8 th May

08/05/2007
12:03 Have had a good sleep, yesterday was a welcome change, little drink little smoke and some decent entertainment.
Received a couple of e. mails off tutor this morning may help figure out practise test problems.

Much of consumerism is an escape –
An escape from anapparent empty, meaningless life.
Though some might lead their lives in a meaningless way, life is certainly not meaningless.
Life is rich with meaning.
Sometimes, to see it, we have to get out of the comfort of superficial consumer culture to start feeling again.
Feeling things like real pain.
Remember, feeling pain means you are still alive.
And it’s a signal.
So by being alive, you still have a chance to turn things around and start living the life that you always wanted.
Life is not like money; you cannot save it up for later, each day passes is potential time wasted.
How will I feel following this type of existence, in say five years time?
Hell how do I know,
I’m happy to have got to where I am at the moment because it is so drastically different from where I was a couple of years ago.

I smoke my first mild joint of the day listening as usual to off beat chill out sounds prior to tackling a couple of mock exams in a subject which has previously been unknown to me, the world of Excel.

My life has had very little direction, my learning schedule has been very loose, I drift in and out of subjects which take my attention, make me have to learn sufficient to comprehend then I move on.
I often regret spending time on certain subjects but counter balance these feelings by gaining satisfaction as learning progresses and I live with the maxim that one day in the future the learning will be useful.

Stone is coming on slowly and I feel relaxed and calm, much more satisfying effect than any medication.

The sounds are impacting more today because yesterday I was stressed because I didn’t understand some of the course work, today that anxiety has fled and I am 75% listening to sounds and 25% concentrating on writing, I’m at ease.

I look at the sky and hope the promised rain is going to materialise, firstly as a tonic to the freshly prepared garden;
the newly planted plants need a good watering also inclement weather will help me stay in and enjoy my self made environment.

I have organised my surroundings by supplying the background sounds.
The premises are secure and I can ignore anyone who may call and disturb my plans for the afternoon.
The skies darken and it looks like my plans will gel together.

I will have to turn the lamp on which will annoy me because I hate typing in artificial light but if that’s to be my only problem today then life is sweet enough for me.

What could have been the alternative? A wife or children asking for a lift to school or work could have wakened me from my slumbers this morning.
How would I have explained to any boss that I’d just got out of bed at 1 in the afternoon?
I have tried in the past!

I still seek knowledge, which may or may not allow me to take up some form of P.C. based home-based occupation.
Perhaps the job doesn’t exist yet or perhaps I’m simply doing what I have been doing for years learning each day subjects which will allow me to pass my time and may be valuable in the future.

I know more than most about my own future, having been told by my specialist that I will ultimately end up paralysed either from the waist or neck.
I therefore cling on to what I consider is the most disability friendly aspect of my life; computer use.
In one way my life is like money in as much as the knowledge I learn now while still able can be saved until I require it at a later date.
I invest in keeping my mind active, my imagination keen and my options open.

A couple of years ago when I had my episode I completely exhausted myself by my efforts and experienced paralysis and extreme pain, had vision and hearing problems and very nearly lost control of my sanity.
The experience frightened me but also served to give me an insight, a taste of what may be in store for me later.
I had to seek solutions and try any method possible to enable me to carry on; I almost succeeded.
In travelling to the extreme I pushed myself to the limit and now I’ve had time to relax, clear my head, regain my memory and generally adapt a more sedate pace of life I can clearly see the defined limits and have full understanding of the consequences of exceeding those same limits.

If I’d been in employment and working 130 hours per week I’d have been a well off person for so long before burning out.
If my mind ever gets that busy again I will be able (hopefully) to recognise the early signs and take action to perform a defrag before congestion once again damages the system.
I took control of my life by realising I had striven to own so much that would supposedly give me gratification either through simply ownership or use.
I regained control of my mind, my own mind, and just in time realised my reasons for discontent and still had the ability to do something to change areas of my life which were under par.

My soul mate of a partner was growing away from me and my so called circle of acquaintances were becoming less and less important or indeed relevant as I progressed further and further with my random directional learning.

I have severed all ties with my past.
Got rid of 99% of my possessions,
lived up to my recently adapted maxim of “Less being more”.

I shed my life as awkwardly as my pet python used to shed his skin.
Sometimes it would peel off with no problems other times it would stick in places and abrasion or in my case obscure and drastic measures had to be used to allow a successful shedding.
The majority of people my age have already enjoyed sufficient years of routine to have dismissed any thoughts of change,
apathy serves as contentment and their adapted routines bring comfort and security through conformity and sameness.

