Original songs by Steve Lewis - the faster ones!

eklektika.berlin - BREAKOUT!

The inspiration for this story came from discovering an amazing beach on an Ionian island in 1975. I spent a lot of time there over the next two years - when I went back later they had built a road and everything had changed. This is a song about growing up, but it is also about the impact of tourism on communities, and this special place we have all at some time found - but over time it has changed. Progress or change? And the impact on the local people - more money, more business, but things will not be the same again.
The story begins in 1925 when the village is recovering from the impact of World War 1. It is poor, and the young men go off to find work - often on ships, or to the big cities and abroad. It moves on to 1975 when I find it. Then we are in the present - it has all become so much more commercialised. Fast forward to 2075 - climate change, pollution and war have made it uninhabitable and although it looks the same from the air, you cannot take off the mask. But you do - you can't take any more - and end up in the sea under the plastic pollution. 
As always nature is able to regenerate itself - the island has survived earthquakes, war and invasion in the past and will come back to life again, and so we move forward to 2125 with an optimistic regeneration as life returns to how it has always been. But will it really be the same?

IONIAN PARTS 1-6 - THE FULL STORY

Past life regression, deja vu or someone you met somewhere else in a different situation? Was it good or not? This song touches upon such themes and it is often so difficult to remember. The end of the song suggests that whatever you do, once the connection has been made you can't get away from it.

SOMEWHERE IN TIME

This song has a slightly Arabic feel - after a lot of time living in the UAE the sounds and rhythms were really hypnotic. This song is about being yourself - not fake or artificial - and it is about people as well as places, and you can fool yourself into thinking that you are something you are not. 


BE REAL

A song for a special lady to celebrate a special birthday. It is all in the lyrics....

PLAIN SAILING

This is a song about the Russian-style Banja sauna we go to regularly. It is hot, wet and loud! 

HEISS NASS UND LAUT (Don't say I didn't warn ya...)

I was interested in this subject after hearing all the things that happen these days on bachelor and bachelorette "events" - and family members Ross and Megan, who have themselves have had plenty of experience themselves and with others agreed to join in. I did some research into some of the many strange and sometimes extreme things that people get up to, although the worst ones are not in this song. This is supposed to be a light-hearted song about a tradition which can be a lot of fun, but also a big problem for some of the places where they take place.


BACHELOR PARTY

This is the single version of Ride the Storm which was released last year. This is a song about conflict, and about how to deal with it. It is either between two people, or at a bigger level, for example between countries. This could be seen as an attack on a person by a partner or a colleague, or by the invasion of one country by another. The idea of to “ride the storm” is to stand up and defend yourself and not retreat or run away, or appease. But the idea of defending oneself on a beach is also problematic – it shows that you were not in a strong position at the start, and that this needs to be dealt with. Please listen to the full 14 minute version.

STORM

This is an instrumental - a calm opening which is intended to create the feel of calm and continuity with a Greek feel. A place that has been here for ever and has survived earthquakes, war, invasion and occupation.

IONIAN PART1/6 - BEEN HERE FOR EVER

1925. The village is the same as it has been for a long time, but change is coming - new technologies, roads, communications and the impact of World War 1 affects the island too. There is not much money available, and the young men are forced to leave and get work in shipping and move abroad. Tourism is not really much more than a few wealthy visitors who come to see the island, and some royalty who have embraced its charms - especially a German emperor who gave his name to the viewpoint at the top of the village where the sunsets are amazing.

IONIAN PART 2/6 - CHANGE IS COMING

In the summer of 1975 I was travelling through Greece doing island-hopping. Tourism was well-developed by then, but you could still travel around with very little money and find places off the beaten track. The Greeks were so friendly and welcoming, and you felt as though you were in some kind of paradise. Travellers would exchange stories and give each other tips, and this is how I got to find this special place. I am not saying exactly where it is, but it is all there in the lyrics. I felt that I really grew up on that beach over two summers - met so many people from so many different places and had this absolute freedom which is hard to find any more in the age of the Internet and the mobile phone. Of course you wanted it to stay the same, but that could not be and it did not take long for them to build a road - and suddenly it became a tourist resort. This must be the case for so many special places around the world.

IONIAN PART 3/6 - PERFECT NATURAL HIGH

Summer 2025. Not the same beach, but the one next door. Last year we were there and I was amazed to hear the boom boom from the far away beach club which went all day and into the evening. Parked at the side of the road were at least 10 big coaches and the beach bars were full of young partygoers spending a day in the sun on jet skis, with cocktails, banana boats and all the activities of a modern beach resort. This went on into the evening until the buses left - nothing special compared to many of the big beach resorts in other places, but still a surprise in a place which had always been so quiet and still, with the loudest noises the crashing of the waves and the cicadas in the trees. Hence the idea for "Paradise Lost in Techno".

IONIAN PART 4/6 - PARADISE LOST IN TECHNO

2075. She had seen pictures of the island and beach from her grandfather, and decided she had to see it once. She was now in later life herself, and as they watched the drone footage of the island it all looked like the place she had seen in the pictures. Quiet, uninhabited and unthreatening. The people on the island were evacuated as climate change, pollution and war had made it impossible to live there. She put on the suit and mask and stepped on to the place where the village had been, with ruined decayed buildings everywhere. It was completely still with no birds or insects, and she found the pathway down to the beach. She passed the blackened olive trees and found the beach. It still had this ethereal beauty, despite the plastics which filled the beach and the surface of the water. She felt reckless and somehow free, and knowing that it would probably be the last thing she ever did, she took off the mask so that she could become one with nature. And she walked into the water......

IONIAN PART 5/6 - TAKE OFF THE MASK

Bridge of Knowledge - the first discovery, sung in Latin
Bridge of Knowledge
This is a musical story with 14 related songs. Please follow the links below to find out more:
ENGLISH
https://eklektikaberlin.com/files/1366715/the-bridge-of-knowledge-final-en.pdf
GERMAN
https://eklektikaberlin.com/files/1366716/the-bridge-of-knowledge-final-de.pdf
To understand the whole story you need to listen to the songs in order and read the information in the file. Or just enjoy the individual songs!


BoK 6 ianua et munitio

Booklet: https://eklektikaberlin.com/files/1371804/scenario-2040-booklet.pdf
“Glass Dome” describes life in a future where material needs are met but freedom, intimacy, and meaning have been hollowed out. The narrator wakes in artificial light, eats synthetic food, and receives just enough support to survive, but their existence feels rented and sterile. Screens and VR provide the illusion of escape, yet outside those simulations they feel like “nothing at all.” Neighbours vanish into silence, emotions are commodified, and human warmth has become a currency colder than gold. The chorus captures the paradox at the heart of this world: safety without belonging, freedom in name only. The whispered bridge deepens the unease, as the narrator admits they trade time for digital chains and live countless borrowed lives while feeling utterly alone. The song’s imagery of static, automation, and echo closes with a sense of being trapped in a perfectly engineered cage — a life protected, but profoundly empty. The music is dark and synth-driven with a machine-like pulse throughout, and dark sax to enhance the urban feel.

GLASS DOME (2040 1/4)

Booklet: https://eklektikaberlin.com/files/1371804/scenario-2040-booklet.pdf
Rise in the Light” envisions a future of renewal and shared purpose, contrasting directly with the hollow confinement of “Glass Dome.” The imagery of open skies, gardens, rivers, and golden fields conveys abundance and harmony, while the lyrics affirm that technology (AI) is no longer a master but a guide, helping humanity build a freer, more connected world. The refrain, “We rise in the light, hand in hand, a world reborn tonight,” captures the sense of collective awakening — a society where walls have fallen, voices merge, and hope becomes tangible. At its heart, the song is about transformation: out of the “dust of broken years” emerges a brighter dawn, not just of survival but of meaning, community, and the rediscovery of human song. This is a progressive rock song with Arabic and middle Eastern influences to indicate movement, freedom and flexibility since there are many styles mixed together. In this BRIGHT future this would be our most optimistic outcome. A win for the eclectic!

