So over the weekend I wrote an entire episode of HEAVEN’S FOREST, 10 pages of BATMAN’S GRAVE and roughs for the rest of the episode, and the newsletter, and a lot of email. Consequently, I am a shell of a man today, and easily confused. Inbox 12, not sure what the day brings, but I have to get into the GENEVA bible today regardless. More coffee. Emails and messages will be reached slowly today.
But the sun is out and I have a new CD to listen to, so it’s not bad.
Since Bandcamp are waiving all fees for musicians selling through Bandcamp today, here’s everything I’ve ever bought from them. If you’ve got nothing better to do, have a flick through and see if anything appeals to you.
“Stuart Hyatt returns with another sonic wonder in the Field Works series, bringing the listener into truly uncharted acoustic territory. Ultrasonic is perhaps the first-ever album to use the echolocations of bats as compositional source material. For this special album, Hyatt has assembled an extraordinary group of contributors: Eluvium, Christina Vantzou, Sarah Davachi, Ben Lukas Boysen, Machinefabriek, Mary Lattimore, Felicia Atkinson, Noveller, Chihei Hatakeyama, John Also Bennett, Kelly Moran, Taylor Deupree, Jefre Cantu-Ledesma, Julien Marchal, and Player Piano. Ultrasonic is part of a broader storytelling project about the federally endangered Indiana bat. Generously funded by the IUPUI Arts & Humanities Institute and the National Geographic Society, each album contains an official printed booklet of The Endangered Species Act of 1973.”
“Amalgaam is a raw and unpolished album. Which doesn’t mean that it’s blunt or trite. The grainy, textural sounds on this record have a fleeting, cinematic quality to them, combining spaciousness with a sense of intimacy – at times interrupted by noisier outbursts. The album is based on a series of improvisations on a very hands-on hardware setup, with an old tone generator, effects pedals, dictaphones, contact mics, etc. This material was then mixed and edited into the pieces on this album, while retaining the liveliness of the source material.”
Sorting out the afternoon listening. Inbox 30, and 45 emails in the Bandcamp tag because today bandcamp.com are waiving their fees and giving the full whack of every sale to artists. This means that bandcamp.com will start breaking in about an hour, so keep reloading if pages fail. I have about twenty different things to touch today, so I’m going to be quiet. Visit Bandcamp instead.
Note: I bought all these records through Bandcamp.
Well, we’re looking at another month of lockdown here. I am bombing my system with supplements. And I’ve finally cracked and started eating biscuits, which I consider getting close to lockdown rock bottom. I generally eat very little sugar, but I started eating desserts again last year during that long bout of 1000mphclub, and here I am gnawing through a Fortnum and Mason’s Toffolossus, a single instance of which could probably feed a street for three days.
Am drinking alcohol at the normal rate.
Frankly, I don’t know why you’re reading this, because aren’t you pigsick of everyone’s individual, dull and generally charmless Take on the lockdown and the covid? I know I am. My stress levels are generally through the roof, but isn’t everybody’s, at this point?
Walked out for supplies today, and every time I walked past somebody, they smiled and nodded. “Hello! You have the face of someone I have not been trapped in my home with for two months! I am happy to see your face! Or whatever part of it is exposed to the air!”
Work is slow. My particular process requires me to get the fuck out of the house and away from the screens for an hour or two each day, to walk and wander and buy lunch and sit outside somewhere with a glass of wine and just let brain and body catch up to each other in their own time. Now? Development and notes go fast, gathering together complex scriptwriting does not. I’ve had the same job in front of me for four days and it’s barely two-thirds done.
Observing, not complaining. Just as I observe that I’m seeing a lot more cars on the roads and people on the streets. Lockdown is fraying.
Good morning. It is 1145am and I am barely in my body. Inbox 22 and a serious number of serious things to get done today. So, aside from anything else, it’s going to be a stress management day. Side-eyeing the news notifications telling me to look forward to at least another month of lockdown as I mix my protein/superfood smoothie. Fun new metric: according to the estimates made by Apple Watch, I can burn almost 3000 calories a day just thinking. If my brain could just explain that to my spreading arse, that would be great, thanks
Okay. Here we go again.
As noted, there was an earbud-related disaster yesterday. Now, I have long used the rule “two is one and one is none.” Because things fail and shit happens. I have two of pretty much everything I consider critical, with the exception of phones. But sometimes you let even the long-held practices slide. And this was one of them. So I replaced the AirPods and picked up a pair of Echo Buds. Which obviously aren’t quite as instant and seamless with an iPhone as the pods, but it only took them a minute or two to sort their lives out. And, to be honest, I’m as embedded in the Amazon ecology as I am in the iOS ecology, because, well, here we are in 2020 and I need things.
Yeah, I’m the enemy. In my defense, I don’t even try to hide it. Excuse me while I track a package from Fortnums and do more capitalisms.
Hello from PANDEMIC-CAM-29. I think I’m looking good, all things considered.
The internet is still doing its off/on/off dance over here, as Virgin Media starts to crumble under the load. I was on BATMAN’S GRAVE all day yesterday, and will be on it again all day today. Have already fired off PROJECT GENEVA emails and processed overnight CASTLEVANIA emails, and have a bunch of deliveries arriving today (including, we hope, new earbuds), so daylight hours will be a bit scattered again. Inbox 18, and they’re just going to have to sit there while I figure out these issues of GRAVE in front of me. Which I need to do today, because tomorrow I’m into HEAVEN’S FOREST and the GENEVA bible, leaving the weekend for a new thing I haven’t codenamed yet.
Got around to watching the remaster of PHASE IV last night, while puzzling out a section of GRAVE, and holy hell Saul Bass’ original ending for the film that was cut out for theatrical! I may have to take a couple of screenshots this week and write it up for my own use.
