I, Sisyphus

A generally slow and restful day. I've written new lyrics for the Sisyphus song and worked out a basic melody. I think piano works best for this, guitar-based songs often seem simplistic in melody and key, but I've stuck to E-minor (G-major) to make the song guitar centred. Why a guitar uses this key is beyond me. Piano is generally C-major based (or F#, for symmetry of the keys). Other instruments might be Bb (trumpets, clarinets, saxophones), or A, or F, or Eb! but no other instrument seems to use G, when bizarrely, a guitar can easily be tuned to any key. Both D# or F would fit my piano playing better but I'd have to redraw my chord books and I dislike the idea of learning a non-standard; even if Nick Drake and Tony Iommi famously used non-standard tunings.

I've also completed my monthly backups a day early, keeping the day free for tomorrow.

I've ordered a cable to split the headphones between the PC and my Zoom recorder, so I can hear the backing track and my guitar exactly how it is being recorded. Judging the distortion level and tone is really difficult when hearing in the room.

Sisyphean Times

So it seems that the idiotic government is about to impose a national lockdown. It seems like all of their measures are too late and too weak, and these have frustratingly continued to be so over the whole year. Perhaps the New Zealand or Chinese model of 'full lockdowns' to reduce the virus to near-zero could be, in the long term, foolish, if a vaccine proves to be impossible - they are merely delaying the effects that the other countries are now experiencing - and perhaps, at the start of the outbreak, a fear of the impossibility of an effective vaccine might have been genuine - although even then, any action to delay the spread of Covid would have been beneficial simply because it would have given valuable time to learn about the virus and to prepare health systems.

Yet it now seems almost certain that a vaccine is possible, and of course, a vaccine is considerably safer and more effective and preventing Covid-19 than actually catching the virus. The government should have, from the start, followed strict quarantine rules, which, as an island nation and with weeks of advance warning from continental Europe, would have easily been possible, one of the easiest of all western nations - in line with New Zealand, Iceland, Ireland and other single island states. Yet, they failed and continue to fail to take the correct actions. The situation is frustrating, and most people seem to take their own action in lieu of the vaccuum of competance or direction by the government.

Anyway, life goes on as it can.

My solution to my artistic problem is to keep working at the music until I'm happy with it. I will set aside the Joey Deacon song for now, and perhaps rerecord it as a folk song one day. The song made me think that the word 'spastic' in English became a pejorative taboo word largely because of the fun children made of Joey's appearance on Blue Peter. The effect should have been predicted, and, perhaps like childhood games was innocent in itself, yet, became embarrasing, then taboo, sad, negative, and ultimately insulting. I thought perhaps, almost in a dutiful way, that my song could do something to restore the shunned word and shine a light of beauty on the whole experience in the way that art can.

I've re-worked The Invisible Man, adding a new solo guitar section and will keep working on this; I'm much happier with it now. I have re-written the words to a song, 'I, Sisyphus', too, which has a stioc and defiant mood, similar to I Care. Both of these perhaps reflect current times and my current mood more than The Invisible Man, which is about being forgotten, ignored, lost; but I think I could pull them together artistically, and both have some relevance to current times.

Let us roll our rock. The summit of the hill is in sight again today.

Old Music and Very Open Back Headphones

I had a night of excruciating stomach pain; awaking with it from a very visual dream of a garden of exploding cakes. Foam and sweet cream filled the garden and kitchen, but the sight was somewhat alarming. My pains might be due to a recent decision to try taking probiotics to help with my long term digestive problems. Perhaps this is a positive sign of change. Only time will tell. Either way, the lack of sleep did not affect my enthuisiasm for the day. The trick with work is to use emotionless, rationalised targets and similar logical analyses.

Yet, it's been a frustrating week. I now have four songs complete: Joey Deacon, I Care, Light Blue Evening and The Invisible Man. Apart from I Care ('Care' from yesterday), all are at least ten years old and I'm unsure if I like any of them. Each alone has merits and flaws but each is starkly different and the emotions don't match my current feelings and their style doesn't match my attitudes to my art or music. Even I Care is different from my usual music. The very punk-rawness of that track sets it starkly apart from Joey Deacon, which is the very electronic and minimalistic - its sounds were inspired by a Casio VL-1 keyboard.

Yet, I might feel differently one day, and I'm sure that some people will like some of these. Can I define why I dislike them? It must principally be the age of the music - its lack of connection with my emotions and attitudes of today; and the old production and sound, which I've tried to update. There is a strong element of being tired of them, I've heard them hundreds of times and remade them over and over many times.

It's still been a very useful week, however. I'm torn between releasing these on some sort of E.P. or small collection of old songs, or just forgetting them and treating these relics as tutorials. These songs feel like my early paintings, knowing the flaws, but knowing that I'll improve. Willing to 'get them out there' and not caring about judgement.

Yet, I also want everything I make to be good enough, to ideally sound better each time, to be starkly artistic and creative, not just any old thing.

Sibelius weeps; he burned his 8th symphony due to perfectionism - his lesson would be to get things out there and not care. I also think of Kate Bush and some of her wonderful Phoenix recordings, and some glimpses of songs like Scares Me Silly and Something Like a Song that I love the sound of and really need to be out there.

Well, of older songs, of course I've written hundreds, but only produced and recorded a tiny amount. Of those, these few tracks, and the few on The Dusty Mirror, probably represent the best (although Written on Rice is worth an outing one day). Art should be new, newly made, about current times, about the artist's current life... so many of my painting ideas and paintings feel ancient and out of touch with my current self, and music does too. Perhaps the solution is to only create new work and never rework old work - yet does this doom these older works to being unseen and unheard forever? Also, what is new? I have years old painting ideas and newer ones but only today's very ideas are the newest. Even my Richard Dadd painting was an idea from a few years before I painted it.

I'm reminded that the Teenage Opera was not published for 25-30 years after it was written, by which time it's themes were very out of date, its music was, it was like a relic of a prediction which came true; the the old Grocer Jack character himself.

What to do? Irrespective of any of this, I've made huge strides this month in creating music and new ways of creating music. I must not dwell too much on this analysis. I can easily create new songs in a flash.

Oh! One invention idea. For decades music artists have been listening through one ear of headphones while having one ear open, while singing perhaps. I do this when playing guitar. It's amazing to me that nobody has yet made 'one ear' headphones that can be comfortably worn but having just a hole on one side - so my idea for a company like Sony is to make some MDR-7506 headphones with only one ear. I could easily make up a set with a bit of sawing - and £100 for a new pair of 'phones - it seems tragic to damage a new pair of great headphones in this way however. My temporary solution is to buy some really cheap 80s-style Walkman headphones, the ones with orange sponge ear-pads. These let in sound so easily that you can wear headphones AND hear everything in the room. I think there is a commercial need for 'very open' headphones that allow really a clear sound from the room as well as the sound being played. I can't find any like this but would love to have some.

Care

A good day, producing and recording a song called Care. It's a song with hardly any melody, two chords and no images, but was fun to play and a good tutorial. It's rather grunge-like, like a Pixies song, and is one of my first to feature lots of real guitars.

For the first time I could see the connections between my painting, piano, guitar and singing, and how I learned (or am learning) each thing. For my painting I have some 'Spells for Artists' which are essentially rules, meditations on how to do things like draw, paint etc. Rules that help focus the mind on the task, and rationally document the best way to do things. The way to improve any activity is to analyse it, work out what is wrong, and how to make every aspect better. This analysis is necessary for fast improvement - it would take years to learn how to do something instinctively and even then, ones routines and procedures would not be as good as they could be. Every one of my 1000 or so paintings has a diary of how I painted it, and it's perhaps that, more than anything, more than any book or class or tutorial, that taught me how to paint.

Yet, I've never done that for piano, or any other skill. Perhaps that's because my keyboard playing ultimately stems from pre-painting days. Perhaps, more importantly, it's because I've not taken piano as seriously as painting as a skill to be mastered. Yet, now I've started to make some documents for singing and guitar playing for the first time. Sometimes, even simple rules can help, simple routines, and even the act of making a list of rules and routines can improve an activity. If something can improve a skill by even 1%, it's worth doing. If a £1000 gadget will improve your skill by 1%, it's worth it. If your aim is mastery, no price is too high - the target is 100% and every 1% along the way must be obtained one way or another.

