With the onset of one of the worst infectious outbreaks of our time, the Covid-19 Pandemic, or Corona-virus apocalypse as I call it, there’s a critical need for coping mechanisms. I live in the U.S., so I don’t believe we’ve seen the worst of it yet. The schools, bars, restaurants, YMCA, barbershops, businesses are all closed. The kids are home 24/7. Work is drastically reduced, although I do work in healthcare, but not on the frontlines of a hospital. The elderly population that I work with are the most vulnerable, so Assisted living facilities are either restricting non-essential personnel, or closing their doors completely. In other words, I’m pretty much stuck at home seeking ways to escape intractable boredom.
One of things that has helped me cope with depression, panic, heightened anxiety, and the madness of the world going to the pot, is music therapy. I’ve made several playlists on my device, but the one that’s saving me right now is named JACKED. It’s a list of 7 great songs by various artists and types of music. For the sake of space, I’ll split it in half and only share 3 songs here. Ready?
There are no lyrics, just some background vocals with a sensational rhythm and great bass line. I can’t tell you how this makes me feel when I fire this one up on the headphones! There’s simple introduction with various electronics, voices, then….the bass line drops. BAM. Instant gratification.
*Call To Arms= 1: a summons to engage in active hostilities. 2 : a summons, invitation, or appeal to undertake a particular course of action. (Merriam-Webster)
The beginning of this playlist, JACKED, begins with a “Call to Arms”, a call to engage in active warfare. On a much deeper level, this is our actual situation in the midst of this global pandemic. An invisible enemy has attacked us with our pants down, daring us to respond. How will you respond? Staying at home all day doesn’t seem much like a call to action during wartime, but it is. We can’t fight this enemy head on. Our call to action is to retreat, distant ourselves, check on our loved ones, or those who are at greater risk of infection. I’ve been in the healthcare industry going on 20 years and I’ve seen firsthand what infectious diseases can do to the human body. It’s not pretty, trust me. To think we’re somehow immune or invincible to once in a lifetime pandemic is simply preposterous. Being smart doesn’t mean mass hysteria, or sustaining a sense of panic. However, strategy is everything in warfare.
Genre: Epic music, Symphonic, electronic, instrumental. Album: Magnus 2015
The group Audiomachine is as awesome as it sounds. Very professional, epic sound. In fact they’ve appeared on multiple trailers for blockbuster movies over the years. I found them over the last few years and simply can’t recommend them enough. This particular peace is just heavenly, majestic, however you want to phrase it.
*Providence = 1. a divine guidance or care. 2. b God conceived as the power sustaining and guiding human destiny.
In dire times such as this, certainly we need the divine guidance of God himself. God have mercy on us all.
Genre: R&B/Soul Album: Blended Family (What You Do For Love) 2016
I’ve always loved the magical voice of the wonderful Alicia Keys. Her ability to invoke emotions in me through her music is truly special. When I listen to this song, Blended Family I’m immediately transported into her experience of loving her family. You can find the story behind her inspiration for Blended family here. Alicia Keys shares her experience of her husband, producer Swiss Beatz, his children from a previous relationship, and their own children. Families can be very diverse considering all the dynamics involved.
Definitely in the midst of any crisis we need to seek the emotional support from those closest to us. I found myself reaching out to some members of the family I haven’t regularly spoken to in a while. Under the strict guidelines provided by the CDC, state and local authorities, social or familial interaction is critical.
I’ll share the remainder of the playlist, JACKED in the coming days. In the meantime. Stay safe, take care of yourself, reach out to others who may be in need.
This is the writing train signing off…until the next time.
I treat it like a job, these days. It may sound unromantic, but writing one or two novels a year takes discipline. I tend to research, write and edit for eight hours, every week day.
Outlining or pantsing?
I like to outline, but always veer away from my plan! I wish I could stick to my blueprint, but I get distracted by better ideas, or juicier characters, so my plans are constantly changing.
When you write crime fiction what comes first? The crime, character, idea?
First the location, then the theme. I fell in love with the Isles of Scilly as a child, for their wild remoteness and knew I had to set a series there.
How do you get to know your characters?