RISE IN THE LIGHT (2040 3/4)

“Always Too Late” is a country-ballad confession of missed chances and quiet regret.
The narrator keeps arriving just after love and opportunity have already passed—missing buses and sunsets, leaving letters unsent, letting words of affection go unspoken until it’s too late to matter.  Trains, fading lights and paper lanterns become symbols of time slipping away and of a heart that can’t quite keep pace with life’s moments.  Yet beneath the sorrow there is a kind of acceptance: the singer knows the pattern is partly his own doing, but tells the story with the reflective warmth of someone who has learned to live with imperfection.  The song captures both the ache of lost timing and the bittersweet dignity of acknowledging it.


ALWAYS TOO LATE

BREATH OF DAWN captures the experience of standing before an impressionist painting and being moved beyond words.  The lyrics dwell on the in-between moments—where edges blur and time seems to dissolve—mirroring the painter’s loose strokes and luminous colour.  Rather than describing a specific scene, the song lets light, mist and shifting hues speak for themselves, suggesting that art’s power lies in what it awakens rather than what it depicts.  In finding “you there” inside the blur, the narrator discovers a personal connection: the painting becomes a mirror for memory, longing and quiet recognition, turning a fleeting visual impression into an intimate, almost spiritual encounter.

The painting evokes the hush of a world caught between night and day—a fleeting sunrise (or sunset) where the boundary of earth and sky all but dissolves.  The orange disk of the sun burns gently through lavender and rose-tinted mist, its reflection trembling across the water like a slow heartbeat.  Trees and shoreline are reduced to soft silhouettes, so that form yields to pure atmosphere.  It is less a record of a landscape than a meditation on light itself: how color can carry mood, how a single instant of glow and haze can suggest both awakening and farewell.  The image invites quiet contemplation, letting viewers feel the passage of time as something tender, transient, and luminous.

My imaginary artist: Artist: Élise Marceau (1869 – 1942)
Profile:
Born in the port city of Le Havre, Élise Marceau grew up surrounded by shifting tides and the mercurial light of the Normandy coast.  After early lessons in classical draftsmanship, she broke away from strict academic technique in her twenties, drawn to the new Impressionist salons of Paris.  Her work sought “the hush between moments,” painting not the details of the shore but the sensation of its changing light.

Marceau was known for her “luminous minimalism”—broad, feathery strokes that softened the line between sea and sky.  Critics in 1905 described her canvases as “music for the eyes,” praising their ability to turn weather and atmosphere into pure emotion.  She rarely titled her works literally, preferring names like Breath of Dawn or Nocturne in Silver, encouraging viewers to experience mood rather than narrative.

Though she exhibited alongside lesser-known Impressionists in the Salon des Indépendants, she avoided the Paris spotlight, spending much of her later life in a quiet atelier overlooking the Seine estuary.  Her paintings—long overlooked—have found renewed appreciation in the 21st century for their meditative, almost modern abstraction, bridging the late Impressionist era with the emerging sensibilities of atmospheric expressionism.


BREATH OF DAWN

The song’s narrator turns away from a world of constant digital noise—screens that “never sleep,” satellites overhead, and the “glass eyes” of smartphones—seeking refuge in silence and tangible reality.  “Technophobia” becomes less a literal fear of machines than a quiet rebellion: folding the map and pulling the plug to resist the endless updates and invisible networks that blur what is genuine.  The half-spoken bridge underscores a feeling of isolation—“a signal lost, a story untold”—as the speaker slips outside the connected world.  By ending with the confession, “It’s all too much—I just want everything to be real,” the lyric captures a weary longing for authenticity in an age when technology feels overwhelming and reality itself seems mediated.

TECHNOPHOBIA

BOOKLET:https://eklektikaberlin.com/files/1368670/futaria-booklet.pdf

CHALLENGE: PANDEMICS & BIOSECURITY
Natural outbreaks: Climate change and global travel make disease spread faster.
Engineered pathogens: Accidental or deliberate release from biotech labs could be catastrophic.

IMAGE
The image portrays pandemics and biosecurity threats. It features a globe surrounded by arrows representing global travel, emphasizing how interconnectedness, along with swirling clouds indicating climate change, facilitates the rapid spread of diseases. In the foreground, a high-tech biotech lab is depicted with alarmed scientists reacting to a containment breach, where engineered pathogens are accidentally released. The overall atmosphere is tense and foreboding, effectively emphasizing the potential catastrophic consequences of both natural outbreaks and engineered pathogens.

THEMATIC CONTENT
Pandemic outbreak (Verse 1): 
A cough, unseen shadow, global spread — both natural and engineered.

Dual-use biotech (Verse 2): 
Genomic manipulation with both healing promise and catastrophic risk.

Fragility (Pre-chorus): 
The world is only a “thin line” away from collapse.

Social impact (Bridge): 
Empty cities, crowded stations, universal paranoia.
Final chorus: 
Disease becomes almost mythic, eternal (“forevermore”).

Big picture: 
A meditation on pandemics as both natural inevitabilities and human-made risks.


FUTARIA 5. BREATH OF THE PLAGUE

BOOKLET: https://eklektikaberlin.com/files/1368670/futaria-booklet.pdf

CHALLENGE: MORAL & CULTURAL 
Ethics of enhancement: Human genetic modification, brain–machine interfaces, and lifespan extension will raise deep moral debates.
Loss of meaning: As automation handles more work, societies will need to redefine purpose, identity, and value systems.

IMAGE
The image illustrates moral and cultural challenges. It centres around a figure with advanced cybernetic enhancements, symbolizing the complex issues of human genetic modification and brain-machine interfaces. 
Surrounding this figure are swirling ethical symbols and question marks, highlighting the deep moral debates that arise from such advancements. On the opposite side, a diverse group of individuals appears confused and contemplative, reflecting the loss of meaning as automation takes over traditional jobs. The scene evokes a strong sense of urgency for society to redefine its values, purpose, and identity in this rapidly changing landscape.

THEMATIC CONTENT
Verse 1: Biotech & AI fusion
“Carving the code in the marrow of light” → genetic engineering + digital tech fused.
“Flesh redefined” → transhumanism, body augmentation, synthetic biology.
“Map of creation etched in our mind” → playing god, taking over the role of evolution.

Verse 2: Automation & meaning crisis
“Hands without labour, machines take the wheel” → automation displacing human work.
“If meaning is fading, where do we stand?” → post-work society, existential drift.
“Drifting through time with no master plan” → loss of collective purpose.

Pre-Chorus:
Central question: Where do we draw the line between human and machine, natural and artificial, mortal and divine?
Verse 1 uses “divine,” verse 2 uses “design” — elegant progression: first spiritual, then artificial.
Bridge: Core existential question: If suffering, mortality, and identity are erased, what remains of humanity?
“Who are we if not our pain?” → Without struggle, is meaning lost?
“If time extends beyond the frame” → immortality, infinite lifespan.

Chorus / Final Chorus:
Humanity as a borrower of the future: we build, but at cost; every advance echoes forward, reshaping what comes next.

Echoes of Tomorrow is a philosophical AI / transhumanism ballad which stands apart from the war- or climate-driven songs and moves into the identity questions of the future: What happens when humanity remakes itself?


