MONUMENT

#0

Journal

"This will be my monument
This will be a beacon when I'm gone
Soon when that moment comes,
I can say I did it all with love"

Robyn

#0.0 2022-04-23

Beginning

I'm taking a leap of faith here. So hard to begin, but I've been thinking about my legacy for a while now and also has been wondering how to build a structure around my artistic ideas and creations. I hope that by organizing it all into system I can construct the support system for myself primarily to push things forward and transform ideas into reality. I've been how in my corporate professional life structured project management systems were able to give me satisfaction and peace, so I want to build an inspired structure for my personal endeavors. It will serve purposes of archiving, idea management and, of course, become art by itself. I believe that it is also very fitting with the way human culture is produced these days. Cloud technologies, code repositories and agile systems both inspire me, but also will give me the means of spreading my legacy and immortalizing my creations. My hope right now is to make MONUMENT available to the public as an open repository of work. This way I can bypass cultural institutions (I'm so intimidated by them and I believe that trying to integrate myself into art galleries, schools and museums will just slow me down) and ultimately have direct access to the viewer; the interested viewer will be able to follow the building of MONUMENT without any limits of geography and need to pay.
In terms of the choice of media and subject of my projects - I don't plan to set certain themes or limits. MONUMENT as a system is not intended to bear substantive meaning by itself, it is merely a virtual archive/museum for my creations, so its primary purpose is pragmatic. However, I can see how it could have a certain artistic effect (similarly to civil architecture being a reflection of humanity's creative light). Also, if considered as a whole, together with the content of my projects placed in it, MONUMENT is intended to be the ultimate magnum opus and reflect my mind, soul and path. If only I can stick to it, if only I can pull it off...

Design

As I mentioned, I consider MONUMENT to be a sort of digital architecture and to have an aesthetic features of both digital project management systems and modern archive. I also want to achieve (at least to some degree) and aesthetical unity within my artwork. Therefore, I am trying to be thoughtful and consistent in my choices of both organizational structure (naming conventions, enumeration, archiving, project relationships) and visual features (fonts, colors, etc). Maybe, If my writing and other fundamental skills develop enough, I'll be able to achieve an underlying monotonicity across MONUMENT to support its unity and wholeness on one hand, but also give more space for projects to show their intended ideas and content in front of calm and uniform background of the system. I will state the first underlying principles of the system below.

Definition of #

I have seen several ways to organize large projects, mainly in my professional career. I'm quite influenced by the agile framework named JIRA (probably due to better familiarity and experience). There are definitely other modern frameworks that are similar and undoubtedly they are a result of our centuries-long experience and innovation in organization, archiving and industrial excellence. I want to achieve a flexible symbolical language for organizing my work (logging history, internal substructure of projects and their relationships), but at the same time keep it as concise and straightforward as possible. I hope MONUMENT system to remain elegant, light and intuitive for the viewer.

Thus, I am deciding to use a single-level flat structure for my work with # being a core unit of work (compare with multilevel structure in JIRA with epics, tasks and subtasks). Here are some core ideas on #:

a) # has no definitive word behind it. "Project", "Op.", "number", "unit" etc. might be used to convenience, but I hope to strip out any connotations of these words with regards to #, leaving it a pure symbolical representation of the unit of work. Not using alternative words for # will be easier to achieve in written and visual formats, and trickier in audio-centric media and everyday conversation. [Maybe I should just come up with a made-up word for it?]. Actually, JIRA inspired me here as well - I'll just call it "MONUMENT 0 (1, 2, 3, etc)" or "M 0" for shortness. Still, # is preferred in written word. In this audio-visual relationship # is becoming the representation of MONUMENT itself.

b) # are enumerated with arabic numerals in order from the moment of creation (first record of the idea or work on #). #0 is, thus, the first # of MONUMENT. The numbers of of #s have variable length (#0 vs #0000) as I find it more flexible, concise and tasteful.

c) While to me as the creator all #s will be visible and accessible, I understand that some of #s will take longer to reach the state when they are ready to be shown to the public and some #s will never go further than the initial idea. Therefore, the viewer shouldn't be surprised when they they see gaps between #s, but they should be sure that behind "hidden" #s lay ideas that haven't achieved their final form. I encourage the viewer to imagine and fantasize what kind of ideas or media might lay in those "gaps" and possible realize those ideas in their own work.

d) To provide necessary structure within #s, I implement the sub ordering of sub#s within #s in the format of #X.1, #X.2, etc. For now I'm not sure if more layers of substructure will be needed, but adding them doesn't seem to add much complexity as they just serve as a means of organization (similarly to table of contents within #).

