Hitler in High Heels, and Other Songs

Two busy days of music work. I have four songs in progress which have typically started with fragments of sequences left over from earlier in the year. Nightfood had hints of electronic music and more progressive type music too. I had one pop song, Style Guru Fashion Queen, which I thought of using, but its tone is light and pop-orientated, somewhat frivolous compared to the adult tone of the other songs so I may omit it or use it elsewhere.

After some initial toying with moods in the sequencer I work on the words, trying to keep them good as poems independent of the music, then try to fit these to the music, then back to words, bending both. It's an iterative process and I try to avoid cliché or too much that is instinctive or expected so that there is always some newness to everything. As in poems, there must be a key dramatic point. My experience with poetry has certainly transformed my song writing.

Hitler in High Heels is largely complete. This began as a simple electronic sequence inspired by the drama of Eurythmics' Sweet Dreams. The lead synth instrument is an aggressive growl, low in the register, like the deep distorted brassy sound that filled every film trailer from 2005 to 2015. It's unusual to have a deep lead instrument, it quietens down for the verses. It is the powerful mood of this instrument that inspired the imagery which inspired the lyrics (all words should create an image); initially of some sort of dominatrix, then later as a character description. Here are the words so far:

Hitler In High Heels

Hitler in high heels
cracked black and savage,
weapons on the outside
something like a hedgehog.

Do you need their love?
Ache for satin comforts?
Await a princely kiss
to shatter your spines?

Your face is so ugly.
Is that why you whip?
Is it beauty you hate and attack?

Men or women?
Men or women?
Men or women?

Of the other songs, most have words but are incomplete musically and structurally. I'm darting between several songs at once to avoid time wasting and too much focus on each. Everything is taking longer than I would like, but I know that all of the best work, like painting, is a matter of slow accretion.

Sisyphus Canvases

A long day yesterday of working on a full set of Spotify Canvases for The Myth of Sisyphus. I like these little animations and they are easy to make in Argus. All use 240 frames at 30 frames per second, so an 8-second loop, which is the maximum Spotify permits. I based these on the CD version album artwork.

I remade the one for I, Sisyphus, using a black disc which rotated in opposite directions to the skull:

I used the same animation for The Problem of Suicide, but added a larger rotary wobble to the camera, making the Sisyphus character turn in jerking motions as though heaving the rock.

Life in the Mirror and The Spare Bedroom of Reminiscence used the album artwork drawings, sliding, fading and flickering. For Nick Drake, I changed the background from light to dark to emulate the look of the album art.

The Exploratory Farmer used the dark look of the album's rear artwork:

So it continued. All work was done by 18:00. I discovered a bug in Argus, the current modulator count could be -1, when there are no modulators, but this was not updated when one was loaded as part of loading an actor. I will investigate today, as it would be better for it never to be -1 anyway.

It was the first day of the Galleria Balmain pop-up shop too, so a historic day, the opening of my third showing of art in London, and this time by a third party. An email informed me that The Grosvenor Open Exhibition is running soon too. Without Peter Boughton the results will certainly be different.

Eyes of Pity, Hitler in High Heels

Working on some music sequences today, tidying up the rough notes and transforming them into longer songs.

Nowadays I tend to work slowly on songs and focus on the lyrics and music separately at first; both should be good in their own right, then I modify the music and mood to fit the words. If you don't hear or understand the words of a song, the music should evoke them so that you can feel what the words mean and what the song is about. The melody should be catchy enough to hum, and sound pretty when played solo on an old piano. Conversely, the words should be good enough to work as award-winning poems.

In the night I wrote a few words to a very short 3/4 melody, a song called Eyes of Pity. It is very simple musically and structurally, verse/chorus/verse/chorus... it needs more. I've spent today working on this, and music for a second new song called Hitler in High Heels, which is also very simple musically (but at least has a few interesting chords and a beat which fits the mood perfectly).

Here is the first draft of the Eyes of Pity lyrics:

Eyes of Pity

When you look at me
I can only see
your eyes of pity.

I am full of love,
I am full of need,
but you reject me.

And yet you're more damaged than I
All you have is beauty
See how sympathetic I am?

I look at you with my empathetic eyes
and all I see is beauty
yet you still reject me

When your beauty dies
the world will look at you
with eyes of pity,

but I won't do that,
I don't think,
because I'll love you;

and I feel that I'll remember you for the next twenty years
and it will cause me sorrow.
See how romantic I am?

I look at you with my desperate intelligent eyes
but all I see is pity.
Your pity.

