Absolute Determinism and Stoicsm

Whenever I face a setback or disappointment, I am comforted by my beliefs in absolute determinism, that I was always destined to act as I did at that time, that every action by ourselves and by others is unavoidable. Today I watched a few minutes of the film The Pink Panther. It was always my destiny to watch it at that time. Now that I've seen it, I've mentioned it here, which was also inevitable. Whether I achieve fame and fortune, or endure a life of struggle, I am unable to resist destiny either way. How can we align the concept of freedom with the truth of determinism?

Stoicism was forged by a slave with no control over his life, yet most people feel that they are in control of their lives; it's almost the arrogant cry of the modern human that we are not slaves. Yet I am certain that we are all slaves to fate, and that we never have any control over any aspect of the universe. This might be a good coping mechanism for an unhappy life but would it dampen a happy one? Yes, if the happiness were created by a feeling of control or dominance, which itself is, at best, a false belief, and at worst, exploiting others who are unaware of this truth.

Generally, people prefer to be happy and live a lie, people will prefer ignorance and peace, rather than be disturbed by the truth of their powerlessness and unimportance. Yet, for me, knowledge of the actual truth creates a unique form of happiness. Perhaps this is what Buddhists call Nirvana.

Backups

I spent today working on my annual computer backups. I back up my data every month, quarter, and year. This is also an opportunity to neaten and file everything neatly. Working efficiently is about storing everything efficiently; not too much of anything, not too little, and knowing where everything is. My system has evolved over about 20 years. I order my computer as follows:

1. Archive
This contains software downloads, the set-up programs. These are generally named including the version eg. v201 for 2.01 - that halp know what version everything is. It's divided into Audio (audio software and plugins), Comms (ie. internet software), FileSystem (mostly drivers, and also things like antivirus software or file tools), Games (PC and emulator based, plus any downloaded updates), Graphics (graphics software and fonts), Programming (compilers), Science (science software, simulations), Text (word processors etc.)

2. Audio
Contains music albums (and albums in progress). Albums themselves contain all files needed; their artwork, source recordings and dubs, 32-bit master recordings, final files, edits etc. This 'Audio' folder also contains music (or any audio) downloads ordered by year (so this can grow neatly), current mp3 player contents, my sound effects and audio recordings archive, scores (sheet music), the archive of past ArtsLab programmes, and all of my Prometheus and NoiseStation songs/projects.

3. Comms
This contains my websites plus other web-based material like backups of SQL databases.

4. Events
A list of 'events', live performances etc. Each folder contains the material used (scripts) plus any posters, sounds or images needed for the show, plus any final photographs or videos of the event. Like music albums, paintings, writings etc., each item is coded by a number and a name and is a folder. There is a 'master index' so that the date of every event or item, plus any details about it are recorded. I do this for every creative endeavour; this diary acts as a store of all essential information, so that if/when I need to do something similar, I can look it up, but I generally also write my thoughts and analysis about the project or event, or any other relevant information because this makes it into an invaluable learning resource.

5. Inventions
I haven't made that many, but I file what I have.

6. Pictures
Artworks. I have 300dpi scans of every painting and visual artwork (over 1000 to date). These folders also contains all of the source material; reference images, sketches, photographs etc. for each artwork. Works in progress are also filed here, as well as all photographs (ordered by year) for general non-work events (Christmas, holidays, etc.). I also keep thumbnail images of all of my paintings (which are often needed), promotional graphical material for my music, a special folder of social media images in the right size and format, all website graphics, plus an extensive reference library of images. The latter is increasingly redundant now that many free-to-use and good quality images are online.

7. Programming. Source code for programming projects, games, SDK downloads, libs and includes, offline documentation. This also includes a full version archive of all of my projects in a ready-to-run state, as well as all of their data, from graphics and sound assets, to box-art and other promotional graphics.

8. Text
Any text-based files. Includes all of my poems and songs (now filed and stored together), plus folders for major text projects such as books, essays, short stories etc. there are over 200 of those to date. All of my old emails are archived here too, plus 'Documents' which is a general storage space for files, ordered year by year. This includes entry forms, books, scripts, and generally anything written by someone else that I want to keep. 'Notes' is also filed year by year but generally contains things I create. The Text folder also contains any manuals for household items (eg. the microwave), scans of old handwritten letters and replies, contracts and legal documents (eg. birth certificate), accounts, bus timetables, a backup of this and all of my blogs, a backup of internet shortcuts and Facebook data, and other things which are used reguarly and sometimes updated - such as letterheads or templates.

Text also contains the master indices of everything, which are perhaps the most important thing. My visual art diary, for example, is over 30,000 lines of plain text; 16 years work to date. Every painting and artwork, poem, song, album, video, computer program or anything else is coded and filed here, generally with a lot of extra information (the albums index, for example lists each album with track list, plus ISRC codes, credits etc. for each song, liner notes etc. as well as all necessary publisher information).

9. Videos
Short films, music videos, plus clipart and bits of video that might be useful (10 second countdown, test cards etc.).

Any creative folder (eg. albums, songs, paintings, writings etc.) is divided into 'Archive' where complete and finished items are stored; 'Inuse' where projects in progress reside; and 'Current' which contains clipart and a small number of common items which are generally used regularly.

Happily, today's filing and ordering is now complete. On we march to 2021.

The Year Closes

In the night I designed the perfect psychological experiment to detect and measure racist and sexist bias. I hypothesize that racism and sexism are inherent parts of being human and that trying to avoid or deny these impulses can make matters worse. This experiment will prove or disprove this, or at least be a way to measure this bias. I must document the methodology.

A good day today. Completed a good 30 minutes of vocal training, certianly my best vocal work to date. There seems to be some sort of cut off point or mode that puts a wall up at high G, when at other times I can stretch to A, A#, B and C with relative ease. Perhaps this is tension, I can't be sure, it feels like some sort of dead end in a maze, that can, at other times, be circumvented. Anyway, today's results were very good. Oh that I could train for longer but the situation here makes that nearly impossible. Oh for a house of freedom and peace where Deborah and I can live.

I completed my entry for the Cheshire Prize for Literature and have sorted computer files for the end of year, tidying, neatening. I perform an annual backup (well, several) on Dec 31st, this takes all day, and now I'm starting to prepare it a day earlier.

Onwards we roll our rock.

Room with a Door

Wrote the first draft of a short play, Room with a Door, for the Cheshire Prize for Literature. The theme of the prize is the impact of Covid, the lockdowns etc. rather a dry subject. My idea is relatively simple, a play about being confined to a room with two protagonists; a sort of cross between Waiting for Godot and Satre's No Exit. It's sufficient. I'd rather try a play, it's more interesting to me than a poem, and is good practice for any future writing. Contests like this are ideal practice in a new field. I feed off the idea of competition. As with any creative work, the key is drama and a point of impact, a twist, and ideally lots of little ones along the way. I need to redraft it... one key principle is image; to find the key scene, point of impact and focus on that, as Hitchcock did. As of now, there is no action at all, it's all text.

Also converted my poems/songs of 2020, ready to add them to my website. I merged poems and song lyrics last year, I think, as I often combine the two but they appear separately on the site... ideally I need to check and update all of them (there are 1770 songs/poems to date) as I'll have inevitably made changes and corrections, but I rarely make them on the website too... they all need checking by hand.

I've had a boost to my Spotify listener numbers, it seems due to the electro-pop I made with Tor back in 2007 or so. I expect things to grow hugely over the next few years. Everything I've made before seems very out of date, simple, synthetic, computer game music... not like the music I want to do, or can do, or will do. I really must produce more new music. I must obliterate my old work. I feel the same about my painting, my old paintings, which are so crude compared to my current abilities. How frustrating each day is! I feel so capable of so many good things yet I feel that my 'old rubbish' gets the attention, as though this defines me. The production of new work seems to be interminably slow. Well, I expect all artists feel this way. I feel more excited than ever about my future work.

Onward!

Sisyphus Guitar

A good day, I'm full of ideas and enthusiasm today.

Incorporated the new guitar recordings to 'I, Sisyphus' and recorded all new solo parts for this complex track, 7 or 8 new sections in all. This is good, it's good guitar training to play more. It slows the recording process down, but all playing is good practice and these takes were done more quickly and better than first time.