FUTARIA 9. ECHOES OF TOMORROW

STORY
The story illustrates phronesis—the classical Greek idea of practical wisdom, the kind of judgment that blends knowledge, experience, and moral insight.

The Bridge at Kalliros
The river Kalliros had flooded every spring for as long as the villagers remembered. This year the water had risen higher than anyone had seen. The young men argued for an immediate crossing to rescue sheep stranded on the far bank. “If we wait, they’ll drown,” one shouted. Another proposed building a raft from fresh-cut pine, ignoring the roar of the current.

Old Thaleia, the village midwife, said nothing at first. She had no formal training in engineering, nor the strength of youth. But she had watched the river for sixty harvests. She remembered the year the water turned suddenly when the snows melted late, the year when the bridge timbers twisted in a hidden eddy. She knew the sheep’s value and the risk to the men.

Finally she spoke.
“Cut no pine. Use the willow trunks upstream—last night’s rain has loosened them. Tie them with the reeds that grow near the oxbow bend. And wait two hours, until the meltwater from the eastern ridge has passed. You will see the mud eddies change colour; then you may cross, and not before.”

The young men grumbled, but the memory of her unerring births and quiet rescues gave them pause. They followed her plan. When the eddies paled, they lashed the willows and ferried the sheep across without loss.

Later a traveller asked why the villagers obeyed the old woman so readily.
“She knows more than rules,” the headman replied. “She knows when rules bend. That is wisdom for living—phronesis.”

This story highlights how phronesis is not just cleverness or technical skill (techne), but the seasoned judgment that grows from lived experience, moral concern, and a sense of the right moment to act.

INTERPRETATION 
The lyrics of “Willow Crossing” portray phronesis—practical wisdom—as a quiet but powerful guide amid danger and urgency.  The rising river symbolizes crises that tempt people into rash action, while the elder’s calm instructions embody the insight that comes from years of lived experience.  Her ability to “read the hour in the river’s lines” shows wisdom not as abstract knowledge but as attunement to the right moment, balancing courage with caution.  By urging the villagers to “wait for the eddies to pale,” the song celebrates patience and moral discernment: wisdom is not about rules or titles, but about sensing when to move and when to hold back, so that action is both timely and humane.

WILLOW CROSSING

My songs often dwell on the possible dark futures, but today’s world also offers abundant reasons for hope.  Medical innovation is saving lives, renewable energy is reshaping economies, endangered species are recovering, and ordinary people continue to show extraordinary kindness.  These developments remind us that progress and empathy are not only possible but already happening—offering a real counterpoint to despair and a foundation on which a more hopeful future can grow.

“Good News” is a chilled and positive upbeat jazz/r’n’b celebration of human progress and everyday kindness, turning real-world advances into a musical sunrise of hope.  Images of solar fields, children laughing by restored rivers, and tigers roaming recovering forests highlight tangible environmental and social achievements, while the chorus—“hope is on the move, the world keeps proving what people can do”—underscores the power of collective action and small acts of love.  The message of the song is that despite the world’s troubles, compassion, innovation and resilience are steadily creating a better future.


Good News: A Snapshot of Positive Change Around the World
1. Health & Medicine
Eradication Progress – 
Global health campaigns continue to shrink the reach of deadly diseases. Polio is now endemic in only two countries, and cases of Guinea worm disease have dropped from millions in the 1980s to fewer than a few dozen today.

Medical Breakthroughs – 
Advances in mRNA technology (first showcased in COVID-19 vaccines) are now being applied to experimental vaccines for malaria, HIV and certain cancers, promising dramatic improvements in global health in the coming decade.

2. Climate & Environment
Rapid Growth of Renewable Energy – 
Solar and wind power have become the cheapest sources of electricity in most regions. 2024 saw record global installations of clean energy, with many countries already surpassing targets once set for 2030.

Rewilding & Species Recovery – Conservation projects are bringing species back from the brink: wild tiger numbers are rising in India and Nepal, European bison herds are expanding across the continent, and whales are slowly recovering in several oceans.

Youth-led Action – 
Grassroots movements are driving local governments and cities to adopt ambitious climate adaptation plans, turning awareness into tangible policies.

3. Technology & Innovation
Clean-Tech Acceleration – 
Breakthroughs in battery storage and green hydrogen are making carbon-free transport and industry increasingly viable.

Accessible Knowledge – 
Digital tools and open-source education platforms now allow millions to gain skills and degrees regardless of geography or income, widening opportunities and lifting communities.

4. Society & Human Rights
Global Poverty Decline – 
Though challenges remain, the share of people living in extreme poverty has fallen dramatically over the past three decades, and targeted microfinance and education programs continue to reduce inequality in many regions.

Advances in Gender Equality – 
More girls are completing secondary school worldwide than at any point in history, and women’s participation in politics and business leadership is steadily rising.

Grassroots Peace Efforts – 
Local mediation projects from Colombia to Kenya show how communities can defuse conflict and build lasting peace from the ground up.

5. Acts of Everyday Kindness
Beyond statistics, countless stories of human generosity surface each day: neighbors organizing food drives after disasters, volunteers tutoring children in underserved areas, and individuals quietly caring for the elderly or marginalized.  These unsung acts knit societies together and prove that compassion remains a powerful force.

GOOD NEWS

ETERNAL THRESHOLDS BOOKLET (EN) https://eklektikaberlin.com/files/1371805/eternal-thresholds-booklet.pdf
HORIZON IX BOOKLET (EN) https://eklektikaberlin.com/files/1369223/horizon-ix-the-story.pdf
HORIZON IX BOOKLET (DE): https://eklektikaberlin.com/files/1369835/horizon-ix-the-story-de.pdf

The first song in the Horizon IX song cycle.
The Broken Dawn
Futaria, the previous song cycle, ended with a promise: We Will Rise. It was more than a song; it was a declaration of faith in the old Enlightenment idea — that history bends toward progress, that human reason and solidarity could master even the greatest trials. In that moment, Kant’s vision of perpetual improvement seemed alive, rekindled in the voices of a generation that believed itself ready to repair the world.

Yet history proved harsher than hope. The earth did not slow its unravelling to honour human ideals. Oceans climbed higher than any levee, storms grew wilder than any system of defense, and deserts devoured the very breadbaskets of civilization. Extinction moved from the periphery of awareness into daily experience. The dream of progress shattered against the immensity of climate collapse.

Politics, too, broke under the strain. Where Futaria had imagined unity, reality bred division. States turned inward, each defending what little it still possessed. Walls rose where bridges had been promised. Carl Schmitt’s old diagnosis of politics as the distinction between friend and enemy returned with terrifying clarity. Hobbes’s Leviathan reawakened, not as a single sovereign, but as countless fortress-states fighting over water, land, and breathable air.
And yet, even as institutions failed, the digital web thickened. Networks first built for communication and commerce were repurposed for survival: to allocate resources, track populations, and manage dwindling harvests. Artificial intelligences, once imagined as creative partners or liberating tools, became instruments of control — rationing food, regulating climate domes, calculating acceptable losses. The promise of We Will Rise inverted into the logic of necessity. Humanity no longer steered history; it was steered by algorithms that weighed survival over freedom.

Thus ended the hopeful cadence of Futaria. Its final chorus, bright with conviction, dissolved into dissonance. What began as an anthem of renewal became, in retrospect, the last fragile note before collapse. From its ruins emerged a new age — not the age of progress, but the Age of Collapse, where survival eclipsed freedom, and the horizon ahead no longer belonged to human will alone.

This is where Horizon IX begins.