Heritage Wall, Music Notes, Tap Repair, Shakespeare

Small jobs yesterday. The final filing of the new Argus and Prometheus, and the Crewe Heritage Wall designs. I've designed three initial designs for this, of course subject to modification and tweaks. Like all artists I abhor art by committee, but sometimes changes are necessary for various reasons. Even Beethoven changed Leonore.

Conflict of Progress:

The Signalman:

Industry to Ecology:

As I've said before, each has an approximate theme of the conflict between the machine age and ecology.

I then started to look at extant music. I've got lots of half-finished, or partially started notes and sequences. I have this in painting too. I try to avoid this; having either finished work, work in progress (moving towards finished), or just abandoned or simply destroy the rest, but sometimes it is good creatively to start things and see how they sound. This seems more common in music, which is more ethereal than art. With my art ideas, in my notebooks, I have a pretty good idea what it is like, so can then decide whether to take things further. With music, more notes seem to be needed to work this out, so I often have partial sequences, and may are used in part, if not totally.

It seems I have quite a lot of electro-pop songs, a left over from the work at the start of the year. These are not so bad, but electro-pop, or pop music in general is often poor. I will work on them. One rule for a good song is good words. The words need image, emotion, story. As words, they should be as powerful as any poem. If not, then the song will be second rate.

Much of yesterday was spent replacing, or trying to replace, the kitchen tap. Years of leaks had sealed the bolt in limestone, making it unmovable. A plumber was called. He said 'You should have just replaced the tap washer, mate' - Ah, that useful 'you should have ...' phrase. Of course, this only makes one despise the idiocy of the utterer. Do such people think this helps?

He used a backnut spanner (which I don't have) with a large bar to twist it. The bolt came out of the tap itself before the nut was loosened, so the nut was indeed welded by limestone. This was costly for the removal of one nut. The plumber put the new tap in, but so badly that it leaked huge quantities and I had to remove it again after he had gone. He spent more time ranting about the excessive taxes he pays as a high earner and how he can't earn a thing on his six properties, than doing the job. Still, we needed his expertise to loosen that nut.

Today, I framed Moon Over Shakespeare. The plastic glazing was as nightmarish as ever, but the painting looks good in its new frame.

This image, like most of the images of my paintings in frames, has had the painting imposed on it later. Without this, the painting would be obscured by reflections of me, see:

Argus v1.12, Spotify Canvases, Printed Bytes

A bad night of hardly any sleep, partly due to stress/anxiety/excitement. I had an awful pain in my jaw last night which Deb informed me was neuralgia. I have not experienced this before. The day of straining at screen images for printing, and the video work, probably contributed to this. I also had a late-night message about a Covid-19 test for the early morning which disturbed my peace. I knew it was nothing to worry about, I am taking part in an Office for National Statistics study into Covid, so have regular tests an interviews.

Despite this, I rose feeling relatively alert. I upgraded Argus and Prometheus first. I added an option to limit modulator noise. See this:

A simple modulator (part of a sine wave, I made this in Sound Forge). I can add noise to it at random, which can be useful. It's more useful for Argus than Prometheus... this irregularity is rarely heard in audio and when it is, it sounds like, well, noise, so isn't always desirable. The old version simply clipped the noise, so today I added an alternative version which detected the highest peak and limited the result, thus:

I also added a few little features; removal of the -0.000 reports (minus zero, never useful to know this).

After that, and the Covid PCR test, it was time for the last of the Spotify Canvases. I pondered You Make Me Happy overnight... what is best for this song? I thought of clouds and blue skies. The tune is also very bouncy, so I thought of a Lego man who jumps to the music. I took two photos; standing and jumping with arms up. It was easy to make him move in Argus:

Here is the modulator for his leap. You'll see how surprisingly complex it is. I wanted a pause on the floor, a quick leap, then holding at the top for a while.

Then Deflexion, which I started yesterday. This one is very sci-fi looking:

It, unusually, uses a 3D object. Most Argus objects are 2D planes with textures wrapped on them. This time I thought I would use the actual Gunstar ship from Gunstorm. The red ring caused a lot of problems. It looked too stark on its own, so I made two, one white and one red glow. The white one flashes like a disco light.

Now I need to find a new creative focus. These Spotify Canvases are fun and easy but how will they last in the great scheme of things? I want to change my will to instruct my heirs to print and publish this blog as a book. A real book for the world's libraries, more stable than the ephemeral internet and its weak magnets and static forces.

In the night I wondered about a simple way to print bytes. Perhaps a byte, in black and white dots, and its inverse below, like DNA, a mirror, then the inverse again; so ABA in a layer. This should be reasonably error proof. Perhaps 24 dots per cm, so three bytes, and 24 bytes per square cm. A 20x29cm page would store 13,920 bytes, and 72 pages would store one megabyte.