This made me think that I've not achieved nearly as much as I could in painting! I know I'm far more capable of painting than my efforts so far show; yet, it seems that I don't feel like pushing on. At times I feel that I've mastered what I wanted and so don't need to do more - everything for me must be learning, must be a challenge to be worth doing. As my goals are attained, it becomes less of a challenge, and there is less incentive to do. If I need to inspire myself I need to remind myself that there are no masters; that there are always new skills, that no matter how much you know, there is more to know and that the top of a mountain might feel like a summit, but it is in fact but a tiny peak beneath a vast and unseen new mountain, of perfection in the universe. We are but specks and the best human ever has achieved barely anything great; Beethoven, Leonardo da Vinci, Einstein, these are specks compared to what is potentially possible - it is this vision that can inspire.

The song itself was a learning exercise. Maybe I'll tidy it up and do something with it. Here are the words:

Care

I care
but I don't care
that you don't care
because I care care care care care even if you don't
I care even if you won't

and I don't care
what you think of me
and I don't care
if you ignore me
and I don't care
that you don't care
about the things I care about.

Joey Deacon et al

A slow, unhappy and difficult day (despite my brilliant treatise on economics). I've been working a lot on three old songs: Light Blue Evening, The Invisible Man, and Joey Deacon: The Best Spastic in the World. These certainly sound better now than when I first recorded them, but I'm not enjoying the process. The songs seem old and of the past for me, perhaps even churning up unhappy memories of my doomed romance (though, the romantic in me would prefer a doomed romance to none at all). I would, ideally, like to unite the songs and create a unifying concept. Maybe they are worth a small EP of 'old songs'. Any art is better than none - but I must keep standards reasonably high.

Yet, these songs, I remind myself, are good enough to deserve some sort of outing. Feelings and art - bah! This is a problematical combination. The quality of one's creation needs to be judged rationally and without emotion otherwise the goal keeps moving and every alternative feels as good as any other, like a mush.

The Joey song, actually a touching and sad song about the fun children used to make of this disabled literary figure, is very electronic and minimalistic in production; this works, but the strongly electronic nature of it jars with the natural vocals. I don't want to, will never ever, use autotune - that will kill emotion, but here, it's real-world sound stands out. My solution is to change the pitch of the electronic instruments to make them out of tune and so more natural. This works brilliantly. I'm reminded that the early electronic instruments, those Moogs of the 60s as used by The Beatles on Abbey Road, were notorious for going out of tune. Perhaps this actually helped them blend in better. As I've said before, by the mid-80s, everything electronic was ruining every song with its harsh knives of scaffolding, cutting up the delicate real-world instruments and vocals. Most songs now make everything sound (or be) electronic, rather than make the electronics sound real.

Love and Money

A new website essay.

A common error is equating work with money. The two are only very tenuously connected. This can easily be illustrated: it is possible to work for no money, and it is possible to gain money and not work.

Money is a fundamental part of human society, however, and has evolved in every civilisation for at least two reasons. Firstly because it is a reflection of psychology, and secondly because it makes the emotional transactions of society more efficient.

Money is tangible representation of emotional debt. When someone does us a favour, we feel indebted to them and want to do a similar favour in return. This feeling will fade away though, we might simply forget who owes us what favour and what favour we owe. We might also have a different opinion on how important our favour was relative to the returned favour. It is simpler to have a token to recall such favours, using more tokens for greater emotional debt; and so this is money.

Money has a longer memory than emotions, so it makes the world work on a more stable basis. It also allows bigger favours that might stretch across several days or weeks. The indebtedness of lending someone your lawnmower is one thing but the debt from building someone's house is huge by comparison, and hard to measure in emotional terms.

Ideally money should represent the exact level of emotional debt. Note that I use the word debt not work, because the debt is the important thing. It is this emotion that money represents, not any exertion of labour. This can be illustrated in the labour that a train or spacecraft does, it uses a huge amount of energy to propel us (or any astronauts!) but we don't feel we owe a train or spacecraft anything, except perhaps its fuel. Yet, consider the kindness of a friend, or how we feel about romantic partners or our parents or our children: we always lavish tangible gifts on people we love. This illustrates that emotional bonds are always financial too.

For any favour we should ideally do exactly the same favour in return; not more, not less. This is known as tit for tat and has been shown to be, in general, the most efficient way to be productive. Money helps with this because we can quantify our favours exactly, so a money based society is necessarily more efficient than one without money.

The efficiency of tit for tat, plus the longevity of the preservation of debt proves that a Star-Trek style society without money is effectively impossible; it would not operate as efficiently as a society with money and so always fair less well when competing with a money based society. This is also why communist-style controlled economies are inefficient, because financial transactions must ideally be devolved and conducted on, or ultimately rooted to, a personal basis and individual transactions. Trying to control an economy equates to trying to control emotions, and the psychological effects are the same. This is one reason why freedom is connected to capitalism and a lack of freedom connected to communist states: freedom of thought and feeling is necessary for an efficient economy because freedom of expression and feeling are related to the friction in trade and financial transactions. Any control of emotional freedom will make an economy less inefficient because it will equate to control of financial freedom.

There is a relationship between love and money because we feel indebted to people who we appreciate more, for whatever reason. We might like a pop-star; they may enhance our lives, and so we feel indebted to them. We want to give to them that which they give to us, because we know instinctively that this is the correct, and most efficient, thing to do. We generally can't meet them or write music for them in return, so we buy their wares and thus our love for them makes them richer.

The equation of emotion and money indicates the limits of money, that becoming richer does not necessarily deny another wealth; although, there is only so much love, and feelings of indebtedness, to go round. If we love someone, then that love must be denied to someone else; yet this is not a systemic injustice, even if the spurned lover may feel it is a personal one. In other words no excess of wealth could be considered negative or bad for society, and no excess of poverty signs of an immoral or uncaring society. There is no injustice in either wealth or poverty, except that we are indebted to, or love, some people and not others. If we pity the poor and unloved, this itself creates an emotional debt and this is the root of charity.

The important thing is that all exchanges, financial and emotional, are like for like to be efficient. It is true, however, that for short term gain, this rule can be broken. Even subatomic particles can break the rules of the universe for a fraction of a second because the individual can sometimes gain by breaking the rules of tit for tat. Over the long term, rules are broken by both sides equally, and so the balance is maintained and the gains or loses are haphazard and unpredictable.

The connection between wealth and emotion also reveals a connection between romantic jealously and envy, and financial jealously and envy. Those who feel envy of the wealthy generally experience the same feelings of envy of other people's relationships and wellbeing. Each is a logical manifestation of the other.

In a lottery, people can gain large amounts of money in an instant, almost at random. Perhaps this could be seen as an injustice; surely this lucky person is not loved this much or has any connection of emotional debt worth a vast financial sum? This assumption is wrong. The prize money in a lottery comes from the individual purchases by huge numbers of people. It is these many tiny accumulations which make the prize, so the system is fair. A similar situation takes place with super rich individuals who head large companies. Generally those companies sell very general services to a very large number of people; only a tiny amount from everyone on earth would be needed to make any individual very rich, and in such companies, and with such billionaires, this is the case.

Ultimately, work is only related to finance when it is work for someone else to create a feeling of indebtedness in them. Other forms of work are not connected to wealth at the time, yet, might be one day. The work by an artist of today, perhaps unseen and unrewarded, unknown by society, may one day be valued for the love and pleasure the artwork gives the viewer or listener, and thus become valuable. The lovers of art might pay to buy or view the artwork, rewarding the then owners, or the museums which give the viewer pleasure. If the artist is still alive, then his or her audience will naturally direct their emotions of appreciation at him or her, which will naturally lead to wealth. This illustrates the connections between fame and wealth; the two are psychologically synonymous if the fame equates to indebtedness, rather than infamy.

1930s Dance Music

A day or errands, some shopping and business duties today, including odering some prints and a frame.

