Completed the backing music to 'Style Guru Fashion Queen' today, vocals are needed before I can continue. I can easily provide these now but my throat still aches. It feels like tension, like a muscle in my neck is in spasm, rather than anything directly related to singing or speech. I always seem to have a muscle spasm somewhere. I have no choice but to stop work on music which I find frustrating; this joy and new focus for my art must essentially wait, but I can make plans.
I've compiled a few images for my self portrait and drew some outlines of a very old (c. 2006 or so) portrait of Oliver Cromwell as a carrot. I started a second Cromwell portrait from June 2019, but I've not documented this well despite painting most of an underpainting for it. Looking at it now I remain in two minds about it, but I can add details to it in a day and call it done. No sense in 'Kubricking' around with art, keeping projects floating away for years due to perfectionist angst, when we can 'Spielberg' it in a day and get it over with.
I've also made a frame for my recent 'walnut' painting but the garage was in a mess and was freezing (it was minus two today). I made an error in sawing one corner, my first frame in years which has a visible mismatch. I bought a mitre-trimmer a few years ago to get clean 'slices' for my corners, but it was no better than my hand sawing with my trusty floorboard-veneer saw (I say 'trusty' as though it is an old friend but I buy a new one every other year, I hand cut hundreds of frames). I toyed with cutting a new edge but instead I'll distress the frame to cover the error.
While cleaning my blocked wood glue bottle, the isopropanol and glue mix splatted me right in my left eye which caused some distress and remains irritated. So, many little things went wrong todau, but these summed up the day. I've generally felt lacklustre and done too little, annoyed at my neck pain and not inspired with visual art.
Part of me wanted to complete Sisyphus before moving on, but I cannot. The song itself presents a few artistic problems. The others fit my voice fine but this is such a classic rock song in production terms that my clean voice type is not a natural fit. We are used to certain types of voice fitting certain types of song. It can be artistically advantageous to break conventions though, and I will do this. How would Pavarotti sing Livin' On A Prayer?
