Sometimes it feels like a family, sometimes it don't.

Ella Beck

Member
Is that as imaginary as your user name?
I can't imagine what that must be like, publishing online with a user name, and the psychology that involves.
I'm only John Watt, easy to be me, and that's part of my birth name.

Most people on online forums have user names rather than using their own names, so if you can't imagine that, you are cutting yourself off from a lot of human experience.

By not making the effort of imagination, you are particularly cutting yourself off from the female half of the human race. Almost all women feel doubtful about using their own name on the internet and attracting unwanted attention or raunchy private messages - a woman friend of mine on Talk Classical attracted the latter, even though she didn't use her own name, and the mods on TC had to deal with it, but she'd have felt far more harassed if the stalker had known her real name.

By 'buttonholing', I meant the way you often address me by my user name, more or less out of the blue, and tell me how I'm thinking or how I'm reacting to a post - and you usually get it totally wrong. I don't like that - I find it insolent - but I'd feel far more upset if you knew my real name.

It is up to you if you want to use your real name, but you, after all, have been a candidate in a mayoral election, so for you there are different issues involved.

For me, it is safety and also, because I am a very sensitive person, a certain amount of psychological protection.

I also, being of a literary turn of mind, rather enjoy making up user-names for myself. I have different ones on the different forums I belong to. But Ella Beck is one of my favourites, because it's so forthright and 'Yorkshire'. I find it liberating, and my posts under the Ella Beck user name are bolder, which as I'm a shy person offline, I find refreshing.
 

John Watt

Member
Oh! Thank you for clarifying all of that, and you're right, I wasn't thinking as if I'm a woman.
I don't know if I've ever done that, except to say if I had a wife I'm the type to have sympathy mini-pauses.
Yes, I'm good at making up names for bands as a musician and businesses as a sign-painter,
but I still think it's a little foolish to be mark123 as a user name.
When I'm getting into it with a user name like that I say I hope you get to be mark122 some day.
How can you be promoting yourself online if you are hiding behind a user name? That's my bottom line about that.

You really can't say I'm addressing you out of the blue, here, where I'm replying to you.
It looks like you're not used to someone else using your name the way I do.
Isn't say my name say my name a big thing in England? It is here.

Your definition of buttonholing is what I would call pigeon-holing.
It is taking a while to develop a wider understanding of where you're at,
but please, I'm not being insolent, admitting to prodding you a little.
I've been a candidate in six elections and am a very public person here.
The big issue is surviving after calling out the criminals that dominate this city.
Everybody knew me already from being a musician and artist.

Are you really a very sensitive person, even at our age? That's wonderful.
Except for behaving properly on this anonymous online, I don't have anything to be sensitive about.
I really do need something new in my life that turns me on, to give me something to get into that means something to me.
Considering where I've been and what I've done, the laws of nature would have to change for that.
From now on you have my consideration for your psychological protection,
an odd concept for a Scotsman to be thinking of for an English person.

I am Master John Alexander Hay Watt, known to be a Prince of Scotland.
My ancestors come from the early days when kings and queens were elected,
mostly for their abilities to sing and dance. Clan Watt members were the first kings and queens.
Their job was to visit people in their homes to socialize and advise,
and ascertain the talents and abilities of younger people to help determine their role in society.
Having Saturday off was what made it regal.
Clan Watt doesn't have a tartan, a public security thing, but can wear any tartan legally.

You say you're shy, when everyone used to say I was too sheltered. That changed.
The way life is over here I say I'm still a virgin in some ways, and for all sanity and health, I don't want to lose that.
I also say I'm a born-again virgin, being single for over twenty years.
You could easily say that's too much information, but for me it's not enough.

