November 21st, 2007
This is the beginning of the latest writing by Peter George Mackie. Please contact him if you want to know more about his works. The first chapter of his piece of travel writing “Flowers of Zagreb”
can also be downloaded at www.authorsonline.co.uk.
The Lost Sleeping Tablet
Dave was pondering over a map of the former Yugoslavia when he landed on Zagreb, the capital of Croatia, which he had visited in the summer of 1977 at the age of 20 and had made friends with so many 17-year-olds who were still listening to ’60s music.
Most of them had travelled to the West at some point and were very interested in what he had to say about places he had been to, such as Amsterdam and Copenhagen.
Having known people who had been to this country before, he was only mildly surprised to learn that the locals were able to travel in and out of and all around Yugoslavia at will and felt it to be a country which seemed to be moving forward and whose young inhabitants exhibited what he perceived as a unique friendliness and a liveliness which was quite unlike anything he had ever known before.
He also found that many of them were interested in literature and the arts and it was there that he met his first real love, Elidija, a music student, who was one year younger than himself. Although it was only a one-night stand, that evening when they had made love in her friend’s flat in one of the back streets of Zagreb would always stand out throughout his life as one of his most treasured memories - and he was also very glad that he had been able to satisfy her as she was a virgin at the time.
Dave then found himself transported to the summer of 1986 when he had visited Belgrade for the first time and had met a young art student somewhere in town. They had taken a look in the window of an art workshop where some local artists or students had seemingly hurriedly put an exhibition together and they both agreed that none of the exhibits were very good.
It was a roasting hot day and, when the young student reached the flat where he lived with his parents and sister, after a long walk in the scorching heat, he removed his shirt and shoes.
It was at this point that he introduced Dave to his sister, a good-looking young girl with long black hair, who knelt down in front of him, also in bare feet, and exclaimed, “Serbian girls are the best!!”
The young art student, whose name Dave had probably never learned, then explained that the room in which they were sitting was his and his sister’s bedroom.
It did not seem to Dave all that surprising that, in a poor area of a country like Yugoslavia, a teenage brother and sister would be sharing the same room, which must have also been the case in other countries, probably including Britain, in the past.
At that time, people were keen to emphasise that they were one country and, when Dave visited Sarajevo that same summer, he thought that it was the most beautiful and unusual city he had ever seen - and the last thing that would have occurred to him was that there would be a war there six years later. He was also disappointed that the spool for his camera had run out by this time so that he was unable to take any photographs.
His spirit at this point moved back to the map again where someone or something was trying to tell him that, in the future, the young people in Zagreb and Belgrade would be reconciled again but did not explain how this would be done… but it was found necessary to heal the town of Split, where the Dioclitain palace was falling down……
Dave was presently transported to the back garden in Scotland where he had played as a child in the 1960s.
In later life, he would realise how lucky he was to have heard all the music at that time, when it had first come out, as he considered that something special had happened then, which could only have occurred once in the whole of human history.
His mind moved on to when he was 12 years old, when he had had some very vivid and profound spiritual experiences which people around him at that time had confused with mental illness.
His father had had him incarcerated in a psychiatric hospital, where he was to spend two and a half years, and Dave would never to be able to forgive him for having destroyed him spiritually as well as having taken away two and a half years of his youth, which he would never get back, and, due to which, he would never be able to form steady relationships, his courtship with a young girl having been put a stop to by the hospital authorities.
Dave’s mother, on the other hand, was convinced that Dave, who was always the first in the class at Maths at school, was going to be a genius, but his education was neglected in the hospital and he would never be able to make much of his life…..
In fact, throughout his whole life, Dave’s father had never been able to accept the fact that he had ever grown up and would continue to play psychological games with him. For instance, only a few years before, when Dave was in his forties, his father, having lured him back to his house to see whether or not a certain magazine had arrived for him in the post, threatened to call the police because Dave had accidentally dropped a cup and saucer into the sink. This, in turn, brought back all the old traumas of what his father had done to him when he was younger, the memories of which he had been desparately trying to shake off…
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October 20th, 2007
Another beautiful review I had (with my pseudonym Vanethian) is this one at Splendid E-zine:
If you’ve ever caught yourself getting into the soundtracks that play in the background of sci-fi fantasy games, you might enjoy Futures Past. Unassuming synthesizers create a circumambient musical flow, taking you first to the distant and icy plains of Pluto, then back in time, where you’ll mingle with the shoguns of Japan and explore England’s age of chivalry. Born in Palermo, Manuel Marino, the man behind the music, started out playing solfeggio-style fingerpicking and jazz guitar. Marino’s heavy interest in role-playing games is evident on Futures Past; he takes his own personal enjoyment and translates it sonically through MIDI sequencing into breathtaking soundscapes that take the listener left of heaven into the World of Dreams. Taking Korgs, Rolands and Moogs to the next level, Marino remains modestly mindful of old masters Rick Wakeman and Alan Parsons when evoking his own brand of medieval methodology. From intergalactic battles to dystopian visions of society, infinite space is the only limit for Marino and his music.