Prints, Profile Images, Spotify Canvases for Gunstorm

A busy day, started by ordering some new limited prints in preparation for the opening of First at Last in Shoreditch next Monday. These are expensive but all part of the long term of art, I must be ready if someone wants a print.

Then a took and set some new profile images for my social media, plus some promotion online about the gallery show. I also noticed that the Gunstorm song has had nearly 10,000 listens on Spotify, after a mere 14 years (well, since its release, it's not been on Spotify for 14 years).

Then I decided to work on some new Spotify Canvases in honour of this, and made a quick one for Ultramarine based on the Ultramarine music video. These are so easy in Argus.

After this, I made a one for Gunstorm, based on gentle cyclic movements of various objects; the lettering, some stars. Then one for One Day which was flickery and stormy, which seemed to match the music. Deflexion and You Make Me Happy remain.

Black Hole Topology

In July, I had a glimpse of insight into the differences between how gravity might behave differently between a solid sphere, hollow sphere, null sphere (a convex spherical boundary), and how this might give clues to how gravitational information is stored on a quantum level. I lost the vision of this but have completed the brief notes that I made.

I've written before that I think the event horizon of a black hole represents the edge of the universe because if light cannot escape from something then information cannot escape, and if anything cannot escape then it represents a net loss for the universe as a whole. Converting something to nothing is as invalid as the opposite, because nothing is the exact inverse of infinity. If nothing can spontaneously convert into something then there would be no rules about what or how.

We may think of borders as linear or concave but a convex border, to this 'hole' is still valid. I hypothesize that, when black holes are formed, their contents are pushed just beyond the border, the event horizon, and so these could be thought of as hollow spheres rather solid spheres. This horizon becomes the edge of the universe. There is nothing beyond, and the topology would not permit movement towards the nothing, but a deflection along the edge.

What is the topology of an concave border to the universe? As the space inside the event horizon is an edge to the universe, then existence on this border might appear like a point to local actors rather than the large sphere we imagine from a distance. The 'nothing' is space infinitely bent, so gravitons must be able to store this information, of course not infinitely, but the near-infinity of space's contortion on the horizon. Gravitational information cannot exist inside these spheres, so the objects on the border must do this. These must communicate with neighbours in an almost 2D fashion, with their metaphorical backs to the void.

How is the apparent size of the black hole stored in such a topology? Presumably two black holes of different dimensions have different quantities of matter at their shell.

Does a hollow sphere of mass x behave, in gravitational terms, as a solid sphere of the same mass? In what ways are the two different?

Where is the centre of gravity of a shell-object which contains null space inside, and how are these co-ordinates defined given a perspective that exists only on the surface of the shell?

Prometheus Coding

Spent yesterday morning working on filing. The dates for my paintings, events, films, were stored in Dec 1 (2010) format - or others. I changed all to 1 Dec (2021) for example. The paintings file is 37,000 lines, so this process took several hours.

Then I created some music. Prometheus crashed again when clicking Stop, an old bug which is so rare it's very difficult to track down. It may be several different bugs, or a memory infringement which occurs earlier, and later causes the crash. At one point I tracked it to between waiting for the play thread to finish, and the end of it, somewhere between [A] and [B] here:

[A]
// Wait for thread to finish
    if (waitforthreadtofinish)
        while (inplaythread)
            Sleep(1);
[B]


inplaythread is active when the player thread is running and set to zero at the end (it will reach the end at the end of its loop once then set inplaythread=0). Now, the crash could be in the player thread or caused by something after it, but I thought it was odd that normal playing is very stable. The crash only appears during stop. I wondered if the Sleep(1) was a culprit. Of course, 1 millisecond is very short... perhaps too short anyway. I thought that Sleep was a Windows API function, but it seems to be a C command. This might be the only time I've ever used it...

So I've replaced it with something which waits for 50 millisecs using the certainly stable timeGetTime()

// Wait for 50 millisecs
void waitforafewmillisecs(void)
{
    lword t;
    for (t=timeGetTime()+50; t>timeGetTime(); );
}


Perhaps it is a forlorn hope to blame Sleep. On the next crash I will take steps to add tracers. This is the longest term and most strange of Prometheus bugs.

The Existence of Light

Either have a big mind or an agile mind, you can't have both.

You are the only being in the universe. You close your eyes. Does light exist? This can be proven by comparing with a universe with no light. To your experience, both are identical, so the existence of light can conclusively be said to be dependent on the existence of an eye. If other parts of the universe detect the light, such as the surface of an asteroid glowing with light, then the two universes may be different. Light will exist only when this difference becomes apparent; when you, as the only being, detect it. The deflection of the light in the lit universe would change its shape, so make it different from the unlit universe, so when the shape difference between the lit and unlit universes becomes apparent, then light will exist, even if your blind self does not recognise the phenomenon as light.

