Otesanek, Neorenaissance Events Curtailed

A full day working on Otesanek yesterday. Lots of trying different combinations of guitars, this takes a lot more time than synths or sequenced sound due to the intermediate stages or recording things.

Today, disappointments, slings and arrows. I became aware of the official scientific predictions for the the current Covid-19 wave in Britain, already at 250k infections per day. This is set to peak at around the 3rd week of January and fade away by the start of March. This means that my Neorenaissance exhibition, in planning for months, in waiting for years, will occur exactly during this time. With regret I've had to cancel all of my planned live events and it's certain that few people will see the exhibition. Jan/Feb 2022 will perhaps be the worst time for any sort of public event. I will try to form some sort of online/distant contingency plan.

The events were designed to attract more visitors, but even before Omicron, the normal Covid restrictions limited numbers. The new wave, its risks and further limits simply make the work of staging live events outweigh any benefits.

I've also been informed, with a few days to go, that Ché's exhibit is in jeopardy too, so I await news on this.

At the moment I feel weary and exhausted. It is the end of the year, so a day for backing up computer data; a job which used to take a morning but now takes about two days.

To 2022 we roll our rock, we smash at the rock wall with our hammers of copper. On we march towards the dream of better things.

Otesanek Production, 2021

A long day yesterday of work on the Otesanek song, and another long day today. I'm using quite a lot of guitars, partly the continuing process and joy of adding this instrument to my repertoire, but also it suits this monstrous song. The timing and structure of the song is complete but there are more questions about the layering and instruments. I've used "Aah!" choirs of startled awe in the chorus to good effect. Matching the right mood and balance in the rest of the song is time consuming. Next I will attack the bass, I typically spend a day crafting this to fit the feeling, as I do the drums. Working at my sequencer, typing the notes, I feel more and more like Beethoven than, say, a recording artist or producer of the 20th century.

I toyed with the idea of an alternative instrument for the quieter sections, maybe even using strings to deliberately link with the 'red light' sections of the former song, but I'll set this idea aside for now.

I wrote most of the basic melody for the first song, Heart of Snow, late last night too, so this is ready. These little songs now take me days or weeks. I'm impatient to move on; the next project is always the exciting one, and I'm filled with ideas. The work of the past seems tired and not nearly as good as the great work of that great world, the future. I must keep striving to make this song and this album the best I can. Time seems to run away each day.

Another job done today is some end of year administration, and I've added the songs and poems from 2020, and most of 2021, to my website. These can change; everything on there is a work in progress until it is published somewhere in the real world. I've also added pages for new albums. How tiny my oeuvre is. I work constantly and seem to achieve so little. So much more can come, if I had the time and resources.

Covid-19 is all around and many people I'm connected with have the virus. I hope that we can all stay safe, words which are used so commonly now that they seem trite, but the right words, just the same.

2021 hasn't been a bad year for me really, though of course everything in it has been attenuated or disrupted, as with everyone. Deb and I have performed three gigs and we have a new website. I've released Sisyphus (that seems like years ago), and Nightfood which remains, for me, an artistic pointer to a new path. I've painted some good works, perhaps some of my best, and exhibited in London for the first time, and re-connected with the Macc Lounge. Everything, hwoever, feels like it is on life support; sleeping, awating the dawn.

I suspect that coronavirus will dominate 2022 and 2023 too. There is a huge incentive for a 'universal' vaccine - and perhaps this will be necessary to some degree. I suspect that, sooner or later, multiple vaccinations will start to affect people's health themselves, or become less and less effective. Inoculating the entire human population several times a year appears to me unsustainable, yet this disease will remain severe and perhaps mutate to become yet more deadly. We have been very lucky that this hasn't happened, and lucky that the first vaccine candidates worked so well. Simply luck, and against the odds.

Start of Otesanek

Two hard and slow days working on the third Christmas song for this sonata. The second is about a lonely woman beneath a tree and the fourth about a tree itself, so it seemed a logical idea to connect these with the tale of Otesanek, a tree which is treated as a baby but grows into a monster.

This fun idea makes for a complex song, it's narrative heavy so has to be reasonably long, and I wanted a different mood from the other songs. I spent all of yesterday working on different musical options. I wrote a chorus in D-minor quite early on, partly because the former song ends in D-minor as a deliberate drift into this one, because the 4th song also starts there. I spent some time playing with a D-minor to C-minor, Bb-Major, C-Major progression but it didn't seem quite right. The song also has many different parts, 3 or 4 depending on how I split up the words.

