The closer Web Summit gets, the less I write about it. Maybe I am afraid of scaring away the opportunities it might bring.

Some time ago I discovered the Russian poet Boris Ryzhy, with his piercingly deep, tragic and honest works. And on Saturday I stumbled on the band 'Night Loaders', with very direct, sometimes harsh lyrics that feel all the more real because of it.

Not the best finds for moments of existential reflection, or maybe the best possible ones?

What am I getting at? Only that back in school I could not stand 90% of the poetry that had been carefully selected by supposedly smart people and immortalised in textbooks, so that teachers all over the country could demand, with manic zeal, that students talk about the literary greatness of the likes of Pushkin and Lermontov. Maybe the fact that we studied this 'toothless' poetry at school is why things never really worked out for me as a writer, and it all ended with a notebook full of silly rhymes that was forgotten forever when I was 16.

Of course, I have to mention some texts, like those by Yesenin, that inattentive textbook editors somehow missed and slipped in, which made them look even more out of place on the pages next to Pushkin. But even those works often got cheapened by teachers who, as soon as they saw the line 'Goodbye my friend, goodbye', would start loudly proclaiming that it expressed Sergei Alexandrovich's love for his friend, for life, and for all people in the world.

Now, sometimes, I feel an acute hunger for poetry that is not just about being inspired by the beauty of our world, but also about thinking a little about the full depth of life's coincidences, its jokes, and all its manifestations from birth to death. My recent discoveries help satisfy this craving for something truly beautiful.

As for me, I am still capable of writing, though not poems, but what seems to be decent code. And for now I can still manage to write long-winded reflections in prose, which I publish here and which a few people read, for which I am very grateful.