If the two universes are the same then they are as one universe. Of course, we can never compare two universes, and the mechanism of comparison limits our perception.

To the solipsist, the universe is destroyed upon death. If any philosopher believed this, they would not write anything knowing that their writings and all existence would be destroyed upon their death.

Examination of our thoughts is no different from a distant perception of an object, no more certain than gazing upon a wall or book. A mind is both perception and the perceived in unity, each creating the other.

Meringue Dream, Prometheus v2.72, Heritage Wall

A night of lucid dreams. I felt subsumed with power in these, which is a common feeling in this environment. I wanted to take more control of the dream world, which I felt was some second echelon of reality; that if mastered, then this could become a step to a yet more brilliant reality beyond. I decided to make people vanish, by touch, and they shrunk away to nothing in an instant, but I found it hard to make new people appear. I started to push objects with the power of my mind, move cars into the distance. The dream characters were somewhat awed. I spoke to an old man, an Italian I think, who was some sort of relative in the dream. He lamented the lack of some sort of sweet, like a sliver of meringue, which he remembered as being plentiful in his youth. I used my powers to make a huge pile of these, a mile high, as the roof of a building. The locals walked up steps to grab some of these.

I woke late. I've spent today updating Prometheus. I've hardly used it since the last update, but have updated Argus since, and found a bug or two, and some improvements to make. I didn't copy all of the text into the program because the icon text in particular can cycle through options... it's not very efficient to have this text stored in every icon structure because there are a lot of icons and most don't need the cycle option. I did inline the text for the errors, however.

I also added the modulator processing options; telescope, palindrome, and a few bug fixes there. I used the new set of high resolution modulators that I've recently made for Argus. Over 20 years, that's how old Prometheus is, music software is bound to change a lot. So, a lot of old plug-ins have gone, most notably the white noise which was very crude; and today, all of the modulators are new, and double the resolution of the old ones. The resolution doesn't matter hugely, it's more important and noticeable in video than audio, but now I have the option to up or downgrade these if needed.

I have prepared my submission for the Heritage Wall bid. The whole process seems to be done in a strange way, and with very tight schedules. It seems to be designed with the aim of making a sort of art-by-committee object. After three designs are made, and one chosen, there is just a 14 day gap to actually create and 'finalise' the artwork. This is a very tight deadline for anything except a digital montage; which is, I expect, what they expect. My aim is an oil painting.

Art and Philosophy

All art should be an exposition of philosophy.

Art Scanning/Photography, and How To File Artworks

Art photography today, the first try of my new 'twin tube' photo rig. This is now a matter of following a list procedure, this always evokes for me the start of the film War Games, where two nuclear silo soldiers have to follow of list procedure. It is time consuming, but fairly reliable.

The tubes slide quite smoothly but not perfectly so. I realised when making it that tightening the ends will make the middle part (which consists of exactly the same components) also tight, so I first put some tape in the end parts, so that these could be tightened and keep the middle bit 'loose'. This didn't work, the fitting is so tight that the tape was pushed out. I realised that the sliding of the steel camera cradle will naturally start to carve slots into the soft aluminium, so that it was important that the aluminium tubes were always used in the same orientation.

The photography went well, better than the old 'square tube' system. It took a short hour or so to photograph 5 images with two sections each, and 4 sections for the bigger Shakespeare painting.

For any art photography with tripod, it's best to set the maximum aperture (smallest hole) and minimum ISO, this means a very long exposure time with very crisp results. A pinhole camera, for example, has everything in focus at all times, but takes a very long time to expose. I tend to snap at three levels of exposure, always at daylight white-balancing. I could set a custom white-balance, but the results always need tweaking anyway, so there is no real need. The important thing is that each photo has the same setting, so no auto-balancing. I use manual camera settings for everything except focus.

Sometimes images are too dark and need brightening, sometimes too light. I pick the best on a case by case basis. One last thing to do in Photoshop is size. I tend to shrink down to 300dpi now. My results tend to be nearer 400dpi, but space is space, and as camera technology increases it is tempting to keep expanding file sizes forever, so I limit everything to 300dpi, which is all I'll need for now. If a future museum needs a higher scan, they can do this!

Here's the final Moon Over Shakespeare:

After doing this, I decided to fit the rig up again and set a fixed position for everything. I marked a notch in the tubes so that they'll always be fitted in the same way, then slid the cradle up and down and polished the tubes with wet-and-dry 400-grit, until it slid smoothly. I could see thin lines on the tubes where the cradle caught, a guide for sanding. Because it was fitted up, the ends where the tubes grip were not rubbed, so the problem with the tape is solved too.