In creative work I've worked on Light Blue Evening. The song was inspured by 1930s dance hall songs so I listened to a few and added some more instrumentation. Generally, the production was sparse before, centred on the bass and drums with only a stabbing honky-tonk style piano. I've added a lot more; two layers of strings, a clarinet and some brass highlights. It sounds richer and better.

Those dance tunes had a lot of richness in them, it's worth remembering that they were played by orchestras with many different voices. The song's melody is almost always introduced for a minute or more, often a verse and a chorus, before the vocals come in. As with modern dance music it's best to have a good tune and rhythm; the words are not important.

The Invisible Man, Light Blue Evening, and Melody in Songs

New vocals today for The Invisible Man and Light Blue Evening, two old songs that I first released under The Harlequin Kings name, but was never happy enough with them. I think they're good enough to get out there somehow, yet, they're never quite right! I think the very fact that I've listened to them a million times, and recorded about 50 vocal takes has destroyed my vision of the music. They were also in a bad choice of keys; it's really only been since I've started to write new vocal music this year that I've understood how crucial the central pitch and key is to the tone of the song - not merely the ease of singing. Generally the higher pitch the better too. Female voices are easier to mix than male, and of male voices, the higher the better.

Anyway, it's been a frustrating day of listening and tweaking the same old songs time and time and not being satisfied. I need to rationally consider why, and if I can't, perform random experiments to see if they can sound better or worse. Of course, it's all good practice; the key thing is to constantly hammer away. Often art is like a crossword, filling in the easy bits, which then help fathom out the medium parts, which then lead to clues to the difficult parts.

Perhaps here I need some sort of melody to match the vocal lead, the backing is perhaps too spartan, or I need a guide song or two that can be an inspiration.

In other news, I've submitted the new artwork for my Finnegans Judgement EP. Work on the new Bites of Greatness and Arcangel covers continues at a much slower pace; those are largely done and need a few days of away from my eyes for me to observe them anew. No rush there.

Last night I thought of song types, and strategies to make great songs. I don't have one answer; the target must always move, there are no right answers in art and it's bad pracice to only work to one philosophy - that leads to stagnation. I considered melody. Most Beatles songs are very melodic, you can play the tune on a piano, and, ideally, get an idea of what the song is about or like from that melody; yet, consider how the string production of Eleanor Rigby changes the mood, and that was added after the song was written. I often, now, put image and mood at the centre, and build sounds and timbre to paint that image and mood, rather than use melody. This is a stark change to how I used to write instrumental music, which is usually very melodic in my case. For that, I played notes to fit chords and made pretty tunes.

It made me consider which is best. Generally it's nice to have a song with a melody, and perhaps The Beatles were popular for that reason, yet there are many pop hits without much of a melody. 'Don't You Want Me' by The Human League has very little melody, and what is there is in the main synth riff at the start, which you could argue is the key part that makes people like the tune.

It seems that the battle is between melody and timbre to create mood. Of course now, any sound can easily become part of a song, and this was a relatively new innovation in the 60s where most sounds had to be made live using musical instruments. The Beatles did use tapes and odd sounds a few times and did write some songs with little melody; Helter Skelter, Revolution No. 9 - aren't these the songs people didn't generally like? Perhaps their song writing was a product of the technology and instruments of the day as much as philosophy.

On Apocalypse of Clowns some of the tracks are very melodic, like Clown Face, and some very timbral, like Siamese Twin Domestic. The latter feels more new and exciting, yet neither really 'better' than the other. Both strongly evoke a mood, although the latter perhaps evokes more of an image. Perhaps a scene is easier to manifest with sounds because we hear certain sounds in certain places. A key thing about melody though is that it seems easy to remember in a way that sound effects aren't; perhaps, also, we remember voices more easily than instrumental melodies because in our mind's ear we can repeat them.

New Album Covers, Philip Glass, Music Ambitions

The Flatspace covers have started to become live today. The Flatspace II anniversary sale was more popular than expected with over 30 sales of various Flatspacey things, which is excellent. 21st Century Surrealism has sold 10 this month too, which is about average, and I feel it can do more; I must reach further with this.

I spent the morning reading back my emails from 2001, to try and determine the date of the launch of Radioactive. How odd, how distant that time seems. I feel so different from the person I was then, when my entire social life was based on email. It was a sad time I'm happy to forget, yet like all memories its feels strangely pleasant to reminisce. I had lots of pen pals I'd forgotten about, but often only for a month or two. I didn't discover the Radioactive launch date. At the time I was strung along by two different software companies, both asking for changes and enticements so that they might publish the game - I got nothing from either in the end (and Crystal Interactive still owe me over $4000 for game box design work). It wasn't until 2002 when I had finally hit rock bottom and had enough of such people and decided to self-publish, and found IndieSFX and Bytten and many other things in this first 'renaissance' year.

Today I've tweaked the Arcangel cover again.

In particular, re-rendering the logo in Lightwave. The old logo was rendered in Imagine. Lightwave has much better anti-aliasing - still some of the best anti-aliasing in all of computer graphics, and the old logo was a bit jaggy. As you can see, the general look is more reserved than the earlier draft and was inspired by classical recordings.

The music has been compared to Philip Glass, and it does have something of a minimalist repetition to it, although very digital of course. Now, to me, it is the very analogue, hand repetition that makes that early minimalism rather nice. When electronic, it can easily sound too harsh, unless one is careful. For me, Sparks' Carnegie Hall song represents the best of the more recent digital minimalism - as good as any Glass' work. Actually, listening to his Mad Rush (which is not a mad rush, its more like a bubbling stream or fall of autumn leaves) it reminded me of my ArtsLab tunes like Murmuration and The Dark Cliffs, but my tunes had far more drama. Listening now, The Dark Cliffs is better than all of Glass' Solo Piano album. His violin concerto remains excellent, however.

I need to whip myself into creative action; it seems to take a day or more now to switch from one medium to another. Music will be my focus next because I can't make a Fall in Green video in this pandemicological climate. I have lots of ideas, generally based on sorting songs into categories to unify them. I have a few older songs that need an outing; The Invisible Man, Incomplete Version of the Writer. It's better to finish something half finished than start something new. If I do this, then the next album will be a bit like The Dusty Mirror, a collection of songs without a central theme, like a Beatles album. If I do this, I must be better than The Beatles. It seems easy to be better than McCartney's or Lennon's solo work - I feel they could have done so much better if they had forced themselves to do so, rather than sit on laurels, but ho, it's easy to say that; I have no laurels and would reject any for this very reason. Every creative act of worth must be difficult, full of doubt and back and forth analysis. Good art cannot come easy. Praise from others is no guide. Only the artist knows what is good.

Onward!

Flatspace II Anniversary, Monopolies

It's 15 years today since Flatspace II was released, so long ago and so much has changed. One thing I've changed today is updated the album art for both soundtracks. Here is the new Flatspace II soundtrack artwork:

I designed a full 4-page CD set of art for the soundtrack back when it came out but, in the end I didn't print any CD copies. I did a quick check and discovered, quite surprisingly, that in 2008 I sold 50 albums but now I'm lucky to sell five in a year, by CD or download. Yet, as far as I can tell, my music is more popualr now than then. This illustrates the changes in the way people listen to, and own, music. Things are still changing, squeezed by the tech giants of Google, Apple, Amazon etc. I feel that these companies want to charge people per-listen (or per-watch for films), rather than have anyone own anything, because it's more profitable to rent than sell. I can understand the model, but it can mean the creators getting what those vendors dictate. If a someone else controls how people watch or listen then creators can't sell their work any more.

Still, no monopoly or power system lasts forever. The system with technology companies is probably more open now than when Microsoft was dominant. Its dominance it killed Microsoft by lack of innovation and competition; this has always been and will alwyas be the doom of the monopoly on anything, whether economic, political or religious doctrine. All things need others to thrive and all things must change and adapt or die. Without rivals monopolies don't know what to change to until it's too late, which is why the greatest monopolies crash in the most destructive ways when they end. I expect that in 15 years we will have totally new and unexpected power brokers in the realms of technology, music, film, data.

My work on the album art continues and I've made lots of changes today to the Arcangel soundtrack and Bites of Greatness covers. Perhaps I ideally need some new music videos for Fall in Green, but I also ache to compose and record more music.

