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.
