Summerlander
Lucid Dreamer

Date: 24/07/2023
Bedtime: 3.40am
Awakening: 9.35am
Return to bed: 10.30am
Method: deferred direct
Attempt: successful
Final awakening: 12pm
The Suffocation Experiment

DREAMING

I'm out with my father Donald Trump, who wants to bond with me despite our political disagreements. We are sitting outside a café in broad daylight when people walking past recognise the former president and start mocking him for his mannerisms and indiscretions. Trump smiles nonchalantly as if he's not bothered by the negative feedback but I feel uncomfortable. The more I look at my father, the more I feel sorry for him and my emotional compassion wells up. I realise I still love him and want to reassure him that not everything about him is bad. 'Cheer up, dad!' I tell him. 'I am very proud of everything that you have achieved—I mean, you managed to become president of the United States of America!' His smile widens. Trump is happy.

WAKING

I wake up realising the glaring identity anomaly: Donald Trump is not my father. Maybe a part of me wants to empathise more with disagreeable people and wishes to truly understand them to the core; as I write down the dream I wonder if it was the result of having looked into metta or loving-kindness meditation a few days ago when I decided to study Theravāda Buddhism. I let the dog out to do his business and use the loo myself. Then, I read my dream journal before returning to bed with the intention to have a wake-initiated lucid dream. It seems to take me a while to relax and I wonder if I spent too much time awake. Have I blown my chances? I toss and turn before settling on my side.

LUCID DREAMING

I hear a pulsatile hiss in my head and recognise there's a strong possibility here that I might succeed. I wait for this sound to peak to be sure that a good connection to the dream world is established, like I'm tuning into a different channel. Suddenly, I acquire a horizontal perspective of my bedside cabinet and I can see my mobile phone, on its stand, with a bright and colourful interface; crystal-clear vision switches on even though my eyelids were shut throughout induction. I reach for my phone, which feels solid to the touch, and bring it closer to my face to find that there is no text on it; gripping the object with both hands, I decide to try to bend it. The phone becomes malleable and I watch the multicoloured light on its supple screen stretch and bend. I am now quite sure I'm dreaming beyond a shadow of a doubt.

I discard the phone and get up to scan the bedroom as I rub my hands. Recalling the suffocation experiment, I begin to hold my breath with the idea of maintaining breathlessness until I wake up. I notice an extremely tall man in black standing by the door, observing me; his bald crown and grey horseshoe hairline makes him appear to be an old man, albeit a strong one. At this point, the sensation of holding my breath feels absolutely real, like soon I will need to resume breathing because the situation becomes increasingly desperate with each passing second. The man turns to the door, indifferent to my experiment, and as soon as he swings it open, I chase after him, gripping his arm in the hallway. This doesn't stop him as his black-sleeved arm easily comes away from its socket and the one-armed figure disappears as he walks down the staircase. I am still holding my breath and can't do it for much longer; I desperately want to breathe.

WAKING

I am back in bed, relieved to be able to breathe again. It felt like I had been holding my breath in my sleep. It appears that the very nature of this experiment leads to a premature awakening as waking in this context is pretty much synonymous with being able to freely breathe. My dedication to this experiment made the wish to wake up win out over my usual desire to prolong lucid dreaming.

Date: 26/06/2023
Bedtime: 4am
Awakening: 7.30am
Return to bed: 7.40am
Method: deferred direct
Attempt: successful
Final awakening: 9.30am
The Recalling Experiment


DREAMING

It's a dark night and I'm part of a brigade searching for an unknown enemy. Next to me, armed and wary of danger lurking in the dark, is the actor Bruce Willis. Suddenly, we observe the infantry being attacked by an invisible agent; petrified soldiers begin to levitate and haemorrhage from every orifice before being dropped from an altitude of fifteen feet by a mysterious force. Me and Bruce look at each other before running for our lives. We hide in a cave-like shelter and keep quiet, hoping that the enemy won't find us. There is a mutual agreement that we are no match for the invisible enemy who wiped out the infantry. We are probably the only two foot soldiers left. We lie down on a mattress on the floor and hide under the covers. I feel hot and sweaty.


