Awake for hours in the night. I mentally counted the number of triangles and faces in the platonic solids, hoping to discover some deeper connection. I became aware that a plane of tessellating tiles can't wrap onto a sphere neatly; try to wrap a football in wrapping paper and it will always distort and wrinkle. Yet, one can wrap a tube, and then bend and connect the ends of the tube to make a torus, so a torus can wrap perfectly. Perhaps the universe is toroid for this reason. Is it important that two dimensions can extend into three without distortion? Could the distortions create irregular rips, like black holes?
I realised that I had the wrong settings on the guitar for yesterday's three parts, so re-recorded them today. The improvised melodies are complex, perhaps more than I would compose, but this is the essence of live improvisation. The key thing is mood; I aimed for this but I'm never that satisfied.
Listening to some Queen and Bowie songs, to analyse the way guitars are handled. Like vocals, they are often layered and duplicated. I didn't notice, for example, the clear acoustic guitar in 'Jesus', or that the main central guitar parts in Diamond Dogs is a double layer, with extra in the left ear (Tony Visconti tends to put these main rhythm guitars in the left ear; the same is true on many of the songs on The Man Who Sold The World.
I think the music to 'I, Sisyphus' is done, but I need vocals. I revisited "I Care" and like it as it is. Now I have another track to work on. I had planned on merely four for this project, but perhaps I'll make an album. We will see. It seems that my ideas constantly shift; first an EP just of old songs, then of sounds about isolation or being ignored, then about Sisyphus, but each new idea seems to invalidate previous tracks - it would be amusing if I didn't include any of the old songs which was the initial motivation for doing this!
It's lockdown. I was reminded that the conditions of it are the same as I lived my life with from the age of 16 to 36 - although I met one person indoors then, perhaps twice a year on average, to play or discuss computer games. My only real social contact was by letter, and later email, but I counted work and my computer as social interaction. The days were spent battling complex problems of programming.
Final news the new cover to The Arcangel Soundtrack is complete and submitted:
