Love and Fragility Underpainting Day 2, Roxy Music and New Frontiers

Underpainting of Love and Fragility complete. During painting yesterday and today I listened to the first five Roxy Music albums, which have a surprising similarity, though each gets a little better. Bryan Ferry's latest album Loose Talk is spoken word over music. Not as good as Fall in Green, so at least here we have leapt over that great artist. I'd like to capture something of early Roxy.

At times I feel at a false artistic peak, in that new things seem harder to discover and become excited about. This feeling lasts only a day or so before I discover some new insight or challenge. Every artist, it seems, stops growing, stops getting better, but I hope, by force of will and careful and constant analysis, by seeking new frontiers with new binoculars, to keep getting better. Now I see my past work as think how bad it is, and how much better I can now do, how much better new work in paint and music can be. My enthusiasm and excitement for these new brilliant things, these new ideas and aesthetics, these new skills, is greater than ever. My primary limit is my health, and of course the eternal angst of money.

I've been gifted lots of chocolate for Easter but I don't want it. I fear its fat. I'd much prefer a luxury gift of olives, or olive oil, or sun dried tomatoes, or cocoa powder, or even sparkling water. There are so many healthy luxuries.

Hope and Death, Love and Fragility Underpainting

A day of painting. Started with a small idea called 'Hope and Death'. It needed a little work as the idea was initially too simple. Some people write any old words, improvised, and call it a poem, but a poem requires more (sorry bad poets, sorry Duchamp!). A poem must have structure, linked rhymes or themes which can subvert or reward expectations, or some special imagery which sets it apart from the prose of ordinary reality. In short it must be crafted, and have the depth and intensity of artistic command. This is the difference between a work of art and just 'any old thing'.

The same is true in visual art, which, after modernism, is now (joyfully) mature as an artform, like poetry. Any painting of a scene or thing which can be seen by a person or photographed is not good enough; this is no different from a poem of 'any old words'. Art must be crafted, given more. It could have repeating visual themes in different areas, such that the thematic copies (shapes, objects) reinforce the ultimate object, the key one which the viewer will ponder (in a poem or piece of music, this is the ending or start - either way, the 'thema'). It could subvert expectations in other ways, with a surprise or unreal element. It could also include bioforms. Humans are very receptive to faces, more than any other pattern, then figures, finally other organic forms such as animals or plants, or biological shapes which look living. Even with a lifeless scene of rocks or mountains, for example, the rocks must have some element of being alive applied to them, the rocks made into a face or figure, or somehow imbued with an organic or biological reality. Lifeless painting of rocks are rare. Most landscapes include figures, or trees, or animals; perhaps for this reason.

I pondered on this philosophy and added more to 'Hope and Death'. Here is the initial idea sketch:

At first I imagined a simple scene; the distant sun, and somewhat misty mountains, rather like my 'Infinite Tiredness of Ageing', but the idea too simple and twee, a first draft needing refinement. More was needed. Here's my underpainting:

The sun is black, but not just black, is has become an eye, the clouds partly a face, the mountains partly a mouth. Expectations subverted, and bioforms included. I also noted the coincidence of painting a crucifix scene on Good Friday.

This took only an hour or two. After this, began the underpainting to the Love and Fragility painting, a painting of sufficient complexity already. Here it is so far:

Backups, Good Vibes, Frame Filling, Router Jig Plans

Quarterly backups on the 31st, a day early as it was the Good Vibrations event in Congleton Library on the 1st. Then traced over the underdrawing for 'The Empty House'.

A nice Good Vibrations day yesterday, and a relaxing visit to Sandbach for some supplies on the way back. These 4-weekly events are our social breaks, my only day off, although I aim to practice performance skills, of course. No activity is, or should ever be, a rest. While alive and able, we must do.

Today, slowly trying to enter painting mode, trying to inspire enthusiasm. I launched The Myth Of Sisyphus pre-sale on Bandcamp, a week before the album is released. I started work tidying up four solid wood frames which have a few dents and blemishes. I tidied up these with a little chalk, water, and acrylic paint to made a very sandable filler, which does the job well. I aim to spray these black, although I feel I'm distracting myself a little with excessive focus on frames.

More distractions too as I developed plans for a 2.4M long router jig to allow me to cut rebates, or make other router cuts in long lengths of wood. This is a simple design: two long L tracks of wood, like a slot, to hold the router. Beneath, a few slats, like the planks in a railway track, which will hold to wood to cut. This will be held by M6 bolts from the side. Not difficult to make, but at 2.4M and about 20cm wide, it might be difficult to store. This, however, will allow me to cut rebates into any length of solid wood, or even apply bevels or other decoration to the outside with fancy router bits. With my other skills of applying gesso and angle cutting, this seems like a logical step to making better frames, although I do now enjoy finding old existing frames.

Plus I need to remember that the paintings, not the frames, are the important thing. Why do new ideas feel exciting and alluring, and old, if superior skills seem less attractive?

I've drawn out a little idea today too called 'Hope and Death', an old design from Scrapbook #3.

Gilding, Colour Studies, First Day Of Painting 2026

Two days of painting preparation. More re-gilding of the frames yesterday. This helped, but the bevelled inner frame still looks inadequate. It may be easier to cut a new one.

Painted two colour studies, for 'Love and Fragility' and 'The Empty House' - both paintings were inspired by the film I'm Your Man.

Today, my first day of painting, on a work called 'Don't Talk To Me About Love'. I didn't paint a study for this small work, partly because I knew it would only take a few hours to paint the whole thing. As a result, however, the colours were unexpected. I instinctively seem to have a grey-yellow-brown on buff image of paintings in my mind. The results were very different to that. The painting, a relatively old idea, has dagger-crucifixes and features a vocal and hurt, and sad/reflective faces on a Janus-like monolith.

Frame Gilding, Empty House Studies, Art Preparation

A busy day but not as efficient as I'd like. Am moving towards painting mode.

Started the day by gilding the inner edge of two frames with imitation gold leaf. Horrible stuff, too shiny, too yellow, too creased and sharp edged, crackly. I'll bin this and try to find transfer leaf (vowing never to use loose leaf) and a better tone. Ordered £75 of new canvas boards.

Then photographed and printed the new underdrawing to 'The Empty House', which I worked on with occasional changes until late last night. These little tweaks can really help, but there's always a moment when we must let go. It's impossible to say if a painting will work, be good or bad, until it's painted, even then, it's impossible to know, it might take years before the realisation of mastery, or lack thereof, hits. So, the best course is not worry too much, not waste too much time thinking like Leonardo da Vinci; just do, and move on, hoping and aiming to improve over time.

Completed a tone study. I now prefer to make two studies for each painting, a tone study in pencil (most useful) and a colour study in oil on cardboard. Both together help eliminate uncertainty.

There are downsides though. This can eliminate spontaneity, some of my best paintings were painted in one go without planning (eg. the Toad) and there is the 'first look effect'. In music I find that the first time I hear a piece of classical music, eg. my Beethoven symphonies, that first recording is my favourite, the archetype, all others inferior. If I listen to an album that's been remastered, the first version I hear is, again, the best. This can be true in painting. These studies can, sadly, sometimes be a best version that the actual painting fails to live up to. For these reasons, a study must deliberately be unfinished in some way.

Prepared the canvas for this, and printed the drawing for 'Don't Talk To Me About Love', which I now intend to be 22cm wide, small.

My audiobook How to Organise Your Computer Files was also approved today.

The official start of summer tomorrow as the clock go forwards. Time is short. Life is short. I must remember this and paint as much as I can while I can. Owards we charge.

The Empty House Begins

Work today on a painting called 'The Empty House'. Here's the idea sketch:

First step is to decide on a size, then draw up the full sized version. I thought that a model for lighting might help, so spent a few hours making a model from cardboard, then skinned with air-dried clay. This 'terracotta' clay (it's more like traffic police orange to me) was a gift, I'd normally use white, and normally DAS. This one was too liquid and sticky, and stainy. Awful to use, but I thought this would be a good job for it, to use it up!

Did lots of image collection too, references of textures and objects, all visual materials to set a mood; classical paintings, lightings and textures. Each of these source pieces will seep into the work as I paint it.

Art Working, Love And Fragility In The Age Of Perfection

Out first thing, bought two more cans of spray paint. Then, some gold spraying, finalised a couple of frames which are now dry, then made a short animation of the blue girl, 'A Book With A History', for social media.