WAKING

I feel hot and sweaty as I wake up to the sound of my alarm. I get my son up to get ready for school and, exhausted after having had a bad night, I return to bed. Lying on my back and relaxing, I wonder if I'll be able to have an out-of-body experience. I keep imagining standing at the foot of the bed and looking back at myself lying asleep. After a couple of lapses in consciousness (or so it seems), I succeed in reifying the thought of being out of bed.


LUCID DREAMING

It feels like I am actually standing next to the footboard and partially facing a wall which I proceed to rap in order to deepen my phantom environment. My wife rises from under the covers and asks me what I'm doing. 'I'm lucid dreaming!' I excitedly reply and begin expatiating on why it is amazing and deserving of joint exploration before pausing at the realisation that I've been talking to a figment of my dreaming mind. Tapping the wall appears to intensify the environment and the grainy surface melts like a white marshmallow as I press it with my fingers. At this point, I remember the recalling experiment (as part of a plan of action) as well as the previous nightmare where, as a foot soldier, I witness my brigade getting killed by an invisible agent.

I make an attempt to delude myself (according to this counterintuitive experiment) by entertaining the idea that the nightmare where the infantry perished was real and that I must've been knocked unconscious and carried to this bedroom replica by the invisible agent. Not feeling confused in the slightest about what's real and what isn't despite trying to contrive a confabulation, I also feel the need to tell myself that waking life memories were implanted in my brain by the enemy. This still doesn't seem to be enough as my sceptical mind emphatically rejects self-delusion for lack of evidence, so I tell myself that the enemy is conniving, that absolute certainty of any world being 'real' is impossible and that what I need in this situation is a leap of faith.

I penetrate the melting wall to find a peculiar staircase adorned with a myriad of glossy beads (instead of my youngest son's bedroom as would be the case in the real world). The stairs appear to reflect weak sunlight coming from arched, stained-glass windows displaying complex mandalas and I scuttle downstairs with the purpose of somehow finding and confronting my mysterious enemy. Before I can reach the exit of the building I'm in, however, I suddenly feel myself to be back in bed. Refusing to give in to these dispiriting sensations, I wilfully interpret them as the enemy magically pulling the wool over my eyes before forcing myself out of bed to glide out of the window with blurry vision.

I land on paving slabs in broad daylight and begin stomping the pavement, producing echoey footsteps that help me to intensify the scene. There is a hyperreal quality to the esplanade before me as I run alongside a concrete wall—at the end of which is the looming suggestion of a beach hiding behind it. I glance at my bare feet and notice crystalline water in the gutter running counter to my direction. I look up and see a man in black watching me before disappearing behind the wall towards the beach. I feel I must reach him as he might be able to lead me to my enemy. Reaching the end of the wall to access the beach (it never occurred to me to go through concrete as a logical shortcut), I come face to face with the figure wearing a black trenchcoat and a fedora hat. He's a dead ringer for the actor Ed Harris but his eyes are uncannily blue and his gaze chillingly penetrating.

'Where is the enemy?' I demand as I display my infantryman persona. 'The wizard is in the tower,' the man in black softly replies as he points to a lighthouse on a rocky promontory beyond the sandy beach. I waste no time in gliding to the top of the lighthouse, entering an empty garret overlooking a calm sea and cloudy horizon. Where is the 'wizard' who wiped out my brigade? Perhaps he is invisible in this very room. Could the man in black at the beach be the real enemy? I leap from the lighthouse and descend on the beach next to a stall that wasn't there before. The Ed Harris lookalike is there, apparently polishing an amulet and a few trinkets are on display. 'Are you the wizard?' I enquire. The man in black appears to be smirking as he turns his back on me before vanishing into his little shop as the beach fades.


WAKING

I dash off some notes in my journal in conclusion of this experiment. In hindsight, my lucidity was solid enough to maintain the knowledge that what was unfolding wasn't real. I never came to fully believing what I wanted to believe for the sake of this experiment. The most I could achieve was entertaining a what-if scenario, which is surprising because in many past experiences what usually takes effort is countering the loss of lucidity and preventing the manifestation of ordinary dreaming. Most of the time it felt like I was pretending to be a soldier looking for answers to see how it would influence the phantom world of lucid dreaming. Curiosity of what would happen if I entertained a mere hypothesis is what drove me. Deep down I still knew that I would eventually wake up to the real world where my family and everything I care about exist.

