Bass Pig? Or Self-Destructive Addiction?

[mweiss]

When my wife used the phrase, “that’s not music anymore,” it stuck in my head.

She was referring to some pipe organ piece I was playing, which was shaking the whole house and terrifying the guests upstairs, who were visiting on the 17th of September, for a celebration and BBQ party.

Of course, I had an audiophile friend, Cole, longtime friend of the family, dating back to before the Class of ’48, in attendance. I had not seen Cole since 1976, when he “poisioned” me with his then-enourmous sound system in a small livingroom.

What I had refined and developed was something akin to the “Thompson Harmonizer” as described in Atlas Shrugged, but with the ability to play a wide range of pitches, thus reproduce music as well as infrasonic waves. For more than thirty years, I focused much of my available attention span to improving, refining and developing a sound system that could literally knock me off my feet. With the development of new technology by a small group of firms in Texas and Illinois, I began negotiations to obtain prototypes nearly one year ago…

For thirty years, I had this uncontrollable desire to be brutally beaten up by soundwaves. Standing in front of a “Marshall on eleven” wouldn’t do it for me. Headphones were out of the question. I wanted the thrill of coming within inches of death by pulverization, such as standing inside the cowling of a Pratt & Whitney jet turbine at full throttle. Everything I built, every speaker cabinet design, every amplifier circuit I tested, was done with that seeminly unattainable goal in mind.

Back to that fateful day in June of 2006. Four prototypes arrived. Even though some neighborhood kids had set fire to the house across the road from me, amidst all the bustle of fire engines and fire crew, I had no interest in stopping what I was working on to go watch a house burn to the ground. With maniacle single-mindedness, I proceeded to install the four prototypes. I was anxious to begin testing and to find out whether this new technology would be more hype than real, or whether it would be another evolutionary step on the ladder of sound, allowing me to go lower and louder than anything previous.

I was in for a little surprise that I did not expect. But I would not fully comprehend the scope of it until I stood 2/10th of a mile from the house on June 30th, 2006 and had a disconcerting awakening. By the 30th of that month, I had carried out another phase of a plan that I had set into motion a few months earlier: the purchase of two of the world’s most powerful audio amplifiers. These beasts were bought from a touring company, the kind that sets up sound at the Superbowl and other huge venues. As such, they would test the limites of residential electric service, to say nothing of the 3-foot thick reinforced concrete walls of the former bomb shelter-turned-sound studio.

There I stood, at the other end of the road, realizing that the earth itself was vibrating. There was no containing the infrasonic energy. It was like testing a nuclear weapon in the cellar, only with the advantage that I could control the intensity of the destructive power. It was at this point that I had my first ephiphany: I had gone too far this time. It was an all or nothing proposition. Either I stuck with the conventional technology and “almost enough but not quite” to feed my ever-growing addiction, or I openly welcome the new technology, as dangerous as it was, and learn to develop the ability to self-regulate my appetite for being bodily shaken and pounded by my music.

My second ephiphany came when a couple of friends had stopped by to help me with some renovation work I was doing that summer. One friend wanted to hear the music, so he cautiously entered the studio, like a frightened animal, curious about the fire before him, and once he was settled in, I increased the volume from what I considered ‘background’ level, to something more attention-getting, but before I reached the plateau I had intended on, he dashed out of the studio. The other friend described the look of terror on this man’s face as he exited the room. Hey, I wasn’t even starting to have fun yet!

The third ephiphany happened during the introduction of the 32’ organ pedal stop to Also Sprach Zarathustra. Since my audiophile friend whom I hadn’t seen in thirty years almost to the day was present, this was like the great meeting of Bass afficianodos.

Now you have to realize that my wife, and another Filipino friend of hers had both experienced earthquakes in Manila and Taiwan more than once. They were upstairs while I started to raise the volume of this normally-inaudible sound that was more felt than heard. Dust started to rain down from the ceiling, walls and ceiling started to make ugly stress noises and the equipment racks, with 700lbs of amplifiers in them, started to sway back and forth from some inaudible sub-harmonic. It was about then when my friend signaled to cease ramping up the level and quickly faded the music down before the trumpet fanfare came in. It wasn’t soon enough though. My very angry wife appeared, having raced down from upstairs, and read the Riot Act to me. I received a 20-minute lecture, telling me that there was something wrong with me, that I had to listen to something at such a level that the house would quake like that. She stated, “that’s not music.”

That stuck in my mind. Like an alcoholic who can’t control his drinking, or the drug addict who moved on to ever more dangerous and powerful drugs, I became somewhat disturbed over the “outside, looking in” view that I had gotten a snapshot of from my wife. For just a fleeting moment, I saw my craziness from an outside perspective.

That’s when I started to have reservations about whether this latest rounds of refinements to the Monster was a mistake. I began to weigh just what the value of something I can’t use to it’s fullest capacity, and even when I do use it to some capacity, can’t use it more than a few minutes a week. Was the ecstacy worth it? It had become an exercise in the absurd. I would listen to some rock music at levels louder than a Ted Nugent concert before OSHA laws started putting limits on loudness at rock concerts, and really I was using 1/10,000th of the systems power reserves. Oh well, at least I had the guarantee of knowing that only my ears were distorting. But all the more absurd was the purpose of all that power when listening to Jazz, or a violin concerto. It was like taking an X-1 rocket plane and taxiing it on the runway all day long.

My only saving grace was that I kept my durations for the loudest listening to as brief as possible. But even so, the damage to my hearing over the years cannot be denied. But little to no data exists on the effects of very low frequencies at extreme pressure levels on the human body. They simply don’t exist at rock concerts or in discos. I’m playing around in uncharted territory.

Now I’ve been asking myself over the year, what are the philosophical implications of my actions? Do I justify it like cigarette smoking, knowing that I’m doing harm to myself, but that the pleasure outweighs what I perceive to be the dangers? Or am I acting immorally on the grounds that I am taking an anti-life action against my body every time I subject myself to the music?

The simple fact is, that I can’t stop. But it IS like sex in that once you get your fill, you actually don’t want anymore for a while. The dizziness, the temporary inability to hear, the nausea, and the shaky nerves all signals from the body that it’s time to quit for now and go sit down at the computer and do something that doesn’t involve sound.

And as a corollary to this issue, is the spread in musical content. Some of it is somewhat embarassing to admit to listening to. After all, screaming guitars and pounding percussion are supposed to be the staple of mindless drug addicts and acid rock, right?

Somewhat peculiar is my tendency to at one moment be listening to Tommy Dorsey, and the next moment be listening to B.B. King, or Three Dog Night, or Bob Marley and the Whalers. I still view it like a dirty little deed that one has to do but not admit to and chaulk it up to a matter of moods.

There are times when I’m in heaven listening to a symphony with a complex and varied theme—like it’s telling a story and taking me on a virtual journey. But there are other times when I have a gutteral need for some pounding percussion, screaming Hammond B3 organ and screaming guitars. Pretty weird. I don’t know what to make of it. Maybe it keeps my arteries from hardening, who knows? All I know is that there’s this nagging feeling that I associate with this activity that is unique to me and no one else, and that is an urge to check my premises. Self-Destruction for Pleasure. Because it FEELS good. Now that’s a Hedonistic reason if I ever did hear one!

[Judith]

Mark, try listening to the finale from Mahler's Second Symphony, or to the Mahler Eighth Symphony, on your sound system. That may integrate your need for "philosophically justifiable" music with your desire to be ecstatically blown away.

I like being ecstatically blown away by music too. (But I'm not willing to risk hearing damage for it.)

Judith

[Judith]

Here's another one to try: Benjamin Britten's "War Requiem". Get the original recording with Britten himself conducting. Go to the "dies irae". Enjoy.

"Tuba mirum spargens sonum"

My knees get weak thinking about it!

(I should stop encouraging your habit. Your wife is going to come after me with Serious Weapons. It may even cause tectonic plate shifting in your area.) :devil:

Judith

[Mikee]

Damn. Up 'til now I've been pleased with my "Thunderbolt", actually enjoying going into the other room and straighten the pictures on the wall from time to time. Sigh. Back to the drawing board.

