If you hitch a trip to Breda, you’ll be amazed by the preponderance of nightclubs and disc jockeys working from dusk to midnight and all across that astral purple blanket. Why is this so?

I was born and raised in that smartest commune called Eindhoven, and from a very young age I displayed an aptitude for mathematics. My parents recognised this and gave me difficult contemporary problems from diverse fields to crunch — complexity theory, topology, combinatorics — but as my neurons and I grew, something weird presented itself. Muffled, indistinct voices rang through my head, seemingly asking me to chat with… them. Not inclined to remain silent about things, I talked to these entities (which I now know are my own neurons firing by themselves) like they were real, generating immense strife with my introverted parents. Eventually I was posted to number theory at TU/e, but I found its symbolic manipulation of surds, prime numbers, asymptotics and error terms incomprehensible and pulled myself out after one sordid month.

“What am I thinking?” I rued afterwards, peering at a delectably blank flank. “Wait, what have I been thinking? All these years, really?” My imaginary conversations often revolved around music and its influence on the pony, the tones and styles comprising memorable or addictive tunes. Having learned quite a fair bit from these non-existent ponies, I surmised that that was my true talent, pressing my parents to let me spend some time in a recording studio until they budged. Once inside, despite complete non-acquaintance with any of those shiny instruments, laissez-faire experimentation helped me fly across the learning curve, and pretty soon a discothque-y number was heard by everypony passing the street I lived on. They didn’t just have smiles, but also cheers, uncontrollable twitching! Why, there was even love to be had… “and that’s my cutie mark!” I shrieked, describing precisely what I’d just obtained.

Later I moved to Breda and took centre stage among the DJs there, fostering newcomers alongside my usual head-spinning dizzying work at the turntable. That place, which I now live in, is thus sometimes called City of Trance: it’s uplifting, but simultaneously instigates deep thought. For me, that’s all that matters.