Sean.
This piano's not going to get any better than this.
I mean, you can play it up to this note.
Sort of.
[PIANO TUNER LAUGHS]
So you're not that picky when it comes to pianos?
If this is the only rules I've got for the story,
well then how can I make it something
that's nice?
I've never seen anything as bad as that
in 50 years of tuning.
It's all good.
Music for me is like a mirror reflection of my internal dialogue.
I find that
what comes out of my music tells me more about myself
than I could guess.
Because when I wake up in the morning, and I sit at my piano,
what I play dictates what my mood is.
Because it's an honest expression,
it almost feels like lying to try and like
pull something out of the hat that isn't what I would be trying to do, you know.
So, if I was doing like I waltz.
This actually hurts to do.
Because what I'm wanting to do is.
I always played piano for myself.
All the time, every day.
I shut myself off for a lot of time,
but it wasn't until finding other people
that held the same interests and the same
fascinations with music and all its sciences,
I was able to pull myself out.
This is the Pianodrome.
A venue slash art fixture.
Sort of portable.
It means a lot to me,
it's part of the architecture of my mind, it's like hallowed ground.
How you doing?
There you are.
What would you like to start on?
Whatever.
Nice.
I like that answer.
Wow.
Yeah, it all comes off like.
Should hopefully make it a wee bit louder.
I first met Anthony when I needed a drummer.
I don't know why I got this impulse to go to Edinburgh.
I was born in Hawaii, my parents moved to Michigan.
On the simplest terms, I just want to travel and play music
and be able to just like solely focus on that.
I just watch his left hand and I try not to mess up.
Hi Sean.
You alright? How you doing?
When people start coming in, maybe just
just bring it to a natural close and say,
'Come to the gig at four'.
Sounds good. Excellent.
If that's alright?
Yeah, sure.
Music is like a pattern and time is this way, time is the length and
the patterning of where all the notes are,
the rhythm and whatnot, is the pattern of the fabric.
Quick stuff
and slow stuff
could very easily be visualized
as like a weaving of different threads and fibres.
And so
the goal right now is to see how far we can push it
without it looking like an absolute mess.
Hello.
So we're now going to play through our first piece.
I'm Anthony.
This is Anthony.
To be performing something,
Wow, even when things go wrong
it's truly my favorite part of the day.
When I'm playing out something
and that story's running,
it's a lot of what gets me up in the morning.
To me there's not much difference between
sitting playing on my own and playing in front of people.
You can have a crowd of like a hundred thousand to four.
There's not any difference.
There's a big wall between the stage and the people outside of it.
I want to be out of the bubble.
The bubble is a pain.
The bubble is...
the curse.
Oh, there's a piano.
Where?
The thing that's playing right now, yeah.
Where!?!
Is it this one? It can't be this one.
No, it's the next one down.
This is the wrong way.
We don't have to be at the Jazz Bar until...
A ways away.
A ways away, that's it.
So, like what are we going to do in the meantime?
That has fuck that written all over it.
Do you wanna go get chicken?
I want chicken.
Ok.
Hello.
How does the open mic work here?
I'll give myself, like, an introduction and explain.
Uh huh.
If it goes too far out for too long, I might have to take action.
So?
Are yous up for something a little bit different?
Met this drummer, it's great fun.
So, we will begin.
Thanks.
Thank you very much.
You sounded great.
Oh, thank you.
I found I had to read a lot of books
to be able to look at someone,
read their facial expression,
read their body language and feedback.
That just was not a thing when I was younger.
It was alien, completely alien.
As long as you can sustain what you love doing,
I think that's the way to go.
Hold up.
The thing to do with life and money, where it's like,
because you can have all the money in the world, but what do you spend it on?
Seal sanctuaries?
That's a good cause, but other than that, it's like...
That's him.
Yo.
Seal-boy, let's go.
Yeah, it can go on it's side.
Now that we've made so much headway in creating pieces, the next step is to
do the market research and find out what it is people want.
What's going on?
Putting the hours in, mate, slaying it,
but it's came at a serious price.
Yeah?
Yeah, I've only been sleeping like three hours a night.
That's not a lot of sleep.
Not really, man. No.
Here's a nature one for you.
So the idea is it's all to do with progressive,
in a really slow background sort of way.
Not abrasive, not like the death metal piano nonsense
that we composed,
you know, for the Jazz Bar and everything.
