What Now with Simo

28th April 2020 — 20/20 vision about our lives — Something different again — 1. What I was doing today — Continued with music and writing — Better not share too much too early — A kind of jinx — Building up resources and tools — Being systematic — Tens of thousands of bars of music — Archiving — Also finished pieces — An Iceland Symphony — Aim to be drastically productive — Building a musical vocabulary — Philip Glass — Starting with a clean slate — From the simplest elements to an enormous range — Doing the math — 2. A dream about a Superman comic by José Luis García-López — Marvel and DC comics and films — A comic book album from the 1980s — A story told in two-page spreads — A car careens out of control in some sparsely populated area — An angle from the seashore toward the edge of the cliff where the car hangs perilously — Not an existing story — Studying and seeing the art in complete detail — What our minds can do — Learned to recognise and studied different pencillers, inkers, and colorists as well as writers — 3. Hearing or not hearing the sea in the music of different composers — Jean Sibelius — Widely recognised power to evoke nature — Forests, lakes, the sea — Inland composers such as Beethoven and Mozart — No suggestion of the sea — Indoors concerns — Nothing inherently reminiscent of the sea about the instruments of the symphony orchestra — Continued evolution of the symphony orchestra — Finnish landscapes — 4. Midsummer — Bonfires by the lakeside — Bright summer nights — Never yet experienced a perfect Midsummer in adulthood — Lakeside setting — Rowing on the lake — Staying in a cabin — Better not talk too directly about your dreams — 5. Watching a scene from The Lion King (1994) — A high resistance — A scene must feel heartfelt — A tear — Ray Bradbury on love — A person who can’t both laugh and cry freely is a sick person — Signs of a healthy person — To better times ahead

Positive feedback — Aiming this time for no segues — A lot on my mind — More on keys of creativity — Key figures David Lynch, Vangelis, Ron Jones — Interviews, talks, and conversations — Insights — Saying enough but not too much — Vangelis recommendation — Not a marketable commodity — Healthier and wiser — Things that restrict us and things that unlock something — Segue — About creative people I know — So much potential but maybe giving up — Friends or family discouraging — On a more concrete note — Make your own opportunities — Ditch anyone who tries to make you feel worthless — Two-faced people — Another segue — Beautiful accents — Icelandic and English — Used to aim to sound like a native speaker, not anymore — The only thing we have to share — Simple language can be more lyrical, evocative, and expressive — Norm Macdonald’s use of language — He makes me smile and feel less lonely — Talk show hosts and comedians doing lo-fi things — Conan O’Brien and Russell Brand on #ConanAtHome — Levelling down to a more human level — Thanks to Andrew Mellor — Encouragement

Reading of H. P. Lovecraft’s “Ex Oblivione” (1920–1921).

9th April 2020 — Day of the Finnish language — Quarantine ending — Thinking of friends — Took a walk — Harvey Pekar and his comic book American Splendor — Pekar’s appearances on Letterman — He chronicled his own life in comic book form — Now many of us do it online — Pekar made a living as a file clerk at a veterans’ hospital — Letterman’s later regrets — Made fun of Pekar — Each provoked the other — Pekar’s very honest attitude — Refreshing — Great film (2003) based on his comics — Growing respect — May or may not read one day — Look forward to seeing the film — The variety of Letterman’s guests — Spending time with someone else a precious gift — Keys to creativity — Creative people talking about creativity — Ray Bradbury, Philip Glass, John Cage, Edward James Olmos, Paul Chadwick (creator of Concrete), others — Sparks of inspiration — Messages welcome — All the best

6th April 2020 — A short break — Working on my music — Paris — Starting my personal system — Day 11 of 14 — About my odyssey through the history of recorded music — Gramophone magazine (founded 1923) used to cover all types of music — Digital archive — Spotify — Widening musical interests from the 80s to the present — Atlantis series of games from Cryo — World music — Pierre Estève and Stéphane Picq — Sounds of different cultures — Delving into classical music — BBC Music Magazine (founded 1992) — Years focused on writing — Samuel Barber’s Adagio for Strings — Oliver Stone and David Lynch on using that piece in their films — The Elephant Man — National Public Radio recording from the early 2000s — Platoon — NPR 100: “Barber’s Adagio for Strings” (9 minutes) — “As Time Goes By” from Casablanca (1942) — Many versions of the same songs — Quote from a soldier in World War II about hearing Mozart’s Eine kleine Nachtmusik — Our situation vs. theirs back then — Beauty hurting and healing — All the music of the world — Perspective — Good wishes

My first audio message from a listener — Jumping from one topic to another — Writing — Day 7 of 14 — Maren’s message — Social interaction — Article on autism — Different possible origins of problems in social interaction — Sorting and processing information — Behaviours that resemble autism — Sensory input — Asperger’s — Lack of practice — Autism spectrum — Not fixed in stone — Studied some psychology — Personal relevance of these questions — Interacting on our own — Conscious changes — Looking into this with doctors — An impactful event — May or may not have had an effect — MRI — Becoming more extroverted again — Great changes — Eye contact — Used to think more rigidly — Nothing was impossible to change — We keep changing throughout our lives — Importance of deciding to change and believing in it — Unhappiness coming from rigid thinking — Sympathy for others — The change can only come from within — I hate manipulation — With most things no clear right or wrong — No one knows everything — Aiming for happier times