Apart from vocals, and the final tweaks (which can take days), the album is complete. It is certainly a technical step up from Burn of God and The Dusty Mirror because of the much greater incorporation of live parts vs. sequenced parts. Some of my albums, The Anatomy of Emotions perhaps, Cycles, Music of Poetic Objects, have quite a lot of live parts but those are all generally solo piano sections. About half of this album will be recorded and with a much greater variety of live instruments, and of course improved vocals; vocals and guitar these have been my central focus in 2020. I'm eager to finish it... to create more... and to push experimental boundaries.

I lay awake for hours in the night. I need to complete the Jabberwocky video next, and produce something for the Cheshire Prize of Literature, and something for the Ruth Borchard Self-Portrait prize; those, and recording the vocals for Sisyphus are my goals for January. Four short weeks; too short. I also need to work on The Infinite Forest.

All of the easy things, the things in progress must be completed so that I can create new things. There can be a lull, a sort of deadness when there is time only for new things so it's good to have several overlapping projects, ideally in different media, so I'll try to make the most of the mix of video, writing, painting and music. This is my ideal.

I've performed some basic singing training today but I feel too anxious and self-conscious when practicing. Yet, I must at least train, and will keep doing something daily.

Streaming vs. CDs

My spirit and lust for life has felt crushed by others today. It will return.

At 5pm or so I started to record new guitar parts for I, Sisyphus; the main backing guitars. I have recorded these once using my old amp but the new one sounds so very different, more powerful and richer, that I feel the need to use that instead. Listening back this evening, they sound better than I thought they did when playing - this often happens. I'm reminded that things are not so bad. I must push on.

The Myth of Sisyphus will probably be released in a new way. I love physical media, and put a lot of work in making a CD that is nice looking and an album that is designed to be listened to as an album, as a symphony, not casually streamed in the background, not with some tracks cherry-picked in any old order. I dislike 'best of' albums, or the act of picking one or two tracks... that is like a short term, instant gratification fix for people with no patience or sensitivity. I like and want music to be grand and symphonic, important, and brilliant: never casual. Pink Floyd's The Wall, for example, really needs to be listened to and appreciated as an album, it becomes more than the sum of its parts at that point. If books were streamed, would people read their favourite chapter or paragraph and ignore the rest?

Streaming music feels like a demo version of a game, a shareware game compared to the boxed AAA title of the full album. Streaming royalties are also poor, rather like shareware is or was for game developers, but it does have some use, it gives people a taste of the music, perhaps fulfilling the function of a single... Pink Floyd, to reference them again, disliked the idea of singles, but against their wishes a bit of The Wall was released as a single, and it did work, it gave thousands of more people a taste of the album.

Well, I'll say more on this when the album is finished next year.

Dream of Radiation and the Bent Key Spy

Slept for nearly 12 hours with many vivid dreams.

At one point I was part of a two man team. I was in a basement or cellar of a strange building, perhaps like the angel tower in the second part of His Dark Materials. I was given a bent and rusty iron key by the other member of this team. The key had a long stem which spiralled, a square spiral. I knew that the procedure we had to do was connected to radiation or some dangerous, mysterious effect and that, for some reason, I was the only person who could use this key but I didn't know what it was for. The other man was some sort of spy or agent and he had obtained these special items secretly. There were other items to be used in this procedure but I can't recall them all, a box was involved which worked like a microwave oven. There were two other men there, keen to observe the events, one looked a bit like Sigmund Freud. I didn't really understand what I was doing. The objects were placed under perspex, a row of about fifteen squares, gloss black. The ones on the left may have been white. Gradually the row disintegrated, the ones of the right disintegrating more vigorously, via this radiation.

Later, I was at home downstairs for some reason and had to go to my room to get vitamins. I was terrified to see my dead grandmother walking up and down the room wearing black sunglasses. I grabbed the vitamins from the cupboard and ran downstairs, then awoke in fear.

Critics

I am reminded today that my parents have always been unsupportive and hurtfully critical of everything I've done, from my appearance, to my computer game obsession, to my paintings, piano, guitar, singing, writing, and everything else. But this also also reminded me that no artist can escape critics, who are everywhere.

Many artists have support and encouragement from someone, a family member or friend, while knowing that everyone else disregards him or treats him with ignorance, distain, suspicion, jealousy, or hatred. This evening I am thankful for the support and encouragement from Deborah and Andrew in particular, and the friends and supporters who wish me well, but also the imaginary spirits of history and destiny, the angels.

History, future humanity, begs me to do my best and I must oblige. This self-drive, almost a guilt-feeling of debt to humanity, is essential, and unquenchable. Critics are transient insects by comparison to the weight of humanity. The balance of these scales must be kept in mind as we work.

Pasternak

Here is the first poem I wrote for Ink Pantry's Dr Zhivago competition. It was inspired by Pasternak's poem Hamlet and its themes of toil and destiny.

Pasternak

I walk over the cold soil to touch
the black tree trapped in its place
Its arms stretch towards
the winter sun's warm face.

My house behind rings its bell,
the sound radiates to every ear
fixing their fleeting moment
of this troubled year.

Sky: let me write my lines
for the act you planned long ago.
Let me sketch a smile
in your script of sorrow.

A black leaf falls and flees,
runs over the field
toyed by a wind
which flows from tomorrow.

The reference about tomorrow refers to my reasoning that the future determines the present more than the reverse. We can remember the past, or misremember it, and all of our information about the past (or present, of course, everything we see is the past, even if only slightly) is imperfect. The past, if we change our memories, is not certain, never certain, but the future sort of is... the future is more certain than the past because it lacks the imperfection of observation, so truth, reality and 'effect' more easily flows from the future to the past than the other way.

The philosophy of determinism and fate is present is Pasternak's work as well as my stoic beliefs. My follow-up poem, the one I ultimately won the competition with, also touches on these themes. In the poem above, the rhyming was a bit too strong it seemed to lack a dramatic instance... it's like a sketch that flows free like whip at the end. Those last lines are probably the best part, so I used the imagery of the leaf (the leaf becomes the man, the child of the black tree, these are the three characters in the poem). In theme, and by way of the leaf, the second poem flows from this and they make a pair.

Christmas 2020

A pleasant and quiet Christmas. Deb and I had a welcome lunch together of duck in orange sauce, roast potatoes, sweet potatoes, parsnips, peppers, onions, roasted ginger, and steamed broccoli, sprouts, and carrots, pigs-in-blankets, and pork stuffing; which makes exactly 12 ingredients for the most mathematically harmonious Christmas meal.

I read a Christmas gift, Creativity by John Cleese. It made an interesting point that unconscious actions are more difficult when we pay conscious attention to them. It made me think that digestion or other health aspects become hampered by thinking about them. Perhaps autoimmune conditions can be caused by too much consciousness? It made me think that there are merits to not thinking.

Today: marking the calendar for 2021. It will probably be a more difficult year for Britain than 2020, but I'm full of art ideas and optimism. In 2020 I had a broad goal of releasing one new thing (game, book, album) each month, and I managed this until September. I'll aim to do this in 2021. Life is short.

Jan - Flatspace
Feb- War is Over
Mar - Burn of God, Flatspace Soundtracks
Apr - The Burning Circus, Flatspace Music Pack 3
May - Synaesthesia Remaster
Jun - Animalia Remaster
Jul - Taskforce
Aug - The Dusty Mirror, 21st Century Surrealism (Chinese)
Sep - The Intangible Man

Jabberwocky Filming on Christmas Eve

A great day today. Up early to film some outdoor scenes for the Jabberwocky video, choosing today as it's the only clear and dry day for days. How lucky we are to have a relaible weather forecast. The film makers of the 20th century must have wished for such a thing.

The weather was bright with winter sun, not as frosty as I'd anticipated. To prepare, a few days ago, I'd listened to the music and noted down the images and scenes in my head, particularly thinking of the parts where I might be needed; the synth solo part, for example, really needs me playing the synth. Some parts, like playing a candle-lit piano in a church are destined not to be filmed.

Deb picked me up and 10:00 and we left for the park. A few shots first for scenes of the 'marsh', wintry foilage, then myself my a 'tum-tum' tree playing guitar, unsheathing a dagger and some outdoor swashbuckling, which was okay in choreographic terms but the framing and focus wasn't quite right. Then we went to the cemetery for some grave filming, images which were always strongly in my head, and the synth playing part there. Framing everything to exclude cars, houses and passers-by was always a problem. I remembered that Bergman had similar issues on The Seventh Seal. Deb's help was invaluable.

