Flower
04/2024 – 04/2026 / Jakub Starý Jenny Stary

COMING IN /
円相
A deeply personal
journey back to oneself

Ensō (円相) is a Japanese symbol of a circle that, in Zen tradition, represents unity, emptiness, and the acceptance of imperfection. It is drawn in a single brushstroke – a reflection of the present moment and the state of mind of its creator. It reminds us that nothing is ever truly complete or fixed. Just like us.

COMING IN is a two-year journey of breakdown, loss, and transformation that led me back to myself.

September 2024, Mallorca – with my partner in crime Benji
still unaware of my feminine side

In April 2024, I decided to leave my life as I knew it. Even though I had everything I had ever wanted — a job I enjoyed, status, a modern apartment in the city center, a luxury car, and a relationship — deep down, I wasn’t fulfilled. So I chose to walk away and start living in a van. Not to escape. But to finally find an answer to the question: why?

Over the past two years, I have created a series of music, texts, videos, and thematic websites that map this journey. Together, they form the project COMING IN, divided into ten parts, each briefly introduced below along with links to the individual outputs.

It is a cohesive body of work that begins with life in a motorhome and gradually leads to a public coming out in my feminine expression — a part of myself I have been learning to accept over the past two years.

私の旅の最初の章は、音楽アルバムとウェブサイトで構成されたプロジェクト『Coming Out, Vol. III』に記録されています。それは、モーターホームでの生活を始めて約4ヶ月後、これまで信じていた世界に疑問が生まれ始めた瞬間を捉えています。

The first part of my journey is captured in the project Coming Out, Vol. III, consisting of a music album and an accompanying website. It reflects the initial cracks in my perception of reality, emerging after roughly four months of living in a motorhome.

# 2
ibiza

イビサ島は、私の自己探求の旅において非常に重要な役割を果たしました。私は合計で約半年間、モーターホームで島に滞在し、そのボヘミアンなエネルギーと深くつながることで、長い間失われていたスピリチュアリティを呼び覚ますことができました。この時期は『LUI IBIZA』というプロジェクトに反映されています。

Ibiza played a crucial role in my journey of self-discovery. I spent a total of six months on the island living in a motorhome, which allowed me to deeply connect with its bohemian energy and awaken a long-lost sense of spirituality within myself. The project LUI IBIZA reflects this phase.

# 3
beyond reality

イビサで私は『LUI BEYOND REALITY』というプロジェクトのアイデアを思いつきました。古代哲学、スピリチュアリティ、そして量子物理学を通して、私たちが当然のこととして受け入れてきた多くのことが、必ずしも真実とは限らないという可能性を探るものです。現実は、私たちが思っていたほど固定されたものではないかもしれません。

While in Ibiza, I developed the idea for LUI BEYOND REALITY, a project exploring — through ancient philosophy, spirituality, and quantum physics — the possibility that not everything we’ve been taught, and take for granted, is necessarily true. That reality may not be as fixed as we once believed.

# 4
zerø

マイクロサイト、音楽アルバム、プレスキット、そして日記のスキャンで構成されたマルチメディアプロジェクト『ZERØ』は、『LUI BEYOND REALITY』の自然な延長です。このプロジェクトは、私たちの存在が一つの源から生まれ、すべてがつながっているという気づきを伝えようとしています。私たちが感じている分離は、実はエゴが作り出した幻想にすぎません。

The multimedia project ZERØ, consisting of a microsite, music album, press kit, and authentic scans of my journals, naturally follows LUI BEYOND REALITY. It aims to convey the realization that life on this planet exists in unity, and that everything originates from a single source. The sense of separation we experience is, in fact, an illusion created by the ego.

# 5
identity crisis

イビサでの滞在中、私のエゴ(自分自身に対する誤ったイメージ)が崩れ始めると、長い間抑え込まれていたものが現れました。それは、私の中の女性的な側面です。私は女性なのか、それとも違うのか。今でもはっきりとは分かりません。なぜなら、自分自身を理解するプロセスは今も続いており、新しい層が次々と明らかになっているからです。

As my ego — a false construct of who I thought I was — began to dissolve during my time in Ibiza, something long hidden started to emerge: my suppressed feminine side. Am I a woman? Am I not? I still don’t know. And I hesitate to define it with certainty, because I understand that I am continuously discovering myself through layers that are only now being revealed.

# 6
capitalistic pain

もしこの世界が本来ひとつであり、分離の感覚が幻想であるとすれば、私たちは遠くで起きている苦しみにもつながっています。人々の犠牲の上で資源を得ている企業の製品を消費することで、私たちはその構造の一部になってしまうのです。この気づきは、スーダンで続く戦争(2026年4月執筆)によって強く引き起こされました。その現実に直面した夜、私はこれまでにないほど激しく泣きました。その痛みは日記に書き残し、後にSNSで公開した動画の中で読み上げています。

If life on this planet exists in unity and the sense of separation is an illusion, then we are inevitably connected to the suffering happening elsewhere — often invisibly. By consuming products of corporations that exploit resources at the cost of human lives, we become part of that system. This realization was deeply triggered by the ongoing war in Sudan (written in April 2026). I remember the evening it fully hit me — I had never cried that intensely before. I captured that pain in a journal entry, which I later read in a video shared on social media.

# 7
shame

『Shame』という楽曲は、自分自身への恥についての物語です。長い間抑え込んできた女性的な側面が表に出てきていることへの戸惑い。それが自分の一部なのか、それとも本当のアイデンティティなのか、まだ分かりません。もしかすると、その両方が真実なのかもしれません。

The song Shame is about feeling ashamed of myself. Ashamed of my suppressed feminine side that is now coming to the surface. I still don’t know whether it is just one part of my personality or my full identity. Perhaps both can be true.

