Working on music today. I feel in the artistic zone, trying to avoid the news and focus on new culture, history. Topics for reading today included Heiner Müller, plus Liu Shouxiang, Henri Richelet, Abraham Palatnik and kinechromatic art.
Most of the day has been spent working on the music for a new song, currently titled 'Song for Ron and Russell', but it probably won't be called that in the end. The key element with art is to be new, to be pushing something somewhere, somewhere new. I'm happy with this album so far, partly because the songs are of an unusual structure. I feel that I am pushing somewhere. Anyone can just output anything; anything can be called art, but it has to be difficult to prove its worth, because this makes it rare, and rarity makes it special. New art should always take effort, energy, thought... an entropic reversal. Life is about entropic reversal and art should be the paragon of life.
I want to create more songs now, to push and learn in new ways. Today's song was developed (as you might guess) as a tribute to Sparks, the band who have inspired much of this album. One thing about their music is it is fun, perhaps this is their most American component, and yet, it seems that for year and year they had album after album that seemed to go nowhere. This is what being and artist is, truly, but I felt a sense of fun vs. tragedy that I could use for a song.
Musically I've used my new Hammond Organ simulation for the bluesy chorus. The verse production was inspired by 'Tonight We Fly' by Divine Comedy with bits of 'This Town Ain't Big Enough'. Other influences so far include Scott Walker and David Lynch, but my palette needs pushing wider, into new, stranger worlds. Of course, Tree of Keys/ArtsLab did this a little. Let's see what happens. Meanwhile, here are my words so far:
Fun
You had fun
We had fun
It was fun
It was so much better, don't you think...
...than tragedy?
Oh, you don't know how hard it's been
You have no idea what it was like
The long years
Desert years
Of dust meals
Of flake and thirst
The trail of claws, in silence,
Brittle hope
And faith
Only faith
Shakespeare writing The Tempest
While my monkey weeps
Fun
It was fun
What choice do we have?
The Watusi
The Twist
The Charleston
The Strand
This dance ain't big enough for the both of us
The Dreamer
The Unwoken Fool
