RECONSTRUCTING.

I haven't used this for a while, so this is an update as of April 2023.

I'm Joseph.
I grew up in England, where I made a lot of strange music and live soundscape work and eventually built a very small business making chocolate. My last years in England were spent mostly living in some beautiful ruins out on the cliffs of Cornwall and grounding myself in nature, but I left in late 2015 to go for a wander and look at the world and did my first little hitchhiking adventure.
In the years that followed I spent my first winter sleeping out in the forest in Sweden, getting to know the snow and the cold and learning necessary survival skills while being quite amazed at just how much power the mind has over the body.
After this I was working briefly in Norway and then back to travel for most of the next 4+ years - this involved hitchhiking most of the west of Europe, at a nice, slow pace, before a little dip to Morocco and then a change to bicycle travel, which became my life for the last couple of years before the events of 2020 made travel a little difficult.
I was back in Sweden around this time so I ended up sort-of-settling and bought a very cheap house at the end of 2021. Since then, my life has consisted mostly of playing with synthesisers and exploring my surrounding area by bike, looking out for the nice animals that live around here (even wolves, bears, lynx, and wolverines - but the closest I get so seeing any of these ones are their tracks in the snow).

I don't seem to be made for a "normal" life and recently I've been seeing through my sonic distractions and realising that I need to get back out there for a stretch, so I think most of 2023 will be an experiment to see how the world has changed these years. I'll leave my bike at home and do some lightweight backpacking to see if hitchhiking still works and what new connections it may lead to, so in June I'll take a hammock and tarp and head south a while, without any strict plans but just to see where the world takes me, as used to be the way.

so that's my life in a nutshell :)
beyond that, I am vegan since the age of 16 and this is maintained for ethical reasons so is something both important and unshakeable.
What I see as being the most important principle in life is to maximise good and minimise harm wherever we have a choice, in action and in influence.
What I value the most is truth and clarity, and I believe myself to be adaptable and always mindful of reason.

Pourquoi je suis sur Couchsurfing

Honestly, aside from some long stretches of bicycle travel with friends who I was very close with, I tend to take most of my time alone and don't seek social interaction as much as most. I have always been very independent, both practically and mentally, but at the same time I really appreciate it when we are able to share time and mind with good people - to remember the importance of connection within a world which seems to go fast in the wrong direction.
I suppose part of travel this time holds some emphasis in not exactly a personal need to connect with others, but what feels more like a positive human responsibility to build paths and bridges between us so that idea and care can accumulate and grow. This is partly why I want to try hitchhiking again instead of cycling (which is by far my favourite way to travel), and why it made sense to come back to couchsurfing.
I don't expect I will send many requests because perhaps my routes and plans will be too loose, but I also had some nice experiences with meetups here in the past, and when I am back home I would of course like to have an open door for others now that I am in the position to offer.

Morceaux de musique, films et livres

I like a massive variety of music without subscribing to genre. A few long-term favourites are Secret Chiefs 3, uSSSy, Dysrhythmia, Estradasphere, Pryapisme, Sebkha-Chott, Krallice, Kayo Dot, Vladimir Bozar 'n' ze Sheraf Orkestär, and more than I could ever really list... mostly stuff that stimulates my brain and may be a little too "crazy" or comlicated for most people to like.
Most recently I have been exploring more electronic music and listening to a lot of Aphex Twin, Autechre, Squarepusher, and things from that family of exceptional talent.

I don't watch many films but a few which stand out to me are: The Holy Mountain, Aylaqruh:hurqalyA, The Hourglass Sanitorium, 2001: A Space Odyssey... A couple of Darren Aronofksy films such as π and The Fountain.

so far as books go, my history was always in areas of esoterica that I am probably quite far away from now, and my interest in reading would usually be more for the sakes of education than for entertainment - there is much I need to learn, but currently the focus is music and sound design.

Une aventure extraordinaire que j'ai vécue

lived

Enseignez, apprenez, partagez

That all depends on who we are, but I am sure there is much :)

Ce que j'aimerais partager avec mes hôtes

Vegan cooking, dusty tales, calm company, and synth tips.

Pays que j'ai visités

Albania, Belgium, Croatia, Czech Republic, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Macedonia, Montenegro, Morocco, Netherlands, Portugal, Slovenia, Spain, Switzerland

Pays dans lesquels j'ai vécu

England, Norway, Sweden