Guitar as Therapy. Mine saves me from the greedy Bank

I have been studying guitar seriously now for a year since I moved to Sweden from the Uk. I took it up in 2003 and played casually and with increased interest as the time has passed since then.

In conjunction with my increased interest in the guitar, I have also become more interested in Guitar Technology both analogue and digital and my interests have climaxed in an obsession now with Hexaphonic pickups, Guitar Modelling, Amp modelling and DSP.

 My conversion to a total commitment to learning guitar properly came by way of the epiphany of seeing Howerd morgen play chord melodies which awoke a slumbering interest I had always had in the direction of jazz the richness of the harmonies and melodic lines Howerd was demonstrating fixed for me the idea of where my musical journey needed to head. 

My partner is a classically trained composer and clarinetist this has been a great leveller in terms of a real appreciation of my musical knowledge and aptitude in relation to a real life exemplar of a truly talented and educated musician, whilst not have any ambitions in a performing direction or even writing or doing anything on a purely musical level professionally I had kind of resolved that should I ever be in the position that I wanted another career then I would look in the direction of something guitar related. Learning to play and actually playing makes me very happy and I find the technological aspects fascinating as well.

Well being in Sweden Now and with our interests in the UK being severely ravaged by the economic mess we laughingly call the British economy it seems that I will be looking for some way to make a living here in Sweden. An old drama teacher at my school in England once gave a lesson about getting into the world of theatre and film his advice was to get a practical skill that can be applied back stage or behind the camera, treading the board she explained was a precarious old business even in the best of times for the majority of those drawn to the thespian muse so a practical skill is what I am looking at and the technological aspects of guitar playing and the field of DSP and all things rig related and recording related across the Analogue to digital spectrum is where my mind is taking me.

Life is good here in Sweden I have two wonderful Children Rhiannon 5 and Rasmus 18 months a lovely Swedish Partner and an area of study that offers so much interest and so many challenges.

I have to apply myself to Swedish Language studies as well I made a good start but have had to concentrate the last six months on our interests back in the UK strangely I found my guitar and music studies were therapeutic in respect of completely allowing me to focus on something I enjoyed away from the really very stressful matter of dealing with an intransigent aggressive and ultimately greedy beyond words bank and their appointed henchmen known politely as LPA receivers.

The worse of the distractions of my greedy bankers may be yet to come, it would be foolhardy to expect them to begin acting anything like reasonably based on my experiences with them since the crash in 2007. One good thing that has come from it though is a growing interest in the alternatives to the broken western/global economic system the debt money global Monetocracy, the last UK election took place shortly after we move to Sweden I watched in horror at the unbecoming spectacle of the sitting Prime Minister seeking to cling to power and the equally unedifying spectacle of the other contenders scurrying around to get their angle at the trough. I don’t want to appear bitter or ungrateful, my business career in the UK was successful by almost any ones standards and the route by which the economic system has conspired to confiscate and ultimately squander my assets was not brought about by any particularly over reckless decisions taken on my part. Like so many others I have been caught up in a set of circumstances way beyond my control having essentially retired, all be it very early in 2003.I did have a few years of wild decadent abandon, even if I had avoided that, I would have ended up at the same place in 2007, and nothing I could have done before the day that Lehman brothers came crashing down could have avoided the circumstances playing out now.

I am very happy and very content but I am also pretty appalled at the mess the world is in and I know that the current system has done a lot worse and continues to do worse to almost anyone else I could ever meet, when I think what is happening and has happened in my own business life in the past 5 years I can only begin to imagine how angry so many other people must be feeling, how helpless and without hope. If I am grateful for nothing else I am grateful for the political re awakening and realisation that I really do want my kids to grow up in a fairer world not just the fairer society that Sweden already represents but a fairer world where freedom really isn’t as in the words of the old song ” Just another Word for nothing else to lose”

Mind you in a Buddhist sense I guess freedom is nothing to lose in a material sense and you know what In my view freedom in that sense is winning.