KlangArt Samuel Heller

A sidenote to privacy: Maybe you wonder about everything what I write here. Well, I think privacy today is an illusion, it can’t be guaranteed and never will. If every information about everything is freely available and society offers true freedom, data protection makes itself needless.  I belive the concept of data privacy will not last long, exept we trust the rich, criminals, military, churches and the industry who say that we need privacy.

We don’t. Take part in working out rules you honestly won’t break. Don’t lie to your self! If you break rules, take responsibility and bear the consequences. It’s that simple, you only need data protection if you mess around with the last three sentences.

Hm, what to write here… Plenty of time I thought about this. Well, the main thing would be that I consider my self as a free thinking seeker for truth – what not means, that it exists. I am a sceptic, not sure whether there is a free will at all.

Besides of that here are two lists what I have done so far:

Music

• Started playing the drums at about 6 years as youngest of 5 brothers. Influences: Motorhead, Judas Priest, Saxon, later on Iron Maiden, Nina Hagen. Yeah, mostly the really hard stuff, then.
• Jamming through my childhood and youth with my brother and friends.
• At 14 first contact with Indian Classic. Other new stuff was Spyro Gyra, Jethro Tull, Marillion.
• Got to know Little Feat, some kind of true love , going on till today…
• 1987, at sweet 16, I started playing and singing some easy reggae songs with a guitar. I bought my pink Tama Granstar drum.
• My musical mind opened to funky and jazzy stuff and fusion: Herbie Hancock, John Scofield, Miles Davis. Playing Djembe too.
• 1991 I realized that I got tinnitus. This made me think.
• 1993 I decided to play Tabla. Another brother teached me.
• In 1994 I traveled 13 month through India, Nepal, Pakistan, Iran, Turkey, Greece, Italy.
• In 1996 I started to play fingerstyle steelstring guitar. I bought an old Levin guitar – my first.
• From 1999 on mainly with bottleneck. I discovered acoustic folk music. I bought an instrument for my live: a Martin D-42.
• 2001 Ralf Reiman became my mentor for a short time, before he died. He introduced me to the recording “Strength in Numbers“, which changed my whole life.
• 2003 Jerry Douglas became my new hero. He is the lapsteel dobro player on the above recording. Somehow I knew that I should play lapsteel guitar, but I hesitated to start something new again.
• In 2006 I did it: I bought a Goldtone squareneck dobro – nothing special, but felt like heaven. How could I wait so long? For sure I never need to switch my main instrument again!

Earning Money

• 4 years apprenticeship as offset printer.
• Self-employed for some years, together with a brother of mine.
• Many different freelancer jobs.
• 6 years as hardware and software supporter, assembling, installing and repairing computers.
• 3 years work for an event agency: Light, sound, decoration, organisation.
• Nearly one year unemployed: It was a hard time – no money, speculating about the whole purpose of being here in a depressive manner.
• Got my job in a non profit organisation, mission 21 – an international learning community. I’m able to bring in nearly everything I did in my life by optimising and help running the infrastructure backbone.

Well, that’s it so far. Staying in motion is healthy, but straining to me. If one is synchronised with the world, going with its flow, it’s much easier to be at the right place in the right time, but one can get stuck. So here comes the balance-thingy…