People express disbelief when I tell them that as I youngster I read almost every book in the village library before the age of ten,
I then spent decades reading nothing but non-fiction educational material.
I found I couldn’t sit and simply read the written word of a story, it would be too one dimensional for me.
My mind when active works in between several and several hundreds of directions.
I analyse, criticise, fantasise, think of possible better outcomes, possibilities, bring in new players, assimilate with personal experiences the wander off on a different tangent and end up taking the old journey along the road with no directions or street lighting!

Travelling around the darker recesses of my mind and imagination, sometimes finding treasure in the form of self-enlightenment sometimes unearthing emotions of such intensity as to inflict physical pain.
A psychotic never knows when the journey begins because they are unaware of anything out of the usual.
The restriction of a day being a period of 24 hours which is made up of a waking and a rest period….disappears as does recognised times of day for meals;
daylight is shunned and actively blocked out to remove visual clues.
Clocks are removed (if ever present),

I was different in as much as my journeys were planned in part by me choosing to hibernate each winter and embark upon a project, which would often involve usually a previously unused portion of the P.C.’s abilities, learn a new function, investigate fully and suss out any personal value.
To try to turn off or halt the journey when one recognises the fact you’ve began is impossible and unwanted.
Suddenly one day whilst driving myself to exhaustion learning about computer security;
I don’t mean the everyday security of keeping virus data up to data etc. I mean the deeper recesses of security the darker side of hackers potential, known issues, threats.
All this at a time when I was convinced several persons, two of which had been my Gurus when I began computing and one of which was a very knowledgable person who built my machine, had hacked into my computer.
(A machine, which I still think was superior to what, I have now some five years later).

Yes my mind was overloaded with security-based problems, my machine was acting out of character and my disc drive simply stopped working.
I add when something stops working I don’t just accept it, I would spend hours inside the p.c. checking wiring etc.
I by passed some of the problems by having a back up machine, which wasn’t connected, to the Internet.

Second joint has nicely crept into my forehead and I feel like I’m being Botoxed from the inside; there is also a concentrated spot of pain exactly in the middle of my forehead that is throbbing in a staccato manner.

I remember I was investigating Apache, had the system and every program certified.
At the same time I was into the Longhorn , later to become Shorthorn project.
Was flitting through Microsoft partner sites,
blagged my way into many hundreds of sites after entering only sufficient details to pass as a teacher or student or boss of a small business.

I was torn for a while between Open source and Microsoft, in the end I chose to stay with the latter but tried many of the Freeware available before removing everything totally to eliminate adware and spyware, which in those days was rife.

Virtual classrooms, confusion between Cleveland u.k. and Cleveland U.S.A. may have allowed me further access to campus facilities, following attempts to understand Cisco and realising the full potential of some of the older models of modems which allowed a small amount of readjustment.

It seemed that the more you learn about security the more it becomes apparent that there are huge loopholes in the system and as systems became more advanced and technologies were becoming combined with wi-fi and mobile phones the future of security looked even bleaker.

My Guru went to University to studyApplied Physics or some kind of physics.
He left a text book one day and I ploughed through three chapters explaining nuclear fission,
I think I remember being informed that Strings were in fact smaller than atoms. I thought to myself that day: if that kid can handle that shit I’d read about then I could push my boundaries a little.
He had told me stories about his hacking exploits, bragged about his abilities, leaving me in no doubt that if he had chosen to use his skills for financial gain he would have been well capable.
He also let it slip that he could take over someone’s p.c., no sweat.

So you can imagine that when I began to hallucinate while working I wondered if it was him, he would also be prime suspect when any malfunction occurred.
But I run ahead of myself.
I return to the afternoon I realised that changes were afoot.

I had a project I had been working on for years a home entertainment system to be based on using retro equipment through a digital converter all controlled from a p.c. equipped with a virtual sound system through a television.
Yes I know that nowadays you walk into Argos and buy one, but I was putting this together six years ago.

I pause to skin up joint three.

I had realised that I was lacking in many fields of expertise to fully give the physical project of building the system and the creative urge to write, the need to research and learn skills.
I split up my projects both real and those which I’d been considering and made a list of starting points for further research, wasn’t too big a deal, was simple enough because most of my learning tended to follow the as needed style so was dictated by progression.

I organised my workspace;
I already had a purpose built corner desk and expensive office chair, leather, full support, on castors.
I used the length of my two arms and the distance travelled by chair following a gentle launch from the desk;
that area was to be my work zone.