New Bites of Greatness Cover

A full day working on the new Bites of Greatness cover. I created three different designs with different poses but settled on one because I liked the Louis XIV quality of the pose, then subverted it with bites, which is a recurring motif on the old cover, and one I will reuse if/when a CD verision is made because the current art is rather good.

Lots of tiny changes, constant tweaks, adjusting colours, placement. As in music, the balance is one of hard, digital, clean; and noisy, analogue, messy. The mix should be just right. Not too simple, not too complex.

Here it is so far:

The red/yellow text reminds me of 1980s Top of the Pops, or albums like the early Now, and Hits, and Hooked on Classics. The red seems to compress badly as a jpg and looks blurred; I might have to tweak the hue for this reason...

All of this is time consuming work. I also have to do an Infinite Forest cover at some point, and of course one for our new Fall in Green album, but I really need to photograph Deb for that. Indoor mixing is currently forbidden with these so-called Tier-2 Covid restrictions. I would think that technically a photography session for a music release is professional work and thus permitted; but we're unlikely to meet indoors for the forseeable future - we've only done so about three times since this all began, Deb is working a lot and there is no immediate rush for the albul art, we can wait a month or so. One possibility is that the album will come out in the first quarter next year, with a single in January.

I want to move on and create more music. I have so many ideas and so much music waiting to fly out. I am annoyed by pains, but excited and energised too.

Aches and Bites of Greatness

Two awful nights: one of constant earache, and one of constant stomach pain and a still blocked ear.

Yet inbetween I had a good day and refined the cover designs for Arcangel, the Flatspace soundtracks, and Finnegans Judgement. I changed Arcangel to add more of a background. Plain black looks a lot better on the screen that it does in print - it hardly ever works in print, so I added some colour there.

In the day I took lots of new photographs and started work on the Bites of Greatness cover. I knew this will be difficult as I want an all-new design. As with the difficult Herr Kasperle or Siamese Twin Domestic, the trick is to keep trying, keep hammering, developing different ideas and possibilites, seeing what can be better, being radical and creating an evolution chain to get to something that is good enough.

A photo of me with some new hair, it seems to suit me. The yellow spotlight has oddly strobed into red and green.

My ear and stomach pain has sapped my strength. The days feel brutal, like crawling along a landscape against a harsh and icy wind. The fight goes on. There can be no rest.

Flatspace, Finnegans, Arcangel Album Art

A bad night of earache due to a blocked left ear, which was the case all day yesterday but in the night it became increasingly painful. This morning, warm olive oil helped. The trick to heating the oil is to dip the bowl of a teaspoon into the surface of a cup of freshly boiled water. Pour the oil into it and observe it; it will visibly clear as it warms in a few seconds. Lift ther spoon, wipe off the drips of boiling water, and tip into the ear keeping a tissue handy to catch the leaks. It will be the perfect warmness.

More refinements to album art today; a change to the Arangel cover, more tweaks to the Flatspace Soundtracks, and new art for Genesis (merely a possibility) and Finnegans Judgement. These tweaks take time, as in music it's useful to take a break to see the results anew. Here are the Flatspace covers so far:

This evening I've played electric guitar to the album Hounds of Love. There aren't many guitar opportunities in there but it was good practice. It seems that Kate has a few tunes in C-minor - my favourite key. I love her more now! But I still haven't forgiven her for the awful changes in The Director's Cut.

I feel I must pause before working on more album art - and suspect the great sin of laziness! I must calculate the real reason.

I'm generally lacking in energy and am unusre why - apart from the lack of social contact, lack of exercise, and dystopian news due to Covid-19 and the Brexit; though both of these amuse more than concern me, politics is often like chickens and cocks fighting, and observers and commentators all add to the fray. Only a minority seem to heve any intelligence or idea of the philosophies involved, and history, so the result is often like something from The Keystone Kops. I know that, in the long term, all will improve and that none of the decisions, even world wars, really matter - the world will never 'end' and in a billion years, humanity and all life will still be here.

I think the darkening nights might be one cause; yet I am generally getting a lot of work done. Perhaps my ambitions are far ahead of my abilities, in speed terms. Expectations must be realistic - it's hard to know if you are doing well if this is based only on how well you feel you are doing; feelings are not reliable. Tangible, emotionless goals are always best. Emotional goals are always doomed to fail. Perhaps that's why happiness is such a stupid goal in life, it is impossible to attain because emotions are destined to change often, irrespective of circumstances.

Walls, Flatspace Art

After a couple of weeks of distruption, the hole in my wall is bricked, plastered, and today, wallpapered! At last things can get back to normal.

A new office chair has also arrived today, a luxury 'executive' leather chair with a back and arms. I've probably needed this for years. I've not had a new chair since... perhaps my childhood. My current/previous one is perhaps 20 years old, and has been my main chair for all of my programming days and for all of my painting life; the raise and lower function of office chairs makes them quite useful for painting! It has a solid metal base and is still in great condition, but even that was not new, I rescued it from being thrown away by the local college (the college itself has since been knocked down, the chair has outlasted even the building) but the seat, never very soft, is now a thin pancake of foam with three pancakes of cushions. It's grown to be just too uncomfortable, the plastic back has long been cracked and I've never been able to relax in it, it was purely a functional object; so I've bought a new chair with a back that I can sit in. I can but hope that it will last as long and work as well as the old one.

So, a new room to work in. The wallpapering and chair assembly has already made today very busy, but I've done some work on a the new Flatspace Soundtrack artwork. Here is a glimpse of old and new (so far):

There is more to do. I want to unify the look with the Flatspace II Soundtrack album too.

I've also recalculated my sales, that figure of 700 or so seemed too low, and I realised that I'd only counted sales from 2015 onwards because the actual sales data is long since lost; I only have email archives to go by. A new recount shows a total of 1598 lifetime sales of Flatspace II and Flatpsace IIk, which seems far more realistic. There are perhaps a few more, and 500-1000 extra copies were included in a pay-what-you-want bundle sale a few years ago.

Still, it would have taken ten-times this for a sequel to be worthwhile. Much as I once enjoyed programming, it was very much a phase. I can see a progression from programming to painting, to writing, music and everything else. In recent years, live events, my radio work, performances have grown, and I can see a momentum towards music and live events, and away from painting, but I'm sure these reasons are temporary. This extraordinary year has made music easier to make - and my skills and abilities in this area are still growing. Music excites me more at the moment - I feel I'm doing new things, and feel that I, and Deb and I, are breaking new ground.

There was a definite time in 2008 where I can remember feeling that my success in painting was inevitable. In 2008 I was still learning to paint and still lived an isolated life, yet I could see results and possibilities and I knew then that I would achieve everything I wanted in painting. Now I feel that the same is true of music. I can see and feel the inevitability of success and it is exciting.

New Album Covers

A good day today. Have tidied up the plaster wall which is all ready now for wallpapering, the glorious final step.

I've also started work on new album covers, mostly for the older electronic works that had very abstract or digital looking desgins that lacked an identity.

Here is the current cover for The Arcangel Soundtrack:

And here is my new design, so far:

The difference is huge. The first could be anything, a game, any old product; the second looks like an album cover. I tihnk it's important that my image appears on the cover. It will mean, of course, that it will be a contemporary me rather than a contemporaneous me, but that will also serve to unify a current image, so it has an upside too. I aim to update the Flatspace soundtrack covers too, plus Bites of Greatness, and perhaps The Tweleve Seasons, although that existing cover is rather good (and also exists in 600dpi, unlike these early albums, which is another motivation to rework these older covers, to bring them up to my current standard resolution).

One other thing done today is making a simple video for the forthcoming Fall in Green track, Mandalino. This is a simple one that uses the old Pierrot ident from ArtSwarm with a simple colour alteration.

Plaster and Past Sales

Applied the plaster layer, or one plaster layer, to my fireplace yesterday, a horrible experience of being micro-managed by my mother at every step. The result if awful, but was the best I could do in the circumstances of having no control over or responsibility for this job.

