Christmas, Where Love Lies Lost

A quiet Christmas day with my parents and Deborah, Boxing Day spent visiting a few shops. I bought some leather gloves and some perfume shaped like a gold bar, which will make me feel rich and probably increase prosperity by psychological action. In the evening, a second Christmas meal cooked with great élan by Deborah. A former professional chef, her skills are as useful as they are enjoyable. On the 27th we went to Knutsford for the weekend, visited Elizabeth Gaskell's grave and several charity shops. We went into the Oil Art Advisory gallery and had a wonderfully warm welcome, and inspirational talk and browse at the art. The entire place looked beautiful, it was certainly something beyond a high street gallery.

We returned home to spend a few hours with my brother and his partner, and a board game in which we had to make objects from wooden pixels to be guessed by other players.

The lack of normal activity has been causing me stress, too little creativity, too much disorder, and no routine. I feel I need to throw lots away. Last night I designed a new artwork which continued one I started in summer, a strawberry with a hole in the canvas so that it can hang. I'll make a gallows for it. I came up with a title, first 'Where Love Lies Lost', then 'I Seek My Solace Where Love Lies Lost', then expanded these lines into a poem, which will be part of the artwork:

I seek my solace
Where love lies lost
I find no comfort
Where love lives most
That which I have
Lends me no pleasure
That which I lack
Extends forever

This week, work on art organisation, and archiving the year's activities. Tomorrow, my annual computer backup and clean, which will take all day.

Christmas Duties, Renamer v110

Spent yesterday and today working on end of year backups and Christmas duties. I've updated my ancient program simply called 'Renamer', which is a batch find/replace program, useful because the find and replace text are in separate text files, allowing replaces of paragraphs. I've used it a lot for website updates over the years.

Yesterday and today I added a feature to batch add a 'header' file, a 'footer', and text to every end-of-line. This makes it ideal for converting a simple poem into a fully formatted HTML page in a blink.

Lots of end of year filing is due. In between, much is being absorbed and new ideas are forming.

Phone 4, Christmas Admin, and Annual Music Streams

Today, set up my 4th new (dumb) phone of 2025, all of the others were buggy or just didn't work as advertised. The returning process for the last one took many hours today. Plus, wrapped the last of my Christmas gifts, and printed my 2026 calendar, which I now create myself. This allows me to use individual A4 sheets (much easier to manipulate and write on), and set my personal custom dates.

All day has taken this.

Nastee Chapel reported £40 of CD sales of Christmas Tails and donated the whole sum, taking the total over the final total for the Snow Business.

I looked at my music stats for 2025 and noted that my most popular Christmas song is 'Away from Her Manger' (good, this is for me my best) in South Korea. My overall most popular song is 'Back When It All Began' from Secret Electric Sorcery; both of these on TikTok, the music was probably in the background of some user-created video. These stats often lag months behind and I've not been a year with my new distributor yet, so all of the stats are loose guidance. No sales of even one track, just many fragments across streaming and social platforms.

I still feel that everything I've done is half as good as it could be, as it should be, and the effort required to remaster and polish everything seems immense; but, I'll keep working at it each day, and hopefully keep improving (which, if I succeed, will lead to similar feelings for all eternity; growth in excellence necessarily makes the past look shoddy).

Onwards we stride. Today, our rock feels a little bigger but a little lighter.

Thoughts on AI, On Cloud Hill

The final videos without lyrics to The Dusty Mirror were uploaded yesterday.

I took a look at some AI video tools and I suddenly felt that doing anything at all with AI would be toxic, as toxic as an association with Jeffrey Epstein or Jimmy Savile or Gary Glitter, or anything else in the sphere of the 'cancelled'. AI has elements of a drug. Song generation AI has huge appeal to those who have no musical ability, and video generation AI has appeal to those with no video capability, but perhaps one day those who use it will gain ability, and on that day they'll declare 'But guys! I can do it myself now!' but it will be too late. The 'fans' who prefer AI wouldn't want the 'real creations' and those who disliked them would not touch someone tainted by AI. The toxicity will always be there, it's like a drug in this respect, a stigma, not with respect to addiction.

I became an artist partly as a rebellion against my computer background, to avoid the digital and its falseness, fake-ness and rigidity. I've not, to date, used AI (in music, video, chat or anything else, though yes, I'd happily take credit for my 2014 album by Oldfield 1 Art By Machine as being an 'AI creation', composed using random means and a program of my own design; but this is not what most people consider AI today, that is ChatGPT-style generative AI). As AI becomes popular I'm increasingly interested in that which is not-AI, the hand made, the ersatz, and human. This is a sort of digital 'arts and crafts' movement, the arts movement from the late 19th century which emerged as a reaction to the industrial revolution. A key part of my philosophy as an artist is to do what others don't, or won't, or can't.

Art is about expressing yourself, our human selves. AI can help, but tools of any sort can get in the way of this expression. 2025 AI is more than a tool, it's more like a collaborator, and there's a difference between what we as artists want and what a (more able) collaborator suggests and we later accept. In 20th century music such things happened often, when a young star was guided (or misguided) by record companies, producers, peers, to create their sort of sound. Those artists ended up lost, rejected, dumped. I remember the Milli Vanilli controversy, where the artist didn't sing on their track, or the similar reaction to The Monkees, when accused of not playing their instruments. The taint of AI to artist will, I suspect, be the same.

