Biography
I walk through the world, sometimes wading along, often falling and struggling to rise. Listen to a story, nothing extraordinary: sad and joyful, perhaps even beautiful.
My name is Zbyněk Sklenský, and I came into the world on a Sunday in April 1982. I am a grammar-school graduate by trade, so to speak, and have a respect for all the natural sciences and humanities. These days I think of myself mainly as a musician: I also studied classical guitar with Jan Hron at the Pardubice Conservatory and musicology at the Faculty of Arts, Masaryk University in Brno. I lost my sight at the age of twenty-five, and since then I have experienced the world through listening.
In the past I took part in various projects, including Naškrk, Betwind and Chambermood. I am the author of the now legendary poetry collection Sběr šrotu železného (Collecting Scrap Iron), which exists in a single copy buried in an unknown swampy place.
In 2018 I founded the project Rozpaky, and the following year I released a debut album of songs under the same name. Rozpaky — a sense of awkwardness or uncertainty — has, after all, characterised my life so far. I now sing with the Dixieland band Kiksylend, which travels around South Moravia, tirelessly calling for a revival of this long-forgotten genre.
Alongside music, another hobby has been with me throughout my life: programming. I have worked with many programming languages, but I feel most at home with PHP. This entire website is written in PHP and runs on my own framework, Xamma.
On this website you will find my varied articles, recordings, songs and poems, audio observations, videos, photographs and podcasts. One of its main subjects is focal dystonia, which firmly established itself in my life in 2017 and has accompanied me ever since.