My music project is coming along

I've kept myself busy with keyboard practice lately and also did a few more recordings.

But besides the videos, I also downloaded a free audio recording program called Audacity which is pretty neat and I can recommend it. It has enabled me to record audio tracks of my songs now; I finished three so far, plus one instrumental version, which I uploaded to Soundcloud and put them in a playlist. (<- find="" p="" right="" them="" there.="">
At this early time I'd say they're still in a pre-demo stage, but nonetheless a good friend of mine took so great a liking to them that she created a page for me on last.fm right away (description text by myself).
This may be quite a bit premature as I started at absolute zero just about a month ago but well, I'll try my best to do honor to it.

I never played an instrument before and I can't read musical notation, I'm simply "learning by doing". As I'm a complete autodidact and taught myself virtually everything I know, at least this general process is  something I'm quite familiar with.

So the plan to proceed is: create & practice more new songs, and as I get more proficient I'll eventually also record better versions of the ones I have so far.
All video and audio files are completely unedited, I simply hit "record" and played and sang along. My friend who created the last.fm page for me encouraged me to stick with this procedure and I think I will, although the Audacity program does allow for mixing multiple separate tracks, editing them, adding effects, etc.
I may give these functions a try since I'm curious by nature - but I'm also kind of old-fashioned in some ways, I feel too much use of technology may be detrimental to true skill and creativity.
My friend, who knows a lot about music, said that nowadays you will only know whether a musician is really skilled if you hear them live - because all the mixing & editing allows completely untalented people to sound talented. So I prefer to simply hit "record" ad basically play live.

I like to write like this.

Stranger to the Law Divine - II

I can play the song now while singing along.
Ok, it's a rather easy one to play, my first one, and it could probably be played in more advanced ways one day. But it's progress!

 

Stranger to the Law Divine - lyrics

I'm working on my next one already which is quite a bit more difficult to play. Getting there.

Other than this there's little progress, or actually there is but I'm on my own - and used to it.
Finished with my last orthopedist who was a charlatan, to put it very mildly.
I tried to talk to him about my findings but only got to hear, "Dr. Google won't help you."
Obviously this person has no concept whatsoever of how information works! Granted, he studied medicine and all, but that doesn't give him a license to insult another person's intellect - an intellect which, I daresay, is quite likely to be superior to his own since back when my IQ was tested - NOT by "Dr.Google" but professionally in the psychiatry when I was about 13 years old - I learned that only 2% of humanity possess an IQ higher than 130 and mine turned out to be 142. If the percentage has changed in the intervening decade and a half then it would likely be even lower now since the human species has greatly increased in quantity since, but certainly not in quality...

My intellect has usually proven perfectly adequate to evaluate information, in particular information that is very relevant to my personal life and health, which obviously is less than relevant to this lousy doctor.
In the end it was "Dr. Google" that saved my life, or rather saved me from losing much, much worse than only my life. The lousy orthopedist told me I'll probably have to live with my back pain and simply take painkillers as needed. I told him Ibuprofen and Diclofenac have no effect on it, and he prescribed me some sh*t called Meloxicam. Of course I informed myself about it - and found it can cause rapid weight gain as a side effect!!! I immediately returned it to the pharmacy. I have no words for how this bloody quack could have ruined my life in the worst ways imaginable!!!

It would be far, far preferable to die right here at this moment than to ever lose any bit of what I worked so hard for, all my life! Any amount of pain is preferable over taking the risk of such horrendous possible side effects!

I'm pretty convinced by now that the problem is with my left sacroiliac joint. Awareness alone of this may already help a bit, and so does warmer weather, and above all, faith.
In the end, it may not be related to my heavy lifting starting at very young age; there are some indications that I might have a disease. But in the end it makes little difference for now; at an early stage it couldn't be diagnosed directly, and I'll in any case just keep living the life of a warrior until it must end in the same way.
I will only ever become more and better than I am now, regression is unacceptable and is ruled out.
In the end it is another trial to prove that I have to, as always, take things into my own hands - this, and faith, is all! I can only ever trust in Father Satan and in myself, all else is fallacious.