One other thing I did was fix my filing system.

From the start I've filed my artworks with a code number: G (for graphics), a number, then variant, eg: G41A is my first oil painting Girl in the Woods. The variant was originally for different colour variations of digital work, and sometimes used for other versions of a painting. Gradually I stopped doing that... I now generally assign a new number to a new version, if the new version is considered a new artwork, but even one painting has other images associated with it. I might draw a shaded study, or paint a colour study or other test. These I consider variations. Almost all of my paintings have an underdrawing. I don't generally code these, but could do so with ease. So, these variants are generally studies or tests rather than anything worthy of exhibition, and these are often letters beyond A, with A generally being the main artwork.

Occasionally I've got a full version with a later letter. My Romans/Albion painting in the Grosvenor Museum is coded G140D, for example, with two studies A and B, and C being a full previous version. If I painted it now, I make the finished version A (not for any technical reason, just convention and ease) and made the full alternative version, G140C, a second artwork entirely, but still, you can see how the system is flexible enough to file new artworks AND any alternatives or preparatory material or studies that are exclusively associated with an artwork.

There is also a separate code for published editions. Generally a painting is 'published' when it is finished, but I might want more reproductions/prints, and these need to be coded, or even numbered, too. So every artwork is followed by a publication letter and number. For original paintings, the code is generally A; and 1 because there is only one original. For digital artworks though, the number might be higher because you might print more than one 'original'. Digital art that isn't printed doesn't count as published - it would get confusing if a jpg here or there was counted as two 'publications'.

Extra editions have a separate code. So G41A (Girl in the Woods) is a painting. The original work is fully coded G41A-A1: G - painting, 41 - Girl in the Woods, A - variant, A - edition (original), number 1. G41A-B1 is a first reproduction of G41A, for example, and G41A-B2 is a second print. I generally use C for my limited edition reproductions and B for any unlimited or un-numbered reproductions. So, my first Richard Dadd reproduction (edition 100) is coded G427A-C1.

Today I noted that each variant needs a different edition code too, so added this to my catalogue. I've never really needed this; all studies etc. were originals. I'd never needed a print of a study, and still don't, but I realised that it would be correct to list the edition codes for all variants of each work.

I list everything in text form, like this:

G41 Girl In The Woods (after van Gogh)
Date Filed
22 Aug 2004
Variant A: Original.
Format: Winton oil on canvas board, size 255x203 mm.
Medium Used (Underpainting)
etc.
Colours Used (Underpainting)
etc.
Medium Used (Layer 1)
etc.
Colours Used (Layer 1)
etc.
Published Editions
A: Original.
C: Limited Edition Giclee Reproductions.
Variant B: Study.
Format: oil on carboard, size 200x100mm.
Published Editions
A: Original.
Chronology
22 Aug (2004): Painted.
30 Aug: etc.
Notes
Any general notes, thoughts, day by day diary of work on this artwork.

So this forms a fairly good way to file artwork and how and when they were made, as well as keep track of reproductions. You could list exhibition histories in the Published Editions section. I did this but I got tedious as this information was already duplicated in an exhibitions list. I do list sales and registered owners there.

Wall Plans, Balmain, Prometheus, Installation Speaker

Most of the wall plans are complete now. I'm starting to slow down and relax, as at the end of any project. After 30 minutes of this I started to draw up a list. One thing to do is photograph/scan my last few paintings, this will take a day. Graphics are in for the London show, so I've promoted that a little. I really need to make a video or two for it, at least to talk about some of the paintings, which is tricky when I don't have any of them.

I also have a mind to update Prometheus, adding the modulator processing that I added to Argus a few weeks ago. Argus has the English built in; the strings are typed into the code. In Prometheus, all text is in an external file. This makes translation a lot easier, but it struck me that I'll probably never translate Prometheus, and it certainly makes editing the program more awkward. Every message, error, icon, is a number so it takes time to work out what they say. I have half a mind to change the code to include text. I'm wondering if this has a memory dimension. The text should take up the same space, of course, but it would probably move from dynamic to stack memory - would that cause problems?

A new speaker arrived from Amazon for my Nantwich exhibition, a Sonkir 3W Speaker. It is USB or Li-ion battery powered, and can play from 3.5mm jack plug, or USB stick, or microSD card, or bluetooth, so a master of all things (most speakers limit to one thing or another). This is ideal for art sound installations; it can be left plugged in at low power and the audio will loop forever, and they are small and cheap. I can also connect it to my Microkorg and use it as a temporary speaker. The sound quality is good enough for a 6cm speaker.

