(Non) Photoshopped Spines, Seadragons and Body Farms

Since last weekend, I have been the proud owner of a mostly-recovered, non-Photoshopped spine, and a beautiful silver iPod Nano, courtesy of my rockin' brother (the iPod, not the spine. That would be a little freaky.) I haven't had a chance to use it yet, but I will once I get around to downloading the new iTunes! Aside of that there have been many shiny pretty objects that I'll get around to photographing, including the beautiful rings from Mei. They really are works of art, I absolutely adore 'em and have been wearing them two days straight.

Unfortunately due to circumstances and training, I wasn't able to join the Sketchcrawl that was held this weekend with Sandra and fellow artists - but I did manage some atonement during my family vacation to Langkawi Island last week. We spent time at Under Water World, where I got to see many, many curious sea creatures and lots of penguins. I'm a lousy photographer in general, so I sketched instead. Here is one of the most fascinating creatures there:


This is a Weedy Seadragon. Its colouration is a wonderfully fantastical congolomeration of red and black stripes and other colours I can't quite remember. It really does look like it has all different sorts of weeds growing off of it!

Reading/study material for the night - Death's Acre: Inside the Legendary Body Farm by Bill Bass and Jon Jefferson. It really is a fascinating read about how the Body Farm at University of Tennessee was established and some of the bizarre cases that have passed through its doors. I've been trying to settle down to do some studying, and between this and the online Architecture notes from MIT, this is a lot more comprehensible.

More updates later, I promise - sketches, jewellery, and mad rambles. That last, after all, is almost obligatory if you go by the people who happily inform me I'm cheerfully insane. You notice I haven't refuted this yet either.

Fly Me To The Moon - I Mean, I Need A Photoshopped Spine...

I suppose it was inevitable that the Flu Pandemonium would catch up with me. That would be the last two days, and I'm immensely thankful for the institution of Public Holidays so I can rest, after having to take sick leave on Tuesday. For whatever reason, the typical flu muscle aches seem to have settled in my lower back and hips, making it deuced painful to move, sit, stand, or bend. It's been aching for two days. That would be two days too many.

Times like this I -really- want to Photoshop myself a new spine.

That said, the combination of a choral version of Fly Me To The Moon and some beautiful glass beads which looked exactly like planets led to an afternoon of wrestling with wire, complete creativity block and bad temper. I broke one of the beads before finally deciding that a redesign might be in order. The result, of which I'm still not too happy with, became known as the Interplanetary Fly Me To The Moon Bracelet:





I really need to practice coiling those wire focal beads a bit more. And let's not get started about the fiasco that was the clasp, all because I was fool enough to forget to measure my wrist before I made it...

Fly me to the moon and let me play among the stars...

I think I'll do just that in my dreams tonight. And hope for a new spine.

Lo, The Fruits of Madness

...which result in 3.20am bedtimes for young women who obviously don't know the value of the perfection that is sleep.

To be fair, it was my intention to go to bed somewhat early. It was a perfectly good intention. It's also what the road to hell is paved with, so I've just added a new cobblestone to the already wide and bumpy path.

But I got caught up in the Coiled Earrings Tutorial, by the lovely Corra of de Cor's Handmades - do check the lady out, she is a marvellous jewellery artist with such an elegant touch! - and being stubborn, refused to go to bed till I'd mastered the Inanimate Objects that are wire and beads.

It was worth it mind, even if I made a total and utter imbecile mess of the top of it - one bead was a bit too recessed, and I yanked too hard at the wire with my pliers, thus breaking it and having to scramble to attempt and repair the damage. All the little imperfections bug me like no tomorrow; there goes my perfectionist streak again.





Tonight, I -attempt- to sleep. But since I'm already fiddling with wires to make the second half of that pair of earrings...ahem.

Emerging from the Bell Jar

References to Sylvia Plath not withstanding, this past week has been absolute madness, necessitating the burial of my head within the bell jar of work and an ostrich-like tendency to stare fixedly at anyone embarking on a different topic of conversation that does not involve 'Hong Kong' or 'Children's Choir'.

I should emerge this week with (most of) my sanity (somewhat) intact, and get back to the whole business of Jewellery, Art, and Speculation. I offer up, for humble appeasement, an unfinished work in progress of my favourite little Abyssal, Whisper. The finished work will be posted. Eventually.