The second iteration used a fast latin rhythm, a bit like the one in Sympathy For The Devil. This didn't seem to fit the mood of the narrative. No matter how disjointed, the music can always fit in the end, but for me the sound of the music should match the story too, and this monstrous story seems to require something lumbering and Frankensteinian, so a regular 4/4 beat.

Today I decided to shift the chorus up to E-minor, but keep the verses in D, which adds enough variety to some bridges and links. The song is pretty loaded with chords, but that's fine, the key part is keeping the image and the emotion. The song starts in the woods at night, so I've decided to paint some creepy sounds.

Even in this draft sketch of its outline, the song is 4 minutes, and will probably longer. One reason these songs take longer is that live parts, like guitars need to be in there to balance the timbres. Composition at the production stage needs experiments, which can work or not, and discarded work is wasted work, though might come in handy in future. I'll save the latin beat, it might come in handy for a totally different song.

I doubt I'll finish this song this week. Next week I must prepare the artwork for Neorenaissance and do a few other visual art related things.

Christmas, Conan

A simple Christmas. Suprise highlights included a graphics tablet and a fascinating book of surrealist writings, The Milk Bowl of Feathers. Both are sure to be inspiring or useful.

Managed some useful work too. I completed my rock song called Conan (at last, it was started in December 2019), but it appears that the character is trademarked and protected so I will not be releasing this any time soon, if at all. I had thought about making an E.P. themed around Conan, using the character as an allegory for these tough times. Perhaps the 1930s was the ultimate spark for his invention. Either way, this won't happen now. The song is done, I'll file it and leave it for distant history.

The mixes of the two Christmas songs is complete, leaving two to create for this 'sonata'. My procedure now is structure, then images, then words, then music. I've written some words for the missing first and third songs today. I've also revisited and looked at the libretto for a concept album I sketched out last year. It's rather like an epic poem and full of imagery.

Prometheus 2.75 and Music

A nice couple of days. I spent yesterday morning investigating the bug in Prometheus, I've been searching for this for years. When you play a live instrument with a buffer bigger than the biggest, then delete the instrument, then play the sequence without playing a new note, this causes a crash when the playback is stopped because the old, big, buffer is cleared, when its size is now invalid. This took years to find because it's a rare sequence of events, and was compounded by a separate crash bug on stop.

I added a few more features including a quantise option for modulators, so I can turn a sine wave, for example, into steps. This is probably not needed very often, but might be useful. I did it mainly for Argus, which uses identical modulators and code.

Musically, I completed both Won't Be A Silent Night, and Away From Her Manger, which I must confess to loving as song. The hardest part is vocal level balancing. I know the words, so I can hear more than is 'there' to a casual listener. Deb's computer is good for previewing songs because it has a sound card that mushes up the audio somehow (definitely not clean) so it makes the equality of the balance good to hear.

The last change was a recording of some tiny words in a child-like voice, for which I slowed down the backing track by 4 semitones and then speeded up the subsequent recording.

Today I've recorded new vocals for The Garden Of Love remaster. My singing has improved hugely over the past year and this trend seems to be continuing; how I love this process. Learning most instruments is a mental process with elements of the physical, but singing is almost all physical. I'm so pleased I've decided to re-record Burn of God. Everything will be pretty much identical but with a few new vocals and all-new guitars.

Away From Her Manger, Prometheus

A full day of music today, recorded the vocals for Away From Her Manger, new vocals for Won't Be A Silent Night and the finale of Conan, plus two guitar solos.

The final chorus of Won't Be A Silent Night is now, thanks to my 2021 voice, a whole octave higher than the rest of the song, and although the vocals tend to sound better and more epic up there, the rest of the production and mix was designed for the moderate lower F's so most of the song is the same as the old/classic version. I did try the chorus layered in octaves but I don't really like vocal layering and try to keep it to a minimum. Once I became aware of it in songs like Goodbye Yellow Brick Road, it started so sound strange. Almost every song by The Carpenters has some sort of layering, and, conversely, Kate Bush is perhaps distinctive as a producer by hardly ever having any.