Talk Classical was recommended to me when I got into posting here, but I haven't even looked.
To explain how... uh... limited my computer use is, about being here as music forums,
I was asked to visit another city to be a birthday present,
giving the owner of a computer store a lesson in how to play like Jimi Hendrix.
I contradicted his desire to be a great guitarist by saying he's into computers, what is hotter now,
and then I told him about Harmony Central, the biggest and oldest music forums in the United States.
Just one example, describing all the haters and negators I found posting about my inventive guitar.
I said there wasn't a Canadian guitar forum and he should think about it.
A week later I got a phone call, saying look up this address, Canadian Guitar Forums.
When I went to be a member, instead of having to look back at my email to click and come back,
a pop-up said "Welcome John" and I was inside right away. That was a thrill. With my new computer I'm not a member.
I also have my own domain and an unpublished music domain, but I'm here instead of there.

So please, see me as a serious member, even if I might have been tweaking you too much.
And as the warning goes about online use, the font you save may be your own.
Yowza!
 

John Watt

Member
It felt good to see Frederik Magles' serious face again, with forums lighting up in yellow, knowing I can log in.
This is about my home, my online home and my global home, using YouTube as an audio-video look around the world.
This is a six minute video about a drive around downtown L.A. in the early forties.
What makes this like home for me? First, I'm seeing this video as being about the cars.
I'm seeing cars I had rides in as a child, cars I had as model cars, slot cars, and now seeing them as customs or restorations.
It's black and white, when television was black and white for me in the fifties, and for others, early sixties.
The men and women walking around, not seeing one pet, look so familiar from American news, TV shows and movies.
If it wasn't for the roads being on hills, this could be looking back at any big Canadian city.

And one of the main reasons I'm posting this here is because I posted a Vancouver trip through time video,
adding another, and I can't remember what thread that was.
Another reason is how good this video is, very high definition, even if the camera moves around.
Just when I was starting to think yeah... how times have changed,
they pass by a storefront with the big sign "Cut Rate Drugs"... yeah... what ended up making America.

I'm thinking a Hollywood guy took a studio camera on a trolley to do this,
seeing cars stopping behind him at the same safe distance, when he couldn't operate it while driving.
I recognize the classical music being used as a soundtrack, and that's worth listening to.
Our global minds, now online all the time to show or display.


 

John Watt

Member
When you talk about being family, that includes your friends and neighbourhood.
People say you can't pick your family, but you can judge a person by their friends.
Here's a video that makes me want to declare that while America is my next door neighbour,
and I'm a member here on these Danish owned forums, I have nothing to do with this.

Americans talk about haters, fake news, calling politicians liars, pedophiles, drug dealers and traitors.
Here's what happened after an American political commentator, looking like a former beauty pageant winner,
compared Denmark with Venezuela. The video says it all.

Venezuela is in American news because America is setting up Americans to accept further Americanization.
The former leader of Venezuela, Hugo Chavez, not only stood up to the Americans who dominated his country,
he started a chain of gas stations in Texas and California to sell gasoline cheaper than Americans did for Americans.
You can imagine how those oilogarchs took that.
I probably only saw this video because it was a suggested YouTube video, after I watch Frederik Magle, from Denmark.
If anyone thinks this American political news commentator is an aberration or a foolish and unimportant content provider,
you would be wrong. She is a professional who works for a professional corporation.
People sitting outside a shack, improperly dressed, heavily tattooed, obviously stoned or drunk, obviously unintelligent,
who are making racist, uninformed videos that inspire Americans to send bombs to other Americans in the name of democracy,
are by far the most video content you can see.
And more than legitimate news broadcasters who want a subscription for their content,
these "amateur" videos are watched more because they are free.

 

John Watt

Member
I've been getting a lot of computer harassment this last two months, in a variety of ways.
I won't describe that.
Right now, trying to post before, this domain froze. I couldn't click "Post Quick Reply" when I finished.
The clicker worked for all other computer functions, and as I wondered about that,
I could see a small pop-up that said "We are giving you an NSL Magle,dk handshake".
I think it was NSL, something like that.
I went back to looking at YouTube videos, always happy to see other guitarists I feel aren't as musical as me,
and after a half hour this pop-up was gone and Magle.dk was operating on its symphonic level.
Yes, when I'm clicking here I feel like I'm clicking around a domain symphony, it's so complicated.
And when I'm clicking like that you know I'm sticking with it.
 

