Kumodraška 7Xx, 11000 Beograd, Serbia, 2015.
I arrived in Belgrade from the lowest southern point of Serbia sometime in October of 2015; in a fit of helpless rage, I fled from constant indignity and pain inflicted daily on me by someone I stupidly considered my ally in this life, in order to prevent the last of the best of me from disappearing completely. I was now a parent, a role I feared for most of my life, painfully aware that I am completely unable to protect a child from this world to a degree I feel a parent should – and at the same time, instantly inamored with the child to a point of the rest of the world just fading into nothing. And already it was time to leave – to love my daughter meant to go away, so that her days can be rid of tension and bitterness that immature so-called adults smear their days with. It also meant for me to go on and shoulder a burden of absence from her life and excruciating pain of her absence from mine. I took a night train with refugees out of town and after a completely insane invisible tour through most of the towns I lived in over the years, I ended up in a small subterranean room in a place my mother used to rent in Belgrade – cold turkey off my meds for clinical depression, ill and sad beyond imaginable, with a keyboard controller, Mom’s ancient PC and my guitar. One night I used a dictaphone to dispel the dread and sadness performing a little ritual: I let something in me surf AM radio in the kitchen for a couple of minutes, handing over control of my hands to something I did not entirely recognize as a part of my self. I met a ghost. And so will You, if You care to listen. It is still woven into warped waveform of that session and scant instrumentation I provided over time, feeling the same dismay that prevented me from creating music as I used to.
This Imbolc, I will start the purge that should untie my hands once again. Tearpalm enters the second decade of its existence – and may it sound its presence with joy and violence according to its nature, until the very end.
Cheers,
That Guy from Tearpalm
Seeing ghosts, cca. February 2016.
