Lubomyr Melnyk

Here I record what I know, biographically, about Lubomyr's life and give some sense of him as a person. I say a little more in the subpage "Understanding Lubomyr". It is a difficult thing, to describe someone who still lives, someone with whom I spoke just this morning.

Most importantly (!) Lubomyr is the discoverer, and sole true practitioner, of the continuous music. He would not say that the music is his, and he has said he suspects the great pianists of yore had an understanding of technique not so dissimilar from his one, but it remains an unfortunate apparent truth that only he can do what he does, and only he has done what he has done.

Lubomyr was born on 22/12/1948, in Munich, to a Ukrainian family. When very young, his family, fleeing Soviet oppression, moved to Winnipeg, Canada, where he grew up for 20 years. He now lives in Scandinavia, but I will not disclose precisely where.

His mother was very musical - a classical soprano - and noted he had an affinity for the piano: he recounts being grateful that, back then, the world was such that even refugees could acquire a humble home and a humble piano, and at the age of three he spontaneously played a basic tune on the piano, so the family supported him getting lessons from a fairly young age. He always adored classical music (but not only that - Jimi Hendrix too!), and to this day he maintains that Beethoven was the greatest thing to ever happen to the piano. He has said that 'people don't love classical music enough'.

"Ludwig, forgive me for even mentioning your name"

"As a boy I was much more interested in playing baseball or playing catch... I was not really ideal material for virtuoso schooling. But the love of the piano, not just of the music but of the physical object, became a very strong bond. I loved the smell of the wood; when you came to sit down at the piano, you could smell the wood, it was beautiful. It was a dream world, where I could dream about being on concert stage and playing sonatas and concertos and all this sort of stuff..."

He became quite advanced in the classical piano, but claims he was never especially good relative to his peers at the conservatoire. The classical music required effort. He could play all of Beethoven's sonatas well, except for the Appassionata ("the only one that was kind of beyond me - I could still play it, but not super well, do a decent amateur job"). He has mentioned in concerts, with great amusement, how he came bottom of the class in this conservatoire:

"God had other plans for me".

"I myself have found it [the very advanced classical music] unknowable. This may be called Inability"

He has self-described his younger self as a 'classical music nerd'.

"how to compare this classical monument of parnassus ... the world really has no idea how infinitely great and inhuman those genius composers were"

"Up until the age 22, the whole world for me was classical music, and then song: operatic arias and Ukrainian [folk and art] songs. My mother was a singer, who had a very beautiful voice, she had no career of course... it's quite tragic, I feel that she deserved a lot more. the beauty of her songs, the operatic arias and the Ukrainian songs, had a profound effect on me and my concept of melody. And then there was the ability to, every evening, listen to classical music on the radio. ... I could listen to it all day long... my mind was geared towards creating classical music"

The first record he ever bought was one of Chopin recordings, from Crown Records, by a pianist named Lily (unfortunately Lubomyr could not recall her full name); "her performances of Chopin's pieces were so extraordinary, so deep and profound, so beautiful, and her virtuousity, her brilliant was stunning, just stunning; I was just whacked out of listening to her play. I could never play like that". For years, like so many people of that generation, he was hellbent on getting as many records from the record shops as possible, purchasing all the string and piano quartets of Brahms for instance.

He went on to study Latin and Philosophy at St Paul's College, University of Manitoba (BA, 1969), and did a Master's degree in Philosophy at the Queen's University, Canada, (1969-1970) with a thesis on the essential nonexistence of matter. After finding his music, and then some years after that, he wrote Open Time, which is notionally for studying his music but really is a kind of philosophical discussion at the same time. It appears that the study of philosophy was very influential on him, and a sort of unwritten philosophy of various, often ineffable, themes underlies a great deal of his music and his technique to this day. It always did.