The prettiest scenes are probably the nature shots, but that is to be expected. Well, I have enough now to make a video. Anything more can be filmed here.

One thing about making a music video is that the images must compliment and salute the music to some extent, so can't be nearly as free and imaginitive as they could be... I feel constrained to match the two. Perhaps if I made a video first, or paid no attention to the music, the results would be better or more interesting... but all of that freedom itself can cause problems. Ideally, this short film would have the drama and emotion of the music which climaxes at the same point and for the same reason. The ideal is music which is great by itself, a silent film which is great by itself, and a merging of the two which is better. I think I acheived this with the Time Falling video. The emotions in the longer Jabberwocky recording are more complex.

Arrived home at 13:00 after a lot of carrying, repacked everything, ate and rested. Then it was revealed that I had won the Ink Pantry Christmas poetry competition. Somewhat embarrased and humbled by this. As Deb is the editor and my friend Andrew is the judge I felt that I shouldn't really enter, but, of course, it was all judged anonymously and I didn't tell Andrew I had even entered. It will be interesting to read the other entries.

My surprise prize was a train set! There are a lot of notable trains in Zhivago and the judge's comments on my poem were exactly right. There is a lot of fate, both the inevitability of events and the quirks of them in Pasternak's work, so I reflected on the zig-zag journey of Yuri and Pasternak. Pasternak's Hamlet poem touched on this.

I can now use my bank and I hear that a preliminary Brexit deal has been agreed, which is good for the country generally, so a good day.

I feel a bit tired and coldy and weak and viral now. This is probably the exercise and being out, something so rare for this year. How unfit I've become! Well, this is a Christmas Eve to remember. I can't really edit the Jabberwocky video tomorrow, on Christmas Day, so I'll save it for later.

Onwards the train of life rolls!

Covid-19 Mutations, Sisyphus Returns

So, the country is struck with two Covid-19 mutations which spread more easily. In retrospect this should have been anticipated, as the mutations which are easily deterred by our restrictions will die off, leaving only the ones that can spread even in lockdowns. It seems to me that the best solution is the Chinese 'hide until clear' option, and focus totally on mass vaccination during this time while the populace cower in bunkers, because the current situation of allowing a large virus population to exist to any extent will otherwise serve only to evolve it. The current policies act like a deliberate breeding ground. I doubt the government will take this action.

I was optimistic that we were approaching the halfway point in this pandemic but now I think that a 25% mark is more likely, that Covid will remain as bad and as damaging as it has been this year for at least 3 more years, but by 2024 things should be better.

Well, we are all in the hands of fate. So many plagues of the past were worse, but had less impact or fear because most people were not aware of them. When not knowing about diseases, one can assume they are all random and survivable. Nowadays we know too much.

Music moves on. I've re-recorded a guitar part for The Myth of Sisyphus track 'Life in the Mirror', and added a new solo for The Invisible Man. It sounds remarkably similar in tone to the old one, despite sounding so very different in the recording. Basically, the earlier draft used extra balancing and EQ to make up the difference. Anyway, the new one definitely has more oomph too it. The old guitars are very screechy or hissy, like a featherless bird coughing out a melody, a tap dance of marbles down a washboard. This itself has a certain charm, but the new tones sound like, well a 'normal' electric guitar. God bless the Yamaha THR30II.

I've also rewritten the melody for the main 'I, Sisyphus' track, to turn it up a few semi-tones and place it in a nicer vocal range. I've tried to match the melody to the mood of the words, so 'I've been pushing this rock for a million years' has a stoic, tedious melody of two notes, relatively low. '...and a faraway peak to tempt me' moves up into a higher octave, as does 'and I scream to the void'. The highest note, a high G, is reserved for the 'top' of 'until I reach the top' at the climax of the chorus. The melody is rather simple, overall. The tune itself is simple and only has a few chords, but there's only so much that can be done.

I did 40 minutes of singing training today, all went well, I even managed 'And it ain't me who gonna leave!' in a notably stronger and more operatic voice than Russell Mael (though, of course, his voice back then wasn't strong, he's a far better singer now). This was one of my few highlights. I feel I'm turning a corner in training, in control and technical management rather than actual sound quality. If things continue then I can keep training with more confidence. I read today that singers don't use their instrument, they use it up... blessed then are my decades of silence.

I need a plan for the coming days. I could re-record the I, Sisyphus guitars. That's the last job really until I'm ready to record the vocals (which I'm saving for 2021). Next week I plan on starting The Infinite Forest re-recording, but, of course, I also have the Jabberwocky video... we will film some elements tomorrow on the only dry day of this very wet week in this very wet month.

I will probably spend next year also making concept albums, which will be one of my key legacies to art. My goal is to do with music what Ingmar Bergman did with film. I need to build a canon of 40 or 50... or 100 albums/symphonies, and easily have the ideas... At first nobody will notice or care, then one day, they will.

Take-itis

I've been experimenting with my new guitar amp, it sounds so much better, so much thicker than the old one. All of the old songs sound tinny and jangly compared to the new ones; but that's not always a bad thing... it's hard to definitively say that the old guitars are 'bad'... but the thickness of the new ones gives me more to play with, more to remove when mixing and I have a lot more choice regarding timbre.

The timbre choices are overwhelming, but helped a little by the fact that I'm not going to use any of the effects on the unit; but that still leaves 24 virtual amplifiers to choose from, although in practice only 15 for normal electric guitar (the others are for bass, electro-acoustic, and 'plain') divided into three groups of 5. I've been comparing the sounds from this and my Brian May Guitar with recordings from Queen. The sounds are very similar. The 'Crunch' amp is an emulation of the Vox AC30 that (I think) Brian used. When I turn the Gain to 100 and the Master to about 50, it has a nice distortion that sounds about right for Keep Yourself Alive, for example, but the more distorted intro to Great King Rat is more distorted. Anyway, the 'Lead' amp adds more distortion and sounds pretty similar to 'Crunch' on lower volumes. Well, to cut a ramble short, I have every option I could want from very clean and smooth to very distorted and there's a lot of control on the type of distortion.

All of this makes me want to re-record the guitars on the Sisyphus album. There are 10 tracks, and not all use guitars, and those that do don't use that much, and, this evening, I've got new guitars for almost everything. The biggest problem is the first track, I, Sisyphus, which has a lot of guitars and a lot of improvised solos and things that would all need redoing... and that's a bit of a pain because when something is free and easy it can sound and feel nice... but when you try to copy it a second time it feels like it loses that newness and niceness. Often, in pure sound terms, it can sound as good... takes generally get better each time, but it's hard to certainly know that because the feeling of the good first take remains... it's almost needs a pause and new ears.

So I played and played lots of guitar parts today, trying lots of different settings, unsure if one take was better than a previous one, finding new sounds and new melodies all over the place. This can be a problem. There are merits to doing things in one take for this reason... that is the ideal, yet, as I've said often we do actually get better with later takes... it's all quite strange.

The best results are when we play freely, as though it doesn't matter, when we 'dance while nobody is watching' where everything feels free and can explode into a single emotional release, like the 'sublime' moment I wrote about in a earlier post. Sometimes I feel that I need to play until I feel that... find the feeling... this is the key... but I'm not quite confident enough with the guitar yet. I am with piano, but I've been playing that for over 10 years, the guitar only since July.

Yet, I also know that some great music and great painting looks hugely 'sublime' and emotional and perfect, like Velázquez or John Singer Sergeant paint strokes, or Rachmaninov by Leif Ove Andsnes, when, in actuality, those strokes and piano notes were made coldly, mechanically, carefully, rationally... I know now that those free looking paint strokes are done slowly and carefully when they look fast and carefree.

Tonight I played guitar to some of those Queen songs and recorded a little bit, feeling that 'freeness'. The solution to this 'Take-itis' is really to stick with a first take, but the addition of new equipment or a new skill while crating something can get in the way. Howard Hughes must have felt like this when filming Hell's Angels as a silent film, only to realise that it needed to be a talkie.

Generally the day has been somewhat frustrating and stressful, insecure and fluttery due to these new things. I want to get the project finished and out of the way, then a new idea or tool or something appears and I find myself applying it and again visiting all of the old tracks. Yet, this usually happens. There always comes a point when I ache to get what I'm working on 'out of the way' as I spy a new thing on the horizon. Oh for a blank canvas! Oh for a clean slate! It seems so perfect and neat and how wonderful it would be to make something quickly and perfectly from scratch and 'purely' all in one easy go!