I discovered a bug in Prometheus, at last a crash I could reproduce. The live playback of an instrument when pressing keys in the sequencer uses the buffers of track zero, which isn't used in song playback (track zero, the 'song track', is used only for global effects, global volume, tempo etc.) Now, deleting an instrument should reset the buffers everywhere so that every track keeps a tally of the biggest buffer needed for the effect used by an instrument. It seems that, after deleting an instrument that's been played, the buffer on this zero track isn't valid... now, it doesn't have an instrument, true, so it shouldn't ever be used anyway, but it should still contain valid pointers to the new buffers for the new next-biggest effect. I'm not sure why it doesn't, but either way, trying to use these buffers causes a crash. Playing any new instrument will reset things, apparently, and so fix the problem. I'm still not sure why there IS a problem, but it's fairly easy to switch off the live playback until a new key is pressed, so I've just done that when you delete an instrument.

This also pointed me to the cause of another, long standing and rare crash when engines were shifted left or right. This is more obvious as the live buffer pointers aren't updated, only those used by the engines themselves.

A good day all in all, but I'll probably spend a few days updating the software rather than making music itself.

Away From Her Manger Production Starts, Big Donkey

Two days of steady music work. I filed and finished quite a few tunes yesterday, two for an old project called Dark Hyperborea, a concept album about urban decay, but, recent though it is, it felt old and I didn't like the idea of resurrecting it. Sometimes it takes more time, work, and effort to fix up something old than make something new. I can always revisit it in future.

I also spent more time on the Conan song. This needs more vocals for the chorus, and a guitar solo, but I can't record them yet. I've added a lower Zeitraum effect to the vocals which gives them a gravelly sound, it reminded me of the vocals on the Ormen part of Bowie's Blackstar which are layered in a strange way. Here, it sounds like a barbarian himself is singing, which is perfect.

I spent today working on Away From Her Manger, a rather lovely song which has a different key for each section; E-Major (and minor, it has both), A-minor, and C-minor, all linked by a G chord. The rhythm is a simple regular beat. I thought that steady staccato strings in chords, like Prokofiev's Troika would work. I added a flute too, then a booming piano which grows. It's early days yet. Each part is carefully crafted.

I've also wrote a simple second song with a Christmas theme called Big Donkey, a pun on the Little Donkey song, but the song is no joke. This one is about a gangster confronting a heavy called Big Donkey. This one is very bluesy, but won't match my Christmas album/sonata. I've already worked out the structure of 4 songs which has an narrative arc. I may record Big Donkey anyway because it's not complex and I've already started on the basic backing; it would be a good B-side or other release.

Christmas Music

A nice day of working on an old song, Won't Be A Silent Night. Not ancient, but in terms of my progress on music it is, so much has changed since I recorded it. I decided to re-record the guitar parts which were originally all synthesized, a good lead-in to doing this for the 2022 version of Burn of God, which will be my next main project. I also recorded new guitars for one of those tracks too, the riff from The Palace of Skeletons, which, back then, was my first song to include any guitars at all.

While I'm in a Christmas mood, and ahead of schedule, I thought I'd write a few Christmas songs, and penned another today called Away From Her Manger. This one uses descending chords, and a similar melodic rhythm to Won't Be A Silent Night. I think that it will be a good idea to make everything from now on a 'sonata' format of 3 or 4 songs, like the start of Nightfood, and this could be another test-bed for this. The mood here is cold and lonely. 99% of Christmas songs are silly artless pop. Creating something different will be enjoyable.

My chest and throat feel somewhat sore. I hope this is psychological and not related to my father's cold, which he is determined to give everyone. The insidious Omicron Variant is popcorning across the country and world. This is adding a sense of anxiety and urgency to every act. I am avoiding the news and watching Lars von Trier's Riget instead, a welcome birthday gift from last year which I'm just getting round to enjoying. Light relief.

Two Universes: The Spacetime And Frequency Domains

Following on from yesterday's conclusions, I wondered if the two overlapping universes, one with time, and one without, but merely reflections of perspective of the same object, not a change in information; would require different language to define or work within them.

I considered that two ways of communicating would be possible; one as a slow accretion of information over time, communication as we understand, and a second 'instant' blast of information. I wondered about the constraints on this second method which might mirror the limitations of the first, and postulated that the time or space of the information would need to be specific in some other way, perhaps highly specialised, or uncertain. Perhaps an image could be seen as an instant flash of information in one time, and writing like little pieces which drip drip into our intellect.

I related these two systems to sound waves and digital signal processing. Sound waves can be represented in the time domain, as a time and amplitude wave, or in the frequency domain as a frequency and intensity wave. The frequency domain contains a 'snapshot' of the sound at a particular point, an analysis of all of the frequencies (sine waves) and how powerful they are. Both methods individually can define a sound wave but each does so in different ways.