Then, sized and sorted out some ideas for paintings. So many, all seem good enough. Many ideas span many years, but this can prove their power. A good idea should last decades, it should be universal and always relevant. I feel overwhelmed and tired, so many ideas and I want to do them all! Most of the ideas are medium sized, 40 or 50 long side. I've marked and sized the papers for these, and scaled the tiny idea sketch drawings to match., The next step is to trace these.

One other job was some underdrawing changes to the last of last year's paintings, 'Love And Fragility In The Age Of Perfection'. The panel was also a little too large too, so I trimmed this down. This was developed for one of the frames I've worked on today.

Another thing I'd like to do is print out some paintings as postcard sized image for people to take away. I did this years ago. Now I have a space to show work, it seems like a good idea and most of the newer work (last 8 years) isn't printed in this way. Of course, these prints will take at least a day, maybe a few, just to prepare, size etc. Most creative work for most artists is promotion of the latest thing, not creation or new things, this plus filing or record keeping of even older work. It's amazing that any individual can manage the workload.

Painting Season 2026

Music is done, time to charge into painting. It normally takes me a day or two to change modes. I started today by updating Argus, as the logical thought of programming can help calm me before a change of direction. Annoyingly, Windows Defender flagged the Steam-wrapped exe as a virus, this is the first false-positive I've encountered on this PC. It meant submitting the file to Microsoft (in hope) and telling my computer at least to accept it.

After this, I decided to look at the frames I've got and those bought over the last year or two. It can be hard to find an incentive to create art without a deadline, competition or opportunity. This year, unlike any, I now have the support of a loving gallery with the Oil Art Advisory, with Zoe and Max, who despite their differing personalities I seem to feel an affinity with both. So, I have the opportunity to show my works - this is a massive, transformative help for my art. Still, I work best with ambitious goals and tight limits, so I've decided, this year, to aim to paint something for each of the new frames I have in stock. This amounts to 10 paintings from tiny to huge.

Today I spray painted several frames, and the results were brilliant, much better than I'd hoped. The all-gold or light frames look so much better darker. I think now, my most favourite frame stkle is black (or very dark brown, warm black) with an inner border, inner bevel, of gold.

The frame top left there was gaudy flat gold, but when the inner part was masked and the outer sprayed lightly, the result is amazing. The elaborate resin cast frame in the foreground was actually a sort of cream with brown highlights. Again, it looks fantastic in black/dark brown.

Other frames were worked on. The dusty 'velvet' frame had a flaky insert in faded gold. I've sprayed this with thin black to great effect. I'll add gold leaf at some point soon (as I will to that resin frame above).

I also attended to the oak Victorian frame. This had a gold leafed beading insert which was so loose that it had fallen apart. I've since glued it. I was in two minds about the frame, whether to leave it in its dusty and aged state, or try to make it look new again, and whether to make this central beading removable, or replace it, or refurbish it. In the end I re-stained the frame in dark brown, so the frame looks like new again, and I firmly glued in the insert without updating its gilding. It was, when I took it apart, held in place with some wooden wedges which were newer than the frame (and the watercolour in it was c. 1950s, so that shows the age of this). I thought of using Polymorph plastic to create firmer wedges, knowing that Polymorph is not adhesive, and is reversable, so I did this, but the results were messy, and still rickety due to that lack of adhesion. I decided, in the end, to use hot melt glue, to permanently fix the beading into the frame. This is better than epoxy clay (which I used for the Tiger Moving Nowhere frame), but it looks a little messy and sad compared to the majesty of the old wood. The frame is a little bent, the insert was very bent, so perhaps this extreme plastic work will, at least, add a lot of needed stability.

A glance at my ideas books has already liberated several ideas, plus those left in progress from last year. I have quickly assigned ideas to frames. One called 'All The Broken Hearted' for that elaborate frame. 'The Empty House' for a plan wood frame which will now be black and gold. I've assigned one called 'Don't Talk To Me About Love' to the Tudor-looking Spanish oak frame

Whether the frame is Tudor or Spanish is anyone's guess, but it looks that way to me (oak and old it certainly is). The idea, as you can see, is rather simple however. Again, there's a Catholic-ness in there.

WANL Videos Complete

Another full day, which began by dropping off paintings to Nantwich Museum for the open. Delivery is from 10:00 to 16:00 over 4 days and we (quite typically) arrived at 09:58 on the first day.

After that, charged into more video work. I had a few changes to make, but much of the long day was spent rendering and processing the video data. Each video takes about twice as long to render as to play, then about the same to convert from raw to mp4. I needed to convert some videos three times: once with subtitles, once without, and one in lower quality for archiving, and that assumes that a first version has no problems or things to change. Ultimately it took until 16:30 to complete the final drafts of the 6 videos, at which point I could start work on the Spotify Canvases.

It's now 20:00 and all videos are complete and uploaded. The full album project is now complete.

At times during the day, while waiting for FFMpeg to chug through the video data, I worked on some framing. I changed the glass on the 'Home Life' painting, and tidied up two other frames, including one I bought today in Nantwich.

War And Nuclear Love Videos

Spent much of yesterday on art admin regarding the six paintings I took to the Oil Art Advisory. Today I reflected on the fact that my painting prices have about doubled in the past 5 years, that they had doubled in the 5 years before that, and that they're probably 10 times higher than when I first started to exhibit 15 years ago. Part of this is due to greater professionalism; more spent on more costs for higher quality work, more people in a bigger chain who take more of a cut. Another of yesterday's jobs was tidying up a very old and flaky frame bought with a glass painting intact and (oddly) a velvet lining, taking it apart for future use.

Today, charged into making videos for War And Nuclear Love. The results are all very colourful and glowing, like an electric pinball machine. The fundamental idea uses horizontal red lines and yellow stars which move and dance to different instruments. What was a red 'slice' on the cover art became blue. The result evokes an American flag, which it perfect for 'Radioactive' and the title track.

I took a video of myself for 'War and Nuclear Love', using a mask to add it to the animation, and did something similar for the 'Post-Apocalyptic Playground'. This track is perhaps little too bright, for the tune which is, in my mind, rather grey and dreary in mood, like The Night of the Living Dead. 'After The Battle' uses out-takes and clips from Jabberwocky. It's now 20:30 and I've just finished the first drafts. I expect that I'll spend all day making little changes and finalising the Spotify Canvases. These must be as good as I can make them given my time budget.

I've also posted my first animation to TikTok and will start doing this regularly, as I do with paintings on BlueSky.

War And Nuclear Love Finalised, Poetry Night, Knutsford

Two full days. Finalised all album admin yesterday; War And Nuclear Love is now scheduled for release on 3 July 2026. Then started work on some full frame videos, incorporating the subtitles. This stage is complete.

In the evening attended the Creative Crewe Poetry Night. Carol is always a joy to meet and full of enthusiasm. If the aim of a performance evening is excitement, showmanship, and pzazz, this had none - it was as dreary as a Catholic funeral, and about half of the poems were poor simple rhymes by simple folk. No amplification meant that the poets were too quiet, many completely inaudible. Despite this, several of the poems and performances were very good. One highlight was a prose poem by Iain Chalmers who with great brilliance described a vehicle crash of books, with each genre of book; limericks, 'chic lit', medical encyclopediae; affecting the description of the event. The inability to hear the poems, and the incredible slowness and poor organisation of the night, which overran by 30 minutes, were downsides, but the warm company and meeting friends there a highlight, and perhaps this is the main reason for such events anyway.

Today, a visit to the Oil Art Advisory, which is always a joy. Delivered 6 paintings to them and collected 4 frames to fill with something.

I also realised that my 'Monsters of Spring' painting on BlueSky was flagged as a sexually explicit image, and hid it, which I found annoying. Some slight 'nudity' of a computer model true. Such labels may harm my reputation on there, I'd have happily deleted the image instantly if I'd have noticed this label. I'll avoid any hints of nudity from now on.

One small job today, updated Prometheus to allow floating point beats-per-minute. Of course the program uses floating point speed internally anyway. There are occasions when this setting may be useful, for example if you need to half the tempo of a song which is 135 BPM. This change was pretty simple to implement but isn't fully tested.

WANL Album Admin

A satisfying and full day of work on War And Nuclear Love. First assembled the sheet music for publication and finalised the lyrics booklets, then made a slight lyric change. Some words in the title track were:

I take my fuse
And masturbate as I muse on

I changed this to:

I take my fuse
And I think of God as I muse on

The word 'masturbate' would label the song, and therefore album, as 'explicit' and would limit the scope of its release, which was something of a factor in my deciding to change it, but the primary reason is that the word was a distraction in the song, overly strong. The more subtle (yet still implied) second version is a better lyric.