Singing training in the evening went well, steady. I managed to sing Queen's Nevermore and make the high 'see' notes, but my high voice is generally pure and weak. Strengthening this is my goal, over the next months or years. Mastery arrives at the age of 50. I haven't got forever to train. God grant me 60 more years to create with! I've barely started and have so many many ideas and ambitions.

Solstice

I woke at 05:30 and rose early on this solstice day and went out into the darkness. How lovely mornings are before dawn.

I uploaded a painting onto Facebook and prepared some notices for a forthcoming Steam sale. Then explored some guitar sounds for recording new guitar parts for the Sisyphus music, and recorded a new lead for 'I, Sisyphus'. My new amp sounds so very different, more like a 'real' guitar now, rather than the strange tinny sound I've thus far recorded. This said, I'm unsure if the new sounds are better or worse.

I had a call from Ian from Chester Visual Arts, a great charity which stages contemporary art exhibitions. It sounds like just the sort of non-commercial, 'pure art' venture I love and I hope I can work with them somehow in future. I put together some images for them.

Then more guitar work, all new parts for 'I Care', using the 'Special' setting on the amp, which is a bit more distorted than the 'Lead' setting. Then fitting the new hot tap in the bathroom, cutting some new silicone washers from a non-stick baking tray using a bladed circle cutter (how useful my art equipment can be!) - sadly the new spanner was the wrong size so I needed to tweak it.

I did 50 minutes of singing training in the evening, my longest session yet. My voice doesn't feel particularly tired though, so perhaps I'm training correctly, or am simply stronger now. I certainly didn't sing loudly to any extent but managed a few tentative high C notes. I'm searching for the pathway to that note, it seems to be in a new register. Well I'm also simply drilling for the lower notes. My goal is, at least now, to instil in my nerves the key to the head voice so that I can enter it easily without thinking. If all feels well tomorrow, I can start training at this level and eventually increase the time spent.

I wrote a poem too:

Winter Solstice 2020

The sun cries low
to a copper god,
the breath of dusk
flavoured with winter's bones;
an uneasy broth of crows
and the distant stars
of a lost home.

The mood of the country is bleak and the news just made me stressed and unhappy, so I switched it off. I've still no access to my bank which also causes me stress. How I wish the mail would speed up! I had a happy moment when an unexpected Christmas gift arrived from my dear friend Andrew.

I'll keep training in singing and guitar at least this week. I might enter the Ruth Borchard competition. If so I'll need to start in January, and fully commit to that. I also want to start and finish the new Infinite Forest re-recording, The Jabberwocky video, order the final Apocalypse of Clowns CDs, and then recording the Sisyphus album vocals at last. The sooner all this is done the better. Life is short.

Guitar Customisation

Did a few guitar experiments, comparing with a few famous guitar sounds, wow, how good this amp sounds. I've found a few settings that do make use of the guitar volume, which I like because it gives more options for expression while playing. I never really liked the Tone controls though, they sre just a bit of a rubbish filter that remove the nicer top end really...

But, I had the idea of noting a volume scale on my guitar... on a whim. I started with a paper dial...

Which I put around the control. This was okay... but I can't really keep that there... so I punched some dots through it, a standard technique in metal working. Then added some little gems, using Paraloid B72 to stick them. I regretted this later; why deface the guitar for the sake of a volume that I'll probably never use! But actually, it does change the sound and I have started to more or note the volume for different sounds, and there is no scale at all for this...

...and the guitar itself isn't that beautiful. It's a functional, lovely instrument, but aesthetically it could be better. The switches look just awful and there are big screw heads everywhere... and actually my gemstones add an Italian-glam look. Now my BMG Special looks like something from Flash Gordon!

The Exploratory Farmer Guitar

An uncomfortable night of gastric disturbances; twitches, cramps. Thankfully no stomach agony as my stomach was empty.

It took a while to get started but I've finalised the guitar solo for The Exploratory Farmer. The song is now relatively simple in structure, a 'sound scene', a verse with piano, then a sort of chorus but it's more of a louder verse, then a proper chorus in new chords, then a guitar solo like the piano solo at first, during which the second verse is sung.

The solo took many takes due to technical problems and learning to use the new amp. I played this one at sunset in a somewhat melancholy mood; perhaps, as with photography, there is a golden hour for music. I find playing piano or guitar at sunset has a unique feeling, perhaps this mood is what is considered sublime.

I'm still singing simple exercises each day. There is probably some progress, my throat feels like it has had a workout of sorts (but not my voice, which remains clear, so this is a positive sign), but it's hard to measure and I'm limiting myself to humming scales which is a bit tedious. I might try these simpler hums, trills, straw phonation on the more difficult high notes, and for warming up and down, while trying more general exercises and vowels on lower notes, so a new regime next week.

Monday is a good day for filming so tomorrow I'll plan for this.

There are new Covid restrictions as a new strain spreads across the south-east. These don't affect Christmas plans here as we were already more cautious than the official advice. I hear that about 350,000 people have had a first dose of the vaccine.

Sleep Learning, Yamaha THR30II Experiments, and The Exploratory Farmer

A brilliant day. I played distorted guitar to Beethoven's 7th Symphony last night, which was joyous in every sense. I slept well but woke briefly in the night, from a dream of raining pieces of porcelain falling onto a grassy and muddy field. My stomach felt odd, but not bad, empty, healing. I took a sip of milk of magnesia and sat up.

I became aware of a breakthrough in my singing that I encountered when guitar earlier this year. After a few weeks of daily practice, I had sufficient knowledge of the layout of the instrument to practice in my head at night. I do this with piano too. I could feel the instrument in my mind and start to play scales or other things in my imagination, mentally feel how it feels to play. This is a great way to practice and learn anything. These early hours, the magic time between the two sleeps, are perfect for learning for a few reasons.

Firstly, the brain is open, the cells pull apart, for cleaning by the tiny brain cleaners, astrocytes. I surmise this is a key purpose of sleep; filing, tidying and ordering by the tiny librarians. This opening up allows clearer and more agile thoughts. Sometimes at night, at this time, we can recall things that we just forget next morning, or we can see paths and possibilities that are normally obscured. I think that this is due to this parting of the cells. This makes learning faster and more efficient. Rather than push through the hedge in our brains, we can more easily build the pathways we desire. We can't just get up for night training though. When we move from sleeping there is a rush of blood to the head that sounds the water of a river, this is our brains going back to normal - so we must practice only mentally. A second advantage to this is that the concepts are more firmly laid because they are placed deeper into the brain.

Last night I became aware that I could feel this muscle memory in my singing. I wasn't sure I would because it's a self-skill, not involving an instrument or physical object. I imagined singing a few notes and so did an test-sing in silence. What a great secret this is!

I slept again and awoke very rested past 9am. I started quickly on new music, the last Sisyphus track which is called The Exploratory Farmer. I didn't know what the music should be, so became stuck at first. I began with mood, then: rain, mud... it was clearly the 17th century. I even named the wind '17th Century Wind'. A scene from the old Hammer film 'Blood on Satan's Claw', a childhood terror, came to mind when writing this song.

Musically, I wanted material from elsewhere in the album so I visited the chords from the opening rock song, but slowed them down a lot. The rhythm is crucial for the mood of a song and I struggle with it sometimes... I seem to want songs to have no regular rhythm, and somehow go with 'feeling' like a moody piano in one of Beethoven's 'raptus' moments. Regular rhythm can constrict feeling. Well, I heard some hissing in my moody wind and decided to make this regular, so the wind itself evolved into a rhythm, and then strings. I then played some piano over these simple chords and worked out the melody for the verse.

For the chorus I had noted to use the chorus from The Invisible Man, so I edited that out and lifted the section directly. This worked well enough but needed a little modification. The music so far is quite glorious actually, and reminded me of Comfortably Numb. That led me into thinking about an epic guitar solo, so I spent the rest of the day experimenting with my new THR30II amplifier. I recorded a great solo on the Zoom H4 using it, but it was horribly distorted, too loud (so sadly lost). I then started to experiment with other Zoom and amp settings to get the volume right - and try some of the factory presets on the amp - how good it sounds!