On another note, the fact that I watched The Punisher and Hellboy to destress yesterday should probably send most of the people who know me (and the known world in general) running for the hills. It was bad enough they let me watch Hitman...

Wire, Wire, Wire!

An epiphany occured this afternoon after two hours of costing trips for the Children's Choir sent me flying to take a break, in the form of photographing the jewellery pieces I've been working on for the past two weeks.

Namely: I have a tripod.

Yes, I have a desk tripod. It came with my camera some three years ago. It's also been sitting in my clothes cupboard for the last three years because I forgot it was there.

So it occured to me suddenly that it might make still shots a lot easier, and I dug it out after some creative invective (I reorganized my cupboard a while ago and it was not where it was supposed to be).

And it made the photographs a BREEZE. Stupid me! Now I don't have to worry about holding the camera still, because the tripod will do it for me...duh. Duh and duh again. Took this long for me to realize this. DUH.

Anyhow, for Mei especially, here are the pieces in no particular order:


Sha's Fire, another of my Dragaeran series of jewellery. She's a tough, sometimes cranky spitfire of a short little woman, and I thought the Fire Opal Swarovski crystals and Byzantine chain in bronze would work perfectly for her character.



An exercise from Kathy Frey's fantastic book, Elegant Wire Jewelry. It was fun, easy, and turned out as well as I could have expected. Instant gratification!



A wrapped-bezel mistake of a pendant. I originally wanted to see if I could replicate Eni Oken's wrapped bezel with attached charms...well, as it turned out, no, I couldn't, and had to scramble around to improvise. It's fine - just not what I originally intended!



This may be my second favourite bracelet that I've made so far. The black glass focal bead just cried out for something ornate and Victorian, so I experimented with twisting 22g black and 20g copper wire together. The antique effect was unexpected, but perfect for what I had in mind! It defied being named for at least two weeks till my friend Jon pointed out that Simon Green's Nightside books boasted the character of Julian Advent, the Victorian explorer turned Perfect Hero and Gentleman, and I should add him to my list of literary characters to run off with. And suddenly, Julian's Lady was born. This bracelet seems like what he might give to a lady he was interested in. I think, anyway.





An desire for instant gratification one evening led to these quick and easy projects.



I play keyboards for a wedding tomorrow morning at church, and the theme colours are orange, pink and brown. In a fit of insanity, this is what turned out - my first metal choker!

Given it's not yet midnight, and I'm not sleepy yet, I might do some sketching since I haven't done that yesterday.

Creativity-ward, ho! (Or perhaps I haven't had dinner yet and this is the blood sugar crash talking...)

Dragaeran Duet

Stress must be good for me. Well, let me rephrase that. CERTAIN levels of stress that don't reach the state of my previous job must be somewhat good for me. Over the last few days, work has been just a touch busy; the result is that I find myself wanting to draw or create more shiny wire things even if I have to push myself to do it.

I haven't done any jewellery since the weekend; it feels weird, but my hands were hurting from using the pliers a bit too much my last bracelet. Pictures forthcoming, but I was pretty pleased with how it turned out. Black glass beads and copper! Very antique-looking.

So last night, after a day in which patience and grace were stretched to the limit of taut piano wire, this eventually produced itself at 2am in the morning. It took 30 minutes. For 30 minutes, it's definitely not satisfactory, at least to me - but it -did- get done faster than Whisper. Which is an improvement, so I s'ppose I should be pleased. Constance! Just for you since you wanted some more soft shading!


Vlad Taltos and Sha, minus the Fur Skillet


Vlad actually has a thicker, bushier mustache. I think. It's been almost a decade since I read the books. Either way, I wasn't about to mess with it and make it worse, so it stayed that way (the other explanation tentatively involved singed hair and a stove which made it so he had to grow it out again but.) Oh, and he's a creation of Steven Brust. Sha is a game character of mine and is running off with Vlad in my place**.

**: Refer to the entry for Jan. 31st for explanation of why I'm suddenly running off with an assassin from a book. Short version - I'm insane. That covers all bases nicely.

For Love Of Furstacks

One of my favourite people in the whole wide world happens to be a furstack. It's a bit complicated to explain, but suffice to say that a role-playing game involving large furry felinoids who shed, and punky, demons-fear-to-anger chicks produced an in-joke whereby the player of the felinoid was promptly dubbed 'Furstack' and has remained so for the past eight years. (I sent him fur in Kosovo, but that's another story.)