[Rich Engle]

That is fucking awesome.

My roomate, Adam Constantine, is one of the best bass players I've ever heard, at the tender age of 29...

A couple of years ago, he started playing Hammond B3. He is a total monster, and does organ gigs everywhere.

He has this majorly tricked-out Hammond, it's usually in his van or or garage when he's not using it. Sometimes, it's in our living room. Giant Leslie cabinet, equally tricked out.

We also have a nice sound system, albeit nothing like what you talk about. But, it's 1100 watts rms, and features a huge, vertical (speaker to the ground) Cerwin-Vega 15" woofer.

There's nothing like previewing music at the "proper" levels... Typically, we have to roll it off because the leaded glass panes start going, as well as all the stuff on mantles and tables started to scoot around.

I don't play guitar as loud as I used to, but I keep it firm. I'm down to full-range. Preamp/effector jacked into a 165 watt Roland keyboard amp, then to a big front system. That's about it, other than a Morley/Steve Vai "Bad Horsie" wah pedal. Vigier Arpege guitar or a Reverend. Both very weird and scary. I'm using about 15 other ones on the album; my engineer has a nice stable. Looking forward to some tracks using a Jackson Soloist into one of those pricey Gibson boutique amps (forget the model). Nothing better than a big block.

William Burroughs did some nice writing in a book called "The Job" about orgone generators, subsonics, and such.

Right on!!!

rde

Air conduct that

Edited November 17, 2006 by Rich Engle

[mweiss]

Well, actually, my intent was to discuss the philosophical aspects of my "problem/addiction" or whatever you want to call it, but I don't mind a little audio discussion too.

I usually like to share this video that I took, while experimenting with the deep organ pedal tones. What happened was completely unexpected. That carpet is heavy burlap lining underneath and is not feather light:

But getting back to my addiction, I think it resulted from too many years "crackin' up from a lacking of a shackin' up" as my late father used to say. The physical sensation from the bass vibration is ecstacy for me. I can't help myself. I just keep doing this. And it's become the single biggest investment. Virtually everything I do to earn extra money went into my addiction.

My wife doesn't understand this aspect of my personality. It is often a bone of contention between us.

I do listen to a lot of Classical music, although I think I only have Mahler's First Symphony. I'm more of a J.S. Bach fanatic. His Toccattas, Preludes & Fugues, etc., are hypnotic. I love recreating them on the Kurzweil synthesizers for my own enjoyment.

As you can tell, music is a major passion, both creating, arranging and listening. I'm just concerned about certain extremes that I may never be able to cure.

[Rich Engle]

Well, Mark...

Addictions are not always negative. I guess you could say Bach was "addicted" to music, Hemingway was "addicted" to writing. This is not the currently PC-compliant view, but the fact remains.

Somewhat on the Objectivist side of things, go to Amazon and check out a book called "Addiction is a Choice." I'm not saying he's all right or all wrong, but it's the other side of the fence.

On the other hand, if it started out with sexual frustration, you could do like in Howard Stern's "Private Parts" movie... you know... turn the bass up all the way and sit on the speaker.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

As a recovered addict of some really suicidal activities, I have mixed feelings about this. I can't put high volume bass it in the same league with crack cocaine, yet I do see the compulsion and the addict's complaint of not understanding why volitional control is lost and of not being happy.

I have to reflect on this some since it stirred something deep.

I tried a huge volume experience once with Adagio for Strings by Samuel Barber (Stokowsky version, which is the best I have ever heard). I laid down in front of some very powerful speakers and turned the volume up full blast.

The experience was delicious and unforgettable, but scary in intensity.

(There was also that thing about the high pitch that kept ringing in my ears for some time...)

Michael

[Rich Engle]

You can do the high volume thing. We do it to check mixes. And, to hear what certain stuff sounds like at concert volumes. But, you absolutely must give yourself recovery time! You DO NOT want to be doing this every day! Shoot, I don't even like doing it more than once a week.

The main reason we do it is because there are things in music that are felt, literally (subsonic stuff). It is an entirely different listening experience.

But no doubt...there is risk involved.

[Judith]

You know, it's probably possible to enjoy the physical aspects of cranked-up bass while protecting your ears. Ask an audiologist about the various hearing protectors out there; shooting muffs protect a certain frequency, and others are made for musicians, such as the violists who sit in front of the trombones. You could enjoy the bass while not being exposed to the loud volume of the other frequencies. I have very sensitive hearing, and I'm not willing to risk damaging it because I want to enjoy music well into old age, but I also enjoy being blown away by the really low notes in a symphony, such as the bass drums, the basses, the bottom pedals on the organ, etc.

Judith

[Rich Engle]

Norton Sonic II's are made specifically for music... A little pricey.

Those things make me nuts onstage, but for this it would probably work...

[mweiss]

You can do the high volume thing. We do it to check mixes. And, to hear what certain stuff sounds like at concert volumes. But, you absolutely must give yourself recovery time! You DO NOT want to be doing this every day! Shoot, I don't even like doing it more than once a week.

The main reason we do it is because there are things in music that are felt, literally (subsonic stuff). It is an entirely different listening experience.

But no doubt...there is risk involved.

I think my hearing is holding up pretty well, considering what my ears have been through, since my fixation started in the 70s with that exposure to the first really high powered hi-fi system. That, and the organ at Radio City Music Hall, laid the groundwork for my obscession.

I had a disappointing experience last year in connection with auditioning a world-class organ at a large cathedral in Hartford, CT (I selected it because the great Berj Zamkochian played it a number of times) for a possible recording session that I was requesting to do. As a favor to me, the soon-to-be-replaced music director auditioned the organ for me, playing full stops, then just the 32' principal, then with bombards, and so on. Well I was shocked. My perception of the sound had changed enormously since 1973, when I had heard a live pipe organ at Radio City. The experience of this much-renowned "mighty" organ was diminutive--was greatly diminished from that I held in my recollections. So much had happened between now and then, that my entire sense of perspective--my sense of context--had shifted. Somehow my 'yardstick' by which I measured sound, had changed. There I stood, just a few feed from the base of the pipes, up where the console is, and the experience was like listening to a pipe organ CD with the bass rolled off. I barely felt anything at all. It didn't affect my ability to breathe at all. I even went dowstairs to the sanctuary and walked the 318' length of the facility, looking for a place where the sound might be more reinforced. I found none. That moment was an epiphany. I had verified that one's audio perspective can shift greatly over time.

It became very clear to me that the manner in which I listen to pipe organ recordings was not faithful to the original--and not the least bit enjoyable to "normal" audiophiles for whom I've played such recordings. People have given me the "T" timeout signal every time, citing that they were having difficutly breathing and chest pains as it got too much. But for me, maybe I've gotten used to it, perhaps converted what they perceived as pain, to pleasure?

I was considering a high grade of ear protection, but at a cost of hundreds of dollars, and due to the infrequency of my listening at any REALLY high volume levels, I generally stick with the foam earplugs that I used to use at work 20 years ago. I still come out with ears ringing, and when I'm out of foams, I stick my forefingers halfway into the ear canals, just enough to eliminate the overload distortion and the intermod (otherwise everything will sound garbled and gurggly, even my own voice, during heavy bass) so that I can enjoy the music. I avoid certain types of music that contains too much density and little dynamic aperture, preferring to hear contrast, not constant loud, but I use audio processors to restore or emphasize impact of percussive sounds, so that power snare drums are sometimes as loud as my S&W .38 Special when I'm target practicing. There may be a lot of relative quiet in between, but the percussive transients will be very loud, very exaggerated. I've not a lot of data on whether this short duration is worse for hearing safety than just constant loud screaming guitars, which may be apt to engage certain safety mechanisms in the ear.