Date: 11/06/2022
Bedtime: 2.40am
Awakening: 7am
Return to bed: 7.20am
Method of entry: indirect
Attempt: successful
Awakening: 8.55am
DEILD: The Anesthesia Experiment


DREAMING

I'm a doctor with my own private clinic and patients are happy to see me save but one who proves to be very difficult and tests my patience to its limits. I end up battering him till he's unconscious and worry that I might have killed him. I check him with my stethoscope. Scene shift: I'm watching the British soap opera EastEnders and it feels like I'm in the scene as an observer. The setting is a pub, which is radically different from The Vic, and I witness Zack Hudson (played by James Farrar) losing the plot. The actor produces a broom and uses it to smash up the bottles of booze on display across the bar. The bartender, who happens to be the actor Peter Stormare, dashes around the wooden counter to hit Zack but this one is quite agile and ends up beating the former to a pulp. I am happy that Zack wins the fight because I remember Peter Stormare playing a wife beater in the film Chocolat.


WAKING

I scribble what I remember and note the identity anomaly (I'm not a doctor in real life), the inexplicable scene shift, the strong emotions of worry and excitement, the close-ups of celebrities and the impossibility of being inside a soap opera. After using the loo, I return to bed with a strong intention to enter the phase.


DREAMING

I believe I wake up to an empty bed and figure that my wife is already up and pottering about. I can hear crying coming from my youngest son's bedroom and find a strange tot there. I take it the little girl before me belongs to the neighbours who live above us and assume that my wife must have agreed to babysit for them but now she must be busy with chores. I pick up the child and tap her on the back. She stops crying after I hand her a teddy bear and carry her back to my bedroom to keep her entertained. After a short while she cries for her mum and I take her to see the view from my balcony but I have trouble opening its door. I hear noises outside and music followed by a propagandistic voice, making me think that the Labour Party have gone bonkers in trying to persuade people to vote for them. Scene shift: My eyes are shut and I feel rested on a mattress under a thick cover.


LUCID DREAMING

I'm in bed and it occurs to me that I could be dreaming of waking up. As I get up and start rubbing my hands for clarity (realism: 90%), I find that I am not wrong when I glance at the curtains covering the balcony door; they are chartreuse instead of a greyish colour as is the case in the real world. As I move around the bed, sight declines to a blurrier state and my eyes feel crusty. (Realism: 50%) Rubbing them whilst wishing for clarity restores realism to an even greater decree than previously and the inaccurate bedroom replica becomes clear. (Realism: 100%) I exit the room into the hallway and look at my reflection in the mirror on the wall at the top of the staircase. I'm wearing a grey hoodie and shorts and my face is quite realistic. I feel slightly excited at the colourful detail of my surroundings and start dancing in front of my reflection, which mimicks my movements. An apt, funky beat comes on—as though someone turned up the volume on a stereo—and then I hear a voice behind me: 'What are you doing, dad?' I turn to see another bedroom adjacent to mine, which doesn't exist in real life, and a perplexed eldest son is standing in the doorway. I smile at him and say as a means to reinforce to myself the nature of what's happening to me: 'I'm having a lucid dream!' He turns around and mutters, 'Okay, dad!' I pat him on the back and tell him I love him, apparently causing him to shrink back to his pre-teen phase, before he utters in a childlike voice: 'Love you too, dad!'

I run downstairs and find that all the lights in the house appear to be on. I enter the loo expecting to find an astronomy-themed mural on black walls but instead encounter a comical poster depicting cartooned police officers resembling Chief Wiggum from The Simpsons having gay sex. I find it hilarious but at the same time disappointed that my mind did not produce what I was looking for. I remember the anesthesia experiment and think of getting a syringe from my right pocket. As I reach to check the pocket, I feel a pinprick on my leg as though the object is already there and piercing my skin. I pull out an empty syringe with a long needle and go to the kitchen in order to find an anaesthetic to fill it with. I approach the fridge-freezer's water dispenser and imagine that it might produce a numbing drug in liquid form but quickly change my mind and instead open the refrigerator to find a plastic bottle filled with a colourless analgesic. I pierce the bottle with the needle inside the fridge and draw the fluid into the tube, subsequently stabbing my right leg with the syringe, noticing that the pinprick is not as painful as the one I experienced earlier. I inject the fluid into my leg, believing its anaesthetic properties to be immediately effective. The leg goes numb as I wished and there is no sensation when I pinch it. I immediately force myself to wake up.


