Slow slow day of work on Tree Of Keys. Went through 'I, Spider' to transcribe the melody of the vocals. So many vocal lines on this album were improvised, but it's useful to have the complete notation for the sheet music if not to re-sing. Worked on the melody to 'The Darker Matilda'. Bought some more supplies for my shelf projects.
Onwards.
Started the day with another coat of stain, yellow this time, to the wood for the alcove shelves. The result should match the target fireplace better. Then, adding the veneer to the bottom parts. I applied thin layers of PVA to both woods. The glue is certain to sink in, so doing this helps it stick. My normal wood glue is Titebond, an aliphatic resin, but that's yellow; the (nearly) transparent PVA is better for veneer.
When stuck, later in the day, I sanded then stained this darker too, but was reminded that even tiny amounts of PVA repel the stain, leaving slightly lighter marks. I used this to deliberate effect on a picture frame, for 'Romeo and Juliet'. I stamped PVA love-hearts over it before staining.
After the woodwork, I attacked the Tree Of Keys remaster. There are two reasons for it. Primarily to replace the small number of off-the-shelf sound effects with my own. This is because there's a flaw in the whole way streamed music is shared, such that anyone using a shared sample will effectively share the royalties, not due to ownership of the sample, but as though the sample was part of our original composition. It is laziness to use third party samples anyway. I very rarely ever use them, and aim to record everything myself (thought I like using ancient film and advertisement clips at times, for artistic effect). As I run my own hand-made sound effect library, and am an expert at making any sound, I may as well make all of my own anyway.
A second reason for the remaster is due to a general improvement in mixing and mastering since I first made the album, and to record new vocals as my singing is a lot better now too.
Sounds needed were a crying baby, barking dogs, a passing train, whale song. All were accommodated. Deb suggested I act as the crying baby, and I recalled a video where people imitated birdsong which had been dramatically slowed down. When sped up, it sounded like real bird song, so I applied this to a crying baby, and the result was good enough. For the train, I used two layered accordions and a specific chord sequence to imitate an American train horn, then a sound recording of a train leaving in Crewe station, which I made during our last trip to Chester. It was fine. Modern trains are not as chuggy or rattly than old ones as the rails are now welded for a smooth ride, but this sounds rather good.
New vocals for 'Dream of the Tao' were recorded. Other tracks completed in draft: Underground, Paradise Lost, Where is the Sun, War Song, Dream of the Tao, Napalm, and Haiku.
The album is avant-garde, with a generally calm feeling. I often find myself reminded of these visual tracks at particular moments.
The Another Violet Night CDs have arrived. I prefer cello-wrap to cello-bags, but bags are better than cling-wrap. The printing is brilliant, I love the look of these.
Started by re-recording the (new) backing vocals for 'Will You Be My Snowflake', and made many tiny changes to this throughout the day. I also transcribed the music for 'Heaven's Day' as I, unusually, improvised the melody.
Later, I began the remastering project for Tree Of Keys, replacing any off-the-shelf samples with my own. It's a strange irony that I now need a whale-song sample, when I had, in the past, recorded some whale-song via Locus Sonus, then discarded it. No matter here, the strange sound I've used instead sounds better anyway. I thought, a few nights ago, that if Kate Bush's last album had been Aerial, her canon would have begun with whale-song and ended with birdsong.
I printed the sheet music for the 'Compose Yourself' event in two weeks time, to note the chords. For live performance, I often use a scaled-back backing track with room of one lead instrument. For 'More' I'll play it all on piano. I've removed the drums from the backing to 'Incomplete Version of the Writer' because pre-recorded drums tend to sound wrong. I must remember to make an album without drums.
What aim for this? Music has, very rapidly crashed to the level of poetry regarding commercial appeal, but like poetry its art has perhaps been elevated by this. Poetry and music are both in renaissance, not decline, and with rebirth comes transformation.
Still, artists need money. I must, at least, remaster the albums that need to be re-released, and improve the next in line. In painting, I have the Castle Park Arts Centre paintings to frame (pending their acceptance), and work on something for the Nantwich Museum Open Competition.
A steady but slower day. My voice is too tired to sing.
I started by staining the alcove shelf parts, and cutting some veneer to cover the new cuts near the floor. It will look fine, better than I’d originally planned. Then I drilled right into the base and screwed in some huge (80mm, I think) screws. These can be unscrewed to act as legs to adjust the exact floor. I'm still unsure if the size of anything is too large or too small, I haven't yet tested this in place. There might be 1 or 2mm, at most, in it.
The next job here was the dowel joints. These are not at all load bearing, even gravity would work, but I want a hidden joint. My new dowel jig might work perfectly on paper, but it can never be exact in real life, so I've cheated with an easier solution which will (should!) give a perfect joint too. I've fitted a 6mm dowel but drilled an 8mm hole. This gives enough wobble room to allow for exact adjustment, and even room to shave the wood down a millimetre from each edge if needed.
To glue the joint, I'll inject hot-melt glue in the 8mm hole, giving me extreme strength, and enough adjustment time to hold the joint in the perfect place as it sets over about 30 seconds. After that, I can pull the dowel apart, pulling it out from the other socket, then use wood glue. This should give a perfect fit.
Then, work on my other Christmas song, 'Will You Be My Snowflake'. It went to plan, though it is somewhat short at around 90 seconds long, though that's still longer than Queen's 'Lazing on a Sunday Afternoon'. I've added a synth clarinet in homage to 'When I'm Sixty-Four'. I need to record new backing vocals as I've changed their arrangement to be more of a complement. I'm pleased with all of the intricate parts here. I'm unsure what I'll actually do with it, it may become a B-Side, or an album track.
Other work consisted of more preparations for the album, preparations for the 'Compose Yourself' event for the 23rd October, and work for a fancy new listing on the Galleria Balmain website.
Full of muscle aches today after so much activity yesterday. I processed the vocals for the other two Christmas songs, and added those for the somewhat moving 'Heaven's Day'. I will keep musing on the first draft of Candy Cane.
Then, I made a mistake on the alcove cabinet. I marked the exact height of the side pieces late last night, and today cut to the mark, but only then realised that I needed to cut off the bottom, not the top. When marking, I should have (counter-intuitively) flipped the pieces upside down to mark them. So, a crisis moment. The wood was the correct length but the shelf slots all wrong! My instant thought was that I'd ruined everything and would need to buy new wood and start afresh, but not all was lost.
The top shelf space was larger than the 133mm I needed, so to fix the length I could cut the right amount from the top and glue it onto the bottom. This would lead to a visible cut line near the bottom, but like many pine lengths today, the wood itself is a composite, so the grain and hue is uneven anyway, and it is all destined to be stained. The cut line would be near the floor, not obvious, and mostly covered by the door, but even that aside, I could cover the line with veneer or some other decoration with ease (I will probably do this, I have lots of veneer in stock).
There are no dowels here, so after gluing, I aim to add screws along the length for strength (it hardly needs it, the weight compresses the joint). The screws, I realised, could be loosened or tightened to adjust the exact length far more accurately than trying to shave slices from the wood. The bottom 5mm or so is hidden by the moat of carpet, so everything is ripe for a height adjustment system. All in all, the mistake is not so serious, and the length adjustment is a design benefit I'd not have thought of otherwise. Next step, to check the sizes, sand and tidy the look, perhaps add that veneer, then fix the arch, and stain.
In the afternoon, Deb and I went to Congleton Library for the launch of Go Sprout The Grain!. A lovely reading with many friends present, and two new attendees from Newcastle. We were amazed and delighted to see Alan; enthusiastic poet and comedy performer, blacksmith and volunteer from Morecambe Poetry Festival. He travelled from Preston for this event. Everything we do in Congleton is a delight.
