yet, and usually sleeps there whilst also leaned against the wall.
It's adorable AF!
As it is summer, the kitten has started sleeping more on the bedside shelf. At times leaning a bit against the same wall, but on the other side.
Nature all around. Good.
People's names
I was listening to the new single by Archive titled 'My Last'.
At some point I turned to my Neighbour to ask:
"Is this Dave?"
Neighbour: "I hope so. Otherwise it would be something by that.. that other guy whatshisname, the one before Dave."
We listen for a bit longer.
Me: "This is not Dave."
Neighbour: "Yep, now when I pay more attention to it, this doesn't sound like Dave."
Me: "Definitely not Pollard either. This must be the previous dude. What was his name? Steve, I think he was called something like Steve."
We continue listening to the song. I decide to check the song credits.
Me: "Craig! His name's Craig. Of course. Well. Craig is like Steve, but.."
Neighbour: "...but with different letters in the name?"
Me: "Yes! Exactly."
The Neighbour
23..2024. / 11.43
Ouch, did my Arab Strap pun go straight into the void there?