An Auschwitz Musical

I have now finished the synopsis to my musical "Dance! You Fucking Jew!" which is an allegory of 20th century politics and contains scenes so amazing and wondrous it would be a definite hit and certainly educate the world about the horrors of war. The protagonist is David, a beautiful genius dancer who becomes the object of desire of the camp commandant who is a top hat fetishist and latent homosexual Fred Astaire fan. The main antagonists are a song and dance group made from transsexual SS officers who live in art deco luxury and wear fancy black dresses that make the normal German guards quite envious. I've noted the idea for future reference and might work out the basic song structure later. Tomorrow I begin painting "Two Parents of a Very Lonely Child" which is about autism. My target for 2009 is to paint 50 paintings, release 3 CD's of music, write my first book (which may or may not be of poetry) and make my first video on the computer which will involve getting some extra equipment. My first solo exhibition is probable too, as the venue is already booked.

Imprimaturae

Today I awoke at 6am. I wrote a song then applied the imprimaturae to three paintings. I used ultramarine green shade, one of the most horrible of all blues, even worse than the angular robotic hue of phthalo, yet the warm neutrality of this shade of ultramarine is uniquely useful for imprematurae. That said when the tube runs out I might not replace it and use cobalt or the normal ultramarine instead which is my favourite blue. Then I drew my penis on the Apocalypse picture because my model doesn't have one. Matching the pose alone was a feat of amazing skill. For a good artist a good penis is absolutely essential for priapic poses of victory after performing wondrous technical events. Then I began to transfer this complex work to the panel. This effort took six hours during which meditative activity I had the idea for a spectacular musical set in Auschwitz which I'll try and sketch out this evening. For the next week I will underpaint new works and then, with the providence of desire, work on my album of songs for Steven which has needed doing for months.

War and Energy

War and Energy

War is a chaotic system that requires energy to function. The energy is emotional energy created by the humans that participate or are affected by the conflict. War requires emotional energy to function and wars end when one side is demoralised and therefore lacking in sufficient energy to drive the system, which then stops becoming chaotic and enters a phase of stability (peace).

World War II was so successful for Germany despite a chaotic leadership because of the large store of emotional energy created during the 1930's. Fighting in the middle east persists because so many people worldwide get involved.

Any energy can affect the system in a chaotic way. This includes peace protests if they add energy, if they are antagonistic to one side or the other. The outcome of any antagonism is unpredictable because the system is chaotic, therefore even a protest that opposes one side might not favour that side in the conflict.

Conflict requires energy to succeed, it is known to all Buddhists that only a lack of action can create peace. Thus peace can only be achieved by either a sufficient lowering of energy on one side (defeat) or both sides (accepted peace; this normally happens when both sides have been fighting for a sufficiently long time that the energy has become naturally dissipated).

Conclusion

The most peaceful and direct way for a third party to achieve peace is to ignore a war. The most effective peace protest would involve a news blackout to actively avoid the input of emotional energy into the conflict system.

Peace

You can't create peace with antagonism, only knowledge. An an artist I can achieve more for peace than all of the politicians and human rights lawyers put together! I will save that idea for my world events paintings. I've just finished transferring the drawing to Iterations of Isolation. My brother has just left so now I can refocus on work again. Tomorrow I want to start on my first work over a metre called Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane.

Wars

Wars among humans is as inevitable as squabbles between cats. Getting up tight about them or choosing sides is idiotic. However wars are as dramatic as squabbles between cats which are as dramatic as a painting, which wars warm against cold, line against line, black against white and idea against idea. The panel for Insomnia is now prepared and the drawing transferred. I'm coming back to speed, although ironically suffering from somnia and finding it harder than ever to wake up. I generally need exactly nine hours of sleep but can happily sleep for fourteen hours.

Three Graves

The scan of Three Graves is now done. I use a flatbed scanner with an A4 sheet of glass on it to give me a level surface. Then I scan the painting in sections and use Photoshop to stitch the images together. The lid gets in the way so I can only scan from one edge, thus I'm limited to paintings 60cm in one dimension and about a metre in the other (due to the space I've got on the floor). The whole process takes about a hour for a six section, 50x50cm painting like Three Graves. Thanks to the excellent calibration on the scanner the colours are near perfect and never need adjustment, but the sheet of glass makes the surface slightly blurry and so needs post processing to allow a lifesize reproduction of sufficient quality.

Unsurrealism

I awoke late at nine thirty. Not a good start. Last night I drew, in idea size, the first outline of a Neurosigil of Drawing, my first intentionally unsurrealist painting idea. In the morning I finished drawing Insomnia Due To Impending Sacrifice and then became depressed, perhaps due to feelings of emotional jealousy or some irrational selfish desire or another. I don't know if I've ever felt depressed before, certainly not for many years. Either way I am unused to the mental pain and desire to sleep in the day, and decided to refocus my mind and spent an hour reasoning with the overly romantic brian cells that were sending me their messages of sadness and general concern for my well being. Afterwards I had become logical again, having told them that for the time being art and emotionlessness were my most important priorities. Then I began to transfer the underdrawings to "Insomnia" and "Isolation" using my normal method. I aim to scan Three Graves this evening.

Guided Surrealism

Curse laziness! Curse impatience! Curse sugar! I'm sick of this inactivity. On the plus side, every disaster to me is now the need for rebirth when before it was a sign of doom. I'm growing sick of doom and becoming genuinely optimistic. My personality has changed enormously since September, more than ever in my whole life before. I'm now dying to work but tired and still a little unwell.

Most of my art is negative (even though my life is not that bad). However my isolated and sad paintings are making my life isolated and sad. My new mission is to paint new futures and they will happen. This idea will guarantee my success in 2009. When it works I will paint world events and make them happen too. I've always wanted to represent ideas in a way that the mind can understand, mere surrealism just represented the mind (which is mostly pointless; although has an aesthetic or analytical dimension. I am no decorative painter however, and psychiatry is best practised on one's own mind, once madness has been embraced first. The assumption of a sane psychiatrist is a clear sign of madness). Now I am reminded that I can change the mind from the outside. Even some of my earliest symbols began to enter my dreams only after I had painted them (is this unsurrealism?). If I can change the mind then I can change the universe, for what is the universe but the mind? Where is the universe without a mind to observe it? It's a combination of neurosymbolic programming and quantum physics. I'll now call it neuroquantum hypersigillic programming. Logically, my first N.H.P. paintings need to teach me how to paint better.

Insomnia Painting

The main part of the modelling for "insomnia" is done. I've taken the unprecedented action of showing my model to the world. For this one I also need some ancient Aramaic lettering and a sheep with spikes all over it like a hedgehog.