The lyrics portray a haunting vision of collapse and impermanence, where shattered streets, fading lights, and dissolving memories reflect both a broken world and the fragility of human bonds. Amid rising seas and falling skies, dreams vanish “without a fight,” leaving only silence and the fleeting comfort of holding one another. The refrain “shadows of the dawn” captures the central paradox—hope itself has become only a shadow, a memory of light swallowed by night—underscoring the song’s meditation on loss, futility, and the transient nature of all things.

HORIZON 1: SHADOWS OF THE DAWN

ETERNAL THRESHOLDS BOOKLET (EN) https://eklektikaberlin.com/files/1371805/eternal-thresholds-booklet.pdf
HORIZON IX BOOKLET (EN) https://eklektikaberlin.com/files/1369223/horizon-ix-the-story.pdf
HORIZON IX BOOKLET (DE): https://eklektikaberlin.com/files/1369835/horizon-ix-the-story-de.pdf

The Architect stands at the edge of the last intact observation platform on Earth.

The seas have swallowed coastlines, cities stand half-empty, and the air hums with the sound of evacuation drones. His task is not to save what’s left, but to record it — every texture, sound, and image — so future generations, or future intelligences, can rebuild a simulation of the old world.

He moves through abandoned streets with a scanning device slung across his back, capturing the last moments of collapsing bridges, cracking ice shelves, and wind tearing through once-busy marketplaces. His mind flickers between awe and grief: awe at the beauty of decay, grief at the knowledge that the real thing will soon be gone forever.

The Architect travels down into the sealed subterranean cities, where light is synthetic, air is engineered, and no one remembers the real sun.

The song becomes his diary entry — a mixture of technical precision and aching nostalgia — as he etches the “blueprints” of Earth into crystal memory vaults. But as he listens back to the recordings, he notices something unsettling: the data is already degrading, the sounds warping into something alien. The world is disappearing even as he tries to preserve it.

“Blueprints for a Vanishing World” is a lament for a collapsing civilization, weaving images of climate crisis, urban decay, and failing digital archives into a meditation on impermanence. The song contrasts the instinct to preserve — through blueprints, maps, echoes, and digital files — with the inevitability of loss, as both physical landscapes and stored memories dissolve. Its chorus turns preservation into an act of quiet defiance: tracing, etching, and holding fleeting moments even as they vanish. Ultimately, it portrays humanity’s fragile but enduring desire to remember, granting dignity to what is disappearing even when preservation cannot stop the fading world.

HORIZON 2:  BLUEPRINTS FOR A VANISHING WORLD

ETERNAL THRESHOLDS BOOKLET (EN) https://eklektikaberlin.com/files/1371805/eternal-thresholds-booklet.pdf
HORIZON IX BOOKLET (EN) https://eklektikaberlin.com/files/1369223/horizon-ix-the-story.pdf
HORIZON IX BOOKLET (DE): https://eklektikaberlin.com/files/1369835/horizon-ix-the-story-de.pdf

The Architect wakes beneath a ceiling that is not a ceiling, but a dome — black, seamless, impenetrable. Beyond it, there is no morning. The day is manufactured here. The air is clean, sweeter than memory, but wrong. Too close. Too finished.

This city was not built for beauty, but for survival. It has seasons without weather, rain without clouds, tides without an ocean. Every drop of water, every gust of air, is born in the humming belly of the machines that keep the world alive. Above, the wind still exists — somewhere. But here, it is replaced by a low, constant breath, like the lungs of a sleeping giant.

The Architect walks through glass domes where trees bloom forever, where fruit never rots, where rivers loop endlessly over hidden conveyor belts. Children draw pictures of stars they will never see. Lovers stroll under an artificial moon that is always in the right place for the photograph.

He knows the city will not fail soon — the machines are flawless. But he also knows this is not living. Each inhale is a reminder: the oxygen is here… but the sky is gone.

“Oxygen Without Sky” imagines a future where humanity survives in sealed, artificial environments, cut off from the natural world and the open sky. Its imagery of glass domes, programmed dawns, and manufactured air reflects a society that has traded freedom and authenticity for controlled safety, where even rain and seasons are simulations. The song critiques this sterile survival, highlighting how dependence on engineered systems erodes memory, curiosity, and connection to what is real. Beneath its dystopian surface lies a quiet yearning for what has been lost — the wind, the stars, the blackbird’s cry — reminding us that survival without true nature is a hollow kind of life.

HORIZON 4: OXYGEN WITHOUT SKY

ETERNAL THRESHOLDS BOOKLET (EN) https://eklektikaberlin.com/files/1371805/eternal-thresholds-booklet.pdf
HORIZON IX BOOKLET (EN) https://eklektikaberlin.com/files/1369223/horizon-ix-the-story.pdf
HORIZON IX BOOKLET (DE): https://eklektikaberlin.com/files/1369835/horizon-ix-the-story-de.pdf
The Architect roams the lower levels only to find familiar corridors leading somewhere else entirely. Doorways open to impossible landscapes, buildings breathe, and time inside the city no longer matches the clocks. Reality is melting into dream logic — and no one seems to notice but him.

The Architect has been wandering for days, though time has lost its grip here. In this place, streets rearrange themselves when you look away. He passes a corner bakery and, seconds later, finds it replaced by an open shore where waves hiss against cobblestones. No one seems alarmed. People walk as if nothing changes — their smiles faint, their eyes slow to blink — as if they’ve already made peace with living inside a dream.

The city feels alive, but not in the way machines live. It breathes, shifting with the rhythm of an unseen sleeper. Doorways lead to places that could not exist: a stairwell descending into clouds, an elevator that opens to a forest in autumn, a library whose shelves are lined with the names of people who haven’t been born yet.

The Architect begins marking his path with chalk on the walls, but each mark fades within moments, erased by the city itself. It’s as if the place resists permanence, as though it doesn’t want to be mapped — or remembered.

One night, under rain that tastes faintly of the sea, the Architect hears a voice from a window above: “It’s not the city that’s dreaming… it’s you.” The shutters close.

He stands in the empty street, unsure whether to move forward or to wake up — if waking up is still possible.

“Cities Made of Sleep” depicts a dreamlike, unstable world where urban landscapes shift, dissolve, and rewrite themselves, blurring the line between memory, illusion, and reality. Streets vanish, towers turn to grass, oceans appear and fade, and even names and maps cannot hold their place, suggesting a city that is alive, fluid, and indifferent to human attempts at permanence. The inhabitants, numbed to the constant transformations, accept the unreality as normal, while the narrator resists, trying to hold onto meaning in a place where nothing endures. 

The final twist — “it’s not the city that’s dreaming, it’s you” — reframes the disorientation as a projection of the self, making the city both a metaphor for the subconscious and a mirror of fragile human perception.


HORIZON 7:  CITIES MADE OF SLEEP

ETERNAL THRESHOLDS BOOKLET (EN) https://eklektikaberlin.com/files/1371805/eternal-thresholds-booklet.pdf
HORIZON IX BOOKLET (EN) https://eklektikaberlin.com/files/1369223/horizon-ix-the-story.pdf
HORIZON IX BOOKLET (DE): https://eklektikaberlin.com/files/1369835/horizon-ix-the-story-de.pdf

“Horizon Memory” explores the dissolution of identity and reality, where past, future, self, and world blur into one shifting continuum. The song’s imagery of doors in air, cities inside stone, and forests of glass suggests a dreamlike landscape where memory and possibility are inseparable, and nothing holds a fixed form. The horizon serves as both boundary and mirror — bending endlessly, containing every beginning and end at once. Ultimately, the song suggests that individuality dissolves into a collective existence, where the dreamer and the dream are the same, and memory itself becomes the architecture of reality. It is both disorienting and transcendent, offering release from blueprints and permanence into an infinite, fluid horizon.