Just for my favouritest furstack in the entire world, this came about tonight. It took too long, it took too many corrections, I rediscovered the pain of doing pencil shading, it looks a ton better scanned, and it looks fantastic upside down - just less so the right way up. Why, I don't know. But this is Whisper in the Deep Shadows, or at least a pale representation of what he SHOULD be like:



He looks a lot better as a Ball Jointed Doll, I promise. I don't have one, but I've seen one and it was the most perfect-looking Whisper imaginable.

Except for the fact that it cost over USD800? I'd have bought one just to drool over the perfection of the sculpting...

...which tells me I really need to go to bed. Like, now.

It's A Movie! ... So Sketch It

People watch movies to have fun. People watch movies to relax. I apparently watch movies to sketch.

I finally caught Sweeney Todd on the last day of its showing, and all I have to say is: Theatre graduate + beautifully costumed and made up film + Sondheim = Purrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr. No more comments necessary, hein?

So of course I had to sketch it. The following were produced in a brief moment of utter insanity in the dark. If you're not convinced that white reflects light, try drawing Sweeney Todd singing 'London' in a dark theatre - trust me, there's light reflected to see a big blob of sketchbook if you keep one eye on the screen and another obliquely on the paper. Notice I didn't promise they'd be GOOD.






...And then there was Violence and I had to concentrate, and that was the end of productive artistry for the evening.

Tonight, I took apart 2 inches of European 4-in-1 chainmaille after deciding I was not about to craft 7.5 inches of migraine no matter -how- much I love this friend of mine. I can do about the same amount of Byzantine weave in half an hour, and this took 4 hours, most of it spent taking it apart and putting it together again. As a result, out came the sketchpad again, and the Chinese calligraphy pens since I hadn't used 'em in a while. The result: I -really- need a lot of practice with those things.



I can't wait for fencing class come Tuesday. Between that and the wirework jewellery (which I am still doing every day) I think that airport detectors'd have nothing on me when it comes to beeping out alarms for contact with too much metal.

Man, I really need to practice drawing some more too. How many hours in a day do I have again? Oh. Right. 24, not 56.

Drat.

Possessions, Obsessions...Err, Batman?

There's a tradition, at least among some of my choir friends and I, that it doesn't matter what date Chinese New Year falls on. The weather? Will be HOT. Scorching, unadulterated, completely and unbearably hot, even if it was raining cats, dogs, and frogs just the week before. Nothing this year has disproved the trend yet.

As a result, I fled my furnace of a room for downstairs, and the fishtank outdoors. I admit to being fond of fish in general (both aesthetically and as food, yes.) They just tend to be a bit lively to draw when they're darting around. Ours are, as you can see, rather fat. They're a mixture of Japanese carp and huge-bellied goldfish that look frighteningly obese. They're cute.



Right after the goldfish, it was time for Batman. Marco? This. Is. Entirely. Your. Fault. I -have- excessive testosterone levels, see! (and it's noir because I can't for the life of me draw the style you did. I so suck.) The colour is a lot better for real; I just don't take very good photos.



And while I'm at it, this is the infamous Hammering Station for my metal and wirework jewellery:



These are the first bracelets and hammered charms I made my first day back on vacation:






These are the first rings I ever made and the green one is singularly screwed up because I had to use pliers to make a bend in it to stop the metal bead from running away:




This is Aliera, the ring that's companion to the Loiosh Bracelet (Aliera is a noblewoman of Dragaera with a honkin' huge Great Weapon of Doom):




This is a bracelet commissioned by a friend, and yes, fish again!




And I'm still working on another piece of chainmaille bracelet - this one the Sha's Fire Draegaran bracelet, in Byzantine weave.

Do they have Chainmaille Addictions Anonymous perhaps?

New Year Traditions

Every family here in Malaysia has different traditions for celebrating Chinese New Year. In mine, we give my mother's plants haircuts.

This requires just a wee bit of explanation so it doesn't sound quite so odd. My mother loves plants. More to the point, plants love her. Think of a benevolent Poison Ivy, and you have an idea of how our garden looks like, and how plants behave around Mom. Got a sick plant? Bring it over. Quite a few plants sent over for rehabilitation have stayed on as permanent residents, after their owners saw the results and realized they wouldn't be able to duplicate such conditions in their own gardens.