Calls of Insomnia

One of the worst things an artist can do is nothing and I've been doing far too much of that recently. My brother is here on a welcome visit but his presence is sapping vital days. Even worse than doing nothing is eating sugar and drinking alcohol. My new resolution is to do none of those things and to reassert my commitment to frugal living. Now, today I have transferred a tiny drawing to a panel for painting; next year's Christmas card. I'm now stalling for time before doing the plasticine modelling for a picture called Insomnia Due To Impending Sacrifice. I tend to carefully model, carefully photograph and carefully draw before I carefully paint a subject but perhaps I am too careful in these early and laborious procedures. Only careful painting is needed, yet looking back at some of the paintings of the last half of 2008 I fear that I've been careful on the other stages and too careless on the most important one. I resolve, again!! to paint patiently and perfectly. The seraph in The Art of Painting took three eight hour days despite being the size of the palm of my hand and that is about right. Now, "insomnia" calls.

Chasm

Well today I'm past the worst stage of my virus and merely in the tickly cough phase. I've done little over the past few days but have managed to write two songs today and scan in one of the last two finished paintings of 2008; The Chasm Was Just Too Wide. I peg my larger drawings on my wall opposite me and there are currently two there; The Apocalypse of Finance is as dramatic as it sounds and will include butterflies and Lorenz attractors. The second, Iterations of Isolation is about how the isolated and unloved can develop fascist hatreds towards people. Both drawings are now complete and the surfaces are prepared although I need to work out the colours.

Flu

I'm currently in a state of physical distress brought on by a flu like virus that last night left me in agonies of feverish heat and spatial and auditory hallucination for the first time since I had chicken pox over a decade ago. Resting was difficult and compounded by Dali because Andrew Williams gave me Diary of a Genius as a Christmas present. It is about time I address the matter of Dali. My paintings are often compared to his, and I use similar techniques, not only because his book on painting was my guide but more importantly because, and this seems to be growing more true the more I learn about that man, I seem to think in exactly the same way and agree that efficient painting should be just that. Being naturally recalcitrant is an inherent and vital part of thinking like a surrealist because comparison using opposites is the essential ingredient of the surreal. As such I dislike being compared to Dali, as he does to me, and I seek to be different and seek out only those spaces that others vacate. That said, I agree with him on many points regarding art and understand absolutely his meaning on many matters, more than even his most devoted of critics (critics are more devoted than even ones closest friends). The emotion had gone from his works at some point in the 1940's and a quest to represent the deeper parts universe pictorially began, leading to fantastical looking works that baffled most people with their coldness and impressed some with their appearance but that is all. But I am no fan of Dali, I might agree on some points but seek to be different, better, avoid eccentricity of any form and be as normal and average as it is possible to be. I will learn only to avoid his lessons and be inspired only by the drips of technique and painting tips that tantalisingly litter his writings. I have my own things to forge. If I see any signpost at all I will know not to go that way.

Sniff

Sniff. I presently sit with a pounding head and dizziness, all due to a virus which has for better or worse prevented me from eating anything sweet and from drinking anything alcoholic (thus, being the first flu in history to be beneficial to my health as it stopped the usual Christmas over indulgence). Despite this unpleasantness and despite the routine of the holiday I have made a fantastic and amazing discovery, the discovery of what I believe to be a whole new genre of art! This excited me greatly and now consider it to be of great importance and will definitely change my work in 2009. I will announce and describe this formally soon enough. It is perhaps the culmination of the personality changes that have been taking place in me over the last few months. Perhaps these changes will continue but each change is already proving to be amazing and beneficial to me and my art. I would now like to go to bed although my headache might make lying down too painful and unpleasant, even for virally induced visions. Sniff.

Drawing Tools

Before painting I plan my pictures with a life sized drawing. I'm doing so at the moment for an ambitious painting about financial collapse and chaos theory called The Apocalypse of Finance. My five most important drawing tools are, in reverse order:
5. 75cm beam compass, among other compasses and templates for geometric shapes.
4. 1m metal ruler.
3. 60x100cm 12mm MDF board for drawing on.
2. Jakar battery eraser which I've modified to give it a hair trigger.
1. Pentel P205 automatic pencil, the king of pencils.

The Apocalypse of Finance

I'm in the planning stages of a painting now called The Apocalypse of Finance. It's a swirling earthquake of a picture and will be my first on a canvas I've stretched and prepared myself. The raw acrylic canvas I bought is amazing stuff, wonderful. Very tough, pigmented, and with the perfect surface texture. It has a visible canvas texture but a fine furry quality. When primed the 'fur' quickly incorporates itself allowing a perfect smoothness that I can't attain even on wood panels very easily.

For a first attempt at stretching and priming a canvas it came out well. A plastic scraper was ideal for spreading the early layers while the surface has some absorbency but the sharp edges of the scraper proved problematical for the top layers. I'll try a sponge for those next time and perhaps spray the surface with water first to slow down the drying rate of the acrylic gesso.

Tip: To fix lumps, smooth, or remove ridges on acrylic gesso priming, wet sand it after spraying with a mix of alcohol and water. I use lavender water. The lavender plant is an artist's best friend.

Three Graves Complete

My curious painting Three Graves is now finished. It began as a 2D sketch and I shaded different elements to make it appear a bit more solid. The dagger and gravestone shapes are repeated in several sizes and orientations, like I tend to do in the cubisty abstracty ones I've done. Next in painting; more new ideas. My friend Andrew suggested painting something that would make people see the consequences of their actions and I've come up with a idea sketch for something about that.

To Arms!

Right, I'm back in painting mode now and with my new "full spectrum" lighting I should be able to withstand the winter darkness. Many works in progress; a painting about autism and the isolation of the nucleus of a hydrogen atom (yes!), one about the lack of physical contact in a relationship, "Self-portrait as Idiot Wanker" is inspired by an unfortunate meeting and portrait by (I think) Duchamp. I also have many ready for glazing; Nine Ladies Weeping I've mentioned before is about Derbyshire, Three Graves about knife crime is slightly different in style for me, Female God is pure geometrical abstraction, Even Eating an Apple While God Looks on is related to that but more complex and includes a square apple, Chick Inside an Egg Dreaming of the Sky was inspired by Emmanuel Kant's philosophical ideas, The Chasm Was Too Wide is about the lack of communication in a relationship, Desperately Looking for Miro has been awaiting the final stages for months now and is no closer to completion. And there are several more in the sketch stage that I haven't thought about underpainting yet but tick! tick! tick! my life-clock taps its rhythm. I must start and finish these great works now so that I can start and finish more greater works in future. Tick! Tick! Tick! no time for minor works and mixed messages. The show must begin. Lights! Camera! Action! To arms!

Sue Ryder Exhibition at the Mall Galleries

For me it's not how you say it it's what you say. I was at the Sue Ryder exhibition opening evening in the Mall Galleries last night. There was quite a mix of work and a lot of weird highly abstracted work. One thing that struck me was the way the method of making some of the artwork was given great importance. I was told that one used pigment blown onto a wet ground using the dying breaths of old people(!) and one used icing sugar and food colouring squirmed onto the canvas with the artists' feet, as if paint and brushes were inadequate tools.