This change meant re-singing that line, which I did today, and invisibly blended it with the older take. With this, the music was complete. The album was listed in draft on Bandcamp, sent for release, and updated on my website. Also added more artwork pages, so now the iTunes booklet will include the lyrics. Filed and deleted the temporary files, the vocal recordings etc., created the MP3 stub files (if I ever need MP3 versions), proofed the music, burned an archive CD, and lots of other important admin work.

Most of the album is now complete, but I still need to create Spotify Canvas animations, full screen animations for YouTube, and register the music with more music authorities. I can do that when the release is approved.

This evening, made some preparations and announcements for the sale on Steam.

War And Nuclear Love Work

Final day of sheet music for War And Nuclear Love. At times I think that nobody will ever play any of this, and that my days, week, years of working on this tedious and difficult sheet music is pointless - but this is not certainly true; there are two main reasons. First, that nobody else bothers, and second, that data integrity has been shown to be an important driver of success and civilisation. I file and record my work in great details because such work is part of the purpose of life itself. Either way, if I'm ever to play these live I really find this useful, so a couple of days work to transcribe an album isn't so bad. I managed to transcribe the complex guitar parts in 'After The Battle' today, and the music for 'Post-Apocalyptic Playground'.

By 3pm the draft scores were complete, but I had lots more art to create, at least for the booklet and iTunes booklet, so I really needed to make a few more full CD booklet pages, and a CD surface while I'm at it, although there are no plans for a CD at the moment.

One other job today was launch the Goodreads Giveaway for The Many Beautiful Worlds of Death. This week-long promotion give away a free copy of the Kindle book, with kind requests for a review from the winners of this lottery.

War ANL Sheet Music Day 1

A full day working on the sheet music for War And Nuclear Love. Started with the more difficult tracks, first 'Radioactive', then 'Remembering Hans Blix', which required hand transcription, then the long songs 'Written on Rice', and the title track. More tomorrow.

More War ANL

A full day and evening of work on War And Nuclear Love. The tracks needed some essential final changes to the start and end parts of each track. This morning I extended the start to the title track to blend it with the prior 'Radioactive'. This won't be the case on the stream version though, only a future (and perhaps unlikely) CD version.

I then went into the garden and recorded the old rusty luggage trolley, which can fold out. Flexing this resulted in a suitably creepy metal swing sound, perfect for the zombie park on Post-Apocalyptic Playground. Then, finally recorded the vocals for the title track. I've changed some of the words. Verse 2 now reads:

Look at the switches
The flashing lights
There's something of a Christmas morning here

Handsome generals
Encourage me to play
And I've nothing better to do today

I pray and hide
God tells me he's on the side of

War and nuclear love etc.

Added the new vocals to the song this afternoon, and added some harmonies for the 3rd lines of these verses (though not the Christmas line, this sounds better without the harmony, it's more conversational than musical). The final step was the 'solo' for this song, which I'd forgotten about. I grabbed the guitar and spent an hour experimenting. Playing chords to the part seemed to sound better somehow, but nothing was quite right. I took a break at 3pm, then decided to record power chords for the final chorus (easy to play now the key is up, simply E-min, C-Maj, A-Maj, E-Maj/Emin). Then played a simple lead solo in an instant for the proper solo part. Thus, the song is complete.

I've noticed that many tracks have a slight tendency to be stronger on the left, perhaps due to my preference for that ear. I've adjusted Post-Apocalypse to match.

Overall, I'm happy with this EP, particularly the new tracks. My singing and production skills have never been better, nor has my keyboard and guitar playing, not that I've ever been much of a guitar player. So, this is a good time to at least create some music, and I am keen to get that old song of 'Written on Rice' out there; and the war theme seems to be culturally appropriate...

Some slight cover changes:

Tomorrow I'll charge into the sheet music, this may take two days.

War And Nuclear Love Progress, Purpose of Music

A busy 24 hours working on the new album. Last night I had to decide whether to work on a full album, or an EP. An EP would mean 6 tracks or fewer, but there is little time for an album; that would probably take up at least another full month and I'm already getting bored with the project. My key motivation was to produce something to enhance and match the Radioactive theme and 'Written on Rice', good tracks that are ageing away and ready and ripe for release. The 6 track limit has been reached, so I decided to call it an EP, and ditch the possible additional tracks. One called 'Einstein', which was in the earliest of stages is now filed, along with a heavily electronic pop song currently called 'Every Day and a Day', which is largely complete apart from the lyrics. The gentle track called 'At the End of Life There's Hope' is again filed away for the future.

It also means there will be no room for the original mix of Radioactive from the game itself. The version on here is a new recording made in Prometheus rather than Noise Station. The bass and high squeals are a little more under control in the new recording.

So the track list will be:

1. Radioactive
2. War and Nuclear Love
3. After the Battle
4. Post-Apocalyptic Playground
5. Remembering Hans Blix
6. Written on Rice

This morning, extended the Hans Blix song, and have extended the intro to 'After the Battle' too, then got to work on the cover art, starting with new photographs. The result looks rather like that Albrecht Durer painting, quite unintentionally.

I need to finalise the music as soon as possible, but 'War and Nuclear Love' still needs the final vocals. I'll have to work on the sheet music and Spotify Canvases as quickly as possible, all to be ready for my self-imposed deadline of next Saturday. It won't be released for some months though, until after The Myth Of Sisyphus has run its course, so I can defer this work.

In other news I've sold my first works at the Oil Art Advisory, and have sold my first copy of the new Many Beautiful Worlds of Death audiobook, both sales welcome and needed. My music remains an obscure backwater in my oeuvre, but this is the case for most artists today. This won't stop me trying my best in this artform (though I will of course continue to do my best in painting and writing too, and soon).

I was asked on Bluesky what I aimed to achieve with my music - a pertinent question, and not something I'd even considered. Art is, for me, a goal in itself, so my key aim is to represent something meaningful, do my creative best, that which is a bit better and hopefully a bit different from what has come before. My goals can't be social, as my music is largely, but not wholly, ignored by the world and I'm unlikely to ever to receive money or recognition, but I know that this was often the case for many living artists of the past. There are many obscure but brilliant artists that I wish had made more art while they could. I don't want to be like them, so while I have health, eyes, ears, it is something of a duty for me to create at my best.

War And Nuclear Love Vocals

Okay, two slow slow, but progressive days working on the War And Nuclear Love album. Found space to record vocals for 4 tracks yesterday. This always takes a bit longer for new tracks compared to re-recording vocals for older songs, as no matter how much is planned there's always a degree of experimenting with layers.

'After The Battle', and 'Rememebering Hans Blix' are pretty much complete.

I found 'Post Apocalyptic Playground' a little annoying as it hovers around E3 to A3, rather low for my range. In mood, and range, it's a bit like 'The Cat Phone Song', so I reminded myself of this. It also has elements of Bing Crosby's range, so I listened to some Bing while I thought about how to do it. An amusing and light tone is just right for this ironic song, which on the face of it is a romantic walk through the park, but the title and the somewhat zombie-like thumped piano solo taints it all with something darker. After recording these simple vocals, they seem perfect. I've added a harmony layer for the chorus, and some fill vocals here and there.

The vocals for 'War and Nuclear Love' are more complex to work on. I was reminded today just how hugely Jean-Michel Jarre's album structures loom large over my music. He tended to start with quiet, or at least long intro tracks, then at some point added one 'single', a highly melodic tune which seemed to be designed exactly as a single release, then obscure ones which were almost an opposite. I seem to have one pop-type, single-type, hit-type song, which leads into others which have less of that feel. Here, the single is 'War and Nuclear Love'. In production terms it reminds me of 'We Built This City' by Starship from 1985. The backing is very synthetic, and the verses are spartan apart from a bass and pumping synth stabs. My track is loaded with more energy. It may be finished with these first take vocals, but I'm unsure. They certainly sound thin and lonely compared to the fat and rich vocals in the Starship song, yet, mine seem to say enough. I've layered up the chorus with harmonies, and a planned vocoder.

Anyway, the Hans Blix song in particular seems to bend this album towards the present, so I feel I must rush to finish it, though I constantly wonder why I push myself so hard for this.

Onwards we charge like a rocket!

After The Battle

A day of work on this war music. At times I'm unsure why I'm doing it, perhaps over-pushing to work on this music despite the lack of a muse. The key factor is that it must be sufficiently new, sufficiently different from before, and ideally a tiny bit better too. My motivation, the original reason I started any of it was that the Radioactive theme (titled 'Radiation' since I wrote it in 2001) and the old song 'Written on Rice' are complete and worthy of a proper release, so I needed to make something to unify the release.

