Sold 4 Christmas Tails CDs as presents to relatives, so began the day by burning these and assembling the artwork. My 7-year-old Marantz CD player seemed to complain about some discs, and it appears that the player is failing. Confusingly, some discs are more susceptible than others, but they seem to play elsewhere so I'm sure it's a fault with the CD player. Such hi-fi separates, once common and even cheap (CD players were usually the cheapest item, the amp the most costly) are now expensive and rare, around £300 to £400. This amount may be trivial to most people but is 3 or 4 months of my income.
I've spent much of the day trying to diagnose the fault and repair it. Most discs seem to play, and as yet, only CD-Rs seems to fail, but this includes, for example, our professionally manufactured Salome albums, so it's a recently developed fault with the player, not a fault with my CD-R stock.
In the afternoon I went out to to opening of the new Crewe community art gallery, 'Platform'. Chief driver of the project, Jamie, is ever friendly, encouraging, enthusiastic, though I remain frustrated, aghast, and depressed that David Jewkes always has paintings there yet, years into the so-called Crewe community art gallery project, I can't seem to get a single painting exhibited. This small exclusion so exasperates me that at times I hate the entire project.
I have an idea for a performance event there. Performance seems to be the box I've been placed in so it seems to be my only option for any sort of participation here. When a place feels unpleasant or unfriendly it becomes a hurdle just to think about doing something with them, never mind doing something for them. It's a great space for the town, there's an energy and drive behind it, and it's an important new space; yet for me it's an uphill struggle to interact at all. I know I must try. The world, most of the time for an artist, is all up hill.
I returned home and assembled two more copies of Christmas Tails, this time for Deborah.
