What Now with Simo

14 October 2020, 4:39 p.m. — A long, almost baroque autumn dream — This time of year — Halloween on the horizon — 21 October — Libra — Proud of my mother — Eye surgery — Back to the dream — Gusty winds — Possibility of falling branches — Storm approaching — Seaside town, autumnal — Huge old house with creaking wooden floors — The home of a friend — Housesitting — Old-time things — Flea markets — R...

An episode of diary entries — Sunday, 20 September 2020 — 12:05 p.m. — “The Song of the Volga Boatmen” — The emotional arc of waking up on some days — A feature of art — Emotional underpinnings — 12:22 p.m. — Norm Macdonald video of Letterman appearances — “Calypso Blues” by Nat King Cole (music) & Don George (lyrics) — A song that can bring a smile — Version by Mona Baptiste (early 1950s) — S...

Newfound freedom — Fresh air — The 1st movement of Beethoven’s Piano Sonata No. 14 ( Moonlight ) — Pieces I never get tired of — Changing pianists, changing tempi — In Season 3 of Twin Peaks — The most remarkable use of this movement — Time slows down — David Lynch and Angelo Badalamenti — The gift of simplicity — “Slower” — Music is a set of simple things in combinations of varying complexity — S...

We are going to gym — Recording on a headset with a microphone — Testing — No time, but doing it anyway — Cardio day — 3-day cycle — No 45 minutes of heavy breathing — Exercise makes drinking a huge pleasure — Stretching — All done — Now food — Last night a good night creatively — A theory about music — The time problem — Also a good writing day — Finished a solid scene for a stage play — Back fro...

10 August 2020 — Icelandic artist Hildur Kristín Thorstensen — My imperfect pronunciation — Summer of 2016 — Singer, writer, performer, dancer, director, actor, and more — Schools in Iceland, Finland, France, and the UK — Natural born artist — Early years — Collage — First book of poetry in 2017 — Bilingual — Poetry that comes naturally — To create a perfect poem — Directness and beauty — Elegance...

Many new developments — Joined the Senscape team to work under Agustín Cordes on writing and revisions for the horror adventure game Asylum — Worked previously together on the free horror adventure game Serena (available on Steam) — Fertile and enjoyable creative collaboration — That game was made from beginning to end in two months — A feeling of exhilaration — The Holodeck in the early episodes...

4 a.m. drive — Good time and place for a driving podcast — Attempt #2 — Done talking about some things — Focusing on the present and the future — I like driving — Mic talk and fair warning — Used to go rollerblading at this time of morning — Now driving — You never know what thoughts will occur when out and about — Avoiding stagnation — Keep developing — Driving past my first school — Cemetery on...

Scooters — Reckless riders — Running, walking, biking — An outing to pick up copies of my paperback — Beautiful summer day — City bikes out of circulation for now — Visiting Tampere in the summer — Nature places and gardens — The time I walked 12 kilometres most days for a month — Scooting along — Tier — One euro per trip plus 20 cents per minute — Half an hour of walking both ways — Really enjoye...

Being on the same wavelength or not — Possible or impossible to connect — The real communication happens under the surface — Looking into each other’s eyes — Other factors involved — Happens naturally — Your people — Those with whom no connection is possible — Seekers — A creative need — Pursuing goals related to creativity — Taking steps to make them happen — Imagination is super incredibly impor...

Excerpts from Chapter 1 of the first book in my upcoming 6-volume series on the TV series Northern Exposure (1990–1995). Chapter 1 covers the pilot episode.

20,000 words for the NX book — Writing — Translating films and TV series — Securing creative freedom — Game writing — My default way of living — Screenwriting gym — A whole script going through your mind and fingers — Concise writing — A way to learn from others — Words need to go through you physically as well as mentally — Writing by speaking — Rod Serling and David Lynch — Ideal type of work —...

Started making the Northern Exposure recordings — Episodes of the podcast will be excerpts from the full work as it is being written — the hours-long full-length recordings and book chapters

Numbered points — 1. Season 1 ebook on Amazon — Paperback soon — Pricing — 2. Northern Exposure podcast series — A “sub-podcast” for now — No branding or advertising — 3. YouTube Garfield pipe strip video called 07/27/1978 — In the category of comedy — Lovecraftian thinking — Visual illustrations of the points — 4. The main street smelled like a clean beach — Streets washed clean — Lost count — An...