I think those artists have the wrong idea. How a painting is made is not relevant. Skill should be admired, and there is always room for a new technique if it adds something new to the end result, but an artwork should stand on its own even if the viewer knows nothing about how it was made or who made it.

Insecurity Grasping For Freedom is currently on sale for the benefit of the Sue Ryder charity.

Types of Canvas

I've just ordered a good quantity of "acrylic canvas". I've not heard of any other painter that has tried this material (although painting on perspex, cast acrylic plastic, is more common). When 19th century painters chose linen they chose it because it was used for sails and was the toughest cloth around at the time. Now there are lots of tough materials used for sails, tarpaulins, tents, military armour and all sorts of things, and most of them are tougher than linen.

A good painting surface needs:

1. Physical toughness so that it won't rip or tear or shatter or turn to dust.
2. Resistance to moisture and sunlight and bacteria and insects!
3. A little bit of flexibility (for cloths) for stretching tightly.
4. Adhesion. Carbon Fibre or Kevlar are really tough but not stretchy and normally lacking adhesion, so your paint will fall off.
5. Stability. Something that won't change over time. Something that will remain elastic.

No material satisfies all of the above but some are better than others.

Lighting

I've been working on the underpainting to Nine Ladies Weeping, the painting intended for the Derbyshire open next year. Aside from my creativity though I've been learning a lot about emotions, mind control, psychology and studying all sorts of other ways to improve myself and accomplish my goal of becoming the world's greatest artist. One year ago I never would have thought that surrealist painting would change my personality to the extent that it has. I will share my discoveries and explore my new ideas in next year's paintings.

Immediate next; new lighting to cope with the winter. I'd also like to paint my grave!

Painting God

I'm painting again this week, lots of small works. I had hoped to start on a bigger one for the Derbyshire Open in Buxton, which if 2009 was like 2008 allows any artist to enter providing the subject is about Derbyshire. I like to enter competitions with subjects because it gives that one small part of me that is a show-off the chance to invent something that nobody else would think of. Actually though, I think even if I were the only entrant I would be exactly as inventive because fundamentally I compete only with myself.

Next on today's ticklist is a painting of God actually which almost makes me sound religious. But what is "God" but the anthropomorphisation of the universe... one with whom a social creature like a simian ape can form a relationship when the reality of a void is untouchable.

How Much Love

Here is sad poem I wrote last night called How Much Love. It was remarkably inspired by Val Doonican singing Blowin' in the Wind on the Rolf Harris Show, recently repeated on BBC4. I've managed to write something even more desolate than Dylan. Now, calm your mind. Lower your mood. Blink. Deep breath. Now let us begin.

How Much Love

How much love,
would it take,
for me to get out of bed.

I wonder how much fun,
I need.
I wonder how much sun I could see,
if I really cared to raise my head,
when I want to die here now, instead.

How much expectation
of a golden new beginning.

How much purpose
could I find, if sought.

How much love,
would it take,
to get out of bed.

How much money,
if love could be bought.

Stupid Computer Music

I've been working on music this week, and given that my weeks end with Tuesday it is now the start of the weekend. I can report with joy that my task has been successful and that the last track to my forthcoming CD The Twelve Seasons is now composed. The music needs final balancing and arranging but the most difficult task is complete. The music spans a large period, some tracks date back several years, but I am very pleased with the quality of the music, particularly the recent tracks which are loaded with emotion and imagery, at times as wide and orchestral as my music can be.

My next CD release however will be Stupid Computer Music, in a week or so. That one is a compilation of some of my computer game music and similar tunes of the past decade. Stupid Computer Music is available to pre-order now on my website and is the perfect Christmas gift for a computer enthusiast or gadget geek!

New Artists

I've discovered a couple of exciting artists recently (well, John discovered me!)

John Salmon is a highly skilled and imaginative watercolourist who paints amazing dreamlike landscapes as well as paintings with a unique, vaguely cubist feel. John is a WetCanvas regular and uses a water charger device for special effects, innovating in technique as well as subject.

Natalia Molinero is another one to look out for. I've just found her art on Facebook. Hailing from Argentina her art is reminiscent of one of my favourite artists Roberto Matta but with an extra influence of pre-Columbian South American art. Her paintings are fascinating and the equal to those of Matta in my opinion and deserve to be as well known.

Rules for Artists

My rules for artists:

1. Make good art.
2. Analyse each picture coldly to ensure that it is good. Analyse its good and bad elements. Analyse its emotional content and contrasts. Analyse its techniques. Calculate how it could have been better. Make detailed notes during painting and you will learn from your mistakes more easily.
3. It is better to paint one good picture than one hundred average ones.
4. It is better to paint one bad picture than none at all.
5. Do not think about an idea so long that you corrupt it. After a time limit, destroy a failing idea and start again.
6. Do not be lazy. Do not cut corners.
7. Do not flood your own market.
8. Make your art worth a high price and charge that high price. Great artists die of poverty. Foolish artists live in poverty.
9. You will dislike all of your pictures, expect this, and ignore this. Tell the world your art is great.
10. Paint beautiful. A good picture awes art critics, small children and ignoramuses. Please all three.
11. Include an element of mystery in every picture.
12. Under state and over prove.

Mr. January

Hey look I'm Mr. January in the Urenco corporate calendar. Many aspects of this calendar are brilliant including the nuclear accident emergency warnings on the back and the highlighting of the monthly siren tests. Next year the calendar competition goes global. Thanks must go to Urenco and Neil Kinsey Fagan for organising this. Corporate sponsorship of the arts is very important because they can afford the venues and provide an audience in a way that local government cannot.

First Painting to be Exhibited in The Mall Galleries

"Following the second selection stage I am thrilled to inform you that your piece will be exhibited as part of Sue Ryder Care's Art Liberating Lives Exhibition."

That will be my first painting to be exhibited in the Mall Galleries. I had a painting for Transport for London briefly shown in the Victoria and Albert Museum but that was only on show for the presentation evening. This marks the end to an increasingly successful first year for me as an artist. I am confident that next year's work in painting, writing and music will continue to improve. My Spear of Destiny is at hand! Onward!

Albion Commendation

Here is my commendation for the Albion painting, now on public display in the Keele University Gallery, in the Chancellor's Building.

Jobs

I've been working on a few paintings over the last couple of days and scanned in some for the website too. The nex job is music and I hope to compose a couple more tracks for the up and coming Twelve Seasons album, as well as work on some more sounds for IndieSFX.

The Distant Lighthouse Shining Away

The Distant Lighthouse Shining Away

I have no reason to live, except for my art.
My dreams were shattered years ago.
My eyes are heavy, sad and slow.
My paint seeps from my crippled heart.

My thoughts and feelings given shape.
Laid bare to purge.
A hook for love...