~~

Working on a new song already, here's a preview of my practice.

Stranger to the Law Divine

I know I've been quiet lately; times are still difficult, only the occasional summer day here and there in between very chilly weather and I'm still struggling with lots of pain from my messed-up lumbar spine; now it's better, then it's worse again, and common painkillers such as ibuprofen, even in high doses, have no effect on it. I keep doing my workouts regardless of course, but afterward I'll usually feel fatigued and disinclined to go out once more but prefer to read or do some creative stuff only.

I still got this old keyboard from a flea market, I can't really play but maybe I can teach myself (I taught myself everything I've ever learned, after all) - so far just a hint of the melody, and the sound on the recording is pretty awful - for the most part I'll have to sing "a cappella". I wrote this devotional song years ago while traveling some road on my bike...

My recent books & a squeaky toy

Books shown in my video:

Breaking Open the Head 
by Daniel Pinchbeck
The author is a journalist and also a seeker of truth, revealing a deep, personal, spiritual journey in this excellently written book about psychedelics, shamanism, and consciousness in general; it's an account of exciting, first-hand experience and when you're reading it you'll be along for the ride.

Science and the Near-Death Experience
by Chris Carter
I had mentioned in a previous blog how I was already very disappointed by the silly "universal love" bullshit in the foreword, but fortunately it proved limited to the foreword only (which was written by a different author). All the rest of this book is very factual and insightful, even if less entertaining due to its factual nature. It's a collection of data plus conclusions drawn by the author, rather than a personal journey. If you're looking for entertainment this one is not for you, better try the one mentioned above then.

The Doors of Perception / Heaven and Hell
by Aldous Huxley
This one is a very famous classic dating from the 1950's, and even though old it's a classic for a reason, highly recommended for anyone with an interest in consciousness, spirituality, or psychedelics, and since it's less than 100 pages it's not exactly a demanding chore to read. I found it really fascinating; the only aspect I felt a bit alienated by is how Huxley talks lengthily about certain classic artworks without introducing them, as if assuming the reader must certainly be intimately familiar with them too - which I am definitely not; I had only vaguely heard of some, of others not at all, and I'm not sure if this is because of the distance in time (Were all people in the 50's acquainted with those works?) or because I don't have any formal education, but I'd guess the latter is not the reason. It's more likely because nowadays we have so much more choice in the forms of art we enjoy, and all the ones I enjoy have always been far outside the mainstream...

True Hallucinations
by Terence McKenna
...that's the one I'm going to read next.

Let us pray

FIBO photos, and some bad news too

So the month is nearly out & I still haven't posted about the FIBO - the annual Fitness & Bodybuilding expo I attended with two friends on 4-11th.

I've been busy lately, also had a bunch of doctors' appointments, and not exactly happy about the lingering freezing weather.
This morning I spent at another medical office where I'd been transferred for x-rays, and I was in for a surprise, not having expected the cause of my ailment to be shown this suddenly and clearly, and my personal doctor thought it was probably just tense muscles.

After the x-rays had been taken I had to wait another while and then was asked to meet the doctor who had examined them. He first asked me once more what my complaints were, and I told him it's pain in the lower back, toward the left hip. He said that was no wonder and explained that the x-rays showed obvious damage to a disk!
I was quite a bit shocked; I hadn't expected this at all.
He said my personal doctor will have the x-rays by Monday, and I would discuss any further treatment with her then. I told him I'm an athlete and if he could tell how severe this diagnosis really is in this context. His reply was of great comfort to me - he said that without sports it would certainly get much worse, and that it was important to do sports. Thank you, good doctor, that's the best thing I could have hoped to hear!

After leaving the office I quickly calmed myself over the initial shock: Nothing has changed, Diane, you've been living with this for many years now, except you didn't know it. The pain came and went, it used to be to the right side of the lower back the past 2 or 3 times, this time it's on the left. It's not continual. It's not really caused by the cold weather, it's just that cold temperatures make any pain much worse.

