Podcast episodes
Season 5
5.11 Summer Day, Rainy Night
PART 1: SUMMER DAY: One last summer day — Boat on the shore — Did go rowing — Times I had the beach to myself — Later realised why — Water just right — Giving thanks for the beautiful day — Phone alarm — Many motivations — Boat drifting — Oh, a fish | PART 2: RAINY NIGHT: Rainy night on the balcony — Most of the lake recording unusable — Something discussed in season 1 — Artist Curt Swan — Known for his work on the superhero Superman — Feels strange to be talking about this again — A later realisation — Swan was pushed aside — Had to happen — Necessary change — Shifted position — This character — So strange I ever said it — Like another person — A personal reason — A brief good period for those comics that coincided with my teens — Intricate continuity — For the first time a sense of evolving into something more — “Mature” — Disastrous results — Wrong turn — Misguided — Not the right place for those kinds of stories — Simply had some fond memories — Sweet ideals — Being a decent, even a really good person — Intentionally misleading covers — Acknowledging my changed views — Another reason to be thinking of change — Too static — Lacking magic — Things that can make you feel good every day — An insidious way for a person’s life to become less beautiful and treasurable — Times of staleness — Even when at the same time creating meaningful things — Why I’m here — Always different levels — Not rejuvenating, revivifying — Being able to wake up refreshed and recovered — Reasons why it may not happen — Sleep deprivation and illnesses — Life becoming more narrow and restricted — Freedom and new possibilities — Change becomes more difficult, if not impossible, the longer the static circumstances continue — Consciously shaking things up — Realising the need for change — Amassing more and more — Then started getting rid of things — Oppressed by all the stuff — Not giving me anything anymore — Seller’s tables at Finncon — Long time ago — Sold most of what I had — Happier afterwards — The horror of hoarding — A psychological problem — Mental health issue — Can be extremely damaging — Becoming encased in your collection of belongings — “Will I really miss something that I’m now getting rid of?” — No — That voice should be ignored — Life became lighter — Collecting as a form of hoarding — Seeking security by owning physical things — I love having room rather than stuff — Not enough life for any human being to keep returning to thousands of things — Dust — Mould — The feeling of being normally healthy — Feeling good about being alive and able to breathe easily — Not something to take for granted — Some inner journeys are delusions — Good health is luxurious — Young people’s beliefs that they’ll always find meaning in the things they currently do — Happiness not in things themselves — No reason to keep a thing anymore — A lighter life — In the here and now — The future is not guaranteed — Wishes for insight and ability to make changes
5.10 Danger of Triviality, Creative Practicalities, and New Music
“Season 5 Opening” (@ 0:00) — Second episode of the day — Recorded on different dates — Closer to the mic again — Nicer listening experience — Lake episodes — Drifting ever so slowly — Without larger goals, danger of falling into triviality — Dreams, aspirations — Not selfish things — Couples bickering in grocery stores over trivial things — Triviality has taken over their lives — Many different forms — Obsessions — Hypochondria — Can be learned from others — Empathy for people with this problem — Be careful — Preoccupation with quirks — Irritability, pettiness — Policing other people’s behaviour — Bike example — Rageful people — Eliminating ways of wasting time — One way to avoid this fate — Lost human potential — Being creative — Numerous ways — My mother’s creativity — She made our whole yard bloom — Kamikaze motorboat — Album Early Music Archive — 50 early tracks — Wide variety of styles — American Indian ponderosa pine flute — My way of playing it — Lovely mellow quality — On Bandcamp, streaming, and for download — Praise for Bandcamp — Great way to support artists — Ways to help artists create more — More income from creative work equals more creative work possible — And faster — Reacting, sharing, word of mouth — Adding tracks to playlists — One thing leading to another — Chains of events — Simply doing my work and putting out information about it — Limits of what artists themselves can do — The rest depends on others — Not becoming an advertising agency — The people I hope to reach — My first single — “Land of Youth & Beauty” — “Lake Presentation” video (2022) for the book Land of Youth & Beauty: Early Poems — Vision of a book in a lake — Recap of the creation story — The vision happened again with the book with me — Sunlight shimmering — No special effects — The life of an independent creator — Thousands of small steps building towards larger goals and dreams — Albums and a single — Further along on the path — The books of short stories and poems — Cornerstones — Following natural schedules — Pierre Estève: “Time is on our side.” — Faith in time — Drifting and talking — Beach all to myself for swimming — Water the perfect temperature — PayPal donations possible via my site — Calling millionaires and billionaires — Everything helps — The bottom line of how much one can do in a lifetime — Updating my site — New functionality — Picture of all my works so far — Always up to date — More sheet music — Interpretations always different — The way lakes and seas and waves are — No indications of dynamics — Tales from the North, Book I — Same for tempi — Apology for not having yet continued the serialised discussion of Andrew Mellor’s The Northern Silence — Peter Falk’s memoirs — Reminder to myself — “Season 5 Closing” (@ 30:06)
5.9 Programmed Addictions, Wasted Life, and Alternatives
