But there’s only six videos, so I will likely include other stuff.

For instance, today started out weird. I woke up at around 7 am incredibly hungry. Like, the kind of hungry that makes me feel crazed and a little panicky. Maybe that was the low blood sugar… I don’t know.

But I had no choice, I had to get up and eat. After I had eaten, I felt better, and tried to get back to sleep.

But then the worse thing happened. I had my CPAP on like a good little boy, and was crossing the twilit land ‘twixt our world and The Dreaming, when I realized I was having trouble breathing.

More about this after our first vid.

For someone who really wants to be making hardcore techno songs, I sure end up doing a heck of a lot of slow mellow numbers. Not totally sold on that lovely string part. It almost works. Almost.

Anyhow, at first I thought I was just experiencing resistance (of the psychological kind) and so I didn’t do anything about it. I thought it was just my claustrophobia making me feel like I wasn’t getting enough air when I knew I was.

So I reminded myself that I had slept for a hundred hours with the thing on by now, and that all available data suggested that I was a lot better off with it on, so despite how I felt, it was fine. I also practiced my go-to visualization to combat the way panic can make your throat tighten and make it harder to breathe, which is to imagine that there’s a metal ring expanding into my throat and keeping my airways wide open.

But that wasn’t quite making the cut. I tried to sleep but I just couldn’t shake the feeling that I was running out of air.

And now, a vid.

Don’t worry, I am never going to do the “at arms length lying down” thing again. It was an experiment, and I don’t really like the results, so that’s that.

Back to our story. Eventually, the feeling of needing air got so strong that I had to take off the mask, sit up, and catch my breath. I then went through some of the breathing exercises (holding my breath, emptying out my lungs, etc) that I have developed for times just like these.

Times I thought would be in my past once I started using CPAP again.

Getting a grip on myself after that was not easy. I was freaking out. The worst time for me to have something scary or bad to happen to me is when I am in that hypnagogic zone where I am between sleep and wakefulness. I am extremely psychologically permeable in that state, and lifelong impressions can be made, usually bad ones.

Eventually, I got myself smoothed out again, enough to get some shitty sleep (sans CPAP) anyhow. And once I had a few more Z’s in me, I had the mental clarity to figure out what probably happened.

You just know I am going to do a vid here, don’t you?

Wow, those slides are going by way too fast. Clearly my idea of how long a slide needs to stay on the screen for people to have a chance to “get it” needs lengthening.

People need time for their frigging eyes to focus!

As for the music… meh. What I wanted it to be was a nice, easy trance-ish type piece, all soothing and relaxing, flowing in and out on the tide of the two notes you hear at the beginning.

And I guess it worked. It’s a funky groovy chill kind of piece. And yet it somehow disappoints me.

Man, being an artist is hard.

Back to our story. I think what happened is that I had gotten the hose from the CPAP machine wrapped around myself in such a way that I was putting some of my weight on the hose, thus inadvertently cutting off my own air supply.

At least I hope that’s what it was. It would be weird for CPAP to suddenly fail me otherwise.

Yup! More music.

Speaking of music, as you will learn, I had a bad night as a composer last night.

I was getting ready to do a subtitling when suddenly, musical inspiration struck. I had this idea for a peppy, Caribbean, marimba style piece of music. I dropped the subtitling (it’s a French cartoon this time!) and opened my music composing program, and after a lot of effort, got the piece of music just right and was mighty pleased with myself. It’s the first time in my life I have gone from brain to actual music that well. Then disaster struck.

More music AGAIN!

I could not, for the life of me, figure out how to accompany the melody I had created. For whatever reason, it is simply impossible to sync with. No beat or instrument lines up with it, even ones I made from scratch. It defies me.

And Lord knows I have tried. I spent two hours last night and two hours this morning trying to make it work. But it continues to taunt me. The notes are just too fast and irregular. You would have to be Mozart to figure this shit out. I have created past my ability to handle. My reach exceeds my grasp, and it’s really pissing me off.

So I gave up and created this instead :

I needed something to based a video around. And I was real tired and on edge by that point. So I churned out a by-the-books Fruvy groove. It’s not horrible or anything, but considering I started off riding a white hot bolt of creative lightning, then hit a completely unexpected and inexplicable wall, I can’t help but be disappointed.

I swear I will figure out how to accompany last night’s inspiration or die trying.

And to think, some people think this creativity thing must be easy.

Fuck that. Art will make you bleed in its name, and drag you down many a dark and twisted road. Sometimes, it is a magical and golden and beautiful experience that feels like little more than shaking your magic wand and making miracles appear.