A less hectic pace this time — Things passing out of the common consciousness — The Twilight Zone — Even that — Forgotten? — Lasting work — People of generations after mine — Ancient history — Their own things — Anthology shows — The Ray Bradbury Theater — One of those eternal things — How many born later will go watch those episodes? — Losing the ability to watch or read old stuff — Going back to...

Welcome — Podcast and book series — 110 episodes and chapters — American TV series created by Joshua Brand and John Falsey — Six seasons from 1990 to 1995 — The Blu-ray release preserves the original music — Earlier DVD releases — Amazon — How to do justice to this series? — A tall claim, but one I believe 100% — The maturest series I know — A unique combination of what it does and what it doesn’t...

10-minute clock — A finely crafted wooden box — News — Two books — Finished a book during the break — A transcript of every episode — The editorial approach — Hybrid books and books that try something new — Issues of focus and memorability — Podcast then also available for anyone with any hearing loss — Writing by talking — Rod Serling, creator of The Twilight Zone , wrote by dictating into a tape...

Welcome to season 2 — Putting myself on a clock — 10-minute episodes — My father turned 75 — David Lynch’s weather report (David Lynch Theater) — Norm Macdonald tweeted Dr. Jordan Peterson — Bear McCreary’s Battlestar Galactica maybe soon on Spotify — R.I.P. Fred Willard — A couple of announcements soon — Regular schedule from now on — Happy birthday, Dad — Always supportive parents — Something el...

Season 1 finale — Single-mindedness can be a good thing when pursuing a single task — But life is many tasks — Throwing the thoughts out into the winds — The good ones will come back — Close Encounters of the Third Kind — Field of Dreams — Clearing out some things — Reminders of things forgotten for some time — Discussion featuring Philip Glass and Godfrey Reggio — Director of the Qatsi trilogy —...

A motorcycle — Sunny day — Continuing the serial — I hate manipulation — Playing games with people — Relevance to Field of Dreams — Simply a good man — Superman is meant to be a completely goodhearted person — His backstory — From another planet, but raised by really good people — A valuable concept — Many writers don’t know what to do with this — Moving on — The connecting link — Whether you can...

When did I go to sleep last night? — No way was I going to record today — A tumble of thoughts — A good creative principle — Small manageable chunks — Modular — A sort of serial — The real heroes in life are the people who keep life going no matter what — In that spirit — A podcast like a radio programme of comforting regularity — Heroes and superheroes — Perspectives change — Superman goes crazy...

28th April 2020 — 20/20 vision about our lives — Something different again — 1. What I was doing today — Continued with music and writing — Better not share too much too early — A kind of jinx — Building up resources and tools — Being systematic — Tens of thousands of bars of music — Archiving — Also finished pieces — An Iceland Symphony — Aim to be drastically productive — Building a musical voca...

Positive feedback — Aiming this time for no segues — A lot on my mind — More on keys of creativity — Key figures David Lynch, Vangelis, Ron Jones — Interviews, talks, and conversations — Insights — Saying enough but not too much — Vangelis recommendation — Not a marketable commodity — Healthier and wiser — Things that restrict us and things that unlock something — Segue — About creative people I k...

Reading of H. P. Lovecraft’s “Ex Oblivione” (1920–1921).

9th April 2020 — Day of the Finnish language — Quarantine ending — Thinking of friends — Took a walk — Harvey Pekar and his comic book American Splendor — Pekar’s appearances on Letterman — He chronicled his own life in comic book form — Now many of us do it online — Pekar made a living as a file clerk at a veterans’ hospital — Letterman’s later regrets — Made fun of Pekar — Each provoked the othe...

6th April 2020 — A short break — Working on my music — Paris — Starting my personal system — Day 11 of 14 — About my odyssey through the history of recorded music — Gramophone magazine (founded 1923) used to cover all types of music — Digital archive — Spotify — Widening musical interests from the 80s to the present — Atlantis series of games from Cryo — World music — Pierre Estève and Stéphane Pi...