George Palmer

Now it's the violins on my left-hand side.

They're out of tune.

What was happening?

It was the distortion of my hearing that everything sounds out of tune to me because there's this peculiarity in the little vibrations of the little hairs in the ear which are tuned to specific pitches.

And more than one of them are vibrating at any time, so everything sounds out of tune.

So I was thinking to myself, this is awful.

I've written all these wrong notes.

And fortunately, a mate of mine who was the leader of the violin section said, look, it's all fine, just let me conduct.

The problem is your ears, not your music.

So he conducted and it was fine.

But that's when I discovered...

that listening to my own music was actually torture.

But you see, the difficulty with any creative person...

is when you are complimented on what you do by those who are close to you, oh, that's lovely, dear, oh, that's wonderful, or owe you some obligation, you feel they're just being nice.

It's when total strangers who owe nothing to you

come up and say that's wonderful etc you feel okay it must be okay so i still have not got over the experience when i listen to my music even though i know it's being played by brilliant musicians i know what it should sound like i know in my head what it should sound like i know from the written page what it should sound like but what i actually hear with my ears is horrible i can't enjoy it

Well, it's interesting because the producer of the Australian Story program said to me, before you decide to do this, just be aware that this will change your life.

Practically everybody who's done an Australian Story says the same thing.

It changes your life.

And it did for me too.