The quavering pencil

It is 9.30 a.m. and I am sat in the waiting area of the car sales room at the garage. My car has by now been taken below, for all I know into the bowels of the earth, where it is undergoing an intrusive and deeply invasive examination known in England as the Ministry of Transport test. I have written a song about all this but it doesn’t make it any the more bearable. I sit nervously along with the other automobile parents, as if we were in the maternity unit of the local hospital; the sense of tension is not dissimilar. There are some kids playing in the area too, looking at some of the books and toys that the garage have provided. Fortunately, nobody has switched on the TV. I do so hate morning television.

On reflection, this waiting area shares more the sense of foreboding that one finds at the dentist. Extraction remains a distinct possibility: teeth at the one, coin of the realm by the bucket load at the other. Damn, some well-meaning salesman has switched on the TV. Oh, bugger! I’ve got to sit and watch sports commentators droning on about the sodding Olympics in the background. I set out at the start of the games with the firm determination to avoid all five-ringed media traces. It was a zero tolerance plan. On reflection, this may have been a little over-ambitious, although I’m not doing too badly. I mean, what is it all about?

I am looking at mixed doubles badminton. I remember badminton as a relatively relaxed game where one tapped a shuttlecock around a church hall over a floppy net, in the hope of dating some of the girls at the youth club. The young people on the screen here don’t look as though they are having fun. They seem so serious and so tense. And when the shuttlecock goes out or when one of them wins a point, they parade or grimmace just like the footballers do on the television on a Saturday. I guess that is where they have learned their behaviour. And the audience too. I can hear them shouting and waving. Where did that come from? I mean it’s only a game of badminton! The players walk off stage to wipe their faces with towels. They will be bringing them quarters of fresh oranges next.

And what is going to happen at the end of this game? Presumably one couple will caper about in some ghoulish victory dance while the others quietly weep and hide themselves in the depths of their shame in some lonely hotel room. I hate competitive sports: winners are totally parasitic on losers.  I also think that some performers are guilty of obsessive trophy greed. One gold per person should be more than enough to feed any sane person’s ego. I certainly do not see trophy greed as anything to applaud.

Meanwhile the whole thing drags on and on, for weeks. I could just about put up with sports day at school. After all, it really was only ONE day and usually by the time things got going it boiled down to something closer to half a day, since plenty of time had to be allowed towards the end for the hyper-tedium of the prize giving ceremony. This Olympic stuff is another kettle of fish: on and on and on and on.

I woke up in the middle of the night. My piano lesson had not gone too well yesterday, so I practiced a little with the earphones in. I like to do that if I find myself temporally adrift, trapped in the waking state, floating in the doldrums of the nocturnal ocean. I am at a strange stage with my keyboard playing. The blindfold improvisations that I have been doing in my Second Life shows seem to have been going well (I do this exclusively at my Terra Fyrmusica island venue). I am still not happy to bring the electric piano into performance, with my songs. Maybe it is because I feel so much more comfortable using the guitar as an accompanying instrument. Still, perhaps by Christmas I shall work up a few arrangements.

I have more or less given up trying to finish the rubbish tip song. I would like to thank Birthe for her comment on the previous post, telling me that a Danish group has a song about this topic. My feeling is that there is plenty of room for lots of songs on this theme.

…Now we seem to be at the beach… sand and a few girls knocking a ball about over the net. Wait a minute! This isn’t just some folks having fun on their holidays by the seaside. No, the dreaded rings are everywhere. Is there no casual activity that will remain unsullied by the Olympic thrust? I have been waiting an hour and a half for my car and the TV is making me very grumpy; it keeps distracting me from my book. At last my car is ready. It needed a minor adjustment to the headlights; that’s not at all too bad. I feel happier now. Happier by the minute as I drive away from that awful television set.

I have been feeling a tad grumpy these past few days. The problem is that there is some peeling wallpaper in the house and, partly because it is on a sloping ceiling wall, a simple straightforward pasting has not succeeded. I am now trying to come up with a fix to this problem that will not require a complete stripping of the wallpaper and redecoration. What has this to do with music? Indeed, you may well ask.

It is interfering with my attempt to compose a song about making a trip to the rubbish tip in Sunderland. I have written an eight verse Kyrielle poem about this delightful experience and I am working in SONAR to set this to music. I have laid down my drum track and I have made an arpeggiated piano track for what might be the first verse. I have to say that it sounds very sprightly

Quite apart from the composition of this particular piece, I am also trying to study SONAR more generally in order to improve my DAW (Digital Audio Workstation) technique, but the bloody wallpaper problem keeps intruding.