That things are not what they seem is a recurring theme throughout his interviews, his conversations with me, his music and his book, Open Time. Phenomena like Water, Clouds and the nature of Sound are immeasurably more wonderful to Lubomyr than any scientific invention, and at any given concert there is a good chance he will speak about something in a spiritual way. I was initially rather skeptical, but I have observed over the last four years that my progress seems to be intimately tied with my adoption of his more spiritual ideas, not in the sense of accepting truth-claims but... while the phenomena that I carry with me every time I play continuous music are indeed the result of neurons firing in the brain and electrochemical processes near my ear and pressure waves in the air and so on, this interpretation loses all of the (musically) interesting and meaningful aspects of the experience; multiple things can be true concurrently.

He draws on some kind of religious tradition; from reading Open Time and conversations with him I gather that his beliefs likely derive from his family and Ukrainian Christian Orthodoxy, but that he is not doctrinally strict. He celebrates Christ and an idea of Creator, adores the world around him and nature in a very passionate way, and is sufficiently spiritual, in that sense, that you might mistake his beliefs for so-called paganism. Several of his tracks are religiously themed, namely Vocalises and Antiphons (antiphon, he explained to us in concert, means a few things but here refers to a traditional kind of Church music, song-prayer, practiced in Ukraine), It was revealed to us that man is the centre of the universe but few can remember, the Six-day moment and undoubtedly more that I am forgetting.

He does not come across to me as particularly strict as, while he encourages connection of the self with the self's soul, and tapping into that for the sake of music, and deems an all-loving, grateful, humble and open spirit essential for the continuous music etc. he has never once tried to convince me, or the reader of something like "Open Time", of anything particular to the Christian religion. In fact, in recent interviews I have conducted with him he has made a particular effort to re-explain aspects of his music to non-spiritual people.

I had the pleasure of seeing Jurij Fedinskij in concert, who, like Lubomyr, is a Ukrainian musician upholding an extremely rare form of music. He and his three students tour the world attempting to preserve the Kobzar tradition, and he put me strongly in mind of a younger Lubomyr. The focus on easefulness and closedness in the way his hands glided over his custom stringed instrument... anyway, his faith, evidently tied with his nationality, kept coming up as he talked to us about the pieces and the work in quite a beautiful and undogmatic way.

Ukraine

I am not qualified to say much about how his nationality affects him, and his music. I can only appeal to the recent experience I had with Jurij Fedinskij, where I noted many striking parallels, and I will just leave you with this quote given in an interview.

"I think the fact that I am Ukrainian has changed absolutely everything. This music would not exist at all if I were not Ukrainian. Our distinguishing feature is that we tend to sacrifice ourselves. Ukrainians are self-sacrificing for things that are important to them. Parents sacrifice themselves for the sake of their children, a husband for the sake of their beloved, and so on. Let’s take Shevchenko as an example. There is no poet in the history of Europe or any country that would do what the Ukrainian poet would do. For the sake of truth and the power of his words, Shevchenko could not allow the Russians to destroy the message in his music. ... I mean, we have the example of an English writer, (Oscar Wilde) who did go to jail but not because of his art, but because of his sexuality. People around the world have no idea of the Ukrainian nation, of our people, of our art, the greatness of our existence. They don’t know about Shevchenko, they don’t know about Ivan Franko, they don't know our fantastic painters, phenomenal painters. They don't know anything. This is not the fault of the people themselves. Although it might be, I don't know. But anyway, back to your question.

The people of Europe and North America have to understand that whatever beauty they find in my music, it is only because I am Ukrainian, and because as a Ukrainian artist, I was ready to make the sacrifice that was needed to find this music ... There is something in Ukrainian people, this desire for creating, this respect for the beauty of art - this we don't find in other people. ... I have always, throughout my entire life, been a Ukrainian artist, no matter where I live. I could live anywhere, I could live on the moon. If you take William Shakespeare, even if he lived in Africa or Italy, he wrote his plays in English. And no one would ever consider him an Italian writer, and the same goes for me.