Spectrum is another major issue. There is no doubt that my tolerance for bass is more than my tolerance for mid/high frequencies. Most people are the same. Fletcher & Munson did tests of the general sample of population in the early 1950s and plotted a curve, showing hearing senstivity at various frequencies. What I've basicly done was inverter the Fletcher-Munson curve, providing increasing power bandwidth at the lower and lower frequencies.

I purchased a high end sound level meter from a British manufacturer (my old Radio Shack meter only went to 126dB, but it's internal mic preamp clipped around 117dB, so wasn't useful above that) that is certified accurate to 140dB and can measure average, fast and impulse sound levels accurately. This enabled me to get a clear picture of what I'm subjecting myself to. Using the A-weighting feature was very helpful, because this puts a filter into the meter that simulates human hearing sensitivity and basically excludes the bass frequencies from the measurement. I could see that my comfortable listening level was a long-term average of 116dBa and the impulse level showed frequent peaks, when snare drums were hit, of 127dB. Things were different for the bass range. Switching the meter to "flat" response, revealed that I was starting to enjoy myself when the bass reached 135dB. Most of my friends dropped out at around 125-128dB of flat-measured SPL. Once the meter goes off the scale, ceiling tiles start to get sucked out and if the bass is very low in frequency, even I experience breathing difficulties. The carpet levitation incident occured at some unknown level way above the meter's range of measurement capability. I was 30' away to get that measurement, so the sound pressure at 16Hz must have been about 153dB at 3'. the scary part was that the amplifier output was about -30dB of full output. But I wasn't going to take it any farther, as the building was making dreadful noises and things were falling down or being knocked over. It was due to the very real danger of structural damage coupled with the discomfort of not being able to breathe, that limited my test duration.

Perhaps some of the math geniuses here might be able to calculate the potentials involved. Based on area and stroke depth, I estimated that the system can displace slightly over 8,000 cu in of air at it's factory specified mechanical limits (Xmax/Xlim). (For reference, my old set of drivers would total about 300 cu in of air displaced, all together.) So the task would be to calculate the SPL in decibels if 8000 cu in of air were to be displaced 16-20 times a second in a sinusoidal manner. The math involved there is a bit over my head.

I'm not one for listening to orchestral music very loud, because of the suspension of disbelief factor. I work with live orchestras from time to time making recordings, and they are not very loud, even at full crescendo levels. Knowing this, I seek to stay close to live performance levels. Also due to the fact that the dominance of upper midrange sound is going to put the ears into distortion land very soon and violins don't sound good at all when the ear starts to distort. Pipe organs, well, I've just had a habit of listening to them at way too high a level for many years and will probably continue to do so. But rock music, as long as it's amplified rock, I can believe this being very, very loud, and in reality, it's no fun unless it IS loud.

I have a lot of fun with my Kurzweil K-series and PC-series synths and samplers, especially because, unlike a recorded CD, there is no compression and no limiters to take away the snap and impact of percussion instruments, so I do up a few multitrack arrangements of some of the type of rock music that I could easily imagine a group of guys playing in their garage. No heavy harmonies, no tightly-produced-for-radio sound, just the natural kind of sound one might hear if a band were playing in the basement--just drums, a Fender electric bass, a couple of Strats, a piano and a Hammond B3 through a Leslie. And then I twiddle with the velocities of the percussion parts, evoking a very powerful snare drum impact that just doesn't exist in recorded music, for instance. I play with the effects busses, adding a little tube distortion to the lead guitar, some compression to the bass, to fatten its sound, and mix the whole thing dry with no reverb at all, so that it sounds like those instruments are in the room, not a recording of a session being played back.

This all goes on with no intent of financial renumeration. It's just a hobby, and, according to my wife, a waste of time. Since she's home much of the time, I don't do much more than load a Steinway piano program and sit at the keyboard and just play--at the same volume that a real Steinway would produce if it were in the room.

I have two distinct listening behaviors. One is relatively normal--it's the way I listen to Jazz, Classical or New Age. But the pipe organs and the rock music wake up an animal side of me, one that craves teh visceral and the brute-ish. Thankfully, I've found that just a few minutes a week is enough to 'tire' me to the point where I can lay back on the volume and listen more normally. A static diet of the same music tends to lose me interest in high loudness levels too. But now and then, a new selection is found and if it has that certain quality that excites me, I sometimes go to extremes to enjoy it, as if sucking the life out of the musical piece.

My wife just paged me. It's time to haul the artificial tree out of the cellar and begin setting it up. It's not even Thanksgiving yet, but she insists. Besides, I've probably bored most of you with all the technical jargon.

[Judith]

120 db is about the level of the average shotgun blast. A single one of those going off right next to you without hearing protection is enough to cause permanent damage. Rifle shots can be from 120 to 150, I believe.

But again, those are in a very different frequency range. You did, however, mention snare drum sounds similar to your revolver. I've been told that shooting a gun indoors (more likely a shotgun, but probably any gun) will definitely cause permanent damage. Whenever I shoot at an indoor range, I use two levels of protection: the little foam inserts AND the outer muffs.

Judith

[Rich Engle]

Man, those are high pressure levels... must make your innards start grinding on one another.

I dunno, man... might be time to jump off the bus.

Maybe I missed it (you did say your ears are holding up pretty well; me too considering how long I've been in the rock racket)... but have you had your ears checked? Sometimes it just comes on sudden after protacted abuse.

Brave fella!

I don't know why I keep thinking about how it's like when people get addicted to vibrators... Sorry, I always have one oar in the gutter.

[CNA]

As a recovered addict of some really suicidal activities, I have mixed feelings about this. I can't put high volume bass it in the same league with crack cocaine, yet I do see the compulsion and the addict's complaint of not understanding why volitional control is lost and of not being happy.

I have to reflect on this some since it stirred something deep.

I tried a huge volume experience once with Adagio for Strings by Samuel Barber (Stokowsky version, which is the best I have ever heard). I laid down in front of some very powerful speakers and turned the volume up full blast.

The experience was delicious and unforgettable, but scary in intensity.

(There was also that thing about the high pitch that kept ringing in my ears for some time...)

Michael

Mike,

I've posted some about this but ultimately was lost when OL went down. You know, some of my posts on the unconscious decision thread that were lost and my own little experiences with that aspect. Outside of people I know up close and very personal as in family, etc., I have a dear friend that is a hardcore sex addict. It has now taken over his life. It typically gets progressively worse as you know. He is also a doctor and familiar with Ayn Rand. I've been talking to him for quite some time and he's made some interesting discoveries about himself when he gets in these bubbles of unreason and only objectifies, gets caught up in the emotion of it and his emotions propell him forward without ever thinking of the what and why and the consequences.

At any rate, he calls it the "Bubble" where reason goes out the window and nothing else matters but the object. Since we've talked for quite some time about this, very bluntly, brutally, and all the way back to when he was young but one in particular was when he was in college taking organic chemistry, he's learned why HE became an addict. For him, it was an easy release in having to deal with reality, his hectic schedule, what was being expected of him. It was his coping mechanism. It was his way of evading reality and finding a way to be able to deal with reality as it was presented to him. But in the same story he conveyed to me, he also used it as a form of relaxation in order to be more productive. He found that when he had some type of release, he was able to get more done. He never turned to drugs or alcohol but sex. Even though it was his evasion of reality and his life at that time and not being able to deal with the stress of it all, rigors of learning and training to be a doctor, he discovered it helped him to relax, helped him to get more done, helped him to cope with his life.

He says he is most active when there are high stress situations in his life, increased workload, etc., which he works very long hours sometimes, very demanding job, he knows that the more he pursues sex that the end results will be relaxation, able to keep pushing forward and getting more done. This is the end result for HIM. I know from my own personal experience that the more productive I am and the more I can get done it brings me a sense of accomplishment, happiness, etc. He is most happy afterwards when he is getting much done, etc. But this high he gets from it only lasts a certain amount of time. Then he becomes depressed, unhappy, etc., because he slips back into his funk of unproductiveness, not being able to deal, etc. So he in turn starts to pursue it once again. It has turned into a very very nasty vacuous state with much destruction, physically, psychologically, etc. He also admits to having horrible self esteem. At any rate, obviously I've had some very blunt, very open conversations with him and have learned quite a bit as to WHY HE became a sex addict, WHAT he gets from it, HOW it helps him deal with reality. But unfortunately he has it set in his mind now that if he fully indulges it he will find satisfaction and will find peace. Oy, I'm sure you know what I've said to him about that. But at any rate, since he unfortunately believes this, he has moved to an area where it is easy access for him and is all around.