I connected this with the universe, and realised that the scientific laws can also be represented in the 'space-time domain', as we, perhaps, commonly experience it, and in the 'frequency domain', a timeless and, so, deterministic universe. Suddenly it seemed that all equations that connect with one, such as the space-time oriented equations of Einstein's General Relativity, can also be transformed to work in the other domain. As with sound processing, all of these laws can methods could be done in both ways, so each set of physical equations can be duplicated in the opposing domain; or in other words that there needs to be two sets of equations, one for each domain, and some processing will be easier in one domain than the other.

The comparison between sound and the universe made me think of the similarities between sound waves and the many waves in the universe. If all particles can also be seen as waves, then perhaps all existence can be seen as waves, so it is sensible that this can be viewed in the time or frequency domain, as easily as any sound.

Secret Electric Canvases

A good day today, finalised the 12 Spotify canvases for Secret Electric Sorcery. I generally use the colour scheme and looks of the album art for these.

The Hitler in High Heels canvas uses pairs of high-heeled legs which spiral away in time to the heavy beat of this track. These were originally like a spiral stair, but I thought it might be fun to twist them at 90 degrees which gives them a subtle swastika look, a nod to the title. I also made alternative legs glowing, for prettiness, and because this reflects the black and 'glow' look in the album artwork.

Eyes of Pity uses lots of opening and closing eyes. I used black and white to match the colours of the artwork again, and this makes it look like an ancient surrealist film.

I used something similar for Out of Date, where lots of clock fall into the distance like time falling away. Be My Jesus is a fun one, a flight of crucifixes which chage the whole canvas colour between black and orange. I used a similar idea for Confidence in Kindness.

The Ones We Love breaks from the colour scheme a little. It is a slow drift through smoke with hints of faces.

The Ceefax canvas breaks from the colours completely, using stark digital blue and yellow, the colours of that old teletext service, but uses the isosceles triangle of the artwork.

The basics on this album are now complete, though I could always use a few more music videos - I haven't made one in so long and many albums need them, partly because they take so much work. Back in the old days I could write and record an album in a week, The Spiral Staircase took 10 days, a record which I considered far too long, but that album contains only about 10 instruments and the balancing was almost the same for the whole album. Now, an album takes more time, one or two months, but longer depending where you count the start and end (one could say I'm still completing this one, for example), but one music video can take a month or two or more. Film is a challenging medium for this reason. Like anything perhaps, it's easy to make quick rubbish, but good things take time and film really needs locations. These canvases are only possible in one day due to the wonders of my Argus software, and because they are only 8 seconds long.

Reverting to my older graphics card seems to be working, the GT710 seemed to lock Windows up - I blame the drivers. My ancient computer may need a replacement sooner or later, but I hope it can carry on for a few more years. People may be amazed that I can barely run my old (and very simple) games like Flatspace because my PC is so poor. I need a new synth, a new PC, time and money to remaster and release the 10 games that aren't available (principally Gunstorm and Gunstorm II), money for CD pressings of The Myth of Sisyphus, Nightfood, and many other albums. So many demands and so little time. We must do what we can with what we have.

Onward.

Colds, Computer Freezes, and Other Stories

Things which have occurred yesterday and today:

1. My father has a cold which is referred to as 'it'. He is determined to cough and sneeze over as much as possible. This causes anxiety, and should perhaps for the world as he has no intention of staying away from the bus, cafés, crowds etc.
2. My computer suddenly threw a black screen, then a "page fault in non paged area" blue screen, also a great cause of anxiety. I wondered if this was due to working on Argus for the first time with this new, replacement, graphics card though it has been stable up until now. How I hate computer faults. This causes me great distress. I spent today backing up, then installed a different graphics card. This has today, on its first day, locked up the computer at one point (if it was indeed the cause), and crashed the driver after waking from sleeping. I wonder if it is the card or something more serious.
3. Between this, I've started work on the Spotify Canvases for Secret Electric Sorcery. Without these worries I could have completed these today but they may take a week now. Other basic elements of the launch; artwork, filing, lyric reading videos are now complete.
4. I saw a bright shooting star last night, one of the last of the Geminids which celebrate my birthday each year. Given recent events, I tried to see it as a symbol of hope.
5. I've delightedly got both of my submitted paintings: 'The Unexpected Return Of Oliver Cromwell In 2020' and 'When This Is All Over' into the Grosvenor Museum exhibition. The launch event is cancelled, for understandable reasons in this virus surge.
6. I've completed the printing and formatting for Neorenaissance. This is generally complete.