Yet, I underestimate the work of such an endeavour. I'm now keen to get all of this music done as quickly as possible, but with that caveat of originality or quality. Both are difficult.

Much of today, like yesterday, was spent on 'After The Battle'. Today I added a new synth guitar solo, this time recording the MIDI - I needed to redo this as yesterday's part only covered the first half. This gives the song much more feeling. Then I added some synth strings, here influenced by 'Running Up That Hill', as my constant chords and incessant beat made me think that song and I was interested in how energy, drama, contrast can be added by backing which seems to be mellow and regular. Kate's music is always more dramatic in my head than the plain written music seems. Here are my words so far:

After The Battle

The ash of my parents
Flavours the breeze
Over the dawn of winter's weeds

The guilt of the damage
Shakes me cold
The moon, cruel and new
Says goodbye to the old

To whom now can my love and loss be told?

Fragments of people
Seeking out fire
Can any stranger see my mood?

Life goes on
Says the sun
And the moss, four billion years
But little is lost

Unsure of it all at the moment. I must keep working and doing my best, by analysis. What does it need? More drama, more imagery, more emotion, stronger everything. Analysis analysis; but as I keep saying, time is short. I should be making things of depth and power, of brilliance. Can I do this here? I'm keen, by April, to move towards new visual art.

War Music, CDA Digialbums

Slow, slow day, but one at least focused on attacking music. I've written a one minute sequence called 'After The Battle' which is little more than an A-minor trawl, the aim that it was like an ending of the 'Radiation' tune, now tagged onto the end of 'Love and Nuclear War'. This evening I've added a purely synthetic electric guitar too it, which sounds much better than any other synth guitar I've added so far. I recorded this live, so don't have the MIDI. I always regret this, but it is much faster to add it to the song this way.

I digress. The tune sounds rather like a Flatspace or Taskforce tune.

In the first half of the day I thought about an old Amiga tune I wrote in around 1991 called 'Metropolis'. I didn't seem to have the mod file, so I looked online and found a few of my old Amiga modules, which I thought I'd lost forever. I did have most of them on virtual Amiga (dms) discs, but there were certainly a few mods there that I didn't have, including a sort of cover version of 'Wanted' by The Dooleys, which I have absolutely NO memory of ever writing - but it sounds like one of mine, and that (rare) song is one of my favourites, so it is something I may well have written.

My music back then was crude to say the least, poor in quality by even by the audio standards of the Amiga. This was literally the first music I ever wrote. I loved it, it was a hugely exciting discovery that I could actually create music. I had a very limited range of samples for instruments and percussion. My later music, by the mid-90s was better. These early tunes were often melodic, but with very little expression or delicacy, often a blasted out melody next to a blasted out bass line and blasted out drums, but a few of those tunes, even today, stick in my mind, like 'Metropolis', and 'Starfoce Nova'...

Reviews of the time were extraordinarily kind:

I made several CDA 'Digialbums'. They were not really Amiga demos, but like an album of mod files on on disc. Alas, at least 4 of these albums (and all of the music) are lost, almost certainly forever. Here's a complete list:

These exist online:

Reflections: Reflections, Warz, Overlord, Robot Revolution, Lightforce, Metropolis, Latham
Limelight: Digitania, Isometrica, The Visitor, Dictator, Chopsticks Revenge, Genesis
Hypnosis Cycledemo: Hypnosis, Hypnosis 2

These are lost and exist only in my memory:

Iris: Starforce Nova, Samba, Megalomania Pt II, Roborock, Imp, Dance of the Hydra
Tesselations: Dreamscape, Revelation, Atomic Solutions, Cyclotron, Speed Metal, Echoes I, Echoes II
Phase IV: Phase IV, Total Recoil, The Matrix, Dreamscape, Contours, Megalomania Pt I, Technorock
After the Battle: Theme from Crustacea, Quadrillion, Solaris, RXD-PIN, Aquanaut, M+S, Cybernaut

Plus Xmas Demo, which wasn't a CDA Digialbum but a techno version of jingle bells with a house picture which flashed the windows to the beat, and Nemesis Games Music which I don't think was a Digialbum either but included Cosmic Fantasy, Nemesis, Shadows Intro.

Interestingly Iris was reviewed in CU Amiga magazine, but doesn't seem to have ever been distributed by any PD library.

Hans Blix Work

More work on 'Hans Blix' today. The initial piano backing was one take to sing to, but I decided to split this into two separate parts for verse and chorus, to give me more control over the pause between, and record a new intro. Work on all of this album seems somehow tight. I must work harder to add more imagery, more drama and power, more generally.

I feel weary, full of anxiety aches and in need of a reset and refocus. My approximate plan is to work on this music until the 21st, then charge into painting. The music work, in my plan, is supposed to be gentle, restful, pleasurable; a break - but it hasn't been any of that so far and probably won't be. I find doing less far more stressful than being frantically busy. It is as though I have a fixed minimum of energy, which is always a vast amount, and any not channelled into work jumps into my body to create mischief.

Onwards I must move, forwards. The heavy rock has been waiting while I've stared at the sun, while I've railed at the gods, eyes wide, long white beard flailing. Now, we must try with care, love and strategic aim, to roll back to our assigned track.

Tooth Problems Persist, Hans Blix

My tooth problems persist, though differently. On Saturday my tooth became loose and wobbled for a day before, today, settling in a new position, where it aches slightly.

While trying to forget all of this annoyance, a generally good day today. Started by trying to get an phone-only app to run on PC with an emulator, but it was tricky to set up, so I gave up. I helped fix the carpet downstairs and ordered a cover for the greenhouse for my mother.

Then, worked on the music for a new song called 'Remembering Hans Blix', for the nuclear album, now to be called War And Nuclear Love (note that I capitalise all first letters of album titles). Music for 'Post-Apocalyptic Playground' is just about done too. Much done today.

Here are the words to Blix:

Remembering Hans Blix

Hands up if you remember Hans Blix
Wonder if he is still around in twenty twenty six
We really need to find him and his magic box of tricks
We've many invisible weapon problems he can fix

We need Hans
We need Hans
We need Hans
We need Hans

War And Nuclear Love

Weary today, but a first day of work on music, on being originally creative, in a while. Finalised the production of 'War and Nuclear Love'. The song is part of this war-themed album, themed because it's being developed to complement the Radioactive theme. The music is similar to that, very analogue-based electro-pop, in the mould of Yazoo or Erasure. Worked on a second song called Post-Apocalyptic Playground too. Here are the WANL words so far:

War and Nuclear Love

Here in my bunker
Surrounded by toys
Dreaming of the people I could conquer

Long blonde robots
Keep telling me I'm great
I'm feeling in the mood to procreate

I take my fuse
And masturbate as I muse on

War and nuclear love
War and nuclear love
War and nuclear love
War and nuclear
War and nuclear
War and nuclear love
War and nuclear love
War and nuclear love
War and nuclear love

There's something in my shattered past
That gives me a need to dominate
And if I can't attract a mate
I'll seek a rubber weakling and inflate

Look at the buttons
Awaiting a push
There's something of a Christmas morning here

Handsome generals
Encourage me to play
And I've nothing better to do today

I pray to God, grip my fuse
And he tells me that he approves of

War and nuclear love
War and nuclear love
War and nuclear love
War and nuclear
War and nuclear
War and nuclear love
War and nuclear love
War and nuclear love
War and nuclear love

Phantoms

A night of strange flowing face pains growing to a horrible peak, then falling away over the course of 8 hours. Now, this has been going on for some days, since Tuesday, and this morning I had a slight temperature of 37.7 degrees too. Yet, I suddenly became logical and sceptical, my personality instantly flipped. Pains only at night are more likely to be psychological, as diseases happen day and night; though of course we are distracted in the day, so at night all bodily senses are amplified.

I began to see everything in new terms. I'd not heard of Trigeminal Neuralgia until the doctor mentioned it, but much later realised that I had, having read a BBC News article about it only about a week earlier, not consciously noting the name. What if I'd unconsciously created the disease and it's symptoms for one day, and what if the pain had vanished because of the idea of taking pain medication? And the dangerous side effects appeared exactly because I was warned that they might?

The intense agony triggered by even a drop of warm liquid on Thursday was real, that's for certain, yet, the day before my mouth had been numbed by dental anaesthetic, so perhaps they became hyper-sensitive as a counter reaction. Since reading about TN, I've avoided eating with that side of my face or teeth, but perhaps I don't need to. Perhaps this disease was only there on Thursday?

My throat hurts, is this tension caused by gulping strangely, or something else? Have I raised my temperature to 37.7 by the power of will? I'm sure this can happen.

