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.
