About
--STORIES ARE GOLD --
I.
You’ve stumbled upon this page. Maybe you’re sitting at work, pretending to be productive. Or you’ve been dragged into some training session on a topic you couldn’t care less about. You’re looking for a distraction. Maybe you’re lying in bed, unable to sleep because you had too much coffee during the day. Your thoughts are all over the place. Or maybe you’re just sitting on the toilet with your phone in hand, craving a moment of peace. No shame in that—most people do it.
Anyway… welcome to Gold in Fumes! A guy named Michal Svoboda came up with this catchy one-man creative brand because, like you, he knows that with a name like his, the only thing he’s guaranteed is that people won’t remember it. Lucky ones like Winston Churchill, Elvis Presley, or Dua Lipa (yes, that’s her real name) have it way easier.
II.
You’re no illiterate, so you’re going to read something here. A story, maybe. That’s the whole point: Gold in Fumes is nothing but stories. Original stories, often surreal, ironic, even absurd, but always rooted in authentic feelings.
As you read these stories, you might ask yourself: Who’s the guy writing this stuff? His name was written somewhere up there… but really, who is he? After all, a person isn’t just their name.
III.
You find out he was born in the heart of Europe to an average middle-class family and drank his first glass of milk in the late ‘80s. You’re thinking: Big deal. During his formative years, he didn’t live through anything explosively unique—just the usual ups and downs of a confused teenage boy whose introverted nature, scattered thoughts (today they call that ADHD), and low self-esteem made interacting with others a bit more challenging.
While others cheered for hockey teams or kicked a ball around the field, he buried himself in books and comics. Beatniks, Vian, and Márquez alternated with tales of an angry milk carton and a slice of cheese beating people with baseball bats or a paranormal detective who’s also a red demon with shaved-down horns. He rode his bike to school with a Walkman strapped to his belt and listened to bands that MTV only played after 10 PM in the ‘90s.
The boom of bootleg VHS tapes and the magic of video rental stores had a profound impact on him. That’s where his love for film began—a love he later deepened by studying film theory and history. In short, Robocop and Predator got some company in the form of Godard and Tarkovsky. It was always about the stories, no matter how they were told.
IV.
You read all this and might think: Yeah, I’ve been there too. How original can one life really be? Don’t we spend most of our time repeating what others before us have already lived? Moments of confusion, fighting parents, first loves, rebellious phases, school, furnishing your first apartment from an IKEA catalog, paying bills, an appendicitis, a hangover that makes you swear never to drink again (until the next time), a midlife crisis.
Some might survive a plane crash; others might not survive a stock market crash. Some might touch the divine in the jungle with a shaman at their side. But really—how unique are our life stories? When twenty of us sit in a room, start talking, and share our experiences, we realize how much we all have in common.
And that’s what Gold in Fumes is about—stories. Stories that are often built on premises meant to entertain you or surprise you with their originality. But above all, these are stories meant to resonate with something familiar, something intimate, something real.
Each story is a shot fired from the author’s imagination at you, the reader, and every hit to the heart counts. So dive into these stories, let yourself be hit, and know that there are more to come—because this Michal Svoboda always needs to create something.
V.
And if you feel like it, scroll down a bit further—you’ll find links to Ko-fi and PayPal. Feel free to click one and toss in a little change as a thank-you for what (hopefully) turned out to be some enjoyable time spent here.
