“Season 4 Theme — 2nd Anniversary Opening Version” (@ 0:00) — Two years from recording the first episode at Hótel Vellir in Iceland — My mother’s passing — My parents — “2nd Anniversary Lyre” (@ 1:52) — New leather couch from Denmark — “Passages Dark and Light — Part 1” (@ 2:40) — Note regarding earlier symphony discussion — At Dawn: Early Short Stories for a later episode — The three first Psycho films — Anthony Perkins — Lasting use of language — David Lynch and Ray Bradbury — Henry Purcell: “What Power Art Thou” from his opera King Arthur (1691) — David Lynch swearing — The music of Ron Jones — Sleeve notes from Film Score Monthly — What Star Trek was originally meant to be — Once upon a time — A person like a dragon — Philip K. Dick quote from his novel VALIS (1981) — Ideas — Intuition — Everything connects — Authentic and right — Don’t fake it until you make it or you may break it — Negative space — A novel can be any length — Freshness from leaving out all the extraneous things — The Hours (2002) — The Elephant Man (1980) — Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me (1992) — INLAND EMPIRE (2006) — Healing devastation — Best possible advice for dealing with trauma — Readings of Ray Bradbury — “The April Witch” (1952) — How can we forget beauty? — Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977) — The suburb scenes — Roy Neary played by Richard Dreyfuss — Metaphor for creativity — Artists can eat their cake and have it too — Northern Exposure did that often and well — John Williams quoting from “When You Wish Upon a Star” from Pinocchio (1940) — Happy ending? I think not — Immature vs. mature — Field of Dreams (1989) — Dignity — Actors with dignity often get exploited for undeserving stories — Bryan Cranston — Jonathan Banks — The emotional toll this takes on the makers and viewers — I must speak my own convictions — Breaking Bad and Game of Thrones as examples of immature storytelling — Modularity as a creative principle — Quote about good teachers — Paul Chadwick’s Concrete — Melissa Strangehands — Art commenting on art — Drawing from life itself — Art in your favourite TV series — A rock garden — Fragmentation — More on art in story worlds — Do comedians exist? — Moments that would shatter the psychotic intensity of many series — “C’mon, man. Don’t be stupid.” — Twin Peaks, Northern Exposure, Seinfeld — Dreams of Norm Macdonald, Philip Glass, and David Lynch — All the things stories are — One thing, two things, three… — A series for the young at heart — Dear listener of the future — Drink cans — H. P. Lovecraft poem: “The Garden” — “Lovecraft’s Garden” (@ 42:41) — “Passages Dark and Light — Part 2” (@ 43:49) — Fake drinking in films and TV series — Imagine a world without potatoes — I had a dream of you today — About half done with the remaining notes — Cheering anecdote — All the music has been composed and performed by me — The future of my music — A video can give the best possible sense of how a book looks and feels — Good wishes to good people — Much love — “Season 4 Theme — 2nd Anniversary Closing Version” (@ 53:20)

Northern Lights, Op. 2 No. 1 for Lap Steel Guitar: “A Beginning Is a Difficult Place to End” (@ 0:00)© 2022 Simo Sakari Aaltonen. All rights reserved.

“Notes to Self” (@ 0:25) — Backlog — Some individual points — Line by Rod Serling — “What are you, some kind of sadist?” — Nicholas Meyer on specificity and universality — The very picture of a violinist — Sir Yehudi Menuhin — Poster in a café — Tastes in music — Plastic people — A really bad idea — Symphonies were originally not expected to be heard by any single person more than once — What types of music and what pieces of music you can listen to over and over again — Expectations of Beethoven, Mozart, and others — Very different now — Expected relistenings — Theme music for this podcast — Most advertising jingles annoy on purpose — Angelo Badalamenti’s theme for Inside the Actors Studio — Twin Peaks theme by him and David Lynch — Highly relistenable — Sometimes you hit those times in life where the heaviness of what you need to experience is overwhelming — You can’t express love generically — Devalues expressions of love — The companion playlists: “What Now with Simo 1952–1955” and “What Now with Simo 1956–1959” — No longer tweeting about new additions — On Spotify — Sharing beautiful creations with others