WAKING

Now awake, I quickly pinch my right leg but find that there is feeling there as normal in the real world, contrary to what was experienced (not felt) in the phase state. Also, I made the mistake of not performing the experiment as the first task of my plan of action. If required, I shall execute this task again.

Date: 04/06/2022
Bedtime: 3.30am
Awakening: 8am
Return to bed: 8.30am
Method: dream consciousness
Attempt: successful
Final awakening: 11.30am
Phase experience: No Murals To Be Found


DREAM STATE

I'm a member of a boarding school and meet up with a group of boffins in the woods at night in order to converse with them. It's our secret rendezvous to eat what we are reputedly not allowed: chocolate muffins. Suddenly, our indulgence is interrupted by a lorry driving through the forest towards our social circle, causing my uniformed friends to disperse. Subsequently, I explain to someone that I had been given the opportunity to devour a delicious chocolate muffin and that one of the other lads had a caramel one which I tasted vicariously, an amazingly advantageous ability which is deemed to be completely normal.

Scene shift: I'm on a small island which is the stage for a reality TV show, having somehow landed there and immediately regarded as a mystery guest by eminent contestants. Ulrika Jonsson asks me why I'm so short, making me feel inadequate and a little self-conscious. I do my best to speak graciously and politely—partly to make up for a perceived, physical shortcoming. However, no matter what I do, I feel like an alien or an outsider. I spot Xavier Bardem aboard a luxury boat sailing on a moat surrounding the villa and, feeling starstruck, I tell the others I'm quite fond of the actor. I am ushered into their residence and Ulrika shows me around. I clock a screen displaying a picture of me as a new contestant and notice that my face resembles that of Christopher Hitchens'—making me think that I am unconsciously emulating the public intellectual's expressions due to having watched him debate Robert Wright on YouTube.

Scene shift: I meet up with Anne-Marie as it's her birthday and she gives me a lift in a convertible from the close to a strange underground workshop. She is dressed up like a dog's dinner, all in leather and curiously a lot shorter than in real life. I give her a big hug, a kiss and wish her a happy birthday.


WAKING STATE

I realise that Anne-Marie does not drive and her height was inconsistent with reality (the impossibility of my former neighbour being considerably shorter than I remember is dismissed by a focus on, and delight in, an inflated ego towering over her when we embrace). The uncritical assumption that it was her birthday betrays a mnemonic failure because her birthday has already been and I messaged her on Facebook wishing her a happy one. Then there is an ID anomaly that also makes me considerably younger than I am in real life: I thought I was part of a coterie of boarding school boffins; on a separate oneiric occasion, my countenance resembles that of Christopher Hitchens' beyond just an emotional expression.

Unusual situations to look out for are exemplified in the dream scene where a lorry interrupts a 'muffin rendezvous'. Flawed logic that tasting a muffin vicariously through another boffin's taste buds is perfectly natural, when it is an impossibility, was present in the dream state. Scene shifts are common, too: I was on a reality TV show and suddenly, it is Anne-Marie's birthday. I have also been dreaming about celebrities every night: Xavier Bardem and Ulrika Jonsson. After using the loo, I return to bed with the intention to induce a lucid dream. I try the wake-initiated approach but fail to relax sufficiently on my back for about ten minutes, deciding afterwards to turn on my side and fall asleep.


DREAM STATE

During the day, a mustachioed food vendor is offering quiche to my family through the kitchen window of a radically different house. Inconsistently, he regales us with cheese sandwiches and charges after his so-called samples. I point out to my family that what we are getting is not quiche, but they say it's good and worth buying. Scene shift: at night, in my bedroom with Alfie and he tells me someone is outside. I open the balcony door to discover an architectural anomaly—there is no balcony; instead, a porch with two approaching teenagers wielding toy guns, and playfully pretending to be burglars, is manifestly before me. To my right, a staircase leads to the street below and next to it I make out strange neighbours arriving before entering the house next door. Dwelling on the structural inaccuracy, I conclude that I'm dreaming.