In a way I’m like a gypsy, I live anywhere in the world; this year I'm here, next year, I'm somewhere else. I feel that people should start to learn more about the Ukrainian nation and our history, and our people. And hopefully, my music may open some doors for them to start exploring the history of our artists."

He has also observed that, on the whole, Ukrainians have been able to appreciate his music the most.

"This music is impossible to play unless you have become a continuous pianist. People in concert don't realise this... Ukraine is the only place where they perceive [the wonder, the impossibility] and recognise right away on stage - and these are not playing musical people, ordinary people on the street."

Awakening

After completing his MA, he moved to Paris and lived there from 1973-1975. For a good amount of that time, if not all of it, he was homeless (or rather sans domicile fixe). He reports experiencing starvation and such utter exhaustion, that his body was sent to the limit; while between-places, there was a family who let him use the piano in their attic. More specifically, he held a babysitting 'job' and his reward was to be able to be in that space and use their piano. It was there that he worked at the keyboard, for almost all of the day (... when not childminding), and the total physical exhaustion helped (he says) or was in fact necessary to discover the transcendent states and easefulness he now attains while playing; there, he discovered the foundations of the technique.

It is worth noting he considers himself to have been constantly developing ever since - he isn't still clinging to something he found in the 70s, claims to have a deeper understanding with each passing year. In particular, the majority of his pieces composed after the 90s were inaccessible, even inconceivable, to him when he started, as his 'arpegge' technique took him twenty years to discover.

Lubomyr remembers the first day in Paris very vividly. He landed in Charles de Gaulles airport with his then-girlfriend, Barbara, and little money; they hitch-hiked to Paris. A young Frenchman picked them up:

"It was like he was a guardian angel... we drove past the Paris opera. I remember the colour of the stone and of the clouds, grey, broken, heavy cumulus clouds. .. [words to the effect of: I am astonished by this memory, over 50 years later] .. the colours I could not believe! As if I were in magic land. Where did he take us? To a hotel by the pantheon: 'Hotels des grands hommes'. ... not the cheapest, nor nearest, but he wanted us exactly there: right to the door. Quite magical.. everything in my being and soul was transfixed; entering the European, Parisian mentality was like going to Mars.. the space that you walk feels different"

When he told me this story, he was obviously quite shaken by the fact the stranger left them by 'the hotel of great men'. Not because he thinks he is great, but because he thinks the music he found is great.

"When I went to do this music, nothing else existed. I had no job, I had no money whatsoever - and I really mean, nothing, nothing at all - just piano and me. And it was there that the pianist, when he eliminates the world and puts aside everything else and simply has this keyboard, his instrument, his fingers and his hands and his heart, his soul and that's all that exists in the universe - the whole universe, that's it - then something beautiful starts to happen. I know this sounds very crazy to people, but modern people have tragically lost the understanding of the universe and the world as a metaphysical thing."

But what inspired the technique, the music? He has named several influences. Classical music, obviously, was major.

"I became a hippy through classical music. Listening to music was almost sort of like being in heaven, and it should be."

At university and then in Paris, he identified with a group of 'intellectual hippies'. He recalls it was not just about piano, that there was a general art and cultural revolution: "a tremendous breaking of the limitations of music... what I experienced in the 60s had already been experienced in the realm of art in the 20s and 30s, a tremendous change in aesthetics........... that breakthrough got me onto the ground, or the soil, where a new seed could grow."

Although, on the whole, he rejected popular music, he liked some: Eric Burdon's rendition of 'House of the Rising Sun', "struck me like a brick out of heaven", and:

"I had already fallen in love with the music of the Beatles, they were something beyond, way beyond [other pop music], everything was so complex and spectacularly crafted, the melodies so beautiful, just divine. ... There was also this Eastern thing in North America, with Ravi Shankar; what impressed me was their musicianship, their complexity and their speed; that's when I started to realise the speed of the brain is very important in music ... the speed of the Indian players on the Sitar, it was quite inspiring... [similarly] people around me introduced me to John McLaughlin."

