Project BluJo

Why this project?

Short answer

Had loads of photos of flowers at Jonas’s place and an idea for a song. One thing led to another.

Psycho-response

This project saved me. Since the summer of 2025, Jonas had been in a terrible state: pneumonia, hospitalisation, a leaking PEG tube that kept getting worse, back to hospital, a new PEG tube, sepsis, another long stay in hospital, a prolonged high fever and growing fear for his life, and the old PEG wound continuing to leak for months on end. All the progress he’d made over the last few years had been wiped out, and it looked as though the worst times were returning. Christmas 2025 was awful, as he also caught a cold on top of everything else and we were left without medical care for two weeks. Our GP was on holiday, and public holidays are particularly grim for seriously ill ME/CFS patients in an A&E department. Life-threatening. That is why all seriously ill ME/CFS patients try to avoid such stays.
The fact that I was able to cling to something positive that inspired me prevented any depressive despair. Despite constant, severe sleep deprivation.

Long answer

Music has always been my greatest personal passion. Instead of meditating like other people, I’d go down to the basement and play pop and rock songs. For my soul. At 12, I learnt classical pieces and song accompaniment on the classical guitar. At 17, I spent every spare minute playing my electric guitar. Because we couldn’t find a singer for our band, I took on that role. BUT: At 18, I realised that whilst I’m not without talent, it’s better if it remains ‘just’ my favourite hobby. Due to Jonas’s illness, I couldn’t play music for 10 years because Jonas was extremely sensitive to noise and there was no room far enough away. It was only after moving house that I started again, a good year ago. I play much worse today than I did thirty years ago.
When I met my wife Andrea on the Canary Island of La Gomera in 1994, I was travelling there on my own – no, I did have my old concert guitar with me. And at the time I was living in Berlin in a very small ground-floor flat. The cellar room directly below was part of it too. There was even a bricked-up shaft from an old chimney leading into that cellar room. For a year, I was obsessed with the idea of setting up a recording studio there to properly record my songs. But then Andrea moved in with me and suddenly there was this boy, this incessantly screaming thing: Jonas. So the recording studio never came to anything.
Until a few years ago, Jonas always had a patch over his eyes. At first, he couldn’t even tolerate the slightest bit of light. Some therapies then seemed to work, and his sensitivity became so low that he could see again. At first only for very short periods, then for longer. To give him a change of scenery, I started putting flowers out and hanging pictures on the ceiling. And I took photos of them for relatives. More and more. Then I had an idea for a song. And that old obsession with the recording studio suddenly took hold of me again. It’s much easier to put into practice today than it used to be.

Intention

The music video is meant to be fun and spark curiosity. That’s why there are countless little details everywhere. I want people who’ve barely heard of ME/CFS to take an interest in it and then understand what it means for the many people affected. So that things change in our society. So that, for example, children ask their parents who are doctors how they can help ME/CFS patients. So that it soon becomes the norm that you can go to hospital with ME/CFS and receive help there, rather than having everything made much worse. So that parents no longer have their children, who are seriously ill with ME/CFS, taken away from them because authorities and doctors accuse the parents of Münchhausen syndrome by proxy or something even worse. So that simply everyone is aware of the situation.

BluJo? English?

= ‘Blumen für Jonas’, the German title, of course. = ‘Flowers for Jonas’. But ‘blue’ also means ‘sad’ in English. The fact that Jonas has been lying in bed like this for so long makes us all incredibly sad! Him too, I’m sure. That’s why ‘Blu’ (which in German sounds like ‘blue’) is doubly fitting. And ever since they were born, I’ve been calling my two sons, Jonas and Julian, ‘JoJu’ for short (pronounced ‘yo-yu’). Hence: BluJo.
I’ve had a bit of an obsession with English ever since Jonas fell ill. Especially at the start of his serious illness, from about 2014 to 2016, I often spent many hours with him and had to be completely quiet. My mind always needs something to occupy itself. I was also out of work for a while. I always regretted very much that I’d never needed my English skills professionally. Now was my chance. I switched my laptop’s default language entirely to English and often spent several hours a day learning vocabulary, read books exclusively in English, and even did a few e-learning courses from the Job Centre. To this day, I’ve stuck to listening almost exclusively to English podcasts and videos. Mostly whilst doing all my daily care tasks. Hence my preference for this language. It was clear that I would create an English version – partly because of the pun ‘Just ME’, which simply doesn’t work in German.

Why keep it a secret?

By early October 2025, I’d finished my song. But I’d only composed the guitar parts; the melody and lyrics were just in my head and jotted down on a piece of paper. I’d never actually heard the song myself when I played it for Julian. It was a real world premiere. Julian recorded it on my smartphone because I asked him to.