For the moment, art should be my focus. The external.

More Trigeminal Neuralgia, NHS Matters, and War ANL

Pain free yesterday due to the very effective Carbamazepine, but woke last night with a sweat and a raised, though not technically feverish, temperature, ranging from 36.2 to 37.3 degrees and feeling not-quite-well. Today, the glands in my throat on both sides are a little swollen and sensitive, swallowing notably a little painful.

Today I read that Trigeminal Neuralgia is more commonly missed than diagnosed by dentists; often the first point of call for sufferers. Perhaps dental surgeries need informational posters or leaflets about this.

In the late morning, I went to Crewe Market Hall with Deb where she was due to read some of her poems for tomorrow's International Women's Day. After that, I worked on the 'War and Nuclear Love' song for some more time. It's a very complex production, and for me will remind me of Duran Duran's 'Ordinary World'. Not necessarily because the song it musically related, but I watched a Rick Beato YouTube video about it and marvelled at the strange chords, which Duran Duran excel at.

Trigeminal Neuralgia

Well, I changed my mind and decided to see a doctor. I've been diagnosed with suspected Trigeminal Neuralgia, and after taking a look at the symptoms this matches how I feel. My teeth are so sensitive that even one drop of warm tea will explode with agony across my face. Rather than the short attacks common to many sufferers, my pain seems to last for longer periods, even hours. It ebbs and flows like a ghost, liquid pain, none to mild to severe and away.

The diagnosis is devastating, I'm coming to terms with it, but it gives me some useful clues. I don't need to worry about muscle relaxation, or tooth problems, or spasms from vocal muscles or saliva glands. The condition can vary per person and may go away, the excellent doctor said it would pass. It can even vanish completely, although on average it seems it gets worse over time. In retrospect, this is the pain (though far milder) I felt in November and December when first experiencing what I thought were tooth problems. It reappeared again last month, but only since Tuesday evening was the pain overwhelming.

I have been prescribed some pain relief medication. I have a few treatment ideas myself. For years I've been taking daily choline, 100mg. I've also recently started to take some lithium orotate after a positive study concerning memory improvement and the attenuation of neurological deterioration. Both supplements are useful as they assist myelin, this small dose of choline may have delayed the disease. More choline and more lithium is one treatment which may help with myelin healing (I expect this takes many months, nerves heal very slowly), if this works at all. These supplements are, at least, relatively harmless - this should always be the first question with an experimental supplement. If my teeth are the only point of sensitivity, perhaps a shield over them will stop it - does such a thing exist? I can drink with straws, now knowing that trying to 'train' my nerves to accept normal eating is probably futile - although it seems that after the initial agony, it does become possible to eat, so perhaps there are some elements of training.

I expect this will obsess me for a few days but now, at this moment, there is no pain and I've felt only dull pain since 2pm, so perhaps the medication is working.

Onwards.

War and Nuclear Love, and the Agony

Did some work on a song yesterday called 'War and Nuclear Love'. It's amazing that in a song almost any chord will do, so I'm trying to push out more boats here and let loose more.

The day, alas, was been dominated by my agonising jaw pain, spasms of some sort. Almost any food, even drinks slightly warm, slightly cold, that touch the senstive teeth at the far right side of my mouth starts a cascade of agony like a flow of some painful liquid. The pain can also grow from nothing without cause, jangling my front teeth, then running along right gums up and down, extending to ear, down to my Adam's apple; ebbing and flowing in intensity. Last night, the pain swelled and grew from about 8pm to 10pm and was the most agonising pain I've ever experienced. I capitulated and took some ibuprofen, which attenuated it completely for sleeping (such relief, despite the shivering terror of it returning).

I'm unsure of the cause. This started on Tuesday night. I'd been reading audiobooks for many hours for about two weeks, so perhaps there are some effects there (unusually high levels of vocal muscle use, salivation changes). I doubt this. Perhaps more likely is the long running teeth problems, which led me to avoid using the right side of my mouth. Now those teeth are largely fine, and have been ground a little to change my bite. This change perhaps, and aiming to once again chew with the right side more, I suspect is messing around with the jaw alignment. I can't be sure though. The pain is so intense, and triggered by a nerve reception that it may be a nerve problem. If it were only muscular, why is it triggered, as it certainly is, by the sensitive tooth?

Anyway, I've decided to avoid doctors for now while I experiment with jaw exercises and strategies. The pain is at times intolerable to the extent of wanting to kill myself to avoid it (that bad), but perhaps this is a release of months of tension, or something along the lines of an adjustment to my life-long jaw alignment which will normalise in a few days. Perhaps there is hope.

Agony and Wars

A good day at the Good Vibrations event yesterday but the last couple of days and nights have been dominated by agonising jaw and gum pain, caused by muscle spasms and cramps. What I'd considered tooth sensitivity for the last few months was unusually painful because of this. In such attacks my jaw and gums flow with awful spasm pain which can endure for hours without respite. The tension seems to spread from or to my throat too, so perhaps it is related to the (highly unusual) many hours of speaking I've recently been doing during audiobook recording. The pain feels like being held hostage by a gaggle of spectral ant-torturers, as the pain glides and flows like water. Pushed by massage from one area to flow to another in a never-ending spiral.

A drink of alcohol causes a similar painful spasm, normally just one that tends to last a few seconds. Now, I find that eating or drinking anything seems to trigger this, in particular an over-reaction by the sensitive tooth, and that it can last hours.

The upside is that this finally resolves the mystery of months of mouth pain, and with hope this is the last gasp of these symptoms, the tangible effects of months of worry (worry mostly about this actual problem) evaporating. At least I know the very painful, but not damaging, cause.

Today and yesterday this is dominating every act. I've decided to rest today. The audiobooks are now complete. I think next I'll work a little on music, the album/EP with the (appropriate) war theme. It's difficult to create something that can even approach the enormity of this subject. The songs I'm working on seem trite and light somehow, but I must work and do my best, not over-think to the extent of a project dragging on for too long. Much of The Beatles output was trite and light, short, unstructured.

Burning Circus Audiobook Complete

Completed The Burning Circus audiobook today. Unsure what to do next. I've been sketching works for the long paused album on war, which seems chillingly appropriate.

Blake and Burning Circus Audiobooks

Two days of work on the Songs of Innocence And of Experience, and The Burning Circus audiobooks. Slight work yesterday, designing the cover art, and preparing the track names, filenames. With over 40 tracks per book, the task of typing these filenames 4 times (in different places) is quite time consuming.

Today, recorded all of the Blake poems, and processed these too, so the book is now complete. I'll work on The Burning Circus tomorrow. I've also decided to pay for a Goodreads giveaway for The Many Beautiful Worlds of Death, a first stab at some promotion for this book, which I still love and rate, yet remains largely unknown to the world.

I'll hold off submission and publication of the audiobooks for a few weeks. I'm unsure if this makes any difference, but with Steam for example, releasing lots of new things at once floods potential customers, when one new release every month tends to have more effect. This will conclude my audiobook work for now. My next writing task will be finishing (well, writing...) my book on oil painting mastery.

My teeth and mouth still ache mildly and constantly, as has been the case since December. This, and the lack of an NHS dentist, constitute the primary bane of my life at the moment.

How To Audiobook Complete

Completed the audiobook for How To Organise Your Computer Files in record time. The text boxes and footnotes presented a problem for audio, so I changed the timbre of the voice for those, making it somewhat dry and dusty like the voice of HAL in the '2001: A Space Odyssey' film. For footnotes, I added a bell sound at the appropriate time, and read the notes at the chapter end, as in the book.

I had to change the cover, as the lower part needs to be blank for overlays.

The book is less than 4 years old, but some parts are already ripe for a new edition. Back then, few USB drives could outperform a hard drive's writing speed, but now this is common. Perhaps the parts on optical media was anachronistic even in 2022, but the comments are still valid; they are, in the long term, probably more archival than solid state drives. I'll wait a week or two before doing more on this. It would be better to release these audiobooks at intervals instead of all in one lump. Much of the material will be valid and useful no matter what the year.

The fast work on this has given me confidence that I can work at a similar rate for the Blake poems, so I've decided to record The Burning Circus too, notably leaving only Deep Dark Light unread. The strange specialist books, like the Nantwich Museum Poems (which isn't my work anyway, and was only made as a limited edition accompaniment to my exhibition), the Salome book, the Marius Fate book, and the Taskforce manual aren't high priorities to revisit.

Deep Dark Light would be quite a lot of work, it has a lot of poems, and the long story of almost novella length, and it's yet to sell a copy, so for the moment I'll hold off on that, even though I think it's a good work of literature.