Success today would come too late.
All of my love, if I could ever have felt it, is now hate.

And so each step is hard and hard.
Each breath I give, each second, long;
and every day an end and start.
I have no reason to live, except for my art.

The Chasm Was Too Wide

I'm painting again this week and working on a few smaller images. The above is the underpainting to a picture about the lack of communication in a relationship called The Chasm Was Too Wide. I don't think I'll glaze what you can see here for this one but I need to add a leaping figure and one sitting in the chair in front of the television.

Two Roman Legionaries at Keele University

Thinking About Christmas has been delivered to Resources for Autism for future exhibition and auction for their cause.

In Keele, Two Roman Legionaries Discovering The God-King Albion Turned Into Stone has been commended by the judges. About 200 pictures are shown in Keele and only ten to twenty percent of paintings that are submitted make it past the jury into the exhibition. Of those that do, the judges award three cash prizes and three commendations. Last year Bye Bye Little Fishes, and thank you was also commended. The exhibition is on for approximately a month and open to the public in the Chancellor's Building in Keele University.

Uranos And Helios

I've just been notified that my painting Uranos and Helios will be exhibited at the Urenco exhibition in the Lowry Gallery in Salford. The exhibition will last two weeks and opens on Thursday November the 20th.

Winter's Daughter

I'm working on a lot of sound effects and music this month and have just completed a poem for The Twelve Seasons, the next album release after Stupid Computer Music. It's called Winter's Daughter.

My autumn hand
of bark is wrought.
Old age once fleeting
now is caught.

My son of spring
is winter's daughter.
My days stretch out
as years grow shorter.

Liquid Sleep Poem

Most of my paintings have associated poems, written on the back. Here is the one to Liquid Sleep.

Liquid Sleep

Tired, so tired.
Limbs sag and flow, like water.
Eyelids low.
Each breath heavy,
deep and slow.

Stars ripple, in cold black lake.
Body fuzzy, floats.
Visions drift like boats.
Fish leap.
Liquid sleep.

Prime Numbers and Quantum Mechanics

Prime Numbers and Quantum Mechanics

The more I hear about mathematics and about physics the more I think that they are the same. It's strange and surprising to me that the most obscure studies of maths seem to bear the closest relationship to the real world. To me, chaos theory and quantum mechanics in particular seem to connect.

Chaos theory is about stability and turbulence. Chaos is a rather inaccurate term for the pseudo-random turbulence that can occur in any stable system, because it implies a total lack of structure and negative human ideas like futility or panic. Chaotic turbulence might be uncontrollable, and unpredictable on a local level, but it is not random and is predictable, and controllable, on a global statistical level.

I became aware that the world is full of periods of stability then a period of chaos. Financial systems are well cited examples of systems where a long period of steady stability is interspersed with other periods of chaotic activity which eventually results in a new steady state. I began to see that this occurs in many systems, including politics, societies, people's lives, and thought patterns.

I began to think of the quantum world, the sub-atomic world where local events can be fundamentally unpredictable but global events are highly predictable in terms of probability. I thought that this too was a representation of stability and chaos. Then I thought of the number line. Some numbers are more stable than others. I thought that irrational numbers were chaotic, and rational numbers more stable. Prime numbers seemed more stable still.

I began to wonder if quantum certainty could be a prime number and uncertainty be an irrational number, and then began to consider the statistical relationship of prime to irrational numbers.

Then I began to think that the certainty and predictability of prime numbers, which like quantum events are individually unpredictable but statistically highly predictable. I began to think that quantum physics was pointing towards some problems in mathematics relating to primes, such as the Riemann hypothesis and Goldbach's conjecture.

If this is correct then the matrix mathematics of the Heisenberg uncertainty principle that explains the fundamental unpredictability of atoms can also prove the fundamental unpredictability of prime numbers, and can also prove the statistical probabilities of primes in the same way. If proved, then any problem dependent on the predictability of prime numbers can also be shown to be unprovable, but statistically likely.

Stupid Computer Music Tracks

My next album release, Stupid Computer Music, has now been prepared. The release date will be the 1st of December. The album is the first of three that I hope to release this winter and is a mix of my computer game themes, making a sort of "greatest hits" compilation, and other unreleased studio tracks of a similar melodic nature. Here is a track listing with notes:

• 1. China Syndrome (4:40) (Previously Unreleased)


• 2. Gunstorm (4:14) (Extended Vocal Version of the Gunstorm II Theme)


• 3. Music For Supermarkets (2:13) (The Outliner Theme)


• 4. Binary Race (3:12) (The Breakout Velocity Theme)


• 5. Taskforce (1:25) (The Taskforce Theme)


• 6. Cyclotrone (2:10) (The Future Pool Theme)


• 7. Deflexion (1:40) (The Gunstorm Theme)


• 8. Lost Child (1:00) (Previously Unreleased)


• 9. Yinyang (2:37) (The Yinyang Theme)


• 10. Hamster Run (3:09) (Previously Unreleased)


• 11. Galoppade (4:22) (Previously Unreleased)


• 12. Coma (1:51) (Previously Unreleased)


• 13. Journey Through Fractional Space (6:05) (Previously Unreleased)


• 14. Starflight (3:17) (Full Version of an IndieSFX Music Track)

Update

I'm busy working on a music commission at the moment and also want to write more music for IndieSFX before the month is out. I have a small number of paintings in progress but I have a few to start too, most pressingly one I'd like to paint for the Derbyshire Open next year. The cover artwork to my Stupid Computer Music CD is proving to be a challenge but the tracks have been finalised so the artwork is the next big job there.

Plans

I have a few paintings in progress but most of the painting work is winding down because of the winter light. I'm now beginning to draw and plan next year's work and begin once more on music. I've just had a commission for a suite of music for a computer game which will assume priority, and I also hope to release two or three new CD's of my own music over the next six months.

Urenco Completion

A painting for the Urenco art competition is now complete. A simple landscape about uranium.

Stone Wasp Complete

The Stone Wasp in a Mountain Lake and the Albion painting were completed today. Work on 31st Century Crucifixion was done too, and Light At The End Of A Long Dark Tunnel was framed (a difficult task for a trapezium).

Albion Work

I'm currently working on a painting of the 40-foot tall god Albion, as in William Blake's mythology. Should be mostly finished by tomorrow but it will need at least one more layer.

My Self Portrait with Electric Wasp has made it into the 2008 Stoke Open in Hanley Museum which I'm pleased with. They turned down the Untouchable Strawberry painting which I think is far superior artistically and technically an certainly took more time and skill. Perhaps this proves that everyone likes portraits. I will be painting a few more portraits next year. I need the practise.

The six months of daylight are nearly over and then I'll rapidly slow down painting, planning for next year and working on music and other things. I'd like to get back into poetry or song writing because I'm very rusty there. I will tend to IndieSFX and Bytten too.