It's more like a synth controlled by guitar than an amplifier (they could add white noise generators, filters, or other drones or tones controlled by the amp, if they ever felt like pushing this concept). My biggest criticism is that it would be nice to have more knobs rather than so many (about half) of the settings set only in software... I'd at least like a speed knob for the chorus/flangers etc. even though I'll never use them in recordings, I'd apply my own effect, but for live it would be nice. Also the volume on my guitar seems redundant now... with my old amp, it went smoothly from silent to gentle, to distorted, so I could modify the timbre live. The amp seems to do this now, but perhaps I can get my old tone and control back with a little experimentation.

Anyway, I remembered that I could plug a jack rather than a XLR into the Zoom, so tried that and, with settings of Low for the input level, it seemed to record fine yay! I might need to turn the Gain and Master knobs down... but this also affects the tone. It's tricky... it would have been nice to be able to trim the output volume a bit, but yes, that is unusual for instruments. Usually the onus is one the recording device to set the levels. We're lucky to have recording outputs at all on an amp.

One downside is that now I could easily re-record all of my current guitar parts... but no, all music or art is a document of the current times. I don't want to destroy the old amp's contribution before it's even been heard, but I might re-record some guitars on some tracks, partly to stop the newer ones sounding too different.

Then singing practice and a nice vocal and facial steam afterwards. My singing hasn't really improved over these past three days, but I can feel some muscle changes so I expect things are improving in intangible ways. In any daily training, some things will improve. I can't measure an improvement in vocal range or volume, but is that important anyway? Pitch accuracy and sense is perhaps the most important thing and this has certainly improved a lot.

Onward with joy!

Day of Pain, Anguish and Triumph

An awful day. Chronic stomach pain from about 7pm last night, so intense. Many hours of pacing, I can't sit or lie in these circumstances. At 2am, exhausted, I decided to go to bed and sleep while sitting up and awoke early still gripped by pain. The pain continued until about 5pm today. I managed to drink a lot, perhaps 4 or 5 litres of water, which seems to be my only treatment. I can quite see why such pain could cause Kenneth Williams to commit suicide! I was unable to work, highly unusual for me.

I think this is a case of a torso locked with stress and cramps, paralysed by strange terror. My father greedily gobbles up all of the best food here, this causes me intense anxiety. Well, what can I do. All anxiety is conflict and the solution is to surrender.

There was a Crewe Cultural Forum meeting today which I couldn't partake in for technological reasons. This makes me feel excluded, but I know I'm not alone and that I will partake when I can. The meeting notes confirmed that Lumen 2020 was cancelled (or postponed). I felt yet more excluded to hear about it this way rather than being told, as I was supposed to be taking part. It's things like this why I'm generally mistrustful and wary of local arts. Almost every project I've been involved with seems to start positively but be silently crushed without word or warning and nothing comes of it. I wasn't confident that I was taking part either. My idea for the Pi Projection was welcomed and the technicalities were worked out, but I heard nothing more, no confirmation or contract, no installation dates or venue; nothing, except, now, reading that the whole event has been postponed.

Well, I can but try and wait with patience. It would be nice to project this, it looks and sounds pretty and some local people might like it. We are all at the whim of fate.

Whims of fate remind me that it's Beethoven's 250th bithday (well, baptism anniversary, I expect he was born on the 14th, my birthday). So, like most December 17ths, I will put some of his music on to play, and, today, play along on electric guitar to try out my new amp. The subject of this post pays homage to my favourite Beethoven book, if not my actual favourite book (although Flowers for Algernon would be a joint first).

Yamaha THR30II Thoughts, Christmas Visits

My new Yamaha guitar amp arrived at 07:30 and I spent an hour or two setting it up and recharging it. When I got some sounds from it a few hours later, I wasn't sure what to think. The volume difference between the different presets can be huge and there are a huge number of presets too, a bit overwhelming. I can understand the effects instantly, but the combination of two gain controls, one for pre-amp and one for the main-amp, as well as a main volume control (and the volume on the guitar) makes for a lot of possibilities alone. My old Blaster amp was so simple by comparison. I could use the guitar volume to shift smoothly from a plain tone to a distorted one, whereas this seems to jump from hardly audible to plain, but needing to switch to a new preset for distortion, many of the volumes seem to switch from near silent to a fairly moderate volume quickly... well, it will take experimentation.

Then I felt the need to tidy and organise things. I'm starting to accrete too much clutter and decided to try to reduce this. I'm quite efficient here; I often have a one-in one-out policiy or a time limit (throw away if unused for a year). I've got a lot of art supplies now that I don't need and will probably never use... my dry pastel days are over. Oils will remain my love and focus, but I use watercolours and inks for illustration, and acrylics for sculptures and frames.

Then an afternoon of seeing friends and deliviering Christmas things, which was enjoyable, but very cold as the Covid restrictions mean standing outside to talk.

I ate when I came in an it caused severe stomach pain, which, 6 hours later, I'm still very much in the midst off. This makes me so miserable. All I can do is wait, pace, drink water. I can't sit or lie down as this makes everything worse and will only delay any digestion. I will spend all night pacing up and down, the pain will outweigh any tiredness. Perhaps this is an appropriate night to celebrate Beethoven, his 250th 'birthday' (well, the anniversary of his baptism, technically) is tomororow.

I'm forming some creative plans. I'd like to write something for the Cheshire Prize for Literature, and paint something for the Ruth Borchard Self-Portrait Competition.

The Spare Bedroom Sequence, Plumbing, Light Singing

A steady day.

Made a small sequence for a new Sisyphus track today, 'The Spare Bedroom Of Reminiscence Of Childhood'. This uses the same music as an earlier track on the album so it was a simple job.

I spent much of the day fixing a fauly tap in the bathroom which has wobbled for years. I saw that it has some sort of valve so I looked that up online, switched it to turn the water off, and managed to remove the tap and find and fit a new washer; but we haven't got a tool capable of tighening the nut. We have a basin spanner but the space is so cramped that I need something like a tube with a socket on the end, which I dicovered today is called a Back Nut Tap Spanner. Well, sorting out this and ordering one took a few hours.

Then a nice social few hours in the park, the second of two sunny days. I thought, at the last minute, that we really need to film the outdoor Jabberwocky parts... must get this video done! If we can't, then it will involve indoor bits and probably be more surreal as a result.

Then about 50 minutes of vocal exercises (with a lot of pauses between), which were all very gentle this time, not even involving actual singing, but involving head and face massage, humming, straw phonation, fricative notes ('vvv', and 'zzz' sounds), and lip trills. These are good training because they allow technical practice of muscle use and breathing, while avoiding strain. For the higher notes, anything above A, I seem to need to push a little, the first time, to hit the note. Shortly after I can manage without pushing. I wonder if this is simply lack of some sort of muscularity, that the highest notes of a range will always need a bit of push at first, but after a few days (or weeks), these become easier.

After singing I used my steam inhaler and this did feel good. One downside with it is the need to dry it each time after use; a tissue and a hairdryer can do this in a few minutes.

I have too much energy and anxiety due to inaction. I'm working at about 25% capcity and need to do more. Well, the night is young.

Birthday, Otamatone, Sisyphus Structure

A nice birthday. I tend to ignore and under-rate birthdays but, thanks almost entirely to Deb, these are always happy and nice occasions.

One gift was a Otamatone, an odd musical instrument that's a bit like a Stylophone but with a ribbon controller which gives it much more expression, but makes it much harder to play, something like a single string fretless guitar. There is also no visible scale - which I remedied by putting some dots on there. The gaps between semitones get increasingly smaller, down to a few millimetres, and the octave range is small and there is no output jack, but it is surprisingly alluring for a toy. I wish they had added a few more professional features... I think a ribbon controller like this but with some pressure sense for volume could be an idela input device for a synth. It would also need tactile notches for the notes - one thing the Otamatone (and Theremin) lack are visual and tactile clues to the notes - they rely only on sound. When playing most instruments, the eyes and touch and ears all assist playing... playing a guitar or piano blindfolded is much more difficult for non-experts.

Most of the day was spent outside in these pandemic times.

Last night I finalised the structure for I, Sisyphus. The key for me is images. The purity of the album was hampered a little by the need to include a few songs which were written before, so I've tweaked these and reused some aspects. The image flow from indoors to outdoors, but I hope I can link the concept together in a visually unified way. There will be repetition of musical ideas in different areas to help unify the music - most of the keys will be similar. There isn't so much a story as a flow of images and scenes, and an overall theme of isolation, or struggle in silence. All I need to do is add a couple more tracks and re-record the vocals.