I told him before leaving that if he moved there this is where he will fall. He's staved off hitting rock bottom many times. But I told him when he left he will hit rock bottom sooner and this is ultimately where he will fall flat on his ass. But he doesn't see it, doesn't want to face it. He keeps running from it. It's similar to an alcoholic getting a job at a bar. This is what my sister did as she is also an alcoholic and so is my mother but has been recovering for quite some time now and doing very well. Anyway....I would like to write more but have to cut this short. I have much to do today, etc. I just wanted to add some thoughts about addiction and my friend. I have many many other stories. I'm not equating this to Mark's bass addiction but do see the similarities.

Mark, do some serious introspection over a long period of time, do experiments on when you are having these bubbles so to speak and when you are not. When you are in this bubble, try to figure out why you are doing it, what you are getting from it, etc. Then after it, still analze your actions, your thoughts, compare, and so on. Is it present when there is a stressful situation; such as, with work or a fight with your baby girl, etc? Does it make you feel more productive and able to cope? Do these experiments before, during, and afterwards and even when you aren't and you are out in your day to day life, I am sure you will learn quite a bit about yourself, your addiction, why, what, how, and so on. My doctor enjoys it immensely although still an addict. He is understanding himself much better, understanding his addiction and why it affects HIM the way it does. But a primary, Mark, is to find out why from the very beginning and why you started to pursue it, what it did for you, etc. Yeah, a lot of introspection but I think well worth it. My own intense introspection helped me to understand why I did drugs and drank, although mine were not done for the specific reasons I've named. I started mine because of group thought and doing what others wanted me to do. It was and is called peer pressure. I was still a kid and teenager. I wanted to fit in. From there, it progressed. But ultimately realized what was happening, why, what, etc., at that young age, most of all what it did to me, my ability to think was impaired, I couldn't figure out why I was doing things, what I was doing, etc., that I stopped. It's been many many many years now. I drink on rare ocassion. One girlie drink and I am majorily tipsy. As some have said, I can't hold my liquor.

Good luck, Mark, into your self-discovery and why.

Angie

[mweiss]

Man, those are high pressure levels... must make your innards start grinding on one another.

I dunno, man... might be time to jump off the bus.

Maybe I missed it (you did say your ears are holding up pretty well; me too considering how long I've been in the rock racket)... but have you had your ears checked? Sometimes it just comes on sudden after protacted abuse.

Brave fella!

I don't know why I keep thinking about how it's like when people get addicted to vibrators... Sorry, I always have one oar in the gutter.

LoL. But a different kind of vibrator.

Whether by fear or by choice, or perhaps by pain, or a combination of all three, I think I've reached my limit. Lately, for me, it is loud enough when "signal present", the first bottom tier of LEDs flicker on the big QSC power amps. It's already about 127dB at that power level and I find that I can stay in that region fairly comfortably lately. Maybe it's because I haven't acquired any really great new music that demands to be cranked up. I can only enjoy CCR's "Born On The Bayou" so many times, after all. The real danger seems to lie with new material that excites that urge to crank it til the blood squirts from my ears. Sometimes I forget about safety and the neighbors, about 1 mile from here.

Last June, I discovered the wonders of the Extended Range Bass, an extension of the traditional bass guitar, with the ability to go lower than a 4-string bass. I discovered it on a Korean soundtrack to a TV series that my wife bought on DVD. I bought the soundtrack CD. The lower bass penetrated the concrete like nothing else, no rock, no disco, no jazz, could. Whenever the lowest notes were played on that song (in the upper 20Hz range), down the end of the road it was as loud as an army helicopter hovering at treetop level. The music that lives an octave above that doesn't carry that far. 'Took a walk about a quarter mile down the road and brought my sound level meter, during a playback and measured what was leaking out of the building. The SPL at the other end was 97dB. That quickly awakened me to the realization that there were potentially a lot of people in a nearby subdivision that would not appreciate this thundering sound on a frequent basis.

It was interesting to discover that the type of music had a huge influence on how far the noise carried and how invasive it might be to others. I am fortunate to live in the woods in a relatively undeveloped area, save for some houses a mile north of me. There's an unoccupied cottage a 1/4 mile down the road to my west, but not much else. I'm surrounded by wetlands (swamp) to the north and east. Now while the rock music is loud, the bass notes are not as deep and don't penetrate the concrete much. But the lower notes do, or the system is just that much more powerful as frequency heads down toward 14Hz that there is more acoustic output in the 20s than in the 60-130Hz range. Either way, certainly the upper bass is more audible, immediately has more slap to the chest, and as such at lower SPLs just seems louder. So it's probably a combination of things that keep it more contained with rock music of conventional means.

The reason why I suspect I haven't totally destroyed my hearing is because I avoid the most pain inducing frequencies. I choose music that has a lot of dynamic aperture (brief silence or relative quiet in between percussion hits) and where the emphasis is on bass. Lately, I listen to a lot of Reggae music, although some Reggae is start to test the waters in the sub 50Hz range of late, so it's getting more interesting for the neighbors. Frankly, high SPLs in the midrange are painful and unenjoyable. When my ears get overloaded, they tire and they start to just compress the peaks, making the music sound dull. Human hearing really doesn't like sounds in excess of 117dBa, after which, dissonant artifacts begin to emerge unless I plug my ears. I think that the longer wavelengths of bass don't make it through the ear canals as effectively, hence the ear's tolerance for higher SPLs at low frequencies is greater. That may be my saving grace. Also, the briefness of my listening sessions (at least the loudest part of them) is another saving grace. Duration and loudness are inversely related on the OSHA charts for noise in the workplace.

[mweiss]

Mark, do some serious introspection over a long period of time, do experiments on when you are having these bubbles so to speak and when you are not. When you are in this bubble, try to figure out why you are doing it, what you are getting from it, etc. Then after it, still analze your actions, your thoughts, compare, and so on. Is it present when there is a stressful situation; such as, with work or a fight with your baby girl, etc? Does it make you feel more productive and able to cope? Do these experiments before, during, and afterwards and even when you aren't and you are out in your day to day life, I am sure you will learn quite a bit about yourself, your addiction, why, what, how, and so on. My doctor enjoys it immensely although still an addict. He is understanding himself much better, understanding his addiction and why it affects HIM the way it does. But a primary, Mark, is to find out why from the very beginning and why you started to pursue it, what it did for you, etc. Yeah, a lot of introspection but I think well worth it. My own intense introspection helped me to understand why I did drugs and drank, although mine were not done for the specific reasons I've named. I started mine because of group thought and doing what others wanted me to do. It was and is called peer pressure. I was still a kid and teenager. I wanted to fit in. From there, it progressed. But ultimately realized what was happening, why, what, etc., at that young age, most of all what it did to me, my ability to think was impaired, I couldn't figure out why I was doing things, what I was doing, etc., that I stopped. It's been many many many years now. I drink on rare ocassion. One girlie drink and I am majorily tipsy. As some have said, I can't hold my liquor.

Good luck, Mark, into your self-discovery and why.

Angie

Angie,

This is probably a complex psychological issue that only a great mind like Branden or Blumenthal can completely analyze and dissect, but I can state some of my own observations and conclusions, even partially-formed, in case a simpler answer can be derived.

In the ‘bubble’ as you refer to it, when I am listening to a good piece of music (well, here is another area where I am fighting with mixed premises—just what IS good music, if some of the Rock I listen to is not music?) I am experiencing two emotions, one greater than the other: joy and terror. I am enjoying the melody, and the sonic smorgasbord of various sounds all working together in harmony of a sort. I am enjoying the sensation of feeling the air solidify and vibrate every bone, every piece of flesh on my person. If the bass player is doing more than just playing a bouncing bass line, perhaps playing entire allegorical melodies, I am enjoying that deeply, imagining myself plucking those strings. If the drummer is doing some particularly impressive work, I imagine myself as that drummer, just feeling the music in a way no normal listening level allows me to feel.