Terry Riley's "In C" opened his and many others' minds when it first came out.

"It ['In C'] really broke everyhing loose in my mind and in my sould and I wanted to sail away, and bring the classical music with me; I wanted to sail away on that beautiful ocean of ambient and (vaguely-termed) minimalistic music - but super ambient music - and bring the classical world into that realm."

Philosophically, he was inspired by Ouspensky who wrote a widely regarded study of metaphysics and esoterica (and many others, of course: Heidegger and Plato, I seem to remember him mentioning). Above all, he was inspired by ballet. Carolyn Carlson and Kilina Cremona - who herself worked with Murs Cunningham, the then biggest name in modern dance - worked with Lubomyr, in Paris. He has said that the wonderful lightness and fluidity of the dancers, was very inspirational, "defying what seems to be possible for human motion", and he went on to discover his own 'lightness'. He has said that Carolyn's modern dance classes were like "sunlight and water" for that seed (of other inspirations and influences) to grow into the music.

"in effect, Carolyn Carlson’s dancers lost their bodies and became weightless entities"

In fact, Kilina was friends with John Cage; Lubomyr went to New York to meet with John Cage around this time - Lubomyr describes John as 'very pleasant... very buddhistic'. John introduced him to a young pianist who was rediscovering the work of one 'Josef Matthias Hauer', a turn-of-the-century composer with ideas of "12-tone music". According to Lubomyr:

"Hauer's system was to gradually change the harmony by altering one note at a time... imperceptible flow from one to the other... it was very philosophical, devoted to Pythagoras and the fourth dimension"

Hauer's compositions greatly inspired Lubomyr, since he was, at the time, realising a new physicality in piano technique but was not sure how to best exploit this in musical composition. He said that, thanks to Hauer, he was "given the gift of a form".

"With continuous music... you're hopping onto a merry-go-round, there's no start, you're hopping onto a train that's already moving. You take up the weight, the pressure, all of those elements... Structuring a piece was always a problem... floating around the aether, without that"

After reflecting on Hauer's music, he was able to start writing more structured compositions in this initial style. Though, his compositions have since moved on from the more minimalist and classical beginnings.

Returning to the lightness of the dancers, that so inspired him: the ideal form of the continuous hand is a relaxation so total that the hand becomes non-existent, during play. More on these two themes:

"I found that I could no longer control my fingers the way pianists do. In fact, I found that I could hardly hold on to a cup or a spoon. because the fingers were no longer there for me — how can you hold a spoon using a cloud or water? Yes, if I turned the flesh to stone and steel, I could, but rarely wished to." [there is more to this than meets the eye]

"It all began in 1973-74, when I was working at the Paris Opera, playing for the rather mystical classes of Carolyn Carlson. By this time, I had no money whatsoever and could not eat, except for the fruits and vegetables which the outdoor stands threw out. It’s remarkable how sensitive to light and sound you become, not just to them, but to all things physical and metaphysical … including your own body and mind."

Minimalism in general, however, was not an influence; Philip Glass was a kind of anti-influence (I mean no disrespect, as I was personally inspired by Glass before I met Lubomyr). Lubomyr imagined certain very busy, orchestral glassworks might be possible with just a single piano. Classical music was always in Lubomyr's heart, as I have said, and he views continuous music as a different level of the classical music (not a higher level - he humbles himself before Beethoven et al. - just a different one). However, I think it is misleading to tell a new listener that Lubomyr's music is classical; it is entirely its own genre. I am privileged to have heard both Lubomyr and many great classical pianists live, and the sounds are very different; the two genres occupy different branches of the 'skill tree' (a metaphor for younger readers).

"Well, during the classes, the dancers would move across the huge floor in long unending and repeated rows, and I had to create music for them, so I took Haydn and Terry Riley and put them together to create these unending spatial sounds in pure and simple harmonic structure. My hope was that the metaphysical character of the music would help the dancers enter the other world."