Economic Witchcraft

Well I've now finished the first glazing layer to the Death of Socialism, one of my best paintings, so far...

Given the recent financial turmoil (which made me feel like Dali in 1929; arguably his best year), I've just been reading up about the Great Depression. The remarkable thing is that, after 80 years of study, nobody knows what really caused it or what to do if it happened again. This shows that witchcraft and economics have equal status as sciences.

The Death of Socialism

Plans were upset a bit by a painting of stone wasp, which although little bigger than a double CD, has taken five full days so far. Albion will have to wait a bit but I'll get another layer on The Death of Socialism done before next Wednesday, I'm sure.

Uranos And Helios Work

New underpaintings to Uranos and Helios (I deemed the old version inadequate) and Liquid Sleep are now complete. Tomorrow I attend Art Support and will later scan Sunset With Rose Petals before preparing it for the Stoke Open. On Thursday I should finish the Sue Ryder painting, then glaze the large "Death of Socialism" (2 days) and then "Albion" at last (3 days). These full days are very tiring and bad for my eyes but the light is fading daily so I must strike while, at least, somebody's iron is hot.

31st Century Crucifixion Glazed

The primary glazing layer to 31st Century Crucifixion is now complete. There will be a few more layers to this painting which is a bit like Spear of Destiny in appearance with some geometrical abstract objects.

Struggle is Progress

Painting is difficult, depressing and annoying. It should be. The day it becomes easy, the day you become pleased with a painting, is the day you reach the top, the day you stop learning and become stagnant. On that day, retire.

Underpainting to Three Graves Complete

The underpainting to Three Graves is now complete. It's an unusual style compared to my normal paintings and is perhaps most like my Iran/U.S.A. painting. I've also signed Sun on a Chain, a sister painting to the sunset I've recently completed. The liquid details in the canyon floor looked, in inky ghostly style, like Dali's warring figures or Nowakowksi's dramatic clouds and rocks. The technique I used amounted to a mini discovery of how simply the apparently complex paintings like Dali's Spain were probably painted.

I should have time to do the primary glaze to 31st Century Crucifixion before Art Support returns on the 10th of September.

Five Days of Wasp Painting

The Stone Wasp underpainting took longer than expected and so my schedule was set back by one day. It's a tiny picture but has already taken five full days, including the preparation work, and completion of a earlier test version. No commercial artist could afford to invest such a time on a tiny panel painting like this. Today I've completed the glazing to Sun on a Chain, a beautiful painting about a heavy heart and passion restrained.

The entry form for the Stoke Open have arrived and I'm sure to try something for this juried exhibition. With luck my recent sunset will be dry enough but I'm not sure. It's unfortunate that the Open was announced just three weeks before the submission date, hardly enough time to dry a wet oil painting, never mind paint one.

Next up for me; The underpainting to three graves which is my last big and spectacular one of the year. After that I must glaze the one for Sue Ryder, and get to work on others in time for Keele. No matter how fast I work, things are always just ready in time. Perhaps I'm fortunate though. Most oil painters who paint in layers work hard to produce ten paintings a year and I'm doing nearly fifty in just the summer months.

Work

I'm working on some pleasant smaller paintings over the next few days, and also framing some older work that has become depressed and unhappy on its own in a drawer. A stone wasp in a mountain lake was mostly underpainted today and will be concluded tomorrow. Then, a sun on a chain will be glazed (hopefully tomorrow afternoon) before doing the underpainting to an unusual bit of surreo-abstraction, a geometric interpretation of Eve eating the forbidden fruit (in this case, a perfectly square apple).

Once those are completed I'll start the underpainting to my last big painting of the year, Three Graves.

Joy

Sunset glazing, complete! Hurrah!

Colour Study for Three Graves Complete

A colour study for Three Graves, my last of the "big" paintings of the years has been completed today. It's a surrealist-cubist sort of picture but rather complex because it includes ink-blot like figures. I'll begin glazing the first big one tomorrow, Sunset with Petalliforms which should take 3-4 days. I've just heard that the Stoke Open is on this year so I'll enter something for that.

Painting Away

Uranos and Helios is now underpainted. I'm unsure about the results because I had intended to paint this alla-prima and so chose some of the more transparent pigments. For the past two days I've been underpainting the Sue Ryder painting, currently entitled Insecurity Grasping for Freedom. At the moment I'm waiting for the mordant to tack on the gilding for 31st Century Crucifixion which will, soon, include 24kt. gold.

There's only about six weeks left of my painting season and I'll get back to music then, and planning for my first solo exhibition which is pencilled in for June 2009 in the Lyceum Theatre, Crewe. I probably won't do any painting in the last quarter of this year.

The Death of Socialism

The underpainting to The Death of Socialism is now complete, in record time considering the size of this one. Next up; the landscape for Urenco and the Sue Ryder picture.

Albion Underpainting Complete

The underpainting to the large Albion painting is now complete. The five large, and hopefully spectacular paintings of 2008 are now well underway. They are "Two Roman Legionaries Discovering The God-King Albion Turned Into Stone" (now underpainted, this will need at least three subsequent layers for special effect reasons). "Sunset With Petalliforms" (underpainted, awaiting primary glaze). "31st Century Crucifixion" (underpainted, awaiting gilding and first colouring layer; this picture includes both gold and will have a few layers of jewel-like colours like pure ultramarine). "The Death of Socialism By Its Own Hand" (to be underpainted over the next few days). "Three Graves" which is prepared but untouched. The last one is sort of surrealist-cubist and might be delayed due to more urgent work.

I've spent the last few days planning and preparing more ideas too. I hope to submit a painting into the annual Sue Ryder charity auction and have planned a picture specifically for this. If it doesn't work out beautifully I'll submit something else. There's also a competition for uranium enrichment company Urenco's calendar. They want a pretty landscape and I'm sure I can do one (but of course I'll make it a little bit unique, a bit different from any other entry... the fact that Urenco enrich uranium for atomic devices inspired me; but I must ultimately paint a pleasant pastoral landscape). One for next year's Derbyshire open is pending too. These competition ones must have priority. I have about five other paintings waiting too.

I'll need to work non-stop to do all of these by the end of September. In October I want to do music, and I need to get some sound effect work done.

Battles

I'm having an extremely extremely frustrating summer of painting. Most of it had gone yet very few pictures have turned out well and even the simplest ones have taken far longer than needed. Some that have taken a mere two days have needed two months, and numerous failed versions. Sometimes only the simple fill-in ideas have worked at all. I often think I'm going backwards and that 2007 was better. Yet, I will continue to bang my head against a brick wall and persist in painting.

Hopefully the better paintings will finally become completed in the last dash. The larger ones in progress are coming along and I have plans for several smaller ones in my more classic style of mountain forms with dramatic figures, skies and surrealist objects.