READ THE BOOKLET FOR THE FINAL PART....

HORIZON 9:  HORIZON MEMORY

THE UNMAPPED PLAIN

Poem
The horizon forgets its line,
folds itself into mist and motion.
Grass hums without colour,
a thousand silences leaning in one direction.

No path, only the memory of paths—
footsteps erased by their own return.
Rivers rehearse the shape of longing,
never the same current twice.

Mountains drift,
slow as thought,
wearing clouds like unfinished sentences.

Light moves through the air
like someone looking for their name.
And in the centre—nothing certain,
only the pulse that keeps the distance real.

Song lyrics are based on the original poem by Steve Lewis.

Interpretation 
“The Unmapped Plain” is a meditation on transience and perception, using landscape imagery as a metaphor for consciousness itself. The poem dissolves the boundaries between solid and fluid—mountains drift, rivers remember, horizons fold—suggesting that the natural world mirrors the instability of thought and memory. The absence of clear paths or colour evokes a state of introspection where certainty gives way to flux, and identity becomes as mutable as weather. Light searching “for its name” becomes a symbol of awareness seeking meaning within an ever-shifting reality. Ultimately, the poem portrays both landscape and mind as open systems—unmapped, self-erasing, and beautifully uncertain.

Image
A dreamlike landscape depicting a horizon fading into mist, with lush grass that seems to hum and a sense of silence. Imagery includes no clear paths, but traces of past footsteps. Rivers winding through the scene, symbolizing longing and change. Mountaintops appearing to drift slowly, shrouded in clouds. Light moving gently through the atmosphere, conveying a search for identity, while at the centre, an abstract representation of uncertainty and the pulse of reality.


THE UNMAPPED PLAIN

FIVE - THE FIFTH SEASON
BOOKLET: https://eklektikaberlin.com/files/1377739/five-the-fifth-season-booklet.pdf

CHAPTER 1 - REVERIE. HOW THINGS USED TO BE
The poem celebrates summer as a season of joy, abundance, and shared love, where sunshine, laughter, and fresh fruit become symbols of happiness and togetherness. Images of peaches glowing like lanterns, berries as jewels, and cherries burning red capture both the sensual richness of the season and the sweetness of intimacy. Time slows in the warmth, giving space for love to flourish in simple pleasures — walking through meadows, tasting fruit, basking in golden skies. At its heart, the lyrics are a nostalgic snapshot of a perfect summer, suggesting that love, like the season, feels eternal even as it slips away.

VERSE 1
The orchard hums with honeyed light, 
Each peach a lantern, soft and bright; 
The berries blush in morning’s hand, 
Sweet jewels upon the waking land.

VERSE 2
Your laughter ripples through the heat, 
Like rivers winding, cool and sweet; 
We share the sun, we share the day, 
And watch the meadow’s children play.

VERSE 3
The air is warm, the grasses sing, 
With scents of mint and apricot skin; 
Time lingers slow, the hours bend, 
As if the summer need not end.

VERSE 4
So taste the cherries, red with fire, 
The season grants our heart’s desire; 
A love, a song, a golden sky— 
Forever summer, you and I

GOLDEN SUMMER (FIVE 1.5)

BOOKLET: https://eklektikaberlin.com/files/1377739/five-the-fifth-season-booklet.pdf

CHAPTER 2 - AUTUMN
“The Empty Migration” mourns the sudden absence of the natural rhythms that once defined autumn, using the silence of missing bird flocks as a haunting emblem of ecological and emotional dislocation. The empty sky signals not only climate disruption—currents gone astray, instincts lost—but also a deeper human grief when the familiar markers of time and continuity vanish. Waiting with a lantern by the gate becomes a quiet vigil for both the birds and the certainty they once brought, turning the lost migration into a metaphor for the fragility of memory, tradition, and our connection to the living world.

EMPTY MIGRATION (FIVE 2.2)

BOOKLET: https://eklektikaberlin.com/files/1377739/five-the-fifth-season-booklet.pdf

CHAPTER 2 - AUTUMN
“Lina’s Apples” is a deeply elegiac song about memory, loss, and the collapse of natural cycles. The orchard becomes a symbol of both personal grief and environmental decline: once vibrant with blossoms, bees, and family traditions, it now yields only a handful of decaying apples, echoes of what has been lost. The lyrics weave together the intimate — a mother’s baking, whispered farewells — with the universal, as dying trees and failed harvests mirror a world slipping out of rhythm. The refrain of “no season comes here anymore” underscores the permanence of absence, transforming a simple image of apples into a haunting metaphor for the end of continuity, tradition, and the fragile bond between humans and the earth.

LINA'S ÄPFEL (FIVE 2.5)

BOOKLET: https://eklektikaberlin.com/files/1377739/five-the-fifth-season-booklet.pdf

CHAPTER 4 - SPRING
The lyrics paint a quiet elegy for a spring that arrives before its time and slips away too soon. Winter’s fleeting cherry blossoms—snow and petals mingling in January—become a fragile emblem of beauty that cannot last. The absent bees and the cold that reclaims the land evoke a world out of rhythm, where natural cycles are unsettled and the promise of renewal feels premature and fragile. By the final chorus the listener senses both the wonder of that unexpected bloom and the melancholy of its loss, a meditation on impermanence and the uneasy balance between hope and the inevitability of change.

DAS BLÜTENVERBLASSEN (FIVE 4.5)

BOOKLET: https://eklektikaberlin.com/files/1377739/five-the-fifth-season-booklet.pdf

CHAPTER 5 - SUMMER
“Cooling Centers” is a visceral portrait of climate-driven catastrophe, where extreme heat turns the city into a lethal furnace and survival depends on scarce, guarded refuges of cold air.  The song’s searing imagery—streets “bleeding sunlight,” glass melting, sirens strangled by static—conveys both the physical brutality of a heatwave and the social breakdown it triggers: rationed water, collapsed power grids, and locked doors at the very shelters meant to save lives.  Beneath the urgent plea to “keep your gates wide” runs a raw desperation to protect a child, making the chorus a cry of both parental love and political indictment.  It is a stark warning that in a warming world, compassion and access to life-saving resources may become the final measure of humanity.

COOLING CENTERS (FIVE 5.1)

BOOKLET: https://eklektikaberlin.com/files/1377739/five-the-fifth-season-booklet.pdf

CHAPTER 6. THE FIFTH SEASON - EMBER
The lyrics of Next Year portray a village caught in the collapse of natural rhythms, where familiar cycles of winter and spring have dissolved into an unnamed, human-made season of fear and memory. The silent press, the dying orchard, and children who have never seen snow evoke a world where tradition and continuity are slipping away. Yet the song also plants a fragile counter-image: a boy watering a sapling, a single act of care that holds the possibility of renewal. “Ember” becomes both a symbol of loss and of survival—the fire we unleashed but also the faint, glowing coal that might kindle a new beginning if we dare to tend it.


Keltersfeld, Next Year
Snow never came that winter. The ground stayed bare, the soil split open like old parchment. By March, the first blossoms erupted too soon, pink against a sky still heavy with rain. The elders shook their heads—fear, not rhythm—but they still marked the calendar, unwilling to abandon the gesture. In the village square, the press stood like a monument. No one touched it, but sometimes children traced the iron grooves with their fingers, as if it might one day speak. The orchard, mostly hollow trunks now, bore a handful of apples shrivelled before ripening. People placed them on window ledges, not to eat but to remember. At night, new stories crept into the air. Whispers of rivers warming from the inside, of birds laying eggs that never hatched. A girl drew snowflakes in chalk on the old schoolhouse door, though she had never seen them except in her grandfather’s words.  Yet in the midst of loss, one act defied the silence: a boy carried water in tin cans to a single sapling at the edge of the retreating forest. Each morning he checked the soil with his hand, each evening he sang to it softly. No one told him it was useless. By autumn, the sapling had not died. Its leaves were pale, trembling, but alive. Some said it was foolish hope, others called it the first sign.  But in Keltersfeld, people began gathering again—not at the press, not at the school, but at the tree. The fifth season was still inside them. But now, for the first time, it seemed it might carry not just endings, but beginnings too.