I've done a few simple vocal exercises today and tried steam breathing with a steam inhaler machine, which feels very good, far better than the old remedy of a bowl of hot water where the steam is far too hot at first then inadequate within about two minutes. The process seems to dry my throat afterwards however, so I am a little wary of using it. I'll start again with exercises tomorrow, and sequence the new tracks.

My main goal for the month should be, is, the Jabberwocky video but I do not feel inspired or remotely like the idea of video at the moment.

I, Sisyphus Lyrics

A low day today. After months or years of moving towards new types of music and more incorporation of vocals I feel I've hit a wall in my vocal training, yet these feel crucial to my artistic future and development. My eyesight has taken a downwards turn this year and my painting may have to wait until the end of Covid-19, so I feel disconnected from art and the world. Yet, I have ideas, will, inspiration. The New Music Show on Radio 3 last night was full of exciting gems. If I lose my voice, my blurry eyes, my blocked ears, my arthritic fingers, then I can still adapt and do something, and will do so every day.

Here are my lyrics to 'I, Sisyphus' so far, which I don't think I've shared yet. This is very much a conventional rock song but it also defines a few themes for variations throughout the album. I need to add a few more tracks, and, for the sake of unity I will try to reuse the material that is there. These vocals are not recorded. I can but hope that, next year, some time, they will be.

I've been pushing this rock
for a million years
through this desert black
and my tempest tears

with an ice wind and rain against me
and a far-away peak to tempt me

and I scream to the void
to the gods above
but I feel no anger
I feel no love

and I hear no voices back
as I roll my friend along the track
just a-cawing of a raven black
evermore

I've been rolling this rock of pain
I've been rolling this rock of pain
Up this hill
And I see the bones of those before me
And I know the world will just ignore me
or tell me to stop
but I won't
until I reach the top.

My skin is gettin thin
and my arms are broke
but my will is stronger
than this cursed yoke

And I cry to the shades around
As I struggle on broken ground

and I hear no voices back
as I roll my friend along the track
just a-cawing of a raven black
evermore

I've been rolling this rock of pain
I've been rolling this rock of pain
Up this hill
And I give my life to this rock
Everybody keeps saying stop
but I won't
but I won't
until I reach the top.

Singing Impatience, Histoire de Melody Nelson

A quiet day.

I had a strange dream involving builders and cementing a floor which was too dry. I awoke with an tickle in the throat which is still a little sore, though my speaking voice sounds fine. My singing technique is incorrect for these problems to occur. I keep wanting to run without walking. I must take things more slowly and gently. I have a lot of tension in my neck, tongue, throat, jaw, shoulders, face, and always have - I'm a ball of nervous energy, but I must slowly untie these knots.

I started by adding new masks to my Sisyphus drawing and playing with the design, this is the cover so far:

I also did some preliminary work on the rest of the art but I'm thinking that I must do something more with the art; make it part of the work too, more than pretty. I've listened to Histoire de Melody Nelson yesterday for the first time, and it reminded me a little of the sort of things, in spirit, that I'm working on. Musically, it's certainly inferior to Jean-Claude Vannier's L'Enfant Assasin des Mouches, but it is very musically and thematically unified in a way which I love and aim for myself. I, Sisyphus won't be as good, or espouse these ideas for me, but future work will hopefully do so. I, Sisyphus is an experiment, a learning exercise, a step, like my other albums of this year; and a way for me to release a few worthy songs like The Invisible Man.

I wasted an hour wrapping some presents for posting, before it became clear that I would not be able to. I went for a walk. I feel impatient and full of energy and ideas but unable to sing to enact them. Drip by drip fills the bucket.

Sisyphus Artwork

Curse me for considering Brexit or any politics important! What a waste of thought and energy to think about politics, or anything we cannot control, for a single second.

A full day working on the I, Sisyphus artwork. I must get this done. Sometimes these designs come easily, as in The Infinite Forest, but then, for that I had a previous idea to work from and rather a clear idea of what to do with it. Often my album art now takes a long time, with lots of options, hammering away at designs and variations of designs until I produce something I'm happy with.

My initial idea was a rock with a skeleton draped over it, but it lacked the impact, from a distance, that I wanted:

So I thought I would, for a change, hand draw an idea, a man rolling a rock over a huge skull:

Then it was a matter of processing and colouring the result. I chose orange and blakc first to emulate Greek pottery:

Then a few different options:

All have different pros and cons, but all look good at all scales. More to do on these, but I think a variation of this will be my main cover. I'm unsure whether to design the full 8-page booklet and CD artwork yet - I always like to, but it is a lot of work to commit to when the music isn't finished and I'm unsure if I'll make any CDs. I rarely sell any these days. I'm certain I will one day, but my primary motivation for making them now is to create that physical item that is music and art combined - digital music is so ephermeral - it lacks value, and has less art in it, it feels 'fake'.

Today I received a copy of the Pola X soundtrack CD by Scott Walker, it cost me £35, which is apparently cheap for this - it's not in production and probably never will be. The only copies are second hand. The music varies in quality (not all of it is by Mr Engels, the Bill Callahan track is particularly egregious, it sounds like a Micheal Bublé record) but the orchestral tracks by Scott Walker are among his best music; 'Light' is trancendentally beautiful.

Singing, Admin, Brexit

30 minutes of good singing training, managed a tentative high C#. My voice seems stronger in these higher registers than lower. This is probably the maximum I can train in one day without causing soreness or strain, and that soreness tends to only be apparent a few hours later. I will limit myself to 30 minutes at most.

I spent two hours or so adding tedious details to all of my song and album details in Distrokid; song writers, performers etc. I'm, still lacking performer details for about half of them, but writing details, producer and links should all be correct. For over 10 years I've wanted 'sequencer' or 'software' or even 'soft-synth' as instrument options, but there are still none, so I credit myself as playing 'synthesizer'. Technically, even my 1999 album Arcangel was not me playing a synthesizer; it was sequenced.

Then a walk, with some slight video recordings, and more email tidying. Feels like something of a lost day so far. Must strive to make progress on the Sisyphus project (ironic that it seems to be taking forever) and the Jabberwocky video.

The awfulness of Brexit looms over the country. I read today that, this year, it has cost the British economy over £200 billion, very close to the sum total of all money paid into the EU since Britain joined in the 1970s. It seems that those who have wasted or stolen this money will escape without penalty. The stupidity and short-sightedness of our leaders and those who support them staggers me, but then, being any citizen of above average ability is a lesson in acceptance of powerlessness. I do not associate with them or their vision and do not feel in any way British or, even less so, English. I feel European, Celtic, perhaps an ancient Saxon, but never like this breed of lazy, greedy, unskilled, mercantile nationalist; who, in the Russian way, can only better themselves with deception and theft. I feel stateless.

More Album Art, Cries and Whispers and the Jabberwocky Video

A busy day refining the Apocalypse of Clowns artwork. I want some sort of unity across all eight pages and have used the checkerboard motif. I've also created the last two pages, for credits and one for Jabberwocky, and added some final details to the back; the barcode etc. There are many technical details to consider.

Most of the morning was taken up with computer housekeeping - it took over an hour and six attempts just to update Windows, something which is very common for many people every month. It amazes me how badly the whole system is designed. I also started to tiny up my email storage, deleting unused emails. Until 2014 I kept neat text versions of all of my emails but now they are part of the massive Google lump. So many emails are rather pointless notifications from any number of companies; just about everything you order. I don't really want or need them but they -might- be useful one day... an ebay email from ten years ago for example... what if I wanted to know the exact thing I bought back then? Unlikely, but possible.

I generally download and keep backups of everything, even this blog, but with gmail this is not possible unless one downloads everything in one lump - I would love to download just a certain selection so that I can keep backups of the important things but casually retain the less important things.

Anyway, I digress.

I scraped some time for basic vocal warm ups and reached a high C a few times but generally I feel ill, sore headed, eared and throated. I completed The Infinite Forest artwork to a first draft too, after a second experiment:

Last night I started to work on the Jabberwocky video too... I have several ways to tackle this. I was interested to read Bergman's notes concerning Cries and Whispers, which I've seen recently after saving time for this knowingly special moment. He rated this as one of his best films, and indeed it is, but its development was full of doubts and insecurities. The photography is outstanding, truly his best colour film; it is a symphony of red, white and black to an extent that it is almost a new class of film: black and white; black, red and white; and colour. He began with a central image and built around that which is an excellent method. He even mentioned Leonor Fini in the notes, although it was the Carrington painting 'Grandma Moorhead’s Aromatic Kitchen' which stuck in my head; another masterclass in red. How I wish I had time to paint!

