Pat Benatar Glazing, Beam Piper, and All Things Study

Last night, a nightmare. I was gifted two brass figures of monk-like jews in cloaks, one had a wavy beard as a father, one without as a son, I initially confused the two until I saw the beard. I put them on the mantelpiece then noticed a caterpillar, striped like a yellowjacket wasp, inject one with an ovipositor, ultimately to kill the figure with a parasite. I covered the insect with a sheet of paper to trap it. The insect changed into a wasp, then a beetle, growing, and becoming stronger as I tried to trap it by folding the edges of the paper. It tried to escape but I managed to trap it by rapidly folding and crimping the paper edges. It was a large beetle, still visible through the paper, still yellow and black striped. I showed it to someone present but it burst through the paper, now a huge hornet, 25 or 50cm long. I dropped the paper and tried to step on it. It transformed into a giant millipede, still growing, and managed to crush it though it was a 30cm long and very fat. It lay broken into skeletal parts. I said that I wouldn't be surprised if it came back to life.

I awoke to a day of painting in the 24 degree heat.

First, glazing 'Sisyphus Rolling A Coconut Dangerously Towards The Critical Mass Of Pat Benatar':

Work was slow but the results were very good. Then glazing another layer on the H Beam Piper painting. The storm part in particular needed some smoothing, and there was slight damage to the top right corner due to trying to glaze last time while the surface was semi-dry. Both things were easily done and to good effect.

I was reminded of several things. First, that Dali wrote something about the coefficients of viscosity never being the same twice when painting. So true. Some hair strokes of Pat Benatar were hard and laboured, some dreamlike and perfect. The same was true of the fine details of the storm near the black hole of H Beam Piper. I was then reminded of Dali's mention of Venetian Turpentine (a resin) for these upper layers. I've not tried this. Resins seem to offer a good solution to fat over lean while increasing fluidity. My next experiment will be using Laropal A81 dissolved in Spike Lavender Oil, but this process seems to take months. In a way, this itself is a good thing. Such a resin should be difficult to dissolve to be useful.

I was also reminded today of a quote by Jan Swafford, that the reality of life for most artists is art or death. A non-artist can't understand this, there is no third option. Artists must, by compulsion, make art all of the time, perhaps because they recognise the speed of life, that we'll die anyway; why work, retire, and die, when we can make a mark or cry at the void then die with greater satisfaction?

One last painting job was a colour study for 'All Things Bright And Beautiful', a strange painting which I like more and more. It's already powerful and strange. There are various challenges in tone and colour. There's a sun, which I'd normally paint light yellow, certainly bright, but here I felt it needed to be red. I was reminded, another reminder, that in a painting, reality is relative, that what is light, dark, cold, warm in reality is different in a painting. Contrast and balance are more important.

Deserted Party Dream, Cotebrook Collection

I dreamt of a party. It was night, downstairs in a house somewhat like this one. My parents were present, and I think Deborah. I was looking at a picture frame, examining the gold and dusted edge, a finish like the God Being Killed frame from Cotebrook. Derren Brown arrived and wanted to show us a trick. I went upstairs to drop off the frame, my mind focused on my art work. I came down to find the house dark and empty, I was alone. In distress I searched and cried for the others to no avail. I'd never felt so alone.

The dream woke me for many hours, hunger was perhaps a factor as I'd eaten perhaps 1000 calories yesterday due to strange food times. Slept accidentally until late and woke feeling exhausted, a feeling which persisted for most of the day.

I followed Mark Eaton on Instagram, an oil painter and excellent portrait artist whom I met at the Cotebrook opening. Wrote a few hundred words of my painting book, and prepared the frame for the Claire Luce portrait, which I must photograph before Friday. Then, the trip to Cotebrook to collect my paintings. I felt that my work stood out but my works had no response from public votes; this is normal.

Discounting speaking with my darling Deborah, I perhaps speak more words when singing on my albums than I speak to most humans in other ways in a typical year. I've had more social, more isolated times; and recent years have been the latter. I noted that we've had no Fall in Green performances or engagements so far in 2026.

This evening, working on a painting drawing. Only after the meal at 17:30 do I have any energy.

Onwards we roll our heavy rock. Nature's sun welcomes us, a new day of art beckons.

Dr Who's Robot, God Being Killed Frame Refurbishment

Watched the Dr Who episode 'Robot' last night. I can't remember ever seeing it (I remember seeing a few Fourth Doctor episodes as a child). While watching I remembered an ancient memory of going to a Dr Who exhibition in Blackpool as a child, seeing the robot in real life, and a grey Dalek with black spots.