Painting Progress

The underpainting to 31st Century Crucifixion is now complete. It will need at least two more layers however. Next week's work is the main glazing layer of a picture where a tape measure measures life, it's all a bit Frida Kahlo. Two other small ones are nearly finished and need scanning or very minor work.

My next local exhibition starts in a week at Bickerton. It's quite a big show for a small village, showing about 250 pictures last year.

Politics

It hit me today that both the political left and right are missing the point. The early Socialists (in the 19th century that is) didn't object to the rich, they objected to the lazy. After watching The Cheeky Girls talking about how hard working people should spend spend spend, it struck me that most people equate money with work, and equate more money with harder work, when in reality this hardly ever happens, in fact it's more common for the rich to do hardly any work and for poor people to work like crazy for very little. The aim of socialism, and of capitalism for it to work best, shouldn't be wealth redistribution, it should be to ensure that people who work get paid according to the amount of work they do, and that is all. In this respect, the political left should be closer to capitalists than the right. The class war is nothing to do with rich and poor; it should be the lazy vs. the workers (although Karl Marx, the laziest famous man I can think of, might disagree with my analysis). Perhaps I'll write a new manifesto.

31st Century Crucifixion Progress

I've now finished the second day of underpainting 31st Century Crucifixion. Time is tight due to other commitments (not to mention other paintings and my full schedule). I hope to do this in five days but it's difficult for such a large and complex painting. The picture is about the victory of technology over religion and the ultimately hollow awe and worship of technology. The picture uses abstraction to remove emotional content from the composition and juxtaposes that against more traditional figurative forms. It is one of my first paintings to directly cross the abstract and the surreal, in a way that Pleasant Dreams does for example. The finished painting will incorporate 24ct gold and perhaps gemstones.

Nine Hours of Nothing

Well I'm stuck in a production rut at the moment. Yesterday for 9 hours I painstakingly painted my stone wasp in a desolate mountain lake but so messed up the colours that I'll have to restart from scratch on another day. Dropping off my strange portrait to Birmingham on Sunday also got in the way of my working week (normally Friday to Tuesday) so I've done nothing but work and produced nothing. I wrote a poem that sums it up, so that's something!

I'm tired of doing nothing.
Nothing all day long.
I woke and worked and worked and worked
and now the day is gone.

I've worked all day for nothing,
and now I have a lot.
I've got no something here to show though;
nothing's all I've got.

Boring

Here are the lyrics to my latest song, penned just this night and my first in a while. It's called Boring.

I have a lot of exciting friends.
They follow all of the latest trends.
They talk about all the things they do,
but, I just find the things they do boring.

They talk about all the cars they drive.
They talk about all the skies they dive.
The watch the action in action films
but, I just find the things they watch boring.

For life itself is boring.
Days go on for ever.
Life has become boring
for me.
My days are filled with nothing
since you went away.
Everything is boring
to me.

My friends are living exciting lives.
They live them with their exciting wives.
They talk at parties and people laugh
but, I just find the things they say boring.

My friends have hobbies that people like.
They watch the football and mountain bike.
They listen to all the latest hits
but, I just find the things they do boring.

For life itself is boring.
Days go on for ever.
Life has become boring
for me.
My days are filled with nothing
since you went away.
Everything is boring
to me.

I sit at home and I read your books.
I light a candle and watch it flux.
I get a phone call from my best friend
but, I just find the things he says boring.

And so my days slowly drag to weeks.
All of my fluid joints turn to creaks,
and all my colour just fades to grey
and, everything I think about bores me.

For life itself is boring.
Days go on for ever.
Life has become boring
for me.
My days are filled with nothing
since you went away.
Everything is boring
to me.

Update

The self portrait is now complete and drying, as is a second Starving Scarecrow. At the moment I'm underpainting Sunset with Petalliforms, a picture that was planned and prepared last November. 31st Century Crucifixion is ready but I need to paint a detailed colour study first. My skills appear to be improving with each finished picture and I'm learning more about framing and decoration too. I hope to customise more frames in future. But enough of paint work!

I've added an events page to my website, which I'll probably take down after the exhibition season. The two paintings exhibited in Nantwich church sold, making a total of five sales since the start of May. As I type, two paintings are on display in Nantwich book shop too, with hopefully five of my best to be shown in the last exhibition of the summer at Bickerton.

31st Century Crucifixion Plans

Today I've prepared the underdrawing to 31st Century Crucifixion, one of the few large sized painting planned for this summer (by large, I mean about 50 to 100cm edges). This one is about the destruction of emotion by technology and uses a mix of geometrical shapes and more realistic organic forms. Other pictures in progress are; A balloon released by a small child long long ago; Alain the sad bathysphere, which is about working in isolation under pressure; Light at the end of a long dark tunnel, uses a trapezium shaped panel; a second version of the starving scarecrow picture; a picture about the changes within post war Britain depicting the god Albion; a sad construction called Arrow stabbed vine; a surrealist portrait of hypnotist Derren Brown; and a new self portrait. There are 3 or 4 others ready but not yet started too.

With luck all of my painting for the year will be mostly concluded by October allowing me to get some work done musically. A long standing project with my best music to date, currently called the 12 seasons, awaits completion and I'd like to work on a second symphonic work like The Spiral Staircase.

I must remain confident that all of these works will eventually be seen/heard, and I do so with an increasing and glorious certainty.

Glory and Riches are Assured

Glory and riches are assured, as each day gets better. Work is now continuing on Judith Beheading Holofernes, a major picture that will be important for learning processes, a bit like Genesis of Terror in that respect. The Bunbury exhibition is on at the moment and I'll be participating in two more this month and two next, including one juried show by the Royal Birmingham Society of Artists. Although I'm full of artistic ideas and selling paintings I feel I'm neglecting music. Some of the tracks for the half-complete album about four seasons sound very good. Ultimately however, nobody, or at least very few people, would hear it. No sales of The Spiral Staircase is disappointing because I know some people out there will like it. Perhaps I could try promoting my music at art exhibitions.

Rhino

A poem for the Rhino painting:

Through his eye we see
a wilderness,
grass,
dry bones,
the sky.

We see a tree,
born,
then die.

I see you,
through his eye.

New Frames, New Music, New Inventions

Framing today and new frames for The Art of Painting, Spear of Destiny and one of the medium sized ones, either Dead Bird or No Good Ideas. The second glazing layer to the curious Judith Beheading Holofernes picture has been completed and tomorrow I begin work on a large painting of Albion.

The exhibition season is here now too with my first paintings of the year on show over the weekend in the Cheshire village of Marbury. Soon after that I'll be exhibiting in Bunbury, and entering a picture for an exhibition in Birkenhead.

Things have been quiet regarding music and game development although some new music tracks and sound effects for IndieSFX are being compiled; it's normal for such things to be constantly in progress with a steady train of new sound content there.

