Oh for a resful day, but, instead I fill my days with work and triumphs. There can be no victory without struggle.
Spent a busy morning compiling small watercolours, ink drawings and smaller works from years past. I cut mounts for these, 10x8in for the large ones and 5x7in for the small (bah! how I hate inches, if I were king of the world I would remind the so-called 'metric martyrs' that martyrs need to die for their cause, and invite them to do so). But photographers are victims to metric standards, even if builders and scientists are now fully metric. A glimpse of the work:
After the mounts, I cut card backs, wrapped everything in cellophane bags, documented the work and designed and printed price labels, which, for me, will hang over the top corner. These will be £20 and £10, ideal gifts, which was my remit.
This took until 12:30. Then, music work. I needed to make small adjustments to the album. I added a new F-major strum to Eyes of Pity - trying and recording about 20 until I got the right speed and loudness; this is always difficult as every chord, stroke and strum can be remarkably different. Then, some new speech for the intro to Always In The Morning, taken from Public Domain film Danger Lights, which had a nice section about the beauty of the night, with a little warning too, rather good actually, even if the sound and speech quality was rather poor. I also added new backing vocals to the Hitler in High Heels chorus, using the slow-down trick that Sparks used on Equator, the same effect that Frank Zappa's son mentioned a few days ago.
Then, my new DD discs arrived. A new and sealed box from 20 years ago. These discs didn't work in either drive. So I've tried two drives and three batches of discs. I'm convinced that the Windows driver won't permit using Double Density discs. My next plan is to locate an old PC.
Five new Burning Circus books arrived from Amazon, one was ruined with sticky tape on the cover, so I wasted time and money returning this.
Then, this evening, I started work on Sky Robes of Celeste for the Tree of Light event and have written a simple tune in C-minor filled with glitter and starlight, reminiscent of my old Starscape tune, which was its root. I've based it on a simple rhythm x-x-x-x-x-x-xxxx. If I had more piano skill I could be more complex with my melodies. Maybe I need to be more bold, but this tune needs to be simple and appealing. It may already be too much to play alongside words.
So, a full day and many tasks are complete. I feel tired and need some time off to generally muse. I still have a lot to do, however. I'm too full of ideas, dreams, ambitions. How curious the artist life is. How short life is generally.
The COP26 conference about climate change ends with a decision to do nothing and our utterly leaderless government have acted according to their principles of laziness and inaction. We have three new worlds; a West of free speech, a totalitarian East of repression, and a poor third which is a mix of mismanagement and a lack of power. The only problem with the climate is human overpopulation. Global warming, ecological damage, carbon dioxide levels, and Covid-19, are symptoms of that.