It is not just musical composition that is suffering. My attempts to learn MAYER, the computer 3D animation software are being hampered, too. And what about piano practice and the things I want to do on the guitar?

If it was only the wallpaper, things might be ok, but the lawn needs cutting, the borders need weeding, and I’m not even going to mention the kitchen. I realise that all this is very small beer compared to being in a war zone or something like that. Still, that does not mean it cannot be talked about.

It’s no good. One cannot be laid-back and casual about these things. I shall have to generate a plan and flip myself into list-mode. Quotidian hassle puts the kiss of death on creativity!

I had a very pleasant evening at the Smugglers last night. It was a buskers night and, although it started a bit late, it quickly gathered momentum. There was a good bunch of musicians (perhaps the collective nown should be ‘quaver’) and the songs were by and large well sung and nicely varied. Because there were plenty of singers, we were put on a ration of three songs each, although I think some of the folks who got on stage at the start of the evening played four. Be that as it may, I started my set off with Fish and Chips. There were some folks in the audience who seemed to want songs that covered the topics of both food and sex, so I played Fried Eggs for Breakfast as my second song; this seemed to go down very well.

A young woman called Katy requested my song Postboxes but there had been shouts from the floor for Brussels Sprouts. Given that the set was drifting into the dual food-sex theme, I felt obliged to serve up the Brussels. Although I regard myself as a very mediocre blues or rhythm & blues guitarist, I have to say that I did deliver a spirited rendition of my minor classic on this occasion.

When I finished my set, Katy asked me if I would play Postboxes next time and I agreed that I would. Anyway, we got chatting and I gave her a card with the address of my website and she gave me one of her cards, too. I then spoke some more with her and her friend outside in the fresh air on the beach, while they were smoking a cigarette. It turns out that they were both fine art graduates with degrees from a highly prestigious arts school in London. They both seemed very enthusiastic about my music and so I started to explain that I was now a reasonably seasoned internet live musician (with something like 160 one hour shows played this year so far in Second Life). At the mention of the metaverse, Katy’s friend physically cringed. I tried to explain a little more about it but she screwed up her face and refused to listen. She just wanted to get right away from the topic. Her reaction was analogous to the way an arachnophobe might shy away from a spider. I cannot recall meeting anyone who appeared to be quite so metaversophobic as this young woman. Fascinating. Btw, metaversophobia is not included in the phobia list at http://phobialist.com, but I have not felt inclined to submit it on the basis of a single observation.

Had a fantastic time in SL last night. I turned up to play a show at Torben Asp’s Yard venue (at the pool). This went just fine. At the end of the hour I took down my tip jar and mp3 vendor from the stage, and detached my guitar. I was just about to leave the stage when I realised that the next act had not arrived. So I asked Torben if he wanted me to fill in until she got there, and he told me to keep playing. I ended up playing for another hour, so it turned out to be a 2 hour marathon gig.

What was good about that was that quite a few of the folks that had come to see the other show got hooked into my stuff and stayed to listen to me for whole of the second set. And it was great to meet some new people, several joined my inworld fan group, Fyrmusica. Everything worked out really well.

The other thing, that is totally unrelated to Second Life, is that I learned yesterday that I have been offered a place on an MA to study animation and design. I am primarily interested in learning how to do computer 3D animations, and would eventually like to be able to put some together for some of my songs. Computer animation involves complex skills and I am sure it will take me some time to learn them and develop them. But I look forward to the challenge.

Last night I read Instalment #03 of my e-novel Harold Hake: the Neurotic Psychologist. This was the first Sunday of the month scheduled event in Second Life at Hexx’s Rastafairy Forrest stage. Hexx told me afterwards that she thought there were about 15 people there for a lot of the time. The event lasted about two hours. It was a great atmosphere, very intimate. The instalment contained a fairly steamy scene in the plot where Julia seduces Harold. The funny thing was that the stream broke half-way through the seduction and I had to read it all again when it was back up. I think some of the audience quite liked the second helping. And then I went on to read the scene where Harold went home and Veronica noticed the love bite on his neck and the scratches on his back. She beat him up and threw him out. So there was quite a lot of action in this episode.