Then happened…

– nothing –

If you ask your loved ones or close friends what they think of your song and they say hesitantly, “Mmh, yeah, er, it was quite good,” then you know they think it’s rubbish and just don’t want to hurt your feelings. But if they don’t say anything at all, that means “absolutely dreadful”. “Nine minutes,” was all Julian said, critically, about the length. At least he managed to mutter “Lyrics are OK” after I’d handed him my note. Andrea had just called out from the kitchen that the noise was bothering her. Otherwise, neither of them asked any questions. Completely frustrated, I wanted to give up on my project. But somehow, I couldn’t get the song out of my head. I listened to the recording, exactly once. I didn’t think it was that bad. Singing for the very first time, including accompaniment, without any practice at all. And I couldn’t even mention my planned video and all the rest of it anymore. I’d often found in the past that the two of them couldn’t picture what I was planning for earlier projects. That’s normal, and it’s the same for me in reverse. There are just some things you can hardly describe in words; you have to see the finished result to understand it. And Julian is in psychological treatment because of the trauma he’s suffering from due to Jonas’s illness. So, not a word more on the subject and carry on in secret.

Organisation

Create a video Word file BluJo project table of contents

Secret project: Just ME recording ‘a stab’ in the recording studio

Research

I have the advantage that I’ve always loved getting to grips with complex systems quickly. That applies to board games, software, dance steps – whatever. It’s also shaped my professional life. Well, not the dance steps. More the software. Before I tackle something, I get an overview. I’m very flighty and often think of things that aren’t even on the agenda yet. And I asked the AI all sorts of questions. More on that at Tech/AI. I saved everything in a file called ‘Video-machen.doc’ = ‘Make-video.doc’. It’s now 100 pages long. The image shows just the table of contents. And about 50 further Word and Excel files on individual topics. Like Reaper or prompts for instructing what you want from the AI video programme. It was handy to keep such prompts, because you often need specialist vocabulary like “extreme wide shot” and that way you can quickly find how you once solved a specific problem.
I often spent days watching YouTube videos before deciding on a system. I only had to start from scratch once, because Runway was worse than Kling AI, so I switched. Things may be different now; development is happening at breakneck speed.

Rocket launch?

I often thought I must be completely mad to put so much energy into this project. And build a website as well? For who? What if the video flops completely and nobody gives a damn? In English? And even Spanish??
And it turned out to be even more complex than I’d imagined. My 57 tracks in Reaper, mixing, mastering, 60 pre-projects in DaVinci, because my laptop doesn’t have a graphics processor, really nasty database crashes with failing backups in WordPress for this website. I could go on and on. I was constantly updating the plans for the next steps. Things like posting the first comment immediately after the YouTube video is released, with the donation links, and pinning it to the top. That can only be done straight after publication. As complex as a rocket launch – mine will ignite on 19 April (?), I reckon today, 3 April 2026.

And always a secret!

I did actually enjoy keeping it a secret from Andrea and Julian. I often only just managed to switch screens quickly when they came over to my computer. To some boring financial stuff that I’d left open just for that reason. Julian once wondered why the hammer was lying next to my bed. And right at the end, on 2 April, Andrea started to suspect that I was up to something. Because in the evenings I was always sitting at my personal laptop, completely absorbed. Even more so than usual. Here’s a picture of the secret recording session in the ‘recording studio’ in Julian’s room (lyrics ‘a stab’). He allowed me to make music there; he’s actually happy when I relax with my music. But he had no idea I was recording the song there. During this recording in my “DAW” Reaper, the lad was out for an evening in Basel. After that, it was time for mixing and mastering in Reaper. I just happened to have my headphones on in the living room a conspicuously large number of times.

A “Tabu” (German word for taboo) and other things

‘Tabu’ didn’t mean ‘taboo’. Just named my file “Tabu.doc” as an abbreviation for “Tagebuch” = diary. As for the last month, I even kept a diary. Not every day, but on many days I wrote down what was on my mind, what was happening with the project, or other things. I could post that here, along with my experiences of which YouTube videos were particularly helpful for which topics, including links to them and more. I’ll do that if anyone’s interested. Otherwise, I won’t. That’s enough for now.

Training

If you want to record a song, you should know the lyrics inside out. A decent mic will pick up every little rustle or wobble of the stand, no matter how small. It’s also important to keep the distance constant. But don’t forget to put your heart and soul into it. I struggled to practise at home. It’s because of the secrecy. But because of my slipped disc six years ago, I walk up and down a “mountain” very close by every day anyway. So there I was, singing my heart out every day and only stopping when I happened to meet a dog owner.

Even on all my car journeys, this was my sole focus. I’d often have ideas pop into my head. The chorus of the refrain, a sad oboe or “no, never”. I was always checking the latest version in Reaper. Was the bass loud enough? Were the bongos getting on my nerves now? Overall, on nine different audio systems.

