The thing about the UK is the percentage of creative people is much higher. It's still a small minority but it's enough that it really makes a difference. Additionally the extreme verdancy and high latitude combined with the atlantic meridional overturning circulation current. It all combines to make it objectively speaking the nost magical place on earth. Excluding very small areas elsewhere of course.

And of course many of those really creative brits take it completely for granted. They focus on their minority status (which would be the case anywhere and would be even worse anywhere) and focus on all the things that could be better because of course in a lot of ways the UK does suck, just like everywhere else. Which is still quite laughable. It is the best place on the planet. 

I finally reviewed the solution to Masquerade in detail yesterday. I wonder why I hadn't long ago. But I wrote in detail elsewhere. There was something else I had meant to write about here but I've been sidetracked. 

I started Chopin's Funeral March. Used to be i didn't like the somewhat positive turn it took. But in a recent listen i found that to be perfect for death shouldn't be completely terrible. It's important to not see it that way. It's maybe a perfect piece of music for viewing death. Perhaps the darth vader theme which i had heard so much more of made it hard to appreciate.

Just about "finished" with Gladiolus rag. I guess may do Maple leaf but Funeral March takes precedence. 

I started back at performing monkey piano last fall. So far brushed up/perfected/learned:
1. Rach prelude in c sharp minor
2. Moonlight sonata slow movement 
3. Most famous pathetique movement 
4. Beethoven's 19 sonata one movement 
5. Nyman heart asks for pleasure. 
6. 1st 3 pages of Beethoven's 7th symphone 2nd movement 
7. Gladiolus
...??? Other stuff not worth mentioning 

Inspired by 3 galloping dogs i finally bought what i think is decent reverb. Fogconvolver. Also Garritan Personal Orchestra 5 which... I think I like better than East West Silver but maybe it's the reverb. Back hurts too much to sit up and work on really writing music or performing monkey much. 

Also acquired autoharp and amp. Working on ukelin and gurdy. 

I liked Silver Mount Zion latest album and finally after a year have begun listening to the rest of their stuff and Efram's Godspeed you. I really like 4 songs so far and many others are pretty good. 3 galloping dogs has me deciding again I need to try again. I want to get at least two other people and perform live.

Still, I bought GPO and close to buying fog convoluter. I have never paid for any remotely decent convolution reverb. GPO is a bit cheap but good value. Just for composing. Ultimately want to perform live.

Performing live is what it should be about. Humility. Not fame. Not amazing. Not mass produced art reaching millions.

Also made a large playlist of shoegaze.

I have never written myself out of a bad place. Only the opposite.

Hurt my back 10 days ago. I can just about stand up straight without pain now. Almost. Can slowly walk. No disc herniation. I think I know what to change for prevention.

I really don't like steroids. Stomach ache for days and highly irritable. Not thinking well. 5th day of steroids and can't stand them anymore. Won't take the last day.

I was actually in a sort of good mood last few days. "Vegging" while I healed. Playing Morrowind. Tomorrow I shall attempt to go to work. It's a long walk to office. I might need a wheelchair. Not sure how that would go over.

I have small children. I have to get better. I need to survive and keep a job another 20 years. For them. Not for me. Nothing much for me.

I'm not good with words despite really trying. I hardly have anything really worth saying.

A person friended me that I went to school with. I think from elementary school on up? Not sure. Want to find out. We once had a 30 second conversation about Clive Barker and I can't recall otherwise ever speaking to him. But I had felt at least in high school that I wish I had known him. Then he was suicidal. I wasn't much better.

Now he's 47. He lives with in his mom's house who is a bipolar alcoholic with dementia. He has 22 dollars to his name. No car. Just started a new job as a waiter. He walked 3 miles to work because mom wouldn't let him borrow the car. She's screaming drunk crazy and police have been called and he doesn't know what to do.

He lives a 1000 miles away. I really don't actually know him. Apparently he has no one. Some fb "friends ". He had a sister. I don't know what became of her.

I will do nothing for him I guess. Talking to him at all on Facebook is strange considering I didn't actually know him.

But he likes the music I like. DCD, the cure. He reads. He's androgynous. Gay.

And he's 47 years old and he has 22 dollars to his name and no one good in his life. He was suicidal 30 years ago and it looks lije things haven't improved. My wife isn't going to let me reach out to some stranger  But he seems to have spent his life working at amusement parks and on the beach.

My stomach hurts. I'm hot. It's hot upstairs because heat rises. Downstairs hurts my back worse.

I have two small children. Something horrible HAS to happen to me. There's no way I will be allowed to be with them as they grow up.

I will listen to probably DCD. Starting now.....

And think of another time.

Reading George Macdonald earlier. Great largely forgotten writer. It's slightly horrifying the people who lived and have been forgotten.  Not just him but thinking about his characters as real people that in some variation they were.

My stomach hurts. I'm in a bad place. I have wrote my way out of a bad place. It's Sunday night. Insomnia night.

I thought of the giant sequoias the other day. I tried to work on a story that had a scene there. I ruined the sequoias.