In the ‘bubble’ of that moment, I am really not thinking that much about dangers, emotional problems or whether this is bad for me. Though sometimes at the extreme of it I am, and that’s the terror part. Expecially when I experience the sensation that I’d describe as someone taking a pin and scratching it across my eardrum, if that were possible to imagine, or when I’m listening to a pipe organ and the lower bass notes are interfering with my breathing. Both of those experiences become disconcerting. Aside from that, it seems to be a very positive experience. The only down side is that afterwards, I can’t hear much of anything and there is a low hum in my ears. When I talk, or when someone talks to me, the voice is distorted for about a half an hour or so after the listening session. I also am not at the best of my ability to concentrate, though, like a sexual release, I feel less tension and in some respects more able to focus on something other than music for the next several hours. So while the noise has slightly caused disintegration of my cognitive faculties for a while, the satisfaction of the need for it releases me from the distraction of anticipating the experience.

I don’t use it consciously as a release of tension. In fact, I don’t want to listen to music when I am depressed and in a quiet mood. The best time is when I feel good, have recently had some physical outdoor activity and am in good cheer. The sense of wanting to celebrate something is the mood that is most conducing to “Bass Pigging.” That, in combination with the wife being out of the house for a few hours is the key to my entering this world.

It wasn’t peer pressure in my case, but maybe acceptance. I was an unpopular person all my life, never had any real friends (which is really starting to catch up with me now that I am working in Primerica and have to go out and meet people in order to do business) and a small part of the build up of this system was ego-driven. I started out as a traveling DJ for a while, until I realized I didn’t like the music that people wanted to hear and also realized that the money wasn’t going to be what I needed to live my dream life. In the early years, it was “cool”, but as things got crazier, some friends considered me “off the deep end” and wouldn’t visit anymore. After a while, people just started to regard me as sick and deranged. So I no longer crank things up much for guests. I watch their body language carefully and when I see the hands go for the ears, or they start to double over, or give the downward-facing hand signal, I comply and back off, even though I lose the ego-reward of showing them what the system is capable of.

Overall, in the “big picture,” I suspect that this behavior/need of mine is only a symptom of other things going on in my consciousness. (Gee, now we need Peikoff’s “Philosopher’s Couch” for counceling here…) I went through a severe period of disillusionment some 22 years ago, in which my endless quest for female companionship ended in a terrible breakup with a young girl that I was introduced to by a mutual friend. Whatever the case, I guess I was too old for her (she was only in her twenties at the time) and it wasn’t until later, when I read a certain Tom Clancy novel, that her character type was described to a tee and I understood who it was I dated those three times and why she did what she did, and how lucky I was that she broke up the relationship before I could be harmed by her ignominous past.

But after that experience, I had a year of heavy drinking. Had a nervous breakdown, was asked to retire early from my job. It was like nuclear war had broken out, killing off all of mankind, all institutions—the world at-large—while leaving me and my possessions intact. I felt like the last man on earth. Even when amongst a crowd, I felt an accute loneliness. I still had all of my toys, but they no longer had any meaning to me. I stopped using them. Everything lost context. That relationship had been the physical manifestation of my dream relationship from the physical side of romance, and as such, it had tremendously widened my scope of capacity to experience joy, so when it was taken away, going back to my old, limited world was a contraction I could not bear. It took a year to recover enough to function again, and several more to return to ‘status quo’.

But ever since then, I don’t know whether it was the year of living like a vegetable or the drinking causing brain damage, but I lost a tremendous amount of mental capacity. My closest friend confirmed that he had noted a marked change in my ability to respond in realtime conversations, and at solving problems. Where I was once near-genius at problem solving, after the ‘event’ I was sluggish and often unable to solve problems of a similar nature.

The years went on, and the need for money, coupled with being unable to find a job at my age, caused me to go into my own business. I had wanted to do something related to media since I was a kid. Now, I figured, was my chance. So I set up shop as a typesetter. Failed miserably at the business end of it. So I closed that business and set up shop as a promotional media services provider, doing video and graphics. That failed to gain more than one client, the guy who remanufactured my toner cartridges. So I moved on to color prepress and had some success, but the one client I had was reluctant to give me enough work to make a living and eventually brought the design of their sell sheets and video packaging in-house with minimum wage kids working on Mac computers. I had a brief stint with a kiosk marketing company that looked promising later during that period in the mid-1990s. Things looked so good that I was on track to earn $100K that year if work kept up. That company went bankrupt and left me out $6400 in unpaid invoices.

Meanwhile, I was stepping up my “criminal” activities, reviving my old pirate radio transmitters and living that dream for a while, the dream to own my own radio station. I managed to avoid the FCC, and I attracted the attention of a station broker, friendly to pirate radio, who, upon seeing my engineering design abilities demonstrated by the techical quality of the station that I had built from raw components, got me lined up with some paid radio engineering work. That lasted from 1997 to present. I was almost making a living at it by 2002. But in 2003, business dropped considerably. By 2004, my daughter was born and business dropped off more, as I was strugglng to rebuild a badly-damaged upstairs roof and walls. The house was fit to be condemned, and I was determined to make sure that my daughter would have a nice room for herself. So I started rebuilding the bathroom and then the spare bedroom, so these two important places for child-care would be spotless. This past summer, I spent long hours rebuilding 400 sq ft of flat ‘shed’ roof that had rotted from water damage and carpenter ants. Each year, I would rebuild one more room. The roof, the walls and part of the floor in each case so far. Radio work had stopped completely by this summer.

Since the ‘event’ in the beginning of the 1980s, I had not only lost my passion for living, but I had also started to sleep most of the day away. It was not uncommon for me to remain asleep for 14-15 hours a day. I just didn’t have any positive incentive to get up. With the exception of December 1989, when a small dream came true and I was to head to the music store to go pickup my first MIDI musical instrument that would enable me to start getting these symphonies in my head down on tape. That morning I awoke with the excitement of a boy on Christmas morning and could not sleep. I awoke early, but knew that the music store did not open til 10am, but I got up since I was all wired up with excitement. The rest of the time, I had no interest in getting out of bed. The world of my imagination and the dream world were more comfortable for me.

I also discovered Japanese animation during those years and it became an escape for me, a world in which I could vicariously enjoy honor, courage and adventure. And pretty girl heroines. At that time, I discovered the unique and beautiful music soundtracks, which would eventually lead to the creation of my weekly radio program. In this little world half a world away, I would find some intense joy. But still something was missing.

If I had met my soulmate before I got to be so old that a relationship was not of the typical young boy/young girl starting a family and living happily variety, perhaps my passion for living would not have died. Even now that I have married this late in life to a woman that I adore very much, I am finding that I’m not young anymore and can’t seem to return to the giddy, schoolboy “electricity of young love” era that I once experienced with every crush I went through as a young person. I feel a diminished joy, but against the backdrop of financial problems, heavy tax burdens and a rising cost of living that underscores my forward-thinking concern for the future.

I have a very strong feeling of impending doom.

I put the above as a paragraph by itself because I feel that it is a clue of great importance. Like my mother before me, who woke up one day and told my father, “we’re never going to make it, are we?” and died a few years later, I feel that the world demands so much of me financially, but is incompatible with my Hedonistic world of self-enjoyment. I’m a free spirit. I cannot live in the “jail” of a 9-5 job. I’ve done it for decades and those were the most miserable years of my life. Now that I am free, I have never been happier in terms of freedom—it’s just the financial worries. The fact that for the last three years in a row, my property taxes have exceeded my gross income. The fact that I must preserve this house, because it enables me to enjoy my #1 pleasure: Bass Pig. Yet, I see that slipping away soon, to a government with trumped up clause, the tax clause…

Rising costs, the world uncertainty, war, etc., all add up to this sense of impending doom that dampens my happiness. I have no clear plan to get out of this situation. Eight now, Primerica is my only hope. But I am finding it difficult to network with others, because I know few people and they are all old and out of the market for life insurance and mortgages. My month of telemarketing was a complete utter failure. Not one client and not one recruit. It is just easier to stay in bed, especially in the cold weather.

