A Splash of Color and Sea Salt… Lyrics in the Making

Currently, I’m in Opatija for a few days. I do have a few lyric drafts in progress, but it is not just about words. I can have a whole concept written, but if it does not have that certain je ne sais quoi, I will keep working on it until I feel it. The plan is to have a new demo by the end of this week. I am also trying to write more prose, without over editing. It was always my weak spot.

When I was in Lošinj recently, I created Beyond Love while sitting on a hotel terrace. I remember becoming so focused that everything around me seemed to disappear. The voices, the movement, the noise of the place all faded into the background, and for a while there was only the feeling I was trying to translate into song.

By the time I noticed how many people were around me, I realized I had been there for two hours. People were talking loudly, but I had not noticed any of it. It is that feeling of flow, or the zone, whatever you want to call it. It happens to me when I am deeply immersed in something I love doing.

Sometimes I create something, step away from it, and return to it later with a strange sense of discovery, almost surprised that it came from me. There is something beautiful about seeing your own work after time has passed, as if with a new set of eyes. It makes all of this worth it.

17/06/2026

(some thoughts & personal writings)

A Note on a Book from My Bookshelf
Walter Johnson, Soul by Soul: Life Inside the Antebellum Slave Market

I read Soul by Soul a few years ago, and it has stayed with me. Some books do that, because they change the way we understand something. This book made me really think about how limited our perspective can be when we only see the world through the lens of our own experience.

I grew up in Europe, in what many would consider a privileged life, as many of us have. Because of that, there is a real distance between my reality and the realities described in this book. But that distance is exactly why books like this matter. They ask us to look beyond what is familiar and to take seriously lives and histories very different from our own.

Johnson’s work is about human beings caught within a system that tried to strip them of dignity and control over their own lives. To read about it is to be reminded that history is not abstract. It lives in the quiet details of people’s lives: in family bonds, impossible choices, silence, survival, and small acts of resistance. It asks the reader to sit with discomfort.

What stayed with me most is the importance of listening to very different perspectives, especially those that challenge the comfort of our own lives. It is easy to feel informed when we remain within familiar stories. It is much more valuable to allow other people’s realities to widen our perspectives and deepen our understanding of humanity.

I also feel a deeper sense of awareness: of the chance to learn, and of how easy it can be to take certain freedoms and possibilities for granted. This also gives me a deep appreciation for blues music and its origins. The blues developed after slavery, but it came from African American traditions shaped by struggle, labor, faith, longing, survival, and expression. As a songwriter, I find that deeply meaningful.

Soul by Soul reminded me that understanding history requires humility. We cannot fully understand the past if we only approach it from one angle, especially from the angle of comfort. We have to be willing to listen to very different voices and recognize the complexity of human experience in lives far removed from our own. That, to me, is one of the most important responsibilities of learning.

12/06/2026
(some thoughts & personal writings)

Jean-Michel Jarre once described hearing Ray Charles’s Georgia on My Mind as the moment he realised that “music can talk to your tummy.” He spoke of the “organic sensuality” in Ray Charles’s music, something beyond intellect, something immediate and physical. That idea stayed with me, because it comes close to what I love in music: not just melody, not just arrangement, but a feeling that reaches the body.

Now that I’m back from a wonderful holiday, I feel ready to write some more. For the past few months, I’ve been writing at least one new song every week. Sharing them publicly has become my way of getting used to being visible as a songwriter. It is easy to post something light or playful, but the more atmospheric, strange, or specific to my taste a song feels, the harder it is to put it out there. The inner critic still occasionally wants me to delete everything.

I’m open to different styles, but I do care about quality. Sometimes that perfectionism makes it harder to finish something, or even to begin. I’m still learning how to let these demos exist online, even for a while, while resisting the urge to keep editing them endlessly. For me, the lyrics come first. Often, I find a simple melody, or hum the tune, and then build around it. I’m not just looking for any arrangement. 

I’m looking for the sound that gives the words the right atmosphere. It has to feel intentional. It has to have that certain something. More than a hook, it becomes a texture, a temperature, a kind of presence. Something with depth, dimension, atmosphere and a taste of its own. For years, I’ve used the word umami for things beyond food: sound, ambience, mood, style...

It is the quality that makes something feel alive, as if it has awakened an extra sense. For me, songs must have it. That umami feeling.

09/06/2026

(some thoughts & personal writings; Matsunoki, Lošinj)

Note to self: “Take time to find a quote that truly speaks to you." :)

This week I’m going away on an anniversary getaway, so the new demo might be delayed. I write these public announcements as if I were a celebrity, but I like writing them. It motivates me when I set some expectations for myself in public.

I’ve gotten used to my writer’s corner, so when I change location, it takes me a little while to settle into writing mode. Hopefully, the beautiful scenery of Lošinj will give me some inspiration. But honestly, it will probably just make me lazy.

I still think about writing a proper love song for a female voice, but I find myself returning more instinctively to male vocals or duets. I’m drawn to the texture they can bring to my lyrics, and the particular tension that appears when two voices meet. That seems to be where my instincts are strongest, and I’m learning to trust that.

I had some trouble choosing what book to recommend next. I was considering Oliver Sacks, whose books were very dear to me, but there has been some controversy around the credibility of certain aspects of his work.  Although I loved Sacks’s books, I did always read them as partly factual and partly fiction. 