Awake most of the night. During fragments of sleep I became the Fourth Doctor. In my dreams I'm often Doctor Who, and when so, I am usually Tom Baker's incarnation. I dreamt of lying in my bed as him, my room in the same arrangement but decorated differently, lined with crude red bricks like a bunker or cellar, the bed made from simple planks. I found this disturbing and I woke twice like this before sleeping  and becoming the Third Doctor. This time the room was the same orientation, but with different decoration, more baroque and fitting to Jon Pertwee's incarnation.

I slept an hour, perhaps two all night, so was too tired to paint today. I had hoped to paint the Daisy painting. Instead I painted a colour study for the Kafka painting, and painted the edges of the Assassinated Strawberry (so, this canvas board can now be hung on the wall directly). Then repainted the original gold frame for the first (and probably only ever) God Being Killed print, which I aim to exhibit in Cotebrook Village Hall on the 6th and 7th June. It will be for sale for £300.

Cat Bat Nightmare, H Beam Piper Transfer, Framing Descartes Again

A sleepless night. Awoke at 2am and remained awake until about 7am, then slept into a nightmare. I was pursued and tormented by two witches who were perhaps my mother and another relative (both young however). They were undead and chasing me around a house and laughing. Our cat, Cat, back from the dead was there, now malevolent, and could transform into a long thin bat which had a sharp claw at the lower end, which would flick out to attack a victim. I knew this this sting was deadly and had to dodge its whip many times. I spent much of the dream running a hiding, being discovered and running again.

Cat was perhaps in my mind as it was recently the 6th anniversary of her death; she once caught a bat in out garden. The bat in my dream was primarily inspired by an object in the Telepathic Daisy painting I drew out yesterday, a shape representing the spectre of death inspired by a rag of clothing in the wind in Wyeth's 'Christina's World'.

I worked today as I could. First, tracing over the H Beam Piper drawing to the new panel. This time I transferred the book text using a laser print on newsprint. This thin paper jammed the printer every time (I tried thrice) but perhaps because of this, the toner was not set and remained loose and dusty on the paper - perfect. I pasted GAC100 on the substrate and stuck the (mirror image) paper down. Once dry, it was easy to wet and rub away the paper for a very good transfer of the image, and archival, flat, and suitable for oil painting over. When drying I applied gold size and new gilding, so the panel is now ready to paint.

Then, work on a new frame. I've decided to enter the Descartes painting into the next RBSA exhibition (my first attempt at an entry there since 2019 - I say attempt, but I've been lucky in getting something in every time I had tried at that liked gallery - I can only hope for this again). Its frame is shared between three paintings of the same size, including the Cromwell portrait which will be in Nantwich Museum at the time, so I need to prepare a new frame. An ideal time to test my new router one my think - but no; I have no money for wood, yet do have some old framing wood in stock, so have decided to use the last couple of lengths to create a new frame. Two 2.4M lengths are needed for this big frame, so I started the first step of gluing the decorative flat front piece to one behind, leaving a 10mm recess.

After that, tracing over the Telepathic Daisy drawing. I'll paint some portraits for next years RBSA Portrait Prize. I wonder if this Descartes painting would have counted? Perhaps. Many of my portrait ideas will be surrealistic looking, of course, such as the Kafka.

Miners Of Economic Worries Forging A Path Through H Beam Piper

A night of fantastic dreams. In one, I had the ashes of Deborah's father, Ernest, who was a painter (among other things, but I think it was in this context that he was in my dream). These were in a cylinder, like a pencil perhaps, though a little wider (a magic wand?). I had to launch them into space, into low Earth orbit for some special action, exposure to certain rays. I recall trying to work out how to do this. A second dream involved a huge building of silver and glass in the sky, like a futuristic library with echoes of Birmingham Library. I managed to fly up to it, and in through the closed window (in my spectral dream state). It was busy with business people or administrators. At one point an ensemble practiced Beethoven's 9th Symphony and I, working nearby (or pretending to, knowing that I was imposter), sang a key note which was rather loud and slightly flat, to the amusement of those rehearsing.

Today, a full day of work on the new painting: 'Miners Of Economic Worries Forging A Path Through H Beam Piper'. I've decided on a somewhat large format of 337x437mm, the face larger than life size. I'd thought of 335x435, and by chance found an MDF panel of 357mm wide, so ideal for this. I started the day by sawing the panel, then drew out the portrait and general plan.

In the afternoon I sealed and primed the panel with ridiculously expensive Lascaux Primer, but it only needed about 3 teaspoons of paint for two coats. By this evening, this complex composition was finished, although I've not checked the likeness of my hand-drawn outlines. Perhaps this matters less. Like hitting a note in a song, this isn't the most important factor; the correct expressiveness is what matters. I have to modify the facial expression to one of worry anyway.

It's somewhat, in style and genus, like my Charlie Chaplin painting, or 'Escape', the Nazimova one, or others like it ('Five Thousand Years Of Tears'); a modification of an extant image in a sort of hand-painted collage. I'm considering underpainting it in greys, it would make the process easier as the source photo is grey. It'll probably take 4 hours to trace over the drawing.