I think that the desire to sleep is the desire to die. I think I have a death wish. Without passion for living, there is no living at all. I have to find out why I keep moving in the direction of failure, why I attract pain and trouble, instead of success and money. My wife calls me lazy, but I am starting to think laziness comes when you physically don’t feel the energy to move quickly and get a lot done. My mind is fuzzy, unfocused and full of noise. So much so, that a simple five minute task becomes an evening-long affair for me. My mind drifts a lot, is hard to focus on task, and lately, I have been forgetting things. This morning, I left the house without my wallet, drivers license, watch and cell phone. I’ve been burning breakfast because I forget to turn down the heat on the stove. I think it’s time I get tested for Alzheimer’s.

I’m a self-centered and very selfish person. I live for myself. But I feel that sometimes I shortcutted the appropriate routes to get where I am. I made a lot of mistakes early in life. I focused on chasing after Mrs. Right for too long and with too much intensity, and it got in the way of my career, education and success.

These are some of my thoughts. My biggest problem is that I can’t control my sleep problem. I came home from an early morning Primerica training meeting and went to bed again. I sleep whenever I get the chance. I can always lie down and fall asleep. That is scary. Successful people are full of energy and they almost never sleep. What the hell is wrong with me?

[CNA]

Damn, Mark, I wasn't expecting you to talk about it all right now. I was just giving a suggestion. But I will say I haven't read your entire post yet but will. My point being is that only YOU can give yourself the answers. Branden or Blumenthal can be enlightening but they can't give YOU the answers as to WHY you personally do it. Everyone is different. Everyone has their own reasons as to WHY they do WHAT they do. Such as my reasons were far different than my friend's or others as they have their own reasons for doing what they do. Branden and Blumenthal cannot make the decision for you to stop. That is something you have to do on your own. The more I realized WHY I was doing WHAT I was doing, it all became so clear, the more I disliked it. But for now and only reading a portion so far of your post, the only person that truly can give you the answers is YOURSELF.

Angie

Mark, do some serious introspection over a long period of time, do experiments on when you are having these bubbles so to speak and when you are not. When you are in this bubble, try to figure out why you are doing it, what you are getting from it, etc. Then after it, still analze your actions, your thoughts, compare, and so on. Is it present when there is a stressful situation; such as, with work or a fight with your baby girl, etc? Does it make you feel more productive and able to cope? Do these experiments before, during, and afterwards and even when you aren't and you are out in your day to day life, I am sure you will learn quite a bit about yourself, your addiction, why, what, how, and so on. My doctor enjoys it immensely although still an addict. He is understanding himself much better, understanding his addiction and why it affects HIM the way it does. But a primary, Mark, is to find out why from the very beginning and why you started to pursue it, what it did for you, etc. Yeah, a lot of introspection but I think well worth it. My own intense introspection helped me to understand why I did drugs and drank, although mine were not done for the specific reasons I've named. I started mine because of group thought and doing what others wanted me to do. It was and is called peer pressure. I was still a kid and teenager. I wanted to fit in. From there, it progressed. But ultimately realized what was happening, why, what, etc., at that young age, most of all what it did to me, my ability to think was impaired, I couldn't figure out why I was doing things, what I was doing, etc., that I stopped. It's been many many many years now. I drink on rare ocassion. One girlie drink and I am majorily tipsy. As some have said, I can't hold my liquor.

Good luck, Mark, into your self-discovery and why.

Angie

Angie,

This is probably a complex psychological issue that only a great mind like Branden or Blumenthal can completely analyze and dissect, but I can state some of my own observations and conclusions, even partially-formed, in case a simpler answer can be derived.

In the ‘bubble’ as you refer to it, when I am listening to a good piece of music (well, here is another area where I am fighting with mixed premises—just what IS good music, if some of the Rock I listen to is not music?) I am experiencing two emotions, one greater than the other: joy and terror. I am enjoying the melody, and the sonic smorgasbord of various sounds all working together in harmony of a sort. I am enjoying the sensation of feeling the air solidify and vibrate every bone, every piece of flesh on my person. If the bass player is doing more than just playing a bouncing bass line, perhaps playing entire allegorical melodies, I am enjoying that deeply, imagining myself plucking those strings. If the drummer is doing some particularly impressive work, I imagine myself as that drummer, just feeling the music in a way no normal listening level allows me to feel.

In the ‘bubble’ of that moment, I am really not thinking that much about dangers, emotional problems or whether this is bad for me. Though sometimes at the extreme of it I am, and that’s the terror part. Expecially when I experience the sensation that I’d describe as someone taking a pin and scratching it across my eardrum, if that were possible to imagine, or when I’m listening to a pipe organ and the lower bass notes are interfering with my breathing. Both of those experiences become disconcerting. Aside from that, it seems to be a very positive experience. The only down side is that afterwards, I can’t hear much of anything and there is a low hum in my ears. When I talk, or when someone talks to me, the voice is distorted for about a half an hour or so after the listening session. I also am not at the best of my ability to concentrate, though, like a sexual release, I feel less tension and in some respects more able to focus on something other than music for the next several hours. So while the noise has slightly caused disintegration of my cognitive faculties for a while, the satisfaction of the need for it releases me from the distraction of anticipating the experience.

I don’t use it consciously as a release of tension. In fact, I don’t want to listen to music when I am depressed and in a quiet mood. The best time is when I feel good, have recently had some physical outdoor activity and am in good cheer. The sense of wanting to celebrate something is the mood that is most conducing to “Bass Pigging.” That, in combination with the wife being out of the house for a few hours is the key to my entering this world.

It wasn’t peer pressure in my case, but maybe acceptance. I was an unpopular person all my life, never had any real friends (which is really starting to catch up with me now that I am working in Primerica and have to go out and meet people in order to do business) and a small part of the build up of this system was ego-driven. I started out as a traveling DJ for a while, until I realized I didn’t like the music that people wanted to hear and also realized that the money wasn’t going to be what I needed to live my dream life. In the early years, it was “cool”, but as things got crazier, some friends considered me “off the deep end” and wouldn’t visit anymore. After a while, people just started to regard me as sick and deranged. So I no longer crank things up much for guests. I watch their body language carefully and when I see the hands go for the ears, or they start to double over, or give the downward-facing hand signal, I comply and back off, even though I lose the ego-reward of showing them what the system is capable of.

Overall, in the “big picture,” I suspect that this behavior/need of mine is only a symptom of other things going on in my consciousness. (Gee, now we need Peikoff’s “Philosopher’s Couch” for counceling here…) I went through a severe period of disillusionment some 22 years ago, in which my endless quest for female companionship ended in a terrible breakup with a young girl that I was introduced to by a mutual friend. Whatever the case, I guess I was too old for her (she was only in her twenties at the time) and it wasn’t until later, when I read a certain Tom Clancy novel, that her character type was described to a tee and I understood who it was I dated those three times and why she did what she did, and how lucky I was that she broke up the relationship before I could be harmed by her ignominous past.

But after that experience, I had a year of heavy drinking. Had a nervous breakdown, was asked to retire early from my job. It was like nuclear war had broken out, killing off all of mankind, all institutions—the world at-large—while leaving me and my possessions intact. I felt like the last man on earth. Even when amongst a crowd, I felt an accute loneliness. I still had all of my toys, but they no longer had any meaning to me. I stopped using them. Everything lost context. That relationship had been the physical manifestation of my dream relationship from the physical side of romance, and as such, it had tremendously widened my scope of capacity to experience joy, so when it was taken away, going back to my old, limited world was a contraction I could not bear. It took a year to recover enough to function again, and several more to return to ‘status quo’.