Year 2022 — On a train — Warmth — Finland has two great festivals of light and warmth — Midsummer and Christmas — Human warmth is a miracle — The most difficult thing to get across in art — Harder than comedy — Everything needs to be just right — Sense of balance and lightness — The Finnish Christmas song “Varpunen jouluaamuna” (“Sparrow on Christmas Morning”) — Prose translation in the season 4 book — Upcoming books and updates — The season 3 book will be special — Now all episodes play on all devices — A lot of catching up — Several books in the first half of 2022 — Collection of short stories — Hardcovers — Excellent printing — A tremendous change — Avenues of expression — Before the Internet and social media — We used to live in a world of far more limited freedom — Trilingual (Finnish, Swedish, English) announcement (Orivesi) — Algorithms — Editorial process — Nobody was in control of their own words — People have largely forgotten this — The bad old days — Everything was controlled by gatekeepers — The freedom of expression we now have — Struggle of thousands of years — Any threat to this needs to be fought — Always have final cut (David Lynch) — The rest of my backlog — After that, whole new fresh projects — Creations from times of searching — Different and distinct — These times — Blind faith in life working out — Even when it makes no sense to believe that — Light on the horizon

Finnish Christmas song: "Varpunen jouluaamuna" ("Sparrow on Christmas Morning")

“Winter Is Here” (@ 0:27) — My tribute joke to Norm Macdonald — A reason why many old poems no longer play — First world problems — Hundreds of poetry readings from 1923 to the 1950s — Listening to some during morning exercise (5 to 6 a.m.) — Wordsworth, John Donne — Donne’s “The Sun Rising” (1633) — Raging at the sun — Determines the comings and goings of lovers — Casts an imperious eye — How privileged? — A natural phenomenon an adult should be able to accept — Painstakingly, by hand, maybe with a quill and ink — “Saucy pedantic wretch” — Spinning creative wheels — Picture the scene — Waking up — How dare the sun shine when it pleases? — Guy ranting at the window — Undercutting everything I just said — Ponderous readings and readers — One early 20th century style of reading poetry — Quivery voice — This type of tone — “Wherefore must this orb of yellow” — Where did this style come from? — A product of a particular section of civilisation — Johan Huizinga — Play can very well include seriousness, whereas seriousness excludes play — Now there are all kinds of approaches — A short, immature vignette — Lost or not? — Right person or not? — Not difficult to tell — Do you end up letting go of your greatest aspirations? — Does your world get ever narrower? — Kick down the fence — Find life again — “Some thoughts from the Twilight Zone.” — The Twilight Zone largely grew out of the creations of Ray Bradbury — Discussed often in Blu-ray commentaries — Rod Serling — The Ray Bradbury Theater — Glad things worked out the way they did — The world is richer for it — Stephen Sondheim — An episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm — Officer Krupke — Krup you

So many of our problems come from misuse of language — “What is the meaning of life?” — Not possible without language — Like the memory of a wind that came and went — Questions of self-worth — At some point in the past — Need to be responsible with language — Any idea can potentially live forever — Self-defeating and other-defeating ideas — Ruthless — Mosquitoes — Getting rid of deeply seated thoughts — “A high standard” — Nonsense thinking about perfection — Emotional self-abuse — Physical effects — No difference — Another basic flaw — “Failure” and “success” can only apply to a process that has come to a conclusion — Aiming at the Moon — All part of the journey there — The only real failures — Our ways of abusing language are multiplying — An imaginative exercise — If you want to suffer more — Come up with new levels of gradation re: failure — A destructive type of thinking — Better ways — Pierre Estève: “Time is on our side.”

An illustration — Something I and Pierre talked about — Silence, negative space, and room — Tight vs. looser editing — Exact same background music ("Fresh Start") — Postponing some topics — Great losses recently — An uncle, a friend, Dean Stockwell — The passing of Norm Macdonald — He was the first outside my personal circle to have an impact on this podcast — Early in season 1 — Norm's encouraging tweet — Messaging — Sent him my books — The prospect of doing a podcast with him — Amazing amount of appearances on podcasts etc. — Kept his cancer secret — He's hugely important — Free — A good soul — Feeling of freedom and space — Two different energies people can create — Dave Chappelle — His last Netflix special — Thoughts get stirred around — Not telling others what to think — Narrow path of only currently approved thoughts and opinions — Religious — Authentically what he was — His way of being — Relaxed — No rush — Pauses — Natural pacing — Unlike many other performers — Breathing naturally — Same kind of calm as with David Lynch — Patron saint of this podcast