Music Dream, Christmas Tails Cover Reveal, Prometheus v3.77

I watched an episode of Tracking Sounds  on YouTube, featuring 'Madam Who?' last night. What great pop songs she writes and produces. After the hour of listening, I listened to many of her singles. Pure pop, great melodies, intelligent lyrics. I can hear the Go-Go's influence.

I slept badly. I dreamt that I was set to meet Pete Saxer, for a long stay of some sort. While all packed and ready I'd set my watch oddly, and confused the alarm time and the actual time so I missed the bus in great disappointment. A second dream featured myself and Deb, playing in a music performance. A band of 4 or 5 young men, boys to us, were playing as a band too. I discussed synthesizers with them. Their instruments were simple, amateurish in their way, but they had youth and the joy of naïve mistakes.

Today, I completed a text interview today from a music zine and record label called Aldora Britain. I noticed that I am (rather than 'we are') in the local press with a Christmas Tails story written by Jonathan White. This was sent out before the cover creation day, a second story was submitted very recently with photos from the day, including photos of the artists.

It's also the public 'cover reveal' for the album. Here it is:

Most of today was spent fixing a bug in Prometheus, a rare thing now. The program can set an parameter in a playing instrument, track, or the whole song. Since v2.20 in 2010 these can slide from one value to another, so I can, for example, gradually fade down the volume of a track, or turn up the reverb wet. In all this time I've never faded two different parameters over the same space of time. This is quite legal and was designed to be possible, but the logic of what to fade to was a bit scrambled and didn't work. In fact I can start a fade of, say, pitch, and end the fade as, say, amplitude and, until today, the second value would be considered pitch! In all of the years I'd not noticed this obvious bug.

So I spent today fixing this. I also added the feature to automatically name a track by the first instrument played on it. So, now Prometheus is at v3.77.

I'm feeling very musically inspired. I've started the basic admin of the remaster/re-recording of The Modern Game. Listening back, there are some vocal elements that I can do much better today. Some of the first version vocals, the weak but emotional 'All The Broken Flowers' will be kept. I want to get this all out of the way, and the next one, so I can work on new things.

Rik Mayall Dream, She Just Looks Empty Underpainting Day 1

I dreamt that Rik Mayall wanted to publish a magazine. I advised that he needed and 'SSN' number for it, a magazine equivalent of an ISBN (in actuality, an ISSN). I became annoyed that he didn't seem to care about this, yet that it was holding up the publication of the magazine. I found a laptop and located the website for purchasing SSN numbers and tried to persuade him to use it, but to no avail. He lazily didn't care.

I awoke feeling so unexpectedly tired and ill, weak, and almost feverish. Still, I pushed on with my plan of painting today and underpainted part of 'She Just Looks Empty'.

All went exactly as planned. The colour study is so massively helpful as a guide here. No matter how I'd have painted it, there are so many options that without a guide I'd be uncertain if this is the best choice. One hour spent painting a colour study potentially saves days of repainting.

Beatles Dream, Prometheus v3.74, Pianos

Last night I dreamed of meeting The Beatles. I went back in time, and the c. 1970s group, were playing themselves in a documentary film about their entire future lives. Someone played the start of 'Imagine' on a piano and John Lennon like it, saying he could almost imagine how the song continues. I brashly, perhaps even braggingly, said that that happens to me too. I suddenly felt slightly ashamed at the boast, not least because I made John lost his train of thought with Imagine. I feared that I'd porlocked him, changing the future and stopping the song from ever being written. Oops.

In a second dream, I dreamt that Andy Stubbs was offered a record contract to record a single by a Dutch record company owner, after playing live. One song was one of his, the B-Side due to be a cover, I thought 'Runaway' at first, but it was actually a Sam Cooke soul song (I can't quite remember which). I tried to warn Andy about retaining ownership of any songs that he wrote, but he wasn't interested in publishing or owning the right to his songs at all; his focus was on the record deal and getting it sounding right.

Dreams led to a long long day of programming, trying to crawl forwards a tiny step while working on 'Another Dead Morning'. The piano wasn't quite right, so I wanted to adjust the MIDI velocities. One easy way is to set these at random between two values. I really needed two actual floating point value settings for this. Argus has this exact option and uses three generic values (FX, FY, FZ) for use in many editing features, so I thought I'd add it to Prometheus today.

Another upside is that these utility numbers can be used elsewhere, such as when scaling all events to a specific timing, such as when moving from say, 120 BPM to 109. Until today, fractional scaling (like 120 to 108.5) was not possible.