Rather than intersperse the songs throughout the reading, as I had done previously, I read the whole instalment right through and then commented on how Harold was feeling as he walked over to the pub to meet his friend Trevor. Several people told me that they thought this worked well. It was during this commentary that I was able to link in the songs (I think I played around 10). I feel that we have all started to get to know Harold now. He is developing as a more rounded and deeper character than he exists in the e-novel transcript. This is because I, in character as Fyrm Fouroux, am able to give the audience more details about Harold and his life than exist in the book. I am doing this by improvising through my Fyrm Fouroux persona. The fiction is that Fyrm was Harold’s academic biographer and had got to know him while researching the biography.

This project is really fascinating me. It feels as though it is gradually evolving, instalment by instalment. At first I wondered whether once a month would be too infrequent, but now I feel it is just fine, although I am already looking forward to reading Instalment #04 on September 7th.

My new music venue at Terra Fyrmusica seems to be taking off nicely. I am getting small audiences who seem to like the intimacy of the setting and who will talk about the songs with me and also to one another. This was very much the atmosphere I was looking for when I built the place.

I am also making arrangements to do reciprocal performances with musicians with whom I feel some degree of empathy, on a no fees basis. So, for example, I shall do a show at The Yard and then Torben Asp will come over and play at Fyrmusica. And I have switched my monthly sessions at Rastafairy Forrest stage to work on that basis, too. Thus Hexx will be playing a show at Fyrmusica later on in August.

Speaking of Hexx, I have just planned Instalment #03 of my e-novel Harold Hake: the Neurotic Psychologist. This will be the one where Julia seduces Harold. In the latter part of the episode, when Harold gets home, Veronica notices the love bite and the scratch marks on his back. She more or less beats him up and throws him out of the house. When I perform this instalment, I shall read the manuscript more or less without interruption, in order to let the somewhat steamy action flow full force. However, at the end Fyrm will make a series of comments about Harold and how he is feeling as he walks to the pub to meet his friend Trevor. Fyrm will make links to about 10 or 12 songs interspersed in the course of this commentary and will sing them as he did in the previous two instalments. The audience was very small last time. All I need is a handful of people to turn up and it will be just fine.

Earlier this week I played my 150th show in Second Life. By chance it took place at Cascadia Harmonics, the venue where I have a regular weekly gig on a Sunday in the morning (SLT). It was a pleasant event, although that time translates into my mid-evening and with the hot weather we have been having in England lately it was stifling sitting up in my music den. Generally, it is better for me to play in the English morning during the summer months.

I have also played two shows at the new small venue that I have built in Second Life, called Terra Fyrmusica. This is a cosy little island, designed for performance in an intimate setting. I put up a simple barn-like structure. Basically, the auditorium is a hall with a thatched roof; there are no windows. I built about 10 armchairs and have them placed around a small square dance surface, close to the performance stage. Behind the stage I built a bar. I have several pictures of my self as a real life guitarist and singer displayed on the walls.

I very much enjoyed these gigs. I was able to interact with the audience using the internal chat screen. The avatars present were logged in from around the word. For example, Luke was from Australia, Madelin from Denmark, Artel and Crystalize from the States. I think Bratt was in England, although orginally hailing from Holland. Of course, there is nothing unusual about that in terms of an audience drawn from the Second Life community!

In terms of my Second Life musical development, I played a five minute session of improvised piano at one of these Fyrmusica shows. This was the first time that I have dared to stream up from my electric piano. I used a string quartet voicing and it seemed to go well. I think my SL cousin Reggie Fouroux, who was at the gig, said it reminded him of the music in old black and white horror movies. The audience talked about it afterwards and it seemed to be quite a scary piece of music, evoking images of vampires and dark chilling nights. I was very pleased with this and nobody seemed to complain about the standard of my keyboard playing. I seem to remember that Madelin described it as ‘avant garde’ - which I took as a compliment.

I have also been talking with my fellow Second Life performers Hexx and Soundcircel. Lynsey (who runs the Woodstock venue in SL) booked the three of us to follow on from one another, each playing a one hour set, last week. Hexx and Soundcircel sent me their intended playlists and then I chose my songlist to relate to what they were doing as much as possible. I tried to make some links to their shows when I was announcing my songs. This is an interesting development and I think we are going to try to do some more of this when all three of us play in a block later in August at the Rocky Shores venue.

Meanwhile, I am due to put on the third installment of my e-novel Harold Hake: the Neurotic Psychologist this Sunday, August 3rd. I pepper my reading of the installment with my own improvised comments about the characters and what they are getting up to, and intersperse about 20 songs throughout the reading. The first two installments lasted a full 2.5 hours each, so it is something of a marathon for me.I do this at Hexx’s Rastafairy Forrest stage which is a delightful place.