Two Universes: The Unknown And The Eternal

Let us consider a deterministic universe. What is possible? What is impossible?

What is possible is that what happens, what is impossible what what doesn't? No; both words concern a freedom that is lacking in the universe. Some things occur, some do not. One can't say with certainty that an event is possible until it has occurred, and by that time it's too late, just as an act can't be considered impossible because it hasn't yet happened.

The words 'possible' and 'impossible' imply prediction, thus an element of free will. Many words have a sense of time built in: 'cause', 'effect', 'try', 'become', 'perform', etc. Words which reference our experience of time are meaningless in a deterministic universe because time in such a universe is a dimension and not experienced as the unknown, unfolding phenomenon which we experience on a daily level.

In philosophy, consider the most simple of logical propositions: 'if A then B'. This statement itself includes an element of time. Can this convey any meaning in a deterministic or fatalistic universe?

This is problematical. Perhaps language, perhaps any form of communication, are incorrect tools to describe a non-temporal universe.

Writing and language are conveyed one word at a time, temporally. Is all communication temporal? Communication is a gaining and growth of information, so yes.

Can communication, an exchange of information, occur in a completely timeless universe? No. Let us see all of time and space as one object. It may contain information but we cannot certainly state where it originated from; the word 'originated' itself implies a past, but we can state that the information exists in its location.

The most stark implication of this reasoning is that any essay on free will or determinism, is already free and non-deterministic because it is an essay, thus using language to convey information temporally, unlike the universe. Perhaps it is possible to describe a deterministic universe, but this description would necessarily be non-deterministic. This does not necessarily prove that a deterministic universe cannot exist.

It appears that there are two universes at work, both present and overlapping like transparencies:

1. Our daily, natural experience of time as a phenomenon unfolding the unknown, which we know and experience on a daily basis. As this is necessary for communication and the exchange of information, then it is not exclusive to humanity, or humans and higher animals, but for all phenomena which communicates, from planets sharing gravitational information to atoms sharing electromagnetic data. The future, in this universe, is necessarily unknown because communication of the known necessitates some quantity of the unknown.
2. An eternal and timeless universe where no communication takes place, but one where the future is known. How can it be shown that this exists?

PAT Testing, Booster, Poster

Three things done yesterday: I had the USB plug for the Nantwich exhibition PAT tested, had my Covid 'booster' jab, developed a draft poster for Neorenaissance.

I've just announced that the performance in the Macc Art Lounge is cancelled, it doesn't seem wise to encourage a crowd for a performance in the gallery at this time of rapidly rising infections. Of course, everyone is sad about this, but it's one of those random events beyond our control. I thought about the countless events across the country which will be hit, perhaps not by cancellations but by, at least, much reduced numbers at this time; cancellations by proxy.

I'm feeling a little under the weather due to booster effects. I will rest today. On we march.

Of Wasps

A slow day, woke late after a night of stomach pain.

I looked at the Neorenaissance plans and made a test USB stick for the speaker I've bought for the sound/ceramic exhibit. The aim is to leave this on 100% of the time for the 8 weeks, which seems to work, the speaker seems to play and loop automatically, so I've made a 20 minute loop. I wondered if the extended silence would auto-shutoff the speaker, but it doesn't. The volume seems to be rather loud, perhaps it's boosted. I massively reduced the source wav, but it seemed to have hardly any effect on the playback volume.

I've felt distracted, tired, cold, slow, all day. I'm preoccupied with ideas for new music manipulations. As I make my own audio software, I can do to audio what the Vasulkas did with video and make up my own manipulations. I have a few ideas but I'm unsure if I should code them just yet. Next on the cards for me is a re-recording of Burn of God with real guitars, but that will take a couple of weeks, and this festive season seems to be too busy and too crowded.

I also made the basic graphics for more lyric videos, for Nightfood, and at 4pm or so I decoded to record these which involved dressing up as per the artwork of that album. The first track, The Dream of Wasps had a strange deep buzzing on the audio. This was on my mic, and the separate camera recording so it must have been a sound in the room itself, which is very strange. Perhaps it was something paranormal, an attack of the very wasps in the song.