How To Audiobook

I've decided to charge into more audiobooks and sheet music transcription, spending the next two weeks to see how much I can manage of those four projects, the work of which is an ultimate goal anyway. Today, a first day of work on the How To Organise Your Computer Files audiobook. It presents a few challenges, as the book has a few text boxes, so I've developed a sound effect to indicate when the spoken text is read from a text box. Some of the text itself necessarily changes a little so that folder trees, for example, are described.

First job was creating those sound effects, then adapting the cover:

About 50% of the text is now read in its first draft, far faster than the much larger TMBWOD. My target is to finish it all by the end of Tuesday, anything less would be a bonus. Onwards we charge.

TMBWOD Complete, Prometheus v3.84

Completed the final small edits and proofing to The Many Beautiful Worlds of Death today, then submitted for approval.

Then updated Prometheus a notch. One tiny improvement was the track lights. Until now the top (green) light is lit when all tracks are active (as most songs will be when on the final render) and dark green when some are not, but for audiobooks, I tend to only want one o two active, just those for the current chapter, so it's useful to be sure that no others are; so a new black icon is now there when all tracks are off.

My 'Hello Earth' painting has taken off on BlueSky, a similar level to the Philosopher painting. Strange how this happens, but it is a welcome and pleasant feeling of appreciation. It's confirmed that the 12 paintings with Galleria Balmain will remain there exclusively until September or so.

I could start on new creative material, or work on more audiobooks or sheet music transcription. Next possible books, How To Organise Your Computer Files or William Blake one. Next possible albums to transcribe, Burn Of God or Remembrance Service. It's an ultimate aim to do all of that, but I'm feeling I'm not creating enough. I need to make new art.

TMBWOD Audio Production

A full day working on the production for The Many Beautiful Worlds of Death audiobook. This is the fun part, made so much easier by Prometheus! After maximising the basic recordings I apply basic dynamics, then load those waves into Prometheus to apply effects, always a high pass filter (plan voice recordings are always too bass heavy), a noise gate, and a tiny bit of reverb.

After that, special effects for the work in hand. I've applied a tinny voice filter to Arturo, the funny robot man, a reedy voice to the gramophone, a telephone effect for God, and a thinner voice for Adam, the mechanical child. For the main computer of the trans-dimensional gateway, I used the very retro sounding AnalogX speech synthesizer. I experimented with the DEC Talk synthesizer (as used by Stephen Hawking!) but that sounded too realistic!

One tricky voice was for 2me, the emotional spirit entity. I read it plain but thought that a female squeaky voice might work. Turning up the pitch sounded good enough, but not intelligible enough, so I decided to tag on a sine wave which tracked the amplitude. This seemed to work well, fitting the description of a 'smooth glass' voice.

The main song was included, and I made a small edit of music, a few notes, for the introduction.

Then it was a matter of rendering out the final files and making tiny volume adjustments so make all waves between -20 and -21dB.

All is set for proofing now. I may re-record parts if I'm particularly unhappy with elements, though this would be troublesome at the moment. The entire book is a little over 5 hours.

TMBWOD Audiobook First Draft, Complete Game Bundle

Completed the basic recording of The Many Beautiful Worlds of Death audiobook today, and started the process for the balancing and volume levels. The first chapter is, unusually, a song, so I had to sing this today too. More than a song, it's one of the most difficult songs to sing I've ever written! It ranges from G2 to A4 and changes key too, all in 8 short lines.

If I had the opportunity I would perhaps make a few changes to the text, a few. The punctuation needs some changes, as I tended to read this differently to how it was written. I spotted one or two actual mistakes, small words here and there, and there were a few moments of 'I could do better' - but on the whole I still like the book a lot. I'm still proud of it, still think it's one of the best things I've done as an artist, and it's still tragic that the world of literature is oblivious to it. Some parts, like the telephone, bed-side LED clock, and computer references place it firmly in the late 20th or early 21st century, so it's not timeless, but much of it is.

I'm in a flux of emotions. The year I wrote it, 2012, was something of an annus mirabilis for me; that book, The Love Symphony, the Richard Dadd painting and cabinet, and many great artworks as I charged from one thing to another. Can I do the same? I must try twice as hard to better myself.

The year feels special, like a year of change, and I want to push to do better things, the best things, to try to improve and learn, to strive.

Another job done today is the release of a 'complete set' bundle of my games on Steam. There are one or two games not deemed worthy of the $100 release fee; Bool, Firefly, Breakout Velocity, Outliner. There are always more I could add. I could make a better, bigger Yinyang, and could improve most of these games. Almost all of them were made in 2002, another annus mirabilis, in which I founded Bytten, Cornutopia Games, and IndieSFX; the foundations of my first period of growth.

I'll spend tomorrow working on the technical audio for TMBWOD. There are opportunities for special audio effects, but it's a big book, a huge job, perhaps not worth it. The readings did make me feel like an actor, I enjoyed some of the character voices, and inwardly laughed at others; but all are good experience. All showcase myself as an author as well as performer.

If I did more of these I would choose my next most popular books; How To Organise Your Computer Files, and the William Blake poems, which I get nothing for (despite my illustrations, Amazon consider it public domain). There are probably countless version of Blake's poems in audio form, probably read by great actors, but it would again be a showcase of my skills, and something of a legacy if I am lucky.

The Many Beautiful Worlds of Death Audiobook

Two more days of audiobook recording for The Many Beautiful Worlds of Death. I've already read as much as all of The Intangible Man book yet am only about 60% of the way through. Many chapters are 40 to 50 minutes.

My mood is stoic. Life is about the survival of the fittest. The fittest are whom? The most resilient. Fitness is not about strength or power or surging forth but informational resilience to harsh conditions.

TMBWOD Audiobook, Proto-Viral Philosopher

So many options for things I may do, and anything is really possible. Creating new things feels different than working on old things, but then working on old things often means creating new things for them! The small video talking about The Myth Of Sisyphus is fine, and perhaps it's a good idea to make a promotional video of sorts for each album, and each book, and each painting, and each game; but again, there is the question of workload vs. value. Everything is ultimately valuable, and anything justifiable if rationalised.

I've sold a couple of audiobooks, after recording two in January, and, as with having sheet music for all of my albums, having audio versions of all of my books seems like a good idea, so today I've charged into recording an audiobook for The Many Beautiful Worlds of Death. Recorded 3 of the 14 chapters today, though the first chapter is (I'm sure you know) a short song, so there are really 13 chapters.

I've been postings paintings and links to existing works almost daily on social media this year and my Philosopher painting has had an explosion in views overnight and on BlueSky today, a first such result for me which, on its own has been an inspiration and source of some happiness.

Deborah's holiday and the Olympics have both been a distraction in the past week, contributing to a lack of focus. Hopefully this focus on TMBWOD (and perhaps even afterwards, another book, perhaps Deep Dark Light, perhaps another) will acts as a stabilising force.

Wuthering Heights, Einstein

Many slow days, at the end of the sheet music project and searching for new directions. Watched the new 'Wuthering Heights' film with Deborah on Tuesday and rather liked it, though the overtly artistic moments seemed consciously arty rather than genuine somehow, so much borrowed from Lynch, and many painting references; Vermeer, Ingres, Millet, even Francis Bacon. Excessive borrowing is not influence it's struggling for identity, someone without a creative soul desperately trying to appear artistic.

I have many possibilities for direction. I've considered everything from a new album, to more sheet music, to more audiobooks, or painting plans, or even revising my old game Bool.

Today I've toyed with a music sequence for a song called 'Einstein' but, working on the music led to a melody which didn't fit good words. I wrote some better words but these have bent the melody in strange ways. Stll unsure if I should work on it at all. Too split. Too many choices.

Ironverb II

A slow day. I had hoped to do some work on promoting my music but did not even begin.

I did, instead, develop a new reverb for Prometheus, Ironverb II. The original Ironverb is a tinny plate-type reverb, with a band-pass filter and limited settings (not even bandwidth for the filter). For Ironverb II I've added an internal delay to the reverb tail, plus left/right (and front/back/up/down - Prometheus is natively 6-channel) controls over the delay gain and diffusion. Diffusion affects the hardness of the reflection, so it's useful for creating new surface-spatial types. I added a 'Preverb' parameter, which is the amount of reverb tail that isn't in the delay. When zero, this makes it only a delayed reverb, creating an odd effect. All of these settings are useful for creating lots of variety. The Dry (original sound) can be turned down if required too.

Doing this revealed a small bug in Prometheus, so that's now updated to v3.83.

This feels like a distraction. I must target something new. Life is short.