The book with it was Nietzsche's Twilight of the Idols; a romp of opinion and hyperbole which, of course, never fails to entertain, though not necessarily enlighten. Reading it makes me want to write a philosophy book in a week, but I feel I'd need to include a smidgen of reason, or a few references.

Shading

A full day working on the shaded designs. My trusty Graphgear 1000 0.5mm pencil seem best for this, but time consuming. Each drawing is taking many hours. Most of the job is complete.

I've been listening to some music which Simon talked about yesterday; The Dollar Album, which was produced by Trevor Horn, but was every but as abysmal as I expected. Listened to All About Eve, too, who were far better. All of this makes me think of music production again. I must update Prometheus with the new modulator processing that I added to Argus, at some point.

I'm keen to get move forward and beyond this commission, and First at Last, the London show, and Neorenaissance. I'm already moving past these three great things to greater things. I must attack the problem areas. I need to work out printing for the draft designs.

Oh for more hours in a day. On we charge.

The Social Dimension In Art

There are a few divisions in the ethereal philosophy of the purpose of art. One division is social need, whether art is to address or comment upon society vs. art that does not, has no message or forms a personal commentary. I can attest that as soon as art has some sort of meaning for message, it feel somehow weaker, that the delicate balance, ideally 50:50, between artist and audience is harmed.

I don't believe in the validity of the term "art for art's sake", that is the existence of art that means nothing or fulfils no need. Art will always be about something and always contain some message. Art is communication, a communication between the artist and viewer. A cloud in the sky doesn't communicate much of a message, but a viewer, by rote of being half of every communicative act, can still interpret messages within it.

There is meaning and feeling in every act of life, so it is impossible to create meaningless art, but it is a bad artist that forces the audience to provide it all. If a tree falls over before an audience, and it is considered an artistic act (perhaps Duchamp was in present and the act took place in a museum!) then they may interpret it in myriad ways: a sign of deforestation? The artist must at least provide some guidance. Perhaps, a simple title 'Triumph of the Loggers' is all that is needed.

Art may have a meaning, but this is different from an address of the needs, or commentary of, society at large. A direct message always has connotations of the preacher or advertising or propaganda, a third-party sharing of information. It is the inaccuracy of this message, the inauthenticity and the inevitable, even if accidental, pepper of lies that harms such art.

The problem with social art, like gossip or any social commentary, is that is is by necessity second hand information; the artist guesses about the ideas and feelings of a group, and conveys these to another group. The problem is that ultimately, we can never know what another group, or another individual, is actually feeling or experiencing, so any form of expression via this indirect route will necessarily have an element of falsehood, which, though not disastrous, will always harm the artwork; it will always be worse than art with more truth.

To maintain the purity of its message, the ideal art should be about the personal communication of the feelings and ideas of the artist alone to the viewer alone. Even art for a wide audience should ideally communicate to individuals on a personal basis. The artist can comment best on social issues by commenting on the effects of society upon the artist, and communication should aspire to a harmonious balance between artist and audience.

Industry

A good day yesterday; completed some of the paperwork for the Heritage Wall project, which included updating my public events list. At 11:45 I was asked to take new artist photos for the Shoreditch project, now called First at Last, and set for launch on September 27th. I dressed up and took some new profile photos.

Then, more preparations regarding the poetry for Neorenaissance, and a trip to buy some more glass for frames. Deb became the model for an Alphonse Mucha style face for the third Heritage Wall design, which I quickly drew out. The designs are generally complete. Next step is to scan and shade these.

Artistically I seem to be engaging more with music again, and video, after watching a few ArtSwarm videos. How precious time is. How other projects and ideas remind us not to waste time on the transient present work.

Shops, Pears, Poets, Blade

A good day yesterday. I bought a few things; a box file for old work, to organise lots of unframed drawings and paintings which I had. I found an old drawing from the Apocalypse Of Flamingos series. Bought some glass too. Dunelm have stopped selling clip-frames, but Wilkinson still do. It's increasingly common for frames to be plastic fronted instead. Glass is cheaper, and always has been, but of course there is the cost of breakages.

I also started to finalise the poets for Neorenaissance, and this big exhibition feels more complete now. The next step is to work on the music/sculpture part, and the video. Then I took some source photos for a painting called 'You Know How It Is When You Remember A Friend'.

The idea involved a pear loosely hanging from a thread. The cord was like a ribbon, in my head, with a memory of the ribbon in an early painting, Eventide 2800:

Here is my old guide photo for that:

My old Amiga game Blade has had a few donations for the download, which touched me. I put so much work into that game, after the final, long years of finding a publisher for Burnout, yet Blade broke me. The publisher released it and gave me nothing, except swear words, laughs, and threats of violence over the telephone. They even distributed my source code at one point. This, they also did to other developers and I spent some time campaigning and trying to warn others. The Amiga was dead as a viable game platform and it took some hellish years, buying a Windows PC, learning to code in C, and finally, after yet more exploitation during Arcangel, walking away from all publishers and, joyously, releasing my own work. Those years were my lowest, but yesterday, after over 20 years, I saw a the first few dollars for Blade. The money is as useful now as it would have been back then.