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October 13th, 2007
Peter Cajander allowed us to publish this part from his book Fragments of Reality. It talks about life from a personal perspective covering areas ranging from self-realization, meditation, stress, happiness, death, and everyday living. Peter is a writer, philosophical thinker, entrepreneur, strategy consultant, business executive, and author to name a few titles. He has been exploring and experiencing different ways of living and expanding his understanding. Peter has travelled extensively and so far lived in Finland, UK, France, and Spain.
Time Travel
It’s funny that we desire to travel through time. Besides self-
ish interest, what purpose would it serve? We are actually time
travelers all the time. Or should I say channel surfers?
We get carried away either by thinking about our past or
piling up with dreams of the future. These two activities take
most of our time. The actual now moment we are currently
experiencing is something we would rather not like to have.
It’s far better and safer to sail in our dreams, where all the out-
comes are already known and we can speculate with endless
what-if scenarios. The future is even better. For us it has not
happened yet and, therefore, we can make it up any way we
desire. Well, almost. The only limitation is that we cannot just
dream about anything of which we have no knowledge. For
example, in medieval times people did not dream about hav-
ing cars and flying around the world in airplanes. So dream-
ing is also quite boring. All the outcomes are predictable in
one way or another—like LEGO blocks that can only be set
up in a certain way based on their shapes.
Our channel surfing concerns the current living moment.
We seldom stay in the channel. We’d rather jump on and off
many times in a second. This happens by switching either to the
dream or the history channel. Reality TV is something we pre-
fer to consume as a recorded version, just to be on the safe side.
Still, all the action happens in the reality mode. We cannot
change our history and cannot predict the future. We have to
do all the things right now. The paradox is that the only
unpredictable (and therefore nonboring) moment is the fresh
now time, what we are all the time experiencing. And the best
part is that it’s interactive. We can take part in all the activities
and get involved. It’s amazing how many of us are not taking
up this opportunity. People would rather switch to old classics
or sci-fi stories that have predictable endings. They’d rather
opt for something that smells, tastes, and sounds like real life
but is not. Artificial life seems to be the best act in town.
Considering the low ratings for actually living in the
moment, it is amazing that people would even dream of time
traveling. What would they do then if they cannot live now?
Sure it’s a more interactive TV show to go for the future and
know that you are able to come back to the original time
whenever things start to get too serious (or should I say real?).
Time travel would be just another way of surfing channels—
just a sportier version compared to staring at a glass box or
daydreaming from the sofa.
Nevertheless, the basic fact is that we always figure out
new ways to escape reality. We’d rather either skip to our own
natural channels or use the manmade “entertainment”
options. When was the last time you really watched some-
thing on the TV or listened to the radio? Most of the time, we
are desperate to fill up any silent moments by whatever back-
ground noise from TV, radio, or MP3 players we can find.
Still, the fact is that you cannot avoid living in the moment—
you can only pretend you’re not there. How good our skills are
determine how good our private scam is. Our consciousness is
always on, and it is permanently stuck on the reality channel.
And most of us just cannot live without constantly surfing
channels. Restless 24/7 escape from the reality—out now!
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October 11th, 2007
I’ve been asked why there is no Reviews section. Well, if you search my name on Google.com, you’ll find many pages (in English and Italian languages) that talk about my music works. So, I don’t want to put a complete list of the links, but anyway I’ll post parts of the most beautiful reviews. I’ll begin with the one written by Bill Binkelman (Wind and Wire Magazine).
Here’s a part of the Review:
“Manuel Marino, a.k.a. Vanethian, records some of the best “pure” melodic synthesizer music around. He composes and performs in the same musical style as Larry Fast (Synergy). Manuel’s music is overtly electronic and yet rooted in pop-music sensibility (repeated motifs, refrains, and bridges); he (Manuel) has few (if any) contemporaries in this regard. Frankly, I’m always impressed with how good his music sounds.”
“Sophisticated listeners may hear Manuel’s (Vanethian’s) music and only discern overly slick pop EM. Myself, I’m a sucker for the hooks and expert musicianship that, in my opinion, Manuel excels at. As with the last album of his I reviewed, I make no apologies for how much I love his music. It’s chromium candy - polished, yummy, and never upsetting to my stomach, no matter what mood I’m in. I can see why this guy gets a shitload of videogame and computer game music work - he’s a wiz when it comes to hooks and he’s an EM engineering professional.”
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