Windy & Carl
Portal

Seeking to grasp the secret of its happiness, I requested an audience with the large boulder smiling at me from the riverbank.

The day was serene, though I was perhaps a bit less so. Eventually, the boulder deigned to listen to me.

I spoke at length about the city noise and how its overlapping layers (both sonic and otherwise) hid my inner melody. I confessed how much I longed for a secluded life where I could gain more wisdom and even hinted that for it, absorbed in endless contemplation, things must be far less complicated, immersed as it was in the peace and silence of the woods.

It (an unchanging millennial rock that knew everything about the arts, human uses, and customs) remained silent for a long minute.

The day remained serene, I was less so. Finally, the boulder deigned to respond.

"Fool! Have you no eyes to see?! Look at me! Now look at yourself! Do you think we are the same?! What you call <peace and silence> is something entirely different for me.

What are the chirping of cicadas, the pouring rain, or the monotonous flow of the river to you? To me, they are guitar walls soaked in feedback. As if the abrasive fury of Flying Saucer Attack tore apart the eastern garments of Spacemen 3's <Dreamweapon>. As if the feverish burn of Bardo Pond melted the individual notes into an electric monolith, a single, static sonic mush that once gave me no rest.

But I've learned to stay. To be. Simply to be.

And now among the droning spirals, I can hear my melody: delicate strums à-la Dave Pajo break through the incessant buzzing of flies drunk on heat, aquatic reverberations reminiscent of Roy Montgomery gently propagate from the depths of a starry night.

And the noise, like in your city life, is not only sonic.

What is the perpetual light of the moon to you? What is the foaming spray of waters during spring floods to you? To me, they are bubbling pools and electronic drifts that disturbed my peace.

But now I no longer flee. I no longer roll off cliffs seeking escape. Now I stay. Immovable.

And I lose myself in long and deep meditations similar to the silvery wave of a <Jenseits> by Ash Ra Tempel (complete with spoken word female voice).

Lose yourself, man! Lose yourself in the tentacular drones that, like wild moss, entwine around the trunk of your spirit! Do not flee them, but from them draw, squeeze your melody! They are a <Portal> to the Beyond”.

Since that day, many more times I have returned to the boulder, always with new questions.

It listens patiently and sometimes answers me.

I don't know why, but I have the feeling it considers me just a magnificent fool.