I also recorded new vocals for the track Falling, a poem from The Burning Circus about appreciating a climb only when falling. The earlier vocals were rather bold and Shakespearean in tone, but I thought a more resigned and quiet tone would work better. I hope now that this is the end to the music tweaks. I mastered and broke up the tracks into invidividual wav files too.

Jobs to do: Album artwork, for this, and other albums. I also need videos for this and ideally The Dusty Mirror, and perhaps for some older albums like The Spiral Staircase. I generally dislike making videos and get little in return. I wonder if making music videos is worth it... perhaps in 10 or 20 years I'll find myself updating my current videos; the job is endless, a symptom of my need to make things ideal and perfect. I've not made any Spiral Staircase videos though, the only one was the wonderful 45-minute one made by dear Sue for my Electric Picture House Performance. One might be useful for the sake of completeness.

I've refined the outline of a future concept album, it has a theme of struggle. I feel that I'd really want to do that and forget the videos, but I at least need album artwork for Apocalypse. The jobs seem frenetic and never ending and the result of this is a lack of energy, the anxious energy cancels out and leaves me unfocused and without the desire to do anything. I feel that the last two weeks have been for nothing; yet, I can see that this isn't the case. I'm reminded again of the Buddhist wisdom that a bucket is filled drip by drip. It's not important how much is done in a day, all that is needed is one tiny step in the right direction.

One other thing I did yesterday was set up and announce a Flatspace II sale for its 15-year anniversary on October 24th. I totted up the all-time sales of Flatspace II and Flatspace IIk; they have sold 729 copies. If they had sold 7000 or 70,000 my life would have vastly changed. Would I have become an artist? Still, 700 was/is a good result, no other game has sold as much as 70. It was/is a taste of what a hit feels and behaves like. 21st Century Surrealism has sold 105 copies so far, so this is my next most popular creation, and it took off in a similar way.

I must stop past reflections and get back to work. My best work lies in the future. There is a lot to do so I must motivate myself with clear goals, and remind myself that time, health, abilities, are limited.

More Cement, Wire Jabberwocky and Stop-Motion Animation Models

Cement day two, filling in smaller gaps with a mere 500ml or so of sand and cement.

Then I adjusted the vocal balance for the loud finale of Jabberwocky, due to Deb's feedback. Getting the vocal volume right is tricky in this track because the climax of the music corresponds with the climax of the vocals too. The best option is to reduce elements of the music rather than boost the vocals. I'm not really fan of 'riding the console', that is dipping the music levels temporarily to make way for vocals, I prefer to design a tune such that vocals can smoothly fit into any music, but that only really works with pop songs or muisc with a steady and regular level of sound. Jabberwocky is much more like classical music in the mix.

After that I started work on a model Jabberwocky for the music video. This is only a possible model... I have an idea for the video, but the look of the model and how it will be animated or move is not decided yet. Sparks' Edith Piaf video is an inspiration but I want to avoid stop-motion animation if at all possible; it takes too long and I've never done it before.

No matter how the video works, a model Jabberwocky will be needed, a poseable one, so I spent an hour or two making a wire skeleton, actually from garden wire which I twisted into twin strands using a power drill because I've run out of modelling wire. This seems to be tough - I hope it will resist metal fatigue. After making a basic skeleton, I added some Milliput to the main joint areas, places which won't move where there are a lot of wire knots. This will stop the limbs, fingers etc. sliding about or becoming loose. The head is a semi-permanent afterthought - it can be pulled off if I don't like or need it. This is all skeleton - hidden underparts. I could cover all of it with fur or felt... or anything else. I wondered if I could dip it all in Paraloid B72 acrylic resin to give it a smooth coating. Would it remain flexible? I think it would flex enough. Perhaps this is an ideal coating that could be sculpted and painted and yet remain posable? the ideal substance would be hard enough to look like a real animal yet flexible enough to bend at the joints.

I have some heat-melt rubber (used for making moulds) - that might work and is certainly flexible, but how could it be applied? And could it be scuplted and painted? Probably not, it is very greasy in texture, almost like a slimy jelly. I could use sponge for the joints and a harder substance, like the epoxy clay, for the immovable parts.

Is Paraloid B72 flexible? Most acrylic tends to be, well, the paint can be, perspex is rather brittle. The dry Paraloid chips seem brittle. Uhu glue seems to set into a transparent but very rubbery blob. Perhaps hot-melt glue would work, or PVA, or Golden Clear Tar Gel - that is rather flexible.

Cement

Listened to the start of perhaps my favoruite Bowie album, Heathen, last night. I love Afraid. Then a semi-sleepless night. Awoke late to mum's ever-busyness. It was time to strip the wallpaper from my fireplace wall then start plastering. We had the idea of sticking some plasterboard there, but it barely fitted so we applied mortar instead by way of rough plaster. It's such a small space that there's no need to buy a big bag of plaster just for it.

The paper was stripped by 12pm, and the mortar applied by 3pm. It was rather a thick layer, perhaps 15mm in places, and the sandy watery stuff, not far off the consistency of a river bed, was in danger of falling off at every stage, it started to dangerously slump down, but it held, and as it dried I managed to shave it smooth leaving a rough surface a few millimetres shallower than the surrounding wall; enough for some finishing plaster. There wasn't enough mortar to cover it all, so we'll have to mix more tomorrow. It was all too precarious to mix and apply this at the time.

The day feels wasted as a result and I'm still somewhat achey after the first day of labour. The lockdown has left me unfit. It feels good to do this sort of work but my digestive system doesn't seem to efficiently cope with it; it's a matter of training. Food is a balance, we must eat what we need - no more. Eating too much and doing too little is the ultimate cause of diseases like diabetes; it trains the body to ignore nutrients, become inefficient. I err towards eating too little, this trains the body to use every scrap of energy, to toughen up, but again, too much of this eats away muscles and other cell friends. I've noticed that the vision in my right eye is now very poor, I can barely see beyond 2M with it.

After the building work, I worked a little on the album; tweaking Lost at the Fair. The bass part seemed hard to balance - in many ways the key to any audio mixing is handling bass. This has a long bass, a tone of about 2 seconds, which can be a problem. It all worked much better when this was faded away in a sort of inverse bell curve. Musically it sounded amazingly similar, yet the mixing worked better. A bass is best when it first appears, the impact. It is that 'boom' that gives it power, which is why there is an ideal length for it.

I also extended Mandalino to segue it into the previous track. Another master is burned. Perhaps this album is done. I must avoid obsessive working on this music; it's probably fine and I'm getting tired of it. I need to work on the cover art but the building works, however minor, are a constant distraction and are tiring me out physically and mentally. I remind myself that I am Heracles, a mere third through my great life. All Greek warriors ache after labour. This is good, not a thing to complain about.

The Covid news is all bad, we are back to the state of March or April. I remain optimistic, but ultimately all we can do is our best. Deb and I have hardly 'mixed indoors' since late February, perhaps met three times inside, and I've certainly not been into any other house. How I miss her touch and our times together.

Lost at the Fair II

A busy enough day. I started by updating Prometheus again. I'm now on version 2.64, so 64 revisions since it was first complete. Today I added icons to precalculate the music to the Sequencer Window; next to Play where they will be more useful. Actual changes to the program are getting less common, I'm tending to improve what is there already.

Last night I listened to the first CD Master of Apocalypse of Clowns. It was generally fine. Two tracks needed minor changes to the stereo space - I rarely listen to the music though headphones when woking on a tune now, it always harms the mix compared to listening through my fantastic Samson Resolv monitors, but of course it sounds far better though headphones so is my preferred way to listen to music for pleasure. The lack of headphones when mixing means that tiny details can be missed though, like those stereo issues, so I've fixed them today. I also added a tail to the final chord in Dead Hand. The piano there is completely dry, but the last chord sounded too flat.

The next issue was volume; Jabberwocky at the end was too quiet compared to the rest of the album - this is partly because it's a very dyanamic song; the peaks are loud enough but most of the song (well, poem) is not at peak. I've turned down the vocals so can afford to turn it all up anyway. In the end I could boost the volume by 10% without clipping. I also made the prior track, and others on the album, quieter. In the old days I used to like albums that were loud, but now I prefer to turn up the volume on my amp; this is the correct way, I've probably evolved into this by listening to classical music. I get really annoyed by music that is compressed in the master and sounds solidly noisy like a log of sound all the way through. It sounds like distorted noise. I refuse to compress when mastering or ever compress a whole track of anything - it only serves to kill drama and emotional dynamism.