I've made a list of almost random images, then divided the music into broad parts and noted the mood for each part. One idea is to express that mood irrespective of narrative; but of course, narratives can create moods too... this will be a longer project than I would ideally like - I want everything to take just a day but even this trivial album art has taken the best part of a week. One image that always comes to mind is a gravestone, walking slowly towards one, like the solemn movement down the road in my Love Symphony film. Perhaps, like Bergman, I should hold onto this vision, at least. Hold onto the images which appear strongly.

I have a headache and do not feel well. I will keep drinking and rest this evening.

Lots of Album Art

Lots of album art today. This is such hard work, but also good training, I suppose. I tweaked the front page and added a few more. As with many of my 8-page booklets, I've made some pages about specific tracks and thought about the structure of the booklet as a whole, so some facing pages have opposites somehow.

Here are some pages from the booklet so far:

I also started work on the new Infinite Forest cover. Here is the draft so far:

Apocalypse of Clowns Art, Jan Svankmajer's Jabberwocky

A disturbed night, tense in the night and evening, and was awake from 3am or so to 6am or so, so consequently arose late. I wrote two essays: one about real fur vs. fake fur, one about vegetarianism. These were perhaps distractions, the arguments circling my mind at 4am in the way that thoughts often do. Neither issue particularly concerns me, but a recent anti-fur statement, apparently by awful entertainer Ricky Gervais, seemed without rational reason to me so I wanted to explore this; I wondered if, for example, he wore leather, or ate meat and considered those things acceptable but fur not, or was aware of the harm that artificial fur does to the environment. Of course, nobody wants to treat animals badly.

I also watched Jan Svankmajer's Jabberwocky for visual inspiration... I wondered if I could make our video suitably surreal. It somehow feels less creative to make a 'normal' video. I wonder if David Lynch had similar concerns when making A Straight Story.

I also created some inner page artwork for Apocalypse of Clowns. I think the cover is complete now. Here is a first look:

Two small sessions of singing training, this seems more effective than one per day. Good progress so far on scales up to B, perhaps my cleanest and most tonal to date but a lot needs to be done in strength and stamina terms. These two 10 to 15 minute sessions seemed like a reasonable limit at the moment.

Overall it's felt like a slow, unproductive and rather poor day. The self-harm of the Brexit negotiations, which are climaxing this week, are cooling the already cold mood and darkening the already darkening days.

Jabberwocky Video Filming Day #1

A night of stranght nightmares from which I awoke three times, twice couging and struggling to breath easily due to a very tickly and very dry throat, and in a cold sweat. The third dream in particular was a spectacular narrative in a universe where novels or stories created new spherical universes which expanded, but these interfered with reality, when their boundaries crossed. People could vanish into these stories if they believed in them, as though the distinction between fiction and reality were belief. I had some sort of mission to repair a faulty story, or perhaps track down a friend who had vanished into one. Either way, the stories were damaging reality, causing earthquake style disasters. Three evil people, perhaps malevolent authors, were also torturing innocent animals and children in a castle dungeon of sorts, finally killing their victims for their perverted pleasure. All of the dream was vivid and disturbing.

In other news, today was the first day of filming for the Jabberwocky video, some scenes of Deborah, as story teller, speaking and acting the song. Each verse tended to have a different shot. The scene was dressed in various props and olde-worlde looking objects. I made and painted a fake brick wall for the real(ish) fireplace.

Filming took about two hours. I had two small singing exercise sessions too, which seem more beneficial than one large one. It seems that a certain power is needed for those higher notes, which I seem unable to sing quietly... I wonder if this is a matter for training itself. I seem to be improving at starting at these higher notes, rather than needing the training ramp of a scale. Steady progress.

This video will be my main focus. I'll film lots of different scenes and then start to assemble it.

Brian May Dream, Vocal Fatigue, Christmas Cards

I dream of Brian May. I tell him that I have one his guitars and that I had an idea of how to improve it and I told him of my idea of using potentiometers rather than switches for the pickups, so that the strength and polarity of each pickup can be set via dials. He showed me a new version of his BMG Special with 6 strange adaptors along the top edge which can be used to create some new audio effect.

A quieter day. I finalised a poem for Ink Pantry's Doctor Zhivago competition, and did 30 minutes of singing practice before my throat felt tired. I speak so little; even now, about two hours per day perhaps, primarily to Deborah quietly on the phone. For many years, perhaps over a decade, I spoke far less, perhaps not at all for many days on end, and always did speak very quietly. As a child my silence was considered a psychological problem by my teachers. The upside is that my voice should be fairly clean.

I had the insight that people who experience stomach problems due to isolation many have a direct cause in vocal silence, as both are controlled by the vagus nerve. Perhaps those who speak more have more settled digestions.

My vocal fatigue appears to be not from my vocal cords but, I surmise, muscles in the upper corners of my throat, just inside the bend of my jaw which control these. Only the 'head voice' is affected, not normal speech or 'chest voice'. A light practice session of 15 to 30 minutes can create a warm feeling of exercise there, but after a pause I find that I can't easily sing at all in this register.

I went for a walk and prepared my Christmas cards.

I'll prepare I, Sisyphus but not work on it until I can sing it satisfactorily, so my main jobs for the next month or two will be the art for this, the art and music videos for Apocalypse of Clowns, and the art and music for the new Infinite Forest re-recording, which is something I had aimed to do for 2021. I can't sing well enough yet, so I will compose as I train.

Jabberwocky Queued

Jabberwocky was confirmed today as set for release on Jan 27 2021. Deb tagged Michael Rosen on Twitter, who himself has recorded the poem, and he kindly retweeted this. I've put the single on my website and the Cornutopia Music website, and updated various social media links; the barest of starts.

Did a light 15 minutes of vocal training. My voice feels tight at times, but never hoarse. This is probably all tension. I can practice piano and guitar for hours with ease and no worries of harming my arms or fingers, even if my muscles burn with the joy of exercise and my fingertips become raw, but I have a fear of damaging my voice which is probably irrational and proving problematical. Well, a routine is perhaps the answer, and regular gentle practice with hydration and breaks if I get an actual sore throat rather than merely worry about or imagine one.

I spent about two hours researching Doctor Zhivago for Deb's poetry competition. I sketched a poem inspired by Pasternak's Hamlet, a poem which moved and resonated with me, as a fellow absolute determinist, but I wasn't happy with my words. I will keep trying.

I also sketched out some ideas for the Jabberwocky video which will take up much of my time for the next six weeks. I don't really feel like doing it, and don't particularly value or enjoy videos - but we need one, and I'll try to make it as good as the Time Falling video, which is one of my best so far. Unlike the singular climax in Time Falling, there are several moments of drama in Jabberwocky, and it is 6 minutes long, which makes it more work and data heavy.

One trick with music videos is to film a lot of things which look pretty, and hopefully have some relation to the music, and them piece them together. For key moments, moments that conjure specific images, these can be filmed too. The change from the 'frabjous' ending and the solemn piano chord near the end made me think of revisiting a grave, so I may include that (there are always constraints on what we can film, and where, in these Covid times - I would love to film some parts of myself at a grand piano somewhere, but there is little hope of that).

Final Jabberwocky Art, Tension

Spent yesterday frantically finalising the Jabberwocky art, which I wasn't completely happy with. I also started work on the final album art. How sad it is that music is download based - how I wish we could make some actual CD singles of Jabberwocky because the art looks, will look, so nice. The main reason is that people have stopped using ceedees, not that the technology is in any way poor. Artists have shifted to USB sticks, but there is no standard for art to go with these.

Anyway, here it is, the final cover:

The black diamond shape there is now a square, as this matches the shapes on the main album, and the fonts match too. At one point, the artist name was in the top right corner, also matching the album, but it seemed to cramp the space too much. At another point, the torn page was lower and at a more acute angle, but this seemed to stop the feeling on 'emergence' of the Jabberwock. Overall, the cover went though about 15 revisions.