Blade was hardly the best of games. My focus now is in making the best art I can. I'm certainly more able than ever, and I'm as filled with ideas and inspiration as ever. On with the week we charge.

China Plates, Plans

A strange phenomena occurred last night. I awoke to a sliding-bump sound and a crack of glass. I stirred, groggily, at 2am or so barely awake, and thought that the painting opposite had fallen down or become cracked or somehow damaged, but I partly thought that the sound came from the room next door. I ignored it and fell back to sleep. An hour or so later, I awoke again, with a start to a sound like the clank of an old bell-style alarm-clock falling over, or two china plates falling on each other. I sat up and lit the light. The room was normal and the painting opposite was fine. There were no signs of movement or anything falling at all. Very odd. I thought that it must have been the next room, or outside. I slept again but again, a few hours later, heard a sound like glass or china crashing. This, I think, must have been a hallucination, but one so realistic it sounds indistinguishable from a real sound.

Generally it's been a frustratingly slow couple of days. These bigger events always take more work and expense than anticipated. A very positive meeting yesterday regarding the Shoreditch exhibition, due on September 27. Most of today was spent buying train tickets for the various events.

Three drawings have been newly framed for this; the Jabberwock series of graphic poems. I'm also contacting poets for the Nantwich Museum exhibition.

In other jobs, the last Amiga game has been published on my itch channel and the new external floppy drive has arrived and been tested; it seems to read and write the 720kb discs so I might finally be ready to record the SY-85 music. I had hoped to make more progress on the Heritage Wall plans but these paperwork and packing duties take so long. I also posted off the legal depostis for The Intangible Man.

The endless paperwork of life - of course, this is vital. Life is the preservation of correct information. Those who clean, file, tidy, are extending their life. My very cells love to file things and keep everything tidy and in good order. We are a community of information.

Exhibition Plans

Some busy days of art business. A social day yesterday which started with a meeting at Nantwich Museum about the details for my Neorenaissance exhibition. Things are broadly worked out, though I have have some uncertainties about the Covid-19 situation in January. I think that by December, we will be sure. This will be an extension of the Stockport '21st Century Surrealism' exhibition, so with poetry and other events, made a bit easier being so local. I'll be showing a large range of work from past and present, including my latest English Triptych.

I think of exhibitions like firing shots from a battleship, some might hit and result is sales or a little pretty flash. Some seem to do nothing, but the firing itself, work though it is, is like a part of the art. All of my exhibitions have been seen by people. The ones that mean the most to me are the themed and fun ones, which are art forms in themselves, with fancy dress events or open evenings. ESAUM: Objects of Magic involved incantations and rituals, as well as invited artists. Those Cubby Hole ones were so nice. The Phenomenology of Love was a good one too, I thought, but I also thought that too few people saw it and that it fizzled out somewhat; but being an exciting London exhibition, it had the potential to capture more mainstream attention, and I feel that that more of my events seem to be gaining some sort of momentum.

As well as Nantwich I'm also preparing for a my third London exhibition; a pop-up retail/gallery space in Shoreditch. This will open on September 27th. I'm working on the catalogue and packing work now.

I'm also working on the Heritage Wall ideas and the third one, which needs some tweaking and alteration.

There are a few art open exhibitions too, and I'll enter lots. I'm still full of energy and art ideas, and hopefully I'll have time to make even music this year, and do as much as I can. No sign of the SY-85 drive, that can at least wait until these three big 'shots' have fired.

Shakespeare Glazing

Designed a few paintings yesterday but I'm getting a little tired of it. I find I'm most productive with two or three things on the go at once. With one thing, your only option is to work on it or not, and not often feels more appealing; but with several things, you can choose which to do and, in the end, it all gets done. I prefer to work on the hardest and most difficult thing first, as everything becomes easier then. Of course, soon, the hard thing becomes easy and something else becomes difficult.

I slept badly but was determined to paint today, at the start of a busy week. The mark of the professional is working when you must, whether you feel like it or not. Most of the time when I paint, I don't feel like it. Generally, the results are no different. Of course, actors and musicians must perform on the night whether they feel like it or not; so it is with good painters.

