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.