I write detailed profiles, so I know all of their quirks.
What’s the hardest part of writing for you?
Lack of confidence. It doesn’t matter how many books I write, I always reach a point, midway through the writing when my belief takes a nosedive. It takes one heck of a lot of stamina and a robust ego to stay in the writing game.
How has your writing process changed over the years and books written?
I began life as a poet, writing longhand, but now use my computer for pretty much everything. With poetry you have to agonise over every word because the form is so precise, but prose is much more discursive.
Did you write poetry before novels?
I surely did. Two collections, Reversal and The Alice Trap, both published by wonderful London press, Enitharmon.
What do you enjoy most about poetry?
Its impact. If a poem is doing its job well, it can be like a bullet of truth, straight to the heart.
Can you share one of your poems?
Not right now, I’m afraid, I’m deep in the middle of a crime novel, but my poems are floating around on the net if you go looking for them.
What next for you?
Two more books in my Hell Bay series, published by Simon and Schuster, which I’m enjoying enormously.
KATE RHODES is a full-time crime writer, living in Cambridge with her husband, a writer and film maker. Kate used to be an English teacher and has published two award winning collections of poetry. In 2015 she won the Ruth Rendell short story prize. Kate is the author of the acclaimed ALICE QUENTIN series, with the fifth book, BLOOD SYMMETRY published in 2016.
In January 2018 Kate will publish the first novel in a new series, HELL BAY, a crime novel set on the remote Cornish island of Bryher, featuring DI Ben Kitto.
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The award-winning author of The Music of the Primesexplores the future of creativity and how machine learning will disrupt, enrich, and transform our understanding of what it means to be human.
Can a well-programmed machine do anything a human can―only better? Complex algorithms are choosing our music, picking our partners, and driving our investments. They can navigate more data than a doctor or lawyer and act with greater precision. For many years we’ve taken solace in the notion that they can’t create. But now that algorithms can learn and adapt, does the future of creativity belong to machines, too?
It is hard to imagine a better guide to the bewildering world of artificial intelligence than Marcus du Sautoy, a celebrated Oxford mathematician whose work on symmetry in the ninth dimension has taken him to the vertiginous edge of mathematical understanding. In The Creativity Code he considers what machine learning means for the future of creativity. The Pollockizer can produce drip paintings in the style of Jackson Pollock, Botnik spins off fanciful (if improbable) scenes inspired by J. K. Rowling, and the music-composing algorithm Emmy managed to fool a panel of Bach experts. But do these programs just mimic, or do they have what it takes to create? Du Sautoy argues that to answer this question, we need to understand how the algorithms that drive them work―and this brings him back to his own subject of mathematics, with its puzzles, constraints, and enticing possibilities.
While most recent books on AI focus on the future of work, The Creativity Code moves us to the forefront of creative new technologies and offers a more positive and unexpected vision of our future cohabitation with machines. It challenges us to reconsider what it means to be human―and to crack the creativity code.
“No one’s insights about the craft and journey of being an artist have guided me in the day-to-day struggle of this profession more than Steven Pressfield. Wherever you are, whatever you’ve been called to make, you need to read this book…and everything else he has written.”
— Ryan Holiday, Bestselling Author of Ego Is the Enemy and The Obstacle Is the Way
YOU ARE AN ARTIST … AND YOU HAVE AN ARTIST’S JOURNEY
I have a theory about the Hero’s Journey. We all have one. We have many, in fact. But our primary hero’s journey is the passage we live out, in real life, before we find our calling.
The hero’s journey ends when, like Odysseus, we return home to Ithaca, to the place from which we started.
What then?
The passage that comes next is The Artist’s Journey.
On our artist’s journey, we move past Resistance and past self-sabotage. We discover our true selves and our authentic calling, and we produce the works we were born to create.
You are an artist too—whether you realize it or not, whether you like it or not—and you have an artist’s journey. Will you live it out? Will you follow your Muse and do the work you were born to do?
Author page of JR Handley, a veteran who writes military science fiction to excise the demons of his time spent fighting in the Late Unpleasantness in Mesopotamia.
The Writing Train: Join the locomotion 