Two slow days working on a video for 'Summer' from The Twelve Seasons. I've basically experimented a lot in Argus and updated the program twice to add new features to aid this experimentation but I'm still not sure if any of the experiments are good enough to consider for any end video. I suppose with new things, a first step is to try lots, keep exploring options, and only then find some to use.
I'm impatient with this though; it is an old tune and I don't like the idea of spending days or weeks on a video for it - yet, I suppose, doing so will result in learning new things, new techniques. My life is learning, trying, exploring. I never sit back and utilise my knowledge, but always push for something new instead which, a lot of the time, is a tiring and frustrating, and brilliant only by chance as I never master things this way, yet everything is interesting, and this is perhaps the true way for an artist. Picasso perhaps stopped being an artist when he got stuck on Cubism for his last (40?) years.
Deb and I went out today for the first time in months, and saw one my my paintings (well, an A4 print) in the library window as part of the local Art Trail. It was a lovely afternoon, rare in these mad times, and much needed.
I've also listened to Novella by Renaissance for the first time. I wrote a song in my youth called 'Can You Hear Me' which had a remarkably similar set of notes. Renaissance remain one of my favourite bands because they fused classical/orchestral music and pop/folk/rock music so well, but there is a lot they didn't and should have done. Their Scheherazade was one extended tone-poem-like compsition which could have easily led to a whole album themed and written like that - more unity! More symphonic! Yet, they went backwards and into shorter, more pop-type music, and introduced synthesizers which was a mistake. Progressive music is like Romantic music, it's about the huge, the spectacular, and some bold show of skill. They lost or forgot this (although, of course, this was the early 80s a time when progressive music seemed out of fashion and punk and pop were growing, remembering that even Genesis and Fleetwood Mac embraced pop). Annie Haslem still tours, I think, as Renaissance but all of the classic band are now gone except for her.