Relationships between #s

I want to establish the system of relationships between #s to allow creation of more complex macrostructures within MONUMENT. It also will help to retain MONUMENT's structure through time as I hope to develop some projects over prolonged periods of time. I hope to keep the number of types of relationships at a minimum at a cost of occasional vagueness of interpretation. Too many various types (often similar in meaning) creates confusion and weights the whole system down. The basic types I want to establish right now are:

a) Whole / Part. This relationship type highlights subparts of the macroprojects (poem is a part of poetry book, album is a whole of a single, episode is a part of a series). Some natural understandable confusion might appear between "parts" of # and sub# (#X.Y). I want to allow these duplicate methods of establishing whole-part relationships as one or another will be more appropriate in different contexts. Back to the poetry cycle example, it will be natural to have all of the poems in the book as subparts (#X.1, #X.2 etc.). However, what if I decide to include a poem that has been written and published earlier to the cycle? It already has an individual # assigned to it (say #Y). As I really want to avoid publish duplicate work (to avoid mismatches and for general clarity) I will probably just reference #Y (as a part of #X) under one of the sub# of #X (#X.5 -> #Y).

Original name for whole/part relationship was child/parent which is widely used in programming systems. However, after further thinking I decided that the usage of parent/child terms in programming mixed in additional connotation to this relationship type that I want to avoid. For example, in programming class inheritance a "child class" will get all attributes of a "parent class", which is quite the opposite in this case (poetry book as a whole contains the content of all poems as parts, but not vice-versa). As another example, in JIRA parent/child relationship adds the connotation of temporal inheritance of work (as in child continues work of parent). While it sounds organic and even natural in human societies, I want to strip this additional meaning away. Thus, I find whole/part an optimal name for this relationship. Unfortunately, there is no good antonym for "part" in this regard and "whole" as a word bends the meaning of a relationship ("an album is a whole of a song" sounds forced compared to "a song is a part of an album"), but this is a compromise I'm willing to make for logical clarity. Best I can do is to use "whole" minimally and prefer to use "part" in my writing and speech.

b) Duplicate. This type used in all kinds of systems I find quite attractive and clear. While I hope that I'll avoid creating duplicate entries in MONUMENT, sometimes some ideas just get merged into one and some smaller #s will be realized in some other #s. Example of such case could be situation where I've started to write one poetry book under some common theme, but then decided that I can't write enough poems under on the topic and would just publish them as part of another bigger cycle. One could also think of the case where an unfinished script becomes a scene in another film.

I don't feel the need to introduce another relationship type at this point.

Font

As I mentioned above, design coherence is important to me in MONUMENT. While I am not a typography specialist by no means, I feel that that I need to select the font that will be functional in both written text, visual materials and - quite importantly - codebase. I feel like very different types of fonts are used in these applications: serif fonts for large bodies of text, sans-serif for visual media and monospaced fonts for code. It's hard to choose one font and make it right. I allow the possibility that I will change it in the future. However, regardless of specific choices, I want fonts to be configured centrally for the entirety of MONUMENT, so that stylistic consistency is enforced and font switching is relatively painless. My initial experimentation didn't yield a strong conclusion. I believe that font is most important on the big bodies of text (code and books), so I am ready to use sub-optimal fonts in visual art. However, how to balance readability of a classic typeface serif font and partiality of a monospaced font for coding. Monospaced Courier New looks so nostalgic and elegant, but I don't think I can handle reading pages of it... How could screenwriters handle it? So for now I'll use DejaVu font family. It has all sorts of fonts for a variety of applications. But even though they come from the same family - the difference between serif and sans serif font is still enormous. Last moment I switched to Computer Modern - so familiar from LaTeX.

#0.1 2022-04-24

I - Artist

Woke up with new energy, started thinking about MONUMENT from the first second of the day. The backlog of ideas that I have accumulated over the years is huge and will require immense amount of work to sort through and drive to reality. While intimidated and a bit overwhelmed, I am allowing MONUMENT to develop organically - not all decisions will be correct, some may be revisited, imperfection is part of the path and sharing the path is one of my goals. Writing these first sentences today is already much easier than yesterday when I was so stiff I almost couldn't breath when starting writing. I think a great challenge will be to see myself as an artist, allowing showing my true character and natural way of thought. Being critical to myself and lacking artistic skills it is easy for me to get stuck on flaws of my work (writing in particular). I am also poisoned by the traditional ideas of who the artist is - eloquent, hedonistic and witty sybarite. Writing this, it is becoming apparent that this fantasy is not only not true - artists come in all shape and form - but also dangerous for MONUMENT. I am an artist just the way I am. My thoughts, my texts, my music, my designs are coming from the inseparable mind and soul of mine and are the product of the totality of my experiences. Life of the artist is my life, everything I know, feel and think - the artist does the same. Thus, it will be best fitting to the ideas of MONUMENT if I try to avoid pretense, imitation of others and unnecessary self-editing.

Digital Foundations

Right now I am storing MONUMENT on my personal cloud and on my laptop, but this is clearly a temporary and unsafe solution. To achieve information safety and archiving on one hand and accessibility to the public on another, I need to start publishing MONUMENT to the Internet (even if it remains hidden for now). I want to get a domain and start a GitHub project (seems like the most obvious starting point for versioning, storage and archiving and change tracking). Couple of years ago, I was able to fetch a couple of cool domains for my personal name - pavellebedev.com and swandrama.com. Having less luck with such a common word as MONUMENT... One I like that is available is mnmnt.com, but it's quite pricey. Alternative domains (.org, .net) are a possibility, but less aesthetically pleasing to me and somehow feel less satisfying. I probably shouldn't get stuck on it and find a "good enough" working option with a possibility of changing it later.

Fifteen minutes later, I'm back with the new domain - mnmt.me. Short, cheap and.. a touch ugly. Well, as I said "good enough" to start publishing. At this point I feel that pavellebedev.com/monument might be even better, but that's really long for the primary link... It seems there will be a lot of back and forth on this.

Flower and knife

Feeling more alive than for along time this evening, but at the same time prominent heartache. [Is this a personal diary too? Whatever..] Just trying to push MONUMENT a bit further before I go to bed. Back at setting up the repo and uploading the first files. Ouch, the foot is cramping.

First commit done!

Uploaded #0 to the MONUMENT repo! Great feeling. However, we are having issues from the get-go; GitHub doesn't really support .rtf text format that I'm using right now, it looks ugly as hell on the website. I either should start looking for the alternative or just accept that GitHub website is not the best place to look at MONUMENT, be patient and wait till the website is done. Will try to find an easy temporary solution.Yes, starting JavaScript...

#0.2 2022-04-25

No progress today :(

#0.3 2022-04-26

Back at it after a day of work. Want to slowly chip away at creating the first version of MONUMENT website. Plan to use JavaScript + HTML & CSS. None of them I know. Let the learning begin...

Was able to port #0 to HTML and created a page locally. I'll have to find a way to edit the document in one place. Writing large texts in HTML is not convenient to say the least. ALso haven't started on formatting, but anyway it's nice to have something physical (or not really) before my eyes. Excited to deploy the website after the first draft is done. It will eb a separate pain. In particular, I will have to figure out release process so I can update the website at least daily with new updates.

#0.4 2022-04-28

Tired, but ready to work. #2?

Moving to the big screen today. Want to do some CSS for the website design using same fonts as here and maybe attack actual website deployment on the server to make it public. Also want to publish #2 with a couple of poems I wrote so far during my time in the US. Really not feeling confident in them, but I think it’s right to get them out there in the spirit of MONUMENT.

As a an organic and realistic representation of my artistic path MONUMENT will have stronger and weaker works, smaller and bigger in size. Some will take years to make, some - a couple of minutes and some will never be finished. It’s ok… Maybe some of # will surface and become relevant in some unexpected contexts, and some of those that I’m less happy about will still be able to touch the viewer. There’s only one way to test it - push and push forward, get it all out and share myself.

I also need to figure out where should I write and store the texts. It’s really inconvenient to have a copy in the file and then copy paste it to HTML with new formatting. But writing straight to HTML is quite insane too… Ideally I want to be able to write and edit textual # on the go - even from my phone - HTML makes it quite annoying.

MONUMENT is live!!!