My throat was and is too tired from yesterday's singing, perhaps too rushed, or not technically correct enough, or just too much. My body aches. Time to rest.
Vocal recording today, for 'You're My Candy Cane', and the two other Christmas songs, 'Will You Be My Snowflake', and 'Heaven's Day'. A key part is to have good backing tracks, and to know what layers or different vocal parts are needed. For Candy Cane, the chorus is layered, and there is a 3-part harmony on the 'Honey in the summer' part, so this meant preparations for that.
Snowflake also had a few layering options, these were somewhat rushed though, I had to snatch an available quiet 90 minutes to record everything, so dashed around to assemble dub tracks on the fly. Later, some vocoder parts for Candy Cane were recorded from the beautiful Microkorg, and then the full assembly and production. The main vocals are all in one track, with a separate track for the Honey harmonies (these are layered as an instrument, so the three parts don't need three tracks). There are three more vocal tracks because the word 'call' at the end splits into growing 5ths... I think Bohemian Rhapsody does this ('Let me go-oh-oh-oh'), so that must be where I got the idea.
The song is just about complete.
At 4pm I had time to attack Step 1 of Stage 1 of the fireplace shelves, and my first use of a router. Essentially, for this project, I must make a square arch with slots inside for the shelves.
You can see the slots, and that they don't go all the way to the back, thus they will be invisible when the shelves are in place. Stage 1 is making this arch, but it must exactly match in size the existing inner frame of the fireplace. I think the way to do this is make it all a few millimetres too big, then power-sand it level. The top (I could say lintel, though this doesn't take any weight) should be just about the right size. I made a paper template, which is more accurate than a ruler because the space is recessed. The two verticals are about 20mm too long, ready to be cut down during final measurement.
Once the pieces are the right size I can fit them together, with dowels to avoid visible screws, though I plan on two being visible at the moment. Stage 2 will be cutting and fitting the shelves, that's easy, then making and fitting the doors, also not difficult once the rest is done. The shelf depth and door width will be cut by the circular saw of B & Q, so I trust will all be accurate!
More music work tomorrow.
After a power day of music creation, today is a bit of a fragmentory day.
Started by spraying some plastic compartment trays gold, with the aim of transforming them into wall-mounted trinket racks. This went to plan, though I was reminded that spraying plastic is extremely difficult because each single particle of dust, each hair, even each fingerprint, can become magically revealed by the ultra-thin gold.
After that, ordering the new CDs for Another Violet Night. I kept thinking or saying that I planned to, I hoped to release it on CD. If this ever happens, it's time to forget about plans and hopes and actually do it there and then, so the new albums will be ready for launch day on Halloween.
To prepare for the release, I set up a half-price sale of four of my existing CD albums on Bandcamp, which all are now £5 until the end of October. Each is from a different era of my music, each a different style. These are: my first electronic concept album, The Spiral Staircase; my first vocal rock concept album (very much progressive in the Pink Floyd style, not at all like the heavy metal one may assume from the artwork), Burn Of God; my proto-piano-concerto Cycles & Shadows; and the contemporary electronic ride of songs dark and light that is We Robot.
Updates about the Christmas Tails project were made; and new, slightly adjusted lyrics for my Christmas songs printed. I may record 'Will You Be My Snowflake?' anyway, even though Candy Cane is fine, and will almost certainly be my choice for this project. I may have enough music for a Christmas EP or similar, but it would have to be something artistically special, extraordinary. Until now, learning new skills, the excitement of learning was a key motivator. New music must be something beyond this, though, of course, we're always learning. An artist should be getting better over time, no excuses, no restful laurels.
One last act was to migrate my artworks email list to Substack. I by no means email out each post, but may this post serve as an update and glimpse to it to dear friends and followers.
Priority this week, to finalise these Christmas songs. Main event of the week is Deborah's poetry book launch and open mic in Congleton Library on Tuesday at 3pm. Brigid the Corn Dolly will be there, and by amazing coincidence there is a harvest moon on the night.
Onwards!
A full day of production work on my Christmas song for the Christmas Tails album, 'You're My Candy Cane'. A song I dreamt on Oct 20th 2023 (dream music composing happens to most song writers, it's fairly rare for me), there's an old post here about it and the original song lyrics. I've made a few small lyric changes. The chorus was simply 'You're my candy cane, my candy' repeated 4 times. Now it's:
You're my candy cane, my candy
You're my candy cane, my candy
You're my candy cane, my candy cane
You're my candy cane, my candy
You're my candy cane, my candy
You're my candy cane, my candy cane
So, two iterations. The song starts with this catchy melody without vocals. In some ways, the song is similar to my first ever song (well, of the 'new', post-school-days era), 'I Love You For Your Money', which also featured repeats of the line, and was also dreamt.
I could make you smile If only You would stay a while
Has been changed to:
You could make me smile If only You would stay a while
To match the song's perspective, and the 'When you call' line is repeated only once.
In production terms, I began with the drums and aimed for an electro pop song. Despite my dance orientated plan, the song doesn't feature regular bass drums, few of my songs do. I seem to favour shuffle beats. I added saw-chord stab fairly early on, to match the rhythm of the melody, then added a pulse-wave lead, as imagined. In my head, it was close to the track 'Zoot' from the Flatspace soundtrack.
I added a few more experimental layers, and a second lead. Arpeggios there seemed to work well in the chorus. I expanded this lead, and made it converse with the pulse lead, one finishing the other. The basic tracks are pulse 1, pulse 2, pulse 2 quieter for the chorus, bass, bass drums, snare, hi-hats, toms. I added a Casio VL1 click as a sort of metronome pre-emptive click, evoking the beeps on the starting grid of a racing game, and added a white noise filter sweep, a classic 80s sound.
This is mostly it. The structure is as penned, but opens with a melodic chorus, and has an additional chorus for a guitar solo after the refrain; the refrain is the climax, the essential sweet-spot, and the solo is the coast down from that peak.
The next step is working on the vocals and arrangement. Songs like this benefit from layers and backing vocals. I already know I want a vocoder for 'my candy', but layered vocals may work there too. I'll certainly need layers for that climax.
I'm constantly amazed how many tracks pop songs seem to require, mine are positively frugal by comparison. Here's a shot of Prometheus with the intro, so far.
The migration to Substack is now complete. Blogger and Substack have different pros and cons, so for now Make Her Sky will be on both platforms for dear readers to choose their preference.
Many other jobs are pending, perhaps the most urgent is completing my Christmas song for the second Electric Sprout album. 12 artists are now confirmed and two songs, 'One Star' by Paul Parish, and 'Solstice Carol' by John Miller, complete and ready for mastering! Mike Drew of The Forrest Dick Band have also sent a few possible tracks, though more may come. My big hope is that Andy Stubbs will manage to complete his song, which sounds brilliant even in the fragment I've heard.
As it has a deadline, this must be my first priority. Perhaps, concurrently, I can work on the two shelving projects. I'm tempted to start that woodwork today, but it is too damp due to rainy Amy, today's named storm.
Two painting competitions report this month, and I've been informed of a new Nantwich Museum Open Art Competition, which is now open for entries on their website. There is a theme of 'heritage', one of those hugely boring words like 'community'. Such a theme is perfect as it will inspire something exciting and daring, and we're blessed to have a few months to develop and pain something new, even if the judging is by a 1500-pixel jpg (sigh, what would Vermeer, what would Leonardo da Vinci do when faced with the degradation of something visceral and ultra-delicate like an oil painting being judged by a coarse digital photograph?). I can but hope for the sympathy of the judges.
Backup Duties, Substack Migration Continues, Computers and Cells
Woke early, after a worrysome and sleepless night, worried about my darling Deborah and her insomnia and work stress. How I wish I could help.
Today was a full day. October the 1st, so a quarterly back-up day. Another task was disabling Bytten, the game review website I founded with Andrew Williams. We found fellow gamers and reviewed a game a week for 10 years, from 2003 to 2013, and today the site was switched off pending the lapse of the domain. I must, at some point, publish the reviews as a book, partly because nobody does. So many websites and web-magazines form a transient culture. I am critically aware of this point.
Backups took the first few hours, then a call from Galleria Balmain; I needed to write some new information about myself and about the paintings on sale there. This took the next few hours.
Then, the long job of the Substack migration of this blog. Yesterday I managed 60 pages, each page 25 posts, so hand-tagged 1500 posts, each opened, clicked edit, saw which tags were needed from the Blogger blog, then added them. I really needed to be a web-machine to do this, with 25 tabs open at once, and the Ctrl-Tab shortcut to dart the next tab after memorising the tags for each post.
Today, at 7pm, I approached the end, the last of the 3,032 posts; but then I noticed another anomaly. I had already discovered that any blog post with the same title was overwritten, forcing me to hand copy-and-paste about 149 posts, but today discovered that posts with multiple images were auto-deleting images. Not only when editing and submitting changes, but the very act of clicking 'Edit' and viewing the post makes the images vanish before your eyes!
I suspect this is due to formatting differences between the HTML of Blogger and Substack, and I hope that it only applies to a limited number of posts, perhaps ones where images appear after another in a row, without text between. This should be a minority of posts. But, sigh, this will mean again traversing the 3,032 posts one by one, comparing them with the original on Blogger and perhaps re-uploading the images.
There is much to do this month, so much. Of key priority is promotion of the Christmas album, as well as work on my song. Lots of other music work too. Well, I can do but one job at a time.
I must focus more upon making good art, seeing and presenting connections; this is the essence of art, and science. Already I can see that there is a connection between the Substack migration and cellular activity. Both are about replication and error correction. If I do this digital task well, my cells will act in a similar fashion and extend my youth. It seems clear to me that this is the case, that exacting computer work and filing trains many subsets of the body to behave in similar, exacting ways.
A long process is in progress as I migrate my 19 year, 3000+ post blog to Substack. Alas, this is not easy.
As first, it seemed that I managed to import all of the posts, but the labels were not there. So the first step was hand editing each post to add the labels.
This can be done relatively quickly with a few cheats, I say relatively meaning that it will still take many days, work, but not many months.
In Blogger, I searched using the 'index:xxx' feature to find a subset of posts to work on. I used 'sort:-published index:0' at first, to start with the oldest post. I need to use the index feature because I can't simply scroll on. It seems that 3000 posts makes Blogger (or Chrome) break eventually.
In another tab, I made Substack to display posts, sorted from older. Then ctrl-clicked each of the 25-per-page posts to open each post in a new tab and edit. The list always defaults to search from newest to oldest, so you need to preserve these first two tabs: one from Blogger, one from Substack.
This, however would be relatively easy, taking a mere 2 or 3 days, except that I discovered that about 150 posts were not imported - agh! This seemed to occur at random, yet there were clues, such as posts with the same title/name were excluded (foolish me for making more than one post entitled 'Dream' or 'Monday', for example).
This complicates things. When finding a lost post, I had to make a list of the missing ones, then add them as new posts in Substack, one at a time. Then, open the post, edit, and set the new correct (old!) date. This was not easy either because the date entry field is broken and takes (no joke) 5 or 6 times of typing the same number -every time- to set the actual date and time. It would have helped enormously to be able to set the publication date when first posting.
Yet, it is possible. The process will probably take me 5 machine-like days of constant action, and all because of a buggy Substack importer. So much work stems from badly programmed systems by other people! What can we do but sigh and do our best to correct, and stoically continue in our task.
It was, it is, a delight re-read my older posts. I must remember to delight and inspire with each new post.
At time of writing, about 750 of the 3000 posts have been edited. Onwards we roll the heavy rock of art.
A tedious day of computer chugging. Converted all of the new music videos to 8000kpbs and checked them. Some finished early or late, it's amazing how many small errors can creep in to any project, amazing how much proofing matters. I've noted to add a new feature to Argus to warn about events beyond the final render frame. For every error, some preventative action must be taken. Here's a shot from 'Smashing My House of Cards', which uses a card-like vertical flip for the video. I know that a true card flip is a 180 degree rotation, which I experimented with, but that looked ugly at the joint point.
I've also looked up gizmos to guide drill bits. There are one or two metal blocks with holes in made to ensure a perpendicular drill. I'd have liked one that fitted for 2.5mm bits, as I use this for screw pilot holes often. In the end I've ordered one for drilling for dowels, which is what I need this for, for the joint in the mantelpiece shelves. A screw is easier but the aesthetics matter. I considered another option of fitting a dowel haphazardly, then drilling a bigger socket, then to be filled with hot-melt glue. This may hold better than a conventional dowel joint and be simpler too. A plug which was cone shaped, zigzagged, perforated biscuit, or other holes may make a better joint still.
Most of the hours of the day were spent waiting for FFMpeg to build my 13 new videos, then proofing them all, uploading them to YouTube with the appropriate text, rebuilding in archive (lower) quality, and other such tedious tasks. I recall that in the 1990s, computers would often take hours to render and calculate things. The waiting gradually reduced so that rendering time was not at all a problem. Now, long waits for computers are back in vogue.
Thus, the videos are done. Only a few more jobs on this album left. How much work each release is, and I barely do any promotion or performances. Soon I can move on. Tree of Keys is perhaps next. I also need to fully update the sheet music distribution on itch, separating free and basic sheets with full and paid sheets, plus adding tags to this blog on Substack. 3000 posts mean 300 a day is still 10 days of solid work.
Onwards we hack at the rock face of culture, crawling forwards towards a better future.
A full day completing the music videos, plus new loops for Spotify Canvases. Charging though new videos for 'Daytime Teevee' and 'More', but everything was tweaked a little bit. 'More', like many of these, is something of an animated placeholder, like 'Breakfast Of Delight' or 'How Lonely', yet I've managed to add a few things to make them more interesting and linked to the song. At very least, the whole video should sing and dance.
I went out for more shelf supplies in the afternoon. Passing the railway station, a man was huddled in a corner, facing away and trying to dress his lower half in a Union Jack with all of the awkwardness and embarrassment of someone changing into a swimsuit in public. I thought that this was connected with the football match, the roar of the stadium and scattered police officers indicating that a match was on. Then, on the corner opposite the Crewe Arms hotel I wandered into a tiny far-right demonstration, with an equally sized counter protest opposite. There were perhaps 20 people on each side, and two blue-clad community police officers to 'keep order' on a protest which was Lilliputian in every sense. One counter-protest placard said 'DOWN WITH THIS SORT OF THING' - an amusing copy of a protest sign in a Father Ted episode. The real scene match the mood of that mock-scene exactly.
Still, the sentiment was concerning. It's a busy junction. Occasionally, rarely, a car would beep support for the proto-Nazis. As I walked home a car screamed its horn and the passenger shouted an expletive to us pedestrians about 'paki's'. I wondered what the 1930s was like in Germany, for ordinary and concerned citizens. I wondered about the rise of such anger, the trickles before a third world war. Trickles seen as valid and just, as though a forthcoming cataclysm is somehow a good thing. I have two sides to my personality, a full gamut of extreme emotions and ideas, and a narrow, controlled centre of logic and reason. Politically, I'm moderate to the core.
For me, all protest is violent. The very act of opposing is a tiny violence. Peace is to ignore, be passive, to go with the flow. This I gleaned from my meditative, Buddhist-like, years of my 20s. I grew tired of fighting, and became content with surrender. This is, perhaps, the message of Buddha, yet I was never quite convinced of the philosophical truth of it. Is the Dalai Lama content to have China now own his country? No, he protests. Without any protest, we are rocks tumbling in the void. My protestations are in art, and hopefully sharing ideas or revealing truths. Most protesters never change the world (have any?), their actions primarily serve to make them and their peers feel better.
At home I continued to work on the videos. All are now done in draft; excellent. I can now charge on.
Another full day of music video work. I must scale back my ambitions a little. Patience is often seen as a virtue, but one of my flaws is that I'm too patient, and will doggedly and time-consumingly pursue something to its end, when my time might be better spent doing something else.
In the late 1990s I worked for two years on a game design, The Heart of Aorkhan, which would have been the world's biggest role playing game a the time, bigger in monsters and artefacts than even Final Fantasy VII, yet with an utterly boring plot, and just about unplayable on computers of the era. I perhaps completed half of it singlehandedly in two years, but gave up. This is one of very few projects I've given up on, I almost always finish everything. In this case, I should have given up earlier, its mountain was too high.
Here though, I can merely scale back. I can fairly easily make basic videos for each song, but of course, I want to add more, make them more artistic, human, better than basic. The eternal balance is between time spent on one project and time taken from a future one.
Today I compiled the new video for 'I Can Heal', 'Smashing My House Of Cards', and 'Fear is Everywhere'. Of the others, tweaks and small changes were made. 'How Lonely' is a simple lyric video. 'Breakfast of Delight' is similar, but I've added a few little bonus elements to match the mood changes in this joyous song, then again a related video for 'Walls (And How To Hit Them)' which uses Lego characters to augment a basic loop that mimics the album artwork.
'Tainted Pain' echoes the themes and look of 'The Parents in the Walls' and uses a healing cross (from 'I Can Heal') to match the drum beats; this is one way I can easily add to these. It's extremely simple but looks rather nice.
I also hurriedly made the Spotify Canvas animations for today's new releases, and quickly announced them. This album, and this single are my best mixed and mastered, I humbly think, than anything before. Hopefully, everything will get better and continue to do so.
In other news, I've worked out more of the cabinet designs. I'd thought about bolting the brackets onto the MDF, but I think that 4mm pan-head wood screws would be better, as strong, and look neater than trying to drill lots of holes for bolts. I tested rawl plug and screw sizes. I think plans there are complete.
Of the videos, 'Daytime Teevee' and 'More' are the only ones that are untouched. These will also be simple animations based on the album art I think, though I have a more complex idea for 'More'. I had always planned, I always plan, for future and more complex videos, should I ever have the time and incentive. An 'Official Video' doesn't have to be the only Official Video, there were two for George Harrison's 'Got My Mind Set on You'.
In culinary art, I'm making an experimental cross between Staffordshire Oatcakes and a famous New York breakfast pancake, a mix of yeast-batter and beaten egg for an ultimate light batter. I rarely mention food in public, but I love cooking and treat it like my other arts.
Onwards with joy.
A steady day of music video work. I started on the final edits of 'All Controlled By Someone', and, for some strange reason, everything was now one frame out! I don't know why, but it meant going through the film section by section and correcting it. One frame matters because it made the video part out of sync with the animations.
This made me think that life, life as an anti-entropic force, is about correcting errors. We are born. We work. We die. All life works tirelessly. Humans now perhaps work with the aspiration to make enough money, to earn enough social power, to afford to stop working, or to afford to work 'voluntarily'. Most animals (and plants!) don't, they merely keep working, for their social good (yes even plants work!) and their job is ordering that which is chaotic, because those beings which do not are destroyed by calamity, and those beings which are ordered can endure disasters due to informational resilience.
The video was fixed and the single version edit created, then work on other videos for the album. Most of these were half complete.
'Smashing My House Of Cards' is primarily an edit of falling playing cards, but I wanted to add more, so I did some filming of singing the verses. I had to do this without my darling Deborah to operate the camera, so it took longer than normal, but the results were adequate. This uses the simplest mix method of a mask with addition to layer the video with the animation.
'Violet Night' and 'What You Could Have Won' are wholly animated, and use a simple effect of flight over the sea. I recorded an initial startled face for 'Fear is Everywhere' but it didn't work, so I made it entirely from public domain stock footage from a film about preparations for nuclear war.
At 13:30 I went out for wood and brackets for more building projects. One is a cabinet integrated into the mantelpiece, making a shelf-rack where the fire used to be. It will feature Z-bend doors with a seamless wallpaper covering to make the cabinet appear invisible when the doors are closed. There are a few complicating factors. I don't want to permanently damage the mantelpiece, so it must be removable and have minimal effect, it will be fixed by two thin (but very long) screws. The shelves don't have to bear much weight, but enough so that it will need to rest on the floor, or else those two screws would hold all of the weight, because the shelves are fitted only into my section via slots; that way I can avoid adding shelf supports into the mantelpiece alcove. Finally, my frame will have to fit exactly, sub-millimetre accuracy, or it won't look pretty. As I work on the videos, I'm occasionally thinking about the challenges here.
Several music videos need work from scratch, but I can't spend long. I often have problems with what I think of as the 'best' songs. 'Style Guru Fashion Queen' from my last album was one of the best songs, with real hit potential, and I had really clear images in my mind of drag queens and Diana Dors-type glitz and glitter, and all sorts of things, but all of that is for the future. In the end, the video became a placeholder, almost a looping animation while it rests in the slumber of potentiality.
'More', 'Tainted Pain', 'Daytime Teevee', 'Breakfast of Delight', and 'Walls (And How To Hit Them)' remain to do. I may end up using simple animations.
So much other news. Three songs are now complete for the charity Christmas album 'Christmas Tails'. I noticed in the local news that Parveen Smith, who I interviewed on my radio programme, and she in turn interviewed me about my art and music on her radio station, has won a United Nations award for humanitarian causes. My sound effects set for SFXEngine, Army Sounds, has been released. Plans for Deb's poetry book launch on the 7th are moving ahead. So much to do. I must finish all of the music videos in 5 days.
Onwards we charge.
An excellent day of productivity. I woke early and pulled my wardrobe drawer to cause it to collapse into a pile of wood with a 'Weetabix' texture. My ancient, and very cheap, wardrobe has been repaired so may times that it's more glue than the paper-like material it was made from.
I have plans for a new one, practical plans. Some artists make beautiful artworks as furniture, I err towards the practical. Still, this new piece of furniture is a year or more away for now for reasons of time and funds, so my first job of the day was to fix this drawer. It had fallen apart completely, the back was held in by nails (my nails, is was originally not held at all apart from the by plastic veneer which folded around it). I glued each joint and the base and clamped it all with my two brilliant Bessey Band Clamps.
Then, I needed to make a new drawer runner. The ultimate cause of the collapse was the lack of a runner, so I made some measurements, and glues two pieces of wood together to make a piece 10x15x300mm.
These glued, so I charged into work on the 'All Controlled By Someone' video. I'd assembled video clips up to and including the first verse. Yesterday, Deb filmed me singing those. One clips had string dangling from fingers. I thought that these needed to be in the sky, heaven, so I decided to set some parameters for the mix of video and animation; limits are always good for inspiration. The 'Cat Covid!' video had lots of layers, too many, so I decided on two; a video with mask, and global 'additive' layer of animation. I used the latter to add some sky to the strings, so went through the video to establish the edit points, and set some 'sky' in Argus to appear there. I animated some clouds too; this was actually a photo of the summer sky taken in Chester - I simply made the clouds gently move and gyre.
So, the video was now black areas, mostly actual film footage, and some blue sky when 'strings' were present.
I went back to the video. I added more edits of existing footage for the chorus, and went back and forth to check it all, then added the next verse, and final chorus, but things were too repetitive. I thought I needed more of a link with the words and hit upon the idea of myself, the protagonist, now becoming a string puller for a lower being, another puppet below; this is the main message of the song, so I filmed a lone hand pulling and matched it with earlier footage of Kasperle being pulled. Thus, the circle of the story was complete.
Then, some masking effects. The video alone was a bit too simple, so I had the idea of adding a clown/makeup mirror with lights, so photographed Deborah's 'Clown Face' performance mirror, and used this as a frame for my puppet-self. I kept thinking that there was something of a 1930s Charlie Chaplin link, perhaps because of my makeup, so added a silent-film style iris effect for the opening and piano playing parts.
Then, the wardrobe gluing was dry enough. Titebond states to wait 24-hours to set. It actually sets about twice as fast as PVA, and can clue cardboard well in 20 minutes. I temporarily fitted my new runner to the wardrobe, choosing hole locations that might be moveable, should disaster strike and the need to move the whole thing. The runner was in the right place, but too deep. I removed it, and planed off 2mm. This worked fine, so I fitted it, and fitted the drawer. All complete.
Then back to the video.
The final step was editing the video so that it could fit the album version (which is about a minute longer, and includes the much better intro) and the single version, which is identical after the intro, which makes thing a lot easier.
So, draft 1 is complete, but there now there's the final stages of proofing, small changes, things to consider.
A little filming today, one hour. I needed Deborah's excellent help and guidance as camera operator and cinematographer today, as my hands were strung to the ceiling. The verses are mouthed, I need something else for the chorus. So far, almost the entire video is 'simple' filmed sections, no overlays, no layers, effects or transitions. I'm unsure what I need yet.
The hour of work is short as it's Deb's last day of her annual holiday, so the last day of semi-holiday for me too. We went to Congleton Library in the glorious sun to attend a reading by Jo Bell, partly to see this place of many memories to prepare for Deb's book event in October. I know I should work more and focus more on videos, so will charge into it tomorrow. Sometimes a pause like this gives me needed thinking time.
Determined today to focus on the 'All Controlled By Someone' video today, and charged into filming Herr Kasperle, the star of the puppet sections. I'll play him in certain parts. Other parts will use Argus. I often feel frustrated at these videos, everything is an artistic compromise; too little time, too few resources, the argument is that any video is better than none. Pushing to limits in these circumstances can be good. I must make it the best I can.
Video lights work best in secondary colours; yellow, cyan, magenta; and the modern LED lights which essentially flicker between primaries to achieve this often look better because fragments of primary leak in at the fringes. A music video really needs cuts every 2 secs; but I rarely have that luxury, rarely have the resources. Still, thanks to Argus I can make objects appear for exact notes.
The next step will feature me as Kasperle. I may need to add more for the sake of variety, though Avisynth is already creaking with one minute of video.
The morning started, however, with weighing and preparations to list The Love Reliquary with Galleria Balmain. Hardly anyone has seen this artwork, one of my best. I can but hope that Colin will help me here.
Onwards I forge.
A bitty, bitty, frustratingly so day. Started some scant filming of the 'All Controlled By Someone' video. Amended my entries for Castle Park, and made preparations to list The Love Reliquary for sale in future. The few cabinet artworks I've made need to be seen somewhere, each took many months, but then, all of my paintings do now. New postal scales arrived, already useful for painting weighing and a cheeseplate which, after testing, will help to upgrade my art photography rig when I can afford to do so.
I set up a test blog on Substack, and thus this post is mirrored there. The (almost) 20 years of blog posts appear to have been copied over, but without tags, and tagging 3000 posts is a substantial undertaking. There are many formatting options that need to be checked too. I can't edit HTML in Substack, which is a shame, as I liked my neat code (even if Blogger didn't/doesn't like my particular brand of neatness). Substack has more features than Blogger, the latter is barely functional for following or subscribing. Any switch of this is a major undertaking, the trust of decades of work. Both support import/export/backups, but which is the most future proof? Which more reliable? Quantity of readership doesn't bother me, this is primarily a diary of use to me, and perhaps of interest to others or a distant history. Will Substack persist after my demise, if so, for how long?
My key goal must be completing the music videos this week. The list of jobs for October is already large.
I had aimed to work on music videos today, but instead pondered them as I worked on some painting preparations. I bought a new set of postage scales so that I can accurately weigh my artwork, and prepared new art to list online with Galleria Balmain and their new art portal. Some of my best artworks will be sold exclusively there for a few months.
Then, a trip to town, and the discovery of two lovely frames. This frames carved in dark oak caught my eye, so antique looking, like something from the 16th century (which I recognise, my childhood house had a 16th century, Henry VII era chest). It might be younger, who knows, but at least a century old I imagine.
The backing planks were taken from a soap crate, covering a very thick and heavy mirror.
Deb bought a pine chest of drawers at the same time, so I helped transport this and carry it to her flat. It had some construction flaws (not subsequent breakages; it was so shoddily made that screws missed the wood entirely, some nails completely pierced the wood). It needs some repairs and refinements, some glue, clamping and new screw holes. I'll do this tonight.
The rain today is relentless.
Woke late and tired, one of those days where everything I've done seems to be terrible and where suicide feels quite justifiable. How fortunate I am to be able to ignore emotions and view these creatures with suspicion. How blessed to know that there is no heaven, no God, nothing even 1% better than our present situation.
My main job of the day was the editing and conversion of the live videos taken at Morecambe Poetry Festival. This took longer than expected, partly because the HD videos were large and each one took longer to convert to avi (for editing) and back (for uploading), so 15 to 20 minutes each alone of pure computing time. The editing itself was trivial. By 3pm, all videos had bene converted and uploaded. Most will be made public in steady drips.
I also revisited my wall cabinet plans. I wondered about wall brackets, and have decided to use simple L-shaped brackets on the side. I did consider some below, like standard shelf brackets, though that would limit crucial vertical space between cabinets. I thought about resting the cabinet on the floor, for ultimate support, but normal bookshelves (and my painting shelves!) take a lot of weight with only side-bearing screws, so this should be enough.
I also set some works aside for Galleria Balmain's new website, though I dislike online art, I need a real-world gallery. My paintings always look so much better in real life. I don't like the idea of an online art gallery, but it is better than not being seen at all, and yes, even I see the vast majority of the art I see online. Even in books, my paintings look terrible compared to seeing them in real life; this is what layered oil paintings are like. Acrylic paintings and 'digital art' look worse in real life and better on a screen, making it doubly sad and frustrating that all art competitions are now judged by remote digital photograph.
I also researched improving my art photography set up. I need more money to improve it, and money is chronically short at the moment. My OHTO MS01 pencil broke today too, bah. At least, unlike the Pentel Graphgear, it didn't snap in two; it seems to be internally broken or become blocked somehow. Either way, the lead will not advance. I'm now using a fine, if workmanlike, OHTO Horizon.
Today, scanned 3 paintings with my photography and lighting rig, then entered the Castle Park Open. The photography phase alone can take a day, but things are a little faster now. I could still optimise the process if I had the money for more equipment to make the guide runners. After that, photographed my white mouse lamp, ready for listing for sale online. Main job the rest of the month is making music videos for Another Violet Light, including the single release.
Arrived back yesterday from a full and delightful few days at Morecambe Poetry Festival 2025. It was certainly a memorable break. For these few days I'm pulled into a different sphere of being social. Things were as nice as last year, sweetened by reconnecting with people that we met then.
Here we are with founder Matt Panesh. Each year we intend to interview him for Ink Pantry, but can never find a spare moment (his moments are understandably precious and frenetic for these few days).
We arrived in good time on Thursday. We accidentally left the keyboard stand at Lancaster railway station, so Deb had to dash back in a taxi (it's a 20 minute journey) to collect it, which was fortunately where we left it. First lesson learned. After settling in, we, unusually, got dressed up for our performance. Normally we would do this at the venue, but perhaps it was unconscious memories of last year, parading down the sunny prom, attracting the (I must assume) awe of the denizens, made us think of making the 8-minute walk in our outfits. We left early, an hour before even the sound check, but I'd prefer to wait at the venue after everything is set up, rather than wain before. All of our equipment was in tow and heavy bags. Alas, those 8 minutes were the exact 8-minutes of a torrential downpour of rain and hail. We arrived soaked. Initial curses aside broke way to laughter. We dried up as best we could, and by the time of the performance at 10, everything was fine. Our performance went well, to plan apart from some accidental extension to 'Sunchild'.
A joy of performing first is that we can then relax into the festival proper. Our initial pre-fest event gradually became part of the festival and we found ourselves in the programme which was an unexpected delight.
The next few days were non-stop; visiting the local shops and seeing the poets in the Kings Arms, at the Library (which we visited for the first time) and stars in the amazing Winter Gardens. The Winter Gardens weren't so wintery this year, now that we'd planned to wrap up. John Hegley on the first night was a wonderful reactive performer, a natural, then the powerhouse of performance that was Luke Wright; outstanding.
Every poet of the festival granted something different. Many of the poems are comedic, fast, interspersed with humorous stories, yet, of course, there were also dark poets, ranty poets, literary poets. The latter rarely get the ovations of the comedy poets, yet perhaps that is because it's easier to get a laugh than a tear, and to be disturbed or affected in other ways isn't the recipe for applause, even if it is as powerful and affecting.
We attended an open mic at the library next day, initially to see our festival friend Kevin Brown, who held a workshop there. I signed up for the open mic upon arrival, but we had to dah away briefly to say hello to Kevin. I felt awkward at trying to do both, caught short between two events, oh to split in two, yet we returned in time to hear a few readers, speak a few poems. The amplifiers were powered by a bicycle, pedalled by Aaron Barschak, and we spoke with him at the end of the session.
We wanted to watch Kathryn Ratzko, the only poet we know from this area, so we were sure to attend. Her poems were brilliant, and curiously in a style like ours; visual, complex in emotions and words, not emphasising rhymes. It made me wonder if Cheshire poetry has a unique cadence, a lack of comedic punch more associated with Manchester. We had to leave for food before Edward Tripp, though his act, even at the start, looked brilliant. This also meant missing the Film Poem slot, which I'd have loved to see.
Our food breaks, which are now at least 90 mins, and relatively early nights meant that we were forced to miss more poets than we'd like, though we never stopped and saw as much as we could. Everything we saw was fantastic and inspiring in its own way. I didn't speak a huge amount, but enjoyed the social emergence. Of all people I spoke to I seemed to feel more of a connection to Nigel Planer. He mentioned his band, The Values. Henry Normal and Nigel were both wonderful that evening. As with most of the Winter Gardens acts, these were like semi-autobiographical evenings of anecdotes with occasional poems. I think that Michael Rosen only read one poem, for example. This did not matter, of course; these are all artists of great humanity.
Nigel Planer mentioned Brian May, as he produced the Bad News mock-rock album, just as Andy Hayward mentioned last week that he's working with Brian, and by coincidence, Dr May was performing live as part of the Last Night of the Proms on Saturday. Brian May has appeared in threes. There has to be a poem in that.
Morecambe is a unusual place, extraordinarily friendly. Shop prices are cheap. Many aspects of culture and architecture don't seem to have moved on in 40 years. It was interesting to see it bask in last year's sun, and as a something like a ghost town in this year's rain.
Now I'm back and catching up with many things. Today I've typed up full notes on the trip, done a litlte more organisation on the Sprot album, connected with many of the poets on social media, and prepared files for some future videos of our performance. I've also restrung my guitar for tomorrow's Good Vibrations, restrung new shoes (as mine decided to fall apart while on holiday), tried in vain to repair my glasses which also broke spectacularly on the first day, so I couldn't see anyone beyone 2 metres. Plus 4 or 5 other things. Onwards to the rest of the week.
The book launch last night went to plan. Met a screenwriter, Andrew J Hayward, who has a few interesting projects in the pipeline. Perhaps we can find time to collaborate on something. We're up to 11 artists for the Christmas album, Christmas Tails.
Today, final rehearsal and packing for Morecambe. Onwards to the festival!
A general day of working on the Electric Sprout album project.
Well overdue singing practice, then started work on the 'Heaven's Day' song, but I don't think this will be my final track, perhaps a B-Side for a single release. The 'Winter's Heart' song is a quiet ballad in the style of an early Kate Bush song, but I've looked back at some of the other songs I wrote for the 2023 album, and thought about working on one of those. Two were not used. My first thought was 'Will You be My Snowflake', a fun song like The Beatles at their most jovial, but instead remembered 'You're My Candy Cane', a catchy pop song, which (in my head) has the production and energy of a cross between 'She's On The Phone' by Saint Etienne, and 'I Think We're Alone Now' by Tiffany. It's a light and silly song, erring dangerously towards Abba, yet, perhaps this is is an acceptable mood for a Christmas song or party classic, a type which I rarely try to pen. The best writer of music in the world will compose for and master every genre.
Tonight is Deb's poetry book launch. I've prepared for that, liaised a little with the charity, Stapeley Grange, and other small jobs about this and Morecambe. Not much can or will be done until I return from there. After that, my priorities will be scanning paintings and entering the Castle Park Open, then creating a music video for 'All Controlled By Someone'.
A day in Chester on Saturday, collecting the 'She Was Always Asleep' painting from the museum exhibition, plus an always happy, stimulating, and energetic meeting with the sublime miniaturist David Lawton.
Lots of smaller jobs over the past couple of days. We've had confirmation of the times and arrangements for our Morecambe performance, so created a poster and sent out messages about that, Deb's two poetry book launch events, and an update on the Christmas album. I wrote another simple Christmas song for it on Saturday night. It's a slow, dream-like piece that nobody would choose for a Christmas playlist, yet, it has lots of atmosphere and beauty. I've recorded some backing already, it requires a live, very emotion-centred performance. Here are the words so far:
Heaven's Day
I saw you standing
Among the traffic
Like a bird
On the swell of sea
Snow was floating
Your red bags full
With gifts
For someone like me
But not me
For I was flying
Through wet clouds high
And the sun's rake of heaven's day
As from you I flew away
From you I flew away
Yesterday and today we've rehearsed our Morecambe set. I've also done some test cuts with the router, how I love this tool! I'm almost ready to make mine and Deb's shelves, but B & Q are out of stock of the required stripwood. Painting is now over the for the season, I'll be too busy until the end of the year with music, music videos and these events to fit any painting in, I imagine.
Prayer for Order
Life is about order, organisation, neatness, cleanliness
Order makes us resilient
More organised forms are more resilient to crises
Stability should proliferate its stability
Information should be preserved
Archives should be maintained
To preserve accuracy and efficiency of storage
Efficiency of recall
Life seeks to organise chaotic elements
Life stores information in stable structures
Life endures attack so that ordered elements survive and proliferate
Life endures attack so that choatic elements are destroyed
Truth is more stable than lies
Truth is that which is proven to be true
By trial, by enduring
By surviving a challenge
A million small jobs today.
