A steady day crafting this music. Was awake until 11:30 or so playing on the synth, experimenting. I played a pretty tune that sounded rather like a Vangelis track from the 1980s, with a spattering of Rachmaninoff in the joyous melody. This could be expanded to become a movement in a romantic piano concerto. Oh for the time, the motivation.#
I slept badly again. I found myself listening to my favourite pop music in the night, which cheered me more than expected. Songs of bravado and happiness; You Better You Bet by The Who, Rush Hour by Jane Wiedlin, Hey Mickey, Steppin' Out, Run With Us, The Boys of Summer, Thunder In My Heart (for some reason I find Leo Sayer hilarious, but can't say why), Nobody's Diary. I slept and dreamed of having a camera with a broken zoom lens. My eyes are indeed causing problems and headaches.
These are difficult times for the world, and they seem difficult for me too. My lowest period was the cusp of the millennium, with no job, no friends, no income or savings. I had less than £200 in the world, and the hopes of finding any success with my Amiga games were fading. I reverted to a rational plan, decided to switch to an IBM-PC, a strange and generally disliked machine, and start again. The result of that plan, Arcangel, was also fruitless, again with no luck or support from publishers. I started work on the vast game The Heart of Aorkhan; my aim was to combat disappointment with vast ambition, but the game was too big, my ambitions too vast.
This led to 2002, a year of starting afresh with a decision to publish my own software online and to make lots of smaller, simpler games (such as Radioactive which, somewhat amazingly, I have sold 3 copies of this month. Perhaps the global nuclear threat is helping). I also started to record and sell game sound effects online, and in 2003 started Bytten with Andrew, to review games and form some sort of connection with the games industry. My games, and sound effects started to sell, not well, but there was growth. Every time I saw growth and tried to capitalise on it, it seemed to magically shrink away like food at the table of Tantalus. The hit of Flatspace led to the game Taskforce, which was a flop, and soon after I concluded, after years of game design and development being my joy and aim, that it was not possible to succeed in any way by making games.
This year seems to have echoes of those early years. Now, art, oil painting, and music production and performance are my passions and abilities. I have more skill and ability than ever, but perhaps, I always had more than before at every stage. The good thing about art is that is has no aim. All artists simply want enough of an income to survive and make art, but what is survival? We all survive until we die.
This music work is taking a long time, but progress is being made and each day I must battle at the rock face, working from dawn until dusk to simply do my best, completely certain, as always, completely certain of success no matter what definition that is. Even the sky is a limit to be pushed beyond.
Back to practical matters. I was unhappy with The Unremembered in its form, the verses were too drawn out, so I've chopped lots of time out (fitting in the same words with ease), and added more drama to the chorus. Tracks so far are: Adagio, Remembrance Service, I Don't Really Go Out Any More, The Unremembered, and The Leaves Of Autumn Are Many. The words in I Don't Really Go Out Any More seem to fit musically; they make the sound of the song nicer, but they are a break in the subject and theme. I improvised them spontaneously while listening to the music. The words to The Leaves Of Autumn Are Many were written but they timbre somehow harmed the epic and beautiful music, so today I've made those words vocoded, but used the music itself as the modulator, so the words are barely audible and certainly not distinguishable. This doesn't matter so much, and in fact rather suits a song about being one leaf in a pile of many.
We are bronzed leaves
bent by time
cower'd in concrete corners
carrying our lives,
loves, pains, memories
of branches, veins,
that tie us;
that tied us.
We look up
to the blanket of others, the same
we are many
we are many
we are many
we are many