New inventions include a sonar proof coating for submarine equipment that consists of lots of fine hairs, like a sea cucumber. A slow but quiet engine would be important, a hydrodynamic drive perhaps.

Fifty Seven Channels

My latest song. Actually I wrote this a few months ago but had to reconstruct it from the chaotic pile of 100+ papers of unedited music fragments! Musically it is a four chord punk rock song.

Fifty Seven Channels

I liked to watch the goggle box when I was young.
I'd stay up late,
and it was great.
We only had the B.B.C. and I.T.V.
but I was hooked.
I sat and looked.

But now the times have changed.
I stare with shock at the digital age.

Fifty seven channels and there's nothing ever on.
Fifty seven channels and there's nothing ever on.
Fifty seven channels and there's nothing ever on.
Fifty seven channels and there's nothing ever on.
Fifty seven channels and there's nothing ever on.
Fifty seven channels and there's no-thing ev-er on.

I didn't mind the adverts when I was a kid.
They were not long,
or am I wrong?
But nowadays it's bloody adverts all the time.
It drives me mad!
It makes me sad

at how the times have changed.
Is this the choice of the capital age?

Fifty seven channels and there's nothing ever on.
Fifty seven channels and there's nothing ever on.
Fifty seven channels and there's nothing ever on.
Fifty seven channels and there's nothing ever on.
Fifty seven channels and there's nothing ever on.
Fifty seven channels and there's no-thing ev-er on.

What happened to the dramas that were written well,
with depth and scope.
Today's a joke,
for now we only get things with celebrities
who no-one knows
on "talent" shows!

Yes how the times have changed.
I check the guide and then cry with rage!

Fifty seven channels and there's nothing ever on.
Fifty seven channels and there's nothing ever on.
Fifty seven channels and there's nothing ever on.
Fifty seven channels and there's nothing ever on.
Fifty seven channels and there's nothing ever on.
Fifty seven channels and there's no-thing ev-er on.

(spoken)
Right that's it!
I've had it with this rubbish.
No more set top box.
No more scart leads.

But wait, what's that I see...
a million new channels for a one off fee...

Now I have a million there is surely something on.
Now I have a million there is surely something on.
Now I have a million there is surely something on.
Now I have a million there is surely something on.
Now I have a million there is sure-ly some-thing on!

Art of Painting Progress

Work is still stalwartly continuing on The Art of Painting, with one more day's work of this layer remaining. My next task will be to complete the underdrawing and initial preparation for a new Albion figure, then start on the Judith painting, which will be my largest and most complex painting to date. With luck, I'll try both of the figures for the Threadneedle Figurative Prize, but time is against me. I'd rather produce one good painting than rush one though. If quality demands it then without question I will miss the deadline and not bother with the contest.

Painting Update

Alas! My 2D/3D self portrait was not dry enough to allow the necessary layering before the RBSA competition deadline, so I must revisit the picture at a later and more leisurely time.

I am now glazing the art of painting picture, which, because it features a self-portrait at its heart, I may just enter into the RBSA competition itself. The Art of Painting is perhaps too bold a title though, so I might rename it.

Spear of Destiny Glazed

My schedule for the next 4 weeks is on track. Spear of Destiny is glazed with it's primary (first) glazing layer. It's not a big picture but has taken 7 painting days so far, mainly due to the large amount of detail. The transhumanic picture is signed too, so that's one for the website when it is dry enough to scan. This is rather a simple picture, and like Waiting For B.T. was painted from one instant-flash type idea, so could be called truly surreal (although I was musing on a specific theme... I'm not sure if that counts. Breton can you help?)

Next up, an intermediate glazing layer of the RBSA portrait painting which should take Sun, Mon and Tues. Toc toc toc.

M. C. Escher

I will start work on the underpainting of my latest painting tomorrow, a complex portrait that explores perspective which looks a little like an M. C. Escher image (as such, adding emotion to negate that awful "cleverness" that his pictures solely emit was important).

That, and seven other paintings are now in varying stages of completeness; three have been sketched and await underpainting, four await the first and most important glazing layer, and one, The Joyous Birth of the All-New Transhumanic Super Beings is in need of the merest and most zephyrous and translimnetic of top glazings.

Busyness

Well it's been a generally depressing week. A foot injury and stress over the need for a quick but impressive R.B.S.A. portrait design has meant a delay in completing other paintings. I've not finished a picture since January despite working on pictures solidly since the start of the year. Today I've transferred the sketch to the new Judith-Holofernes painting (eight and a half hour's tedious work), and also done the same for the quickly envisaged RBSA picture. I plan to start the R.B.S.A. picture this Friday. Now I need £70 worth of painting supplies. No matter how much I buy I seem to be short of supplies. Am I alone in this?

To do: Underpaint the R.B.S.A. portrait (7-10 days), first glaze to Art of Painting (8 days), underpaint Judith (7-10 days), top glaze The Joyous Birth of the All-New Transhumanic Super Beings (1/2 day), glaze Rhino (2-3 days), glaze Christmas painting (1-2 days), plan The Death of Cleopatra by her Own Hand (6 days - at best - ideally spread over 4 months but I haven't the time because ideally I will enter this into the Threadneedle competition due in June), trace the Crucifiction underdrawing (1 boring day), and Escape (1 day).

There's lots more beyond that too. It proves that advance planning can be stress inducing. I'm left with no freedom, despite having as much as I take. At times like this I glance at Raphael, who died in his 30s after painting loads of huge pictures. I wonder if stress and anxiety like I feel caused his premature death; and conclude yes.

So, the choice for tomorrow is to trace something or paint the Christmas one.

Limping On

Well so far I've had a rather rubbish week; stressful because of a new painting for the R.B.S.A. Portrait Competition and I wanted to design something worthy of a contest with only 6 weeks until the deadline. The stress probably contributed to a foot injury that has left me limping and unable to walk any great distance. The steel panel I bought for the portrait is too slick for the primer, and I've spent too much on drawing paper that is too poor quality for my use.

On the plus side I've just read Cennini's fascinating and in parts amusing book. It's made me want to try some glair/oil emulsion recipes. My studies into spike and lavender oil have been revealing too.

Now though, after starting on Sunday with a mere idea sketch, the portrait underdrawing is complete. It's a complex picture, as complex as my Art Of Painting, or something like Leda Atomica by Dali. Four days for such as work is really a record. There are no colour plans or studies yet, which I must do. The underpainting to this great work must begin on Good Friday and may take ten days.

Work Being Completed

I seem to be working like mad but producing few visible results. However, I've got a few paintings in progress that should be finished this month. "The Joyous Birth of the All New Transhumanic Super Beings" is a rather abstracted picture about genetics. A Christmas card one is due, too, that's the second version of this one because the support was poor and paint application was too thick and I became worried about the long term health of the picture.