I installed a chest/fridge combo and filled the fridge full of energy drinks and beer bottles,
three ice trays, and perched a bottle of whisky on top.
The fridge was placed against a wall on the limit of any chair propulsion so therefore energy had to be expended to warrant reward of any of the fridge’s contents,
thus an exercise regime was implemented.

I then stripped the machine down to its basics allowing free movement of air.
I stupidly had convinced myself not to use the radiator in the room to prevent damage to the p.c.’s system!
Thinking back Winter is not th e time to spend very long hours, almost thirty hours on the bat sat motionless in a unheated draughty room with a bloody fan on to help circulation.

The window was covered with a thick velvet curtain, blocking out completely any light from outside,
Bankers light on desk and light from welcoming fridge interior.

I did of course then install my 500 watt high discharge lamp, which I use to?
Combat SAD of course, what else?
A few of my favourite “Pot” plants were placed in the room for company.
What?
They sat motionless like “White Widows”, (how many clues do you need?).
“Why persecute a man for his belief?”
in the powers from a simple leaf.

I arranged my Yamaha full size keyboard on top of the Peavy and left the guitar plugged in at all times.
There was then an old type stacking system, thorough which I sometimes put the keyboard and recorded onto tape prior to downloading to hard disc.
The skeletal p.c. was next to the desk on the floor with the oscillating fan behind me helping it to keep cool while all the time providing a steady flow of air across the females in my company helping them to grow strong and tall.

Get that one?

Joint just hit, pain in head increased, like having a busy dartboard on the spot.

I digress, something I seem to be prone to, or is it on purpose?
Who can tell, I only write the words in the style of that well known pianist,
forgotten his fucking name.
This is of course one of the recognised drawbacks of smoking dope.
I have faults with the old memory or as I prefer to put it my memory seems to have got more selective.

Les fucking Dawson, I write in the style of that artist, all the words are there, just like the notes he played on the piano but like his notes my words may not always be in the right place.

The desk was occupied by an inferior thirteen inch monitor, which thinking back I spent thousands of hours staring at it while my neck, which had been locked solid for sometimes 24 hours solid eventually collapsed and my head would roll forward, too heavy to retrieve.

Near the monitor were the necessary requirements.

Two Zippo lighters, a can of petrol and a pint glass full of skins and roaches,
I found a neat gizmo on the market, hand held card slicer, ideal for preparing roaches from unwanted card courtesy of my bank enticing me to save or take a loan, insure my house, car, pets, big toe, holiday, health, children, whatever, not interested but grateful for regular supply of card,
I seem to remember asking one night following a call from my bank asking if there was any way they could help me, if they could send the thicker adverts and not the recently poorer quality paper fliers.

Dish full of batteries of all shapes sizes and nature.

Huge butterfly clip with pieces of paper for attention at a later time, also a reason to move neck upwards when solid.

Keyboard was of course housed under front of desk, four of the cubby holes of the desk housed the four satellite speakers and the woofer was placed at head height in front of me.
There were also four other combos of speakers ranging from four so eight in number.

Above the monitor was a portable TV and video, p.c.cam and digital cam.
Important program discs were at arms length and the remaining item was a beautiful, heavy, pot, special Grouse whisky edition,
Ashtray.

To my left was the second p.c. a collection of tapes and music cds and a wall unit for storage.

To remind you of where this began to day was with me remembering how I felt that day when it dawned on me I had progressed so far without realising the fact.

I have years of experience in computer lead journeys to know that details like starting point and destination are often unknowns, which is why the journey is tolerable due to the uncertainty of the travel.

I had prepared the best I could to provide a space in which I could follow several avenues of activity while working on the bigger scheme of combining all the elements into a system, which didn’t require so much fucking cabling.

There was also never far from hand a Dictaphone, into which I logged any system change I was doing; my system changed several times a fortnight,
often getting replaced, wiped clean and re-stocked.

I later had a fly mike fixed to it when using headphones and would use voice activation to note down thoughts as they came to me while doing another part of the project.
I found it simple to switch between the different areas but found ideas from the previous activities would infringe on present occupation and therefore ability to talk these ides out into mike was useful.

Now if the trick cyclists are to be believed a sure sign of manic behaviour is taking on several projects at once.

But as I have just explained the different sections, projects were ultimately designed to become a part of the whole.

I had decided to push myself to the limits.
Don’t forget I was a guy approaching 50 who had come to realise that almost every aspect of his life was not yielding sufficient pleasure to make continuing feasible or rewarding in any foreseeable way.

