Pedal Woodwork, New Band Dream

Woke late, exhausted, chest aching after a few physically busy days. I started by making a new cradle for the Yamaha FC5 pedal. This is fixed to a horizontal piece of wood which then locks to the keyboard stand, making a rock-solid place for the pedal. The downside is its size and shape for transport. I considered making pegs so that the bit that holds the pedal so that it can be removed easily, but this seemed like a lot of speculative work, and the 15mm depth of the wood meant any grip would always be shallow. I screwed it in. I can always remove these and re-screw if needed. Here it is:

The hardest part was cutting out a large 3mm recess in the wood to slide the holder part beneath, which I did by sanding.

The new Yamaha FC3A pedal arrived later, you can see that in the picture too. I can instantly tell its far better than the M-Audio one, it is already less likely to move despite being physically lighter. It is bigger and oddly shaped though, so I have to take apart and rebuild part of my piano table to fit it. The arch part to cradle and block the back is now drying and will be glued tomorrow. The FC3A is great, but it's much easier to play the keyboard with the FC5 and my new wooden cradle.

I've played a few Salome tracks but it was difficult and frustrating. I feel too tired, sapped.

I dreamt of going for a walk to see Simon, but got waylaid by some young people and went to see them in an art studio of sorts. There were about eight people there. One looked like Andy Warhol, the head or spokesman. He said that he's setting up a band and we're all in it. One member said that he'd take over recording, one the album art. I felt frustrated that I was overlooked for my recording and production skills, my vocal skills, writing skills and more, and was seen only as a keyboard player. I stayed silent, feeling unable to tell them about my vast musical experience, I just couldn't find the moment. I felt old and side-lined compared to the other young members.

I want Salomé to be over, and the recording and production finished. However good the merits of this show are, and I've learned a lot, I'm desperate to move on to new and more exciting ventures.

Final Rehearsal, Pedal Disaster

A frustrating end to a frustrating and stressful week. I decided to take the keyboard out and put it in the proper playing position on its stand, now that I know that I'll be playing seated. This was good because it reminded me that it was wobbly. I started the day, then, by making a custom 'foot' from Polymorph heat-mouldable plastic. This didn't work, it was too soft when hot, so that the foot merely sunk, and remained wobbly. Not only that, this solution, though it would fit the circular foot perfectly with a neat click, it would only work when the stand was in that height and position, so I removed it and, far more simply, cut a square of 3mm rubber sheet and put it under the foot. Sometimes the simplest soloution is best.

Then I decided to make a holder for the foot M-audio piano pedal, a custom cradle which I can attach to the stand and stop the annoying thing moving. It went to plan...

(ignore the damage there)

Then, when playing, some notes seemed to sustain all the time, and some, never. After a few bangs and experiments, it was clear that the pedal had died/failed, which is a common problem. The pedal is solid metal, really good, yet the crucial switch itself is rubbish and unreliable, as many Amazon reviews confirm. This meant, amazingly, that on the very day I make a custom cradle for a specific pedal, the pedal breaks. So I have to bin both things (hnece the damage in the image, I tried to recycle the wood, but the pieces are firmly stuck.

This meant an emergency order for a replacement, a £65 Yamaha pedal with money I don't have to spare. So many things these days have 100 cheap versions and few or no good ones. These are a good example, all electric piano pedals costs £10 to £20 and all are unreliable. The Yamaha pedal seems to be the only good option, as fellow musicians say, and it's over three times the price. The same feature applies to mic stands, keyboard stands, camera tripods and all sorts of other things on Amazon; 99% of products are really cheap and rubbish and the 1% that is good is expensive and has no competion - or in a worst case there is no expensive option, just many variations of cheap rubbish.

At 2pm Deb arrived for a rehearsal and this went well. I used the cheap Yamaha FC5 pedal which is so flimsy it's more like a calculator than a foot pedal - but it worked rather well when I put a wooden bar in front of the keyboard for my feet, so I plan on using this for live play (I still need a realistic piano pedal for practice though). I will need to make a new 'cradle'.

The tricky and fingersome tracks of Truth Seeker and Give Me Your Pain are hard to play and sound muddy or overly boomy, so I've simplified the arrangements, removing a key. This keyboard, unlike a real piano, will sound a key at the very slightest brush. A real piano won't sound unless you press it firmly, so I've adjusted the preset to not sound on very light presses (velocity shift to 60 vs 64). This instantly made playing more reliable. The MODX piano sound still sounds rubbish compared to my P105 or SY-85, however.

Both rehearsals went well. I feel tired and overworked, squeezed by self-imposed and unpaid jobs, but I know that all art is this. I also feel frustrated at not being able to perform 'properly', my songs. Well, life must be taken one step at a time; my mind is only giant leaps.

Recording, Mask Painting

A busy day, almost two days worth in one, as I started at 6am and have worked until 8pm (so far).

In the afternoon I started recording the Salomé tracks. It was hard to get them right and I played best low down, but crouching to play the keyboard was very difficult. The sustain pedal was to the right and distant, so most of my weight was on my left leg, bent at the knee, and sustaining that post for 30 minutes to perform will probably be too difficult, so I've decided to perform sitting and have ordered a new piano seat. Standing looks better from a performance perspective - oh to actually be in front! I love audience interaction and performing... but standing is impractical and will certainly harm the quality of the playing.

After that, at 4pm, I decided to paint the masks. The Nietzsche mask needed an acrylic gesso layer, the other two were painted late last night. Then I painted the masks in oil paint, remembering my frustration with sticky and messy acrylics when painting the Ragdoll Robot mask. What a joy it was to use oils! I will never paint a sculpture with acrylics again. I will reserve them for frames and functional things like that.

I listened to Queen's A Day at the Races as I painted. What a poor album compared to A Night at the Opera! I noticed, for the first time, how downbeat and sad many of the tracks were, perhaps a new insight after watching the Bohemian Rhapsody film. Freddie's were about loneliness and lovelessness. When listening to The Millionaire Waltz I was really reminded about the scene in the film where Freddie sends a lamp-light message to Mary Austin. Drowse, one of the most dismal Roger Taylor tracks he ever wrote with Queen, now reminded me of Bowie - and reminded me that some of Bowie's tracks were also dismally tuneless, but, yes, creative.

Rehearsal day tomorrow, and my next job is recording the music.

Televisions, Argus v1.15

An awful day yesterday which began with a sleepless night gripped with stomach pain and vivid nightmares. This meant waking late yet still feeling weary if not exhausted. I decided, in those circumstances, that programming was a good thing to do. It's a perfect way to focus and settle the emotionless mind.

I started to program Argus, simple upgrades and fixes, at first slower and more difficult than anticipated. Then I had to set up my parents new television, but they weren't happy with the size, so this was, over the course of the day swapped for another, and I spent more time, stress, and constant shouting from my father, setting up the new machine. It looks and works well, but of course my father hates it, everything, and everyone, as is his character.

Steady work on Argus continued, and later at night, some initial painting of the masks and Salomé daisy prop.

Argus changes were completed this morning from 7am to 9, an early programming session of peace. The complete changes are (not that this matters to anyone...):

-Sequencer taskbar shows Time from 'from' frame rather than from start of film.
-Option to preserve initial camera and light events when deleting time from the start of a film.
-Option to avoid same consecutive actor number or frames when filling with random data.
-New auto-name option will auto-name costumes and actors when texture name is typed, name actors when costume names are typed, and name tracks after the actor when creating or pasting a first event.
-Darker boundary lines between same-named track groups.
-Three circles option added to F-value context menu, and two, four and eight circles options removed.
-Halve, Double, and Negate options added to F-value context menu.
-Range 0000.dds to xxxx.dds for textures added to Costume display for ease or use.
-Tracks are now split in logical order from top to bottom in a neat staircase.
-Added Bold, Ghost, and Acetate blend modes.
-Include film option added.
-Option to flip/mirror costumes along x/y/z.
-Fix to frame number/mouse pointer not being restored after rendering.
-Option to auto-name tracks.
-Option to merge all subsequent tracks of the same name.
-Full Circle removed from Modulator Depth context menu.
-Halve and Double options added to Modulator Depth context menu.

Mostly small changes, but the new Bold, Ghost, and Acetate modes are interesting; these change the look. Before this only 'Normal' and 'Add' were available ('Add' is D3DBLEND_DESTALPHA, which is exactly like Photoshop's 'Linear Dodge' - this is amazingly useful). Include film gives me the option to create a sequence which does something then load it into another film.

I've written several new songs in the past few days (White, Male and Poor; I'm In Love With My Car; Bitcoin Millionaire; The Loneliness Society) and am keen to get creating. Everything is waiting for the Salome performance to conclude (of course, the music for this must be recorded too). I've set ambitious targets for August, including painting as well as music.

Salome Masks, Freud Mask Walkthrough

I've put in so much work over the past week on the masks for the Salomé performance despite the fact that we have no role for them. Progress was fast at first but became slower and slower for the finer details. Many work-hours per mask put in so far. I could work on these for weeks, polishing sanding, layering to get a smoother and smoother result. I'd like to, my obsession for perfection demands it, but I don't have the time, and pursuing this goal would drive me to insane anguish. I must cope with and accept a 'good enough' result, set a time limit, stick to that, learn lessons, then move on.

Here is Step 1. Newspaper and garden wire, glued to the shop-bought mask (which is a plastic core covered with paper) with hot-melt glue:

Step 2: Sculptamold applied, a blobby gooey mix of plaster and soft paper shreds. A wonderful way to sculpt. This sets stone-hard in 24-hours.

Step 3: Some plaster bandages for the beard. You can see how messy everything is. It's very hard to keep it smooth, and even the tiny fragments of white become very hard, barely sandable, in under an hour. This creates problems if a smooth finish is desired.

Step 4: Painted with my own gesso mix of whiting (chalk), water and acrylic binder. This can be made thick as a filler, or watery like a gesso sottile type thin paint. I slapped this on thickly in about 3 layers. It dries very quickly but in a much nicer way than acrylic paint, not skin-forming, so it can be managed and moved, a really pleasing way to paint and fill, unlike the frustration of acrylic paint. This soft and beautiful material is a lot easier to sand than Sculptamold. Sculptamold is so hard to sand that power tools are the tool of choice.

Part 5: Hours of intricate sanding, and another smoother and thinner layer of gesso, then more sanding. Dust everywhere.

A close up of the texture on the hand. 30 days of sanding and layering could make it as smooth as anything, but I don't have the time. It would lose the character and rawness of the sculpting and I might end up up wanting to re-add some of the pits and dents to it give back the character it now has. Thinking about it, I thought that a dream idea of a hand should be the goal of this object, a hand as imagined by the wearer, rather than a 'realistic' hand.

And a look at the Nietzsche mask, I worked on all three at the same time. This was a lot more difficult. The pose is less realistic, unachievable with real hands, and its weight meant creating a support structure to hold it while it dried. The tennis ball (I had no other ball options) had messy surface fur, and everything was rushed on that day of record heat.

I needed a lot of power-tool work on it after that stage and I was unhappy with many aspects of the positioning and general look. After the power-sanding, gesso, sanding, gesso, sanding, it looked like this:

Dalai Lama, Sacre Coeur, Bohemian Rhapsody, Salome Masks

My mind raced in the night. I thought about the Dalai Lama, how he could spread a message of happiness and peace while also being a head of state and so politician; politics the antithesis of peace and happiness. Perhaps he can ignore the conquest of his country by aggressive China, yet remain happy in a peaceful defiance, and hope you encourage the Chinese leadership to become happy and peaceful. After 6000 years of civilisation on Earth, happiness and peace do not seem to have evolved to be good qualities for a head of state.

My beliefs are Stoic, accepting, not too different from Tibetan Buddhism. Spiritually, I feel closest to Shinto, the idea that all things have a 'soul' because I think this matches the emotional attachments the brain forms for objects as well as beings and collectives.

I painted, a simple painting of a burning heart; Sacre Coeur, a sacred heart, in darkness.

I watched the film Bohemian Rhapsody in the day. It was, oddly, both too long and too short, racing through events at the start but seemingly missing enough to lack connection, though I found it better and move moving than the similar Elton John film, perhaps because I like and resonate more with Freddie than Elton. The film made me feel artistically impotent, frustrates again at know what I can do and should do, but unable, but my skills are, at least, better than ever, even if unused for the time being.

Then, got back to work on the Salome masks, these accursed objects; so much more work than I'd hoped and so much worse looking than I'd hoped, but yes, with each iteration, they look better. My chalk gesso is fantastic, and I discovered that I can add water to make a sort of 'gesso sotile', a watery glaze which leaves no brush marks but covers previous ones. The whole process is and was very messy and time consuming, and the objects somewhat blobby and strange, but without doubt, I've learned a lot here.

So much of my life has been spent learning some technique or other, often to the detriment of other arts. I remember spending weeks working out how to cast ultra-thin sheets of plaster that I could cut into shapes. I mastered it in the end, making 3mm sheets that were glass smooth on both sides (I made a mould from 2 sheets of glass). The pieces sang with a tone when hit, and could be cut into the most beautiful and delicate forms. I used some for a painting called 'The Death By Explosion Of Moons And Keyholes', but after that haven't done anything with this, and have largely abandoned poured plaster.

Life feels like a trudge, and my constant stomach pain has returned, but I must stoically strive in my Sisyphean solitude, make and enact some good art plans. One job at least remains, the recording of the Salome music. I fear that the oil painting season this year, what should and could have been a great year, is lost, but I have many music ideas. I need more hours in each day.

Sound Effects, Deep Dark Light Serialisation

A strange couple of days, I'm frustrated at the lack of artistic progress, particularly the time spent on the masks for Salome. The main factor is that they require a lot more work than expected, and have no actual use in the performance, but the gesso and new sculpting techniques on them were excellent, and may be useful in future. I'm reminded that we must always be created based on what we know, but always learning something new.

I sent a Facebook message to Gordon Scott, recommending that he join the Society for Art of Imagination. I then realised that he has 'unfriended' me from Facebook, which was strangely hurtful, I think our art, outlook, and struggles are similar. How I despise Social Media. Social Media feeds inequality and injustice more than anything before it. As an advertising tool it is as good as QVC, the TV shopping channel. As a platform for social change it is immoral, if not actually evil. It gives more power to fewer people. In school, bullies were a minority with special physical presence or a confidence to push other people around. Social media gives that presence and confidence to everyone. It breeds bullies, with an added dimension of gang behaviour, and a self-righteousness childhood bullies do not possess.

I started work on a new sound effects job, modifying and creating new effects for a game development application which, if luck is with us, may become a longer term collaboration. I completed these today. My skills are better than ever here. The changes I've made to SFXEngine this year, due to the unexpected and welcome sound commission from Mike Vitt, have really proved their worth. Today I coded a new feature which examines and notes the peak levels of an entire project, which has improved the sound quality a little bit more. Most of mastery is a slow accumulation of tiny changes, each barely significant, which have a great cumulative effect.

In audio, this mastery includes my software; Prometheus and SFXEngine, worked on and improved upon over the past 20 years. This isn't always the case. There are lots of great software tools that stop being supported, or get worse. Much as I love Sony SoundForge (it's far better than Audacity), the older version was better, and my version is probably better than the newest version (which isn't by Sony any more). Sony CD Architect, which is no longer supported or for sale anywhere, is wonderful and was a bargain purchase for its quality. I hope it keeps working for years and decades.

I've also submitted the 'Light' story from Deep Dark Light to John Hopper's new literary magazine, 100subtexts. He's agreed to serialise it over 10 editions and seems enthusiastic over it, as am I. The images in that story often come to my mind, even now. I'm not sure when the first edition is due.

The Salome videos are just about complete now, but the timing will probably need adjusting. Stefano is due in the country this week and the show is less than a fortnight away. After this, I can do any art, and I'm already thinking about paintings, albums, and ideas.

Salome Videos, Stockport Open

I worked until late on the Salome videos then stopped, my head spinning in exhaustion. I awoke at 4am, thoughts racing so much I could barely pause. It's been like this every day for as long as I can remember, since childhood. What has this got me? What I have produced, nothing more, nothing less. Such is art. I work constantly for nothing but this.

Outlines of the videos are complete, but I am unhappy with the video for Empathy With Daisies, which is lots of arrows flying into the distance. It looks too computer generated.

In the morning I worked on the filing of the Fall in Green projections. I made lots, over 20, for the Wonderland show in Knutsford, which remains our only show to date which used projections. These were oddly filed ready for the show, rather than individually as videos, so I re-ordered everything. All videos are 2000kbps for projection, with silent audio (of minimum quality - a video needs audio to play in the projector, so I need to create a silent track). After this it was time to prepare lunch.

Today was the opening for the Stockport Open Art Exhibition, so Deb and I went there by train, a quick journey. The staff are always friendly and welcoming, and everything organised well. The art was disappointing. Very few, if any, works were inspiring, very few good. Many were amateurish, unskilled or poor. As a selector, I'd have rejected many of them. There were a few that I and/or Deb liked though.

I enter so many opens. I wondered about whether to enter The Discerning Eye. I like this exhibition, but the last one was online-only selection, a choice which favours digital art, acrylic art or other degenerate media. It penalises oil and tempera painting which looks better in real life, and of course, one gets a totally different impression of an artwork via a 'digital photo' than in real life, so very different. All aspects of size are missing and most aspects of skill. Online judgement of a painting competition is an insult, like judging a music competition with ears full of cotton wool, yet, it looks like the world is committed to such insults.

When I got back I started work on the opening video of Salome which I'd forgotten, I decided on a slow tunnel of orange smoke, matching the poster graphic. I decided on black between videos rather than ending each video with black, so needed to recompile all of them. I've also finalised the details for the sound effect job.

Recording the Salome music is vital, this, and a video of the performance, will be the primary legacy of this project which is destined to be hardly seen. Apart from the three performers on the list for the open mic, I don't think anyone we know is coming to see it, which is usual, but less important than the quality of the work. Some of the events I've done, like The Spiral Staircase in Congleton, have been really good, even if the audience is usually less than ten.

Masks, Lessons, Videos

A busy day yesterday.

I started by sanding the Salomé masks, the Freud and, in particular, the Nietzsche mask. Sculptamold remains a great material. It sets rock hard, such that even the roughest of normal sand paper isn't enough, so power tools or really sharp chisels are needed. I used my drill and the drum sander which is an amazingly useful and powerful sanding tool. An even better tool would be an orb of sponge covered in changeable sandpaper, or indeed a cone. Yet, none of those exists, and even this drum sander is no longer available as a tool.

Still it really took a lot off the Nietzsche hand, and it looks much better, the fingers, after that were much more smooth and 'realistic' than the other mask. I use realistic loosely, as these hands are abstract and aim to convey a feeling rather than be too realistic... for a start a real hand would not be able to hold an orb comfortably at that pose, but also, there is an element of 'collage' that can ruin an artwork, when one part looks too realistic compared to a more abstracted other part.

This work took all morning, and all for masks for a performance that will probably be poorly attended and certainly non-paying, not only this, the masks have no use in our show. I designed them, and liked the idea, and have made them as an incidental spectacle. if the show is a huge success, tours the world, is performed one day in great halls, then these masks (and more) will be worn by the chorus, but, for now, they are artworks inspired by our own artwork. It is for the reason that they are made, a permanent feature of the transient performance work.

In the night, I had the idea of a Rilke mask with a hooked nose from which to hand his heart, so I made that from Sculptamold in the morning too.

At 2pm, I gave a piano lesson to Peter, he tried to persuade me to join Crewe Chess Club, which I would if I had time. When I'm old and have nothing better to do, chess would seem like a nice pastime.

After that I applied gesso to the masks, my own recipe of chalk, and a mix of GAC200 acrylic medium and water 1:1. This seems to be a great way to make sculptors gesso, which is far closer to plaster than paint, a thick filler. It dries quickly and is very soft and sandable. It's aim is to fill in the many gaps and pits in these very pitted and lumpy sculptures. I applied about three coats each to each mask. They touch-dry in minutes, but take a few days to dry completely ready for sanding.

Today I continued work on the video projections for Salomé, twelve are needed. I wanted to avoid having any, all of this extra work for this transient performance, but I can't resist making everything the best it can be and including everything possible. This project is and has been so much work. Here is a scan of some wool for the Freud's Lecture piece:

The video places lots of random strands of wool on the screen in rapid succession, sort of a cross between the Len Lye dancing line and the old 'Pipes' screensaver that Windows 95 used to use:

It's relatively easy to do in Argus, a matter of making 12 individual strands and making one appear with random orientation and at a random place every few frames, and having them fade out and fall away. For 'Cosmic Solitude' I made a falling, spiralling tunnel of hearts, using the 3D heart model we've made (which Deb will be performing with):

In other news, I've submitted an old unpublished story (The Hare and the Fox, a circular allegory similar to The Incomprehension of Beauty) to a new magazine project by John Hopper called 100subtexts. John is a supportive friend and one of the few inspirational and arty connections I have on social media. Also in other news I'm contracted to make some new sound effects and am looking forward to that next week.

Tomorrow is the opening of the Stockport Open so I'll be going to the Art Gallery, and it's the opening of the annual Bickerton exhibition too.

I feel tired and pushed to a limit with this consuming Salomé performance. I miss painting, I ache to create more. Salomé has taken so many weeks of work, but every part of it is my art as much as in any other media. Each day I swear to avoid summer performances, to save such things and music for winter when I can't paint. I must make twelve videos today, there is no time to pause.

Heat, Masks

Tuesday was hotter than Monday, too hot to work. We had plans to complete some of the Salomé props, and managed to complete Andreas the bird, and most of a plaster daisy. Here are the state of the masks after Monday:

Andreas has a core of sponge, wrapped with wire, then felted. Adding felt from scratch would be very expensive and inefficient. I wondered if a 'stuffed skin' method like a teddy bear would have produced better results, it may have, though of course the skills needed are different. After that start, we added a Fimo beak, stabbed into the foam core wire, then some feathers; these look really realistic but are in fact plastic. The eyes, like the feathers needed a sort of tunnel cut into the felt and sponge, then these were glued in.

Generally it was too hot to work on Tuesday. The messy work of carving or working on the masks is best done outside or in the baking garage, but even so, I had no energy and can quite understand the appeal of a siesta. My room last night started at 26.9 degrees at 11pm and was 26.1 at 8am.

Here, incidentally, is Rilke's heart, another of the five props we're making for this:

Today, I've delivered my paintings to Bickerton for it's annual Village Hall exhibition. I may also have some sound effect work, and have a piano lesson tomorrow. Mike has sent out a great press release for the Salomé show, and I need to send out a first email about the event to the few people on the mailing list. Lots to do... and much more I want to...

Heat, Salome Masks, Lexx

An intense day, knowing that it would be the hottest day ever recorded in modern Britain.

I had to collect my paintings from the Bunbury exhibition, and we did this as early as possible. The Bird Orbiting A Black Hole frame was quite badly damaged, the painting had clearly been dropped and the pine dented. This was such s disappointment, as I'd put so much hard work into this frame. Simply though it was, it was probably the finest frame I've ever made.

After this I wanted to avoid any computer work, and I couldn't paint as the extreme heat would mean keeping the windows closed, so I decided to make plaster (Sculptamold and plaster bandage) models for the Salome event. Deb stayed with me all day to do this, a special treat. The work was very intense and difficult. I used a core of newspaper wrapped with garden wire.

In the evening we watched the first episode, the first film, of Lexx, the first time I'd seen it since its only showing on Channel 5 in the 1990s.

Ethics Underpainting, Bunbury, Salome Rehearsal 3

A few busy days. Completed the underpainting to Ethics in a Time of Revolution yesterday, then, in the evening, went to St. Boniface, Bunbury for the Inspire 22 festival. The art was really good, and the church itself an amazing monument. Each century has made its mark upon it, and I loved the 1450s-era oil paintings in the church.

The room was overwhelmed with flowers, the thick scent of lilies dominated the space like no other exhibition I've attended. It made me think of the power of scent.

Today, a third rehearsal for the Salomé event.

The next week is due to be record-breaking in heat. The Bunbury collection is on the hottest day, so we'll try to keep cool as we travel. I'm unsure what to do on that day... making Salomé masks sounds like a good idea as the heat will help dry the plaster.

Macc Piano

A lovely day today. A productive morning; printing some 'flyer' things for the Salome event to hand out in Macc, putting up a blind for the small window which involved hacksawing it to size - even then it only took 25 minutes. I've become adept at putting up roller blinds. Also, some piano practice and working out some arrangements for the Salomé event in Congleton with Mike Drew. It will be a free vent with donations. Mike offered to put on some free refreshments, perhaps and probably off his own back, he's a rare treasure.

Then, a trip to Macclesfield to play the public pianos. There are three, including a former and now broken and sad one outside the Heritage Centre. Many keys lock down when pressed - but can be raised again with force. Effectively they can be played once. I thought that I could compose something unique for it, where a note can be played only once in the composition. Deb and I arrived at 3pm and I played there first:

Then to the bus station to play more. There were more people there, some first applause. A woman entered and commented that I could be heard all down the street and was entrancing the passers-by, some came in just to listen. I played Cycles III, and much of the Salome pieces, but never as good as I wanted. By the end I was just getting into it... I remain in awe of performance pianists.

Then a trip to the Macc Art Lounge to meet Ché, so nice to catch up. I was sad that the visit was so fleeting. I needed to play again and did so in the Market:

Simon Brown, chef and photographer, filmed me and we chatted a little. He helps at the Button Warehouse and reminded us of the Open Mic events there. I miss the Mash days, and the ArtSwarm Live events. We need a local venue!

Then a nice drink and meet-up with Peter. Everyone today felt friendly, was friendly. We are in the turbulent tail of a pandemic, great social and economic woes, political turmoil, struggling public services, and a distant war amidst many global problems. Perhaps these events make people care more for each other and for the simpler things, or perhaps this summer day, not too hot, simply idyllic, hits us at the right time.

How I love the piano, as I do oil painting. I must play more, compose more, and paint more, perform more, do more of everything.

Ethics

A busy day yesterday. Started work on an older composition called 'We're Very Worried About John' - based on a phrase my father says about an old television programme from his youth. It's an old idea, perhaps even a decade. I wonder why I'm working on such an old thing, but it has some charm of course, and hopefully these ideas are eternal anyway. The style however, and elements of the composition are done differently to my contemporary way of working, so it's interesting to compare. In particular, this has a false-box sort of background, which I've used a few times. Here it's very useful to give a sense of indoors and yet outdoors too.

I also spent time sorting out some photo reference images.

In the afternoon Deb and I went to Holmes Chapel for a performance by John Lindley. It was nice to see him and effectively take a break from a busy week. I also noted that Ty Pawb has an open exhibition and is calling for entries. Extraordinarily, they don't provide any information, no terms, no dates, apart from the submission deadline and exhibition date. Artists are expected to pay and enter without knowing what work is acceptable an what isn't, or any other terms.

I heard last night that both paintings have been accepted into the Stockport Open, a great relief as the trip on Friday to collect would have been expensive and time consuming.

Today, a full day continuing the underpainting to 'Ethics'. It's interesting to see it come together, the energy.

I had more time today, so my work was finer and better generally. The paint was drying as I worked on this hot day, creating unique problems. Each day, the paint from the previous day is completely dry. In such circumstances, it's good that I paint frugally and on a solid substrate, to limit the stress on the paint film.

Bunbury, Ethics Underpainting, A.I. Art

A full day. The night was sleepless. I had trouble breathing and the room was 22 degrees Celsius. My father woke up the house by opening the front door at 05:30. He thought someone rang the bell - a dream? Which empty visitor rings in early hours? I instantly thought Death.

Started the morning by continuing the underpainting to 'Ethics'. I've broadly ignored the colouration of the colour study, well, partially stuck to it. A tone study is, would have been, more useful. I like a sense of place, location. This is a training from art itself, historical art. Art has a room, a landscape, or it is a modern portrait with a plain background, a close space which is different. I'm representing ideas, feelings, complex narratives. I like a location and subversion of it, but increasingly I'm wanting to change the narrative and the location within a painting itself, so I'm starting to question and wrestle with my colours.

The tones here are strong, almost comic-book like, but this is not a problem. They are broadly based on one image of a volcanic eruption, my location, but there are elements of unreality. Do we see a sky or two skies? A second 'sky' made from mountains seems to be there, the grey. This is part of the narrative, and the complex elements, the hands and eyes are unreal elements, not from the mountain 'place'. I'm starting to think of colouration as part of a scene, but also thinking how colours transform a location. The colours in the Descartes painting do this extensively, there is just about a horizon but a lot of other complexity, contrast and energy. You can see lots of energy here, too.

At 13:30 I went with Deb to Bunbury to deliver my paintings for the art fair in the church there this weekend. What a lovely village Bunbury is, quite the perfect English village. We'll be going to the opening event on Friday.

Dr. Mee called and spoke about A.I. art. There is a revolution occurring in A.I. generated art and apps like 'Midjourney' making pseudo-human art, things that look vaguely abstract, vaguely human, but much more complex than the first A.I. art which took the world by storm: fractals. I can imagine this sort of art replacing lots of human created art; adverts, book covers, album covers etc. but what about its impact on fine art? I'm reminded again of fractals. They had a huge cultural impact in the late 1970s and early 1980s. The Mandelbrot Set adorned book covers, posters etc. but had little or no impact on fine art.

Perhaps this next generation of A.I. art will be, in artistic terms, fractals v2.0 and nothing more, but who can say. I have a particular aversion to A.I. art, digital art, fractals. I love oil painting, and I became an artist oil painter exactly because of my aversion to digital art, a rejection of the digital similar to the 'arts and crafts' movement's rejection of the industrial age. I started by creating digital art in around 1999, 2000, 2001. I began to realise that it was easy, and that one day a machine could make pretty pictures, that any idiot with zero skill can make pretty pictures. Art is not about pretty pictures. Art is about the transmission of human feelings and complex concepts. No artificial intelligence could communicate human feelings to a human.

I have a particular hatred of lazy and talentless 'abstract' artists, 'photography' artists, 'digital' artists, 'pretty landscape' painters, and everything else that anyone can do. A.I. art might be the welcome death-knell to galleries who vend pretty rubbish - which, we must state, constitute the majority of high-street galleries. Perhaps these will value their 'hand-made' pretty landscapes and hand-made pretty abstract paintings, in an forlorn effort to distance themselves from the A.I. art which will essentially be the same but cheaper to make - perhaps (shock!) even prettier. The sort of art that I make, and other true artists make will never be threatened by such parlour tricks.

I make art because it is my life, my purpose, my 'ikagi'. If I didn't do what I did, nobody could or would - this is my key principle and a key definition of art itself. Most jobs are of the sort that if a worker stopped doing them, or died, another worker would take over and complete the same job with the same outcome; thus the worker's life is literally meaningless. Art is the antithesis of this because only the artist can create their art. Even the most avid and exacting student can not replicate the master - this is art's joy.

Art is the complete transcription of a feeling and concept, refined and practised over an entire lifetime. No A.I. could duplicate the thought processes of an artist, partly because an artist's experience is every living breath, glimpse, visit to here or there, knowledge of this or that relationship. Human experience and existence can't be modelled by an A.I. - it must be lived second by second. An android could live as a human, true, and android art would and could be comparable to a human's, but each android's art would be unique, as each humans' is - this is a very different concept than a metal box in a lab dreaming of a life and then trying to paint impressions of that dream. That would always and necessarily be a second-rate artistic representation.

No A.I. would be woken from a dream by his father answering the door, and then consider that the personification of Death was present in the empty void beyond, and then spend the next day painting with this consideration floating in the corner of its mind.

Descartes Colour Study, Ethics In A Time of Revolution Underpainting

A slow day. Started by painting a colour study to the Time Independent Portrait Of Rene Descartes. This is a complex work and while working on it I realised that there is a direct link between this and Beethoven's music in that I can feel my thought processes happening and being applied to the canvas as I composed, much like Beethoven's later symphonies, which can meander as it thinking, probing for an idea. Here it is exactly the same.

My colour choices are strong and strange, almost gaudy. I'm reminded of a few things by this. Firstly that, for me, a representation of some reality is important, and that means a location, a horizon, floor and sky. In this painting, there are parts of this. This adds a sense of place, but there is a lot 'going on' to, time and space are fragmenting, and they are supposed to be; the painting is about simultaneous time and the collapse of thought in 4-dimensional space, so place is needed so that it can break, collapse. The colours often clash, an eternal battle. I've used much brighter yellows here than I normally use in a colour study, it's these that have changed my palette, and also violet, which I rarely use because I dislike the intensity of dioxazine, yet the ultra-beauty of ultramarine violet is almost too delicate to use. This work also uses green extensively. In hue it's closer to Raphael than anything I've painted before. For the final painting, I will make adjustments.

In the afternoon, I started to watch the film Equus, fascinating.

At 2pm I decided to paint, impatient. I know that this week, this busy week, will be hard to fit any painting in, but I must paint so must make time. I began the basic underpainting of 'Ethics In A Time of Revolution: Social Media Paranoia' - it effectively has two simultaneous titles, both equally valid and important.

I think that the hues for the final work will be slightly more muted, browner. A palette of muted browns alone add decorum and a beauty to almost anything. I perhaps love ashen greys, muted browns and touch of blue more than any combination.

I painted until 7pm. Tomorrow is delivery for a new exhibition in Bunbury Church; I'll show: G810A Arturo The Genius Mouse 4, G108A You Must Report To Oncology, G263D Bird Orbiting A Black Hole.

Ambition

What I need is ambition, a challenge for the month. The Salomé rehearsal today went well, better than expected. I must record the piano parts to prepare for the full recording of the music. I tend to add more to my playing than the score says; this is better than scoring fantastically and cutting down, of course, playing must always excel, but this means that I need to dart back and forth, adding these embellishments to the score, playing and adding more and so on. The score was written for me alone, my notes, my mnemonic, but I have a mind to publish the sheet music and the poems in one book, partly because the 11 poems alone is too few for a book.

We went out after the rehearsal to collect some prop material:

Deb is still recovering from her illness and has some episodes of coughing, but I think all will be well for the event.

Now, a good target would be to complete the recording of the music, complete the 3D props for the event and perhaps engage more performers, and paint all of the paintings I have in mind, including a plan for the large scale works - the Death of Agamemnon, the Tralfamadorian painting, the new black-hole gravitational painting, the René Descartes portrait. These need to be painted!

How to fit all of this into the next few weeks is the challenge. Just making the props and staging the show would really take up the next 3 weeks, irrespective of any painting.

Stockport, Salome

A long and very difficult car trip to Stockport yesterday in the burning summer sun to deliver art for the Stockport Open 2022. The system for handing in art was remarkably slow and inefficient, but the gallery staff and volunteers were, as I must say always are, friendly, welcoming, and supportive which made the delivery a pleasure. At all times I was anxious about getting back to the car which had to circle the area like a shark because the specified car park was closed and the sat-nav failed to find any alternative. Everything about the transport was nightmarish and the whole trip took four hours. There is a sole prize, an unregulated public vote, of £150, an amazingly poor amount. Yet, the quality of art here tends to be very good, on par with the Chester Grosvenor Exhibition.

In the evening Deb started work on a blackbird prop for the Salome performance, and I ordered some masks for it. I feel very tired and unartistic. I'm starting to hate and begrudge the Salome event, it's primary artistic result for me is a lack of perhaps 10 paintings I could have made if it were not for the endless rehearsals and work for a show which will be unpaid and unrewarded - but, I tell myself, isn't most art anyway? I have drastically improved my music scoring and sight-reading abilities for this event, and the simple piano tunes are my best so far for a Fall in Green performance.

Tiny, tiny steps forwards in piano playing. Tiny, tiny steps forward in piano composing. Tiny, tiny steps forward is performing. Oh for more time and resoruces to focus on visual art, or actually, any art, but until the start of August fate has tide me to complete this event. This event is different, certainly, with more costume than any show before, yes, something of Jean Cocteau. It's pushed me in the scoring and piano playing, though I'm unhappy with the piano sound and feeling on the MODX - oh for a real piano, or even the P105. The primary benefit are these lessons, this improvement, and the primary cost the lack of other art - other art means legacy. I keep reminding myself and chastising myself that this will be the last year I perform or do anything musical in these key painting months. How I love painting in summer and despise it in the dark and cold months. We will record the Salome music in full, this is a key part of the legacy.

A rehearsal day today, and two more set which will end painting on those days. A delivery and opening in Bunbury next week, a visit to watch John Lindley's Dead Man's Tales event next Tuesday, and piano in Macclesfield next Thursday. The week after; Bunbury collection, Bickerton delivery, another piano lesson. No days for painting or any new art until the 22nd.

All The World Underpainting

A busy day yesterday, first completed the underpainting to All The World Will Be Your Enemy:

It's a somewhat old idea, that is, from last year rather than this, I have so many important art grounds to break and am filled with ideas and plans. This painting is a feeling, not so much paranoia as indefatigability in the face of a stormy world, silent and stoic defiance, holding on defensively. I listened to the soundtrack to Watership Down as I painted, and Mike Batt's choral translation of his song, as used in the Watership Down series, then Vaughan Williams, the essence of Englishness, for the fields. This, in tone, must be as English as Dali' deserts are Catalonian.

It is compositionally and thematically similar to The Taking of Excalibur in 2018, and the mood is perhaps similar, but perhaps this is more one of acceptance, a continuation, like frames of an animation. I wanted to represent the countryside here. The red/green colouring and the figure echo Half A Broken Heart, too. Ideally, I needed more time to paint today, this complex work was difficult to create in eight mere hours, but everyone has limitations and brackets to battle.

This is one of few paintings on smooth MDF panel. I love this surface, as I do most surfaces anyway, but the canvas boards I more commonly use now are just as good - they are also rigid, but those are bought in bulk, and a similar (low) cost to MDF.

My friend and piano student Peter arrived for a lesson in the afternoon.

In the evening Deborah, who is recovering and coughing a little less each day, and I worked on the plans for the Salome event. I think it would be a good idea to make some of the elaborate masks and costumes that I had originally envisaged. There will be too few visitors to this good event and historic occasion, but this is often the case with many performances - I'm recalling some of Cocteau's performances. Perhaps, even so, it's better that I make and preserve these costumes for a future world which will want and need them. Perhaps 'Empathy With Daisies' will be performed in great halls and capitals of the world, or at least some dark outdoor stages of Greece, where my masks will fit perfectly. We need more cast, but will do with what we have.

Man On The Edge On Emotion, All The World Will Be Your Enemy

Completed the underpainting yesterday to Man On The Edge On Emotion:

I'm unsure how much needs adding or refining in a glaze layer. The painting has a lot in it, many psychological elements and emotions. I thought that the violet figure looked like death, holding or desiring the the woman in green, life. Love and death, longing and remembrance seem to be the key emotions here; decay, but also rebirth. The landscape has skull elements, but, there seem to be some elements of hope, seeds of something special, too.

Today I prepared work for submission to the Stockport Open on Friday, and made a public call for poets for the Salomé Event.

In the afternoon I started painting again, a work originally called Mama Mia, Here I Go Again, but which I later retitled All The World Will Be Your Enemy; I love the latter title, it seems to match and evoke a history, a comparison with the Cheshire countryside, childhood, reminiscence, like Elgar's Cello Concerto. The painting oozes Elgarness.

It's a smooth MDF panel, a most lovely of surfaces, but with challenges due to time pressure. I have a piano lesson tomorrow so must try to complete this in a few hours before it becomes too dry.

Today's light also thwarted me, it became so dark at 4pm that I needed to use my lights.

Man On The Edge Of Emotion

I spent this idyllic summer morning washing, cleaning, tidying, then a first session of painting in some time today. I started at 2pm on the underpainting to the small 'Man On The Edge Of Emotion':

I kept thinking of the title 'Post-Covid Man In A Post-Truth World' but this idea predates that title, perhaps that is a new painting in genesis.

Covid Omicron 4/5, and How To Organise Files

I tested Covid negative today, and feel fine. What a strange virus this was, it's a somewhat unique experience to have been infected with a new disease. For me, the first symptom was a sore throat of the sort that hay fever, or dust irritation causes. This is so common to me that I feel it now, so I'm unsure if this even is or was an actual symptom. The first definitely detectable symptom was a raised body temperature to between 37.5 and 38 degrees, about 1 or 2 degrees above my normal. My thermometer picked this up but I didn't feel particularly warm. This, with a raging thirst, lasted for about 4 days. The space behind my eyes hurt, simply looking left and right was strangely agonising.

During the feverish four days, the nature of my sore throat changed to one of swollen tonsils, thus pain while swallowing. Then, the temperatures subsided and I had a very slight, very infrequent but very itchy, dry cough; thus the bulk of the disease was then over. I gradually felt more normal until finally testing negative, 12 days after my first noticible symptoms and 11 days after a first positive test (I didn't test daily); but 14 days after my exposure and certain infection on June 19th.

One main conclusion is that Covid tests are nearly useless, particularly at the start of a disease, only showing a positive result when already obviouly symptomatic, and not when asymptomatic and infectious. A test showing when actually infectious would have really been useful; an exhalation test of some sort?

Well, over the past week I managed to keep busy, despite remaining isolated to protect my parents. I've upgraded Prometheus twice and sampled a lot of strings, tuned percussion, bass sounds, and some keyboard sounds, a total of 506 wav files sampled, trimmed, and looped. The auto-looper was vital for this, it would have taken far longer and had inferior quality to do that manually.

Deb helped with a third proof of How To Organise Your Computer Files last night, and I've made the final few changes. The book is now published. Deb, for the record, wanted more commas before more each use of 'too' at the ends of sentences... I resisted.

I've also updated my website and the Pentangel website with these details and ordered a few copies for the national libraries, friends etc.

I now need to work on art, need to create.

More Strings

A very full day of sampling, sampling lots of strings ensemble sounds from the MODX. The pianos on the synth are weak, less good than the SY-85 or the P105, but the strings are excellent, a real highlight of the synth.

Sampling Strings

Well, it seems I'll be relatively restricted in my activites for a few days. I expect that I'll be free of this virus and free to move on Monday, perhaps earlier if I am lucky. A good use of my time, I think, is sampling some of the MODX waves, and today I've sampled about 100 strings waves. They sound great so far, though, of course, these will only prove their worth in years to come. I so hope I'll have time and energy, years, decades to use them! How unproductive I feel.

Yet, it could still be a good month. This samples job is important and necessarily time consuming, so it's the perfect job for these couple of days. After that, a final check of my computer book and that will be ready to publish.

I've played through all of the Salome tunes apart from the last, and they are not difficult, so the hard parts of performing this event is largely done - but, of course, there is a lot more to it than the mere show, alas. I've drafted a press release for it today and invited the first few poets to the open mic section.

I must make this a great month, the best I can. I must make each day the best I can.

Covid Confinement, Looper

I feel well, but my LFT today shows a very faint positive, so I must and will remain 'isolated'.

So disappointed to be confined. So much good art lost. After months of being tied up with music, most of which was learning or in a state of gradual improvement, I was ready to leap into painting in June. After just 4, very productive, days of painting, other music events started to dominate and I had to put together and rehearse the show for Congleton Library, and now the Salome Event. Perhaps in the scheme of things these will be interesting additions to my canon, but this form of performance is far from my best work and never a lasting legacy. Even the live performance aspect is frustrating as my songs, some of which I consider among my best work, are never performed. I'm now trapped in the two-week Covid doldrums which may end my painting plans for 2022 at this crucial part of the year.

Everything is so very frustrating.

Well, today I've sampled a few more MODX sounds, and modified my auto-looper, adding a feature to skip to the next loop. At the moment it can and will only find the first loop which matches, even if several different matches exist. I've practised the Salome music, and this is ready to go. There is little more I can do.