A second version of an old painting called "The Art of Painting" will probably be glazed this month too. The original was one of my first complicated compositions and was a little ambitious for the time (a mere 18 months ago). This version looks better in the underpainting already. A second version of a 2005 painting called Rhino is in progress in the underpainting stage too. That one is because I liked the first and now think I can paint it "better" (although the original is still rather nice).

Finally I have a very surreal painting currently called Arrow Stabbed Vine. This is causing frustrations. After weeks, admittedly of mostly staring at it, I dislike parts. Parts of it niggle and annoy me. I have an insane tendency to want to restart a painting from scratch instead of "correct" it so I'll probably do that. Full pictures that become studies in this way generally lead to better paintings. I'm learning that imaginary objects demand studies and so I've done a few pencil studies for this one (pictured) which should help fix a few of the earlier insecurities.

Song Work

I've been working on music for the past few days, in particular the tracks for the long-awaited concept album The End and The Beginning. Some of my planned tracks will have to go by the wayside unfortunately because I can't get them to sound right and I'm fed up with working on this project which is about three years old! The latest song from this, Like a Ragdoll Falls, has been entered into the U.K. National Song Writing Contest. My entry form for this year's Royal Academy Summer Exhibition is now posted too, and I've already submitted a painting for the John Moore's prize too.

Painting Update

I'm currently working on two pictures. The daylight hours are taken up with a picture called The Art of Painting, a complex picture which includes a few different styles of painting including one of Raphael's seraphs, a cave painting and an abstract version of the same figure, and a cubist representation of The Procuress by Dirck van Baburen. I painted a version of this 18 months ago but I thought it deserved a new version because my abilities have changed considerably since then. The other picture I'm working on is in the planning stage and is a large figure painting depicting the beheading of Holofernes, a subject painted perhaps most famously by Caravaggio. My surrealist interpretation is less about Judith and perhaps more about another famous painter of this subject, Artemisia Gentileschi.

Informative Surrealism

Two new underpaintings done this week. One is a surreal construction that's a bit similar to the "Strawberry" painting. A desert in folds, a vine, an arrow and a rose feature. The second is less visually impressive and based on a simple idea about losing creative ability and features a distraught figure in the desert facing a dandelion that has just lost its seeds. I've decided to enter the John Moore's biannual competition in Liverpool, although it was a difficult choice because I'm developing at a good pace and will be in a much better position to produce world class art in two years time.

My newest idea on art theory is something without a name at the moment. Whereas surrealism is expressive, designed to express the subconscious of the painter, this instead tries to trick or insert ideas into the subconscious of the viewer, by the use of visual clues (shapes, words...) that the subconscious mind alone will notice. The Kate Bush as a Winter Tree painting was one of my first examples of this. It was not surreal, not from my dreams or subconscious, but designed to have enough of a likeness there for the viewer's subconscious to see, but not conscious mind.

So, It Has Come To This Poem

A new poem, written (as many of my poems are) for one of my latest paintings.

So, It Has Come To This

So, in this dead sea.
Sky red with sunset's end.
Ice floats by the concrete shells,
the empty markers of this hell.

So, in this hot air.
Choked with carbon's green haze.
Smoke on water, flows,
like acid clothes.

Sea sighs.
Fall then lift.
Fish bodies drift and kiss.
Chemical stained beach rocks hiss.
So, it has come to this.

So Many Years Ago

Another new song. This one is swung and a bit like a Madness song. I'd like to record this but it might be tricky for me.

So Many Years Ago

I still see your, green eyes
as I was speaking to you that day.
Back then I felt, nothing.
I feel it now more, forgive me for the pain
my words caused you.
My curse was made

on that day so many years ago
so many years ago.
but that was so many years ago
so many years ago.
Dry tears, I know, but I can't let it go.

What's retrospect, but an
arrow of knowledge, point of regret.
Who could expect, in those days
you were the lesson, I can't forget
I hear me say...
You blink and turn

away-ay so many years ago
so many years ago.
but that was so many years ago
so many years ago.
Dry tears, I know, but I can't let it go.

(solo)

Now I live there, with an
aristocratic romantic air.
I like to think, that I'm
a bit eccentric, or int'resting to meet
but it's a joke.
Inside I'm broke

from that day so many years ago
so many years ago.
but that was so many years ago
so many years ago.
Too long, I know, I did not sense
the wrong I sowed and now I can't let go.

Mary Brian and The Spiral Staircase

I've been painting all week (my weeks usually start on Friday and end Tuesday) and the main glazing layer of my new Morning Hour painting is now complete. I've also signed two others, So It Has Come To This (is about pollution and is similar to The Flute Player, the football one and other complex ones) and Mary Brian Twenty Years On which is a simple portrait. That makes 3 paintings done in 2008 so far. I'll put them on my website once scanned, which will take until they dry sufficiently.

Meanwhile I've also finished a new track to The Twelve Seasons, the extended version of an old musical idea called The Four Seasons of Dance. This time there is a mix of tracks a moods, around the theme of seasons; three for each. Most of the tracks are done now, only two left to write. This should be my second musical release of 2008, with the new Spiral Staircase due for release on March the first.

Space, Love

I love this song because of the ascending melody (okay, you can't hear that, but the chords climb, a bit like The Beatles' Here There and Everywhere). I had the idea of brainstorming concept albums with simple track list of titles as a way of coming up with song ideas. One album was typically sci-fi and called "Journey to Elsodus IV" and "Space Love" was pencilled in as a track.

Space, Love

Reach up and float to me,
breathe in my space, love
free from your gravity.

See the stars weep in loveless skies.
Breathe in my space, love,
red love in my gold eyes.

(solo)

Kiss me on liquid skin.
Touch me with pure love.
Invite your stone soul in.

See the sun die in frozen skies.
Behold by space, love,
behind my almond eyes.

The Invisible Man

My first song of 2008, number 318 in total.

The Invisible Man

No parts.
No broken clockwork heart.
No bits of hair to, depart.
That's me.
That gap in the crowd.
A snowflake inside, a cloud.

There's no-one to believe me.
There's nothing left to leave me.
My body is clear as air.
There's no eye that can see me.
I blinked and I was gone.
I woke up to find myself
invisible.

Too bad.
My happy life went sad.
I've turned from obscure, to mad.
I call,
but make no sound at all.
The mirror just shows, the wall.

There's no-one to believe me.
There's nothing left to leave me.
My body is clear as air.
There's no eye that can see me.
I blinked and I was gone.
I woke up to find myself
invisible.

The Birds Made Song

My latest poem; inspired by the thought that birds seem to sing for no reason.

In day of sun, and night of dust,
they raise their voices, and they must
defy the need for food and lust.
The birds sing art, at dawn and dusk.

No food, no love, no sex, no home.
No need, no purpose to exist.
No future, no security.
No tasks to tick upon a list.

In structures made with beaks and wood,
they forsook food, and cursed their blood.
Today in fields of death, and mud,
the birds made song, because they could.