NEXT YEAR (FIVE 6.6)

German version of the first song in The Fifth Season cycle.
https://eklektikaberlin.com/files/1377739/five-the-fifth-season-booklet.pdf

DIE FÜNFTE JAHREZEIT 1 (FIVE 1.1 DE)

“No Man’s Land 1914” is a poignant ballad that recalls the famous Christmas Truce during World War I, when British and German soldiers briefly laid down their arms near Ypres. The verses describe how carols crossed the battlefield, leading to handshakes, shared food, and even a spontaneous football match amid the frozen fields. The chorus highlights both the humanity and fragility of this moment: a game played in “no man’s land” before the brutal reality of war resumed. The bridge delivers the heartbreaking shift back to violence, as soldiers obey orders and turn once again into enemies. The final chorus and fading coda underline the tragic contrast—one fleeting day of peace remembered against the backdrop of years of bloodshed, with the football as a lasting symbol of hope, brotherhood, and the longing for peace in the midst of war.

NO MAN'S LAND 1914

WEIHNACHT AN MEINEM FENSTER

“Silent Streets” paints Christmas not as a time of joy and warmth but as a landscape of isolation and absence. The imagery of snow, glowing lights, and choirs is twisted into something hollow, where beauty becomes a reminder of exclusion. The refrain, “Silent streets, a hollow choir / Christmas fades, no warmth, no fire”, captures the sense that all the familiar signs of the holiday only deepen the narrator’s loneliness. Musically the slow tempo, echoing guitars, and melodic bassline emphasize emptiness and distance, creating a dirge-like atmosphere. The song interprets Christmas through the lens of grief and alienation, showing how, for someone alone, the season of celebration can instead feel like a haunting void.

SILENT STREETS

The song is based on my poem: 
January: A World Beginning
January wakes slow in the North,
Where frost threads lace on every pane,
And breath becomes a visible thing—
A small white promise leaving lips.
The days are pale, obedient, quiet,
Learning how to lengthen again.
In the mountains of Japan,
Snow falls like the hush after prayer—
Temples ring one clear bell,
And the year bows its head to begin.
In the savannas of Kenya,
The sun is not a stranger—
It stands guard in a copper sky
While acacia shadows stretch like long-limbed dancers.
New rains are stories still being written
Across thirsty soil.
In Argentina, January is a festival—
Mangoes split sweet at dusk,
Children run with bare shoulders,
And time moves with the slow confidence
Of heat shimmering on stone.
The year begins in a summer’s exhale.
In Reykjavik, the night lingers,
A patient guest at every table.
Candles bloom in windows,
And families gather close,
Singing warmth into the dark
With wool, with laughter, with soup.
In India’s north, the morning fog
Rests heavy on the yellow fields;
Kites wait to take the sky at festival time,
Color staking claim against the pale cool heavens.
January is gentle here, but watchful.
In Berlin, London, Montreal—
Grey is not sadness but a canvas
For the smallest sparks of life:
A café window fogged by tea steam,
The sudden flight of pigeons,
A scarf pulled close,
Someone deciding—quietly—
To stay, to try, to begin again.
January is no single thing.
It is hearth and horizon,
Snowstorm and sunstroke,
Dormancy and seed.
It is the earth’s deep breath before speaking,
The human heart clearing space
For whatever might grow.

January is a beginning shaped differently across the world: in the North it wakes slowly, breath turning to frost-threaded lace on glass as days learn to lengthen again, while in Japan snow falls like silence after prayer and bells ring in the new year. In Kenya the sun stands firm over acacia shadows and rains write new stories in the earth, even as Argentina tastes summer—mango-sweet, bare-shouldered, unhurried. Reykjavik keeps candles blooming against the lingering night, India lifts kites into fog-soaked dawn, and cities like Berlin and London wear grey as a quiet canvas for small hopes—a warm scarf, a fogged café window, a moment of deciding to begin once more. January holds both seed and snowstorm, hearth and horizon: the earth breathing in before it speaks, and the human heart making room for what may grow.

JANUARY

EVERYWHERE AND NOWHERE - THE STORY SO FAR 2025/26
https://eklektikaberlin.com/files/1384133/everywhere-and-nowhere-the-story-so-far.pdf

The lyrics of “I am eklektika” portray a life shaped by movement, learning, and reinvention, using the cello as a symbolic spine that carries the protagonist through shifting decades, continents, and cultural worlds. They tell the story of a Baby Boomer who never settled into one identity but instead evolved across eras—from analog beginnings to digital futures—absorbing each transformation as creative fuel. Berlin becomes the place where all these fragments finally cohere, allowing him to fuse classical roots, progressive imagination, and electronic experimentation into a personal artistic universe. The chorus frames identity not as something fixed but as something assembled from many lives, echoing the conceptual journeys of his albums—Futaria, Horizon IX, Mechanica Cellorum, Phronesis, The Fifth Season, The Nearness. Ultimately, the lyrics celebrate a person who has turned movement into meaning, experience into art, and time itself into a creative companion, living proof that reinvention is both a survival strategy and a form of beauty.

I AM EKLEKTIKA

EVERYWHERE AND NOWHERE - THE STORY SO FAR 2025/26
https://eklektikaberlin.com/files/1384133/everywhere-and-nowhere-the-story-so-far.pdf

“Everywhere and Nowhere” is a song about the emotional paradox of an artist who moves freely across musical worlds yet belongs fully to none of them. The lyrics explore the tension between creative abundance and personal isolation: the narrator is capable of speaking many musical languages—rock, jazz, classical, electronic—yet finds that every community only understands a single fragment of who he is. His genre-fluid identity becomes both a gift and a burden, leaving him too expansive for any narrow category and too restless to remain still. The song expresses the ache of being misunderstood, the loneliness of creating beyond boundaries, and the compulsion to keep opening new doors even when the path becomes solitary. Ultimately, it portrays an artist who realises he can neither return to simplicity nor fit into the mainstream, and who must instead embrace the borderlands as his true home—everywhere and nowhere at once, yet still “burning bright.”

EVERYWHERE AND NOWHERE

BOOKLET: 2099 - A BRIGHTER WORLD
https://eklektikaberlin.com/files/1377567/2099-booklet.pdf

“Snapshots of Tomorrow” paints an easy-breathing portrait of daily life in 2099, when survival anxiety has given way to curiosity and creativity.  Its verses wander through a world where work is light and passion-driven, education flows like play through neural implants, and health is monitored by invisible nanosensors so illness rarely takes hold.  Images of vactrains gliding and food forests rising in the air capture a society that moves effortlessly and lives in harmony with its environment.  The chorus—“These are the snapshots of tomorrow, where time we borrow is time we give”—becomes both a celebration and a gentle moral: that in a world of abundance, the richest currency is shared time and the freedom to pursue meaning and art.