But ever since then, I don’t know whether it was the year of living like a vegetable or the drinking causing brain damage, but I lost a tremendous amount of mental capacity. My closest friend confirmed that he had noted a marked change in my ability to respond in realtime conversations, and at solving problems. Where I was once near-genius at problem solving, after the ‘event’ I was sluggish and often unable to solve problems of a similar nature.

The years went on, and the need for money, coupled with being unable to find a job at my age, caused me to go into my own business. I had wanted to do something related to media since I was a kid. Now, I figured, was my chance. So I set up shop as a typesetter. Failed miserably at the business end of it. So I closed that business and set up shop as a promotional media services provider, doing video and graphics. That failed to gain more than one client, the guy who remanufactured my toner cartridges. So I moved on to color prepress and had some success, but the one client I had was reluctant to give me enough work to make a living and eventually brought the design of their sell sheets and video packaging in-house with minimum wage kids working on Mac computers. I had a brief stint with a kiosk marketing company that looked promising later during that period in the mid-1990s. Things looked so good that I was on track to earn $100K that year if work kept up. That company went bankrupt and left me out $6400 in unpaid invoices.

Meanwhile, I was stepping up my “criminal” activities, reviving my old pirate radio transmitters and living that dream for a while, the dream to own my own radio station. I managed to avoid the FCC, and I attracted the attention of a station broker, friendly to pirate radio, who, upon seeing my engineering design abilities demonstrated by the techical quality of the station that I had built from raw components, got me lined up with some paid radio engineering work. That lasted from 1997 to present. I was almost making a living at it by 2002. But in 2003, business dropped considerably. By 2004, my daughter was born and business dropped off more, as I was strugglng to rebuild a badly-damaged upstairs roof and walls. The house was fit to be condemned, and I was determined to make sure that my daughter would have a nice room for herself. So I started rebuilding the bathroom and then the spare bedroom, so these two important places for child-care would be spotless. This past summer, I spent long hours rebuilding 400 sq ft of flat ‘shed’ roof that had rotted from water damage and carpenter ants. Each year, I would rebuild one more room. The roof, the walls and part of the floor in each case so far. Radio work had stopped completely by this summer.

Since the ‘event’ in the beginning of the 1980s, I had not only lost my passion for living, but I had also started to sleep most of the day away. It was not uncommon for me to remain asleep for 14-15 hours a day. I just didn’t have any positive incentive to get up. With the exception of December 1989, when a small dream came true and I was to head to the music store to go pickup my first MIDI musical instrument that would enable me to start getting these symphonies in my head down on tape. That morning I awoke with the excitement of a boy on Christmas morning and could not sleep. I awoke early, but knew that the music store did not open til 10am, but I got up since I was all wired up with excitement. The rest of the time, I had no interest in getting out of bed. The world of my imagination and the dream world were more comfortable for me.

I also discovered Japanese animation during those years and it became an escape for me, a world in which I could vicariously enjoy honor, courage and adventure. And pretty girl heroines. At that time, I discovered the unique and beautiful music soundtracks, which would eventually lead to the creation of my weekly radio program. In this little world half a world away, I would find some intense joy. But still something was missing.

If I had met my soulmate before I got to be so old that a relationship was not of the typical young boy/young girl starting a family and living happily variety, perhaps my passion for living would not have died. Even now that I have married this late in life to a woman that I adore very much, I am finding that I’m not young anymore and can’t seem to return to the giddy, schoolboy “electricity of young love” era that I once experienced with every crush I went through as a young person. I feel a diminished joy, but against the backdrop of financial problems, heavy tax burdens and a rising cost of living that underscores my forward-thinking concern for the future.

I have a very strong feeling of impending doom.

I put the above as a paragraph by itself because I feel that it is a clue of great importance. Like my mother before me, who woke up one day and told my father, “we’re never going to make it, are we?” and died a few years later, I feel that the world demands so much of me financially, but is incompatible with my Hedonistic world of self-enjoyment. I’m a free spirit. I cannot live in the “jail” of a 9-5 job. I’ve done it for decades and those were the most miserable years of my life. Now that I am free, I have never been happier in terms of freedom—it’s just the financial worries. The fact that for the last three years in a row, my property taxes have exceeded my gross income. The fact that I must preserve this house, because it enables me to enjoy my #1 pleasure: Bass Pig. Yet, I see that slipping away soon, to a government with trumped up clause, the tax clause…

Rising costs, the world uncertainty, war, etc., all add up to this sense of impending doom that dampens my happiness. I have no clear plan to get out of this situation. Eight now, Primerica is my only hope. But I am finding it difficult to network with others, because I know few people and they are all old and out of the market for life insurance and mortgages. My month of telemarketing was a complete utter failure. Not one client and not one recruit. It is just easier to stay in bed, especially in the cold weather.

I think that the desire to sleep is the desire to die. I think I have a death wish. Without passion for living, there is no living at all. I have to find out why I keep moving in the direction of failure, why I attract pain and trouble, instead of success and money. My wife calls me lazy, but I am starting to think laziness comes when you physically don’t feel the energy to move quickly and get a lot done. My mind is fuzzy, unfocused and full of noise. So much so, that a simple five minute task becomes an evening-long affair for me. My mind drifts a lot, is hard to focus on task, and lately, I have been forgetting things. This morning, I left the house without my wallet, drivers license, watch and cell phone. I’ve been burning breakfast because I forget to turn down the heat on the stove. I think it’s time I get tested for Alzheimer’s.

I’m a self-centered and very selfish person. I live for myself. But I feel that sometimes I shortcutted the appropriate routes to get where I am. I made a lot of mistakes early in life. I focused on chasing after Mrs. Right for too long and with too much intensity, and it got in the way of my career, education and success.

These are some of my thoughts. My biggest problem is that I can’t control my sleep problem. I came home from an early morning Primerica training meeting and went to bed again. I sleep whenever I get the chance. I can always lie down and fall asleep. That is scary. Successful people are full of energy and they almost never sleep. What the hell is wrong with me?

[Victor Pross]

Mark,

Didn't I tell you the first day you posted that Angie is special? You should really have a chat with this beautiful woman, she is MUCH MORE than the pretty face you see.

Victor

[mweiss]

Mark,

Didn't I tell you the first day you posted that Angie is special? You should really have a chat with this beautiful woman, she is MUCH MORE than the pretty face you see.

Victor

She does seem to possess quite a large amount of wisdom for her age. But then, I find that the Objectivists that I knew over the years were extraordinary people. Consider yourself a lucky man to have met someone while you are still young enough to enjoy love in all it's many glorious dimensions.

[CNA]

Hi Mark,

I read your post and have to say wow. You definitely poured it all out, heart and soul. I'm not a doctor but I can give you my opinion. Have you thought about going in to see your doctor, having a checkup and definitely tell them about your sleeping patterns, lethargy, and so on? I do want to say that both my sister and mother suffer from depression in various degrees which can be severe. I am very familiar with depression due to what they've gone through, watching them, etc., as well as much research into it on my own although I do not suffer from depression personally. Honestly, I would highly recommend going in and seeing your family doctor if you have one.

Angie

[CNA]

Mark,

Didn't I tell you the first day you posted that Angie is special? You should really have a chat with this beautiful woman, she is MUCH MORE than the pretty face you see.

Victor

She does seem to possess quite a large amount of wisdom for her age. But then, I find that the Objectivists that I knew over the years were extraordinary people. Consider yourself a lucky man to have met someone while you are still young enough to enjoy love in all it's many glorious dimensions.

Thank you, Mark. Yes, I am a bit young but do have quite a bit of knowledge and wisdom as I have been through a lot and I mean a lot, probably more so than most people out there, and have most definitely learned from it. It hasn't been easy by any means, god, very very difficult at times but have learned so much from it and have applied that knowledge and wisdom to my life in all aspects.

