A dozen musicians sit in a semicircle on the outdoor stage, each one playing the kompang, a Malaysian hand-drum. Backed by synthesizers and a western trap set, they run through a repertoire including traditional Malay folk songs, Middle Eastern music and even Dean Martin covers.

The vuvuzelas are not just a collective drone in a literal sense or an audio sense. As phenomena, they become a metaphor underlying my whole trip. Everything else I experience while traveling in Düsseldorf—the sites, the history, the people, and the way in which childhood memories come spiraling back to the current moment—begins to feel like a grand set of resonances harmonizing the vuvuzelas.

I tell Peggy I’m drinking the hell out of pu’erh these days. It connects me to the earth. And Tang Dynasty sages. I imagine living as a hermit 1000 years ago in some remote cave somewhere, uninhibited by tech workers, Virtual Reality sycophants, people on the bulletproof coffee bandwagon, or any of the usual bullshit in Silicon Valley.

Inside the truck, the original custom Helios soundboard from the late 1960s, in all its dirty analog glory, was now fully restored, along with decades-old half-inch tape decks. Upon entering, one could almost smell the history.