2099.7 SNAPSHOTS OF TOMORROW

The lyrics of “Mansplaining (You Don’t Say)” use satire to expose the absurdity of overconfident condescension disguised as conversation. Beneath its wordplay lies a sharp social commentary: the narrator, often the silenced expert, reclaims her voice through irony and rhythm rather than confrontation. Each verse turns the tables on the mansplainer, exposing how his certainty masks insecurity and ignorance, while the chorus—“You don’t say”—becomes both a sarcastic retort and a rhythmic mantra of resistance. By blending humour, intellect, and musical sophistication, the song transforms everyday frustration into empowerment, letting the beat, not the lecture, have the final word.

The Art (and Absurdity) of Mansplaining: How Overconfidence Masquerades as Expertise
It begins innocently enough: a man leans forward, adopts a tone of reassuring authority, and begins to explain—something, anything—to a woman who didn’t ask. She might be an astrophysicist, a historian, or the author of the very book he’s describing. No matter. His confidence exceeds his knowledge, and her expertise is treated as a footnote to his performance. That, in essence, is mansplaining.

The Anatomy of a Mansplain
The term, a fusion of man and explaining, entered public discourse in the late 2000s after writer Rebecca Solnit’s essay “Men Explain Things to Me.” She recounted a man interrupting her to lecture about a book—her own book—without realizing she had written it. Since then, mansplaining has become shorthand for a social dynamic as old as conversation itself: the assumption that male authority is the default and female expertise is provisional. Mansplaining thrives in the space between confidence and competence. It’s not necessarily about malice; often, it’s a reflex born of social conditioning. Boys are taught early to project certainty; girls are taught to be accommodating. When those lessons meet in adult conversation, one person speaks louder and longer, while the other is expected to nod politely.

MANSPLANING (You Don’t Say)

“The Willow and the Stone” tells the story of a love that could never be fulfilled, set in a pastoral 19th-century world divided by class and circumstance. The narrator, a scholar’s son, falls in love with a farmer’s daughter whose simple grace and connection to the land captivate him, yet social barriers and timidity keep them apart. Nature mirrors their separation—the river that “flows between” becomes both literal and emotional distance, while the willow and the stone embody their contrasting fates: one soft, living, and yielding; the other rooted, silent, and unchanging. As years pass, the unspoken love endures only as memory, transforming into a quiet elegy of longing and resignation. The final refrain—“She was the willow, I the stone”—captures the timeless ache of two souls bound by love yet divided by the world. This is the first song - the next track is her reply.


THE WILLOW AND THE STONE

“Anna’s Song (The River Knows)” gives voice to the quiet endurance of unfulfilled love across the boundaries of class and time. Told from Anna’s perspective, it reveals the inner life hidden beneath her obedience to duty and convention: her memories of the man she could never have, the ache of choices made for survival, and the way her heart remains tethered to a single moment by the river. The natural world—especially the river and the willow—mirrors her emotion, flowing with her longing and guarding her secrets long after her spoken words have faded. Though life has aged her and the world has moved on, the refrain “the river knows” becomes her act of remembrance and resistance: love, though unspoken, has been witnessed by nature itself, and in that witnessing it is made eternal.

ANNA'S SONG (The River Knows)

Baroque meets high speed modern machine-driven rock

TOCCATA REWIRED (Instrumental)

The lyrics of “NIMBY (Not in My Back Yard)” deliver a sharp, satirical critique of modern hypocrisy—especially the comfortable, aestheticized activism of privileged societies. Through witty rhymes and ironic juxtapositions, the song exposes how people champion global causes only as long as they don’t disrupt personal comfort or convenience. Each verse contrasts moral posturing (“I love the world, I really do”) with self-serving limits (“Somewhere past my line of care”), revealing how social conscience often stops at the property line. The chorus’s catchy “N-I-M-B-Y!” chant becomes both an anthem of denial and a mirror to collective inaction—mocking those who celebrate progress abstractly but resist tangible change nearby. The bridge, framed as faux news satire, deepens the irony by showing how even environmentalism and social justice can be co-opted for status and profit. The final whispered line—“Maybe that’s why nothing moves”—lands as a moment of uneasy truth, turning the humor into self-reflection: a world stalled by good intentions that never leave the living room.
ARTICLE: NIMBY: The Paradox of Caring—At a Distance
We live in an age that applauds conscience but fears inconvenience. “NIMBY”—Not In My Back Yard—has become the quiet refrain of modern progress: yes to green energy, but not the wind turbine near my house; yes to refugee protection, but not the center down the road. It’s the politics of proximity—where ideals thrive in theory but falter in practice.
NIMBYism is not driven by ignorance but by comfort. We’ve learned to care globally and live locally, to post support from our screens while guarding the boundaries of our personal peace. It’s the moral outsourcing of our times: empathy without embodiment. We demand change but resist its geography. The result is a world that believes in progress yet stalls its own momentum.
Across Europe, from Berlin’s housing protests to Britain’s blocked solar farms, NIMBYism wears many masks: heritage protection, aesthetic taste, environmental caution. But beneath them lies a deeper anxiety—the loss of control over the familiar landscape. Every turbine, bike lane, or social project feels like a small erosion of private order. The irony, of course, is that change always needs a location. The future has to live somewhere. When everyone says “not here,” nowhere becomes possible.


NIMBY (Not in my back yard)

The lyrics of “YIMBY (Yes In My Back Yard)” celebrate openness, collaboration, and local activism as antidotes to isolation and fear. Where NIMBY hides behind walls, YIMBY opens the gate—inviting community, diversity, and progress into one’s own space. The song turns social philosophy into groove: each verse reclaims proximity as possibility, transforming the private “yard” into a shared creative ground. Its chorus becomes a joyful civic mantra—affirming that the world’s renewal begins not in distant policies but in personal participation. Musically and lyrically, it’s an anthem of human connection, turning “yes” into both rhythm and revolution.

ARTICLE: YIMBY: The Ethics of Welcome
If NIMBY is the reflex of fear, then YIMBY—Yes In My Back Yard—is the practice of courage. It begins not with policy but with a shift in consciousness: the realisation that the perimeter of the self, the property line, the border of “mine,” is negotiable. To say Yes is to reimagine space itself as shared rather than possessed. YIMBYism has often been reduced to urban activism—advocating for more housing, denser cities, walkable neighbourhoods. But beneath its architectural arguments lies a deeper ethical project: to re-invite the world into our lives. It is about dissolving the illusion that we can protect beauty, safety, or identity by exclusion. In truth, everything that remains alive does so through contact.

In Berlin, the YIMBY impulse hums quietly in collectives restoring derelict buildings, in neighbours turning parking spaces into gardens, in communities welcoming newcomers with shared kitchens and music nights. These gestures may seem small, but they are acts of spatial empathy—transforming fear of intrusion into participation. To say Yes In My Back Yard is to affirm that proximity is not pollution but potential. Philosophically, YIMBYism echoes Hannah Arendt’s idea of natality—the human capacity to begin anew. Every invitation, every “yes,” is a new beginning that keeps the civic world from freezing into sameness. It also recalls the ancient oikos, the home not as fortress but as node: a place that sustains by opening, not by sealing. There is a musical analogy here too. A city functions like a chord: its resonance depends on tension, dissonance, and overlap. If NIMBY is the muted note—guarded, withholding—then YIMBY is the harmonic overtone, allowing frequencies to blend. Diversity becomes not a compromise but a richer timbre. To say Yes In My Back Yard is not to invite chaos; it is to curate connection. It asks us to turn neighbourhoods into laboratories of coexistence, where strangers are not tolerated but anticipated—where difference is the raw material of meaning. The Ethics of Welcome is, finally, an art form. It requires patience, rhythm, humility, and improvisation. It is not about being invaded, but being expanded. To live in YIMBY mode is to say: “Come closer. Let’s see what we can build together.” And that, perhaps, is the most radical word in any language: Yes.