I worked on Moon Over Shakespeare. When I completed the underpainting I thought that it looked finished enough, but, naturally, now it is dry it looks grey and imperfect. I spent a day painting the sky and today worked on some elements of the floor. My main aim was work on the poppies. These intense reds are just about impossible to paint in one layer; the modern reds with even a touch of white makes an insipid pink. Even Velazquez' crimson draperies are strange pinks are they not? These petal shades are easy with glazing. See here the underpaint vs. the final petals:

The finished painting looks more bold in some areas. I didn't glaze all of the mountains. These may benefit from it; things would have been smoother, but I am always aware when painting that work on one is stealing time from another. I know that there isn't time today to complete it all... I may add more.

Time is too short. Life is too short. I have so much I would like to do and have too little time and resources.

Heritage Wall

More work on my 'Heritage Wall' ideas today. I started by drawing these on a smallish scale, but still a lot larger than my normal ideas sketches, which are only 80mm or less. Yesterday and today I've expanded the ideas to double size as a 'final' outline version. I think these ideas are perhaps too complex and busy, but I'm unsure. They probably work better as murals or oil paintings than in the final format.

I've been thinking overnight on the different algorithms for converting these into drilled holes in steel. It might be interesting to explore more options than the very 'digital' looking regular halftone dots (I say this but this is probably a matter for high-end programming - I wonder if I can program something for these industrial machines?). Some random distribution dots, echoing the look of real film might look better, or some huge holes for larger dark areas. These algorithms aren't at all difficult or complex.

The work on these ideas are taking many hours, but after a few days of multitasking I'm focusing more and more completely on them. I have two other painting ideas in progress, including a very simple circle design I thought of last night with hearts on a sky-like background. The precious light of September is running away. I hope to finish the Shakespeare painting at least soon. The Covid closed world has awaked with a blast and there are art competitions and opens everywhere, so suddenly, at the end of the painting season, things are getting very busy.

SY-85

Meanwhile my SY-85 saga continues. First I ordered a replacement floppy drive and adapter; the adapter didn't fit, so I ordered a second one for £35, specifically for the SY-85. This fitted and the drive works. Then I ordered a USB floppy drive for the PC, but this wouldn't read the blank DD (720kb) discs which the SY-85 (old drive) used... so I ordered some HD discs, thinking that these should work with the new drive. The new discs work with the USB drive (yay!), but don't work with the SY-85! So I have a HD-only PC and a DD-only synth.

Now I have to find a DD USB drive - which is not easy.

Wall Concepts

Two days of working on some wall concepts. My main focus has been working on two refined versions of the first two ideas with the aim of making larger versions, then I decided to simply switch to a larger version for the third design.

I took some photos for source material yesterday. Today, blew up all three designs and took more reference images. I've also been making plasticine models for some elements.

I have a lot of distractions, my mind feels like an anxious octopus. The Castle Park Open is on this year, so I prepared the dates and admin for that, as well as noting monthly goals, announcing the Yinyang sale on Steam, and releasing another Amiga game on Itch - during which I investigated SCM4 mapper too; perhaps, I thought, I could edit the data of the program directly using a hex editor on the adf file.

The hours flew by but tomorrow I think I can focus on some good quality design drawings. Of course, I think they are iconic and perfect for the job. I think these could be painted as full paintings, 2 metres across, and sold to the council for £12,000, the same sum as Dali priced his crucifixion at in the 1950s; of course £12,000 then was more like £350,000 today. I'd include the copyright too so that, as with Glasgow, they would earn their fee back and more. They could form the start, and soul, of a new Crewe Museum of Art and Culture.

Crewe Art, Michael Harding White

1st of September, back up day. Then working on the new public art project. The brief is for 3 designs, which I like, as this is a good way of wroking, each will compete with each other. I started by printing out some rectangles of the right proportions and have made some idea sketches.

In other news, I discover that Michael Harding has removed the zinc white from his paint formula, making it titanium only. I discovered that I had accidentally bought one of the pure titanium tubes without knowing, wasting £30. I will buy Blockx white from now on, which is almost always better paint (I only say almost because I've not actually tried their titanium-zinc white yet). Blockx are a lot more expensive (expense is generally a good thing), and the tubes are poor and prone to crack at the seams. I hardly buy any Harding paint now. He loves yellow because all of his paint goes yellow, he even makes two 'whites' which are deliberately yellowy! The oil that leaks from his paint is as a dark brown as ear wax or anything from a smoking pipe, but the paint flows well enough, and the colours are generally brighter than the lower, stickier and waxy 25% of a Winsor and Netwon tube. The tops of Winsor and Netwon's colours tend to be brilliant. Of all of the ultramarine blues I tested, including Blockx and Old Holland, Winsor and Netwon's stood out as the best; quite unexpectedly. I've not bought Harding's ultramarine, of course, as he grinds it in linseed.