I have already mentioned he was impressed by music of Indian-heritage.

"... But this fertile soil for discovery had been prepared earlier by excursions into Eastern thought and all the hippie stuff... so you might think of me as a Hippie Pianist"

He is also greatly enamoured of martial art traditions, in particular Tai-Chi and Kung-Fu. In Open Time, he references: "an Interview with master Cheng Man—ch'ing, by Robert Smith, from the book of their Joint authorship, on the art of [incorrectly printed/garbled symbols], in the Classical Chinese school (Yang Style)". There is a notorious YouTube video where the BBC interviewed him on "Kung-Fu piano" (unfortunately misunderstood by almost everyone who wanted to write a comment, and I created this website partly to defend against such incidents). He is inspired by the ideas of discipline and ideas around how exquisite mental control and mind-body unity can lead to very remarkable acts of physical prowess.

"You could call me a student of martial arts. I am not a master of that, and never will be. I am touching their world, with my piano world, and I see especially in Kung-Fu that there is a tremendous speeding up of the brain... this is not evident in the early stages of continuous music, but as you develop... the sense of time can drastically change"

Though he has often spoken of other influences, he still can consider Beethoven great enough to drown out the others:

"Of influences, I can say only this: that when we have removed all the circus and the spectacle from music, we have left one solitary dimension of absolute harmony refined and hewn to its barest and most awesome magnificence: that dimension's name is Beethoven... Too proud, we are, to lift our consciousness out of the mud of this century and look at the mountain behind us. Or is it still ahead of us?"

Lubomyr's discography is... patchy. Prolific, but not very well-recorded, and nowhere is there a complete list of everything he has written (maybe I can change that, with his help - when this site is "complete", a partial attempt at such a list will be found here). It is very difficult to find copies of many of his recordings, especially his earlier compositions - many CDs and LPs were limited edition. I personally own several audio files which are not found anywhere on the Internet, and know of several more which exist but I cannot find. Therefore, it is hard for me to tell you what his first published pieces were, before his more recent increase in fame thanks to the support of the label Erased Tapes.

One thing I am confident of: KMH was his debut. He was still in his 20s at the time, and yet I think it is still the case that no-one else could play this piece. It occupies about 50 minutes, though the time is unimportant. For me, I remember finding this piece soon after I discovered Lubomyr and thinking it was the very pinnacle of pianistic achievement. I told Lubomyr that, and he sort of laughed and said that he had improved every year since then. Pockets of Light, as those who read my rambling 'about me' will know, was the first piece of his that I ever heard and it immediately gripped me, but KMH was something else entirely. I imagine it has not been performed live in decades, unfortunately. Sure, the aesthetic of the piece is an acquired taste, but the raw skill, the liquidity of it, is breath-taking, especially when you put the humanity back into context. Such a piece is worthless if computer-generated, but thankfully it was not. Other early releases include the Lund St. Petri symphony, Islands, Requiem, Poslaniye and Lyrrest. These all share a similar super-continuous wild running sound (KMH has this at its most extreme), but later in life his technique developed (I am thinking of what he calls "Bel Canto") to support much more melodic pieces; though this is incorrect to say (KMH is beautifully melodic), I have no other way to say it.

Humility and pedagogy

"the Scherzo... when I hear it I go crazy. I just want to go out and become a bus driver. How can I even compose music after hearing this 2 minute excerpt of a scherzo on the XP?";

"I feel horrible when I hear those giants speak"

Apology: since I am the only student I have spoken with at length, I have to use myself as an example throughout this section. I prove by example that Lubomyr happily hunkers down to meet his students at eye level, or perhaps happily lifts them up to him; while he is world-class, I never felt the fear or anxiety or caginess or whatever else that one might expect to feel, by making demands on the time of a world-class craftsman.