Like talking about another person — Changed so much — Some of the changes — Music — Listening to it — Odyssey through the history of recorded music — Writing my own — Discovery of Norm Macdonald — New discoveries in the area of comedy — Tough audience — Seinfeld — Checking out some tweets — David Lynch on the passing of Polish composer Krzysztof Penderecki — Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining — The Exorcist — INLAND EMPIRE, Wild at Heart, Twin Peaks season 3 — “Major haircut at Philadelphia Orchestra” — Video message from Edward James Olmos — The people we actually depend on to stay alive — A brilliant aspect of Norm’s coronavirus stand-up and the bat song — Comedy that helps — 9/11 — Morbid seriousness — Wrong steps — Sense of perspective — Funny but also informative — Purell hand sanitiser — Perfect last couple of lines — “Bless your heart” — Mr. Olmos on Miami Vice and Battlestar Galactica — Creative control

Day 4 of 14 — Low spirits — Slept — Flock of birds — Or bats? — Norm Macdonald’s bat song written and performed by Josh Gardner — Heart of Tampere — Courtyard — One single star between the Venetian blinds — ”Star light, star bright” — Introversion and extroversion — Extrovert forced into an introverted lifestyle — Happy childhood — Years alone — Everything builds on what went before — The years we learn to socialise — Nerd background — Knight Rider featuring David Hasselhoff — Drawing comic book adaptations — A talking car with many safety features and that could drive itself — Disney comics popular in Finland — KITT features already a reality — All kinds of comics — Marvel, DC, Asterix, Peanuts, etc. — Computer games — Game magazines — Newsfield magazine Zzap! 64 — Original Star Trek on a portable black-and-white TV set — Firing the imagination — New Star Treks not for me — The more you fill in detail in a story — Daydreaming — No room to imagine anything — More like a theatre play — Just enough detail and nuance — Sets like theatre sets — Love of theatre — Prefer stories where there is stuff left to imagine — Endless roleplaying sourcebook — Working to escape the introverted lifestyle — London last year — Living alone not by choice — Ideal life — Activities when younger — Outdoors adventures and exploring — Rollerskating at 4 a.m. in the Finnish summer — Fresh morning air — Sweden, Iceland, Paris, London, Sidcup — Most friends far away — Watching TV and films with others — A social experience — Missing that — YouTube, Norm Macdonald, Curb Your Enthusiasm — Larry David — The relationship of Curb Your Enthusiasm to Seinfeld comparable to that of season 3 of Twin Peaks to the first two seasons — Heightened and extreme — Many other directors than David Lynch involved in the first two seasons of Twin Peaks — A healthy form of anxiety — Also the light and the humour — Scenes between Larry David and Richard Lewis — No laugh track — Mostly improvised — Earning the privilege to do certain things — Happiest moments of my life — The road to my dream future — Taking the steps in blind faith — Getting my driver’s licence — The freedoms it opens up — Bicycling — Reading the road — Driving in Finland and other Nordic countries — Driving my kids to school, going on outings, etc. — Strange lives right now — Life continues and will continue — Reaching out — Thanks to listeners — Second set of names — The nature of this podcast — Editing these — Natural pacing — No machine-gun delivery — Audio messages from listeners welcome — Future idea — Thinking of my friends — Take care

A change of pace — More personal — Previous episode — Day 2 of 14 — 2nd food delivery — Thanks for comments — No pushing — First set of names — Super thanks to Norm Macdonald for his kind tweet — Ideal epitaph — Finding my way in the dark — A regular outlet — Norm’s comedy has helped many people — A form of healing — Importance of it coming naturally — Comedy an art or craft — Conscious evolving of it — Carl Reiner’s comment on Norm Macdonald Live — Norm’s smile and joy in what he’s doing — Ray Bradbury’s advice on enjoying what you do — Hard work needed too — A way to live a life — I may have been too logical — Also a type of journal — Experimenting more — Vivid dreams recently — Dreams are also experiences — Nightmares and happy dreams — Dream from last night — The setting of the dream — Ring entrusted to my safekeeping — Whenever you may be listening

Pronouncing my name — No call for dinner — Pass the salt — Finnish consonants — Day 1 of quarantine — Journey back to Finland — Keflavík — Heathrow — Finnair — Helsinki — Tampere — Exposure to others — Hand sanitiser — People creating ways to cope — No choice about returning — Thanks for caring — Pulling back on corona news — It won’t be like this forever — Some positive things — We are now missing one basic human thing — When this is over — Agoraphobic alcoholics — Alcohol lowers immunological capacity — Effect of stress and fear on the immune system — Study about watching the opening of Saving Private Ryan — Professor Michael Coleman, University of Jyväskylä — Bodies in Question — Effects of art and entertainment on the human body — Did later events mitigate? — People have strange objections — Nothing can be experienced without effects — The turn a lot of entertainment has taken — Hammering harder — Violence — David Lynch’s works — Knows how to do both dark and light — Sense of humour — Biography Room to Dream by David Lynch and Kristine McKenna — Also as audiobook — MAD magazine — Lack of a sense of humour a warning sign — The Dalai Lama’s sense of humour — Seeing him in person in Helsinki — His way of expressing himself — The expressive, lyrical English of many non-native speakers — The Dalai Lama breaks the rule — A healthy sign — People who shouldn’t be trusted — Johnny Depp quote from Death Ray magazine — Everybody’s crazy — As people we are weird — Better not hide it — One way psychological problems develop — Carl Jung said suppressing an emotion doesn’t work — Tired after yesterday — Original plan for a travel episode — Specifically the 1982 version of All Summer in a Day — Encouraging comments