Turning now to real life, I played at the Smugglers buskers night yesterday. I went down with my mates Tom and Terry and having a beer with them was the best thing about the evening. I was half-way through my set when about four very noisy lads came into the pub. There was nothing wrong with the lads but they had had a lot to drink and they just wanted to talk amongst themselves. This was fine but it had the unfortunate consequence of completely ruining the musical performances. On stage, we all became background musak to their chat; I found it impossible to engage the audience, to develop rapport, and to create an atmosphere that would showcase my singing to the best. And I am afraid this is not uncommon for real life performance environments.

I remembered that last time that had happened I became angry and expressed my frustration to the M/C at the end of my set. This time I reacted in a totally different way. I suddenly became aware of the noise and realised that my song was almost becoming drowned out by the shouting voices. One glance across the room told me that this was not something that was going to stop in a hurry. I therefore switched off all attempts to play well or to connect with the audience. I cut verses out of my songs and increased the tempo of play to maximum (playing sedate songs at a ridiculously fast pace). It was as if I had clicked on a mental ‘fast forward’ button in terms of my delivery. I had decided that there was nothing I could do about the situation and was 100% sure that the M/C would not be able to control it either. I therefore wrote off the performance and played as fast as I could to get to the end of my set and get off the stage. And the sheer noise of the lads’ chatter continued to mar the music intermittently throughout the evening.

For me, playing music on the internet has become far more interesting, exciting, and friendly than trying to play music in real life pubs. I no longer regard real life as my preferred performance environment, even though shows in the metaverse can sometimes be tainted by griefers.

I went to a pub buskers evening last night, not thinking for one minute that I would be competing against the Spain vs. Italy soccer match on TV. Three of us bundled out of the taxi cab, into the pub. The room is rectangular with a TV screen at one of the shorter sides, close to where the drinks bar is positioned. the stage is set up in the middle of one of the long sides, next along from the bar area. We stowed our guitar cases near the stage in the area furthest from the bar and then bought some beer. There was no room to stand near the bar, since that half of the room seemed to be packed with people watching the football. We went and sat down, waiting for the music to start. Regrettably the match had gone to extra time or some such thing.

Eventually, the M/C for the evening started to play. Both he and his female vocalist were forced to play towards the other musicians (players or audience) sat in the section of the room that was furthest away from the bar. The TV remained on and the football people stood with their backs to the stage, watching the TV and making their fottball-related noises from time to time as they do. The M/C finished the opening set and nodded over to our table, indicating that the three of us would be up next. The convention is that normally we decide amongst ourselves which order to play. Terry had played first, last week. It wasn’t a good situation. I decided to do the decent thing and said that I would play first. And so I got up, took my guitar out of the case, plugged in, and with a word of introduction from the M/C, started to play.

The M/C had mentioned my song ‘Fish n Chips’ and so I played that as my opener. I glanced around the pub and realised that I was being totally ignored by the crowd watching the football, although the musical audience seemed to empathise with my plight and certainly offered me some nonverbal encouragement with smiles and nods as I finished my song. At this point I decided to improvise and made up a short song, on the spot, about the rows of empty glass bottles that were stood on shelves above the windows in the wall of the pub, that looked out onto the sea. I think I just wanted to make the point that virtually nobody was listening and I could play anything and no one would notice.

By my third song, it was starting to get very difficult to play and concentrate. The football crowd had started cheering in earnest. I mean really loud cheering, and moaning. I played my song ‘Beds and bedding’. This is technically a little challenging to play on guitar, with quite a lot of work running up and down the length of the fretboard. I think I chose to play it so that it would give me something to focus upon when the people made their noises. I could try to get totally into my playing. I was trying to ignore them as best I could.

The M/C wanted a four-song set, so I was somewhat puzzled to know what to do for my last song. The cheering was getting louder and louder and coming at moments that I could not anticipate, since I was not watching the TV screen. I chose to sing ‘Fried eggs for breakfast’. Again, this is a song that demands close attention to the guitar work, but one that I know very well indeed; I could more or less play it blindfold. And this was the song that I played through the final climax of the penalty shoot-out. It was an absolutely appalling situation in which to be asked to play music for the enjoyment of others, from a stage. I willed myself to keep strict time as each roar filled the pub. It was very difficult not to be thrown off the beat. Somehow, I finished singing the song, pretty much without a single mistake.

