There is only one group called the Beatles!

There are five things anyone should know about.

Tractors.

Pirates.

Football.

Art.

And finally...Music.

Music comes to all of us very, very early in life.

Let's start with music.

Music selection while reading this, The Sweet, "Ballroom Blitz" & "Teenage Rampage".

As toddlers, I think we are sedated by the sound of some music.

When we grow older, it begins to be songs we can sing along with and music we can boogie down to. Must be that music is something basic inside of us. Something that connects us with happiness and celebration.

Later on in life, music proceeds to dominate the way we feel, live and to times the way we identify our selves. It has an impact on our taste and our aesthetics. This changes as we grow up.

What can I in actual fact remember from my own life with music.

I must think hard to remember my first recollections with music, aside from that being some Danish children's song that I could sing along with my siblings and mother. Which one it was? Big ?

Sure I could start a list with all those songs I can remember from childhood, and probably it would be fun reading for English mother tongue people, because they are all in Danish.

"Bro, bro brille"

"Der bor en bager, i Nørregade"

"Lille Peter Edderkop"

"Tre små kinesere på Højbro plads"

"Knock, knock knocking on heavens door"

OK, which one isn't from my childhood.

There wasn't really any television in my childhoods home. Not only in our house I mean. No, in the whole country there wasn't any tellie before late afternoon or early evening. Radio, yes. But not much for children. As far as I remember.

Then came this word "Beatles". Which is probably the first word I ever could say in English.

How and when it came to me? I must have heard it in some connection when our parents were talking with other adults and somehow I put it into connection with people or musicians with long hair.

At least one thing I remember was that I, without knowing any, called someone like that "a Beatles". Don't ask me where I saw him/ them or how I made it up to be a lot of them. However, then my big brother brought me down on the solid ground of circumstances.

"There is only one group called the Beatles", he said. 

"Klugscheisser", like you would say in German. Something like a "know-it-all". I will let go of the literal translation, if anyone need to know, google it.

Was this in fact the very first time the young me, did use some cognition? 

Anyway, my know-it-all brother took that moment of triumph away with a single sentence. Done for me doing cognition. Only one Beatles! Pfffui.

I believe to have listened to Beatles on the radio, but nothing that I really can remember.

What was my first ever experience with music that I can recall?

In our house we had no gramophone, no tape recorder no nothing to play music on other than a radio. So I couldn't choose what to hear. Probably wouldn't have anyway, coz I think for the most part of the day I was outside playing and digging and catching colds and swallow mosquitos or I was in the stables with the cows and pigs.

Music in childhood? No, not a lot. Well, not until my older brother and sister started school and got some "foreign" influence from the kids who lived across the fields and over the hills in the bigger congregation of houses, called a village. There they got in touch with boys and girls who's parents was things like postman, bakers, farm owners and other more specific stuff.

With that they became exposed to influences from an outside world, which until then had been completely unknown.

Still I guess I was too small to really comprehend what was going on, and because we didn't - still didn't- have anything else than a radio in the house and a television that only got fired up in the evening when us three bean sprouts were put to rest, I still was completely unaware of what in fact this "Beatle" meant.

As I started school myself, we still lived in the smallest of small hamlets. In school, when we had what was the Danish country schools version of a music lesson, we were singing from the psalm book. Nothing with fancy instruments, and the first real music instrument I'd ever seen, I guess, was an old pedal organ in one of my aunties house, and then later the piano in the little village schools hall.

Music I could hear was still the likes of my parents. I think I had started to recognise some of the Danish pop groups or "Dansk toppen" as it was called, the weekly program with the Danish top of the pops. My mother and sister liked to listen to that, and so did I then.

End of part one.

In part two:

"My brother got this fabulous tape recorder, so now we could start to record music and play it when ever we wanted...."

Nine - Eleven

What did I do on nine - eleven 2001.

I was living in eastern Germany and was working as a project manager for media culture at a media centre in the city of Dresden.

Like most other people in the world I can clearly remember what I did that day, and I a, sure that if it wasn't for those events in the US, I wouldn't have had a clue.

It was a Tuesday and I was on evening duty in the studio as we were having editorial meetings for one of our monthly culture magazines on the local television station. That means I was late out of bed and out of the house.

