What Now with Simo Simo Sakari Aaltonen

24 March 2024 — Passages Dark and Light II: Passages 1–43

Friday, 9 February 2024 — Table of contents not available for personal reasons

A place of the imagination — Bar / café — Still under construction — My music in the background — Albums and singles — The person in charge of the music — Passages Dark and Light — Tales from the North, Book I — Early Music Archive — “Land of Youth & Beauty” — 1 January 2024 — David Lynch’s weather reports — “January one” — Being and becoming yourself — Finding your own things — Patreon plan — Seeking support — Possible future episodes to help people sleep — Sleep issues — Music intended to be calming and soothing — May not work for people with troubled, restless minds — Too easy to tune out — Occupying your attention — Season 3 of Twin Peaks — Freed from anguish for a time — An array of elements arranged in such a way that it alters your state of mind or the way you are feeling — What art can be — We may remember from childhood — Discerning — “Critical thinking” — A lot of my early music — Music system glitch — New stage a few years ago — Directness — “Turtle Morning” — American Indian ponderosa pine flute — Had with me on my travels — Start of the COVID epidemic in 2020 — Dropouts part of this piece (“Stream No. 1”) — Thump — The way I play this flute — Voice out of practice — Plans for this year — Backlog — Started putting out my own creations only in 2019 — At Dawn: Early Short Stories — Creation of more than 20 years — The most central things — Fiction, poetry, music, filmed works — Reading of Lovecraft poem “The Garden” — Early work on four games — Started focusing on my own creative works — Everything a result of long, careful work — Documenting — Preserving the magic and surprises — Responsibility of artists — Everything affects us one way or another — Fiction and nonfiction — The core things — Art & Love series — Dreams after a bad day — Dangerous state — 1) Grisly dream — Place of several rooms — Warning — Someone was going to chop up a body — Podcast Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend — Was able to turn and move the “camera” elsewhere — 2) Bicycling around an amalgam of places where I’ve lived — Lake shores — Causeway — Bridges — Rain — 3) Meeting in a tunnel system — Brief exchange — Took off jogging down the long tunnel towards the light — Backpack — Felt light, healthy, fit — An uncommon habit developed a long time ago — Sneakers — Reflected real life — Underpass free of ice and snow — Great things about Conan O’Brien — Jim Downey — Saturday Night Live — Scene from Billy Madison (1995) — Adam Sandler — “Everyone in this room is now dumber…” — Norm Macdonald and crafting perfect writing — “Weekend Update” — Objectively good writing and editing — One word created a little vignette or story — What makes us laugh is separate from what we may “approve of” — Close to closing time — Test crowd — Figuring out the configuration of the place — A creative space — Thanks to certain special people

PART 1: SUMMER DAY: One last summer day — Boat on the shore — Did go rowing — Times I had the beach to myself — Later realised why — Water just right — Giving thanks for the beautiful day — Phone alarm — Many motivations — Boat drifting — Oh, a fish | PART 2: RAINY NIGHT: Rainy night on the balcony — Most of the lake recording unusable — Something discussed in season 1 — Artist Curt Swan — Known for his work on the superhero Superman — Feels strange to be talking about this again — A later realisation — Swan was pushed aside — Had to happen — Necessary change — Shifted position — This character — So strange I ever said it — Like another person — A personal reason — A brief good period for those comics that coincided with my teens — Intricate continuity — For the first time a sense of evolving into something more — “Mature” — Disastrous results — Wrong turn — Misguided — Not the right place for those kinds of stories — Simply had some fond memories — Sweet ideals — Being a decent, even a really good person — Intentionally misleading covers — Acknowledging my changed views — Another reason to be thinking of change — Too static — Lacking magic — Things that can make you feel good every day — An insidious way for a person’s life to become less beautiful and treasurable — Times of staleness — Even when at the same time creating meaningful things — Why I’m here — Always different levels — Not rejuvenating, revivifying — Being able to wake up refreshed and recovered — Reasons why it may not happen — Sleep deprivation and illnesses — Life becoming more narrow and restricted — Freedom and new possibilities — Change becomes more difficult, if not impossible, the longer the static circumstances continue — Consciously shaking things up — Realising the need for change — Amassing more and more — Then started getting rid of things — Oppressed by all the stuff — Not giving me anything anymore — Seller’s tables at Finncon — Long time ago — Sold most of what I had — Happier afterwards — The horror of hoarding — A psychological problem — Mental health issue — Can be extremely damaging — Becoming encased in your collection of belongings — “Will I really miss something that I’m now getting rid of?” — No — That voice should be ignored — Life became lighter — Collecting as a form of hoarding — Seeking security by owning physical things — I love having room rather than stuff — Not enough life for any human being to keep returning to thousands of things — Dust — Mould — The feeling of being normally healthy — Feeling good about being alive and able to breathe easily — Not something to take for granted — Some inner journeys are delusions — Good health is luxurious — Young people’s beliefs that they’ll always find meaning in the things they currently do — Happiness not in things themselves — No reason to keep a thing anymore — A lighter life — In the here and now — The future is not guaranteed — Wishes for insight and ability to make changes