My mother swears she doesn't do anything but feed her plants organic compost, which is mostly just all the fruit-peel, tea leaves, and coffee grounds and eggshells that the household disposes of. Orange peel is the biggest contributer to the compost box, so we have a running family joke that if any of our pineapple plants, fruits or vegetables ever taste of oranges, we'll know why.

That being said, Mom is a fanatic about her plants looking nice for New Year. Since we live in such a hot climate, the plants do get some brown edges due to heat and old age. There is one particular potted plant that we've nicknamed the Twin Towers due to it having branched out from one bulb into two bulbs, and grown into a gigantic onion-looking piece of greenery. The ends of the Twin Towers -always- require trimming, so it's become known as 'giving the plant a haircut.' And since we've been doing this for about three years now, it's become a Household Tradition now.



In other news, today was Sketching to Blazes and Sucking Badly Day. I think I'm out of practice or else I'm just not concentrating, but oh, improvement, improvement, thou hath backslidden from me. The following are studies I did for a picture I'm intending to work on soon, and...ngh. Yeah, improvement needed.





The Family also got their fair share of being sketched tonight after dinner:



The scan quality is less than stellar, because I was trying to take flash photographs with my camera - no scanner here, alas. Tomorrow, it'll be Sketching Fish, which will hopefully go better than this.

And on the jewellery note, can't resist tossing this one up. It's named Loiosh, after one of the mythical dragon-like telepathic creatures called jhereg in Steven Brust's Vlad Taltos novels. Even if I do say so myself? I'm really pleased with how this came out despite the clasp being a bit of a disaster. New Year bracelet!




More jewellery tomorrow and Gong Xi Fa Cai to all!

Stardust Falling

on a good night they say sometimes
sixty meteors fall
an invisible one streaked
past my window
sank into the dark
without a sound

could have been your heart breaking
could have been mine
but mine
would echo like an hollow tin box
heavy with melted dreams

maybe i heard though
it fell so quietly
i never knew it had gone

elephants have graveyards
memories do too
or so they say


i wonder where falling stars
go to die

--LSY, 2.51am
Chinese New Year's Eve

Return of...the Camera!

My camera was, for a while, held captive by Another Party - actually, my father wanted to borrow it for something, which deprived me of its presence and the ability to take photographs (however bad) of the jewellery obsessions that have consumed me for the last month or so.

Given the photographs came out -really bad-, I somehow think perhaps the camera should have -stayed- with my father....

Anyhow, here is what I've been up to for the last few weeks:


Topmost - The Vlad Taltos bracelet**. Vlad is an fantasy/medieval assassin who has a lot of Pointy Objects, and he usually leaves a lot of dead people behind whenever he's working. He also wears a thick chain called Spellbreaker wrapped around his wrist and dresses normally in blacks and greys. I wanted to replicate Spellbreaker, hence the multiple chains - and of course, all the metal and spiky stones, and the grey/black bits.

Middle - What happens when I get lazy and refuse to fabricate any more lengths of chainmaille. This is the box weave I've been talking about in posts past; it got a bit tedious so I cheated and used larger jumprings and lengths of chain. Those are the matching earrings, the steel ones.

Bottom - The Surf and Guppies Summer Flirtation Bracelet, which is probably my favourite of the lot. Don't ask me why, those beads just looked like guppies and summer and surf and flirtation. The earrings are as colourful and mismatched as the beads, which is what I wanted.



A slightly better shot of the Surf and Guppies Summer Flirtation Bracelet. Yes, there were -worse-.


** Note: I should explain here that for some reason, a few friends and I got into a conversation about which literary characters I would and should run off with. I don't know why. It just happened (this is a common refrain.) The candidates in question were: John Constantine from the Hellblazer series, Vlad Taltos from the Dragaera novels, John Taylor from the Nightside series, and Hawk from the Hawk and Fisher stories. We decided on Vlad Taltos after more terrifying and scary reasons that should not see the light of day, but it got to where I decided to make a bracelet representing every single one of 'em. This is the first in the series; I'm already planning John Constantine and John Taylor.

Why yes, I -knew- I was insane. Didn't you?