It ought to be obvious to the reader that I think very highly of Lubomyr and his prowess. However, I likely would have not had the motivation to keep pursuing his music if he had been arrogant about his indescribable skills, if he had lorded it over me in any way. He would be well within his rights to: here was I, a nothing, barely scraping my Grade 5 in piano, and there was he, one of the greatest pianists that have ever been, but I have received nothing but good humour from the man, and patience. Though he so keenly yearns for students and for his work to be preserved, there was never any real pressure on me to do well and learn quickly. He would often be very cheerful and over-estimate my own abilities, suggesting we could move onto the "next steps" a little prematurely, but he never hurried me. I have every confidence he has been equally kind to his other students, past and present.

Lubomyr would compliment the baby steps I took, in the early days, just as heartily as he now compliments my concerts and recent, more significant, progress. When I say I have performed in public, to promote his music, he thanks me but the focus in those emails has always been on how pleased he is for my development. He has also always been a little afraid of putting me off: very often, when he has pointed out things I am doing wrong or struggling with, he has made a comment about how, you know, it's ok, there's plenty of time, the other stuff is going really well,... I think his gladness at having someone who cares, someone to teach, far exceeds any occasional frustrations he might find with a student - as it should be!

I once pointed that out to him - that he is remarkably uplifting - and he simply said that teaching is very important and he must needs do a good job of it. An email I received, years ago:

"Dear (-), that is very heartening for me to hear! Really .... we live on earth to help others .... and helping people to learn the true nature of the Piano is my task in life. See you soon again hopefully Thursday of Friday morning .. Best wishes, Lubomyr M."

He remains humble about his music even when away from the classroom. It is easy to think otherwise, but one must understand that when he exalts the beauty of continuous music he is not praising himself, or his discovery and technique, but rather he is praising the piano, sound, existence - everything else. There is also a difference between arrogance and stating an observation you have: as I keep saying, we would all love to be wrong about how no-one else is doing what he does, but it just, after 50 years, seems to be the case - there would be a converse arrogance in assuming a piano master had not achieved anything difficult or special.

In his book, Open Time, he insists that there are no truly great men, and that the pianist should not strive for greatness: implicit in all that is that, in spite of everything, he does not perceive himself on a pedestal. Let me quote him verbatim:

"The player who plays to know himself is already at poverty with the world. Neither you nor the music possess any stage. There is no platform for adoration. For the concept of 'stage' is the denial against the truth of our active time - against the time that is as we listen and play. Know that there are no great men, so that you do not aspire to be one of those who do not exist. When you pass from Manhood to greatness, you will no longer be playing. First you must find the silence that is the music, and let your voice be rooted in it, so that you may sing from the force of this silence."

He has also said that he does not think his compositions are particularly clever (I, of course, would disagree). He does not fancy himself a cunning composer of complex harmony and melody, and as always bows to the classical masters on this front, especially Beethoven. However, cleverness is not the goal of continuous music.

His experience as a refugee, as one in poverty and as one briefly homeless, as one ignored by establishment, all of that, I am sure, has helped to keep his sight clear and his life free of most trappings of wealth or fame.

Eccentricity and obscurity

When describing Lubomyr to friends, I often hear jokes about his being a wizard in occultation (or words to that effect). Indeed, this wonderful interview from R. R. Parry describes Lubomyr as a source of divine music from a cave, hidden in the mountains.

Such an image fits him, in part; on the other hand, he is a very real human, passionate about films and cheap food, smoking a pipe and driving a car in the countryside; and he is full of humility and warmth (as I do keep saying) with no intention to hide himself away, sequester his knowledge or become aloof. But his eccentric tendencies do not go unnoticed. Continuous music and philosophy are at the forefront of his existence, his being, his perception of time, his physical interaction with the world, and his music is his unique gift to the world, this very precious thing that goes largely ignored (he is not at all a bitter man, but this will cause a man to have a certain perspective on things), and all of this comes out in his behaviour and the way he speaks. I love that, but I think it is quite true that it is detrimental for his cause. It is very easy, especially for a Westerner, to write him off. I want to reference this subpage again, where I expand more on these points.

