I'm very fortunate to be someone who has no reason to be believed. You know how you are not supposed to be crazy? When I went to school, I asked to have my work stolen from me. Your welcome.
A big part of my training at the Academy was "Voice Training." Steve would have me tell him stories and make up elaborate pieces of music. Normally being the best psychic in town meant he was keeping everyone at a distance. But with me he insisted on letting me stop by at my discretion. Talk about out of my league. But none the less, I later found out this 800 lbs. gorilla in the living room liked me a lot. I told him about various books about tragic composers and their dramatic painful lives. I told him which one would make the best movie, (and it did) even if it was total fiction. He insisted on making me remember the actual name of the author of said fiction. Turned out it was the same name as a local folk musician, which confused me. Even with all of my brain damage he still could get me to remember things briefly.
Besides playing guitar and piano for him, Steve let me show him my art, paintings and diagrams. I also sang. I sang like a bird on acid. In key and on time. I constructed these wonderful operas, which he secretly recorded. I had told him about my expectations that if I didn't give the work away it would be unnecessarily lost. He called in his secretary about 53 minutes into this one composition just to blow his mind. A normal person would not believe that such a thing could ever happen, beautiful difficult modulations, unimaginable effortless progressions. I even knew who it was that would be able to produce the best sound for that particular composition. It was not the only time this happened. That was 35 years ago.
If nothing else it proved that Steve was right to say, "Just because you are able to think something up does not mean that anyone else is ever going to be able to think up the same thing." Signature behavior and all.
When I told him I was leaving the Academy, he said that no one was going to believe me. A very defensive reaction from a self confessed functional paranoid. But as was Steve's style, he believed me when I said that I didn't care and that we could still encounter each other outside of school. He softened his understandably harsh response gave me 5$ for lunch. I never saw him at the Academy again.