My girlfriend at that time had already gone to work and I been alone in ou apartment and had  plans to go to town to do some chores. I think I was going to buy some new shoes.

Back then, I did not possess a mobile telephone. Nearly no one did, so getting instant messages was not anything common. So I was out early afternoon doing my shopping and then going to the studio to for 3 pm to meet with my colleagues and a certain gentleman, who was the lecturer for a narration course, we also had running that evening.

I remember my entry into the sitting room in the studio as clear as had it been yesterday. It was the common meeting area in the studio with a big table and a little kitchen. Normally there was always a lot of laughter and talking around that table -especially on Tuesday's when the gentleman with the wonder voice and immaculate pronunciation came for the narration courses- the discussions between him and the studio leader were especially loud. 

But not that day. I sensed it right away as I'd opened the big squeaking metal door and entered the hall. There were an unnatural silence, nearly like when you enter a church during a mess.

As I came down the hallway to the main room I could hear some mumbling and as I reached the main room the voices died down and I was met with four pairs of eyes looking at me in silence. 

It was my two colleagues and the gentleman with the voice. Nothing so surprising in that. 

I looked at them and and said hello. Then the wonder voice sounded through the silence:

"Have you heard the news?" 

"Ehh, no, ehh what news?"

"They have attacked the the twin towers and New York is burning and a plane has hit the Pentagon and somewhere else, it is all burning, people are jumping out, it is a massive attack and another plane has been shot down somewhere and has crashed .."

"Pardon, what"

It all just sounded too hilarious, too unreal and because that gentleman with the voice was known as a bit of a story teller, I just reacted like he was full of tales, as usual

"Common, be real" I said.

Then my colleagues started.

"But it is real, someone has attacked New York and crashed two passenger planes into the World Trade Centre. Go to the computer and look at the news online".

Still, I was sceptical but started to feel uneasy about it all and the man with the voice went on relentlessly.

"It is the beginning of the 3 world war, it's going to escalate..."

I was already in the office in front of the huge computer screen. Opened the browser and entered an online newspaper.

After a while the news and the images started to load and come up, and I began to realise that everything they'd said, was true, and to my horror I knew that this was the day that would change the world as we'd known it forever. 

 

Not red rain, but rain raid.

This morning a huge thunderstorm was moving over the eastern part of the new territories I Hong Kong. Even it was wet, I couldn't bend my curiosity and had to lurk outside to check out the conditions in the rain.

7 words

A list of 7 words, 7 things that is important to me.

 

Yes, I know there's in fact 9 words and yet not really. It's either another term or facet of the word or the same word in another language.

How to make every thing quick and easy.

This is an amateur guide to an amateur guide.

Recommended music while reading this:

Deep Purple. Live in Japan. 

My inspiration to this post must come from the tons of YouTube video guides I've seen the recent years and which I always gets so sick and tired looking at, even before the "fabulous youtuber" has come to the point and begun to guide.

Today I'll talk about how to make an amateur guide. First of all you need to be an amateur so the guide you are going to make cannot be about anything you are good at or anything you are paid to do. If you are good at it or paid to do it, you are a professional and then it cannot be an amateur guide.

However, as you see the beginning has to be long drawn and have nothing to do with the intended guide. It should just be some utter flab doodle, which whole intent is to fill line in and sentence out with words and hereby waste as much time as possible before getting to the point. That way, it might occur to the reader that I am more important and extremely knowledgable and the subject is of a very difficult matter.

Something like this.

"And you have to remember to remind yourself when you write in your Evernote todo list, that you must drink water,  a lot of water. Did you know that our body consists of 90 something % of water? Because of that it is important for you to keep drinking all day, other wise you could suffer from dehydration."

Getting a good start here, however, the amateur guide has to be amateurish, so do not start with anything that is interesting. That will just get the attention of your reader and they could expect real content coming up next. 

So to avoid that, tell about your last holiday.

And show pictures of food and smiling children I front of mountains and landmarks.

If your guide is a video, now would be the point where you could start to include a screen recording to illustrate how to begin making a guide.

Don't ever stop that screen recording. Even if you don't know where to press or what to show. And even if you do not know what to say.