Of course opinions on how 'good' the music is will vary, but I do find it striking that he has operated in such an inherently interesting way - you may feel free to disagree about whether or not the music is beautiful, but it is quite different - yet it took many years before the music really started to catch people's eye, with Peter Broderick and Nils Frahm being his most notable collaborators. Corollaries was a breakthrough album for him, but prior to and even since that he has been undeservedly ignored. His music always has been and will be the music of small places, the comforting town Church and cosy café venue, with quieter audiences that really listen; it will never be mainstream, and I do not expect it to be. I almost feel as if it shouldn't be. But we do wish it were heard, and preserved. He has toiled for decades wondering, so he has said, if his life has even had much meaning, if most of his CDs are lost or possessed by a scant few and almost none of his scores playable by another.

I am sure that very many artists have been in his position, as unsung heroes. In particular, he has struggled with the idea that the music will die when he does. Even such legends as Nils Frahm, who have celebrated what he does, have not really tried to push for people to learn it, or to continue to popularise his work years later. I suppose I cannot expect this of them, yet I expect it of myself and they are better than I. What gives? On Wikipedia it is said he has composed over 120 works, but where are they? Can anyone listen to them, or even list them? Even he would struggle to: I know from long experience that his house is quite chaotic, his scores "lost" in overflowing drawers and no fewer than forty different computers which he owns and has files stored on.

I believe there are two significant factors at play, here:

(1) the music demands (when really listened to or really performed) a great mental attention and peaceful coexistence of one with one's self, which everybody ought to be able to give but few do, or few want to or find the time to do

(2) his eccentricities are too easily misunderstood, his passion too easily mistaken for arrogance, and his philosophy too easily mistaken for crankery.

If you see comments under some of his videos and interviews, or reviews of old LPs, you can encounter comments dismissing either him as a person or dismissing his music as regurgitated arpeggios, fast scales and nowt else (you could describe any piece of music in such a banal way, but you would not describe it accurately).

There is a third significant factor. The actual nature of the technique, the actual specifics of the philosophy... these are necessarily incoherent. It is vicious: to know it, you have to play it, but to play it you have to know it, and the majority of the understanding comes with the non-verbal experience of play and mental-physical feelings, all of which fails to be really put into words. I, probably, will sound very incoherent at times, on this site, despite best intentions. One difference, though, is that I suspect Lubomyr does not quite understand this perception. All of his truths are obvious to him, but they were not obvious to me and I had to learn how to interpret him. I still am learning. One has to perceive the possibility of a truth behind the ostensible incoherence, and then you will see he makes a lot of sense... but this has taken me years of patience and good faith, which the casual onlooker would not have the time or will to give.

He is somewhat anti-establishment. He tilts against established science, technology and government, for the most part. Notable examples for me are his reluctance to use any OS published after Windows XP, or any music software since that time. Everything is done in CUBASE 94, and he bought me an XP laptop precisely so that I could use this exact version of CUBASE, so that he could more easily send me scores and recordings. He absolutely loathes over-digitisation, how it loses the high frequencies and the nuances of analogue sound; even analogue sound can upset him: he once said "if I did not have to eat, there would be no recordings".

The music is so pure and wonderful for him that, I think, it feels painful to condense it; painful to condense it into legible score or recordings. He has sent me so many emails about what the really good quality speakers are, how I should get them before all the hippies die off and this technology becomes resold at a much higher price... he is also just as passionate about film, about the good old days of noir film, before Netflix and the like introduced easily accessible brainfood. My mother and he spoke about this for about twenty minutes, before a concert, in a chicken 'n' chips shop (he completely refused to let us take him out to a restaurant or anything like that).

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