So, this was added, plus a host of other minor features connected with MIDI velocities. At 16:00, work on the new piano for the song began. The old, sequenced, piano sounded like an ape-robot hammering the keys like a monster. It did have a somewhat nice, and very bright timbre. I read somewhere that when mixing, pianos should retain their bass (most mixing desks have a high-pass filter switch) - complete nonsense! Pianos in most records are bass-cut, sometimes to the extent of sounding very little like actual pianos. Today, even piano-centred artists like Elton John use synthesized pianos, and those are often bass-cut and treble enhanced. The reason for these EQ changes is that the piano and the human voice span about the same frequency range.

I tend to not do much at all with pianos, except cut the bass a bit, but here I've added a bit of a notch at 450hz as the song has a lot of mid-range sounds.

Art Books, Flight Dream, IRSCs, Prometheus 64-Bit

A frustrating few days, I've kept busy but don't feel I'm on a track, darting between too many different things.

Most of yesterday was spent on my art book. There is much to write here. I also started to think about Prometheus and how difficult or easy it might be to make it into a 64-bit application. It is rather easy, but there are a few caveats. One is that the files have pointers in the structures, eg. "long* lppointer". Of course, the data there is irrelevant, it's zero in the file, it's there only to make saving faster, but it means that the file structure itself is a different size on a 64-bit system. The solution is to have a file structure which simply uses an unsigned-long as a substitute, not a pointer, thus it can be the correct 32-bits big on a 64-bit system.

Overnight I had many fantastical dreams. I dreamed I could see the end of the world, which took place at a music event. The event was planned by Creative Crewe, and included as an organiser my old headmaster, Mr Bowers, a well-liked teacher, and the father of someone in my school class. He appeared in my Facebook feed yesterday due to the sudden death of his wife. The event included musicians, and a piano or harpsichord which could be split in two, high/low, through the keyboard and each half wheeled around. I was disappointed not to be asked to perform at the event, but held a hope in my heart that I'd be asked, I felt that they simply didn't think to ask me, quietly desperate though I was to be part of the event.

The event took place in a circus tent of some sort, and three signs, like giant keyboards hung above the ring; left, centre, right. In the cobbled courtyard outside, Deb was there with a bowl haircut, perhaps a little like Princess Diana, perhaps a little like my memory of the school friend. I became aware that she was in love with another man, an electric guitar player who was part of the show. Without much fanfare or any words, she left with him, leaving me heartbroken. The grey courtyard was high up on some rocks, and jutted out into the sea like a castle, and there was something medieval about it all. In my suicidal despair I leapt from the walls to my death in the churning sea below.

To my surprise, my descent slowed and I started to fly forwards, low over the waves, rather than hit the bottom. I began to feel happier, and glancing up at the horizon saw a fantastical city in my distance, among brightly coloured clouds, like a painting. The city appeared to be New York, or a fantasy version of it, with the Statue of Liberty appearing in the centre as I watched. I fell to the ground, which was now a beach of rippled sand and sea water. The beach was full of small gemstones, transparent cubic zirconium and very pretty. There were strange women around, like angelic beings.

Thus ended the dream.

Today I discovered, by pure chance, that I'd accidentally assigned the same ISRC code to two different recordings, one on The Dusty Mirror and one on the new Letters From A Square Spoon. This is a disaster for record keeping, these need to be unique. These codes are used in many places to identify the usage of a recording. I'm so lucky to spot this today, 4 weeks before the release of Spoon. This timing allowed me to remove the release in progress and re-submit it correctly. I was also set today to order the CD copies, which also include this code; so I managed to do this with the correct code. The codes are used in many places, but today I've managed to correct them all.

Duplications like these are rare, I've done it once before in the 15 years or so I've been creating codes; but this error was much more important than my older one, as today so much depends on accurate reporting and detection of a recording. I'm blessed to find the error today.

After that I worked on Prometheus 3.60, preparing it for 64-bit. The first step was to remove (the old and deprecated) DirectInput which I used for key-press checking. I don't really need it at all, as Windows itself has enough function for checking the keyboard, so this was done. Then I had to change strlen() to my own routine, as strlen returns a 64-bit value in Win64, and 32-bit in Win32. 32-bits is best for both for me, so I replaced it. The only other change was changing ITEMIDLIST* to PCIDLIST_ABSOLUTE when using SHBrowseForFolder().

After that, Prometheus compiled and ran in 64-bit for the first time. It didn't and can't do anything. It needs 64-bit plugins too, and needs a new file format and converter for it; but it's an amazing step to get it this far. These changes will probably bleed into the sibling programs of SFXEngine and Argus.

Violet Lightning Dream, Park Photographs

A bad night of stomach twitches. I dreamt of walking home, along Nantwich Road, at night with Deborah. The starry sky above was stunningly beautiful, and spiral galaxies were clearly visible in lovely colours, yellow in the centre and different at the edge or beyond where the dark-matter ought to reside. Violet lightning, almost smoke-like started to strike alarmingly around us, though the result was more pretty and electric, rather than loud or booming at all, and there was little rain. Two bolts struck very close to Deb and I awoke in fear.