My big problem with Apocalypse v1.00 was Lost at the Fair, one of the early tracks for February. It had a meandering organ solo with limited melody and it generally felt emotionless and noisy at the same time. Today I decided to remake a new version, using Deb's orginal vocal recordings (how blessed I am to be able to do this! If this were a song I could hardly rewrite it and still use the same vocals!) I'm much happier with the result. In many ways it is simpler; a simple descending chord sequence, in 7-time to give it a slightly strange feeling of being lost or confused. I added some gentle chords, like a memory... the poem is about losing one's mother so needs poignancy... the simple chords help with this, it far better than the old version; that was noisy and chaotic, like a busy and loud fairground; this version has a bit of everything.

I also made a wooden surround for the fireplace downstairs (like a tiny picket fence of pine) and cut some plasterboard for the hole in my wall.

I must work on new art, new ambitions, new plans. I have an idea for the Jabberwocky video and need props for that. I'm getting frustrated at these little jobs, the wall etc. This frustration is good, it's energy for pushing on when these things are out of the way.

Jobs to do; finalise the story structure for my next album which will be a dystopian concept album. I must also write something on Covid-19 for a Crewe Creative Writer's competition, and type up a script for the Cheshire Prize for Literature. As yet, this script, a half hour existentialist dialogue, is my only idea. I hope to come up with a few so that I can choose the best (whatever that means, I tend to like the ones that the judges don't and dislike the ones they like - such are contests). Plays are limited to 15 minutes so I'll have to edit this script anyway.

Bricklaying

I love learning and trying new skills. I was reading about Phil Collins the other day, how he joined Genesis aged 20 or so, learned new skills; acting, then singing, touring, solo albums... I realised that in music I've had to write and record my music, playing all of the instruments myself, programming the sequencing software and designing the synthesizers and all of the audio effects, building the studio, learning mixing and production, performing live including booking and promoting the events (designing the posters, setting up and sound checking, greeting the audience, taking tickets etc.) designing all of the album artwork, directing, filming and editing the music videos, founding the record company, publishing the music, registering the work with the relevant authorities, etc.

I love trying different things, and the above is only one example... in painting I've had to learn countless skills from oil painting to woodworking, glass cutting, gilding, wood carving, plaster casting etc. etc. In house building I've needed to plaster a wall once - this was difficult but enjoyable because it was a challenge. No skill is particularly harder than any other although all are difficult at first. Is playing the piano harder than carving and gilding a picture frame? Is cutting stained glass harder than plastering a wall? All become easier with repeated practice. I'll never be a world champion tennis player, I'm too short, but occasional examples like that aside, I strongly believe that almost any skill can be mastered by anyone.

Today I needed to brick up the hole in my wall where the fire used to be. This was tricky because the hole was a very strange shape, with fragments of old bricks and shattered halves at each side. The old bricks (nearly 100 years old) were a bit bigger and heavier than current bricks. The height space also involved an awkward half-brick which was impossible to cut so we decided on wood, not strong, but it will fill the gap. First step, cutting the bricks into bits to see what would fit:

Then a quick YouTube glance on how to do it - YouTube is a fantastic resource! And some laying later:

The key part is getting everything level... the gaps between the bricks are a bit haphazard, mainly because they had to fit into the pattern of the old larger bricks which sometimes had huge blocks of mortar set in there. In no way would this wall hold up against strain, it's a matter of sealing the hole, that's all; but that's fine as it's been a hole since, in all likelihood, the house was built. There doesn't seem to be any sort of lintel or bar above the hole as there would (I imagine) need to be nowadays, but hey ho, the result should be strong enough. The next step will be the plaster which will be a mix of plasterboard cut to an abstract shape and wet plaster for the gaps. It won't be perfect, but hopefully good enough.

Nightmares, B&Q, Covid

Woke at 3am then stayed awake until 6am, feelings of pressure and dry-eye discomfort, followed by three nightmares. In the first I was contacted by someone in Northern Ireland who wanted to commission me to write some music for a funeral and go there to perform it. I said that I couldn't go there until at least 2021 (and I felt anxious about any ida of trave anyway), but would happily write the music, but I found the situation disturbing and macabre, as though my death was implied. In the second I fought violently with Mark Edmonds who stole one of my power tools provocatively then taunted and insulted me, and at one point tore up my childhood soft toys. The third dream was a complex adventure which I can hardly recall but I think explosives were part of it.

As a result of this bad night I awoke beyond 10am and the morning flew by with no artistic achievements apart from vague aims and hopes. For the next day or two I must make a surround for the fireplace, and brick up the hole in my bedroom wall. In the afternoon Deb and I visited Dagfields for gifts and rest, and we then visited B & Q for supplies for the building work.

I feel restless and annoyed at my lack of art. Perhaps my soul is missing painting. Perhaps the few days of work on the house will be something of a reset. The Covid-19 news is bleak and grim. I still badly miss seeing Deb indoors, and seeing other friends. We have become a nation of monks, atheist monks.

Music, Marillion and Image

A strange and complex dream last night. I wanted a projection screen for an event which was outside, and I had to mutilate cows, or extract tiny organs or glands from their living bodies to achieve this. I barely recall much else.

The day has flown by. I've finalised my Christmas and birthday gifts for 2020, and almost all presents are done. I tweaked the Jabberwock a little, slightly lowering the vocals, and have ordered a few things online. It feels like a day of rest after a hectic week. Covid-19 is in a clear second wave, partly due, I feel, to students and micro-peak events. Still, I feel that the end of September, specifically the 24th, was the nadir and that things are getting better.

I listened to Marillion's Brave last night, an album recommended to me by Simon Ladley. It does have a very 90s sort of sound - very clean. The band themselves said that they're part Pink Floyd, part Radiohead, part Muse, part Coldplay. The result is a beige blur of consistent sound which is pretty and soulless. The vocals are inaudibly low so any hint of poetry or a story is lost; this is the worst sound mixing on any album I've heard. The only other Marillion album I have is Script For A Jester's Tear which is brimming with 80s theatricality, though it reminds me more of goth and alternative type bands like The Bolshoi than Genesis. I can't help but think that Fish, with his performance élan made the band. Fish's replacement Steve Hogarth said that they should have changed the band's name - I agree, but the result would have still been mediocre unless the music kept pushing boundaries and became edgey. I hope never to think of my art or music as being like any other artist or artists. Comparison itself is an insult - it implies a lack of creativity.

I became aware of the power of image. All artists change over time and it's difficult find consistency. With Fall in Green we have a great image and instant and clear personality of gothic, romantic, fairytale. My solo music, by comaprison, has changed hugely and at times I feel very disconnected with the early computer-game synth music, yet I can see a progression too.

Before Cycles & Shadows I considered a change of artist name for the new 'classical' type personality change, yet I rememebered that The Love Symphony perhaps fitted that; but then there is The Spiral Staircase, which is certainly symphonic in scale, yet totally synthetic. I'm now thinking of my whole current back-catalogue in terms of a total artwork and want to unify the look and feeling of it all, and one way is to work on the cover art. Albums like The Flatspace Soundtrack have art that looks so very dated now, and much more like a budget computer game than the work of a solo musical artist let alone a musical master and artistic genius.

I must work on this.

I met Deb in the park at sunset, which was delightful. The autumn leaves made me think of making Jabberwock monsters from them. I must now focus and summon creative energies.

The Music is Finished, and the Artists' Life

A nice day yesterday mixing the vocals for the last four tracks. The Jabberwocky was the most complex, it varies a lot in dynamism and mood so the instruments can clash. Vocal mixing isn't difficult. The only real key with vocal is cut out the bass and add the right amount of reverb; rarely are vocals processed in more complex ways but one of my favourite effects remains a panned single-tap delay fed through a band-pass filter. It gives a distant memory quality.