I was also looking for something along the way which would prove fruitful or spark interest for me to find out what I could and couldn’t do with a computer, something which has been a part of me for 20 years.
Something I could still do in the future regardless of what happens to me physically.
Hell I had it researched right down to option of puffer-controlled p.c.

As far as my music was concerned, I’ve been playing the same old dots from the same old music books for 30 years and wanted to break away and find a different more enjoyable style of playing sounds rather than dots off a page.
I spent months playing the standards and eventually finding a more fluid swing based style playing which allowed me to play around with the dots instead of following them religiously.
I had of course abandoned all allegiance to the metronome years ago.
I’ve been told by a musical examiner that I am tone deaf,
I also have industrial deafness, tinnitus,
have restricted use of both thumbs and four fingers yet love to play and can play well at times, surprisingly well.

Fourth joint is kicking in nicely, politely announcing its’ arrival by freezing my lower jaw.

I played my collection covering the sounds of the past hundred years, I researched artists, genres, went back in time to before the music was dictated by the then growing media business, tin pan alley etc.
I searched for the birthplaces of styles I was seeking to emulate.
My search for insight into the Blues led me along some dark avenues, disturbing facts and tales of hardship combined with the apparent jollity of a New Orleans funeral.

I had a companion who had listened to me play, firstly on the Wurlitzer and secondly on the Yammie for 20 years.
I returned to basics, there was about 1000tunes and I knew for a fact that they were many I had never played because I’d been in the nature of only playing what I knew,
hell most I’d never heard, some of the old musical hall ones.
I knuckled down and set myself a week to learn each and every one of the hundred tunes in each book, obviously there was much more than 1000 songs.

When learning a new tune but completely unaware of what the song actually sounds like allowed me to choose whichever style I wanted and without realising it I found myself altering the style perhaps four of five times while playing the same piece I had therefore learnt to relax and allow styles to be dictated by feeling for dots and I’d begun to read some of the lyrics so my playing was affected by what’s trying to be sung.

My playing became looser, I should maybe take this opportunity so interject that by now the widow widows had sadly passed away, popped their clogs and outgrown their pots and were in the process of being..
Selectively cremated on a daily basis.

I was still mastering the contents of the books while returning to classical pieces and refreshing my memory of the purity of the piano when solo.
I used low volume playing though headphones to allow me to listen to the length of each note, noticing how long it lingered, how soft it could be played yet remain audible.
I used that technique whenever setting out to try and master some of the instruments I’d chosen to specialise in and spend time learning to play not just the note of the flute but the sound of the mouthing.
Twisting the sound of three sizes of sax out of all recognition.
Playing a slap base, and of course learning to play the drum section.

While on the classical section I found I couldn’t stop experimenting with styles and of course really made some interesting versions of classic pieces, even found some which could have been taken as the base for some of the more modern guitar riffs.
I return to my partner who was listening she is 17 years older than me and as such is able to remember some of the tunes I was mucking about with.
She came in the room one day, sat and listened and then said I played like her father used to play in the band.
I concentrated for a while on that over fancy style of adding as many apparently unnecessary notes as possible to a tune.
Changes of key working with different styles, once you found the blues key for your piece it can be the liveliest piece of music every written but it will have the unmissable sound tattooed onto it.
I began to play pieces and I could in my mind imagine the sound of another instrument playing along or taking over the tune. Often these thoughts were founded on I wonder what the clarinet or xylophone would make of this, a couple of alterations and one two or all three instruments are playing, I single one out go up and down twenty octaves and come across some surprising results.
Often the eureka moment drops onto me,” That’s here that sound comes from!”

I forget to mention I played the most of my sounds at full volume, often my sessions on the keyboard and guitar could clearly be heard streets away.

I mentioned the presence of the old faithful stacking system it was there if I wanted to play vinyl, tape or record from line in.

I had replaced it on the computer by downloading the audio freeware which had supplied me with all the amplification, sf effects, graphic control, environment control, speaker control, I.e. small/ large. I could record edit, alter speed, octave range volume, I had pretty well enough also I’d just broken down a system to produce a radio station be it on the acceptable fixed schedule basis of operation.
I had quite a decent. 100% free virtual audio package, without having the need to use complicated programs.
The London speakers were giving out a good sound and over the months I gradually increased the quality of the sound until I found a level previously unencountered which I found new and wanted to keep and transfer to the living room system which was still waiting to be harnessed together in front of me.

At the time there were a few sites to which you were invited to download pieces, re mix and then re- post for someone else to tinker around with. the life span of any piece was only for the length of time it remained interesting.

