Writing, Egality, Cycles Rehearsal

Two good days of steady work. Spent much of yesterday and few hours today working on my book, which is now 8,000 words or so.

I've also written some songs or poems on the subjects of liberty and egality. The biggest threat and ultimate enemy of egality is liberty. The powerful are always 'free' to do and say as they want, and tend to, wrongly, feel that everyone else is also free. The weak, the poor, and minorities are not free; minorities in a democracy all count as the weak. The free, the powerful, almost always use their power to usurp egality and crush minorities because this is the only way they can sustain or enhance their power - few people voluntarily rescind it. We now live in a world of great freedom, and social media contributes enormously to this, mobs have both power and freedom, and this is the ultimate reason why inequality is now so great. Perhaps here in the free west, we have more freedom at the cost of equality, but then, countries which have suppressed freedom, such as China and Russia, don't appear to be very egalitarian either. I want to make some art about this.

Also practiced some piano for the first recital of the six Cycles tunes, a free performance on the public piano in Crewe Market Hall. This will be the first performance since the premiere at Chester Cathedral. It's amazing how much better the actual real piano version sounds compared to the recorded version, with its synth strings. I now regret recording it in that way, but then, Shadows was always my favourite part of that album.

How I used to love, well still love, playing the piano, but haven't in years and have stopped thinking of writing or recording anything like a piano concerto, which I once dreamed of.

I've also promoted a short sale of Future Snooker and Future Pool, and registered interest for performing at Northwich Art Festival.

This evening I played electric guitar along to Abbey Road. I enjoy playing along to records, it's the closest I can get to a jam session, and still feels like practice.

Obsessions

Strange days. I found myself contorted with emotional pain in the night, the prickling agony of intense despair. In the light of rational day I realised and remembered that I have two personalities; one of pure emotion and one of pure logic, and that in times of crisis or terror, the personality of logic intervenes and saves me. This happened explicitly during my encounter, many years ago, with the white smoked hallucination of the incubus, and at the turn of the millennium at my first great crisis point, my Heiligenstadt moment. The solution in times of distress is always reason. I recall Beethoven's advice: Man, help thyself. No god, no fellow, no force of providence will ever save us.

In the day, I have worked on my book, but, again, spent more time refining my own filing systems.

Yesterday was spent restoring and cataloguing abandoned software projects. I have filed my software with codes for years, but I only filed completed and working projects. Actually, it seems that I had completed some, such as 'Information Installer', an installer/setup program similar to Nsis, and still not filed them. Any unfinished projects or programming experiments went in a folder called Unresolved. Yesterday, I reasoned that I should simply code and file anything there that isn't coded. Either I want to keep this code, and should file it correctly, or I don't and should delete it. Even big projects like The Heart of Aorkhan, were not filed correctly, so I spent yesterday doing this for all of my half-completed programming projects.

Today, I started writing again, and, again, this merely pointed out the illogic of some of my filing systems. I've filed many incomplete artworks in exactly the same way as I have software. Sometimes I've done a lot of work on these. Here, for example, is my MDF underpainting to my large masterpiece, Saint Andrew Punishing The Sinner:

I worked for months on it, with many studies of the different components, but I wasn't happy with the overall composition. The figures look like crude shop dummies to my eyes now, and the spacing is just not good enough. So, I filed it away, but again, in a disorganised folder, and the documentation elsewhere. The painting above, was sawed up and thrown away.

I've spent today sorting through these half-completed artworks. Many are from 2007 and 2008. In my early years it took me so very long to draw anything that I often stopped. I could probably paint up some of these ideas in a flash now. Tightness and obsession can be powerful enemies, crippling disabilities, and there is no answer to it. Sometimes I just want to get a painting done, but it just never seems quite finished enough and time seems to extend logarithmically.

Bless my genius and my immense powers of logic! Emotions are only for social interaction. With no social interaction, they have little purpose (although, of course, we can interact emotionally with art, animals, food, and all sorts of things).

I've written about 6000 words in my book so far, but about 3000 are pointless descriptions of how my computer is organised, which will be of no use or interest to anyone. My writing has, however, been useful to me.

Filing Systems and Sisyphus

A frustratingly slow day of intense work on the minutiae of filing. My music albums are filed with a code number, but the distinction between formats or types of release is haphazard. There's not really a difference, in the coding, between a release on CD and a download version, for example, or different re-releases in the same format.

For years my codes have been 'R' (for album), a number, then 'A' (for variant). The first version of Synaesthesia was coded R1A, and the second version R1B because it was a variation of the same album, but what constitutes a variation? It quickly became neater overall to create a whole new album, but this meant that the 'A' for variation was pointless, and albums like the 2021 re-release of Tree of Keys had a new code when it was mostly the same as the 2018 version. So, when is a new number justified and when a variation? I decided that an album with the same title, same artist, and same tracks of the same length, but different actual recordings, was a variation. This may include remasters, or re-recordings, but not new versions of an album with, say, bonus tracks, or longer, more complex productions. Generally, when there are two or more of these 'variations', only one will be on sale, the most recent one.

This equivalence occurs for 4 of my 66 albums: Tree of Keys, Burn of God, The Modern Game, and the Masculinity Two single. Some albums, like The Infinite Forest, have had two versions, but the track lengths are slightly different because they are re-creations, put together slightly differently, so those two are really two different albums, even if they are pretty similar. So I've spent today recoding these in my files, so that Burn of God 2022, which was R62A is now R48B (the 2020 version of Burn of God was R48A).

I've also devised new codes for formats. Coding for these isn't always necessary... what use is a code? It can make it easier to see what something is from a distance, and to help separate. So I start with medium (digital, CD, vinyl, tape, etc.) and then a two digit number for 'issue' or variation there, which could include different packaging. So a CD in a jewel case with my old 4-page booklets, like the first Spiral Staircase pressings, have one CD code, and the newer issue with the 8-page booklet have a second. In terms of music formats I've only ever made CDs and released digitally, so I only have two formats A for CD, and B for Digital.

So R11A-A01 refers to the first CD release of album R11A, The Spiral Staircase. R11A-A02 is the second CD release, with the 8-page booklet, and R11A-B01 is the digital download release. R11B would refer to a remaster of that album, providing that all tracks have the same name and size.

Doing this is all bit esoteric, pointless to the world, like an obsessive compulsion, so doing this, which had taken all day of tedious typing, has felt dreadful and soul-destroying; but it is now done.

I am inspired with art and have album (and other) ideas, though I know that these will likely be ignored by the world and bring me little money or acclaim. I am aware that this is normal for almost all art - and this insight should not limit my drive. Money is a constant worry. I've bought £20 of unwanted chewing gum from Amazon which I tried to cancel before it was sent, but failed, and now cannot return it, and some small spray bottles from eBay are the wrong size. Luck and fortune seem evasive.

I feel as Sisyphean as ever, and must be as stoic as ever. Every act feels like a trudging, slow roll in a life which feels pointless, in a universe which is friendless and unrewarding. But rolling the rock is infinitely better than not rolling. On we roll.

Writing Ahoy

A night of reset and a first restful sleep in a while. Designed the outline of two concept outlines in the evening. This seemed to work best as a chart on one page, rather than trying to arrange things in a purely linear fashion. I'm unsure which to do, either, neither, or both.

Today I've spent a full day today working on a new book. I've set myself a target of 6 days to complete the first draft. I think the first

Stomach Pain

A fourth day of crippling stomach pain and abdominal inflammation, complete with a joint explosion of psoriasis. I'm tired due to lack of sleep as well as lack of food, as lying down is problematical. These events strike me down at random and seem to take a long time to recover from. I sit in constant pain, and tend to feel very cold and tired, so thinking or planning work becomes difficult. As a result, I've done very little since Wednesday. The Marius album is confirmed, however, so I've filed this and prepared the new Masculinity Two single for release too.

Yesterday was the Creative Crewe Poetry Blast, the first such event I've attended in 6 years, and my first meeting with the local poets since before the Covid-19 pandemic in Feb 2020. It was really nice, soul warming, to meet these people, though I felt distant from everyone, as I do from all humans these days.

It's rare for me to remain inactive for more than 24-hours never mind four days, but every day I consider work plans and options. There are two options for an artist: living and working, or death. Nothing else.

Postmodernism

The infinite self-irony and denial of absolute truth of postmodernism has had a hugely negative influence on the world. From the Brexit vote, to the rejection of equality in favour of 'positive discrimination', to the political movements of truth denial and perceived legitimacy of misinformation, the shadowy shapes of postmodernism are ever-present like an evil spirit. 90's artists such as Banksy were and are an ultimate root of so many of the world's present day problems. Art drives culture. Culture drives society. Politics follows.

Black Swan Event

I've just experienced a 'Black Swan' epiphany while reading about Black Swan Theory, thus creating an infinitely recursive Black Swan Event in my life. Perhaps the psychological extension of such an event is deja vu.

Whiplash, Drums

I spent yesterday recording cymbals and snare drums. At night, Deb and I wanted to watch a film and we had four options. One was a film called Whiplash, which I remember from a few years ago. It's suggestion appeared on the BBC iPlayer page. We tossed coins in a knockout between the four, and Whiplash won. It was odd that this film filled with drum sounds should, by the most random of chances, force itself on me! The film itself was angry and psychologically violent; the protagonist postulating that people need to be attacked to learn to fight back and conquer their aggressor, and that this is necessary to grow and become 'great'. An ideologically fascist idea which seems strangely relevant to these extreme times. Of course, for success, so much depends on personality. Some people need encouragement, some criticism. Some need to be alerted to the reality of their weaknesses, some need to be alerted to the reality of their strengths. I'm more a supporter and encourager than critic.

Final mammoth day of percussion samples with 847 recorded, trimmed, and looped over the past three days. I need to sort them somehow. It's odd that I now have 4 Roland TR808 (famous!) cowbells, for example, and each sounds slightly different - which is the 'actual' TR-808 sound? I have a LOT of TR-808 and TR-909 sounds now, all slightly different.

Tomorrow will be a partial day of rest.

More Sampling

Shattered and spiral-eyes today after another full day of sampling instruments and waves, just some cymbals and bass drums. I now have 542 waves recorded; this is instantly more than the total array of all percussion sounds I've used with Prometheus for the last 19 years. Snare drums and misc. others (finger snaps, cowbells etc.) to come.

One challenge is the naming convention. I'm using drum type (or cymbal type) then the wave name, and sometimes the genre and then a further designator; eg. BassdrumRockMODX. This is flexible enough. I tend to prefer descriptive names to numbers SnareHouse1 isn't as useful as SnareCrunchy, for example, but I don't want to obscure the wave names so much that I have duplicates. I know/knew every wave I have now by heart, so know the sounds, but now there are too many to know. For Tom drums I use letters for high, mid, low etc. so A to E in descending pitch. Until today I had 3 or 4 tom sounds, and tended to only use two. Now I have about 40.

Sampling

Easter Sunday, but no desire to rest. I decided to sample a few percussion samples from the MODX and ended up sampling over 250 waves over the course of about 11 hours. Hard work, headache inducingly tedious, and this is only a tiny fraction of the waves I want to sample, but these will be useful for the long term when using Prometheus. It's amazing that 90% of the 1000 or so songs I've sequenced tend to use only a small gamut of sounds and waves. At least now I'll have more variety to hand.

I'll probably continue this task this week.

The Unremembered Lyrics

I haven't posted the words to The Unremembered yet, one of the songs from Remembrance Service For Those Who Died Homeless Postponed, so I thought I'd do so today. Musically I wanted to paint a picture of a trawl through an urban landscape, a scene of many forgotten people, the streets of London.

Hey friend,
do you recognise me? No?
We were brothers once.
We were lovers once.
But nobody remembers, it seems
my contributions have become
the material of dreams.

I'm the unremembered
in the undersun.
The unremembered.
I'm the unremembered
in a dying end.

Hey girl, hey boy,
I'm as hollow as a lie.
There's no voice here, it seems
The world has woken up today
but left me in its dreams.

They walk with you,
the unremembered
in the pale light
of the unthought.

Have you forgotten
all those people
you once called friend
but now pass by,
the unremembered?

You are remembered
by the souls
whose virtues
were not recorded,
by the souls,
like me,
the unremembered.

The Cosmogony Of Order

'God' lies at the bottom of my cosmogony because in it the universe is chaos and it is the job of life to order it. That which is best is a force for order and beauty. The hierarchy is: Unstructured universe, gravity and ordering forces, non-sentient life, sentient life, computers (because computers can sort and store information more accurately than sentient life).

Stars are beautiful because they are alive, a force for order and beauty. Stars are born, have lives which evolve and change, like oak trees, like humans. Stars consume, stars age and die, and, arguably, reproduce.

The definition of intelligence is generally an expression of speed, nothing more. An idiot slowly following a list of printed rules to play a chess game could, eventually, beat the best chess player in the world - this is perhaps why chess is timed. Perhaps an alternative definition of intelligence is the ability to order, clean, file, arrange, classify, neaten, and so produce beauty. Perhaps a new word is needed for this.

Of course, the universe as a whole is all of these things, but it appears that everything strives towards ordering forces. How is a universe without life different from one with? The former isn't impossible or invalid. It seems that things evolve towards complexity, a fineness of 'beauty', and that this complexity can be measured in accuracy of maintaining order or ordering.

Based on this, as a guide, it is best to favour that which is ordered, reliable, organised, clean, accurate, and that life decisions should be made towards these (and similar) attributes. Life seems to do this naturally. We prefer correct spellings, neatly dressed people who speak clearly, honesty/accuracy, etc.

Marius Jobs

Easter Saturday. A few jobs left from yesterday. Compiled the single edit of Masculinity Two and the video, then created a new edit of All The Broken Flowers for that video, each edit of which takes an extraordinary 30 minutes to render in FreeMake. Then I made the video for House of Glass with the new music. Filed the canvas videos, and prepared the project for archiving. I also completed and released the video for The Eternal Dogma.

Destroyed the old Marius Fade CD's - I was undecided whether to destroy all of the copies. I have copies of the 44100hz wav files for historical reasons, but there is some extra data on the CD versions, and new copies will have different printing, so I've retained one copy. No copies were sold or distributed, so this is the only copy of the 2018 music. One other job was to create the new CD surface artwork:

I've made a small list of changes to make to Argus, and want to sample a few more waves from the MODX. These are small jobs, productive distractions. I need to begin work on a new project.

Burn of God Launch, The Modern Game v3 Complete

A full day of finalising the Spotify Canvases for the new Modern Game release, and finalising the music. The album is now set for a release on May 27th. Beyond Mars was the most difficult track to get right. From its beginnings this was a transitional album; developed, as with the old Harlequin Kings album, as a testing ground for song production, and it has proved its worth. The real guitars certainly improve Coming Back To Earth, and all of the songs are better than in their first incarnation.

Today is also the launch day of Burn of God, and I've sent off more copies of this album than almost any before.

In future projects, my heart and mind remain on music, trying to push into new areas somehow, or build on old ones. This is difficult because I have so many ideas, and all seem good enough at first; so, focus and intellect is needed. I also have to develop an hour of music for the Lou Salomé project, which will be performed, almost certainly, in the first week of August. There is also an opportunity to enter a surrealist film festival, and I'm tempted to be ambitious and film a feature in a few weeks - but this is something of a pipe dream at the moment.

On we march.

Marius Tweaks, Spotify Canvases

More work on the Marius Songs today. Yesterday's Beyond Mars vocals are pitched all over the place compared to the staid earlier take, but this adds a special emotion to the performance, it was this desperation that I was aiming for (this magical emotion that makes Bowie's Five Years so alive). There is something special about it, but it can sound jarring as a result. One appeal of auto-tuning is that it can make a voice 'fit in' more with electronic backgrounds but this can a one-way street because electronic backgrounds are often cold. The more emotion in any instrument, the more it will stray from pitch and timing because emotion in music IS variation in pitch and timing. I thought today that an alternative is to track the pitch of an emotional vocal and bend the music to fit its 'imperfection'. This could make for an interesting experiment.

Half of the day was spent on final mixing of the music. The other half was spent working on the Spotify Canvases, which are relatively simple and based on the album/book art. Two, though, use clips from the actual music videos to Masculinity Two and House Of Glass.

In between I'm watching a film with Antonio Bandera, Pain and Glory by Pedro Almodóvar.

Beyond Mars Vocals

I recorded new vocals for Beyond Mars today. I love singing because it's not easy, but a long and slow process of gradual improvement over many years, step by step. How much better I can sing now than in the past! Oh to re-record the vocals of the past. This feeling is common to singers and can't be helped. Art shouldn't stop being made now, even when knowing that skills will probably be better in future. We must do our best at the time and strive to learn and improve with every act.

I now tend to sing a song through twice in a row. Both takes are often very similar, but with two there is always an option of a certain part being better in one than another. The hardest and most important part when singing a song is the opening line and the opening word. Firstly, there is no former sound to guide the voice, it must start in an instant, but also the first line is often crucial for setting the mood of the whole song. In a few of The Modern Game songs, like Beyond Mars, like All The Broken Flowers, like Two Kinds Of Animals, the first line defines the feeling and the idea of the whole song and condenses and summarises it, like an overture.

I also watched Robocop with Deb last night, and was reminded what a good film it is. It manages to be sci-fi, action, comedy, romance, tragedy, and satire.

Admin Complete, Spotify Canvases, Rachmaninoff Dream

Music admin is complete for now. Spent yesterday tidying this and noting future points of ambiguity in the records.

Have spent today creatiung Spotify Canvases for Remembrance Service, and making lyric pages for The Modern Game, though the music still isn't quite complete. I need to keep wroking to finsh these troublesome final steps this week, and make Canvases for that. The Remembrance Service Canvases are quick and simplistic; all based on the album artwork. I didn't want to spend too long on these. The Modern Game Canvases will be based on the book art.

I need to start thinking of my next music project, but the choice is always daunting. There is always an element of creating music that appeals to others, that is 'relevant', that is 'catchy', irrespective of an artistic meaning or depth - is artistic meaning or depth exactly this anyway?

Last night I dreamt of meeting Rachmaninoff, who was short and portly, like Hitchcock. I was awed and joyful to meet him and gave him a hug, which he treated with indifference. He had two assistants, and was always distant, somewhat Noel-Cowardish, and very arty, always thinking of avant-garde things and unusual ways to be expressive in arts visual and musical. I found him inspirational. Later, in the dream, Richard Madeley (with his wife, I sat next to Deborah) mocked me, even kicking me under the table (which, I think, was in an airport waiting area, or hotel lobby) at which we sat opposite, with his socked-feet. I got annoyed and grabbed his leg, trying to break it and hurt him - I knew I wasn't strong enough and told him so, and that such acts would be uncivilised.

Admin

Endless tedious, mechanical, headache-inducing, hours adding track after track and album after album. There is some merit, however, in revisiting ones old catalogue. I listened to Here Come The Warm Jets for the first time as I worked. Work, at this late hour on Sunday, continues.

Chester, More Filing, Order

A trip to Chester to collect from the Grosvenor Museum in the cold air and bright sun of spring. The young lady at the desk asked about my Nantwich exhibition, which was nice.