Launched MONUMENT on my remote server. Wow, that was much easier to do second time (I did it for my DJ we bsite in the past). I'm going to self-reference here, but it's at mnmt.me! Was even able to use nicer fonts. Even though so much content and resources exit on the Internet in public status, I'm actually grateful for creators that made that decision willingly, as did Donald Knuth with Computer Modern fonts - he's my inspiration this evening, long live Dr. Knuth.

I think I need to create a config that determines which #s are public and which are accessible through the main page. I will also soon switch to using Git branches for #s that are in progres. That will be safer (if I will pull from master every day on the server) and also will make commit history cleaner.

Just realized I started sub#s of #0 with #0.1 and not #0.0. Need to reindex. Or is the #X.1 the way to go? That's the level of philosophy I'm not ready for today. Will switch to #0.0 for now.

First # published

Just published my three old poems reflecting the mood of my years in the US as #2. Relieved that I was able to find them in the debris of my phone and feeling quite emotional as those verses really bring me back into so different moods and thoughts of those times. While I wasn't sure whether I should publish art created before the beginning of MONUMENT - I believe that ultimately it's been in the making my whole life, so it serves the archival purpose of it. Feeling very insecure about people reading them, but I'll get over this feeling. Going to sleep in an uplifted mood.

#0.5 2022-04-29

On the go

Trying to edit #0 from the phone, so I can wrote notes on the go. Right now seems tricky to say the least. However, it worked. Cloud - is an amazing technology.

Want to reformat some of the existing page structure to make it easier to change in the future. Want to use smaller-level headings intead of typing bold or italic everywhere. Better do it now, otherwise as MONUMENT grows refactoring it will be a pain. Also need to start thinking about page layouts so they are not just flows of texts. I shared MONUMENT with my sister Uliana - she's my first viewer, so I want to make it clear and pretty for her.

#0.6 2022-04-30

Spring

Shared MONUMENT with my friend Madeline today. Slow unbeiling of my soul, fantasies and threads. Chicago's late and short spring is in its peak. Young leaf buds are floating through the streets as we are driving. After-rain smell on concreet and pine on my sweaty body. Bliss.

#0.7 2022-05-01

Raging May

Was thinking about the war a lot lately. While other struggles of my current days are more approachable as they are comparable in scale to the existance of a single person, the tragedy of the war is so sharp and pierces through so many layers of human experience that I was not able to find enough emotional capacity to comprehend it. Instead of emotions of grief, sadness and hope it were confusion and fear filling up my heart. However, last night, when I woke up in the middle of the night after passing out clothed in full illumination of my room an idea visited me, the idea of an antiwar statement. This idea and the imagery that it entails are so strong that I could not fall asleep. Even after I was finally able to do so, all day it has been ringing loudly in my head. For some reason, it has the level of clarity and urgency that most of my other creative ideas do not posess. Thus, I feel the need to respond to this calling and bring this idea to reality. This shall be done in #3.

#0.8 2022-05-04

Socializing

Work goes much slower in NYC... I'm working, enjoying the city and catching up with friends. Sharing hints about MONUMENT with them. Don't want to share details just yet - afraid to lose creative energy. Hope to start sharing more when there is more content. A little bit worried about losing momentum, I feel like with every day of not working on MONUMENT some ideas are losing their chance to be realized. So I'm glad I am able to find a chance to work on it tonight. Being in the lobby of the hotel is very suitable and energizing. I've reformatted and standardized all of the headings so that it will be easy for me to keep #s consistent between each other. Will start working on #3 now.

#0.9 2022-05-21

Closing the Gap

Haven't been writing here for almost 3 weeks... I'm quite dissapointed in myself for having such a big gap in my workflow even though there might've been reasons for it. I was still thinking about the ideas, but there is no excuse really not to write the m down, at least here in #0 - it doesn't take that much of time and effort. Moreover, the longer I'm not actively working on something - the harder it is to come back, it's almost I'm losing the rhythm of it. On the other hand, a fresh eye helps to spot some design changes I want to make.

Anyway, it's time to get back to work... My priority is still #3. Also I've been thinking about finishing one of my old songs written in Russian. Given that I'm playing piano (a bit) now - I can actually meaningfull compose the chords in a less improvised way, definitely feel more empowered in that sense.

#0.10 2022-05-22

Small Step

Just a small step of progress this evening. Want to write at least a couple of lines of #3. It's a script (spoiler), and while it's a medium I've been striving to work with for so long, writing dialogue is very hard for me. I hope I'll get better - practice, practice, practice... Work, work, work...

I actually wrote more than I expected, first scene and dialogue are pretty much done and it was kinda fun... Nice.

#0.11 2022-05-23

Chez Maude

Doing a little bit of work at my friend Madeline's place this evening. MONUMENT website design is looking good enough at this point, really want to focus on the content for now. I want to add # status tracking and more informative main page, but that will be more relevant at a later stage when I have more #s. Really want to push to create more these days, so I have a diverse selection of pieces for the first public release of MONUMENT. Today - still working on #3.

#0.12 2022-05-27

Planes

Flying to Boston for my delyaed graduation ceremony. There is nothing else, but ceremonial about this event. I already have my diploma and have been working for a couple of years. However, I am craving this transition ritual that I've been robbed of due to the pandemic. I had to skip my undergraduate commencement as well becaue I had to move to the US, so I really wanted to go to this one.

Being on a plane is one of my favorite times to think and to work. Minimal distracitons, maximal focus. The whole context of being in the air seems to attract muses for me somehow. Maybe that's why air and sky has always been such an attractive element to me. It can only compete with water probably... I've been feeling quite low the past couple of days so it's a perfect opportunity to get myself together and reaalign creative channels inside to continue working!

#0.13 2022-06-05

Back Home

Back home after an intense but necessary weekend in Boston and Detroit. I finally had my ceremony and then I celebrated it the hard way on Detroit dancefloors. Met new friends and found new inspirations. But now it's time to get back. I think I am going to publish my old DJ set as part of MONUMENT and also I want to record another video DJ set. Meanwhile, really want to push forward on #3.

Published my DJ set from last year under #4. I'm a little on the fence about publishing older works, but I guess if we consider MONUMENT to be a holistic archive of my creations - then why not. I also really like this set :)

An interesting related topic is aliases and alter egos. So far I've been DJing and releasing music under the name of Swan Drama. Should I continue that line? How do you even manage that stuff? I should ask some artists who had countless aliases - Aphex Twin, Wolfgang Voigt...

#0.14 2022-06-06

Just Another Day

Good and simple evening at the house. Want to finalize tracks for my new DJ set - hope to record it this week. If have energy left - continue writing the script.

#0.15 2022-06-10

Instant Classic

New mix is done. Welcome #5! Quite inspired by "classical" music and acoustic instruments in general this mix is really aggregating my musical inspiration of the last couple of years. Short and succinct - I think it is quite different from my older mixes. I definitely had fun with it.

After recording there is always a tedious part of editing, uploading and releasing. Hope to be done this weekend if not today.

#0.16 2022-06-12

First New MONUMENT!

I finished and uploaded the video for #5 today. I am quite happy and excited about it for several reasons. First, it's a first brand new piece that I started and finished since the beginning of MONUMENT. Second, I it just such a joyful and encompassing represenation of my life in Chicago at this moment... I am in my apartment, the first place that truly feels like home first time in a long time, the whole mix is of course inspired by me learning how to play piano and diving into the world of classical music more than ever. With my immigration uncertainty, if I have to leave this plave and this lifestyle soon - at least I will commemorate it in this mix.

It's interesting contrast with #4 that I did last year. Different mood, different apartment, new me. More confident, more mature, more happy, more free! Still, #4 is hard to beat with its grandeur and scale. The new mix is a bit less than an hour long and already packs a bunch of ideas in my opinion. But last year I went big with a 2-hour diptich mix which is honestly hard to swallow in one go... What a big difference it is between recording a DJ mix and performing in front of the audience. While the latter is so much more about improvisation and energy exchange with the dancefloor, with the mix intedend for a listener I am forced to create a dense musical narrative, which is quite more exhausting in my opinion. Not sure when I'll have energy and inspiration to do it again... Maybe in another year :)

#0.17 2022-06-25

Down and Up

Back after yet another break that took too long. Last two weeks were just harder and darker. Filled with loneliness, even around people. I am happy to observe that I now posess more knowledge and tools to get myself out of the hole and be ready to work again.

I still haven't publicly shared #5 on social media, want to do it today. I also want to start exploring video art as I see it the most natural media for MONUMENT as a digital archive. Tens of programmable screens on the walls showing different pieces of work, switching them up and reflecting the current state of my andventure - this is the fantasy I have in my head. Bright light from web universe into the eye of the viewer.