PHASE STATE

I rub my hands to stabilise the dream world. Returning to the bedroom replica, I decide to glide downstairs—encountering strange globular objects floating in the air at the bottom of the staircase—and head towards the loo whilst expecting to encounter a mural displayed on black walls for artistic inspiration but never reach my goal. I believe I wake up but still test the bedroom environment just to make sure. At the foot of the bed my fist goes through the carpeted floor and I know for sure that my surroundings are oneiric in nature. I sink into the floor in order to land in the loo imagined to be directly below so that I may find a mural in another attempt to seek artistic inspiration, but I descend into a dark space filled with some kind of pressure that almost feels like gelatine restricting my movements. Spinning causes the surrounding darkness to be replaced by an upstairs environment more congruous with my former address at Lea Close than the current one at Gardner House. Jumping out of one of the windows of an oneiric version of my former abode lands me on a fire engine parked right outside the front door. Upon seeing a party taking place in the opposite house with some people outside beckoning to me, I descend from the large vehicle to take a gander. Amongst the dream characters inviting me in are Poca and Andy Waters, who call out my name. Inside the house I find a lot of confusing but colourful decorations but no murals to be found. I lose lucidity at the party.


DREAM STATE

The party is characterised by debauchery and overall hedonism, including a butch lesbian pursuing me whilst declaring her lust for 'little boys'. Scene shift: I walk away from Lea Close with my mum, who complains incessantly about my former neighbour from hell, Helen, pointing out how conniving the woman can be. My mother wants me to go with her to confront our awful neighbours who are apparently near the local shops. I look back at my former house and see Stacey's silhouette behind a glazed front door and can tell she is wearing colourful summer clothes.


PHASE STATE

I'm back in bed and my head is hissing—a clear indication that I am in the hybrid phase state that makes lucid dreaming possible., I get up to what I recognise to be an inaccurate bedroom replica and therefore an oneiric environment. I search the house for murals, gliding faster than anybody could run, but find nothing, eventually flying out of the window of Melody's room to encounter a rustic vista radically different from Crane Park in the real world. The grassy field is missing and I'm flying over a muddy, tree-lined track with houses on either side (instead of a block of flats on the left as viewed from Mel's room in the real world). The houses are beautiful—some of them wooden and reminding me of the Old West—and curiosity gets the better of me. Descending to check out these properties, I expect that they also hide murals. I find empty rooms everywhere, finally coming upon a room with two beds ostensibly hiding sleeping people under their covers. The first bed I uncover is empty; the other turns out to hide a soft toy resembling a little dog that gradually morphs into a teddy bear. I wake up.


WAKING STATE

Scene shifts are quite frequent from daytime to nighttime scenes. The abodes are never quite right and there is a sense of traveling back in time to old addresses or neighbours that don't exist (nobody lives to our left). Unusual situations also come in the form of hedonistic parties and social contradictions, such as Poca and Andy Waters in the same room, often occur. It is a shame I couldn't find oneiric inspiration for a mural—I guess I must be more insistent in the dream world next time.

Date: 22/05/2022
Bedtime: 2am
Awakening: 5.53am
Return to bed: 6.10am
Method of entry: dream consciousness
Attempt: successful
Awakening: 8.15am
Phase experience: The Guitar Experiment


DREAM STATE

I'm walking towards a nighttime wilderness in England with my former schoolmate Javed and a Sri Lankan punter from my former days as a bookie; both men are willing to have a friendly fight and I'm the umpire reminding them to play by the rules and that they are not to get seriously injured as both are family men. We jump over a brick wall and the fight is about to commence when I spot what look like a couple of Kodiak bears approaching from a distance and hurtling towards the men. Eventually, the ferocious beasts catch up to them and both faint; I hide behind a tree as I believe the would-be fighters are about to be devoured. The animals are not bears at all seen as they possess a larger and quite uncanny presence—they remind me of a cross between a lion and a rhinoceros but overall redolent of the demonic hounds in Ghostbusters. I am petrified and in awe of such creatures which are not officially known to exist. I hear fingers clicking and the beasts freeze next to the unconscious men. Not far, I see Judi Dench (the actress who plays 'M' in 007 films) standing in front of a building that wasn't there before which I take to be a top secret facility. I immediately get the impression that she controls the hellish hounds and, approaching, she snaps her fingers again. Huge mandibles grip the men's limbs and a jerk accompanied by a crunch rouses them back to consciousness. I am taken aback by this nifty trick as the men scram in a panic. It isn't Javed running alongside the Sri Lankan punter; it is now Bob Hoskins. I furtively get away and encounter my friend Lizzie Bowman in the wilderness who also witnessed Judi Dench's hounds. We run together and there is an impression that we must know where to tread because England is now swarming with lions and there is the added challenge that they move around. It feels like a precarious memory game.


