Friday, June 07, 2019

Emotions and Pies

Awoke late, after a long sleep, to a slow day.

I began by trying to write some music for the ArtSwarm 'Pies' episode. I had decided to write some music based on the number pi, each note representing a digit of pi, like the music from my album of the same name. I loaded up a few of those pieces, and explored with changing them around. This took a long time and I remained unhappy with the results. Perhaps I needed to be certain what I wanted first, but in anything creative, actually trying something is almost always worth it.

I gave up after an hour, my head aching with strange, listless tiredness, the world seemed like a grey liquid that I had to fight though. In these circumstances the best course is to think without emotion, like Spock from Star Trek. I make a list of what needs to be done and consider every item logically, work out any problems and solutions, and make a list of steps to complete. In all lists I try to tackle the hardest and most unpleasant task first, after that, everything is easier.

I am always mistrustful of feelings, those archaic simian messages that flow up, down, all over the place at seemingly random. Some people say that the point of life is to be happy - how ridiculous! If this were possible, everyone would have attained it. Happiness is, at very least, a change of state rather than a state in itself, and besides, happiness and contentment are dangerous for productivity. How careless happy people are! Emotions are empathic messages. If we're on our own, I wonder if emotions are our cells talking to us? I once thought that our cells think of us, our self, as a sort of god, and perhaps feelings of holiness are actually messages from our cells, tiny animals in worshipful awe of the unknown body in which they live and work.

My list involved adding my portrait series to my website so that is now done. I had planned to paint lots of these, and might, but for the moment there are five. The third one, Tempus Fugit, bothered me a bit on the rightmost eye, the eyebrow parts too thin, so I grabbed the painting and touched it up, only adding a few tiny details, tiny, tiny hairs. This made all the difference, now it is complete.

Tempus fugit - yes! Tonight I must battle with 'Pies'. I'm off to London tomorrow. I must aim for a Pie breakthrough in two hours. How can I inject emotion and meaning into that subject?