I needed pieces to practise on and these were ideal,
I shied away from tampering with vocals except for talking the letters dd into an appropriate place so I can see what has been altered on my section of work, a tag.

Joint five, am loving sounds currently playing, completely unstructured, seemingly. Ace.

Now of course I was fifty and never heard some of this music before yet alone the names used to describe the street sounds.
I then stumbled upon what would have called years ago Rave.
I had been going through the sacks of tapes and figuring out which may be worth keeping, usually listening to snatches of same while waiting for computer to restore to a useable state, (happened often, had plenty of time to listen).

I found some tapes taken from a rave house and began to play them.
I realised they may be worth keeping when I noticed several youngsters hanging around the house end apparently enjoying the music.
Mix with some of the old judge dread and fun times being had.
I then moved into comedy songs, favouring the famous Yank.
I listened to some of the more modern offerings of trance, acid house, garage etc whatever the kids seemed to be listening to. I couldn’t understand or tried to but liked some of the ranges of sounds that were being used.

Every setting of every voice on the keyboard was played listened to and some attempt to mark and remember the more interesting sounds were made.

I was no longer playing instruments to produce a recognisable facsimile I was making sounds.
I remember some of the sounds making me cry with their beauty and apparent purity when I later played the keyboard downstairs through the digital converter, 500 watt amp and theatre sound system, wooden floor and plaster walls, nearest I got to creating my own heaven.

Back to the dingy room just me and my buds.

Yes, people called occasionally to listen to the system, see what I’d been up to, have a drink, and get wrecked. Once per month at first the computer guru would come along and help iron out problems, usually problems could be solved with minor adjustments to the system of upgrading or re install at the worst of times.
After a year or so he said he could no longer help and indeed I seemed to be learning fast enough to keep up to date.
The other caller would be the guy I mentioned with experience of the music business but who was trapped, as I had been in a time warp of production music mainly the 80’s and 90’s.

We would get stoned to Santana then drink to Floyd and Doctor John,

I realised I’d had music all around me for years but never been able to hear it as clearly as this system was allowing me to.
Pieces so familiar seemed to be heard for the first time, small intricacies never before heard and so clearly present.
My mind was made up, I’d progressed with my playing styles, had learnt new tunes and enjoyed myself but had realised there was a challenge to produce an almost shy, retiring type of background sounds which can be listened to or allowed to flow on as required.

Unfortunately the keyboard I’d played for so long had been a gift from my ex-partner and one day while having more than the usual feelings of hatred for her I smashed it up to get rid of the last memory tie I possessed.
Never did like the idea of wearing ties.
The smashing was only recently, I add. That was during my second, and hilarious second episode.

I return to the work station. I had began writing a factual story of my travel to Scotland.

One day i looked at the scribble in the note book following a 24 hour session and thought it sounded like sci-fiction, best part of it, and when writing it up next day into my diary, records kept of changes made, an idea of a story line came to me where as life would be a challenge against technology and its gremlins and so a comical side came out of the struggle.

So there was three styles of writing I was trying with different degrees of failure.

These of course were used as further examples of bi-polar behaviour.

Ideas were flowing and some were acted upon, followed to extinction.

My music practical took a back seat as I returned to the computer and went off in search of knowledge.
I travelled along the back streets of the TechNet after having piped through,
I’d try backdoors as I came across them and travelled along different corridors in different directions governed only by whatever door allowed progress without asking for any annoying details which would undoubtedly break any chain of thought.

To be perched on dew kissed spider’s web.
Each drop of dew is a door but you have to travel to and through without alerting the keeper of the web the spider and all who rely on her.

After a while the simple lay out of the pages, the lack of distraction from adverts and annoying flash grows on you and you do not realise the more effective use of you time your are apparently making.
The fact that your presence on the site has been noted is enough to realise you treat the content with respect.
Generally took what I needed and left.

Doctor John has a song, fucking poet now!
Giving warning to think about what you wish for.

Getting involved with some of the beta programs should be given the same warning be careful what you wish for and consequently download.
I chased all the carrots for a while, new progs, adds ons enhances to performance, updates, trial versions, share and free; I was like a kid in a sweet shop. I had soon realised most were not worth it but some of the chances to try some of the products offered under the partnership seemed too good to miss, hell just keep sending the error messages and spending a lot of time trying to make it work with your self build system.

I later seemingly retaliated by stripping the system down to the barest of basics to allow function then starting again to build.
I feel sick and think the typing plus the last joint is taking effect so bed calls for a lie down for this aged-soul.