A mid-work day, as most of tomorrow's performance is worked out. Everything feels positive and I'm ready to work on lots of new music, new performances, and books over the coming months. As I wrote to Tor this morning, music seems to be going back to the state of Beethoven's day, where artists make little from selling it, instead making money by performing. Beethoven was too deaf to perform; I contest that this was a secret of his success, forced him to compose more and more impressive works. Ludwig made money from commissions and pupils, as well as selling sheet music, typically in one-off deals. He was world famous but still generally impoverished for most of his life.
Beethoven's musical legacy is in his compositions, even if these didn't do him many favours of wealth or comfort in his lifetime. Liszt, Paganini, Mendelssohn, and many other musicians of the 19th century made fortunes by performing, as contemporary musicians do, but their recorded (composed) legacy didn't reach Beethoven's height. Perhaps the record era of the last 20th century was a blip. Perhaps recorded music will never again earn livings for music-stars, and we must again perform, have pupils and accept commissions for special occasions, like any artist.
I however love recorded music, and see the album as a valuable artwork in itself, like a film, an opportunity for unique drama. How wasted most albums are, even mine, on vague and ethereal music of shallow silliness. I feel again like I'm at a point o rebirth, a dawn of new work and want to sweep everything that came before aside to start on serious work.
I spent the morning on music paperwork; registering my Marius Fate album with various music authorities. There is so much paperwork in music, and so far I've been so unrewarded for it! I've been registered my music officially with PPL since 2007 and have, to date, received only 2p in royalties for the 200+ tracks thus filed, but, if I ever have a hit, this work will be necessary.
In the afternoon I started work on Future Pool and Future Snooker modifications, making improvements to these games in preparation for a possible future Steam release. This involves new art and a new logo for the games, changes to select the ideal screen mode, updating the game to the latest version of my Hector game engine, adding X-Box controller support, a new manual, new marketing artwork, a new promotional video for each game.
I despise computer programming, the act makes me ill, but the alternative is to have my games hidden and unplayed. Without my changes they are impossible to ever be played, so I feel that I have to do something with them. Most of my 30 or so games have sold less than 10 copies, so even if the games do function, the effort is close to being for nothing, but I feel a strange compulsion to keep working on them, they are almost like children. Every few years I seem to spend a few weeks updating my ancient back-catalogue, hating the process more and more with each visit, but like an obsessive Captain Ahab, a Fitzcarraldo, I must battle through the trees every so often to strive for an ethereal goal.
Perhaps I'm a little negative and dramatic here. Future Snooker is one of my late period games, and a new feature coming to Steam will allow people to play against each other online, so this is a good time for both of these games.
Onward we push.
