Hello, my dear ones 🌸
sometimes I feel like a book never begins with the first sentence. That it begins much earlier, in a barely perceptible flutter, in the image of a night street, in a tone that returns to me unexpectedly, in a sentence that one carries in their head before even knowing who it actually belongs to. And perhaps that is precisely where the entire PNVNY Universe came from for me. Not as a project in the cold sense of the word, not as a plan mapped out in tables, but as a world that took a long time finding its way to me. First subtly. And then so strongly that it was impossible to pretend I didn't hear it.
All my life I have felt close to what refuses to stay in just one shape. A story that is merely a story is not enough for me. Music that is merely background sound is not enough for me. An image that is merely decoration is not enough for me. I have always been drawn to that wondrous tension between things, that moment when literature spills over into music, music into atmosphere, and atmosphere into an object that one holds in their hand and suddenly feels that it belongs to the same world. Perhaps that is why I write the way I write, and compose the way I compose. I do not separate these fields from one another. On the contrary. I let them speak to each other.
For me, the PNVNY Universe is precisely this conversation. It is a space where novels do not meet music by chance, but by fate. Where poetry does not arise alongside stories as something extra, but as their shadow, their echo, their nocturnal breath. Where collectible artifacts are not mere objects, but tiny gateways into a world that I try to build with all seriousness and tenderness. Someone might say it is a literary project. I would rather say it is a way of inhabiting one's own imagination more honestly and completely.
When I write a novel, I do not write it into silence. Even silence has its own music, and I hear it while writing. That is why book soundtracks were created. That is why there are now dozens of pieces of music inspired by these stories, by their mood, their solitude, their city, their light and their darkness. This is not music added afterwards to make the text seem more interesting. It is music that grows alongside the text. As if one part of the soul spoke in sentences and the other in tones. And I merely walked between them, for a moment to one door, for a moment to the other.
I often think about what a person is actually looking for when they open a book. Are they looking for plot? An escape? A mirror? Or are they looking for a place where they could exist differently for a while, more deeply, more truly? That last possibility is precisely what is close to me. And perhaps that is also why I am drawn to the motto that has naturally settled around my work: novels have their own soundtrack. It is not an advertising phrase. It is almost a confession. A confession that some stories want to be read with sound, that some emotions need their musical landscape, that some worlds cannot be locked between just the front and back cover of a book.
Today, within the PNVNY Universe, there is a novel trilogy and alongside it poetry, specifically the collection BLACK – poems about a silence that burns. Even the title itself resonates within me with a strange precision. A silence that burns. How many things in life are precisely like that? Outwardly silent, yet leaving a mark that cannot be unheard. For me, poetry is often precisely this imprint. It is shorter than a novel, but sometimes strikes deeper. Like a drop of ink in water. Like a glance that can never be taken back.
And then there is the third installment of the trilogy, Přízraky v Umagu. The title alone awakens within me something harbor-like, damp, nocturnal, somewhere between a dream and a memory. Perhaps that is why I am also drawn to the visual style of the entire project, which grows out of noir aesthetics, urban melancholy, nocturnal New York, European harbors, and a literature that is not afraid of the shadow. I have always believed that style is not a disguise. Style is a way of feeling. And if a world is to feel authentic, it must have not only its own language, but its own light as well.
Perhaps all of this goes a bit against today's rush. The times favor shortcuts, quick effects, things that fit into a few seconds of attention. And yet I create a world in which there is room for a novel, for an album, for a collector card, for a bookmark, for a poster, for a postcard, for a QR card that leads a person further, deeper, beneath the surface. Someone might say it is too much. Yet it seems to me that modern man does not suffer from an excess of depth, but from its scarcity.
Lately, scenes from the film have been strangely returning to me The Hours. There are moments in it so ordinary they are almost painfully precise.
There is one small scene there. Clarissa carries the texts she edited from room to room. Julie finally takes them and tosses them onto the floor, looking a bit helpless. Clarissa puts them on the chest of drawers. And that completely ordinary sound of paper landing plays.
That sound has been haunting me the past few days.
Because this week I not only rearranged the furniture in my apartment, but I also painted. I was moving tables, shelves, lamps, books. In the living room, I was setting up a second office. Not just because Petr, my darling, needs his space too. But also because sometimes we need to work side by side, even right on the double bed, exactly like in that movie. With papers all around us, with a laptop on our knees, with the feeling that work and life actually cannot be completely separated.
And now, when Petr is not here right at the moment, I need a place where I can put books, flyers, and everything that starts arriving from the print shop. Suddenly it hits me that my apartment is really turning into a writer's apartment. Literally. There are going to be bundles of books, boxes of flyers, collector cards, bookmarks, posters.
It cost me a lot of energy. Doing all of this at a time when I got sick was not exactly ideal timing. And somewhere between moving furniture, painting walls, and thinking about the festival, there came a moment when I just burst into tears.
Maybe a bit like Clarissa in the kitchen by the sink.
The film is unsettlingly accurate in this regard. It shows how ordinary moments of life can at the same time be deeply existential. How something that a person has been holding inside for a long time suddenly opens up in them.
And on one of those nights, when I woke up and tried to get out of bed, Peter had to help me. He supported me with those big, warm palms of his. He carefully lifted me up, as if he knew that at that moment I needed not just strength, but also tenderness.
And I started crying again.
Because suddenly a memory of my grandmother came back to me. How I once helped her get out of bed. How I supported her so she could sit up. And in that moment, when she has long since been gone, I suddenly felt that I had ended up on the other side of that memory.
That I too need help.
And that it is actually strange how roles in life slowly reverse.
And so now I am sitting in an apartment that still smells of paint. Around me are boxes, papers, bundles of books. And in my head, questions are running through my mind that probably every author knows when the moment approaches for their work to enter the world for the first time.
Will fifty copies of each book be enough?
Or is it too many?
How do you actually estimate how many books a person will sell? How many people will come? How many people will just stop for a moment?
Maybe people I've never seen before will stop by the table. Maybe someone will open a book and just stand and read for a while. Maybe someone will scan the QR code and play the music created for the pages they are holding in their hands right now. Maybe someone will leave with a book that will one day remind them of the strange atmosphere of that day.
And in the meantime, I think about the details.
About the black wrapping paper.
About the golden ribbons.
About the small glowing lanterns on the table.
About the black tulle spread across the tabletop.
Maybe it all sounds a bit crazy. But I believe that it is details that make the world believable. Just like in a novel. Just like in a movie. Just like in life.
And perhaps that is what it is all about. Not how many books are sold. But that moment when someone steps into a world you have long assembled from words, tones, and tiny objects.
About that small, inconspicuous sound of papers when they land.