# 8
(wo)men like me

ジェンダーの枠を超えて生きる人々は、いつの時代にも存在してきました。現代社会がそれを受け入れきれていないとしても、それぞれの時代に、既存の枠に収まらない人たちは確かに存在していたのです。このテーマについて、記事とSNS用の解説カルーセルを制作しました。

People who challenge gender norms have always existed. Even though today’s society may still resist these expressions, every era has included individuals who didn’t fit into its definitions of how a person should behave. I explored this topic further in both an article and an explanatory social media carousel.

# 9
self acceptance

この動画は、あるひとつの瞬間を捉えています。それは、「自分を愛していない」と気づいた瞬間です。その気づきが、自己受容へと向かう一連のプロセスの出発点となりました。

This video captures a specific moment — the realization that I don’t truly love myself. That moment became the starting point for a series of steps leading toward deeper self-acceptance.

# 10
this is (the suppressed) me

私が長い間抑え込んできた自分を表現する勇気を持つまでに、30年以上かかりました。『Shame』のミュージックビデオは、この2年間の旅の象徴的な結末です。この旅の中で、私は物質的なものや住まい、快適さなど、多くを失いました。しかし、その喪失があったからこそ、長い間隠されていた本当の自分が現れることができたのだと思います。そうでなければ、きっと気づくことはなかったでしょう。

It took me more than 30 years to find the courage to express my long-suppressed self. The music video for Shame represents, for me, the symbolic culmination of this two-year journey. Along the way, I gradually lost almost everything — material possessions, housing, and comfort. I believe that only through these losses could what had been hidden for so long finally come to the surface. Otherwise, I might have never found it.

moments before accepting
transgender identity
04/2024 – the journey begins
10/2024 – Ibiza
11/2024 – on the road
02/2025 – Barcelona
03/2025 – Ibiza

COMING IN GALLERY

05/2025 – Tetín (Czech republic)
06/2025 – Ibiza
07/2025 – Dolomites
04/2026 – Gran Canaria

Diary notes, March 13th, 2026A society that is able to protect its most vulnerable members is a great society. And I believe that Czech society is great. Just look at our history—how many blows of fate this nation has had to endure, and yet we have always managed to recover together.

There is a well-known quote that says a society becomes great when its members choose to plant trees in whose shade they will never sit. I understand this selfless act, rooted in the desire to cultivate a living space for the generations that will come after us, primarily as an expression of love—for one’s country and for life as a whole.

Although my homeland may now find itself in the grip of dark forces, I believe that truth and love will prevail over lies and hatred once again—as we have seen so many times before.

March 13, 2026, Prague

enzō
ensō

円 相
en sō
circle — form, essence

- the union of an imperfect human with a perfect source
- self-acceptance and authenticity
- the end of the old, the birth of the new

Diary notes, March 17th 2026We all receive lessons, because we get lost in our ego far too easily. We forget our true essence—that we are like players in a game we are only partly playing on our own behalf. We are not just players; we are also the character—we are the Universe experiencing itself through us.

It could therefore be said that our decision-making power (= our free will) forms 50% of the game’s script, while the remaining 50% is shaped by invisible forces permeating the entire Universe, the strongest of which is love. Love for oneself—and therefore love for the whole = love for others, because I see a part of myself in them—is the most reliable remedy for a wounded ego.

If I begin to see myself as just one of many possible forms of human existence, and realize that I could have been—or could become—any of them, because we all come from the same source, I understand that hatred and aggression toward others is, in fact, hatred and aggression directed at myself.

We might then begin to see hateful comments as a cry for help from human souls carrying a great deal of unhealed pain. As a result, they have constructed an identity of someone whose existence does not feel pain—an ego. And even the slightest shift of awareness toward these suppressed parts of the self can cause so much pain that it becomes easier not to look into these depths of one’s own psyche at all—until the very possibility of doing so becomes almost impossible.

Diary notes, March 17th 2026But what does our innate humanity tell us? That when someone cries for help, we help them. To those who spread hatred in the public space, without realizing that they are merely channeling their own unnamed pain through this energy, we could offer words of understanding rather than judgment.

Because hatred in society cannot be solved with more hatred. The flow of this negative energy can only be stopped by love. By realizing the unity of the human race and reigniting the fundamental human instinct to help those who are weaker—an instinct that is often suppressed by a system built on economic competition.

Social hierarchy, however, is merely a human construct. The undeniable truth is that we are all human, and no one holds greater value than another. The value of every human life remains the same—immeasurable. It is only the system we have created, and continue to uphold, that keeps us as its pieces, assigning higher value to some and lower to others.

But this is merely a game created by humans. And if we identify with it too deeply, it becomes just as absurd as claiming that I am a game piece in Ludo. Each of us is an individual human being, yet also a fragment of one and the same consciousness. A wave—and at the same time, the ocean.

Once we realize this, we can see others within ourselves, and ourselves within others. We are all playing the same game—just at different levels. And love is the universal language that connects us all. <3

Flower

Do I have all the answers? I don't. But I know this: the truth is somewhere inside us, waiting for our permission to feel it.

“Know thyself.” — Socrates

Special Thanks To:
Family and friends
Benji
God/Universe/Consciousness
Chateau Herálec
Weleda
Matějovský
Spain
Siemens
Toyota
Converse
PSN
Samsung
Skanska
Miracletox
SATPO
Germany
Unilever
Karlovarsko
Merck
Carollinum
Carpeteria
Reiffeisenbank
VisitBrussels
Ploom
Warm thanks to those who stayed with us even in hard times: