Last week I played a concert in Prague for the film Po horách, po dolách (1930) by Karol Plicka.
I like going to Prague very much. I love Czech food and Czech beer. It all went terribly quickly. I came home from Budapest from a Def Leppard and Motley Crue concert. My daughter likes them very much. It's crazy how these old bands got through the phone to her, I mean to the kids. Old trousers and hairstyles from the 90s are back in fashion. Old sunglasses and even cameras. I don't have a problem with it in principle, but I find it crazy. Hearing music at home from my childhood room that I heard from my childhood room 30 years ago. My dad's MTV recordings from the Scorpions, Bon Jovi, Motley Crue to Type o Negative, Nirvana and Ozzy Osbourne. I basically grew up on that music too. Still, I find it strange. The world always behaves differently than one would expect or plan ...
I didn't prepare the music specially for the Plicka’s film. The film has no plot and is very long. I think it's 101 or 107 minutes long. My concerts are usually about an hour long. I prepared a meditative palette of musical colours with occasional dramatizations, and I improvised the music for the film. Mostly on acoustic guitars. My output signals went into Tomáš Mutina's computer and he then effects and processes them. This Plicka’s film is really a challenge for a musician. I didn't want to play primordially to short sequences of children playing or women working. I conceived the music more dreamily. To make the viewer relax in the cinema (?)
Hah
I mean, to make the music evoke a more dreamy and nostalgic atmosphere to these times past.
With Janosik film, and also with this film, it always occurs to me that while people here were herding sheep and working in the fields, the western world was much different. I'm not saying they weren't happy, but maybe that's why our society behaves the way it does today. Why “peasant” opinion and reason wins out over science and we allow ourselves to be manipulated by “false ducats” from Mr. “Whoever” tells us how bad live we have, how pure we are and we run after them... It doesn't matter who it is...
I find it very sad. Someone's sprinkling poison on us from airplanes. First wrong, we don't have vaccines so they put tracking chips in them, the shrouds are damaging our lungs and making our brains soft, the tests are damaging some thin membrane in our brains, the president is a secret agent, it was best here under the Russians, and we envy the gypsies in the settlements. We have everything we need and we cry...
I don't think we've ever had a better time than now. We have a quantum of opportunities, we can travel, we can learn languages, we can do retraining courses, we can listen to almost all the music in the world on our phones. It may be an insanely fast-paced time, and of course it's also incredibly superficial, but man as a whole is better off, even if he doesn't realise it. I speak my mind. Of course a lot of things bother me. The superficiality and the way the viewer and reader have ceased to be cultivated in the public space. The important thing is that they are watching and preferences are rising. Truth is only a relative thing...
In the morning when I park my car at the studio I pass a local pub. Gentlemen in overalls have been sitting there since morning. Beer and spirits on the table. They are discussing the planes that are spraying us and complaining about the gypsies. They remark very often and passionately that this state does not think about them, has ruined their lives and the Ukrainians are taking their jobs. Sometimes I feel like saying something to them, but I prefer to go upstairs to my studio. The sentence I like best is:
"people here have nothing to eat and are starving..."
At the end of June Pat and I are going to finish the material we recorded in Texas. It's looking like Komara 2. Arve Henriksen and I are working hard on new music. I think we have over two and a half hours of it already. We'll probably put out two albums. One this year and one sometime next year. We're working on the music that Rick Cox. It's a very interesting trio. I'm very happy to be working with them. My music is always moving in a different direction.
I'm gradually making sketches for the Miki movie. I've already seen a few shots and it looks really great. You can see in the actors that they are trying very hard. After all those cheap shows, they are finally acting in a real gangster movie. I'm happy about that. It's also a great challenge. 90% of the music I prepared ahead of time I'll have to throw out. It doesn't fit the picture. It doesn't matter. I'll send it to Arve and he'll cut some of it for our new album.
Life is beautiful.