“Season 5 Opening” (@ 0:00) — Second episode of the day — Recorded on different dates — Closer to the mic again — Nicer listening experience — Lake episodes — Drifting ever so slowly — Without larger goals, danger of falling into triviality — Dreams, aspirations — Not selfish things — Couples bickering in grocery stores over trivial things — Triviality has taken over their lives — Many different forms — Obsessions — Hypochondria — Can be learned from others — Empathy for people with this problem — Be careful — Preoccupation with quirks — Irritability, pettiness — Policing other people’s behaviour — Bike example — Rageful people — Eliminating ways of wasting time — One way to avoid this fate — Lost human potential — Being creative — Numerous ways — My mother’s creativity — She made our whole yard bloom — Kamikaze motorboat — Album Early Music Archive — 50 early tracks — Wide variety of styles — American Indian ponderosa pine flute — My way of playing it — Lovely mellow quality — On Bandcamp, streaming, and for download — Praise for Bandcamp — Great way to support artists — Ways to help artists create more — More income from creative work equals more creative work possible — And faster — Reacting, sharing, word of mouth — Adding tracks to playlists — One thing leading to another — Chains of events — Simply doing my work and putting out information about it — Limits of what artists themselves can do — The rest depends on others — Not becoming an advertising agency — The people I hope to reach — My first single — “Land of Youth & Beauty” — “Lake Presentation” video (2022) for the book Land of Youth & Beauty: Early Poems — Vision of a book in a lake — Recap of the creation story — The vision happened again with the book with me — Sunlight shimmering — No special effects — The life of an independent creator — Thousands of small steps building towards larger goals and dreams — Albums and a single — Further along on the path — The books of short stories and poems — Cornerstones — Following natural schedules — Pierre Estève: “Time is on our side.” — Faith in time — Drifting and talking — Beach all to myself for swimming — Water the perfect temperature — PayPal donations possible via my site — Calling millionaires and billionaires — Everything helps — The bottom line of how much one can do in a lifetime — Updating my site — New functionality — Picture of all my works so far — Always up to date — More sheet music — Interpretations always different — The way lakes and seas and waves are — No indications of dynamics — Tales from the North, Book I — Same for tempi — Apology for not having yet continued the serialised discussion of Andrew Mellor’s The Northern Silence — Peter Falk’s memoirs — Reminder to myself — “Season 5 Closing” (@ 30:06)

“Season 5 Opening” (@ 0:11) — Programming of people — Behaviour patterns — Part of the control group — TV, films, games, stories in every medium — More and more inhuman — Even subhuman — Since 9/11 — Torture — Non-critical depictions — Troubling — Many went along with it — The time torture was made legal — Antarctica — Arctic polar region — No justification ever — No free advertising from me — Crept quickly also into science fiction — Past critical depictions of torture and other types of physical, emotional, mental, and psychological abuse — The belief that we can separate fiction from reality — Media literacy — Stopped following broadcast TV about 20 years ago — Stupid stories — Very easy for the writers — Sexual assaults as motivation in stories — Told from the perpetrator’s point of view — Not the victim’s — Unlike with David Lynch’s and Mark Frost’s Twin Peaks — Events shown for the horrors they are — Not trivialised — What Alan Moore called “a pornography of violence” — Now common and mainstream in TV series and films — Chemical addiction to this type of content — Leading to withdrawal symptoms — Needing another “hit” — Most of these depictions don’t help people process things — The need was created — Few people born with it — Picking you up again — Friends or something else — Not what we should be doing with our lives — Sad waste of human potential and art and creativity — Long process — Is this really what we are here for? — Is this a good use of our time? — Is this the best we can do? — Is this what we are looking for? — One thing addicts can’t stand — What I am and am not in a position to do — Wouldn’t want a child to grow watching thousands of scenes of torture and rape — Exploitative — Offering nothing to victims of such experiences — Keeping wounds open — Creating and maintaining the addiction — Many forget what beautiful and worthwhile things can be done with art and creativity — People actually pay money to watch rapes and torture — Is this really human? — Can only answer for myself — Everyone free to make their own choices — Tobacco addiction — Scientific facts — Ray Bradbury — The Ray Bradbury Theater — His short stories — How is it possible we often stay away from such beautiful and healthy things? — Time forever lost — The precious gift of being alive — Freedom — “Season 5 Closing” (@ 24:32)