I remained awake for hours until perhaps 07:00, then finally slept. I awoke late and tired, and have battled to work today. I've added the vocals to Mr Tambourine Man, and updated my website a little, adding links to the Galleria Balmain gallery. I went out after lunch to take some photographs in the park for the Fall in Green album artwork, and stopped off at Deborah's on the way; delightful and unexpected.

I've taken some scans of screwed up newsprint as possible backgrounds for the album, but they are too creased. I'll try again tomorrow with another attempt at something parchment-like.

FIG Mastering, The Love Symphony Film, Bronowski Dream

A few scant things done. Compiled the first master to the new Fall in Green album. A few tracks needed rebalancing with minor changes, then the final volume balancing.

From 17:00, I looked again at the Love Symphony film. I thought it would be a nice idea to split the film into individual music tracks, making a video per-track. When I made the film in 2015, I deleted the source footage as it was considered too huge, only to re-find it years later (I had actually backed it up to an obscure hard drive). I think I have it all now.

For tracks 4 and 5 the editing was complicated by the minor issue that track 5 is a one-minute segue between the two album tracks, and the film merged tracks 4 and 5 into one. I used a simple edit to split the two. Track 3 and Track 9, however, would not load at all due to what is almost certainly an AviSynth+ v3.7.3 bug (I assume that the older AviSynth v2.60, which I made the films with, would still work, but I can't install both side-by-side). I still have the Track 3 edit from 2019, so this isn't a problem. I'll simply forget about editing Track 9 for now; and indeed forget about doing anything more while I consider what to do with these.

Generally, I feel lost and uncertain of direction at this akward time between projects. I dreamt of being lost in a car park, trying to find a bus or coach home from some distant tourist place, like Chester Zoo or Tatton Mansion. I also dreamt of working for Jacob Bronowski. I was in a team, and had to be up early, perhaps at 6am, and wear a shirt and tie for this unwelcome office job which I had to attend. I was aware that there were two similar teams of similar looking people, with similar names, each operating on opposite shifts.

Arm Dream, FOTTI Single Videos

I dream of a world where living human arms can grown and adopted. One person adopted an arm which grew a black hand. Deborah adopted a (white) hand, which hadn't yet grown. These were world firsts. I took part in a television debate about these hands and the regulation concerning their adoption; were people able to look after them? Some background checks must surely be needed, etc. The dream was probably linked to the various arms and hands in The Dusty Mirror and its videos.

An day of unusual and extraordinary tiredness, perhaps due to the cold or great stress. The past two days have also been very busy and productive. My stomach is tight and in constant pain.

Today I completed the final edits of the 'Fear of the Thing Itself' and Johann Strauss videos. The PRS are lax in processing the latter song, a job normally done in 24 hours has taken nearly two weeks to date. I've ordered a new memory stick for animation work, which (if I'm very lucky) could compete in speed terms with the unreliable hard drive I'm using at the moment. I've done some cursory work on a 'Norman Bates' video. Before yesterday's YouTube showcase, I was happy to call the Dusty films complete, and make Norman Bates a simple lyric video, but now I see the importance, utility, rarity, and artistry of video work, so I'll try to push myself yet harder. This is already my most accomplished album by far in video terms.

I must summon the energy to complete this. New music and new video await.

Asylum Escape Dream, Square Spoon Scoring

A somewhat sleepless night. I dreamt of going to some sort of event with Chris, we sat next to each other. Later, the event moved, so we had to get into Chris' car and follow it. It seemed to stop in some low sand dunes with harsh grass, like a beach area of sorts. I walked with Chris into the dunes among the scattered attendees who had dispersed. I discovered Noel Edmonds there; he was secretly gazing into a crystal ball, a transparent orb, shortly before burying it in the sand. I wanted to tell him that a transparent orb is no use, that scrying depends on random occlusions in a real crystal.

The scene shifted and I found myself in a dormitory in an asylum. I think Sabine was in another bed there, and she wanted my help on some technical matter. I offered to help if she would help me escape this prison, and she agreed. After advising her, I fixed up some wooden object with bolts which I'd been working on as part of my escape; a part of my bed. I realised that it was 5am and that the time to escape was running out, so I opened up the window and jumped a great height from it. I landed on some triangle rooves of terracotta, then leapt to lower rooves and into the snowy garden, then ran away, to bushes, trees, and a beach beyond which was something like the earlier one. I found myself indoors, in some sort of conference area, a large business gathering. Annie was there, and I asked her to help me escape, I needed a disguise or other form of practical help. She said yes. I can't remember much else, apart from that I felt that help would be given, that my escape may succeed.