The Beads, Anvils, and Pointy Objects Compel You...

In my case at least, that's the truest statement of the month. A short summary of all the madness that's happened in between would read:

Found a store to get gorgeous, unique glass beads; bought more wire and got addicted to wirework as well as chainmaille; started sketching again; sang original songs for friends' album launch and murdered songs with nerves; may be recording demo song or two in March; sang with chamber choir for KL Performing Arts Centre Open Day and forgot lyrics; saw preview of buto performance at same and loved it; started fencing, LOVED it; hammered own pewter bowl at exhibition demonstration tonight, initialled it, and got to keep it; wound and cut own jumprings for the first time.

All that in one breath, and it'll be an approximate idea of how I feel.

And yes, I did indeed start fencing classes yesterday(and I can just hear some of my friends scream in horror, OH NO THE WORLD WILL END SHE HAS POINTY OBJECTS.) I've wanted to do it for years; it's a dream come true.

The pewter bowl hammering was just tonight - my colleague and I were at a convention centre appreciation dinner representing my workplace, and Selangor Pewter was giving people chances to hammer out either a shallow dish or a deeper bowl with a wooden mallet and dapping block. Scarily enough, yesterday I was just looking AT dapping blocks and reading up on what they were for, while researching wirework and making chains. How could anyone pass up such a perfect opportunity for stress relief? Carpe Opportuniem! (or however the Latin goes; I don't know Latin except for the phrase Winnie Ile Pu. Really.)

So now I have a beautiful pewter beading dish with my initials engraved at the bottom. Pewter! It's such expensive stuff to buy and here I got to whack at it AND keep it, all for free!

On the sketch front, since I promised Marcos that yes, I would be good and attempt to get back into drawing something every day like I used to (how's that for new year resolution), I present the following slightly mangled attempts:


Quick, rough, and dirty attempt at speed-sketching from a reference photo I loved. Didn't quite come out the way I wanted, but still better than I thought for five minutes or so.



Accompanied my colleague to the bank to run errands before work yesterday and sat in the car while she went to take care of stuff. Since I can't sketch buildings for nuts and they hate me anyway, I attempted to rectify this by drawing the Choco Boutique across the road. And ran out of ink, of course.



It is not the most polite thing in the world to sketch away when one's at a cocktail function and supposed to be meeting and mingling over pre-dinner appetizers, but those flower arrangements were just too cool to pass up. They look a lot better than this, I promise. The ikebana-like branches caught my attention tonight, so out came the sketchpad and inks.

And now, I attempt to finish packing so I can go home for Chinese New Year...yeesh, where did the time GO? *ahemcoughdistractedbycuttingjumpringscough*

The Six Step Program for Jewellery Addiction

1) Swear you'll get to bed at a decent hour, because sleep is important.

2) Find a pattern for chain maille that looks so easy, an evening could see it done.

3) Resist.

4) RESIST! YOU SHALL NOT BE MOVED, nay, not even budged from your resolve! A pillar of stone, you are, to temptation!

5) You steadfastly put away your tools, only to pick up an o-ring here, a jump-ring there, and the flower chain is so -pretty-, what about adding something here to turn it into a bracelet and OOH LOOK SHINY ORCHID CHAIN...

6) The pillar of stone resolve is revealed to be a pillar of salt, and is thus Budged with Great Haste.

Which explains why it's 5am, and I'm still up, really.

But I finished the flower chain bracelet I was making as a present! The pictures are lousy, but at 4.30am, I'd be lucky to recognize a Dalek when I see it hovering up the stairs with a laser trained on my brain.



The weave is called Flower Chain, a design by Aderamelech which I found at http://www.mailleartisans.org. It's really lovely and quite easy, even if it's laboriously time-consuming in spots. Or maybe I'm just slow.



Detail of the chain.

One more pair of earrings to go but that definitely can wait till after sleep, or the world will have an irate, plier-wielding zombie on the morrow, demanding o-rings in place of braaaaaaaaaaaaaaaainz.

Addicted-to-Jewellery -Making Anonymous

People get addicted to cocaine, alcohol, video games, and reality TV shows, among other things.

I, on the other hand, get addicted to making jewellery. (Well, and books and art but that's another story...)

