Gili Trawangan

@SilentTears Thanks man, appreciate it. Good luck to you too!

Yeah, your signature there is crucial! You gotta love the devil as well, it makes this so much more fun, doesn't it?

If you are being aware of something, no matter how subtle, that's not it. Bring yourself back, there is yet another layer. Until there isn't...

@modmyth Haha I honestly don't know, it's the only celebrity who's notoriously a 'man whore' that came to mind I don't know the names of any of the young ones. Channing Tatum maybe.. he's the last one I'm aware of. The point was made regardless

Just tried it for the first time. Will do the 30 days and see what happens. Challenge accepted

Tricky... the ego will gladly take the idea of non-doership and use it as an excuse to keep the addiction. If non-doership is not in your experience, drop the idea altogether, it serves no purpose except perhaps for the elimination of regret. However, will power alone will not pull you out of the addiction, in fact part of the process is loving yourself despite relapsing on occasion. You need to clearly see how porn is really bad for you, make long-term plans with the clear vision of your life without porn, and have so much going on to be excited about that there's no time or inclination to go back to it. None of this is easy, I'm still grappling with it myself, it's a very old and ingrained pattern. Wish I could be more helpful...

Wtf is an OG? Are we all supposed to know what that means?

Amen!

Monday and Tuesday were a struggle, but yesterday and today morning I really hit my stride on one of the music themes, the only one with no vocals so far. All I had was a melody line for the cello and a drum loop that I had used on top of it. It was in F minor, and I couldn't find any sound to put on top, so I transposed it to E minor, which is a more common chord, and started to add guitar loops. They sounded good, then I started to add brass loops, and all of a sudden the sound was getting big. Today I polished it all up and it sounds quite good, actually. Not much mixing will be needed, when you use the sounds from the Digital Audio Workstation, the levels are pretty much good from the get go. In two days a new track is practically finished, and I'm quite happy with it.

@SilentTears Sorry, forgot to quote you, and can't seem to be able to edit my post...

Right back at you man, thank you! It's funny you should mention this, I have a webpage open on my phone browser which I haven't read yet precisely about this subject. Honestly, my initial reaction is to recoil, because I've had a few health issues on the genital region in the past, one of them was prostatitis, and more recently a couple of infections. So I wonder about how dangerous it could be to "mess around" with that, which is how I've heard they do it. Maybe I'm just ignorant, but I heard that they orgasm without ejaculating? Or am I mistaking this for something else? I guess I need to read up on it I mean, don't get me wrong, it sounds awesome have you tried any of this? It seems like a really cool thing to dive into, but I admit that I'm scared due to the health thing.

I watched the video (lost 10 minutes of my day) and don't see how or why it matters. It's a kid making a video with a few jokes that aren't funny.

@RendHeaven It is women who ask me regularly how many women I've had sex with and I think you're right, I always feel unease about the question and just reply something like "enough". Some of them are very insistent on getting an actual number though, I think they're looking for an answer that makes them feel special, it's got nothing to do with us as men and everything to do with how they get to perceive themselves in the situation. However, giving them an actual number is never going to make them feel good. So, best to ignore and tease back and let them create their own little fantasy.

Same here. I wonder how much of this is a collective thing... sounds like you understand your loneliness feelings better than I do though, I'm still grappling with them and just trying to let them go as 'ego'...

@Dwarniel As far as flesh prisons go, yours is very nice to look at from the outside

I got an unexpected call from a good friend today and it energized me. He's about to have his first kid, was in the hospital and decided to call me for a chat. I notice how this element is lacking in my life, friendship and connection. I spend most of my days in solitude, and it's not because of the coronavirus outbreak, here in Vietnam people still go outside and aside from schools remaining closed and all the precautions being enforced by government, things seem pretty normal. No, it's not the virus, it's my own choices. It's a kind of conditioning that I have not transcended. Solitude began very early for me in life; having three older brothers who played together and always left me out, together with a long period of both parents being absent (for different reasons). It just became rather normal for me, spending most of my time in solitude. I suspect that this pattern is also what prevents me from having an intimate relationship with a woman besides sex, together with my trust issues. The thing is that all this solitude takes away from quality of life. Yes, I have times when I'm extremely happy and connected to Source, but other times the mind is very agitated and even meditation doesn't seem to make it any better. I think that having some conversations with friends that I know and trust is something that is missing, but at the same time I don't really know what to do to change this. This past week has been terrible in terms of being productive with music. I can't seem to find the head space to be able to create, there's too much mind chatter and agitation, nothing sounds good, there is an aggressive energy inside that turns into judgment and anger. And sexual compulsion. I almost looked at porn yesterday, after two whole months of abstinence from it. I feel like I need to abstain from masturbation as well, but that's a tall order to fill, with all of this solitude and mind agitation. I need to accept that the process of making this project come to life is not always going to be pretty. There's struggle here as well, there is resistance, there's all kinds of emotions. And it still feels as if there's an 'I' that can somehow learn to control them, and perhaps this is the belief that needs to be let go of. Sometimes it is, but then sometimes it comes back. Mindfuckery.

I'll bet that if Leonardo Dicaprio came a-knocking (or whatever high status guy tickles your fancy), that theory would quickly fly out the window

Check! lol You gain something if you really enjoy sex and if you really enjoy variety. And then you lose on other stuff. I don't regret it because regret is pointless, and there was a time in my life when seducing women was my favorite thing in the world.

Great! Wonderful read, thanks for sharing.

About to watch the Lion King for the first time...

Magic. There's this song I was having trouble with, there seem to be too many tracks. I'm on 14 now, mostly because I have four just for the acoustic guitars, although these should turn into two once I start recording for real. But today I worked on the bridge after the first chorus and first found a really nice guitar loop that fit perfectly with the main guitar theme. I was really surprised, it sounded great, plus I already knew what the arpeggio was going to be, just needed to find the right sound for it. I searched around for a long time and ended up putting two of them together. But when I added the strings it just took the whole thing to another level, it actually became beautiful... I don't know what happened, it feels like magic. Everything had been so confusing up to that point, how did it just blend so perfectly together? It's hard to explain or describe, it just feels like magic. I absolutely love this feeling, it's music being put together God knows through what mechanism. I certainly don't understand it, just watching it happen. Of course, not all is perfect, the chorus is far from that level of perfect blend, and I might have to make peace with not getting this lucky all the time, but when something like this happens it just stirs up a lot of excitement and joy.

@Inliytened1 I understand, I admire your patience

Understood by whom? There's nobody here and it's unknowing, man! wink wink It's a terrible teaching, actually. It's nonsensical, to begin with. What does it even mean to say "nothing matters"? Plus, it misunderstands relativity. I can just as easily say that "everything matters", which is also nonsensical, and has the same truth behind it, which is none. Infinity has no position, there's nobody to say that nothing matters, it can be said but it is relative to the position from which it stems in that particular moment. This entire thread is mental masturbation, including this post.

I've never seen it either Hmm, I do have some free time today...

That's a pretty long list, but a good one