In an amateurish guide to an amateur guide, it is important to see and hear how you are fumbling around to find the next tool or some other colour setting for the screen, while you mumble something like: "Basically, all you need to do is to click here and drag this one out there and then squeeze a bit here, then we should see..." 

And here you must stop talking -but still leave the recording run- for the audience to see your arrow or mouse or what ever is navigating the screen on its way to every single of all drag down menus or apps, while opening applications and random Windows without the slightest connection to the subject.

Remember to maintain calmness and try to add some vocabulary that is not completely head on, but yet not the opposite. Confuse the audience with your words. Let them think that this is just too complicated and that the terminology used goes way over their heads.

That way you can be sure to have their attention. Because no one want to admit that anything goes way over their head and did not get any of what's just been said. That makes people feel dumb, no one wants to feel like that. But because no one wants to admit that things got just too complicated and hereby admit being stupid, people tend to ignore they didn't fathom any of it. Instead they just nod and keep quiet, that way they think they show they are with you all the way.

Make sure your guide do not have a real purpose. 

Well initially not,a little something that could make sense is OK. Oh yeah and by the way. The title has to be attractive, like something we all want. 

That's it.

Smoke on the water.

Tsim Sha Tsui in Abendlicht

 

Quitting

"If you have been so low down as nearly anyone can and that because of alcohol, then you have to ask yourself if you can live with that being who you have become!"

I think it was me who said it like that.

He asked why I don't drink any alcohol anymore?

So I just told it how it happened that I took that decisions to is a bit over one year now. In that your I've had one wee snaps in Macao and 3 limoncello so and one small glass of red wine. Yes, that's it.

What has changed?

First of all a higher sense of wellbeing and certainly more positive and also enthusiastic. I read someone else's reflection about two years without alcohol where he used the phrase: "not hating himself anymore". 

Maybe I can put my name under that as well. 

Like in hating oneself when you wake up late in the afternoon and your head feels like at the climax of a Brazilian carnival, and you conscience are gasping after clarification as to what happened last night and how did I get home and in bed?

A recipe for low self esteem.

Yes, I feel more confident about myself without the drink. I do accomplish more as I have more time to create. Do not feel so restless and longing to go and hang out at a bar somewhere to talk mans talk over a sneaky pint or 8 -clearly ending up talking shite- and do not feel that alcohol will me relax. 

It did make me relax. So much that the last night I had too much alcohol, I got so relaxed that I fell asleep somewhere in central district in Hong Kong. Asleep, is the nice way to put it. The correct term would be that I passed out. 

Not to mention what it does to your pocket, as in savings. Not that I really have counted it like that. I just know it as the coins last longer and the visit to the hole in the wall has become less frequent.

On holiday it is obvious. No lunch pint or two. No afternoon pint or three and nothing in the evening and into the night or early morning.

Now the early morning is a fresh head and positive energy. Some mornings even involves exercise now or creative time like writing or developing ideas for my work.

This could be a hard one to reveal or even fully accept, however, I feel that I have become more happy with my job and also better at it because it gets the whole concentration of what I am and can offer. 

Now that I'm not just counting down to Friday socials and cold beers.

And Saturday socials and cold expensive beers while watching football on small screens next to other bragging beer drinkers. Like the one I had become.

Now I feel sorry to think that I didn't really give a damn how my colleagues saw me. At socials I was mostly one of the last to leave, but for sure I wasn't the most sober. In fact I was never one of the most sober. Regrettably, I was rather the opposite.

Once at a Christmas party i'd been to a bar before the party and had some margaritas. Then I had wine at the party, a lot and can very faintly remember we all left for a music venue. 

Then a black hole. Some walking around in Wan Chai. A closed door to the MTR home. Some arguments with a taxi driver as I'd lost all my money. Somehow I got home very late -or early- and past out on the toilet. My poor wife had to get me to bed from there.

When I got to myself later in the day, I had to face a banging hangover and a life without my phone, which I had lost somehow somewhere.

Unfortunately this episode wasn't enough to get me to realise that I had to revise my own relation to alcohol, to give it a serious thought and probably better quit.

Still I thought I was in control and that a thing like that happens. 

And it does, if you let it.

Not only to me in the real world. And I if Harry Hole can manage, why shouldn't I?

