Entry #0003, Last few days in Turkey
Well, it's just few days left for us in Turkey. I first arrived here 4th of June 2022, so that mean the day I leave is going to mark 9 months here - that is the longest time I've ever lived in the foreign country b-sides of Czech Republic, that is not really foreign for me.
I've decided I capture this moment by doing this post, even though this web page of mine is still under construction and not even halfway finished. But it totally make sense to write about it, since the entire reason I am building this web site is to preserve my own history in the way, that would be accusable in whole at any time - without the need to skout for pieces allovers the internet and social media. The data is fragile and the internet is forgetful.
Right now I am slowly gathering content and selecting for this site - each day for an hour or two, that is maximum amount of time I can retrieve from doing music, label and diploma thesis. While doing so, it is impossible to avoid self-reflection while looking on the pictures of myself from the past and listening and organizing my old music and visual artworks. Especially now, when I am approaching 30 - symbolic age, that is often highlighted in the biographies as a turning point of when a person going through transition from being young amateur to grown professional. That is what I am feeling now as well. I feel that my life is getting in shape in all senses and acquires certain qualities, in my case it is how I self organize my time and actions and inner understanding what I am doing with my art and for what reason. Working on diploma thesis has helped me a lot in this. The matter of my research helped me to understand myself and my intentions much deeper, but that is for another post. I will definitely do something with my thesis, so it would not be just another pdf that no one will read, but something that could be helpful for some. At least, I am writing current thesis in English, so I retain motivation. That was not the case with my Bachelor work that was on Sonic Arts and Sound sculpture, thich I had to write in Czech language, knowing that no-one will ever read it, because - let be honest - from 10 millions people who are speaking Czech there is not more that a couple thousands artists, from which few dozens are working in the field of sound, most of them I know personally and they are not the kind of people who like to read papers. But this time the topic is quite important and interesting while not covered as much as it deserved.
Considering music. Right now I am finishing an album for Blear Moon, that was in the making for couple of years. It is definitely not something for easy listening, but important for me as my reflection of specific artistic approaches to the sound and music composition that was broad to the discussion by greatest contemporary ambient composers such as Tim Hecker, Lawrence English, Loscil, Rafael Anton Irisarri and few others, works of which I was carefully study and attempting to depict the qualities that made it so immersive and emotionally charged. This album is in mixing and mastering stage - I hope that I will be able to find a label for it.
On other hand I have not composed any ambient music for this entire period. The atmosphere and context here is not something that resonating with music I usually do, so for now, only engineering side of process is really possible for me, but not the creative side. I believe that is also because of the everyday activities that I am doing that include a lot of "organized" works, reading scientific papers and learning a lot. This, along with undergoing ADHD treatment and the substances I take for it, puts me in the kind of mode and state, that is just not fit for creating slow and atmospheric music.
But, on the other hand, I got deeply into creating other kinds of music like Jungle and breakcore, that I always liked and now I have so much fun doing it, in fact, the album is almost ready, which I will release under my other alias "Serat". This reminds me about the story of one of my favorite contemporary composer - Robert Haigh, who were composing minimalist "furniture" piano music like of Erik Satie or purely avant-garde music back in 1980's, but it was in 1990's when he for a while, turned to drum'n'bass\jungle music, that turned him famous in the UK electronic music scene and established legendary status of his project Omni Trio by being featured in GTA game series. I wonder how he was perceiving this shift at the time, considering, that after that he turned back to compose ambient and classical music and continue to do so till this day.
Anyway back to the topic. Even though there a lot of things I dislike in Turkey, I believe that it shaped me a lot for this 9 months in the way, that could not be possible in any other places and I very much appreciate and grateful for that. I lived here in great comfort and had a lot of very happy days and bright impressions.
In few days we are going to go to Yerevan of Armenia, to spend there a month with the family and friends who move there and gather some mental and physical power for our next chapter that is starting following april in Leipzig of Germany, where we will finally settle for good.