Back home, constant work on music admin. The PRS registers compositions (musical ideas, notes, lyrics), rather than recordings, edits, versions, so some of my tracks have ambiguities regarding edits or alternative versions. The new registrations of my complete catalogue are revealing errors. So far I've listed 24 of my 64 albums/releases.

This made me think that some of the power held by big record companies is exactly this, the huge mass of data, carefully managed and accrued over many years. This has great value in its size and its order.

There are probably not many musicians who do all of this work, but for me, filing and neat records are a key purpose of life. A tidy world means a tidy life means tidy cells and a long existence. Truth is order, and so perhaps, order is beauty. One key element of my cosmogony is that the universe is broken and needs us to heal and fix it. My 'god' is imperfect, and needs our help. The messy universe needs people to make it neat and beautiful, so artists, like cleaners, like archivists, are paragons of the living.

Music Admin

A long and exhausting day working on music administration, endless music admin, adding to databases, monitoring my music catalogue. I like neatness, filing, order and, yes, databases. This is fortunate, as 25% of being a musician today is this very activity. As a recording artist, I now have 500-1000 tracks and, today, 65 albums, EPs, and singles, in my ouvre, and the admin work for this is huge, and with each new authority, standard, and technological innovation in this area, my workload (and the workload of every record company) grows.

I will spend most of next week on this. I also need to check/proof the new Marius tracks, and then upload and process those, make 13 Spotify Canvases for those, and make 8 for the new Remembrance Service album.

Tomorrow, collection of my paintings from Chester.

Marius, Prometheus, Salomé

A few solid days working on the Marius Fate re-workings. The final track, The Trees, hardly needed any changes, although all of the tracks have been rebalanced. This begins the long and tedious process of listening and re-listening. At times like this I often wave between thinking that it's all terrible or that it's all brilliant. It's a matter of doing your best, trying to learn and improve, but not linger too long.

It's amazing that this was recorded, for its second time, in 2019 because things seem to have improved so much since, but my improvements have been slow, steady, incremental. Most of my work improves like that.

One thing of note in the sound is the lack of auto-tuning which is now so prevalent that this album has an anachronistic sound, an 1980s/2020s hybrid.

Today I've updated Prometheus to v2.84, one of many updates this year. A few small changes and improvements. One was the addition of a format button on the Modulator and Sample displays:

Deb and I have also signed an agreement to adapt and perform a new work based on Loving Lou Salomé by Stefano Santachiara. Deb has written some great words for this already and it will be good to take part in a genuinely international work, as well as something new and different. We need at least one album per year, and if each if different, so much the better.

To cement the Marius re-release I may make more Marius Fate music. This should be electro-art-pop of some sort. I always wanted and intended to create a Marius Fate trilogy.

Coming Back To Earth, Society for Art of Imagination Membership

A steady day yesterday. I applied the new vocals to Coming Back To Earth, and practiced some of the guitars for it. I also applied the vocals to Love In A Hopeless world, but these are difficult because of the strained drama, the desperation, of the chorus vocals which sound good in the original, so any new version needs to match in tone, grow from gradual gentleness into that desperate emotion.

I applied to be, and have now been accepted as, a member of the Society for Art of Imagination. I feel honoured to be a member, and have long admired the technical skill and imaginitive art of the group. The society, so I beleive, split into two slightly separate factions, and I was, in 2016, accepted by email alone into the society by Michel de Saint Ouen, but I heard nothing more and my enquires were not responded to. Thanks to Marcus Usherwood I attended one of their exhibitions in Bakers' Hall, London, in 2017, and spoke to Brigid Marlin and met several other members. I was keen to see the 'mische technique' in person (I was disappointed, but it confirmed in me that my technique is the most efficient and best looking way to oil paint).

