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.