I didn't sing at all, my throat felt tight and tense. I wondered if this was connected with the cold, the sensation was similar to flexing my cold and inflexible hands. It could be a reaction to the work of the past few days but it felt more like tension of some sort: tension, anxiety, stress; my enemies. Like Beethoven, I often play instruments best when angry or emotional, or sing when fighting like a tree in the storm - all bad from a technical point of view. For singing, restful liquidity is important. I am made of electric energy and tension - have I ever, in my life, relaxed? I pictured myself made of jellyfish, the air as water. Perhaps ideas like this will help. Images and the feelings of shapes are the key to learning anything. I expect that a lot of my vocal tension comes from practicing unconsciously when asleep or doing other things which I can feel happening. I learned to play at least 50% of my piano when not anywhere near the instrument, even in dreams.

I slept badly, filled with intense anxiety and panic. This is probably a reaction to my conscious monitoring of anxiety, and perhaps the unusual day of intense work and, later, a 90-minute fast walk in the cold air. My thoughts often turn to the platonic solids. I wondered if one can be made from 8 triangles, laid like two counter-rotated triangles like a Star of David. I wanted to visualise this.

A busy day today. First a trip to Macclesfield to drop off the latest Richard Dadd print, and the 'An Experience' painting, and to meet a lovely friend and the new buyer of the latest 'Tiger Moving Nowhere' print. The weather was a constant 4 degrees, wet and bitter, but suitably wintry. Deb and I stopped on the way back to buy a Christmas tree.

An Experience That Isn't Shared, More Fall in Green Art, Singing

I awoke early and clearly thought of myself as King Charles I, awaiting execution. I was offered a dagger to kill myself rather than face the headsman, and considered where to stab myself, below the ribs, or through? I rose in a melencholic mood. I feel I'm working constantly and yet making no progress.

First I did some framing work on this painting, which lacked a backing board: An Experience That Isn't Shared Is The Same As No Experience. I will deliver it to the Macc Art Lounge tomorrow, for sale for a cheap £605. I feel it should be closer to £1600.

After that, working all day on art for the Jabberwocky cover, which I'm still unhappy with, and the new Apocalypse of Clowns cover. The latter is more simple, and I then modified the Jabberwocky art to suit that design a little - as the single is from the album. Neither is what I consider to be complete.

No vocal training today after 40 minutes yesterday. In brief, low level, tests there seems to be little difference in range or power to before I started my recent exercises two weeks ago, it feels like I've gone dramatically backwards and that my voice is tight and inflexible.

Jabberwock Single Art

More work on the artwork for the Jabberwockys single, I can hardly believe I've spent over a week on just this, almost as long as writing and recording the music. After some photos of the model:

I decided to try to add some essence of the written word to the cover. A plain photo seems too simple, and it looks too much like a model. The card suits reference Alice in Wonderland, and the diamonds the Apocalypse of Clowns album.

But that seemed a little over complex and strange, somehow the head rather than the rest of the model was too much of a focus. So I tried a new pose and eliminated the text, then added it back. I added lightning for drama:

Then removed the text, and added it back in part, and made the title and artist text white on a darker backgrond. I also mader a few alternative colour versions. Here is the blue/cyan variant:

But the green background seemed to work best. Here is my preferred version so far:

Jabberwocky Art, Tim Burton's Alice

Woke reasonably late. Took initial photographs of the Jabberwock model but the lighting was too strong and too intense. Later took some daylight photos with the PC monitor behind showing an image of trees, and those worked better. Then started on lots of variations of cover designs. I wanted to include image of us, if possible, and I added some text too... in all things there is a balance between the raw and organic, and the perfect and digital. If things look too digital, artificial, things need to be roughened.

I'd like to get this over with quickly. Other jobs are to do the covers for I, Sisyphus, and Apocalypse of Clowns.

Sang daily exercises for 40 minutes or so. Progress is evident, but slow, and often needs to start from scratch again each time, yet I can feel new muscularity, as well as reach new notes. I can reach a high C now in falsetto. This note seems like another new register almost, like new guitar strings, which is interesting. I am not aiming to expand my vocal range. This expansion is a natural part of strengthening a normal voice so there is no need to, and no benefit from, pushing for these things.

My mood remains stoic. I feel so much more capable of painting better than before. I'm amazed that I painted the Dadd painting a whole eight years ago. It feels like the majority of my work was done before then too. Now that I can paint better than ever, I've almost stopped; perhaps the challenge is gone, but also I want to learn and master new things. Perhaps this is my flaw, yet, many artists excell soon and then slowly decay, I'll never do this. I must work, logically calculate and record my techniques and progress, and improve, improve. I will paint great masterpieces one day, if the gods grant me the time, and the same with music, and books. I can spend each day doing the best I can, growing, creating. Perhaps I'm getting too focused on these little details like album artwork; yet, isn't that too part of art?

I watched Tim Burton's dreadful Alice in Wonderland last night, a rape of Lewis Carroll's story. Most American films become an Apocalypto-Christian battle of 'good vs. evil' and the 'good' people 'win' by violently killing the evil side. It is also filled with noise and about 100 characters who do just about anything to get attention. The whole film is like a tartrazine-fuled epileptic seizure designed for people with 'attention deficit hyperactivity disorder'. The only emotion in the entire film came from the knowledge that star Johnny Depp has recently been shown to be a 'wife beater' in court, this fact gave the film its only pathos. The computer imagery was universally poor and very artificial looking but it was, however, very pretty and had good sound - like all contemporary films.

One other thing struck me; that Dickens' A Christmas Carol has been made countless times for film and television and always tends to stick very closely to the story. Alice in Wonderland has also been made countless times, but almost never sticks to the story, and The Looking-Glass, which was (I think) even more popular as a book, has hardly ever been made at all.

Jabberwock Model

More work on the Jabberwock model today; etching using my vibro-etching machine from Aldi which is good but is very noisy (even when wearing the maximum strength 'Peltor Optime III' ear defenders, it's noisy) and it vibrates so much that I must use lots of gloves to avoid tissue damage to my hand! It is ideal for these scales though...

Then, after a damp walk in the park, the painting. Initially a coat of dark brown to sink into the cracks, then reds, then golds. In retrospect, I should have used a lighter hue after the brown. I've made so few of these sculptures in my life that I'm still learning. Here's a close up:

The model is rather dark, but it is probably good enough for the music artwork.

I painted it as I listened to Queen's Greatest Hits II. Singing along, I managed to hit all of the notes in it (I think!) although, of course, nowhere nearly as strongly as Freddie. The greatest vocal challenge is probably It's A Hard Life, not a great song at all, but amazingly sung. The best song, for me, is The Show Must Go On; so poignant, though Barcelona remains his saddest, if not one of the saddest songs ever recorded. Perhaps no song here is as good as their early work.

In other news, I appear to have sold another print; print 4/50 for my Tiger Moving Nowhere.

I was struck with melancholy earlier, at my long awaited Nantwich Museum exhibition next year, three or more years waiting, and it will happen during the pandemic. All of the special events I had planned or hoped for; poetry readings with local artists, music performances of unique and newly created work, cinema shows with projections... so many events, all now cancelled. The show would have been new, different, my best exhibition so far, and yet, now it will be a mere exhibition of paintings. Hardly anyone will see it and I might not even be at the opening event, if there is one at all. It felt like some sort of ending of my visual art, which is of course nonsense, but I was struck by an arrow of sadness just the same. I've stopped painting this year primarily for pragmatic reasons; I had lots of musical and computer based work that I needed time alone inside to do, so I did that. The only gallery I'm exhibiting in is the Macc Lounge and all exhibitions and competitions have been cancelled, so this year has been about music instead.

It's been a good year in that regard: War is Over, Burn of God, The Dusty Mirror, created and released, plus remasters of Synaesthesia, and Animalia. Plus Apocalypse of Clowns recorded ready for next year, plus learning to play guitar to a useable degree, improving my audio production and engineering skills and studio equipment, and starting to learn to sing... as well as other things; finishing The Burning Circus, the Chinese translation of 21st Century Surrealism, Flatspace, Taskforce, etc. None of these things have been a success as such but with each thing I've learned something and pushed some limit. The Burning Circus is certainly my best poetry yet it has yet to sell one copy. They are all important seeds. The best art, historically, always appears like a seed, unseen, that grew slowly. All art is about making, learning, growing, and doing that over and over.

I must live each day, month, year, as though it were my last; push, strive, fight, battle, aim for the best, highest; the transcendent. Excellence is necessarily a solitary path. Our friends are the transhumanic gods, and our encouraging angel friends, the great artists of the past and present who are counting on us to continue their important work. My duty is to them.

Next plans: To finish the Jabberwocky cover art, and the music video for it.