"Season 4 Theme" (@ 0:00) — Welcome — "Fresh Start" (@ 0:33) — New cover art and theme tune — Looking back on season 3 — Discussions with David Lee Homb and Pierre Estève — Great feedback — All music in my own episodes is by me — No ready-made elements — Hardcover books — An Iceland Symphony — Short episodes — Introductory episode — Original idea and secret hope — Chris Stevens in Northern Exposure — Pierre's music — His and David's generosity — David's first book of poetry Awake, I Dream — Future plans — Next steps with An Iceland Symphony — Book of short stories later this year — Catching up with transcriptions — Season 3 book of transcripts — Including full transcripts of the discussions with David and Pierre — A million other things — Welcome aboard — Good wishes

Atlantis II: “Rainbow Bridge” (@ 0:00) — Cahors — Avignon — Nature and wild places — Dragon Lore II: “Sanctuary” (@ 2:02) — Listening — Sound is a miracle — Field recordings — Studies — Learning — Your own voice — Confidence — The best way to learn — Pleasure in the doing — Teachers — David Lynch — Rules vs. principles — John Cage: Silence (1961) — Freedom — Atlantis: The Lost Tales: “Spitzberg” (@ 12:20) — The way Mr. Lynch learned screenwriting — Restrictive rules — Surprises — Changes in mood — Season 3 of Twin Peaks — Current reading and films — Many interests — Edward Bernays — Rules of propaganda — Short film Propaganda — Noam Chomsky — Poetry — Technical things — Janine Benyus and biomimicry — Ken Loach — Lars von Trier — Also some Hollywood movies — Dracula: “Flying Over the Mountains” (@ 20:50) — Koyaanisqatsi (1982) — Baraka (1992) — Story told without words — Director Godfrey Reggio and composer Philip Glass — Collaborations — Not an effort but a joy — Stéphane Picq — Early computer music — Cryo’s Dune (1992) — Atlantis: The Lost Tales: “Crystal Winds” (@ 27:30) — Instrument collection — Ireland, Turkey, Indonesia… — Male and female voices — Atlantis II: “The River” (@ 30:44) — Studies in singing, conducting, composing, and more — Alyssa Landry and Gaëlle Zydian — The end of Atlantis II — Two flutes — Atlantis II: “Child” (@ 34:12) — Invisible links that music can reveal — Utopias and new worlds — Architecture — A full ecosystem — The flying ships — Great musical challenge — Pythagore / Pythagoras — Atlantis: The Lost Tales: “Awakening” (@ 39:19) — Atlantis II: “Tepec” (@ 41:41) — Caves in Southern France — Stalactica — Isturitz and Oxocelhaya — Prehistoric — Concretions — MADe In series — Bamboo — Metal — Stone — Lithophones — Senses — Bamboo: “Flowering Mystery” (@ 47:39) — Longevity — Tuned stalactites — Perfect fifth — Cave paintings — Elegance — Essence — Engravings — Animating images — The impulse to do art — Bows — Communing — Spirits — Atlantis Evolution: “Worlds Beyond” (@ 55:19) — Relief paintings — Places chosen by sound — Echolocation — Resonance — Iégor Reznikoff — Reverberation — Fundamental — Resonant frequency — Atlantis Evolution: “Ancient Shells” (@ 1:03:05) — The spirit — World music — Earlier attitudes to music — Béla Bartók — Debussy and the Javanese gamelan at the World Fair in Paris — Tchaikovsky, the celeste, and “Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy” — Obscura: “Temptacium” (@ 1:09:57) — Will our music last? — Political problem — Atlantis II: “Highlands” (@ 1:12:26) — Gregorian chant — Songs like “Greensleeves” or “Scarborough Fair” — Cultural links — Prejudices — Clarity and elegance — Language that lasts — Negative space — Ray Bradbury: “The Lake” — Simplicity vs. complexity — Obscura: “Lux Perpetua part 2” (@ 1:18:13) — Silence and space — Atlantis II: “The Tower in the Well” (@ 1:20:26) — What does or can art do? — Art is both given and received — Positive and negative impact — Atlantis Evolution: “Memories of Atlantis” (@ 1:23:06) — New approach — When are you happiest? — Atlantis: The Lost Tales: “La Lune” (@ 1:25:51)