Electric Flute

Watched a documentary about Jethro Tull yesterday and wondered about the possiblities of making electric wind instruments. Amplifying the vibrations of strings requires quite a lot of power despite their clearly visible vibrations. In wind instruments the resonant echoes of the air create the sound, so even if the metal body of a flute could be tapped for its minuscule vibrations, I would imagine that any sound from this would be poor quality and disturbed by the keys or other physical motions as much as the sound. Experiments are needed.

Ideally, the vibrating air itself would be amplified. I thought of using a magnetic gas, though the flautist may have to breathe it, then a colloid with something like magnetite particles, similar to my experiments with 3D magnetic sculptures in liquid using Mars Black pigment. This may create a whole new genre of liquid-electric instruments.

A third option is using tiny metal hairs which wobble with the air, somewhat like the stereocilia receptors in the ear. Using this principle, my concept for an electric wind instrument uses tiny metal springs in the instrument chamber, possibly with paddles on the end to catch the air flow. These would ebb and flow with the air and their movements could be picked up with a guitar-like magnetic pickup.

Myth of Sisyphus Lyric Videos

A somewhat slow and very cold day today. I set up the room to record a new set of lyric videos for The Myth of Sisyphus album. I decided to wear a very plain grey tee-shirt, which perhaps most closely matched the feeling of the artwork, and used an orange fill-light, for the same reason, although cold colours work best for this, those which oppose flesh-tones. Everything was done in one take and the videos were edited, subtitled and checked efficiently, perhaps helped by the fact that this album is a lot less heavy on words than the mammoth Dusty Mirror. All videos are now complete and scheduled on YouTube. I need some more for Nightfood, for the sake of completeness.

The news is full of dire warnings about the Omicron coronavirus variant. This has dampened mine and the nation's mood.

I feel somewhat cursed with the Nantwich Museum exhibition, waiting for 10 years or so for it, having it delayed twice and now, after so many plans and events which have been curtailed or cancelled, destined to take place during a period of probable 'lockdown' in all but name. So often it seems that my best exhibitions and performances are ignored, missed or somehow evaded by fate, while insignificant and poor quality events strangely attract attention, just as open exhibitions tend to select my least impressive works and reject obvious masterpieces, such as Royal Cambrian Academy of Art inexplicably rejecting The Love Reliquary and The Starcrossed Escape Of The Psychological Cosmonaut. Such are the dice of the fates. The only option is to keep trying and try to make every event, painting, thing, the best I can. On we push our rock.

Framing, Chester Nightmare Delivery

A full day of framing yesterday, cutting backing boards, mounts, glass etc. I've done this so often, it's complex procedure of many steps. I framed the English Triptych (or, perhaps more correctly, series) and the Alien Nativity, and prepared the two paintings for the Chester Grosvenor exhibition. That's about as much as I can manage in a day:

The glass, from Wilkinson, is now in inches; it was, when from Dunelm Mill, a nice 300x400mm, but now I need to, annoyingly, trim off about 4mm from the edge of each side. I'm more confident at glass cutting now, in fact rather enjoy it, thanks to some help from a visit to a stain glass workshop. Clean well, score in one stroke - never cross a line or touch the perfect wheel to anything except virgin glass, then turn the glass over and press with fingers on the score marks to tease them into a crack.

The finished Alien Nativity in its new frame:

That day went to plan but today was the most nightmarish art delivery I've had in my artist life. I've entered a lot of shows, many of course come to nothing. One of the hard jobs of art is packing, labelling, printing forms, walking, train-journeying, carrying, and sometimes simply being rejected and having to do it all in reverse a few days later.

Today Deb and I set off for Chester to enter the first Grosvenor Open since the sad death of Peter Boughton, the former keeper of art and indeed, great cultural figure of the city if not county. To cut a long story short, the trip was successful but hampered by three closed roads, two 4-mile dirt tracks, a closed car park, a £16 purchase of chocolate from Tesco made to pay for the parking, a broken checkout machine then a semi-operational car-park machine, a hailstorm in the country, a rain storm while carrying the paintings, and about 15 miles of diversions across unknown countryside.

I am reminded that life is about battling challenges.

Two Criticisms Every Artist Faces

Two criticisms every artist faces are: 1. "I can do that!" or "Anyone can do that!" from people who haven't actually done it and haven't even thought of doing it, and 2. "You should do this ..." or "You should have done this ..." from people who wish they were artists yet lack the patience or ability, so find it easier to show their creativity by making slight changes to the art of other, more hard working and adept, people.

