A quick sketch, done while immersed in one of the most memorable moments in my life. A kind of a souvenir. This is from Saint-Louis, a town close to the Mauritanian border in northern Senegal. Having spent a day discovering both new and more ancient art in the old town, getting to know local people, exploring streets and talking with various inspired artists as well as having just said bye to a dear friend of mine (until we meet again), I feel rather elevated and tender. I’m standing here by the ocean-front, just sensing the atmosphere – a vivid yet serene evening / the sun setting behind the Atlantic Ocean / kids running around and chasing goats and laughing / women in their elaborate dresses strolling by / a boy dumping the contents of his trash can straight into the ocean / the usual smell of garbage mixed with more exotic smells floating in the warm air / distant sounds of fishermen and mosques carried over the water / blended with evening birds and cicadas – and it is now that I finally realize I am here on a new continent, and it is exactly the right place to be in this moment. I feel deep joy, a revived sense of purpose settling in.

I wake up somewhere over the Sahara. Everything is dark and quiet, only a sound from the airplane engines is audible. We’ve left Madrid several hours ago, one hour late, and it must be few hours past midnight now on our flight to Dakar. Everyone around me is asleep but I’m unable to close my eyes anymore: tired of traveling all day, I just want to touch down on the continent, see how it might look down there with my own eyes, and travel to meet my friends. I lean forward and look out the window expecting to see nothing at this point: and there, somewhere in a vast darkness that is the Sahara Desert, a moon with a neon orange shine is climbing above the horizon. A neon orange moon, in the middle of this darkness! I look further up, and gradually the whole sky appears like an ocean of stars, shimmering in a fullness that moves this country boy grown under northern stars to few tears. Far below them, scattered lights on the ground – towns and villages one can only imagine about – in a sea of complex twinkling as if a reflection of the nature above. Here I am above West Africa, under the stars, somewhere in the infinite universe, with an orange moon as my companion.

Few realizations during the trip:

– I care and am passionate about music more than ever
– I couldn’t care less about current music industry/business/media
– I’m passionate about social development, humanity and contemporary art more than ever
– I want to combine my music/sound art practice with the world instead of music business or the art world. How?
– Human cooperation is the greatest wisdom/truth/ideology/act/theory/social media app there is – if there ever has to be one