The week ends and I feel its been disappointing, like so often I seem to work non-stop and achieve very little. The Cromwell portrait was exhausting and I'm unhappy with it. I've worked on The Modern Game songs for endless hours, yet they feel hardly any better than a week ago. My best creative act was perhaps the simple New York music piece for ArtSwarm, and the Marius Fate branding is fine too, for what that might matter.
I suppose that there are always fragments of good things to find in the week, and trying the portrait, trying anything, has benefits, but progress on anything seems interminably slow. I had a sleepless night and woke after 10am. I feel more like a struggling music artist than an painter now, and more isolated than ever. Perhaps I need to listen to Beethoven again.
My main job for the month was to complete The Modern Game, so I might push on with the cover artwork. That, at least, needs completing, and most of the songs are in far better condition than in the old version, so that is a positive. Sometimes, the hour after hour after hour of work on something can improve it. Perhaps the instant, time limited, completion of something like my New York music makes it feel like a better artistic achievement. I remember that Life Beyond Mars, one of the Modern Game tracks, was originally improvised and sang in a few hours for ArtsLab and felt great at the time. Now, the recorded version which is undoubtedly considerably better in every way, doesn't seem so because I've worked on it for so many months.
Life is dripping away. I must keep hammering at the rock face of art in my solitude, whipped by my unstoppable will and drive to do my best with my thin energies and short time on earth.
Onward.
