I'm about to be published in a new journal called 'The Newhaven Journeyman' (Eleusinian Press - see them on Facebook/Wordpress). A friend sent me the call for articles a few months ago, and when I read the motivation behind the journal and its aims, and list of suggested topics I was inspired to write. My article, entitled 'Sounds of the Rainbow' is about my lifelong relationship with Noise.

As a bipolar person, I am hypersensitive to sound, taste, smell, touch and light. I frequently have to seek silence and a darkened room. Neuroscience is beginning to demonstrate that bipolar is at least partly a neurological disorder. Or, if like me you dislike the term 'disorder', it's a different way of being.

Sounds of Nature (green noise), music of certain types, the voices of those we love, can be very therapeutic. Other types of sound become 'noise' i.e. a sound we do not want to hear or enjoy hearing. This varies enormously depending on how we feel and how much unwanted sensory input is around at a given moment. And what was once a welcome sound can become noise: the voice of someone we trusted suddenly strident, angry and critical for example.

'Where music, madness and politics meet' - that's the tagline for the journal. I'm excited to be going down to Newhaven in late September for the launch, along with my son whose surrealist fiction is also appearing in edition 1 of the 'Journeyman'. We're travelling together by train. Hopefully, I'll be strong over the two days of our particular journey, and the compartments we sit in will be free from Noise...

I look forward to hearing the sound of the sea. It's been a few months since I was on Criccieth beach, the weekend of my other son's wedding, listening to the best of green noise: waves lapping against a beach.