#0.18 2022-07-16

Weeks of Wandering

Another break that lasted too long... The reponse to #5 was great, and it definitely felt very reassuring. Now I'm thinking about also sharing #4 on social media, as I think it is my strongest mix so far and I haven't really revealed it.

On another note, during these weeks I went on a beautiful road trip that brought me to the Gulf of Mexico and back. It was truly inspiring and a great escape. Even though I'm still not fully recovered from the intensity of it, I want to get back to work as soon as possible. I was lucky to share this adventure with my sister and my new friends Caroline and Ben. During our last stop in New Orleans Benjamin said a phrase that I could not resist turning into a short poem. So today I wrote #6 and it is deticated to the beauty of this city and the beauty of my friends.

#0.19 2022-07-24

Wicker Park

Have been feeling increasingly sad lately, drowning in stress of the job, mindless content consumption and lack of sleep. At this point I am back to MONUMENT once every week or two and it makes me unhappy as well. However, this is where the ida of MONUMENT as a mere framework for my endeavours stays strong. If I come back - this is the place to go. I am loyal to it. If I write - I write here, so with it being still I have a constant reminder of my lack of activity.

Today, in another attempt to battle depression I decided to use my recently discovered detox method. I leave my phone (today my watch as well) at home and leave wandering around the neighborhood. Coincidentally, Wicker Park street festival took place today and that gave a direction to my little adventure. After walking in soluitude through the celebrating and tipsy crowds I landed on the bench at the abovementioned park itself and started reading a new book - The Counterfeiters by André Gide that had been collecting dust for a while on my shelf.

It has always stirred my curiousity to think about how fundamentally tricky and difficult it is - to choose a new book to read. Contrary to the fil or a music album - it feels like a more serious time and energy commitment (though I wasted times and times more on mindless Internet browsing lately that I barely quesitoned). I guess one might follow some systemic direction - from googling "100 best novels ever", reading all Nobel laureate winners or bestsellers. Another popular approach seems to be to follow the word of mouth and trust the recommendations of close friends, teachers ot even critics. What an honor it truly is to be trusted with such power... Still, I'd say that my approach to it has been different - I guess it was kind of intuitive. At the book store I just grab books that capture the whim of my eye and often I don't read them for a while until they are selected once again in that unpredictable wheel of fortune. Interestingly, I often find those books that the universe throws at me quite impactful. This certainly happened with Campbell's "Hero with a Thousand Faces" that I grabbed at a bookstore in LA completely ignorant about the popularity of this book. Well, I was impressed by it as well. The guy was refreshingly audacious in his monomyth theory and at the same time obsessive in collecting fitting folklore to support it. While many might criticize him for oversimplication of global traditions and religion and preacherous tone - I liked the book a lot, as to me the main achievement of it was therapeutic. It's not the symbolic language of the myth he's primarily talking about - it's the language of universal human experience. In some of those stories I saw a reflection. More than that, I felt that I had to write some of those stories into my life, construct, engineer them - the goal being to restore the narrative my own hero's jorney.

Got a little carried away here and don't have much energy to write about Gide... Maybe next time. Want to try to drop a couple of lines at #3.

#0.20 2023-04-29

Silence, Shame and Return.

I haven't written a line in MONUMENT for more than half of the year. I feel ashamed and disappointed. I also have just noticed that it has been just over a year since I started this project. I should've done more, but I have not.

At the same time I am happy to observe that the concept of MONUMENT is really forgiving to such time gaps. At least now I have a place to return to. If I do something - be it after a month or a year - I am commited to reflect the process and result here. After long and empty winter I am a little more inspired to dedicate time and continue on my work here: I have several projects that I have started (#3) and still hope to finish.

I also want to publish #7 - a little poem that I wrote sitting in my favourite family cafe across the street. It really made me reflect on the impact the city of Chicago has made on my mind and fantasy. It seems to have a sort of soft power over me...

#0.21 2023-06-25

Hate It

Another two months - fuck.

Publishing a small poem (#8) that I started several motnhs ago... I have to say I hate it and it feels so banal and primitive and stupid and childish. Yet it is probably one of the most personal things I wrote and is an accurate description of my narrow-visioned life of the begginning of the year... So I think it is valuable to reflect it in MONUMENT.