WAKING STATE

I record what I can remember and note potential dream cues such as the social contradiction of Javed and my former customer, stark elements from my past, the unlikely situation of being the referee of an agreed upon fight in the wilderness, seeing celebrities, shapeshifting, impossible monstrous animals and the threat of lions. I also identify schematic associations by my dreaming mind, e.g., the night before I dreamt of a giant Venus flytrap similar to the one in the film Little Shop of Horrors which happens to star Rick Moranis who is also in Ghostbusters. I return to bed with the intention to induce a lucid dream and fall asleep.


DREAM STATE

Me and a group of people are sat around a table. It is my understanding that this is a therapy group session and it is peculiar that every male—myself included—is topless and we have to present the females with instances of child abuse and domestic violence. A male psychotherapist interrupts the session to announce that there's been a mix-up and some of us are in the wrong group—I happen to be one of the misplaced ones. I am invited to leave the room for a break before embarking upon finding the right room. One side of the room is missing a wall and I use this wide gap to jump down to a dark underground sewage system resembling what I encountered under a bridge in a recent lucid dream. This is somewhat familiar! What am I doing here? I'm dreaming!


PHASE STATE

I tell myself I no longer need to re-enter the building behind me in order to look for the new therapy room. Everything is a very elaborate illusion. (Realism: 90% gradually making progress towards 100% as I rub my hands.) It feels like a nighttime environment but I am now in a tunnel and see light at the end. I glide towards the arched opening revealing a daytime, urban environment where I come upon a river—beyond it, near the horizon, I see a pillar-shaped mountain that reaches all the way to the clouds, making for an odd panorama. I struggle to recall the experiment I'm supposed to execute and believe I'm waking when the surroundings fail even though I strenuously rub my hands in order to heighten tactility. I'm in bed, apparently having woken up, and tell my wife I just had a brief lucid dream but failed to remember the experiment. 'Next time!' she says. I look at my hands and they look normal but decide to do a reality test nonetheless by pushing my right index finger through my left palm; the digit goes through my hand at a push! I'm shocked to discover I just had a false awakening and start deepening the phase by rubbing my hands as the realism is now only 35% that of the real world and the bedroom replica got darker since I falsely awoke. I reach for my electric guitar in the corner of the room and realise it is a lot smaller than it's supposed to be when I pick it up. The instrument is still in its case, which I struggle to unzip, so I decide to play it by pressing the strings over the nylon fabric. As I feel the strings through the gigbag, I hear the electric wailing sound of the guitar even though it's unplugged. I start randomly shredding on the fretboard (which is something I struggle with in real life) to produce a surprising classical rock sound in the style of a musical prodigy like Yngwie Malmsteen. My experience is more tactile and auditory than visual at this point. (Realism: 70%) I revel in the elaborate solo I'm producing until the environment fades and the sound peters out.

I believe I have woken up. I get out of bed and walk towards the balcony door to part the curtains and check what the weather is like. It looks dismal outside: the sky is grey and overcast. Beyond the neighborhood, I make out a strange cloud formation. The more I peer at it, the more the sky turns pink and the more a fiery cloud manifests in the shape of a wide column with a cauliflower-like top. That is weird! This mushroom-shaped phenomenon looks like an atomic bomb has gone off! Could it be that I just had another false awakening? My index goes through my palm again, confirming I'm still dreaming and I open the balcony door. (Realism: 100%) I want to play guitar again but the corner of the room where the instrument is supposed to be, to my left, is out of reach. I don't want to waste time so I reach behind the curtain, to my right, expecting to find a guitar there. To my surprise, I find my old V-shaped guitar, which I sold years ago, leaning against the wall. I start playing a melody similar to the first solo in the song 'Master of Puppets' by Metallica. Curiously, each note I play simultaneously causes the now fiery sky to reverberate. I'm awed by the beauty of the sounds and the colours before me and subsequently all my senses fade, leading to wakefulness.


WAKING STATE

It is worth mentioning that I have some experience with music as an amateur piano and guitar but I must say that in the phase I played more confidently and easily reached the level of a virtuoso. This experience won't turn me into a great guitarist overnight, but it has, at least, inspired me greatly.