Online Sales and Headline News

A trying day. Some days, I have a list of things to do and don't even get past the first thing. Today I wanted to add a shopping cart facility to the new Fall in Green site, but it just wouldn't work. The PayPal integration on the Pentangel Books site seemed to work, but I can't really be sure, and the new site is almost identical and on the same domain, but the indentical code simply failed. I think it must be down to a security issue, or the need to create new credentials.

But, I decided it doesn't matter, that trying to keep pace with the changes in web technology was too frustrating. I worked for six hours trying different things, working through logs and various steps, and I'm sure I could have fixed it in the end, but I decided that it was not efficient to do so. I hardly ever sell things online via my website so I reasoned that it's better and easier to simply use a third party site, and let them handle these things.

Most of my book sales come from Amazon, plus my real-life sales in shops or at events; I've never sold one via my website. Bandcamp is already there for bands to sell merchandise and albums, and the only other thing I sell are prints, and most of those are sold via galleries, or personal contacts; and RedBubble is there for some of my digital art.

So today, I've spent time deconstructing the shopping systems on my site and adding albums to Bandcamp.

In other news, I had a lovely message and subsequent article in Macclesfield Nub News about my piano playing in the Macc Art Lounge next Wednesday: "Macclesfield: Cheshire East's most prolific artist to perform ultimate free piano concert" - quite a headline to live up to. I'm still very inspired and full of musical ideas and ambitions.

Onwards.

Selection Box, New Website

A really nice performance yesterday in Congleton. This was our first with two synths. Mike has acquired some lights, we were too dark in Knutsford. I used mine too and brought some light sensitive ones.

About 10 people came, including two new, which was about what I expected. Dark winter weekdays are difficult times for any event, but Covid has had a doubling impact on everything.

Mike said that our music was the best sounding to date; it was certainly very different, lacking piano. I love the piano sound, and some, like 'Time, Falling' don't work as well on these mini-synths. The Reface DX still annoys me. The paltry 32 presets is a real hammer blow to its live use, I still fume at this because it sounds and feels so very good in so many ways, yet I fear actually creating sounds with it because the few that are there need preserving too.

I'm still hoping to buy a bigger synth. Mike wondered why when the sound is good as it is, which made me wonder too. Larger keys are easier to play, but it can come down to those presets. Three synths rather than two adds more command options during a performance. The Korg can loop a background effect. I use an MP3 backdrop at times, normally a sound effect, wind etc. so that its timing doesn't restrict the performance. A love the size of a big, piano size keyboard, and, also, new sounds can add to the timbre and feeling of recorded work. Those limited presets are stopping me playing with the Reface.

The set up work was relatively easy from a technical standpoint. The mic kepy feeding back at times, perhaps it was just too loud. The work was as heavy and as tiring as ever. My knees and muscles are starting to ache for too long after such events and I am still very much recovering on this stormy day.

I thought, last night, how different it is to perform rather than see others perform. I realised that I'll never know what it's like to watch us perform. Even if videoed, we gain only a strange idea. When playing, I'm focusing on so many things, and every tiny hint of mistake is a glaring error, which is often not there at all on a recording.

I got in at 10pm or so and spent an hour packing things away. I was so buzzing with energy that I didn't go to bed until after midnight, then up at 6am due to hunger.

Today I've set up fallingreen.co.uk, a simple website for our work, so this cold day has been one of computer work and one of physical rest so far. I remain inspired and have so many creative ideas; musically, visually, in video and performance.

I'd really like to find or found a place, a bar or house that can be a permanent art performance space, like the Iklectik Art Lab in London, or The Kitchen in New York. I would set a programme of events and exhibitions, sell drinks, live above it, perhaps.

Rest Day, Selection Box, New Music Ideas

A simpler day yesterday, the first in weeks where I've had time to think and feel actually creative. A reminder how hard it is to find such time. I used it on admin work, the essential filing and tidying, recording. Only what is recorded is art. Only what is recorded exists.

I developed a new possible website and did a quick rehearsal of some of the Selection Box tunes. The sound will be unique and very different for some tracks; Clown Face, normally somewhat sad and reflective is now space-like a meditative with a wailing synth lead over a 5th drone.

Today I fitted the bathroom roller blind and we did a second final rehearsal of the show. There are some elements that probably need work, but this is very much a relaxed and experimental setting, which I love. At times I miss those special art nights in Mash, though the hour drive there and back and the complex loading and unloading grew to be too much. If I had the money I'd found some sort of art club which had similarly experimental entertainments every night.