Digitisation Devaluation and Targeted Advertising

I thought about shadow libraries, archives of books shared without heed to licencing or remunerating authors or publishers, and I was struck with the idea that the reason that much of the world has lived in poverty and economic stagnation since 2009 is not the real-estate 'global financial crisis' of that time, but due to the rise of the internet. Over time, everything digital has become increasingly devalued and increasingly worthless. This applies particularly to text-based factual information. Encyclopedias were once expensive, rare, treasured, even bought as investments. Now these are nearly worthless, as is so much journalistic content. News media and quality journalism has been all but destroyed by free news found online.

The things of value are those things not digitised, or not yet digitised, but it seems that the trend for digitisation will continue, and with it the devaluation of that content. I wonder if the total amount of value online is constant? It would be interesting to know the ratios of valuable digital information (some digital items are, of course, sold) vs. cheap or free digital information. Of course, much data is also lost over time, also something of a tragedy.

The value of digital items is mostly lost by piracy or free acquisition in legal ways. There are, of course many digital items intended to be low value from the outset, such as automatically created content.

That which retains value is that which is not yet digital, or that, like paintings and sculpture, which cannot be digitised fully. AI perhaps represents a start of the digitisation of personality.

Of course, our personalities are sold as commodities by social media to construct an advertising profile, this is the business model of these giants, so they consider this information valuable. I remain unsure whether it is. I'm sceptical about targeted advertising, it seems to me something of a scam. Social media companies make money by charging others to advertise, not by selling anything of value. Those advertisers have little choice but accept the if the 'personalised advertising' theory whether it actually works or not. Before social media, ads were not personalised, yet advertising was a thriving business, and the concentrated attention of people on social media would, I posit, still drive a lot of commerce without any targeting.

MOPO Sheet Music

Completed and filed the sheet music for Music Of Poetic Objects. Each album refines the standards and look of the music, so even when this mammoth, planned multi-year plan is complete, there will be a huge amount of work to publishing it somehow - yet I've now completed 37 albums of complete sheet music, with 14 albums remaining.

Since it's re-recording, I'd not listed The End And The Beginning on Bandcamp, the old version was there, so I've prepared that today. A full day of seemingly little progress. So it goes. Onwards we march.

Music Of Poetic Objects Scores, Kate Bush, and Introspection

A few solid days working on the scores for Music Of Poetic Objects. Spending more time on some than others. The ones for The Love Reliquary began as solo piano works, but I've added the full string arrangements to the pretty second tune (The Lost Princess), and today did some scores for the Swift Triptych, which are strange in the sequence and don't really translate into or render themselves well as 'real-world' instruments. In these circumstances I wonder what the utility of scores are; but I've notated most of the important parts, while removing parts like white noise, background flames etc. I suppose a paper version is better than no record at all.

Attended a dinner and murder mystery play night last night with Deborah, a generous Christmas gift to us both. The food was excellent, though I can't eat beyond 6pm as my digestion is so slow. I wasn't interested in playing the game, solving the mystery play which took part all around is, but I enjoyed observing it all. If reading a 'whodunnit' we don't have to try and solve it, and such fictions are designed to be illogical, unrealistic, and to subvert or make fools of the reader anyway. Deborah looked beautiful, like a Mucha subject. The star of the evening for me was the venue, the stunning interiors of old Crewe Hall. It's probably the best looking historical building I've visited, more beautiful even than Chester Cathedral.

Reading about Kafka, some consider his personality schizoid. I share many, not all, of these traits; certainly so when I programmed alone until my mid-30s. This has been playing on my mind recently, but personality is, I think, too complicated to label or categorise. Everyone is unique, and can be understood only on an emotional level, like art. Rationality needs time and time to calculate, becoming more accurate over time. Emotions understand instantly, like waves in the frequency domain vs in the time domain. Like atoms as particles or waves. Rationality and emotions have this duality. Perhaps our perceptions of time have a similar relationship.

I ate late, so had indigestion and stomach agonies. I got up at 2 or 3am, and watched television while standing (in such discomfort, even sitting is too unpleasant). By chance, the BBC showed two hour-long programmes about Kate Bush, one a documentary, and a second programme of her television appearances. Both hugely inspiring (I copied her dance moves!). What a great artist she is, or was, and great beauty she is, or was. I was struck with many sadnessess, but why? Perhaps envy, and sad at my eternal obscurity and feelings that everything I do is ignored or pointless, that I and my actions are worthless; when I feel that I can create and have created some good music, paintings, books. Again I recalled the schizoid traits of these feelings of obscurity, reminding me that my perceptions may not reflect reality. My training as a small child was that the things I do are unimportant. Now I know, on an intellectual level, the importance of all things.

I'm driven and eternally busy; productive and setting higher and higher standards without being paralysed by perfectionism. These are good traits. I feel inspired, that I'm working better than ever, that my 5-year old music explorations, perhaps now at an end, can be completed, and that I can create many new artworks in music, in painting, in writing, and in every area. I wish I had ten clones so that I could do all of these things. Perhaps all of my creations will always be ignored by the world, but perhaps everyone thinks that. I've to have a 'success', yet some things I've made (and make) are more successful than others. A breakthrough may occur. Some things I've made have been good, I judge them so at least, even if all things seem to be equally disregarded. It I had a 'hit' artwork, a hit song, a hit painting, its popularity would certainly annoy me relative to the many other good things I've made, and I expect that all artists feel this.

Have spent today working on the last bits of Music Of Poetic Objects scores, including some alternative piano versions. Perhaps a week is a long time to spend on such things, but as with all art or science, its impossible to know if this time was wasted or well spent. Perhaps this week's work will be my 'Leaf by Niggle'.

One other job was the hefty admin work concerning the release of The Myth Of Sisyphus, now due for release on 10th April. I've compiled, uploaded, and filed new videos for each track. As usual, I'll do no promotion for any of it. Is this a schizoid trait? It's true that I don't revel in, or even like, showing off my wares; but I do, sometimes try to promote them - I can still love my creations even if I don't love telling others about them - and TMOS is an album I'm proud of. I think the lack of such promotion feels like time stolen from the creation of new and more exciting works, and a dire lack of resources and/or reward makes promoting no better than not promoting. At one time I paid to advertise Flatspace. After a year, I decided to stop and sales continued at the same rate for at least a year - the money was wasted, that promotion useless. I've yet to try any form of promotion that has been worth doing. Perhaps most artists do love sharing their work, do love performing, do love telling others about their work; and that this is their reward. The hugely critical responses I've experienced in the past have burned my emotional fingers in this regard, such that the opportunity instantly feels risky, fearful and prone to pain and disaster; thus promoting my works always has this barrier to overcome.

An introspective roll along this section of road. Time to rest, and complete the scores. A new week to fill dawns. Analysis is useful because it can create revelations. To the gods of art I thank and pray. Let us roll our rock on this dark road. Onwards, onwards we push.

Music Admin, More MOPO Scores

A slower day. Started with the regular Windows updates, then admin work on 'Sisyphus', adding the album to my website, then a long-planned hour or so updating the public Cornutopia Music Catalogue document. In the afternoon, tedious time working on the recent scores, and scoring out 'For Deborah', which actually sounds better in the MuseScore preview than in my poor recording.

Bedtime Stories, Wild Horses Scores

A full day scoring the 'Bedtime Stories' and 'Wild Horses' scores. The latter has 12 instruments and is perhaps my biggest orchestral score to date. Most of the work with the other pieces involved painstakingly transcribing the piano notes, but not so in 'Wild Horses' as the notes are sequenced already. The work is the adjustment of the various virtual instruments into real ones. My 4 string layers (including bass) are split into 5 here, and the splits were somewhat awkward at times. All instruments fitted, except for a few notes of the horns which were too high (I could have used trumpets or a trombone, or another type of horn perhaps).

Absolutely lots of work for this long piece. Again, I'll not score it completely, or perfectly (do I yet have that skill?). I've added several dynamics, string markings, clues, but not everything (no tempi yet), perhaps 50% of a 'finished' score. Enough should be there for a conductor to work it out even now, I can always add more later.

I'm also changing my brackets, which, until today were (incorrectly) big blocks of everything, but will now divide by instrument sections, which I think is correct. I find them a big confusing as we are all supposed to be playing together; why would anyone be doing their own thing in such a group effort as an ensemble performance? Everything is about learning, evolving. I wrote my first scores, my first transcriptions of my recorded music, in 2022, a mere 4 years ago. As of today I've completed over 450. There's still a lot to learn, a lot to proof. I think I've scored more than half of the music I've recorded and released.