John Watt

Member
There really isn't a forum for song-writing or lyrics here, but I probably wouldn't go there,
seeing it as too serious. I've got some words here that could be song, but they're not serious.
This is a being at home activity for me, as I always talk about how I improvise lyrics or update other lyrics,
onstage and walking around with my beater streeter guitar and portable amp.

When I was in grade two or three I got to pick a single when we were shopping, and I picked "Ringo".
That was a western sounding song talk-sung by Lorne Greene when he was the star of a big TV show, "Bonanaza"
And I'm pretty sure my parents would have had my brothers helping me pick it out.
The next single was "Sidewalk Surfin" by Jan and Dean. We thought that was the Beach Boys.

"He lay face down in the desert sand, clutching a six-gun in his hand.
Shot from behind I thought he was dead, because under his heart was an ounce of lead... Ringo".

Here's what could be a song, just riffing off Ringo with northern Canadian fontage.

A Cold Love Song

He lay face down on the arctic ice shelf,
gored by a walrus, he couldn't move himself.
I put my hand under his sealskin coat,
and felt his heart beating in his throat.

My huskies howled with his extra weight,
the sleigh was groaning, I couldn't be late.
When the sun went down, we would all freeze and die,
so I asked the great spirit as he passed in the sky.

If my friend took a tusk, from his back to his chest,
am I going to save him, or just put him to rest?
This long day is ending, and the condensation is damp.
It's a long way to go, before I burn the oil lamp.

The great spirit answered, the ice cracked all around,
urging the huskies to run to their compound.
The snow started to harden, making it easy to skid,
and when he got back he was surprised that he did.

It took many days but his friend recovered,
he was the lead guitarist that the Inuit discovered.
It didn't take long, before his wife rubbed noses with him,
and they took off with his sleigh, and his best pemmican.

They see him out there, snow-shoeing alone,
picking through piles of old whale bones.
He makes his inuktuks to guide his love back again,
and he wrote songs to remember, saying Dave we were friends.

The dark night continues, for many more months,
The Inuit keeps chewing his skin all alone.
He uses pieces of metal from a sunken oil derrick,
as he sits there hating his old friend Dave Toderick.

Strange arctic things happen under those northern lights,
but everyone loves the new band known as "Falling Ice".
They say the Inuit went snow-blind, and wandered around,
singing a song he called "Wall Rush", that Rush fans put down.

It didn't take long for global fame to come through,
with a documentary narrated by Richard Attenborough.
But as the backstage orgy chewed on whale testicle,
The Inuit returned with a big male bull.

The naked party scattered over the dark frozen ice,
looking like many immigrating lemming mice.
But the Inuit thought these new words hurt me more,
spoken by my new friend, vice-president Al Gore.

He came to see me, saying I have to leave,
before the ice melts and I sink in the sea.
That's when I thought of my friend and his band Falling Ice,
thinking he's ahead of his time, global warming isn't nice.

They lay face down, floating in the sea,
a bunch of naked Eskimos that everyone could see.
Bobbing like ice cubes, the Inuit just watched,
and thought of a better guitarist known as John Watt.

I'm sitting here now in front of this screen,
typing and typing like it's some music scene.
Getting sore from behind, and it's not from working a sled,
I better shut down and start getting ready for bed.
Bingo!
 
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John Watt

Member
I don't have a lot of time here so I turned on and logged in just to check in.
Is this like being in a band on the road where you don't have time off to go home,
but passing by, stop in to see if everything is okay?
A little.
I know Magle.dk is okay in every way, and it's on all day,
and that's kinda like me too.
I'm seeing on media and in reality a lot of people from Denmark,
and that makes all of this real nice.
 
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