I wrote two songs in the night. These are journeys of images, my favourite way to make music. There are many songs, tunes, words, ideas. Images, rhythms or feelings/vibes, but I prefer to start with images and structure because the other parts are easy.

This week I have to frame the remaining Nantwich Museum paintings, complete Christmas plans, and hopefully record some new lyric videos for Sisyphus.

Macc Lounge, Tree of Light

A very busy two days. A nice day in the Macc Art Lounge on Thursday, got to chat with photographer Meirion Watkin, a new exhibitor.

Then, yesterday wrapped some emergency presents in the morning, this always takes so long, and a quick rehearsal of Sky Robes of Celeste, before dressing up and loading for the performance itself. The weight and awkwardness of this piano is so problematical. The slightly heavier SY-85 is more preferable because it somehow feels lighter, being smaller.

I now play standing up. This is not ideal from a playing point of view, as using a pedal means effectively standing on one leg, but it looks better for the audience. A new colour changing light bulb arrived in the morning so I decided to fix this to the piano to give me more atmosphere, from the perspective of the audience, though the white light and cabl is not ideal. Perhaps I need black.

I decided to use two stands, as X-stands get thinner as they get higher and my full width piano becomes something like a see-saw with just one stand. I also covered these with a cloth which looks a little better. With each performance, there are still things to learn and refine.

The event was rather short, about 40 minutes; a school choir, a few gentle readings with feeling, ourselves, and a rendition silent night which began with a screamy-gospel backing track which was thankfully muted after about 10 seconds. The reflective mood was generally maintained except for the Butlins-eqse mix of jolly Christmas music on loop, before and after the event, and the somewhat out-of-place call by the mayor for the audience to countdown the switching on of the tree of lights.

As a performer, apart from the physical carrying work (the stage was rather a long distance from our parking) the hardest part was the coldness and darkness. I lost a glove in the dark and had to find a light to locate it. It was about 5 degrees celcius, and wearing my metal crown instantly made my head freeze, so I restricted this to just before and during the performance and remained swaddled in hat and scart at other times, but this made engagement with the people there and/or photo opportunites difficult. The stage staff were excellently professional, almost too much, as they began deconstructing and packing the minute the event ended, making it a bit of a rush for me, but I'm usually the same.

So very achey this morning after a super-busy few days. My ear is better after 4 days of ache but I am at my physical nadir. I need to work out and plan the bigger show for Monday, this is one of our most raw performances and all of the work is new, but I really must rest today. I will spend it with essential computer-admin work.

Selection Box Rehearsal

An exhausting day. Hardly any sleep with persistent ear ache, then a morning of monthly backups, and preparing the printing for the Neorenaissance exhibition. Just finished this before 12:30, a quick gulp of lunch and then working on the script for the Selection Box event on Monday.

There are 17 tracks/poems/songs to perform and this time I decided to use two smaller synths and electric guitar, partly due to the weight and the required delicacy when moving the piano, and partly to create a new experimental sound, but this means that all of the songs apart from one have new arrangements and new instruments. In some cases these had to be designed, but often meant finding existing ones that sounded good.

Deb arrived at 13:30 to a run through and we started with Friday's Celeste performance, then setting up the equipment for the other rehearsal. Everything was worked out, though not much was in a finished state, all light instrument tests, one or two runs-through of each piece. We have 8 premiere pieces hastily assembled and miraculously written by Deb in the past 4 days. So many moods, many are fun, but even then each must extoll some sort of skill or originality, and we've found some really unusual combinations such as adding bass-funk rap-like patterns to an old lady's reminiscences of Christmas.

This second rehearsal, our first full one, took about 3 hours. We're in the Macc Art Lounge all day tomorrow, then performing on Friday, which gives us one day (and me two) to practice the rest.

Some artists, rock stars, seem to love performing. For me, it's simply hard physical work, albeit good practice. With a technician or roadie, things might be more endurable but for me performance is an alternative type of art, less enjoyable than writing or recording. Each should be innovative. Most bands evolve to become their own tribute band, playing their hits of yesteryear. I prefer the idea of new material, but of course, everyone likes something familiar - all new material would be bamboozling because everything good must be different and therefore new, and everything new takes time to appreciate, so all good art will necessarily receive, at first, bemusement, confusion, or outright criticism; that is no reflection on the art itself, and is, counterintuitively, a sign of success.

I'm certainly physically and mentally run-down by the weeks of constant toil, but things are on target.