On my journey, especially the last 10 years, its come more and more to my attention the ways false things have fallen off while true aspects of myself have been challenged. It seems to me a lot of what the journey of life is about is filtering out what is not you so that more of the real you shines through.
When I was young I loved football. I played it all the time when I wasn't climbing trees and going on adventures. When it was raining I played snooker, listened to the radio and so on, but football was my thing. If I had pursued it more and dedicated myself to it I possibly could have made it. I was told by the manager of my school team a scout for Heart Of Midlothian Boys Club was interested in me. What I loved about football was the creative part. I was a creative player, left wing I usually played or sometimes striker. It was most joyful for me playing with my friends in the park casually. I did enjoy organised games up to a point but the rigidness of it felt too limiting. Then as you got older there was all the official stuff they organised around the game itself - club dinners, trips away, etc... This was the period I began to lose interest. They took all the fun out of it for me. I'm glad I never made it as a player when I look at the life they have. It definitely would not be for me.
After football my creativity found an expression through Music. Or Music found me and thank God it did! It was much more free in terms of expression and there were no boundaries in terms of longevity. A footballer can only play for a short time, a musician can play for a lifetime. Yet still there was a problem... I didn't want to go into the music industry. Right from the start. I was always thinking there must be another way to make a life from Music without going down that path. If you have good songs, can sing and play, what else do you need? If people like your songs then surely it doesn't matter where you play or how you deliver them as long as you make yourself and your songs available. Why do you need a middleman? What if you want to play live but not in pubs or not in traditional venues? Why can't you do that?
So from 18 until 27 I was wrestling with this question.
The answer came to me during my spiritual awakening, for want of a better term, and I saw clearly what I must do and how things should go for me. Unfortunately, I never realised there would be so much resistance. I wasn't harming anybody, wasn't asking anybody to do anything, but this was my unique path and those who understood and saw something in it could come with me. What I found were all kinds of forces coming out to try to stop me - again and again. On forums when I talked about things, in Europe when I attempted to move forward with it, and still even more resistance after that back in my hometown of Edinburgh.
This next part relates to my post Distortions Of Truth because many of the obstacles and interference I've faced relates to the French freemason mentioned in that post. For instance, his wife revealed on the David Icke forum back in those years that he was a guitar teacher and taught from home aside from his regular job. There was a period in Edinburgh around 2016-17 when I was out busking where many people would approach me and either assume I was a guitar teacher or even ask for lessons. When I told them no, I write and play my own songs, I don't teach, they would seem uninterested. Often I was minding my own business in a cafe with my guitar when this happened. Nobody ever asked this whilst in Europe with SoulJahm and I had my guitar with me regularly wherever I went. It took a while to figure out because there were other things people said which related to things I knew about this French guy. Then there was a guy I briefly played with years before, back in 2002, at open mic and he got back in touch with me many years later to tell me he was now an English teacher but also teaching guitar.
This seemed to show me people who I'd got involved with from the past were still trying to influence and come through my reality here and now. Like echoes of the past. I was constantly having to shake this kind of thing off. Its not an arrogance, its not about not wanting to help people, its simply that my heart and soul tell me I must make Music. I am a creator, an artist, not a music teacher. So my own inner filter would again and again reject anything false, even if I could make more money from it or be more popular or interact in the community. Its not that I want to be a loner, that I don't like people, its simply that I've found people would not accept me as I am. They have always wanted me to be something other than I am and its been quite a battle to shake that off. I am all the time trying to show them what I am if only they would fully allow me to express myself. So I've had to settle for doing the best I can under incredibly difficult circumstances but I know within myself there is so much more to come.
The other side of that coin is that I've found people want to try to take away or get in the way of what really feels right to you. With one hand they've tried to force me down wrong paths for me and with the other tried to get in the way of the right path. An example would be attempting to keep me away from the electric guitar and force me to stay on acoustic. But I love to play electric too! I love both! And I will play both. This seems to be coming from some sort of jealousy or territorial thing, as if certain people try to stamp their niche and not let anybody else in. As if they are saying "electric guitar is my territory, you stick to acoustic". It brings to mind an encounter my ex-girlfriend Kate had with a psychic in Edinburgh in 2008. When she told him I was a musician, she said he replied that he also once was but did different kind of music and he seemed quite downbeat and almost off-putting, saying I'd have to find a niche as it was hard to make a living from it. That is stupid and I never think that way. I'm never competing with anybody, only competing with myself to keep getting better and I just follow the direction I feel in any given moment (I'm writing these forum posts because I've been stopped from recording electric guitar currently, which is what my joy really informed me to do! So I find another way to express in the meantime and even this, writing, is coming from the French/Irish ones, he said "we see you love writing" and she said "you should write a book" despite me telling her I've no interest in writing a book. Its not what I truly wish to be doing). Nobody can be me because nobody else has lived my life and I know I can't be anybody else. So if my own authority and inner being lights me up with joy playing acoustic and electric I will do so as much as I can. Whatever my soul informs me to do I will attempt to do and I feel sorry for those like the French and Irish lot who try to kill my joy.