Some good choices on there, if #1 wasn’t on the list I was gonna complain. Could definitely use some Mahler and Schnittke and I’d choose different works for some of the composers but solid overall.

“Quoth the Raven, ‘What the fuck?!’”.

I guess part of my stance is that my definition of a “shitty person” includes those who would rather outsource their thinking to someone else, whether that’s a political, religious, or some other figure. Although a lot of that does get down to good education (whether formal or not), which not everybody has access to. Even with my relatively privileged upbringing I’ve had to unlearn a lot of crap over the years, and not everybody has that luxury.

Yeah you’re not wrong, that’s why I put the “and/or”.

I’d argue that if ANY ideology can convince you it’s ok to shoot children in the head, you’re already a shitty person and/or psychopath.

Adds another dimension to your username for sure

If only we knew.

Not sure if this is quite what you’re looking for, but the journals of a lot of famous writers and poets are published - people like Sylvia Plath, Virginia Woolf, etc. who had bipolar disorder might be of interest. Plenty of psych memoirs out their too by people like Terri Cheney and Marya Hornbacher that might be of interest.

LOOMING OUT OF THE DARK

Call me an elitist, but this reads like “I’m 10% fluent in a language but want to write a complex, multilayered novel in that language”. Reading music fluently (that means at least treble/bass clefs and probably alto/tenor as well) is probably the bare minimum you should have for something like that, and that’s if you don’t care if the parts are actually playable/readable by humans.

Grab a few orchestral scores off of IMSLP and study them and see how they’re put together - stuff like Beethoven’s 5th symphony, as overplayed as it might be, is perfect for learning how orchestration works, which instruments can do what and how they sound in different combinations, and the “grammar” of how music is notated correctly.

Damselfly.