I love a few things about the society: the 70's fantasy art aesthetic, which, although can suffer from nonsensical or hippie-psychedelic silliness in terms of subject matter, does display great technical finesse and a love of skill and complexity; it is this which unites this visual art with progressive rock. I also love the focus on, from the members I know of, oil painting and physical media; not digital or other child-like media.

Being An Artist

Being an artist is a matter of working incredibly hard, usually all day and every day. Your rewards are generally nothing, except for, if you are an unsuccessful artist, being judged as a lazy or generally useless human being, or if successful, envied, and told that anybody can do what you do; until you die, at which point you will be praised beyond measure.

Egyptian Statue Dream, Marius Work, Lyric Images

A relatively sleepless night which included a fantastical dream. I was taking part in some sort of competition, I appeared to be in a unique world, a place like something from the film and novel Ready Player One. The prize was some solid gold statues modelled like Egyptian buildings and statues, and these were hidden in a huge vat of Lego; actually somewhere in one of several vats. I enjoyed reminiscing about the Lego pieces to my fellow competitors, who felt like allies or friends, impoverished children looking for treasure and an escape from their life. In particular I remarked upon the beauty of the transparent yellow cylindrical pieces, demonstrating how I used these to replace the Lego men's heads. I looked in the last vat (these vats were large, the size of shipping containers), which had not yet been looked in and I found the statues.

Envious people saw me and tried to take the statues and I found myself running from a gang. They started to fire weapons at me, missiles which streaked in spirals by and exploded in puffs of grey smoke, like something from an arcade game. I managed to avoid the enemies, and hid some of the statues in a lock-up garage or somewhere similar. I awoke soon after this, but I thought that I had escaped with the gold.

There are elements of childhood, hope, escape. Why Egypt? Magic, a connection to ESAUM? Life feels difficult now, perhaps anxious for the country, yet I'm achieving good things for and by myself, even though I feel as separate from the world, and as distant from any popular or financial success, as ever.

The day started slowly but I continued to push on with work and made good progress with the (experimental) re-recording of the Marius Fate album, with a new arrangement for Looking For A Lover, House Of Glass, Masculinity Two, and Two Kinds Of Animals. All are, for now, in an initial stage however. I will be working on all of the tracks at once and revisit them all over time to ensure an even balance and feeling.

I also assembled lyric sheets for the Burn of God and Remembrance Service albums, for social media posts:

What is missing is any live performances of any of my work. I have little incentive for these, and always shy away from applying for anything. I'm occasionally amused that I was put in charge of publicity for both my original art club and the Creative Crewe organisation, when I dislike anything connected with publicity or promotion, and seem to be particularly bad at it, too.

In the night I thought of forming a punk band where the members wear bags on their heads. Members can only sing each other's work (to avoid ego problems) and members must swap instruments every so often, too. My only idea for a track was called Anthem for Doomed Youth - perhaps it could even be a punk version of the war poem.

Backups, Album Preparations, Simon Visit

April the 1st means quarterly computer backups and regular admin work, monthly goals, cleaning the digital Recycle Bin, neatening or deleting things 'in progress', downloading and storing things neatly. This took more of the morning.

Remembrance Service is now ready for release on May 20th, so I started on stage 1 of 2 of filing the tracks with the musical authorities; there is a lot of music admin. Most of it means nothing, but it is important. I need to work on the Spotify Canvases at some point, and possibly some music videos. This can be a lot of work and for no reward other than arts' sake. In such circumstances, is it better to do it at all, or work on other art?

I chose the red image for the final cover. A clear face is good, generally better, for cover art, but with the title of the album I wondered if people would associate my Nosferatic visage with a homeless person rather than that of the distinguished composer.

I listed the album on my website and updated the Cornutopia Music catalogue, then continued the '3rd personing' process for my 50+ album descriptions there. Doing that for all of my 1000+ paintings may take years, so I aim to do that on a per-item basis.

Then a trip to see Simon. He knows so much about history and is filled with wisdom, insight, and kindness. How blessed I am with friends.