The next track was Herr Kasperle which had more emphasis on vocals. Tracks vary on how much emphasis vocals get. Country music tends to put the vocals front and centre of the mix, twice the volume of everything else. Other music types can blend as much as desired. Def Leppard's Hysteria has vocals so quiet you can barely make them out - well I can't hear any of the songs all of the way through. I think that's an example of what not to do, I surmised the singer lacked confidence and wanted to bury his vocals, but sometimes the sounds of the words can matter more than the meanings; I love a few French and German pop songs without understanding them.

Then Dead Hand, our answer to Wuthering Heights which is so dark and brooding it makes Kate Bush's song sound like bubblegum pop. This is an amazing track. I wrote it as a solo piano work about two years ago, for my 99 Men Falling project, an album of lonely piano music in the mould of Erik Satie. The idea for that album is that all of the tracks were improvised in one take to capture the mood I was exactly feeling at the time, so the piano was recorded live in one take; an ebb and flow of 'real-time' mood, which is the essence of all good music.

I wanted to include it on the album but it seemed too long and dreary, but I thought it might work with some words, so I asked Deb if she would like to read a poem to it. The bleak mood of Dead Hand seemed perfect. I added some genuine Northern English wind to it, recorded two days ago, and the backing track was complete. Deb listened to the backing through headphones and read her words. The words fitted so perfectly with the ebb and flow of the music that it's amazing that they two parts were written completely independently. Her poem itself was written years before I met her. And yet, the result has become one of the unexpected most powerful tracks of the whole album.

The last one to mix was Siamese Twin Domestic, which, as I've written before was tortuously long to write, but has worked brilliantly and is nothing like anything anyone has made before. I don't think anyone would have produced the five minutes or so of music I've written for it given the ten short lines. In one last twist I reversed the vocals and overlaid them onto the forward vocals - sort of conjoining them, in the same way that sole melody is reversed at the end.

So this music is done, pending final listens and tweaks, which need a few days pause. What a luxury it would be to only work on the music of an album, and/or the live performance. But I have the artwork to make, any and all music videos, plan single releases and far more... yet I ideally want to keep working on my music... my important work. So many times have I wanted to go back to Beethoven and prod him to keep working on hit 10th symphony, irrespective of his mood and health and finances, to prod van Gogh to paint more, than his work will, one day, be appreciated. Ever since I became an artist I feel spirits from the future telling me this.

The artwork and videos are mainly important to me as art; to make them the best I can. I also hope that others will find and like the music, that something will be a breakthrough hit and lead to great wealth and fame, or at least noticed. I know or, well, believe that the music I'm making is good and pushing new boundaries of all sorts, but I'm aware than my work is ignored. I read that Nick Drake sold less than 5000 copies of his albums. I've sold less than 3 for almost all of them; The Flatspace Soundtrack has sold about 10, which is the biggest seller, and of course not at all representative of my music now. Of course thanks to streaming, most tracks have had one listen at least, and sometimes several thousand.

This of course does not discourage me because I'm aware of similar problems with many artists of the past. Being the best artist and best person I can is the important thing. I am aware that sometimes feedback from fans or critics is unhelpful, perhaps it is always unhelpful, and most artists try to ignore it anyway. An artist can't make art to please others, only himself, and the temptation for 'hits' or other prizes generally creates bad work. It also, at least, creates generic work that blurs and blends in with the times rather than being truly new and different. Perhaps, like Steve Hackett said when he left the band, Genesis should have stopped becoming mainstream and continued to embrace creativity. Of course, the flip side is that sometimes making pop songs or catchy music can be new and different... in the Genesis context, they had made lots of experimental and fantastical work and wanted to make new and different material. Even my most pop-like music was made not for commercial attraction, but to be different and to explore different areas of music. I do and will occasionally aim for the mainstream of music for this reason and for cultural relevance, which is important. The potential commercial or popular impact isn't because it's a fickle and stupid target. I am digressing.

I can't function as a person in other context except as lone artist. Even the easy 6-months of part time work at Red Shift Radio made me suicidal in that time; the sheer soullessness of that life. A normal job is one where if you quit, someone else would take over and do exactly the same thing, making your life pointless. Most people create a family to support, and their meaning is therefore to support them, the job is only means to that end. Artists, will never have or need such a thing, though van Gogh and Beethoven foolishly strove for this. For me, my work and my art is my life and my purpose, joyously so.

What a long post! Now, to a new day of creation. A first day of rest after weeks of work on this music. I will permit myself an hour or two; not much more. I have a duty to humanity to fulfil. Onward!

Vocal Recording, Lone Wolves

Final day of music work on Apocalypse of Clowns, and while taking proper precaustions, Deb came here for some essential vocal recording of four tracks. The last three tracks I've written: The Jabberwocky, Herr Kasperle, and Siamese Twin Domestic are my favourite and clearly show a different direction and level of complexity and length over the others, although each took a week or more. I'm reminded that half of these tracks were written before War is Over was recorded, never mind the other albums of the year.

In the end, I made six different experimental tunes for the Siamese Twins, and at least four others are complete enough to be useful elsewhere.

My stomach continues to be very bad, all, I assume, the result of physical isolation. From the age of 18 to 34 I had almost no social contact and rarely spoke, but even then, from the mid-1990s I occasionally, perhaps 3 or 4 times a year, met with either my gaming friend Hayden or game design collaborator Andrew Cashmore. I wrote to Andrew Williams perhaps every week or two from about 1994 or so. Of course, even then my stomach suffered from many painful problems. I wonder if this is some sort of self-preservation apparatus; calorific restriction is one of the few ways proven to increase longevity. It is interesting to note the portliness of the contented family man - a slow and deathly end. The contented do nothing and amount to nothing, yet feel happy in that, like Odysseus on his timeless island. The artist must prefer passion and agony to happiness or contentment. Marcus Aurelius knew that positive emotions were the most dangerous.

Perhaps the lone wolf in the prehistoric wilderness, without a society to help him, needs this pain to eat less, to become more hardy or remain thin and somehow ready and fit for a future rejoining of a clan. Must isolation always be like ostracisation, a negative rejection? It often feels this way - but perhaps feelings pre-date reason and are intended only for the procreation of the animal.

Siamese Music

A really bad day, well night, of stomach pain two days ago which meant not eating yesterday. This is probably a sign of the stress and isolation of the Covid situation. I read the day before that a vaccine will only be availabue in Britain to those over 50 which worried and annoyed me, but, on reflection, I doubt this will be the case as this virus is simply too destructive to the economy for limited measures.

In work, the music is moving slowlym too sloy, forwards. I've created about four different trackjs for the Siamese Twins track, all are rather strange an atonal. The poem is about anger and is strange in itself, yet does this mean the music must be strange too? If a subject is ugly, must the music be un-beautiful? Perhaps I'm overthinking it all and not making progress as a result. It amazes me that my early albums took a week, and this one takes a week per track. Other music which took a long time (like The End and The Beginning, which took two years) took the odd day in that time, whereas this is taking me, it feels, full time to move so very slowly.

I had a positive dream last night. My mother signed me up as a teacher to teach a 7 year old boy, an act which annoyed me. When he arrived however, I think with a red beret like Roger Red Hat, he seemed to know about my work, my paintings, and he too was an oil painter of surrealist paintings and he said he wanted to be the greatest surrealist painter in the world. I told him to manage his ambitions, yet I was impressed by and somewhat envious of his talent. He chose my early painting Coma as his favourite, which was in my dream, yet in sepia. Perhaps my creative, painting side is growing, which is good.

I had a second positive dream too which I can't recall at the moment.

Raft Dream, Progressive Music

Last night I dreamt of being afloat in a raft in, at first, a flooded field, in sight of a canal or river. A woman was with me, or I was the woman. Then we were on an ocean with rolling waves. Low clouds were blowing over the surface quickly, and I could see them come and go, blown by a string and exhilarating wind. I said that it feels good to be in the free ocean because we can see the clouds coming.

the scene changed and I became Lt. Torres in Star Trek. I reported for duty but felt unnwell, and informed my commander, who was, I think, the Voyager Doctor. I carred with my a small round cushion which I could use to lean on the consoles, like a short seat, like a misericord, to rest. The commander mocked me for feel weak and I said I felt fine, then I collapsed. I was then carried to sick bay, but I awoke from the dream before finding out the cause.

