Next thing, bang I hit the floor and feel like this must be it! An ambulance was called as this was rather unlike a POL Arida moment. Lying there as pale as a Goth on a good night out worried the people present who included my partner and two sons. The ambulance duly arrived, at last my first trip in an ambulance! “How are you feeling” said the helpful Paramedic. If I could have head butted him I would have. To add insult to injury they never even put the flashing lights and siren on, another dream unfulfilled. After an examination by a lovely female Doctor and an uncomfortable introduction to something I believe other people sometimes pay for, I was diagnosed as having a badly infected intestine. Transferred via taxi on the worst cobbled roads to the Guts and Bum Hospital, I was soon getting IV doses of that great health care employer, the antibiotic. I say this because without them half the health service would not exist.
So there I lay feeling better by the hour for two days until a consultant came to have a good look. He arrived with a gaggle of young learners and looked at the charts and went mmmm. “Your white cell blood count is way too high; you have to stay another two days” I pointed out that no blood had been taken since I arrived and felt much better. This was laughed off as he pointed to the chart. Actually they had not taken a blood test and they were looking at the one when I first arrived. So with that one slight observational error the Butterfly effect began.
I contacted various people to arrange changes to my schedule, including two gigs I had on, arranged for supplies to be delivered and groaned at how many people this was effecting. Then a call saying all my Second Life land was about to close and to get there and pick my stuff. No chance!! So after four days I finally get out to find so many things had changed from the norm. In Second Life my prize reconstruction of my real life house was gone and no I didn`t have a proper copy of it, but along with all the other things which were cancelled, changed and basically screwed up, I was told I should feel lucky. Well yes I did, but it pointed out something everyone knows, that each tiny thing we do has a ripple effect on everything else, even if a simple decision is actually wrong.
What has this got to do with songwriting I hear you ask? Well, as with the last chapter on observation, it is the task of a writer to observe the ripples which effect people in so many different ways. A simple fart would have been a tiny ripple of no real effect, but still an effect, the bigger the fart the more effect spreads out to many other people. Thus the hidden intestine circled the planet and changed things that would never have happened if it had remained hidden. Perhaps my mission from now on is to analyze the world via the intestine; if I actually find my head in there it will all make more sense.
POL Arida is alive and backJ