Created a new poster for Deborah's second poetry book launch:
Fitted the new strip light; it was a dream to do, the connectors were push-in. Photographed the 1M Corn Dolly and added it to my website. Finalised the risk assessment for the Electric Sprout album cover creation day, this will be on October 29th in Crewe Market Hall. I checked the leads for the MODX for the Morecambe Poetry Festival event. We now know it will be at The King's Arms at 9pm on Sep 11th. We were advised to being long enough leads. I have one 3M lead, on 6M and connectors to join the two; so we have a 10M limit!
I researched routing, for my shelves. This might be useful, though difficult, as at least 8 very precise grooves would need to be cut. I made a foot pedal holder for my custom piano bench, so now the new M-Audio pedal is held still in the correct place. I copied over the new waves for the new performance, and packed for Chester tomorrow, and checked train times, lest we travel that way.
I typed up lyrics for Christmas song number 5, but won't be recording this one (Three Two One, Bounce My Sprouts) any time soon.
And more, including research on Okapi, Nostoc Communes and cellular fission...
Final underpainting day of 'Can There Be A Refuge From Terror?'. Lots of detail here, so glazing should be limited. A painting of this complexity would have taken me 6 or 7 days a few years ago. Alas, my busy schedule for the next 12 months will limit my time to paint (as well as the lack of any actual incentive bar the glory of art; though that was good enough for dear old Vermeer, though he did have one patron).
Two other jobs done this evening, more to charge into.
A full day. First, painting the angel figure and hands, bone hands, small teeth, red mouth, butterfly, and heaven insert of the Refuge painting. In the evening, some quick work on the Electric Spout project with another artist coming on board, and contacting the amazing Carol at Creative Crewe with regard to a public cover creation day. Our small part in the Morecambe Poetry Festival opening is confirmed, so we need to work on some publicity for that, and Deborah now has two dates for her poetry book launch and readings (which need posters). So, a day of spinning four plates.
Of course, I am spinning more at the moment. 'All Controlled By Someone' is released on the 26th, and the album on Oct 31st, so I need to make 13 music videos in 6 weeks, and I have three songs to rehearse for John Lindley's charity performance event too. I must list this! I also have a painting to collect from Chester Museum soon, and three to enter into Castle Park; plus 3 wall cabinets to build (design work complete), a ceiling light to fit in the storage room, and new camera pedestals to design and build for my art photography rig. These are not urgent.
It will take at least one more day of work to complete my current underpainting. Onwards we charge.
First day of underpainting 'Can There Be A Refuge From The Terror?'. Why do I paint these complex mixes of objects? They can be tedious and awkward to paint or paint around. I have a butterfly which defies perspective, so it must be symbolic. Also, more work on Sprout 2. If I include myself and Deb, we have 5 confirmed/interested artists.
A productive day. Monthly backups completed, then designed some CD and box shelves for me room, and some for Deborah. All would use two large sheets of MDF, so it's optimal to design and build all three structures at once. Much was planned here, and I realised I needed a new, 80mm long, 2mm drill bit for precision drilling pilot holes for the 6mm shelves, so I ordered these.
In the afternoon I made soem initial enquiries about a new charity Christmas album, a sequel to the 2023 Electric Sprout Foundation project. No replies as yet.
Then, collected a second M-Audio expression pedal. The keyboard has two pedal inputs, one for volume, one for super-knob, so I thought two wouldn't hurt, and it would give me the chance to see if a second pedal would also range 0 to 125 rather than 0 to 127 as it should. Alas, it does also range 0 to 125, and requires, ideally that it remains at maximum at all time, so if connected I'd really have to keep it at the annoying 98.5% of maximum at most. Well, at a mere £11.50, I don't regret the experiment, and it's good to have a backup, so I'll disconnect it, and keep it as a backup.
New new album requires a new song and time spent organising, and I have paintings to complete, Morecambe to attend and perform at, and a music video to make this month alone. I must work and rest efficiently to manage this. I've decided to enter the, as yet unseen, Descartes painting into the Castle Park Open, so I'll need to frame this month, as well as frame and photograph the other two entries. Ideally I would upgrade my photography stands too... I must observe and note wood and bracket options when I visit B & Q.
A slower day yesterday. I wanted to slow down and rest for a day. I wrote the draft of a Christmas song, although it changed from Father Christmas desperate to deliver a present into a love song of sorts. The melody is fast rock in the manner of 'Jamie and the Magic Torch', but it needs work. I'll leave it.
Also, framed the Lost Boy painting, which is being collected today, and painted a little more of 'Hello Yellow Brick Road'.
Box Of Love
I got a broken box of love
And I gotta give it you by midnight
The forest is a maze of twilight
The fog is closing all around
I know that you are far away
But I gotta get to you by midnight
I gotta tell you things are alright
I gotta lay your worries down
And I see a silver trail go by
Like a star lost in the sky
Lost in the sky
A blizzard is about to fall
And I worry did I miss the midnight?
Will I comfort you or kiss you tonight?
Will I ever see your face again?
I never was a man to pray
but I'm praying for another midnight
Praying for another midnight
Praying for another when
And I see a silver trail go by
Like a star lost in the sky
Lost in the sky
Tested the new M-Audio expression pedal, it works, so the problem was the Yamaha pedal. It has less range of motion than the Yamaha pedal and ranges 0 to 125 (annoyingly) rather than 0 to 127, but it feels stiffer and generally nicer to play. It costs £12 vs. £75 for the Yamaha, but I think is about as good. I may be able to extend the range to 127 by shaving down the plastic stopper at the end of the pedal; of course that is a destructive modification.
I also cut some rags for painting and wierd two new lights for the art photography rig, making it another 1% more efficient.
In the afternoon, glazed more of 'All About Eve'. This is unusual in that my glazing was somewhat haphazard, not doing all of it, buts parts here and there as I felt, or as I thought needed. I also glazed 'Hello Yellow Brick Road' a little, though it could use more. The days feel too short, my energy too low.
Felt so weak and tired yesterday, perhaps due to doing so much the day before. I updated my website, adding the new paintings there, and prepared an information pack for the new album. I also worked on designs for new stands to help with my art photography, and other small jobs. Late in the day, I drew out a painting idea, currently called 'The Empty House'. I've had an idea called 'Wilderness Of Calcified Ovaries' in progress for over a year, but decided to split it into two; 'Love And Fragility In The Age Of Perfection' which is about mortality and immortality in love, and this one, 'The Empty House', about the procreative drive.
Today, drew out Love And Fragility; it will be about 33x40cm. In the afternoon I worked on the first glazing layer to 'All About Eve'.
Music while painting consisted of Amarok; an album remarkable for containing so much hatred, an emotion rarely expressed in art, and especially instrumental music. I wish Margaret Thatcher wasn't in it, and wish that the climax lasted longer. Like many of Oldfield's works, it cycles between many instruments, and several moods (including the lively jig, the romantic Spanish guitar; Oldfield tropes) and a few musical themes. I think that structurally it works well, and suits its 60-minute single-movement format. Then, Atom Heart Mother, which is also largely instrumental and epic, then The Story Of I by Patrick Moraz, which is ear-splittingly high pitched at times, but always too frenetic, too manic and unfocused. It should be called The Story Of Mania (or The Story Of ADHD in contemporary parlance). The intermezzo attracted me, and is the best part of the album.
Two busy days. Painted a little yesterday, completing the Lost Boy painting and adding to the first Claire Luce portrait of 2025, now entitled 'Song Of Experience'. Then, a trip to Tarporley to collect my paintings there, and restoration of one of the frames back to perfect condition. Just about every exhibition requires a bit of restoration after the show. The Love Affair frame now perfect once more.