Angie

[mweiss]

Hi Mark,

I read your post and have to say wow. You definitely poured it all out, heart and soul. I'm not a doctor but I can give you my opinion. Have you thought about going in to see your doctor, having a checkup and definitely tell them about your sleeping patterns, lethargy, and so on? I do want to say that both my sister and mother suffer from depression in various degrees which can be severe. I am very familiar with depression due to what they've gone through, watching them, etc., as well as much research into it on my own although I do not suffer from depression personally. Honestly, I would highly recommend going in and seeing your family doctor if you have one.

Angie

Given that both my parents died at the hands of doctors, you'll excuse me if I'm a bit skeptical about their ability to help me.

I've got a great lineage: let's see... dimentia from mother's side, ulcers and tumours from father's side.

Both of them were on the naturopathic route for a number of years, but when Miss Rand passed away, mom went downhill at blinding speed and was dead within 4 years of Rand's death, spending her final years in a state mental facility. Dad developed Leukemia and died from complications of that.

Presently, I have no family doctor. I simply don't know anyone I can trust. My wife has doctors for her prenatal care, but that's all. I have a good dentist, and that's all at the moment.

I don't believe in medical solutions to epistomological and ethical problems. The problem to me is quite clear: I cannot bear to live in this irrational world because the laws of this world are encroaching on my right to exist as I wish, to live my life in the manner I choose. Ayn Rand went through a period like this in her own life. I'm certain that astute Objectivists know what I'm talking about.

I'm trying to deal with addressing the law part of it, since in America it is a crime to be poor. If you can't pay your taxes, they come with SWAT teams and take you out--dead if they have to. So I'm struggling to become a millionaire. Trouble is, while the company is terrific, I'm not on of the type of people that do well in this business, because it's all about people, and I have been a misanthropic xenophobe for most of my life. Dealing with the mental abuse of finding myself stuck reduced to resorting to being a telemarketer, I'm under a lot of stress and getting no positive reward. I may have to call 10,000 people before I gain one genuine adherent that gets me a foot in the door, so to speak. In the meantime, I stave off tax liens and sheriff's visits. It's an ugly mess, while I'm trying to repair my home to make it liveable. (We've got neighbors that don't live anywhere near us but have written complaint letters to the town about our home and that it should be bulldozed and so on.) I'll admit it's not the most picturesque house in the world, but with a lot of fixup, it can be a home for us until we earn our first million and can think about upgrading.

Everything seems like it's against me, and this has been the status quo for decades.

I don't believe this is entirely a physical health problem, although I do feel better and can think more clearly when I've been working outdoors or doing a lot of physical outdoor activities for at least a month. Now that winter's here, I'm not getting exercise and fresh air, so I'm on that natural decline that I go through every year.

If I lived in a free world, I think I would be a lot happier. 95% of my day to day problems are directly connected with the government wanting money from me that I don't have.

[CNA]

Hi Mark,

I hear ya and totally understand. The reason I suggested seeing a doctor is that depression/clinical depression can cause physical symptoms such as lethargy, sleep disturbances either insomnia or excessive sleep, body aches, irritable bowel syndrome as well as many others. How about this, I will go pull up some depression information for you off the net and post it. If any of this sounds familiar to you which I am sure it will to some degree, there are places that you can go to see a doctor about this or to get a referral for counseling, etc. They have programs to get insurance coverage for indigent patients, etc., if you aren't able to afford it right now.

WebMD

Symptoms of Depression

ALTHOUGH it is often classed as 'mental illness', clinical depression often has as many physical symptoms as mental. The feelings or emotions that are depression symptoms actually begin to cause the physical effects. How this happens is a vital part of understanding depression and the symptoms that come with it.

If you are depressed at the moment some of the following symptoms may sound familiar:

You feel miserable and sad.

You feel exhausted a lot of the time with no energy .

You feel as if even the smallest tasks are sometimes impossible.

You seldom enjoy the things that you used to enjoy-you may be off sex or food or may 'comfort eat' to excess.

You feel very anxious sometimes.

You don't want to see people or are scared to be left alone. Social activity may feel hard or impossible.

You find it difficult to think clearly.

You feel like a failure and/or feel guilty a lot of the time.

You feel a burden to others.

You sometimes feel that life isn't worth living.

You can see no future. There is a loss of hope. You feel all you've ever done is make mistakes and that's all that you ever will do.

You feel irritable or angry more than usual.

You feel you have no confidence.

You spend a lot of time thinking about what has gone wrong, what will go wrong or what is wrong about yourself as a person. You may also feel guilty sometimes about being critical of others (or even thinking critically about them).

You feel that life is unfair.

You have difficulty sleeping or wake up very early in the morning and can't sleep again. You seem to dream all night long and sometimes have disturbing dreams.

You feel that life has/is 'passing you by.'

You may have physical aches and pains which appear to have no physical cause, such as back pain.

It's this wealth of depression symptoms, and the broad scope that confuses many people as to what depression actually is. Explanations rarely cover all the symptoms, and everybody's experience is different

Physical Symptoms

WebMD Medical Reference

Most of us know about the emotional symptoms of depression. But you may not know that depression can cause physical symptoms, too.

In fact, many people with depression feel pain or other physical symptoms. These include:

Headaches. These are fairly common in people with depression. If you already had migraine headaches, they may become worse if you're depressed.

Back pain. If you already suffer with back pain, it may get worse if you become depressed.

Muscle aches and joint pain. Depression can make any kind of chronic pain worse.

Chest pain. Obviously, it's very important to get chest pain checked out by an expert right away. It can be a sign of serious heart problems. But chest pain is also associated with depression.

Digestive problems. You might feel queasy or nauseous. You might have diarrhea or become chronically constipated.

Exhaustion and fatigue. No matter how much you sleep, you may still feel tired or worn out. Getting out of the bed in the morning may seem very hard, even impossible.

Sleeping problems. Many people with depression can't sleep well anymore. They wake up too early or can't fall asleep when they go to bed. Others sleep much more than normal.

Change in appetite or weight. Some people with depression lose their appetite and lose weight. Others find they crave certain foods -- like carbohydrates -- and weigh more.

Dizziness or lightheadedness.

Many depressed people never get help, because they don't know that their physical symptoms might be caused by depression. A lot of doctors miss the symptoms, too.

These physical symptoms aren't "all in your head." Depression can cause real changes in your body. For instance, it can slow down your digestion, which can result in stomach problems.

Depression seems to be related to an imbalance of certain chemicals in your brain. Some of these same chemicals play an important role in how you feel pain. So many experts think that depression can make you feel pain differently than other people.

Treating Physical Symptoms

In some cases, treating your depression -- with therapy or medicine or both -- will resolve your physical symptoms.

But make sure to tell your health care provider about any physical symptoms. Don't assume they'll go away on their own. They may need additional treatment. For instance, your doctor may suggest an antianxiety medicine if you have insomnia. Those drugs help you relax and may allow you to sleep better.

Since pain and depression go together, sometimes easing your pain may help with your depression. Some antidepressants, such as Cymbalta and Effexor, may help with chronic pain, too.

Other treatments can also help with painful symptoms. Certain types of focused therapy -- like cognitive behavioral -- can teach you ways to cope better with the pain.

[Kat]

Mark,

Is this bass thing a positive or negative value in your life? Does it make you happy or has it become an obsession that has spun out of control. It sounds like you may have gone overboard. At what cost?

Michael taught me something very important when he helped me to quit smoking and that was that in order to stop an addiction, you have to find something incompatible that you value more and it makes it quitting so much easier. When you realize objectively how little you actually value your addiction or obsession and how it gets in the way of your actual goals and getting what you want from your life, you will get a more realistic perspective and be able to put your priorities back in order. Are you sacrificing too much for your obsession? Maybe it is time to reconsider why it has taken on such a dominant position in your life. You say it has put a strain on your hearing, your house, neighborhood relations, your marriage, and your finances. Is it incompatible with something you value higher. What can this do to your baby's hearing? Only you can prioritize your own life. If you come to realize that it is not a problem, then enjoy, but if it has gone too far, by all means pull back or stop. Stay balanced. Take control.

Kat