This commentary already feels old. AI will rapidly change, and perhaps become a brilliant and able collaborator, but like collaborating with any genius artist, the art he/she/it makes will be his/hers/its own. If Mozart were a slave to the exact requirements ('prompts') of his patron, would Mozart or the patron be the artist? Artists have faced this exact problem for centuries, and the artists who have proven to be the best are those who damn their patrons and do as they will.

Today is the day of the winter solstice, and we've determined to visit some ancient standing stones, The Bridestones. These stones as a monument, once tomb, are over 4000 years old, though achingly sadly wrecked in the 19th century. They sit on Cloud Hill, Congleton, and I wrote this poem for the occasion which I'll read there today.

On Cloud Hill

On Cloud Hill to the sky I reach
With eyes of glassy youth and bright
I sigh for that which bones can't teach
For broken here these bones alight

We here at winter's lowest stroke
Make prayers with fleeting voice and tone
These gods are dead, yet speak their joke
From corpses of eternal stone

The season's arc is sliced in amber
Afire for souls of shiv'ring awe
The copper on this skin of sand
Will reach this mark ten thousand more

These things will look up, cold and still
Long after we turn cloud to hill

Videos Part 2, First BBC Radio Play, Snowflake Premiere

Another full day of video conversion, recompiling all of my Violet Night and Dusty Mirror videos and removing the subtitle layer. The Violet Night ones were completed by the afternoon; Dusty is half complete. This requires a lot of tedious and exacting text work, and lots of waiting around for the computer to convert.

In between I've listened to Freddie Mercury's My Bad Guy, a great album, at least half of it is brilliant, and half not so. I love that he dedicated it to his cat, something I've done with some of my music!

I forgot to mention that I've had a royalty for my first ever play on BBC Radio. BBC Radio 6 played 'Pandora' from Bites Of Greatness at some point last year, but I've only just noticed. I've no idea in what context. Of course now, I consider my vocal music my best, even if my voice is still growing month by month. Everything recorded so far sounds inferior to anything I could do today. I've come a long way, but I have a long way yet to go in this regard. My many remasters are important for this reason. The 2026 Modern Game remaster is twice as good as the last version, and that was merely 2022.

Tonight is the premiere of the new video to 'Will You Be My Snowflake?'. I'll online on my YouTube Music Channel for it at 7pm.

Videos Without Subtitles Part 1

A frustrating day in many ways, but I managed to set up most of a new game bundle, and re-compiled updated all of the Tree Of Keys and The Modern Game videos for YouTube, adding with subtitle and without subtitle versions. Ultimately, each version has merits, so adding both allows the user to choose. I have to do this for Another Violet Night and The Dusty Mirror.

Congleton Live, Lyric Videos

A nice performance day at the day centre in Congleton. Mike kindly suggested we perform two of my songs, 'Will You Be My Snowflake?' and 'Christmas Smells'. He really likes Snowflake and keeps pushing me to send it to influential people, but who and where?

At home, exhausted from lack of sleep if nothing else, I completed and uploaded the new Snowflake videos. I've decided to create two versions of each video for the first time; one with subtitles ('Official Video With Lyrics'), and one without ('Official Video'). For me, seeing the lyrics always enhances a video, and my lyric subtitles appear before the line is sung as a forewarning, then jump into place at the right moment, which is really useful if singing along.

Music videos on television, however, never have visible subtitles, these are optional via the television's system, so if I ever want my videos to appear with classical pop from the 20th century (yes! I've described 20th century chart music as classical - it truly is a world away from today's music), I'll need two versions; one with and one without subtitles.

I also have some videos described as an 'Official Lyric Video', such as Christmas Smells. This is used for simple animated videos where the words are the most important element, but even here I suppose I could keep the version without words as a sort of looping animation, something better than a still image of the album cover, which is the default for YouTube. I'll think about this.

All of this all opens up a possibility of remaking older videos for a second time and relisting those, which is lots of time consuming and tedious administration work. I've already made a start by renaming the current videos to match the new name convention. Most of my videos don't have lyrics, and about half are for instrumental tracks, so that's something. The albums which do have subtitles are the newest ones: Another Violet Night, The Modern Game, Tree Of Keys, The Dusty Mirror, and their singles.

Snowflake Videos, Oats, AVN Music Pack

A full power day. Started by working on the 'Will You Be My Snowflake?' video. I experimented with adding a soft-focus glow to the scenes, and changing the size a little, but after an hour or so, it didn't look particularly better, so I reverted to the old version.

Then, something of a panic moment when I realised I was out of Mornflake Oats! I dashed out in a vain attempt to find some locally, then came back, and decided to film the vocal parts for the 'Candy Cane' video first. I quickly did this, completed the basic editing of those clips, then galloped the 1.3 miles to Morrisons to grab a few kilos of oats. I managed there and back in 40 mins.

My father wanted a stamp album ordering, and my mother a calendar, so I did both. Much of the day so far had been distractions.

Then, editing together the 'Candy Cane' video, and compiling the rest. There were several little changes, so I made these, and added some phone rings to 'Candy Cane' and a slightly different sequence for the 'on phone' part of the song.

Then, a short break to prepare for tomorrow's performance at the adult day centre in Congleton. The words and chords to 'Christmas Smells' was created and printed, and the equipment packed and Christmas outfit prepared.

Finally, created the Spotify Canvas edits of these videos, and uploaded them ready for Friday's single release.

In the evening, the new Another Violet Night Music Pack for Flatspace was confirmed, so I set that live and made an announcement on social media. Lots done, but there always seems to be so much more to do. I haven't sent Christmas cards yet, and feel behind in many areas. Still, a full day like this feels satisfying.

Onwards we push.