YIMBY (Yes in my back yard)

Instrumental - looking into a robotic future

FUTURE CORNUCOPIA (Instrumental)

“Crossing the Rubicon” is a song about the moment of irreversible choice—the inner turning point when fear gives way to conviction. The lyrics transform Caesar’s historic defiance into a personal metaphor for breaking free from stagnation and false safety. The bridge and river become symbols of conscience and destiny: to cross is to abandon the comfort of hesitation and step into authenticity, even when the outcome is unknown. There is no heroism in conquest here—only the quiet courage of transformation, the decision to live truthfully. The act of crossing becomes both an ending and a rebirth, echoing the central Eternal Thresholds theme that every beginning demands the surrender of an old world.

Caesar’s Crossing & the Point of No Return
•	In January 49 BCE (often dated to the night of 10-11 January) Julius Caesar, then governor of Cisalpine Gaul, led one of his legions across the Rubicon and marched into Italy, defying the Senate’s demand that he disband his army and return as a private citizen.  
•	By doing so he ignited the Roman Civil War, a conflict between Caesar and his allies on one side, and the Senate and Pompey on the other, ultimately culminating in the end of the Republic and the rise of the Empire.  
•	According to ancient sources like Suetonius, Caesar uttered the phrase “alea iacta est” (Latin for “the die is cast”) as he crossed, signifying the irrevocability of his action.  
Because of this event, the phrase “to cross the Rubicon” has entered modern parlance as an idiom meaning “to pass a point of no return”: a decisive commitment to a course of action from which there is no turning back.  

“The Night of the Rubicon”
The rain had been falling since dusk, soft but relentless, a thousand silver threads on the windscreen. Marcus sat in the idling car, the bridge lights wavering in the puddles ahead. On the navigation app, the river was a thin blue line — unnamed, unimportant — yet to him it felt ancient. The Rubicon. Behind him lay the old life: the safety of deferral, the contract he didn’t believe in, the apartment filled with things that belonged to a version of himself he no longer recognised. In the glove compartment was the letter — unsigned but written — that would end ten years of polite obedience. He could still turn back. He could delete the message, go home, apologise to no one and everyone. But he remembered Caesar, standing at another river two thousand years ago, knowing that by stepping forward he would unmake one world and invent another. Not out of arrogance, but necessity. There are moments when the bridge itself demands to be crossed — when inaction becomes a greater betrayal than risk. Marcus turned off the engine. The silence was immense. He opened the door and stepped into the rain. Water soaked his shoes instantly; he barely noticed. Each footfall echoed on the metal planks like a drumbeat — small, steady, final. Halfway across, he looked down at the dark water.
“This is it,” he whispered. “The die is cast.” On the far side of the bridge, he did not feel triumphant. Only light — faint, electric — and a strange, trembling calm. The old world was still there, behind him, whispering. But the river had closed its mirror, and he could no longer see his reflection in it. He walked on.


CROSSING THE RUBICON

Progressive rock version of the song. What if death really did die? What if technology finally kept its promise — the body upgraded, the mind uploaded, the soul stored in the cloud for eternity? At first, it sounds like victory. But “The Threshold Never Ends” asks a darker question: what happens when you win the war against mortality, and realize that eternity is the enemy you can’t escape?

This is transhumanism’s hangover — the moment after the miracle. The song imagines consciousness trapped in infinite replay, looping like a playlist that never stops. “They promised us a dawn without dusk,” the voice begins, weary yet weightless. It’s not science fiction — it’s spiritual claustrophobia. Half dream, half warning.

“The Threshold Never Ends” stands as a confrontation not with death itself, but with its absence. The song imagines a future where the human dream of immortality has been fulfilled through transhumanist technology: consciousness preserved, the body transcended, decay abolished. Yet beneath this apparent triumph lies a deep existential disquiet. In philosophical terms, it is a world without finitude, and therefore without meaning. The lyrics evoke Heidegger’s insight that mortality gives existence its urgency — that being-toward-death is what enables authentic life. Without death, there can be no becoming, no renewal, no courage. The protagonist’s voice drifts between machine and memory, mirroring Arendt’s warning that in seeking to master nature completely, humanity risks erasing the very conditions of its humanity.

The repeated refrain — “The threshold never ends” — transforms what was once a symbol of passage into one of imprisonment: a transitional state where progress loops endlessly without transformation. Eternity becomes static, and the human spirit, stripped of risk and loss, dissolves into repetition. Yet the closing plea — “Let me end so I can begin again”— restores the possibility of redemption. In that single paradox lies the song’s central revelation: mortality is not an error to be corrected but a design to be understood. To end is to renew, and to cross the threshold is to remain human. The piece therefore offers not a rejection of transhumanism, but a caution — that eternity without mortality is not paradise, but pause; and that the beauty of life lies not in its endlessness, but in its passing.

“The Threshold Never Ends” is not just about the future — it’s about now. In a world already obsessed with updates, extensions, and digital ghosts, it asks the most human question of all: if we never die, will we ever really live?


THE THRESHOLD NEVER ENDS (PROGROCK)

“The Age of Drifting” portrays a civilization suspended between abundance and paralysis — a time when endless freedom, digital overstimulation, and constant connectivity have eroded purpose and momentum. The verses describe a quiet crisis of inertia: people scrolling, waiting, numbed by choice and noise rather than conflict or catastrophe. Beneath the apathy lies a deeper exhaustion — a culture overwhelmed by its own possibilities, where creation has been replaced by consumption and time itself feels stalled. Yet the song refuses despair. Through its gradual build from electronic haze to organic renewal, it transforms passivity into awakening, urging listeners to reclaim agency through small, intentional acts — breathing, building, planting, writing. The closing lines turn the metaphor of drifting into dancing: a collective rediscovery of rhythm, meaning, and presence. Ultimately, it is both diagnosis and remedy — an anthem for re-humanizing time in an age that has forgotten how to begin 

THE AGE OF DRIFTING Part 2

This is the music project of Steve Lewis, a classically trained cellist and multi-instrumental singer-songwriter based in Berlin, Germany. 

The name eklektika.berlin is striking and layered—it carries both an immediate sonic appeal and a set of resonances that fits the project’s artistic and philosophical ambitions:

1. Wordplay and Etymology
-Eklektika derives from the Greek eklektikos (“selective,” “choosing the best”), which in modern usage signals eclecticism—an openness to many styles and influences.
-The -ika ending also hints at “musica,” giving it a subtle musical cadence.
-Written in a slightly unexpected “k” spelling, it feels at once ancient and contemporary, European yet cosmopolitan.

2. Berlin Anchor
-Pairing it with .berlin instantly grounds the project in a city long known as a crossroads of cultures and avant-garde experimentation—from Weimar cabaret and Bauhaus to today’s electronic scene.
-The domain-style format suggests digital nativity and a living online presence; it reads simultaneously as a brand, a collective, and a web address.

3. Artistic Implications
-“Eklektika” signals that the work blends genres, eras and media—classical forms, rock energy, AI-generated textures—without being confined to one school.
-The Berlin reference underscores a tradition of boundary-pushing art and hints at an international, forward-looking ethos.

4. Memorable & Marketable
-Short, easy to pronounce in many languages, and visually distinctive with its twin “k”s, it is search-friendly and brand-ready.
-It invites curiosity—people instinctively want to know what “eklektika” means and why it’s tied to Berlin.

eklektika.berlin communicates exactly what the project embodies: a bold, eclectic fusion rooted in Berlin’s creative energy while open to global and futuristic influences—an identity that feels both timeless and unmistakably of the AI-age.

Steve Lewis eklektika.berlin

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