One of my favourite fiction writers has this story about a policeman, Harry Hole. He also is a drinker. In the series of books he often excesses into the blurred delusional world of alcohol, when he gets frustrated with a case he is working on. I remember me being a bit annoyed with him when he time and time again, disappeared into the black whole of binge drinking. Then he quits, and begins his fight against the temptation. And I have always been so engaged as he fought temptations that I nearly clapped in my hands when he resisted. Why didn't I do that to myself when I went out.

Another inspiration was a young musician in Scotland in the summer of 2015. He was on stage at a music festival in a little town at the seaside and in between two music pieces he and his musical partner had a little dialog about drink and this guy just calmly and extremely confident stated that he hadn't had a drink for two years.

No drink for two years! Imagine that being stated in a wee town in Scotland. I found it very strong. But didn't think I would do that. (I probably didn't believe that I could). The entire room kinda went silent for some seconds, like anyone had that same thought. Like " probably I should do that too, but how?" That was one of those magic moments that happens sometimes in life where one statement just throws the a whole crowd of the rail.

Now I'm kind of half the way to that. And what's the verdict then?

After one year without drink, I am starting to believe I can realise some of the ideas I've had inside me for a long, long time. Ideas that has been pushed into a waiting position and categorised as : "I'll do that when I get the time". 

Probably it should have been : "I'll do that when I'm no longer at the pub".

What it was that finally made me do it?

A complete black out and more than 8 hours of memory loss. Was what finally put me over the edge of realisation. 8 hours in the darkest dungeons and nights in Hong Kong's Wan Chai and Central districts and I have not the slightest idea what I'd done and how I got to that place where I woke up in the early hours of Saturday morning. A hard awakening. As I woke up I was immediately aware of what devastating circumstances I'd brought my self into as someone had stolen my backpack that I had been stupid enough to bring on a night out.

And with that backpack, all my documents. ALL MY DOCUMENTS. Passport, Hong Kong ID card, bank card, keycard to my workplace, my phone, my iPod classic, an iPad and my reading glasses. Plus my sweaty and smelly sports clothes. Ha ha.

Everything- gone.

That was what I'd become. A black out middle aged out of his head drunk gweilo.

No way.

Pictures of the world we live in#2

 

Panorama from Castelmazzano, Basilicata, Italy July 2016

The blank page.

Medium.

An online platform for people who wants to write and publish what they write to an audience.

It is great. I read stuff there I couldn't have read anywhere else. It is (sometimes) entertaining. It is (sometimes) educational. Often it is reflections and some kind of self realisation pieces. And very often it is writing about writing and how to be a better writer or even just to become one that writes.

Writing starts with a blank page.

From there it is a matter of persistence and bravery. It is like the matador, alone in the bullfighting arena against the bull.

The blank paper against you. 

A blank page.

You (me)?

The idea is not to give up, just start somewhere, then it could go by it self.

At least that's what I read two days ago in yet another of those many stories about how to write.

So that is exactly what I'll do.

Just write.

Fill the blank page with?

In the past month, more or less, I've been using writing prompts to get started. It is a wee app I've installed here on my iPad - yeah, I have got used to use my iPad for writing. I like the hammering on the touch screen a lot more that using a laptop keyboard -or any keyboard in fact- and I really like the writing app I am using -  so, every day, when I normally sit down to write, I open that app and it gives me a prompt, somewhere or something to start writing about.

That has helped, in some ways. 

Now though, it has started to bore me a bit with its often superficial prompts.

So once again I look into the writing tips and advice I've read about to seek guidance. Hmm. I have been thinking back to my school days when we were asked to write pieces, papers and small essays.

Man, how I hated writing back then.

I remember how we also got subjects to write about from the teacher. "What did you do on holiday?" Or what about this: "do you prefer dogs or cats, and why?"

I was so lazy. I just wanted to go outside to play and run around, and many times that's what I did and so, the papers never got made until the very last moment -which sometimes was early in the morning on the day they were due- and, of corse, therefore they were utterly rubbish. Or piss, like they would say it in Scotland.

Getting those subjects I thought back then, was a limitation of my individual creativity and a restraint on my imagination so therefore I convinced myself that I would prefer it when we were given no specific subject - or a prompt- to write about. Just write what came into our mind.