While I was playing, an image from the film ‘The Glenn Miller Story’ came to mind, where the band played on during an air attack, with small bombs exploding around them. It was a humiliating experience. Once I was off-mic and packing my guitar back into its case I did vent somewhat. I couldn’t believe what had just happened to me out there on stage. I said, loudly, “That was the worst fucking gig I’ve ever played in my life”. The M/C said to me “But you volunteered for it, you knew there was a penalty shoot-out going on”. And that was the funny thing: I didn’t. My state of ignorance is so profound when it comes to football I really hadn’t a clue what was going on. I didn’t even know what teams were playing until I asked someone when I returned to my seat.

My mate Terry said he would have not played through it all. He said he would have just walked off the stage. The strange thing is that once I was up there on stage and playing (and in fairness the worst of the cheering had not started by then) my mind focussed solely on how to play through my set and survive. It was as if I HAD to play and not allow myself to be put off by this crowd of people who held me in total and utter contempt as I struggled to entertain them. To have walked off stage would have somehow been to accept that they had the right to shout over my singing. And I was not prepared to do that. I refused to be cowered by their incredible rudeness.

This post is following on from my previous entry “Musical balance between my real and second SL^TM lives”. There has been a response to this in the SLMC forum and, indeed, the comments to the post made by Winston Ackland and Doubledown Tandino are both from SL^TM avatars.

I have elsewhere commented on the fact that I do not feel entirely comfortable posting in fora, and what I want to say here is far too long-winded to go in as a post among others in the SLMC thread. I shall therefore develop my thoughts here, rather than in SLMC. It is a cross-over topic, but I prefer to write this mainly from the perspective of my rl persona.

Reflecting on the SLMC thread, I’d like to say that I found the comments about RL vs SL remuneration interesting. Before I talk about that, let me just point you to the forum page in question:
SLMC General discussion - Fyrms blog

Zak’s comments were very informative, although I think I felt more in tune with the sentiments of EvaMoon. I do share Fable’s anxiety about pushing out 3 hours of entertainment. I have spoken on this topic in the past with my rl friend Tom. He plays some very lovely and creative arrangements of rock, blue grass and alternative numbers on acoustic guitar. While he has an interesting repertoire, he does not write his own material. I, on the other hand, have an extremely limited repertoire of covers. We have therefore sometimes speculated that a shared gig, perhaps split into four halves (each of us contributing two sets in a sandwich, as it were) might be an effective way forward, and he has a PA that would be adequate for most bar situations. Whether we will move in that direction or not remains to be seen. I shall be meeting up with him for the full English breakfast in a cafe overlooking the harbour and sea in the city where we live, later this morning (it is 7.30 am in rl as I write). We do sometimes revisit this issue at our weekly breakfast meeting.

I do not depend on money from SL music for my main income. However, I do feel that it is reasonable to expect it to fund my musical activities in terms of guitar strings, equipment, and so forth, given the time and effort I put into it. But it is not the financial side of things that occupies me here. The post in the SLMC thread that has really caught my attention is the one by Winston Akland. Let me quote from his SLMC posting:

“SL is the new “real” for me. The quality of the performer/audience connection thing that I get in SL is far superior to anything that I would ever hope to expect in RL. I get comments from people during shows, and what they say tells me that they are really listening to the songs. What a refreshing thing to experience, as a performer.

I think this happens because live music in SL is really more like a radio show. Sure the avs are “together”, chatting at the venue. Behind each of those avs, however, is someone sitting at a computer, maybe with headphones on, listening to the show alone. Fully immersed. Where else do you get that? Maybe at a Sads Silent Show.

I can’t compare money, RL to SL. I don’t do RL anymore. But, I’ve got to believe that, on the $ to pain-in-the-ass scale, SL is, for many of us, giving RL a run for its money.”!

One of the songs I sing in SL is called ‘Goffmanesque’ after the American sociologist Erving Goffman. Goffman wrote many books but one that seems to apply very much to what we do in SL is entitled ‘The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life’. His examples are rather dated now but I feel that the ideas and principles he outlines in his book can still be applied to the contemporary world of RL. I think they are also extremely pertinent to how we present our avatars in SL. Norris Shepherd (another avatar) really picks up on Winston’s radio analogy when he points to the two-way aspect of this. I agree that, as performers, we are entitled to assume an intimacy of connection through to our listeners. Our confidence in this assumption grows as we receive more and more message comments accumulating over time that testify to the fact that particular listeners have *heard* us and have understood what we were singing about. Of course, sometimes when chat is very busy and active (not merely gestured chat spam) I do get the feeling that not much active listening is going on and that the folks are really off into their own side-ways interaction in the Local Chat box. But that doesn’t seem to happen too much.