As I was already downtown I then went to a drugstore and found they offered a 20% discount on all sports nutrition supplements by their home brand, so I bought 2 cans of protein powder and a whole bunch of protein bars. I'll keep running faster than ever in my life, yep, and lifting heavier too. This is what I do!

 

 

Thanks again to my friend who took the photos - you did an amazing job! :)

Quantum mysticism, but watch your step

No, you're not allowed to collapse my wave function. I prefer to be somewhere out there, unobserved, so my position and momentum remain unknown. I'm both here and not here.
Some random positions are shown below though.

My bike, observed at rest. ;)

Vast fields.

Climbed on top of some wooden thingy.

I loooove these flowers! All over the forest ground,
but only for 1 or 2 weeks each spring.

These were taken about a week ago, on the first and so far only day that went significantly over 70 F, so I had to finally be back out there again!

The next day was FIBO, I still meant to post about that too but I'm really behind with stuff. At least my chemistry MOOC (online course) is finished now, I did the final exam the other day. Only 76%... but well, it's not as if I studied terribly hard for it, all I did was the minimum requirements as I had a lot else going on.

Then there was also that competition for Lucid Dreaming Day, I really felt a need to get creative for that - and I won the 3rd prize!! With this picture:

Shark Breach in Amsterdam

I won access to an online course offered by World of Lucid Dreaming (there's a lot of free info too, check it out). This prize is awesome as I couldn't have otherwise afforded it, it's 50 $. The downside though: the author identifies as a "skeptic". She sees dreams as "fantasy", as "produced by the brain", as "not real". It really puzzles me how someone with this kind of view can have lucid dreams, or how someone with frequent lucid dreams can still hold such a view... either way.
On the other hand, right in the first lesson she mentions, "The French philosopher, Rene Descartes, found his lucid dreams so vivid that he concluded the waking senses are illusory and not to be trusted."
I can totally relate to Monsieur Descartes there!!

As frequently mentioned earlier, it's not easy to walk the line and I again and again find myself in between all the fronts. I'm still reading Science and the Near-Death Experience although I was very put-off by the foreword. It was written by one Neal Grossman and it starts out perfectly fine. His foreword covers eight pages, and I was 100% on his side in everything he said until on page 7 of 8 (paperback version) he starts about a "message" being hidden in all this research, and "the message is universal love." I cringed!!!

You can go to the link above and click on the book to "look inside" and read the entire foreword in the free preview. I didn't fully read it before ordering, otherwise I probably wouldn't have ordered the book. It's just the foreword and the author of the book itself, Chris Carter, still brings up a lot of valuable facts and viewpoints, even going  into quantum mechanics. Still it makes me apprehensive that he approved of having this bullshit in the foreword. And generally - no wonder the divide is this deep, and no wonder the materialists make fun of proponents of a wider view of existence - when the latter more often than not come up with such silly, childish, and entirely unscientific bullshit!

What is love? A silly animal emotion, not more! Sure, I do love as well, I love sunshine, sharks, metal music. I love Bela Jaws (my plush shark). But I'm not saying there's anything special about this. I am an animal, just like everyone else. I love as much as I hate, I get tired and hungry and thirsty - and cold, most of all, much more often than I'd like to! I feel all these things like any animal does, any living organism who has consciousness, any human or dog or fish.

It is simply not rational to see in love anything more than that. From a spiritual perspective it may even be very dangerous, as I believe this is how the demiurge lures in souls to assimilate them. We do not know what exactly waits beyond the end of our bodies' lives, but for this trap I'll be on the lookout.
But spiritual matters aside, as I said, that universal love crap is not rational, but the book is about Science and the Near-Death Experience. And being not rational is exactly what the materialists usually accuse their opponents of, and sadly I must admit they all too often have a point there.

I'm still standing my ground. For the little we can know, I believe consciousness is primal. But no "universal love" bullshit. I'm standing my ground even if I have to stand alone.