The “training videos” are just examples of how I often just record something on a whim. In this case, I just recorded videos with a gimbal. I remembered that when I created this website..

Attention to detail without perfectionism

A flood of AI-generated rubbish is being posted online. With people simply telling an AI programme, “Make me a funny animated film with a dragon”, and the mindset of wanting to make a quick buck from it, more and more AI rubbish is finding its way into the world. In six months, the AI didn’t produce a single truly original idea for me; I always had to come up with those myself. AI is brilliant at rehashing existing content or processing ideas. AI suggestions have also often sparked ideas for me, much like a conversation with someone who is very interested in the topic and thinks along with you. The AI also made critical comments when I asked it to. That saved me from putting my foot in it on more than one occasion. But certainly not all of them, and I deliberately left many mistakes and imperfect scenes in. Not perfect, but finished. More on AI at Tech/AI.
I’ve hidden a wealth of details in the video and researched a lot of background information. Here are a few of them:

   Fonts
   Open Sans /
   Comic Sans

All standard text is in Open Sans: easy to read and professional-looking, with drop shadows and so on. I also used Comic Sans, which is equally easy to read. However, in the world of design, it’s considered ‘unprofessional’ or ‘childish’. This fits with the lack of knowledge among medical staff about ME/CFS in the hospital section. It also works for ‘Dragoduction’, as it’s not meant to be taken seriously.

lotsoff much fantasy
Music video 01:08

That was written in Comic Sans too. Jonas always read loads of fantasy books and was always up for a bit of nonsense, even in long emails. A nod to the Doge meme.

red border
Music video 04:17

For Jonas, things can quickly become life-threatening; he has survived three bouts of pneumonia so far, as well as sepsis, and in the first half of 2015 our GP told us we had to brace ourselves for the worst, because he was in such a terrible state following his stay at the university hospital. The red border around the photo of Jonas indicates this life-threatening situation.

Data protection
Privacy Policy

Yes, I’ve looked very closely at the privacy policy. Partly as a safeguard against those who send out warning letters to fleece people. But more importantly, I’ve always taken care not to use anyone else’s data. Or, in a few cases, I’ve purchased licences or sought permission. I hope I haven’t forgotten anyone. Or I’ve blurred faces or not used photos at all. I deliberately show my sunflower logo from the side with the leaf so that it isn’t confused with existing logos – I did my research. Anyone undertaking a project like this should also make regular backups and have ‘contingency plans’ in place.

Drag-O-Flynn
Link to the original

He’s been hiding everywhere. This still is from the music video. I’m not telling you where.

And – lift-off!

Perfection is the enemy of done

There are still loads of places where I can hear mistakes in the vocals or where a video clip could do with some work. But at some point, I stopped making improvements in all those places; otherwise, I’d never have finished. Six months is long enough for this project. It’s now or never.!

Jonas is feeling very unwell

3 April 2026. The last six months have been awful. Not this project here, no. Jonas’s hole in his stomach, which wouldn’t close for so long. Sepsis, high fever, several hospital stays. It wasn’t the doctors’ fault; they were brilliant at the BDH Clinic in Waldkirch. Nevertheless, all the improvements Jonas had made over the last few years have been wiped out. He can only keep his eyes open for a few minutes now, very rarely. I can hear him moaning ‘Ouch’ in a whisper right now, through the baby monitor. Sometimes, when he’s in pain or gets a rush of adrenaline, he manages to squeeze out a word or two. Nothing more. Should I not release my song because of this?

It’s not just about Jonas, is it?

To me, he’s the main character, obviously. But there are so many just like him. Just as young, intelligent and funny. Just as valuable as Jonas. With desperate parents. Often with an even more brutal course of the illness and its ‘treatment’! Many with a fatal outcome, too. Without public awareness, there is no compassion from those who are healthy. And without compassion, nothing changes.

When are you going to do your project?

You might not be here because of ME/CFS. That’s absolutely fine! There are other topics too; life is full of variety. I hope you find some inspiration here on how to make your project ‘fly’. Just like Jonas the dragon rider took off in the end. That was my last difficult hurdle for the video. The rest was just hard work.

Project BluJo

Why this project?

Why keep it a secret?

Organisation

Training

Attention to detail without perfectionism

Fonts Open Sans / Comic Sans

lotsoff much fantasy Music video 01:08

red border Music video 04:17

Data protection Privacy Policy

Drag-O-Flynn Link to the original

And – lift-off!

Fonts
Open Sans /
Comic Sans

lotsoff much fantasy
Music video 01:08

red border
Music video 04:17

Data protection
Privacy Policy

Drag-O-Flynn
Link to the original