Blank page.

Only then I shamefully realised that if there was no given subject or prompt, I absolutely didn't have any idea what to write about.

Blank page.

One of the ideas or suggestions I've read about lately is that you try to imagine who you are writing to or for.

Ok, now I'm writing to this blog of mine that I have started. The problem is that no one knows anything about it and I don't tell anyone as I am afraid people would laugh and think; " what a load of utter rubbish"!

So that is who I'm writing to, no one. 

Why bother then?

Blank page.

Like a pilot at training flying a simulator, or rather simulating he is flying.

This is like me now. I could write in a little greasy notebook here in my kitchen and hide it away in a drawer so no one could ever see it. Or I could write and simulate that someone actually might see it published on a blog that no one knows anything about. 

To get practice. I could say. And because I like it. Because I feel I have to do it. Because I feel good doing it.

A page with four words.

A prompt.

Sometimes there is a need for an ignition, something unexpected to start a chain of associations.

To put on that blank page, as a start.

Prompts.

Before the words are coming out as a natural stream of sense.

Picture of the world we live in.

Mount Vesuvius across the bay of Neaples. 

Dump bed, hydraulic and the fresh air of the North Atlantic.

Once in a while I wake up in the middle of the night and a certain experience starts haunting my mind and I start shivering with anxiety and fear.

Anxiety and fear. 

Not connected to that moment but something that has happened many year previously. I didn't really feel that fear at the time it happened but I can certainly after, years after when I wake up and feel that incredible fear. 

Back in the early 80ties. I was a truck driver on the Faroe Islands in the Atlantic Ocean. Some small windiest wind ridden islands, right in between Scotland and Iceland. Sometimes they kill whales there, just for the sake of it. I didn't do that, I was a truck driver.

For a week. Then I got bored and became a taxi driver. For one night. I think that was the night where I ate the eye of a sheep. But that is yet another story.

It was as a truck driver I got scared. Well, not back then. I was too young and dumb or maybe just too naive to be as scared as I should have bee. The rest of my life was still in front of me -and still is- so what could possible go wrong, apart from nearly everything.

Short time before that I'd just finished my military service and felt so free that I could fly to the clouds and beyond and above, like Jonathan Livingston seagull. 

They needed more roads on those windiest islands. They gotten themselves some more cars because they caught more fish and built bigger houses and even bigger boats. Then needed to catch more fish to pay for it all. And now this road. 

We were quite at the beginning. Two men was drilling holes in the rocks and cliffs and filling it with dynamite. In the night they would blow it. Next morning the digger would go there and start to dig in the pulverised rocks and lift them onto the loader of my gigantic truck.

Once my truck had been filled with tons and tons of rocks and rubble, I would push the shift forward, into first gear, release the clutch, give some gas and the monster would slowly start moving. It was a heavy dealt. And loud.

Basically I was building my own road to drive on and for every load I delivered at the other end I had to drive further and further.

There, at the other end a colleague in bulldozer was moving back and forth to flatten the rocks and rubble to a plain surface. Later gravel and sand would be added, then some layers of Tarmac and a new road would be finished. At the end of that new road, a wee remotely village, which only had been reachable by boat or hiking over the hills.

Now the cars would come, and the tourists. Like the German car that suddenly came out along the road we were building. As they came to a halt at the front of my huge truck, they got out with a map and asked why they couldn't continue.

"Well, because the road isn't finished yet" I replied.

"But it is here on the map" they argued and shovelled a big map out of the passenger window and up under my nose.

"Look, here it is, you can see the road there as a red line".

And they were right. There on the map was a clear red line marked along the coast line whee we were just building that road.

"When is that map printed?" I asked.

"This year!" They replied.

"I see." I said.

And then, I, as a "migrant" worker, had to explain to some German tourists why that road was on a freshly printed map as a finished solid road when it clearly still was under construction.

Do I need to explain it here too? I guess I do.

Okay. Back then, the Faroe Islands was still like a culture of fishermen. Like people of nature. They were used to a hard life with very few resources. Apart from fish. And maybe that was how and why  their philosophy was this way.