“Season 5 Opening” (@ 0:11) — Programming of people — Behaviour patterns — Part of the control group — TV, films, games, stories in every medium — More and more inhuman — Even subhuman — Since 9/11 — Torture — Non-critical depictions — Troubling — Many went along with it — The time torture was made legal — Antarctica — Arctic polar region — No justification ever — No free advertising from me — Crept quickly also into science fiction — Past critical depictions of torture and other types of physical, emotional, mental, and psychological abuse — The belief that we can separate fiction from reality — Media literacy — Stopped following broadcast TV about 20 years ago — Stupid stories — Very easy for the writers — Sexual assaults as motivation in stories — Told from the perpetrator’s point of view — Not the victim’s — Unlike with David Lynch’s and Mark Frost’s Twin Peaks — Events shown for the horrors they are — Not trivialised — What Alan Moore called “a pornography of violence” — Now common and mainstream in TV series and films — Chemical addiction to this type of content — Leading to withdrawal symptoms — Needing another “hit” — Most of these depictions don’t help people process things — The need was created — Few people born with it — Picking you up again — Friends or something else — Not what we should be doing with our lives — Sad waste of human potential and art and creativity — Long process — Is this really what we are here for? — Is this a good use of our time? — Is this the best we can do? — Is this what we are looking for? — One thing addicts can’t stand — What I am and am not in a position to do — Wouldn’t want a child to grow watching thousands of scenes of torture and rape — Exploitative — Offering nothing to victims of such experiences — Keeping wounds open — Creating and maintaining the addiction — Many forget what beautiful and worthwhile things can be done with art and creativity — People actually pay money to watch rapes and torture — Is this really human? — Can only answer for myself — Everyone free to make their own choices — Tobacco addiction — Scientific facts — Ray Bradbury — The Ray Bradbury Theater — His short stories — How is it possible we often stay away from such beautiful and healthy things? — Time forever lost — The precious gift of being alive — Freedom — “Season 5 Closing” (@ 24:32)
5.8 Early Music Archive, Lou Doillon, and Room to Imagine
“Season 5 Opening” (@ 0:12) — Heavy heart — Talk it out — Reconsidering last episode — A little knoll — Past discarded recordings — Attempt to have a little fun — Reasoning behind the collage — “I like messes.” — Not letting myself off the hook — Moving on — Possible problem for creators — The best I can — By the time I publish a book — Able to justify everything included and excluded — We could do an experiment — Negative space — Heaviness of heart and spirit — Something very positive — Lou Doillon — French — Discovered her first as an actress in a film — Outshone everyone else — Multitalented artist — Music — Writing, playing, and singing songs — YouTube playlist — How natural she is — Things she doesn’t do — Like seeing and hearing a kindred spirit — Links between these various things — My past music — Final stages for my music album Early Music Archive — My 10th year of making music — 50 tracks on this album — Music from up until about two years ago — Newer music of a different stage — Bandcamp and CD Baby — Music can be a hyperlink — All kinds of moments — Getting fully up to date — Backlog — Reminders of things past — Someone I knew in another lifetime — Past, present, and future mix together — The books of early short stories and poems — Not an excusing label — More on art as a circle — The artist, the creation, someone who experiences the creation, and the circle returning to the artist — That final part of the circle of art — It matters — Motives that don’t apply to me — Motives that do — Meaningful to hear reactions — A common misunderstanding — Theatre example — With an audience or without? — Alan Moore / BBC Maestro videos — My past regarding him — His pieces of advice on writing — Can no longer get into his works — Because he does everything — Not leaving room for the audience or imagination — Paraphrasing — The opposite of what works for me — Too much detail already filled in — No room to imagine — The original Star Trek (1960s) gave just enough detail to spark the imagination — Kirk, Spock, McCoy — Not too much information — No longer part of my mental landscape — At that point, I’m out — Why am I even there? — Both fun parts already done — Fan fiction — I only want to know a certain amount — Portable black-and-white TV — Playing outside — Snow labyrinths — There was still room for imagination — Few props needed — The limited interest of biographical detail — Trademarked names — Simplistic motivations — Life can’t be reduced to single incidents — David Lynch proved with Twin Peaks season 3 that continuing series don’t have to end up giving too much information — Season 2 — Norma Jennings (Peggy Lipton) — The Double R diner — Ed — Shelly — Already enough — Not making it less than what it was — Knowing when to stop — The value can be in the lack of that more — Agent Cooper — Sheriff Truman — Just enough — Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me — Twin Peaks: The Missing Pieces (91 min.) — Deleted and extended scenes — Edited by David Lynch himself — Norma’s moment of quiet desperation — No unnecessary explaining — Drawing our own conclusions — “Season 5 Closing” (@ 44:35)
5.7 In Which I Talk Baloney in the First Collage Episode
Veil of darkness — Morning row — Swimming on the beaches — Great privilege — My flashlight — Juice left — Creative activities — TV a lot — Arcane matters — Discussion — Completely against — About seven — Word-for-word perfection wandering off to one side — Come out later — Art is a circle — Talking baloney — At Dawn — Fresh inspiration — You will regret it — Properly continue — Early Music — Ten years — That Dark, Dark Night — Crystallisation — Love — An Iceland Symphony — Let them flow — All the feelings — One plus two — “In the Fog, Deep” — Eight is the number of infinity — Dissatisfied seagull — Dying to write — Be more fluid — How it made you feel — The sun has risen — Waterfall — Thunderstorm — Follow a story — Let yourself — Gentle moment — Absolute disaster — Needing to continue — Trying to backpedal but sliding forward — An oldfashioned fruit machine — This is a dance — From November 2022 to May or June 2023 — Cordial invitation — Nauseous — The full range of human emotions — Arm numb — For nothing — Bring some light and some beautiful darkness — What always is very meaningful