I woke late to a good day of working on the sheet music for the new Fall in Green album. I score the music in all new albums now, and aim to score one old for each new one. 14 of the 15 tracks are now scored. Some tunes have many parts, so not everything is scored as it can be, but I try to at least have a piano version which contains important musical bits of audible parts, and make more expansive options if possible.

Pigeon Dream, Frame Repairs, Galleries

A sleepless night of stomach agony. In the early morning sleep I dreamt I was in a room at my old primary school, or possibly a country house. Outside, in what looked like the play area, three pigeons were strutting and pecking. One was pecking violently; smashing his beak into the floor and hard stones quite alarmingly. At one point he smashed down hard at a flint stone and it shattered, causing blade-like shards to fly in all directions. One of the other pigeons was injured by these, with two or three large gashes on its human-like fleshy leg. I rushed out to help, and started to clean and dress the wound with water and 'Steri-Strips'. One wound there, older yet still bloody, was crudely stitched with white cord. I was shocked at the behaviour of the violent pigeon and turned to look at him. For the first time I saw that he was in a far worse state, lying motionless and in pain, his purple flesh covered with bleeding wounds.

Today I filed Prometheus and examined yesterday's frame. It had a few splits in the wood, so I experimented with developing a solvent-based wood filler which might work for fine art or craft applications. Something water-based would swell the wood, and it must ideally not be chalky or white, but transparent or and easily toned. I made two tests with sawdust and picture varnish (an acrylic resin) and Paraloid resin. Both set hard, perhaps too brittle to sand, but looked excellent with stain, a perfect colour match. I think the Paraloid B-72 would be best.

The splits were too fine to be filled, so I used a syringe to inject wood glue and clamped the frame shut. This did the job wonderfully. In the afternoon, I painted the Kratos sculpture brown, an under-layer. I need to do more. I need a gallery to show and sell my work. My paintings really need to be seen in real life.

I was reminded that I have an unfortunate phobia of art galleries. My first experience of entering one, years before I painted, my digital computer prints in hand, was so negative, the proprietor so critical and aggressive towards me that I felt like killing myself upon leaving in utter dejection. This, at the time where the my game publishers were stealing from me and being equally abusive, became a catalyst for me to ignore all third parties and isolate myself from the cruel world. It took many years, and a whole new life, before I entered a gallery again, the Silver Star in Chester, to quite a different and instantly positive experience. Every other place of exhibition has been due to an open competition, invitation, or personal booking. Now though, I need a gallery.

I must work harder. Time is short. Life is short. Onwards we battle.

Twitches, Spheres and Droplets, Kratos, Art Classifications

A night of spontaneous twitches and inflammatory skin itches. My dreams were nightmarish and involved, at one point, huge spider-like black crabs which had escaped from a fish tank, and were crawling around the large public room, which was bedecked with tropical plants and other animal enclosures.

My emotions in the morning were of despair and misery. This was partly dissatisfaction at the parrot painting from a few days ago, and dissatisfaction at the Kratos painting (setting aside poverty, futility etc.). I didn't feel like doing anything but I never obey my feelings; those simian tricksters!

My aim for the day was to paint, but I decided to do something practical and intellectual and performed a photographic study of spheres and water droplets. The results were spectacularly beautiful on all counts.

After that, I got to work on the second Kratos painting, on panel as before. This time, I wanted more of a fleshy colour, and to set the scene in a cavern. The results were far better than before, and I again loved, or at least appreciated, a smooth panel surface (even if I prefer Belle Arti canvas panels). I listened to Berlioz as I painted, the emotions of the music helped guide the crucial content of this painting. I thought how every stroke of brush was affected by so many variables. My stoic mood really helped the painting, as did the Fantastic Symphony; no machine could oil paint to the same degree without all of this input.

I'm still inclined to repaint the parrot picture on a canvas panel, and perhaps experiment with a rougher, more impressionistic style of painting. Surrealism is never impressionistic or rough in texture. All surrealist paintings are highly detailed works, ultra-smooth, like photographs, because they are designed to depict mental images, which are stronger when clear, explicit, detailed, and brightly coloured. Blurs are foggy memories, uncertain.

I'm aiming for an overall emotional effect, so can use any technique to achieve it.

I'm defining whole new classes of painting. Consider Beethoven's works: string quartets, piano sonatas, symphonies, concertos, violin and piano works, etc. Each a different class, worked on and mastered over time. Although art has genres (impressionism, cubism, abstract etc.) those are more painting styles; effects, not classes in this definition; those types of painting are more like the 'instruments' in the musical analogy. My classes include: 1. Spontaneous ideas from a tiny 'unconscious' sketch expanded into a detailed work. 2. Improvisations in the wet (and similar in ink, my book illustrations use this technique). 3. Groups around a visual theme (eg. the ekphrastic group which used The Death of Chatterton).

Rather than my work being haphazard, I've been exploring and moving towards mastery of these classes of work ever since I started painting. Now I can fully define these, and perhaps define other classes with rules, just like the rules for sonata-form, rondo, string quartet, and so on. So much in visual art is new, not done, unexplored. I feel I'm right at the beginning of several centuries of evolution and growth.

You Either Believe Layer 1

Traced over Kratos yesterday.

A terrible night of nightmares and bad sleep. My chest hurts, feeling fuzzy as though at the end of a cold, and given my immense feelings of weakness over the past two weeks, I feel I may have unknowingly contracted a virus.

Today I painted another layer on the miniature 'You Either Believe In AI Or You Don't'. Each layer seems to improve things hugely, then when looking at the dried result it seems to require a new layer. That is the mark of oil painting.

A Drive Through The Town Release, Kratos 2

A dream of a trip to the moon in a rocket, with my mother and brother. It's a special event, a prize or unique reward. We have the silver rocket to ourselves. I can remember lining up to acquire the travel documents. It was to happen on Friday, which in my mind was tomorrow, not today.

Today it's the release of 'A Drive Through The Town', my most pop-like, and best produced album to date. About half of the day was taken up with the technicalities of release, sharing links, updating the website, making basic announcements. I'm pleased with it, and hope and aim to update and re-record older albums, and make newer ones, which I'll strive to be better as well as different. I wish I had the money for a CD verison of Drive, and indeed wish that I could sell any copies at all.

For the other half of the day, I decided to re-paint Kratos, a second version. I want the size to be 50cm or less, and the doors of the artwork need taking into account, so really I needed to make it smaller. I wasn't happy with some aspects of the first version either, so decided to work on a smaller version today. I drew it out and prepared a 20x20cm panel. My new 'Frameculator' software allowed me to instantly see how big the external frame would be.

The Beatle City production is complete after 4 or 5 full days spread over 2 weeks, which is typical to produce a song.

Three Dreams, Transubstantiation Underpainting

A long sleep, from 10:30 to 08:00, filled with many dreams. In one, Sigourney Weaver cowered at the top of a large tower, thousands of feet above the landscape. The tower may have been the 'death' tower in the painting I painted yesterday. A small child was there too, perhaps Newt from Aliens, but she (or he) was barely visible, just a felt presence. The tower's summit was reached via a slide with many tiers, to make a wave-like slide. Death, the devil, or some evil figure appeared from the slide entrance, grabbed Sigourney by an arm and threw her down the slide quickly, she helplessly slid to her doom.

In another dream, myself and my brother were heading towards a huge shopping centre made in the shape of The Statue of Liberty, but with glass skin so that you could see the shoppers and shops which spiralled around its centre.

In the last dream of the night, BBC Radio presenter Steve Wright came to live at our house as gardener. The flowers in the back garden had recently been dug over by my mother. He enlarged this area and had decided to plant many plants there, in pots and wicker baskets, burying them to keep to nutrients there, notably recalcitrant to the way my mother would plant things. I helped him as we worked in the garage. After some work, we went inside for food, and some cream cakes were on offer which he enjoyed choosing from.

The day began slowly. I seem to feel tired and slow for some reason, though I've hardly exerted myself physically recently.

At 11:00, I started to paint the Transubstantiation painting, and it (the underpainting, at least) was complete by 14:30:

I rather enjoyed the process, made much easier by the colour studies. Looking at my work, at the themes, some are more common than others. First, the clash between emotions and rational thought, and secondly a critique of Christianity and Catholicism, although here the painting is more literal, even reverent. I'm reminded that my exposure to art and music as a child was in church, and that those images remain part of my visual landscape.

I learned that I've failed to get into the RWA exhibition this year, though one of my two works made it to the second round. This does not bother me; there is a lot of competition and judgements are prone to luck. Anything radical or interesting is more likely to fail than succeed; this is the way with all art critique, though it makes me sad that my work must remain unseen.

As I painted, I listened to a repeat of the first night of The Proms, and Clara Schumann's Piano Concerto. Clara remarked, upon visiting London: "It is the artists' own fault; they allow themselves to be treated as inferiors in English society, since nothing is too humiliating to be borne if only they make money." - how astute! Art in England is unique in its relationship to money. Artists have more respect in Europe and America, and can be rich or poor in either place (though, better to be rich in America). In England artists should only be poor, and never considered important. A rich artist is considered an unjust waste of money. This is an utterly backwards situation created by cultural memories of aristocratic hierarchy, where 'rich' and 'poor', that integer attached to our bank-accounts, are considered social classes. In England wealth is shameful, the pursuit of wealth is shameful, and hard work is shameful. Work is something worthy of servants and foreigners. This culture is why Britain is an unproductive country.