If you catch a lot of fish, you have a pile of them. Then you can start eating. When you have eaten the last fish you can't eat anymore, unless you go fishing again to catch some more.

When they build roads they behave a bit the same way. Roads are build and paid for, using some of the money they collect from taxes. Each year the know more of less how much they take in. Then they budget. So much for this and so much for the other.

At the beginning of the year they pile of money was all there, but opposite as with the road we were building that became longer and longer by the day, the pile of money got less. Until one day there was nothing more. Then they stopped and waited until the next year and a new pile of tax money.

That was why they knew that the road would eventually be there at some time, so they printed the map with the projected road. Although it wasn't there, yet.

Clearly the German tourists weren't largely impressed by that explanation, but I couldn't blame them. After all they were German and used to different kind of budgeting and efficiency.

This isn't what sometimes keeps me awake though, not the slightest.

My huge truck was kind of the dump truck type with a solid metal Vessel. To unload the rubble and rocks, I had to back up to the edge of the track we've created, reverse as far I could to the very edge, and then kip it all down using the powerful hydraulic pump to lift the vessel.

I loved this part of it, the part where I had to reverse this massive & heavy ten wheeler and manoeuvre it as close to the edge as possible. Sometimes I had to get out to go have a look how far yet to go before the whole machinery would crack the hundreds of meters down into the North Atlantic Ocean. 

At that time I didn't give that much thought. I couldn't imagine that I would misjudge the distance in the rear mirror when I put that machine in reverse. I didn't imagine that my foot could slip from the cloth or the break. Never it came to my mind that those breaks could even fail.

This is, however scary and somewhat risky it actually was, not what sometimes let me shiver when I get to think about it. That something else entirely.

One day when I'd stopped at the sheer drop ready to kip my load of rocks and rubble down into abyss. 

I started the hydraulic pump. The hoist started pushing upwards and the bed slowly rose and soon the first rocks started dropping. As the dump bed came higher and higher the whole load got moving and with a cracking noise rolled out with more and more force. That's when it happened. Suddenly there was an unfamiliar noise, another crack I didn't recognise and the dump bed stopped moving but began shaking.

What was that. I looked out and up under the dump bed, I saw that the hydraulic hoist had become loose and was now just holding up the heavy dump bed as it was stuck at one of the metal bars at the bottom. 

The whole load was gone and I shut down the hydraulic so the hoist and bed came down, but I couldn't take another trip. I had to get back to the garage to get this fixed. 

To call it a carnage is a little big bit of an overstatement. Basically the truck was owned by one man who lived in a house just opposite the entry to the building site. If he owned more of the heavy material on the construction site, I cannot tell. 

As I came there I found him in his office, or rather where he had his calculator and a telephone. 

I explained the problem and he got up and out, found himself a really dirty and oily boiler suit. The we went out to the patient which I'd parked in the driveway.

Now it was standing there like it was looking at us coming towards it, boiling and steaming and smelling of oil and diesel and hot hydraulic oil.

He jumped up into the drivers seat and hit the ignition. The truck started and a big cloud of black smoke shot out of the exhaust pipes and up in the air. As he tit the gas pedal a deep roar thundered through the Atlantic air.

Then he hit the hydraulic lever and the dump bed started moving. The hoist was still stuck in the corner of two crossing metal-beams under the chassis of the bed and so it managed to lift it up.

As it came as high as it could he stopped it and let it stay there. Jumped down and found a wooden pole.

He took it and carried it up onto the chassis of the truck. Then he placed it between the bed and the chassis to support the bed in its upright position.

I thought to my self: will that really hold the weight of that heavy dump bed. 

Or at least now I tell my self that was what I was thinking. But maybe I wasn't. Because I found my self standing there next to him working with a power tool and trying to cut out the broken metal joint that should connect the hydraulic hoist and the dump bed.

It did take some time to fix it, and all that while we were both standing there working on the truck chassis. Only with a wooden pole to hold up that metal dump bed above us.

There has been hundreds of accidents worldwide in similar situations. Fatal accidents as well. That thing would have squashed us both to minced meat had it come down. 

And exactly that is what sometimes keeps me awake when I start thinking what could have gone so terrible wrong.

But because you can read this it obviously didn't.