The first part of the dream is clearly about emotions, dealing with ups and downs or coping with this drama rather than the logic of emotionless creativity. Emotions are needed to create good work but are troublesome things when undirected, and my mood seems to be up and down each day. Perhaps the dream indicates that it's better to ride like this. Perhaps the second part refers to my persistent tickliness and strange throat, although it seems better today.

In the day, I decided to sort of the tracks for the Fall in Green album. I'm so pleased I worked on some later, as these newer ones, Herr Kasperle and The Jabberwocky are so different and more experimental than the earlier tracks. I must keep experimenting and working hard. One track, a sad piano track, seems almost too morose to include on its own, but should work better with words. I still have the Siamese Twin poem to do and have written aboout five test versions, all different.

One is like a string trio which plays through all 12 chords, then plays the same melody backwards, a palindrome, like a Siamese Twin. It is interesting, but also very short and the feeling is rather flat and undramatic like a Bach fugue in strings. I will keep working at this.

My mood has generally been very low and slow today, but at times I've enjoyed this when thinking about art, it seems to help. I've also ordered a new electro-acoustic guitar, inspired by and encouraged by Deb. My new music includes a few acoustic sections and if I am ever to play any live, will need a guitar with amplification.

My art is clearly moving and expanding in the area of music and I'm practising singing, guitar, and piano regularly. I don't feel this is a permanent move; painting, film, writing, will also always, I think, be part of my work, but I feel I'm making progress and pushing new ground here at the moment. My music is becoming more like 70s progressive music in spirit... I feel everything must be new and difficult. Of course, there are differences in my work; one is that I'm eclectic and want to explore many areas, and my synth-pop compositions are one example.

Harr Kasperle Again

Completing sound work on the Herr Kasperle music today, although a lot of the morning was taken up with various admin duties, and repairing a sofa which has a central 'foot' type leg attached only by about 6 staples (a big block of wood, about 25x80mm). I had to remove the staples with wire cutters, glue, drill and screw the block firmly in place. I think my repair is one of the most solid bits of the whole construction!

I worked on a few bits of electro-pop tunes in the afternoon, but eventually got round to Kasperle. The start is a drift, dreamy landscape of sound with little melody. What melody there is sounds oriental or like the soundtrack to a Bladerunner-style fantasy film. This leads into some throbbing strings, a bit like Koyaanisqatsi, a bit like Palladio by Karl Jenkins, a bit like the verses to Eleanor Rigby. These give way to a line about a woman descending a staircase so I literally descended the strings along a scale, which is now firmly in D-minor, although there's a strange ambiguity and romance with E and B, which adds an eerie feeling to the music.

The next part is about the life of the puppet, ghosts and memories, so I played acoustic guitar for that, using the same melody as the throbbing strings but now in gentle single notes which echo into darkness. This part was tricky to compose because the gentle oriental part is already very quiet, so I needed something different from that, but I also wanted a contrast from the powerful strings, so using that melody seemed to be one solution, to make it melodious.

I rehearsed a bit then played this in one take, which is an improvement on the Jabberwocky recording which took a few tries. One key part was moving the guitar in dialogue with the mic, so that it had feeling and expression. I avoided headphones. One of the worst bits about recording guitar is the issue with wires and physical restriction. Electric guitar is even worse; a long wire leads to the amp, which is mic'd up and being recorded, and another wire plugs the headphones into the computer to listen to the backing track or beat, but I need a free ear to hear what I'm playing so have to half-wear the headphones, AND I'm strapped into the guitar so moving anything becomes awkward. This time I cheated and simply played the backing track through speakers quietly, so it will be slightly audible on the recording, but the ease of use makes it all so much easier to play, and so the performance was better. I've heard Paul McCartney's vocal for Something which also has similar audible backing music there.

The tune then returns to that dreamy, discordant opening, then a brief burst of strings again for a final quatrain, before again drifting away into a sort of scene where the final words of the song reside. After this, a camera clicks and we are outside, actually using a sound clip I took from France, and the last words of the poem are spoken; they break the fourth wall as they narrate to the reader about the outcome of the day.

I still have Deb's vocals to add to this. The album now has two tracks to do: something for Siamese Twin Domestic, and some sort of opening and/or closing music to form a themeatic bracket. I always treat albums as wholes, symphonic artworks that hold together thematically.

Sleep

I've been inspired me to finish a poem tonight.

Sleep

The colours outside fade amber to black.
The music coughs silence, loses its track.
Dead bicycle wheels wheel to a stop.
Taps gargle and drip a last slow drop.
Party curls curl to the wax polished floor.
Levers push closed the thick fire doors,
and eyelids fall heavy to blink out the world,
to say a goodbye to the party curl's curl,
to cough a goodbye to the bicycle's wheel,
to slip into darkness, pricked by the curse
of the day's kiss,
of the night's hearse.

Herr Kasperle

A steady day of music work today, three tracks are in small stages of progress: Herr Kasperle for the Fall in Green album, and two new songs for the electronic 'Plastic' album, one of which is based on Yellow Balloon Attack, a tune which I love by Oldfield One. Gone are the days when one track takes a day, now every track or song seems to take a week, with little bits added each day as with a painting. The results are certainly better this way. There are lots of reasons for this, from the fact that I now like to make each note have the right feeling and use more live and custom recorded sections, but also things are more musically, temporally, timbrally complex.

Ultiumately I'm aware that any automation gets in the way of expression, so the less the better, which is my long-term philosophy for music and art. One only has to listen to the gulf of difference between the first Tubular Bells record and the 90s Tubular Bells II... the second is certainly cleaner, but vastly lacking in emotional gamut by comparison. Mike Oldfield said that the first recording was full of mistakes - but for me there are no mistakes, every piece of expression done by hand is correct, assuming the unconscious is working correctly then everything is as intended by the spirits of art, the muses, even if not the consciousness of the artist. Of course, if a cup falls off the shelf when the mic is on then that could be a mistake, but perhaps the artist's unconscious put the cup there especially to fall at the right moment? Again the muses assert themselves.

I've played a little more guitar today but my progress is slowing. I'm playing tunes on each string well, and slowly moving between strings, and playing the odd chord, and bending the odd note. Perhaps I need to try to techniques, new pickings, tapping etc. Also, repetition itself is still progress. Things like speed and accuracy increases generally occur without being noticed. The key is to assume this is happening, and to keep playing something, anything, regularly.

Fireplaces, National Poetry Day

I woke at 6am yesterday and performed my quarterly computer backups, which often take half of the day but were complete by 11am. Not much else was done, although I experimented a little with music. I also watched a few videos of poetry readings, and promoted mine on what was National Poetry Day, and in the evening wrote a melody in 7/8 time which had a relaxing feeling, something like an Einaudi, which itself is strange for a 7/8 tune.

It was a frustrating day due to a general lack of direction, but that was perhaps because I finished my planned tasks so early. Yesterday and today were also disrupted by building work.

There seems to be an element of Godotness creeping in, planning or waiting for a clean start to begin, rather than accepting the greater power of slow accretion. A bucket fills drip by drip, this should be my mantra. We don't need to do a lot each day, just one tiny, tiny step in the right direction. That is enough.

Today, some more audio experiments for the Siamese Twin poem for the Fall in Green album, but not much was done. I'm not used to music taking so many days, but that is how long it seems to take now. I wasted time watching YouTube videos, but some were intellectually interesting and perhaps useful in future. Deb and I went to see a friend on her birthday, and to deliver our books to Crewe and Nantwich libraries for them to lend out. I also updated all of my music videos, checking and unifying the links there. It's been a more relaxing day, with some of those tiny steps, but my annoying tickly cough remains.

A lot of the weekend will be taken with building work as I have to shore up a hole in my wall, the former fireplace. I've been lax in guitar practice. I must play tonight. It's been a good year, but I must keep aiming higher, and working towards a greater goal steadily. I'm as sure as ever that I'm producing my best work, and that better things are to come.