Why do so many people believe “everything was better in the past”? Why do they even believe it was different? My son’s grandparents are about the same age as I am – my wife is only one year younger than my daughter from my first marriage – so I constantly… Read More
I often marvel at how my 12-year-old son doesn’t have any kind of “defined” musical taste. I, on the other hand, fell in love with rock music at the age of 10, though, to be fair, it wasn’t exactly hard back then. Many people—including myself—see the ’80s as one of… Read More
I have quite a few stories where I no longer remember the names of the people involved. Not because they didn’t matter — they did, very much so — but because their names were the least important thing about them. It’s as if the mind deliberately smudges out the trivial… Read More
I like sitting in the park. I used to play a game where I’d try to figure out people’s stories from the few words I caught from their conversations as they walked by. Where did they come from? What do they do? Are they married? Secret lovers? These days, people… Read More
I’d like to share a very brief story. The event itself is almost insignificant; what really matters is how such a trivial moment could be shaped into actual writing. First, I’ll tell the story; then I’ll show how it can be written with the help of artificial intelligence, even by… Read More
At eleven, the cinema was the only place where we could truly vanish. Not from the world – from ourselves. Darkness had a peculiar weight back then, a kind of layered significance. There were days when we rushed out of the 3:30 screening straight into another cinema for the 5:45,… Read More
It was April 1986. Springtime. The year that changed my life. I won a math competition, got accepted to the math program at a prestigious elite high school, and was even well-liked at school. By then, I’d had some fantastic concert experiences: I’d seen P. Mobil, Iron Maiden, and Depeche… Read More
I’ve always loved literature. This is, of course, a risky statement, because people who say that tend to have something a bit off about them. And yes, something is off. With me, at least. You see, I loved it for exactly the reason people usually mock: I loved imagining “the… Read More
If you’re starting to read this, it either means you have way too much time on your hands, or you don’t yet know what this is. Don’t worry, in either case you won’t regret anything — at worst you’ll waste a few minutes of your life. You would have squandered… Read More