We rehearsed the Morecambe Fall in Green show but - curses! The so-called ruggedly indestructible £75 Yamaha expression pedal seems to be broken, a particularly unwanted expense. It was often unreliable. Plugging it in needed some wobbling to the connection to make it work, and last night the range was about 85% at minimum to 100% at max. This morning I dismantled it and cleaned the potentiometers with contact cleaner, but it seems to be completely dead. I can't be sure if it's the pedal or the MODX which is at fault, but the MODX has two pedal inputs and both behave in the same way; both worked when the pedal worked, both broken when the pedal is broken, which indicates that it is the pedal, but, of course, both circuits in the synth are next to each other so that could equally be a cause. Ideally I need another synthesizer, and/or another pedal, to test.
After the pedal repair, I wallpapered part of the hall, which had a damp patch which needed mould removal and new anti-damp paper. The drain outside is the probably cause, so this was sealed. How much of life is repairing. In the afternoon, I scanned (photographed) three new paintings. The photography takes a lot of work; setting up the lights on my custom stands, setting up the stands for the camera rail, setting the flatbed, the camera. I have ordered more wire to make 2 new lights, it would save time if all of the lights were ready with bulbs attached. I could also replace the tripod-rail system with custom built wooden stands which could fit the rails exactly and at the right height.
The Masochistic Gaia is therefore complete, and I've entered it as planned, plus the vegetable Oliver Cromwell, and the hugely relevant Theresienstadt painting into the ING Discerning Eye, all at £5000 or £7000. This is likely to be my last entry there for a year or two, though who can say. My last success there was with the Facebook painting.
A slow day yesterday. Confirmed submission of Another Violet Night, this will release on October 31st, and painted a mouse lamp to look like an actual white mouse. The plain lamp was an ugly black resin. I also shaded a study for the cat in 'Can There Be A Refuge' painting.
Today, re-drew a Claire Luce portrait, with shading this time. It seems that a shaded outline works well, and my 0.5mm pencil seems better for this than my usual 0.3mm line drawing pencil. The likeness is much more easily checked and adjusted this way.
Was happily helped to deliver two paintings to Tarporley for the weekend community exhibition there. New paints arrived. Blockx Mars Red is instantly beloved. A fine and powerful red, more violet than Venetian Red, but much redder than Mars Violet. Mars Red and Mars Yellow Orange would make perfect flesh I suspect. Oddly, I use mars violet and light red, and rarely ever involve venetian for flesh, using the still beloved venetian for other 'general red' use (often for my signature). I can see the Mars Red replacing this, especially as the Harding Venetian Red is very fluid, almost watery, like many of his paints. Blockx Natural Umber is indeed a raw umber, rather neutral and green-shaded compared to the Michael Harding version I use in every painting. Blockx Natural is very close in hue to Winsor and Newton Raw Umber Green Shade, though more opaque and a little more granular. I'm less certain if this will replace my invaluable Harding Raw Umber, but I will give it a try when my Harding tube runs out. Every Blockx colour I've used has proved to be lovely, they make the best oil paints.
Also signed a new contract with Galleria Balmain today, and heard that I have at least one poem accepted in the Morecambe Poetry Festival Anthology 2025.
Submitted Another Violet Night for release yesterday, but it appears there's a problem with some of the content. Time will tell. Also affected some repairs on the house regarding a damp patch, and adjusted and standardised the volume levels of MODX backing tracks, an important step towards more live performances of my recorded material.
Today, a music and social session in Congleton Library.
Woke early for a long day of painting 'Hello Yellow Brick Road'. Everything was difficult today, things kept breaking or not going to plan. I needed to be agile.
First, my Winsor & Newton No. 26 Palette Knife broke at the weld. It would probably last forever as one cast piece, incidentally. I bought this knife wen I started painting, perhaps in 2004, perhaps 2005. I knew this was a good shape, as my father (also a painter) used this shape. Halfway though painting I had to diver to buy a replacement. At first break I made a repair with Polymorph (it held well!) which meant I could continue.
Underpainting was completed by 17:45.
Drawing is about copying what you see, not what you think you see. Making art is about copying what you know and how you feel about it, not what you see.
Slept well, after an evening of dancing and singing. I watched The Electrical Life of Louis Wain which brought me to tears with many affinities and sympathies. I was reminded how much I miss Cat, the kitten who appeared in my life on the year I started painting, and left in 2020, the year I stopped, for a while, as I turned my focus to music.
After that, I prepared the panel for 'Hello Yellow Brick Road', and transferred the drawing. The stormy sky needed some preparation, there are no source images or objets for this apart from the lighting guide, so more preparation is required. I think the colours should be simple enough, so I've skipped that stage.
I've also worked on a black mouse lamp I was gifted. I've painted it white and will paint to the look like a real mouse. This is very much a hobby project. Plus, some work re-cataloguing album cover artwork. I file the covers as artworks too, and some of these were not quite right. The day is done. How fleeting each day is.
A slow morning, then started work on a stallked painting idea from 2023 called 'Hello Yellow Brick Road'. Here is the idea sketch:
Like many such sketches, these are as much a mnemonic to me as compositional guide. The area on the right is blue sky, an ironic joyous destiny, so perhaps the painting is a satire on an emotional level. I set up a simple scene as a lighting model:
Then blew up the idea sketch and enhanced it a little, this time shading some parts in pencil. This will be my ancient typical size of 234x336mm.
Other things done today include recoding the 2nd and 3rd version central panels for 'Love Is Dead' to G575, like the original 1st version. These versions were painted years later, but are part of this artwork, so should be coded with it. Another job was revising the poster for John Lindley. With sadness I noted that The Little Street Cellar is to close this weekend, the venue where our monthly music nights take place.
Spent today glazing the second Clair Luce portrait (G1460A). My first was painted in 2005.
The smoothness is good, and colouration, but the likeness is poor. I'd mastered painting a panel with smoothness by 2007 and the 'Untouchable Strawberry' painting, even if perhaps some techniques such as glazing with opaque colours, and how much detail to add during underpainting have improved since. My colouration too has been good for almost as long, though again some improvements are constantly being made, and I was certainly not confident at colouration until recently; yet for the most part, it felt today that I've hardly improved at all technically in 15 years.
At times I've painted portraits directly to the canvas, like the Telly Savalas painting, the recent portraits of Volodymyr Zelenskyy and David Lynch. This is a relatively recent development, and something I'd not have tried before. Perhaps the lesson is that line/edge drawing is a more difficult discipline than body drawing, primarily because it's more difficult to check and adjust a likeness in line, because we're not copying a line drawing but a solid form. At one point I made shaded pencil studies, but generally don't do this now. These were sometimes were done as tone studies, but also as tests of likeness in portraits.
Perhaps it would be better to draw portraits as tone drawings rather than outlines from the outset. I don't want to paint a portrait on the canvas in the way most oil portrait artists do/did because the correct colour in the correct place first time is the ideal for the perfect finish I desire. Any paint on the canvas first will muddy the result. A third option is the way some artists, like Steve Caldwell, paint, creeping a high quality image out, rather than working on the whole, but this limits blending or makes it impossible (in acrylics that is not an issue). Painting in layers is vital for actual beauty, as well as giving a power of colour effects impossible in other ways. Intricate though acrylics are, they look flat and poor in real life compared to oil paintings.
My glazing today was very smoky, sfumato. This technique can come from an obsession for smooth 'perfection', or an insecurity, not knowing where the lines are, not wanting to find them. I became convinced that Leonardo painted like this for the latter reason, that he was, unexpectedly, insecure about his drawing ability. This makes sense, because he was brilliant at drawing, and we only become brilliant at something by insecurity about it, and fighting yet harder to improve. My line drawing woes reminded me of the two Mona Lisa paintings (I have no doubt that the Isleworth Mona Lisa is a genuine Leonardo, and a first version). They are the same person, yet not quite the same, the likeness is different.