Today's music will take longer to score as it was to compose originally, which is an amazing thought.

Parts of 'The Rat Rock' is left to do, but most of the first key six tunes are now complete, though, of course, that proofing and adding the other touches is a huge job too.

By Candlelight Score

Woke early and have spent all day notating the score for 'By Candlelight'. This is tricky. The 'cadenza' is a bit all over the place with surrealistic timing in parts; even in structural terms, like 3 bars to 4 bars to 5 bars in between chord changes. I've spent a considerable time simplifying a lot, while retaining the structural core which is close to the performed version. It is perhaps the neat version it could have been.

I've added chord symbols to everything, as I like to do, which gives flexibility when playing back (I like to improvise), and finally added the strings, and string strokes too. This one stats with 4 bass strings, FCFC, starting at F2, which is too low for a cello; yet this is the only use of the note, so it made more sense to raise it all, and limit the strings to two violins and a viola, which can replicate the scant string use elsewhere.

So far all scores are 'full', meaning no solo piano (or other simplified) versions yet. It's easy to make these by removing, so that can all wait.

So, 3 and a 1/3rd scores from this album done in 3 long days. I knew this would be the most challenging album. I'm also adding more than usual. The Salomé scores, for example didn't have (don't have) any of the strings or other instruments which add so much to the recording.

I spent about 90 minutes going for a brisk walk, essential for health, and a few other activities during breaks, including watching the mixed doubles curling semi-final live from the Winter Olympics. British athletes seem to have come 4th a lot in these games so far. Most British competitors are Scottish, the snowiest country. We may stand a chance at a medal if we invent ice darts or ice snooker or ice cricket.

On ice snooker, I've had an idea of how to improve and resurrect my game 'Bool'. It needs a new name, as this common name for a variable type is perhaps not ideal for active search reasons. I thought 'Obolo' might work, or 'Loob'.

Dreams Of A Fly In Amber Score

Sigh. A long and hard day of tedious note-by-note scoring of the music from Music Of Poetic Objects. These tunes were generally MIDI recordings of strangely timed piano (I never use or would want to use a metronome, the point of playing is emotional expression, not quantised death). Those recordings were then augmented with string layers and other instruments. This way of working makes these difficult to score. Some more recent scores can use a Prometheus feature that lines up the beats/bars with the notes, even when the timing is expressionistic, but these old sequences never did that.

For 'Dreams if a Fly in Amber' the tune is relatively simple (not all over the place like the 'Rat Rock' tune), but even so the timing is far from regular, so I must start by approximately lining up the notes, exporting that as a MIDI file, then tidying up the notes as a MIDI sequence, exporting again, then importing into MuseScore, then going through the tune with every other instrument, one by one, and adding the notes manually. Here there are hand bells (well, one), three layers of strings (violin/violin/viola), cello/bass, brass (a horn in a somewhat high register), and a bass drum. This covers all of the instruments used, making it a detailed score.

This has taken at least 6 solid hours today. As with many of the scores, some aspects are not notated. The dynamics are often not done, or merely hinted on (I've made an effort). Strings don't include the strokes, no pedalling and few expression clues on the piano. Yet, that can be done later when needed, and done by anyone. People manage to play Bach without such markings. This first step is the crucial one.

I started to notate 'The Rat Rock' too, but the piano there is crazy. The tune is swung and it took me some time to realise that some notes are triplets, my first notated use of such things. To actually record the tune I just improvised it all; instant and easy, but nightmarish to copy exactly. This one is recorded in correct time, that is where the bars and beats match the sheet music, so most of the instruments are easy to extract, but the piano notes need entering manually - and for 'Rat Rock', these can be a staggering explosion of notes, all over the place.

I've tackled the first, easy verse. That (and simple variations thereof) was all I played for the actual live performance in Stockport. Even with the two-and-a-third scores done so far, there is more to do, more markings and enhancements. Well, I knew this album would be hard work, and without reward apart from a sense of completeness, the life affirmation of the job of tidying which all living things aspire to.

As with all of my scoring, it is all perhaps a complete waste of time; but who can say. Last night I read Kafka's diaries from 1911, in which he writes a lot and complains about how he has no time to write, no space; yet, here I am, over a century later, reading his little diary which he would have been amazed to know is published, sold, read, and enjoyed across the world. I have few such hopes of my music ever being played, but a necessary first step is to write it out. Perhaps one day, perhaps even soon, AI could transcribe this by electronic 'ear'; but it can't now. Could an AI ever be fed a performance of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony and produce something that looked like the actual score?

Strange Angles Scoring

Slept badly and woke late. The morning was spent with tedious technical admin, then rendering the archive copies of the Sisyphus videos. I can't file the album fully until it's set up for distribution. This can wait until next week.

At 13:30, started transcribing the Strange Angles music. What a nice tune this is, as many of the Music Of Poetic Objects tunes are, but hideous to transcribe. The music shifts between 3/4 and 4/4 (the ticking rhythm is 5/4, mischievous) and my playing timing is sometimes hand independent in a way that's entirely due to expression, and impossible to score exactly. For playing, I practised a certain way, from a certain score, then loosened this up. Each hand was literally enraptured. My recording has an extra note in a bar throwing the bars out of place. Prometheus can't change beats-per-bar, it's fixed for the whole song.

I've ignored these things and represented it as neatly and correctly as I can, players may play expressively if needed. My original 'live' score from 2019 is close to the final one, but today's new score is more accurate, and includes the synth choir chords, and brass (scored for Horn in F, so reads a 5th higher in the stave), and everything else.

It's now past 19:00 and it's taken this long to score this. I knew this album would contain my most challenging pieces, so completing each track is a milestone. In occasional breaks I've watched the mixed-doubles curling at the Winter Olympics, by chance I've watched every match of this so far. I tend to record these and watch back at double speed. I noted that most human entertainments are about 75 to 120 minutes; feature films, many sports, operas etc. This time span seems to be optimal for a grand work.

TMO Sisyphus Proofing, Argus v1.64

Another full day but perhaps the last day for now of The Myth Of Sisyphus 2026, at a record pace. Today, filed the album, and updated Argus to v1.64.

For Argus, there are two settings for frame numbers, one of how many texture frames an object contains (how many images to load) and those frames as used in the animation itself. This is a bit of a pain, as both need to match. We don't want to load a frame we don't use in the animation, and we don't want frames in the animation that aren't loaded; so to solve this I've removed the first setting. Now the animation is examined when it's set up and the maximum number of frames required is noted for every object, then all are loaded.

After that, I proofed every video. Almost all needed changes. Even the audio had an error; one verse vocal came in about half a beat late. I've made the videos so that the end of one will fit to the start of the next, thus the entire album can be made into a full film, albeit a relatively simple one of animations. These could be useful for a live show, though the odds of me ever performing such a thing are close to zero.

It's almost worthy of such an event though. Watching and listening today I'm reminded very much of Pink Floyd. The Myth Of Sisyphus is like the concept album they didn't do; Dark Side of the Moon, The Wall, Wish You Were Here, and this.

I'm ready to move on, and, rather than be creative, I thought I'd charge into a week of just sheet music, to see if I can manage an album, a difficult one like Music Of Poetic Objects, then Burn Of God if there is time. I'm 3 weeks ahead in my plans for the year already, and it's long term goal to transcribe all of my albums, and it's too dark and cold to paint, so it's a good time for this.

The release date for TMOS will be 10th April 2026.

Good Vibes, RSPCA, Remaster Plans

As humans, we know that we will all die eventually. This is our only certainty. So, to wish time to go faster is the most irrational thought. It is a pseudo-suicidal self-destructive notion. We should want time to drag as slowly as possible. Once this is grasped, we start to fill that time with something useful enough not to notice its passing.

A really nice and well performed Good Vibrations event yesterday. Deb managed to read a few Fall in Green poems. After this, a trip to the RSPCA centre for a photo to conclude the Christmas Tails project. No mock-cheque (the money itself was sent on the 1st) so I held the cover artwork. The brilliant Peter Robinson came up to photograph us, and it was nice that Mike Drew joined us too. Here we are, with Lee from the Wildlife Centre:

I managed to fit a few minutes (little more) of video editing for The Myth Of Sisyphus. These are very simple looping things, and I'm torn about whether to include versions with and without subtitles, but there are occasions when either is appropriate, so I expect I'll create both.

There are four main albums that need sheet music: Music Of Poetic Objects, Burn Of God, Nightfood, and Remembrance Service. It would be nice to transcribe those this year, and I think I'll charge into one next week, not to remaster but to transcribe (I do want to remaster Nightfood at some point, this one will benefit most from my new skills).