But most of the time, it’s like trying to give birth to an enraged bobcat that hates you.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

I thought I would try something new tonight and share some of the music I love with you nice people. I am going to go through my mp3 collection and find stuff I really love, andpost a YouTube link to it in this article, and tell you about why I love the song and what it means to me.

If it seems to work as content, I will do more at some vague point in the future.

If it doesn’t seem to work, I guess I will just have to declare the experiment a success and never do it again.

First up, my favorite love song of all time. Some of you might already know which one it is.

To mean, that is love. A deep, heartfelt promise to be with you no matter what happens, forever. To me, that is what a relationship is : being there for one another no matter what life throws your way.

I have had very little to rely on in my life. I both want that kind of love and want to give it as well.

Plus that electric organ bit at the end is so damned gorgeous. And the fact that it is sung but a mega hottie like Robert Plant in his prime doesn’t hurt either.

Another love song I love is this one by Cyndi Lauper :

As you can tell, it’s along the same lines. Someone saying they will always be with you no matter what. I have lived a long time with the feeling that nobody could stand to be near me if they saw the real me.

Join the club, right?

An eternal pledge of love circumvents this. It means you can be yourself with this persona and they won’t run away screaming. And if you are lucky, they can do the same with you, and you can grow old as your genuine selves together.

At least, that’s what it means to me.

Next, we have one of the first of what I am sure will be many Paul McCartney and/or Beatles songs :

I couldn’t tell you why that song moves me like it does. And honestly, I don’t need to understand it. A younger me would have been unable to leave it until he had analyzed, dissected, and understood exactly why he liked it, to many decimal points.

And that’s not a bad thing. It’s a big part of what makes me the artist I am. I figure out what makes something good, and over time, that becomes integrated into my creative process and becomes yet another color for my palette.

But sometimes, I just don’t need to know. Paul McCartney shines a light into my soul that brings me joy. That’s enough.

Of course, there is going to be a fair amount of The Bourbons in these lists :

This one only recently became a favorite, though. Somehow, all the other times I had listened to it, it made no special impact. But then I started really listening to the lyrics, and I realized how liberating and transgressive its message is.

The whole idea of choosing to lose the game is extraordinarily subversive. It rejects competition on all levels. My favorite line is “No need to beat these guys who were cheating away”.

Everything in our society is geared towards promoting victory. The good guys have to not only prevent harm but to win. The only acceptable loss is one where you tried your hardest to win. Above all, you have to play.

But maybe some of us just don’t want to play at all. We want to stay where people love and accept one another without competition, rules, or comparison. We don’t like competition itself, regardless of who wins.

Even, or especially, if it’s us.

So let’s just lose, go home, and be human again.

I guess it’s safe for me to post this song by now :

For ages, I couldn’t even think of this song without the whole song playing in my mind, like Cartman from South Park and the song Sailing Away by Chris De Burgh.

It’s not hard to see why. It almost seems to cute to say the song has a driving beat. Everything about the song makes your pulse race along with your mind. It embodies the mood fo the lyrics perfectly.

Plus, the themes of lyrics are universal. The fire of obsession and desire, the feeling that you know what you are doing is futile or wrong but you just can’t stop until you have burned out completely, the perversity of trying to acquire something in a way that drives it further away from you. It’s deep down stuff plucked right from the heart of lunacy.

No wonder I love it so much. I dig insanity music. It equalizes the pressure of the insanity in me.

And now, light your lighters and sway back and forth, because we’re doing Freebird :

I love this song for many reasons. For one, musically, it is off the fucking hook. Everything is gorgeous and groovy and smooth and powerful and blazes like the glory of angels, and it makes me want to curl up in the song and live there. Live in it’s gloriously technicolor early Seventies heaven.

But I will confess, I also love it because it is the perfect scumbag redneck boyfriend song. This is the song your ex boyfriend Rodney who knocked you up again is playing when he drives off to leave you behind with the mess he made and go find some other lovely lady to charm into bed with him and make feel like she’s the best thing in the whole world before leaving her behind when things get messy or boring or whatever.

Cause he’s as free as a bird, y’all! AND THIS BIRD YOU CANNOT TAME!

Well that’s it for me for tonight, folks. Odds are fair to middlin’ I will actually remember to do a video roundup tomorrow. That would be a first.

Until then, enjoy the tunes. Whatever you think of them, don’t be afraid to share your opinion. You don’t have to like it just because I do. I want to hear from everyone. And as always….

I will talk to you nice people tomorrow.