Something that has a much, much, much greater guarantee of a financial return.
He feels like he needs to adjust himself to make himself profitable.
And I was like, I don't think you need to do that.
That model sounds like it's more for
having a relationship with an industry, which it's fine.
I just don't understand it.
Sean said I could crash with him and we talked about writing music and traveling.
So he was only meant to stay for like a few days.
Like a week, I think actually was the initial idea.
We went from having an entire tour planned to
you have to stay in your house.
Lockdown.
How are you not fucking dead?
Oh, my blood pressure is so bad.
No venues, no bars.
No music shops, no museums.
Is that it going?
Yeah.
Cool.
Right.
Test run.
And our sleeping patterns were gone.
We were waking up at like ten at night
and going to bed at like twelve in the afternoon and stuff.
Bah, oh nearly.
Not to mention being forced to live like a goddamn teenager.
A realistic portrayal of mental illness.
Every day it was just getting worse and worse
and worse and I just couldn't speak to him or anything.
It was really starting to become an emotional problem.
And I was starting to not be nice to be around at all.
This needs to get dealt with immediately before it gets bad.
Eh, well.
He wouldn't talk to me and I was like, 'what's going on?'
And he wouldn't say anything.
And, uh.
He's just like, you're out.
It's like, fuck. Awesome.
In the middle of a pandemic.
There's a certain sanctuary to be found in being alone.
But it kind of rings as,
a very positive, but kind of in a sickening way for me.
Due to the fact that,
you know, humans are social creatures.
And even to this day,
there's a lot of time where I'm like,
'I need time myself'.
This is my time, where I go and digest
and think and read and do all these sort of things.
So although it's got it's nice, happy
safety to it, that the...
Eh...
You're missing out.
You're missing out on a whole lot of other stuff,
that eh...
As I got older I realised I was something I very much wanted.
When I was four,
I was diagnosed.
For a lot of people, they don't get diagnosed
as an autistic spectrum disorder until a lot later on in life.
It must have been pretty apparent.
Ooh.
Be really careful here.
I just framed up all this.
Paul sublet a room to me because I needed to still live after lockdown.
He was building this studio and I came here and helped him.
So, we'll maybe wait until we've got Sean
since he's like 6½ foot and...
Burly.
After I'd finally got my head together,
I sent him a message.
And then we just met up.
I'm glad that he was understanding, considering the circumstances.
I mean, I care about him as a human being.
And it's like, I don't hold any resentment over any of this shit.
Ah, so that's why you set these fuckers up.
Me and Anthony were asked to contribute a track
to an album the Pianodrome were producing.
It was really confidence building to know that people were that into us
that they were like, 'oh, yeah' and ask us to do that.
Add more to this next one.
Beh, buh, buh.
Ah what a good idea, man!
Like, yeah, yeah.
That works.
So I just need to know where you're putting your various instruments and how
you think you'll have to move between them.
I'm thinking an arrowhead formation is probably best.
I think that we've both dealt with quite a lot of adversity
in various differing aspects,
but it's in the fact that they're different I think is good.
I am Sean and this is Anthony. Wohoah.
And we're now going to play our next tune, which is to do with a massive dinosaur.
Oh, yes.
All right, take one.
Here you go.
Oh ho ho, it's so much fun.
That was so good.
That was so good!
That dinosaur that was unnecessarily good, man.
Yeah?
Yeah, that Stegodon was like, booosh.
I'm trying to remember what happened. It's all a blur.
The idea of needing extra help,
I found, was not very easy to take on the chin
because I didn't want to feel lesser than.
And I am extremely grateful for the people that have put the time in,
even when I fought against their efforts to help and support me and nurture me.
Photo ID.
Gates will close 30 minutes before...
It says gates will close 30 minutes before departure.
Anthony had overstayed his visa by three months.
No.
Until next time, man.
It kind of played out quite well--
Bye!
--that he didn't get kicked out too early.
I can't pretend that I'm like normal.
You got like a diagnosis that you have a neurological difference.
For some, it's exceptionally debilitating.
Others can use it to work to their advantage
and live quite a fulfilled existence.
But you've got to put the effort to do that.
You've got to know,
well, this sets me off in this way this I don't like, I come up short here.
However, I can be obsessively good at that, I can be bla bla bla at this.
So whatever it is that makes you happy, do it.
And don't ever try and compare your journey to somebody else's
because it just does not work like that.