An interesting day. I slept badly with internal twitches and knots and trapped wind that did nothing but moan and hurt, like imprisoned orgone energy - inspired by reading about Wilhelm Reich (who apparently made a cuboid orgone focuser from plywood and loft insulation; anyone knows that a pyramid would be a better shape, or better still, a tetrahedron or dodecahedron). I slept, but had a nightmare of giant wasps or bees, dead in honey-coloured glass containers. One awoke and seemed to attack my neck from behind. I wonder if bees or these wasps represent work energy?
In the morning I thought of the joy of the colour orange, and orange and white. The curtains in our front room when I was a child were orange. The amber and white page of the Music of Poetic Objects album was always one of my favourites. The best part of Bowie's Low album is its colour, so I listened to bits of Low just after waking. The whole album still sounds half-finished.
Last night, inspired by the success of Jabberwocky, I thought it would be a good idea to release Apocalypse of Clowns soon. I remembered that World Poetry Day was in March so thought of that date. Deb agreed, so I previewed the tracks fully, listening afresh for the first time in weeks. I found two uncomfortable notes in the only instrumental, Life of Pierrot, so I made a last minute change to that track and re-recorded it. Then I set the album for release. I'm reminded that I have a lot of music admin to do, for this, for The Infinite Forest.
This took me up to 12:30, normally lunchtime, but I found myself alone and able to sing freely so eagerly and hurriedly grabbed this chance, but I felt rushed and annoyed, without time to prepare mentally or physically, and after recording a few scant notes, fell into a dark sadness. I spent the rest of the day trying to turn the lens of my energies back to the Sisyphus music.
I recorded some new vocal parts for The Exploratory Farmer. Some parts are in higher notes. The 'Bone' is in a high E, which is normally the note of transition between low and high voice, so it can be either. In my lunchtime rushed singing I sang some lower (and thus much richer) notes, but yesterday, some 'bones' were higher, in falsetto. Starting higher and moving down tends to stick with the high voice (and, indeed, vice versa, it takes a bit of actual thought to switch). The entry into the climax at the end of the chorus is a high G, which I sang in falsetto in the day, yet the line up to it, a mere F, was in low voice (or sometimes called 'mixed voice', it sounds thick enough, like a higher chest voice, really). Oddly, I sang this high G in this voice tonight automatically, which was unexpected. Of course, this is a richer voice and usually better (we might want to sound falsetto and pure sometimes). I was surprised to sing a G like this. Perhaps this is simply the bonus more more than a few minutes training each day.
Several tracks are complete. I'm using this album as much as a sparring course as anything, which is good; I like to make everything some sort of training, to push a bit further with every artistic act. Until now I didn't appreciate the sheer workload of vocal training, greater than the triviality of learning to play a guitar (after all, you can fall on a guitar and it will produce a valid sound - listen to the up-and-coming Siamese Twin Domestic for an example!). Singing is much more rewarding as a result.
After Sisyphus (and after painting etc.), I'll start on an EP which will at least include the old Plastic Superman song and the even older (1990s) Burnout theme. I need to link these two. Plastic Superman is lightweight pop, it's mood is uplifiting, designed as a 'workout' song, and Burnout is a sort of run too, a run or glide to freedom. What can I do to both unify these and broaden the range of what the three tracks are 'about'? Art is about mood, knowing and crafting feelings...
