Again it's January, and again I find myself where I did not want to find myself on any terms. The covid waiting loop. Wake up, coffee, cigarette, planning the day. Question is what for? Go for a walk? Why? Sure, I do need some exercise, maybe even fresh air to clear my mind and to not lose the plot completely. It's just that I don't want to go there. Face this motionless, sleepy, bloody boring town, today as bleak as it's been yesterday and the day before.

Write to promoters? What for? Most of them know as little as I do when there will be concerts again. I may as well wait for some last-minute requests in May (thinking optimistically) or June (thinking realistically). So let's forget about it.

Rehearse? Write a song? And whom for?

Insight - apparently I do write songs not just for me.

Insight two - my three agenda items once again are as obsolete as they were last year at the same time.

So most likely, just like the past weeks, I'll wind up again waiting till it's too late to start something sensible anyway. Next inevitable step watching serials into the wee hours and try all over again tomorrow and then seriously, really seriously start something that'll get me somewhere. So pretty much the same, as today. After all, I reached a point where my routine mantra-like prayers "it's not that bad", "thank god you're healthy and alive" "some day soon we'll all be fine" don't really help any more.
Alright then. As there's no more laundry to be done, I can still do the dishes or maybe some cooking? No idea whom for, but at least cooking feels like a creative pursuit. I'm just afraid we're nearing the critical point when it's time to decide what's more important, food, cigarettes or coffee. Really thought those days are long gone, but at least I know my priorities.

Let's rather talk about something different. Maybe those moments last autumn and winter, when life seemed to make sense again. On any motorway, heading some place where people are looking forward to the show I'm going to play for them. Let's not talk about Görlitz, halfway to Warsaw where chances are good you'll get a decent going-over for pissing on a green strip middle of the night.
Let's rather talk about La Boheme, ADA Pulawska, the Piesniarze. About those who came to listen. More than a few. Respecting you for what you've got to say, what you're willing to give. It feels quite right. Finally, very right again. Right because it's what I fought, toiled and swallowed many a pill for. More right in particular than vegetating in an only just affordable flat in a town with paralysing averageness as its prominent feature, waiting to run out of money or steam or for state subsidies to arrive. Oh, those state subsidies. At least I don't have to feel obliged to show gratitude, given they'd ever arrive. Not for this somewhat pathetic bribe-money, that twee compensation for patiently letting them empty all those buckets of shit over you for years and years and years. To stoically ignore it just to be left alone to do your thing.

Until early morning, they tried to convince me of songs. Czech songs, all in a way or another connected with the history of this theatre collective out here somewhere near Melnik. That'd be a corker, they said, if you'd be playing one of them some day.
"Schlaftrunk?", Martin asks. "Schlaftrunk!", I reply, not the first time during this last evening. And then we're listening to that song about the man, that artist, waking up in the bed of a lady in Olomouc who is most certainly not his wife. At least that's what I understand from Mirka's explanations. I'm in love with the sound of this language, it's flow, it's melody. Once more, I do fall for it.If I wasn't such an undisciplined, lazy bastard, there might come a day for me to sing one of these songs, even perhaps yet in this life. If I wasn't such an undisciplined, lazy bastard, there might come a day for me to sing one of these songs, even perhaps yet in this life. For now I have to settle for the luck of being here, marvelling them giving me credit for just showing the will to try, for wanting me to do it.

No response, no reply, no nothing from Brno. Looks like there won't be a show in Bajkazyl. OK, stuff it! I assume no answer is an answer too. I'm booking a cheap room in town and take a walk down to the Smoking Rabbit where I played last year. In four weeks time I'm supposed to perform here with Pavel the violin player, so I may as well pop in for a pint and leave them a handful of posters. In one of Brno's finest venues I meet Pavla, the owner, Pavla has got a little cold, Pavla hems and haws, Pavla says sorry. We can't do the show in October. It's Wednesday and national day, nobody will be in town. I love days with two cancellations. Though I don't really get why all the Czech are leaving Brno on national day, I have to swallow it. Not my Brno year, I suppose.

And then there is Miro. Miro is special. Very special. I've got a feel Miro is not just a fan, I think Miro adopted me. Something like that it must be. Last year, when it rained cancellations while I was already on tour, Miro approached me in Banska Bystrica. Already during the concert, he was sort of a noticeable appearance in the audience. Slightly older than most, all dressed in black, black shoulder bag, all decorated with patches of black metal and death metal bands. Oh yes, he came intentionally, he knows the songs. Especially "Lily Of The West" he likes. And "Light Enough To Travel". I can't believe this. Apparently, there is an actual someone in Banska-fuckin-Bystrica who knows some of my songs.

What my plans are for tomorrow, he asks, where I'm supposed to play. Nowhere, I say. All cancelled. Would you fancy playing for me and my family, maybe some friends? It's about a forty-minute ride from here. Can't offer much, some gas money, we can pass the hat, some drinks, some food and a bed for the night, obviously. What do you think?

What the hell, why not? I'll have a place to stay, will be fed which will be all way better than booking a rundown cheapo B&B or worse. Besides, Miro seems to be a nice guy and at first sight not too dangerous, so I do agree.

Next day around noon I pick him up in front of the Bosorka and we're heading direction Zvolen. On the way, Miro recounts. It was already in communist times when he got fed up with authorities, with a system dictating which way to live a life. So he just drops out. Out of the system. With his wife Veronika they're buying an old farmhouse out in the sticks, somewhere middle of nowhere, Slovakia. No power, no running water, no rules. A minimum supply of electric power is provided by one solar panel, for going online you have to aim the house aerial at a radio mast on one of the surrounding hills, that's it. Apart from goats. Quite some goats.

With Miro's son Janko we're dragging my instruments from the car park in the valley up the hill across pastures and a gorgeous orchard. It's a breathtaking view from the old farmhouse's porch over the autumn coloured valley and fruit trees heavy with apples, pears and plums. It's silent here. It's as close to sheer happiness and freedom as one can get.

In the main room of the building a huge brick-built oven takes one corner of the room, there is a huge bed too, a table, four chairs. They prepared a bed for me in the side room, the only other in the house. After dinner, the four of us are sitting around the table, there won't be other guests. They're afraid, Miro says, because of Covid. It doesn't really matter, we're here. That's just fine.

I pick up my guitar and start playing for them. More than I initially wanted to. Pretty much every song I can think of. And the stories behind them, which Janko translates for his parents. At some point during the evening, Miro mentions Veronika and Janko are playing together as a folk duo. Traditional folk music, songs Veronika collected in some remote areas of Slovakia, old songs, spiced up with some prog rockish guitar and Irish Bouzouki playing from Janko. "That's it", I say, "I’ve got nothing more, I played it all. What if you play for me now?"

What happens next is pure magic. Janko explains what the songs are about. They play, they sing, heartbreakingly sweet harmony vocals, a strange kind of violin, some local flute I haven't seen before. I'm just sitting there watching them play, wondering how I got here, lost in what's just happening in this small room at the end of the world, realizing it doesn't matter why or how as it's simply the most beautiful and right thing that could happen just now. The next morning, Miro prepares a bath for me. In a wood fired cauldron he heats water which he pours into a slightly misplaced looking bathtub as it sits right here on the hillside overlooking the valley.

Cut. Hamburg, July 2021. Like the year before, local COVID-19 measures made regular shows almost impossible. So once again we had to plan it as some sort of guerilla gig in a public park in Hamburg-Altona. It was a fun one the first time and the first gig I ever played on a gravestone. I mean literally. You can't get more noir into folk noir I suppose.

Trouble is this year the weather is against us. It's pouring down, no way to play an open air show. The closest dry place we can find is some sort of arcade of a school building nearby. By text message and WhatsApp promoter Snel directs those who registered online for the show to our new sheltered location. Seconds before I start, I can't believe my very eyes. Right there stands Miro. Miro from out in the sticks, Slovakia. WTF? Saw you're playing in Hamburg, he says. Took a bus here to see the show. I can't believe it. I mean, go figure! He's taken a coach from bloody middle of nowhere Slovakia to see me busking on the rainiest day of the year in Hamburg. That's commitment, I'd say.

But let's go back to the Slovak valley out in the sticks, September 2022. Things are different here this year. Miro already announced it'll be a real concert this time. Not at their home, this time it'll be at granny's down in the village. Together with HMLISTO, Veronika's and Janko's folk duo. Or as Janko would say, post-folk duo. They prepared a stage, there'll be a real audience, he's noticeably proud of what they achieved, I think even a bit nervous. And it is... well, how is it?

It's like right out of a rock'n'roll book of fairytales.

Veronika's mother and her sister cooked for us. Between the house and the barn they improvised a stage, in the back of it a wooden plank decorated with the artist's names and a peace sign. The audience starts dribbling in, 30-40 people. Friends, neighbours, punks, pensioners, old, young, common people. Both grannies walking around offering home-made goats cheese and tomatoes to the guests. Everybody brought something to drink, to share, delicious local moonshine being passed around. I'm seriously touched. It's moments like this that keep me going, it's moments like this why I can't stop doing what I'm doing. It's because of moments like this why I once decided I can do without a 9-to-5 job, a private home, family holidays and all this. I might be sorry some day, but this here is all worth it.