I think the ability to be caught up in the world of SL depends to some extent on the suspension of disbelief that is necessary if we are to become fully engrossed in a good film or novel. But our situation differs because the characters, or avatars, can and do talk back to us. Sometimes, I think that it is our collective suspension of disbelief that generates a very real metaversial experience. There are arguments that, setting aside the physical world, our social reality is something that is constructed and reconstructed again and again as we interact with our fellow biological avatars. I can see no good reason for doubting that an alternate form of social reality is being constructed on a daily basis in the metaversial world.

Winston has raised the question as to whether SL is the new ‘real’. My feeling is that we should not set up the two in oppositon to one another in our minds. There are going to be obvious differences in terms of touch, smell, taste, and proprioception. And of course we can’t fly bodily in rl, or teleport for that matter. I feel it has a lot to do with whether you are looking at the glass of metaversial reality as being half full or half empty.

I think it is important that those of us with a glass-half-full attitude do not spend too much energy defending our position from sceptical attack. For example, last night I was trying to explain to some friends in a rl Italian restaurant how live performance worked in SL. They couldn’t understand what I meant by a ‘venue’ so I said it could be a realistically drawn 3D graphic of a pub or bar. “Oh, so you sit around drinking virtual beer do you?” [guffaws of laughter all around].

At that level, it is not possible to continue serious discussion. I remember at the time I thought about the fact that you can get hold of a ‘drunk’ animation. And, after all, I could not taste the wine that these biological avatars were consuming at my table. And they could not taste wine I was drinking. But surely, the argument might go, we never lose control over our avatars in SL in the way that we might if we drink too much in RL? Well, no, but in RL you don’t normally end up with your head stuck up your ass, your hair on your bottom, or doubled up with your arm twisted out of recognition. The point is that loss of control in the metaverse is not going to be the same as loss of control in RL and it is silly to assume it will be.

It has occurred to me that two of my recent compositions have SL^TM themes as their focus (’On Sailors Cove’ and ‘Vibrant at the Vibe’). Of course, I am still working on fresh song topics that have nothing to do with Second Life, though.

My music experience has been changed by my involvement in SL^TM. I have now played around 125 shows since January 3rd, 2008. Nearly all of these have been for one hour and I typically sing between 10-12 songs in a show. This compares with my trips out to rl buskers nights at pubs in the North East of England where I would be sitting in the pub all evening and maybe get up to play a short set of three or four songs (if few other singers turn up, then I might play a longer set of 6-7 songs, perhaps). The remuneration for playing in rl is pathetic compared to SL^TM, given that most nights I would be given a beer ticket at best (which is then exchanged at the bar for one pint of beer).

In the metaverse, I think I am building up a small, loyal following who are extremely interested in what I am trying to do in my music. I am getting feedback from my SL^TM musician friends from the States (e.g. Elvis Duffy) and from Holland (e.g. Soundcircel Flanagan) that has been extremely helpful in the context both of the technical difficulties of streaming sound up to the internet, and in terms of computer music techniques. It is the meterversial environment that is opening up possibilities to move into a completely different method of composition, working mainly with my electric piano and DAW. This music will not be played in real life, or at least, not in the form that it is being played into SL^TM. Of course, I also get feedback from my real life musician friends and have just had some very helpful comments from Tom Young and Terry Barr.

I know my friend Terry has some concerns about whether I might get swallowed up in the metaverse. But for me, I have never felt that real life offered me the opportunity to develop my music in interersting ways. Getting gigs has always been a headache and I have had miserable success at that over the years. Indeed, I stopped trying some years ago. I just do buskers nights now. And the majority of times I play in real life, it is either to a very noisy audience who don’t listen to what you play or to an virtually empty bar, except for the other musicians. Now, there have always been exceptions to this, and there continue to be. Indeed, a *good* night singing in real life is an experience second to none. But I’m afraid that I’ve just gotten fed up with waiting for those very occasional *good* nights to occur. Real life has never ever given me the musical opportunities that SL^TM has. And I now feel that that is where my priority and allegience lies. I no longer take real life venues very seriously as musical environments conducive to my performance or development. I go to the real life gigs primarily to have an evening out with my mates, to listen to some music on a casual basis, and have a few beers. For me, the really serious music is happening in SL^TM.