I remain tired and slow today. Perhaps this is a good week to work on John's music track, a pause and perhaps refresh from painting.

Journey Dream, Portents Of Desire Underpainting

I dream of a long and difficult trip. I was in a small group; with an old woman, and one other person at least. We had a long way to go, over the course of two days or two sections. The first part was a long walk in the rain, or difficult conditions, and at the end of the day we grew tired at the thought of the journey. Things became easier however, and we managed to take a train and found that the second half of the journey was much easier and faster than expected.

At the end, there was a bird, a 'dootoo', or something similar. It had a long tail; I have memories of a cartoon bird, Wattoo Wattoo, which perhaps was a partial inspiration for this, but the colours and appearance were generally of the bird Grayson is fascinated by in my Grayson Perry Scarecrow painting. The bird, I was told, was a Jewish myth, that is was made from, charmed by, or somehow connected with, a stringed instrument bow, or possibly a harp. The long tail evokes a connection between a harp and the spray of tail feathers in a peacock.

Overall, the dream seemed like a positive portent. Before sleep, I was evaluating the year at this halfway point, so perhaps it indicates optimism for the second half.

So far in 2024, I've remastered Gunstorm, Gunstorm II, and Argus, and released those on Steam, and remastered Breakout Velocity, Fallout Velocity, and Firefly for the future. I've written and recorded A Drive Through The Town, and completed a the few paintings in progress from 2022, at least five complete so far. Plus, the Fall in Green book has been released, and we've attended almost every open mic every two weeks; including modifying and learning to play my Microkorg as a sort of keytar. I've certainly grown as a music performer and live singer. I've completed the public mural and revamped the art section of my website.

Where to go next? I have many paintings in progress, and ideas for more. One problem here is that many old ideas remain - this is a long term problem. This matters only in that the themes or philosophical contents can be out of date. Of course, I have ideas constantly; perhaps the best art ideas are eternal, or don't go out of date. I'm reminded that Beethoven's later works often took many years. By their completion, did he consider them out of date? This is the question I face, particularly because I'm full of new ideas and outlooks which jar with some of the paintings I have lined up.

Today, Argus was released. I spent most of the day underpainting about 80% of 'Portents Of Desire', a painting notable for having different colours from the colour study I painted yesterday. One clear difference between my art now and before is that now I'm less concerned about the meaning of paintings, more about the feeling they convey independent of any meaning or interpretation. Inspired by a documentary about Thomas Hardy, about bleak death, the idea drawing took longer than usual. It seems to be more about division/separation, and longing, though there was no conscious concept or message behind the composition.

We Are Dreams Questing For Dreams, Painting Studies, Beethoven Dies Again

I slept for many hours and dreamt vividly and positively. At one point my dream was of the four seasons, experienced like a film or artwork. I seemed to be changing them, as though editing the film, while discussing them with someone, a female observer in the strange space we inhabited, like a sports hall.

I painted three things in the day. First, I trimmed the canvas for 'Old Lazy Candle Shouting At Innocent Baby Candles'. This was originally framed in my old-style pine box frame, with visible screws, but I have become unhappy with the look of these, and have been gradually replacing all of them; so, I de-framed it. I found that the painting nearly fitted the outer frame of G114A 'The Time For Love Has Nearly Flown'. That frame was a little too small, so I decided to trim the Candle painting to fit, partly because the balancing of the composition was, if anything, better by being trimmed.

The recess of the new frame was a lot smaller, so I needed to paint over upper and lower areas which were unpainted, so I did this today.

Then, I glazed a new painting 'We Are Dreams Questing For Dreams'. I (probably) painted this in 2022; I at least painted it on a spare canvas board cut to size, using some remaining paint at the end of a painting day. I kept this sketch, and looking at it again, decided to continue the painting today, and so added a glaze layer.

I used just safflower oil, rather than my usual amber medium. The painting was improvised, though followed my typical themes; starting with a blue 'sky', a sandy 'floor' and adding structures and figures. It seemed to be a man striding, made from blown sand, walking towards a palace. I thought that it seemed to reflect an idea of hope for something better in this dust-blown life.

After that, I painted the colour study to Inspection At Theresienstadt.

At all times I listened to Beethoven's final years and moments in the BBC Radio 3 'Composer of the Week' special serial, from 2020. I was again moved. The transience of life, the hope and hopelessness of art. Where can I show my art? Beethoven felt special, vastly better than others, he recognised his talent. I feel this too; yet I know, unlike him, that everyone feels like this, that everyone feels that they are special - maybe not immensely special, but everyone feels a bit better than the rest and wants appreciation for their unique and special talents.

In the afternoon, Deb visited for a Fall in Green rehearsal, for tomorrow's charity performance. Without her I would be as misanthropic and hateful as Beethoven; but we have each other, she is my world.