From a bit more scientific point of view on brain, I would consider books by V. S. Ramachandran perhaps more reliable. His work was especially interesting to me, and it actually inspired my master’s thesis.

I then remembered Erving Goffman’s The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. He presented social life as a kind of theatre: not false, exactly, but influenced by context, roles, gestures, and the expectations people bring into the room. That idea stayed with me because it is close to the way I approach songwriting.

Some of my songs, like “Impermanence”, come from private moments. Others begin as scenes or fragments from books, films, paintings, or memories. By the time they become songs, they are no longer pure autobiography. They become atmosphere, character, story, performance. In many ways, that is how I write: as if the lyrics were scenes from a film or a play.

And like in any scene, there is always the question of what is shown and what the observer or listener brings with them. Often, projection begins in the space between the visible and the imagined. We do this with people, too: when we encounter someone without the full context, we can mistake our own lens for the truth of them.

Sometimes, if the distance between the projection and the actual person is too wide, it creates a kind of cognitive dissonance. To see the person clearly would mean giving up the story we have built around them, and maybe facing something unresolved in ourselves.

Having experienced projections placed on me throughout my life, I have come to think about the ways we see one another through our own stories and expectations. Maybe that is simply part of being human, and part of the stage we all live on.

02/06/2026

(some thoughts & personal writings)

“The river is everywhere.”

Hermann Hesse, Siddhartha

I first read Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse more than ten years ago. Around that time, and in the years that followed, I became deeply drawn to questions of consciousness, psychology, sociology, science and spirituality. I read widely and intensely, searching for something that might help me better understand the human experience.

About four years ago, I deliberately undertook a water fast that lasted more than thirty days. During that time, I consumed only water. The experience had a profound effect on me and changed the way I understood the mind, the body, and body’s capacity to heal. To this day, I still occasionally fast for a few days, and each time it feels as though my body resets.

To go through something like that, one needs to understand a great deal about the human body and the mind. I did it while working on my undergraduate thesis on metabolism, nutrition, and exercise. That thesis was received with a great deal of praise. I continued exercising almost daily during that period. This is not a recommendation. It was not an impulsive decision, nor is it something to take lightly.

The first thing I ate after a month of fasting was an apple. That moment felt deeply humbling in itself. Tasting fruit again felt as though pure heaven had landed on my tongue. It showed me how easily we take simple things, even something as small as an apple, for granted. Each and every sense was heightened.

As much as I was exploring consciousness, I reminded myself daily that this is still a material world we live in. It is important to stay grounded, to return to simplicity, to revisit your childhood sometimes, to let your ego react sometimes, and to feel the full range of human emotions. We should never think we are above being human. The world has an interesting way of teaching us another lesson, even when we think we have learned them all.

Fasting was only one part of a much larger inner journey. Over the years, through reading, reflection, experience, and self-exploration, my relationship with a purely materialistic view of life gradually changed. I still enjoy occasional luxuries, as anyone might, but for years now, I have not seen them as the only source of fulfilment. 

For me, true joy is found somewhere deeper than what I own or achieve. Perhaps one of the great discoveries in life is finding what resonates with you: the moments that feel aligned with life, and those rare instances when everything seems to fall into place. Another is learning to stay on your path, and to accept that some people will always choose to misunderstand you or mistake kindness for weakness - thanks RiRi :). And that is okay with me.

I also found that it is not our job to teach anyone wisdom. That, to me, would be ego-driven: to believe we can direct another person’s inner growth. Still, some people resonate with our inner world and may be gently nudged, often without us even realising it. That influence is usually subtle and mutual. Accepting people as they are, setting boundaries, and still seeing the best in them is, for me, a very peaceful way to live.

I also do not see spiritual differences between people as any kind of hierarchy. I see them as shaped by many forces: where and when we were born, the families and communities that raised us, the bodies and temperaments we inherited, the opportunities and obstacles we encountered, the fears we were able to face, and how much room we had to learn. It is an endless dance between nature, nurture, circumstance, and choice. Again and again, I return to the importance of finding balance.

I have also come to value original thought more deeply. In a world where it is easy to repeat ideas we have inherited or absorbed, I think there is something important about learning to truly think for ourselves. Even though language can feel limiting, and many thoughts have already been thought before, original thought is not about being different from everyone else. It is about curiosity, looking beyond social conditioning and questioning things deeply.

I found that one of the most important things is to move through life with a sense of wonder, to think deeply, but live lightly: to recognise what resonates with us, to let go of what does not, and to avoid carrying heavy burdens, whether our own or other people’s. I do not believe life is meant to be a constant experience of heaviness for most of us. Some people may be able to genuinely carry such burdens, but in my opinion, they are very rare.

Over the last few years I began to understand the river of life more deeply: to sometimes surrender to the flow, to adapt to what surrounds me, and to keep moving. And always, to keep some sense of humour. I believe the universe likes us best when we do not take ourselves too seriously. 

This world can be a wonderful place when we are mindful of what we choose to focus on. I would not call myself a religious person, or even necessarily a spiritual one, but I do feel there is something bigger than us. I feel deeply immersed in this human experience, grateful for the chance to be part of it, and I intend to experience as much of life as I can.

 
24/05/2026

(some thoughts & personal writings)