And this just after one class today for proper wirework techniques. Cue the Doom Song from Invader Zim here. I came home from music rehearsals having made two bracelets at class, and proceeded to make two pairs of earrings, just to get rid of all the caffeinated energy from dinner.

This may also be the time to mention that I started working on chainmail again - box weave, this variation is called. It's gorgeous. It's time-consuming. It's addictive.

It's sleep-depriving.

So anyway, while I'm at it with the jewellery, here are some photographs from my vacation over Christmas in Cameron Highlands. All I took were flowers, really, and then the camera battery died. No, I forgot to bring my charger, yet again! (See, Marcos? It's fate! Always happens when there's something interesting to photograph!)


Bird of Paradise. The colours were irresistable.


They called this one a Slipper Plant. It does actually look like one, from that angle.


Experiment at Art Photographing a pitcher plant. There's only so much one can do with an auto-focus digital cam though...


I -think- these are miniature pineapples. I really don't know; they were in the cacti section of the flower garden we visited, of all things. They might be some form of exotic cacti for all I can tell.

And now, for the fruit of my labours, to put it pompously:


These are for a friend of mine as a thank you present. The picture doesn't do the lovely sequins justice at all, they're a lot prettier than that.


Augh, this one is pure disaster but I needed a photographic record in case I have to replicate it someday. I've no idea why it was so much harder to take either; conditions were the same as earlier.

When I finish the chainmail, I'll attempt to get a good picture and post it up.

...Oh lord it's 4am. Why am I still not sleepy? Argh!

Don't Draw Before Bed...

...it mucks up your sleep.

As in, it's 3.20am, and I'm still up. Why? Because the Sketching Itch is worse than the infamous Seven Year Itch, and it demands Immediate Attention. It also is the perfect way to ruin an even more perfect little sketch, but more on that later.

And more on the really mad day that transpired too, only later as well.



I don't know why this kept insisting it wanted to be called Ave Maria. The fact that I was listening to the Hitman soundtrack at the time might explain it.


The perfect way to ruin the perfect sketch. Gah! I need a lot more time in the School of Leaving Things Alone, Grasshopper.

...And -now- it's time for bed.

Ring Them Bells St. Catherine...

Ring them bells St. Catherine
From the top of the room,
Ring them from the fortress
For the lilies that bloom
Oh the lines are long
And the fighting is strong
And they're breaking down the distance
Between right and wrong...

I could never remember any other verse to this song when I was younger (Bob Dylan, and I heard it covered by First Call eons ago). Ring them bells St. Catherine - maybe it was just the resonance of the syllables. Either way, it was an achingly beautiful refrain I never managed to quite forget, and now some fifteen years later, I remember it again. Driftwood of the mind, ripples and reflections of truths seen dimly in mirrors.

Appropriate, in its own way, for the momentous things that have gone by in 2007.

Happy New Year, dear friends. May the new year be good, be prosperous and eventful - but above all, may it allow enough quiet to retreat to that small, inner space and be still.


Hair, bells, drifting. Just a few reflective doodles for a new year.

Rocks, Geology, and Alabaster

Sometimes, epiphany takes getting whacked on the head with the clue stick and the absolute obvious. Normally, this happens in the shower. At least, for me. The only answer I have for why this is so, is that my muse, Poggy the Green Hamster, lurks in the darkest recesses of my bathroom. Given there aren't any darkest recesses in my bathroom bar the cistern and the sink, the how remains an unknown factor and I'm happy to leave it that way. Really. Safer not to ask why.

Today's epiphany took the form of realizing that it's been far too long since I did any form of art at all for fun. I mean, sketching and all IS fun, don't get me wrong, but doing a piece, however crappy, for the sheer joy of it -- erm. I can't even remember when. And given I've been so caught up with costume designs, sketching practice, observation practice, art for a purpose...being frivolous suddenly seemed like a real good idea.

One particular personal project that I've been researching has been to do with alabaster. At least, it was the inspiration for playing with textures and colours and trying to do something with puddles of light. She suddenly turned in quite another direction from where I originally thought I wanted her to go, but if looking at her reminds you of something like lamps and puddles of light, then I got what I wanted.

It does remind me that I've always sucked at anatomy and I really -should- study it but I've no idea how.



And I have no idea why she kept insisting she be called Alabaster either. Next time they say 'Go explore uncharted territory', I should warn them that the inside of my head is a dangerous place.