Here's yesterday's song. It's late, so I won't write too much, instead I'll just share the lyrics. Very loosely inspired by the etymology of Tuesday, a love song
I am the square of sun
That moves across the room
Slow and languid
I have been severely procrastinating this project, as this and the next few videos will show. From a series of Yesterday to a series of Today.
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Here's my bathroom. I only have to film one in the toilet and I will have all rooms in my flat covered.
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Beatles included.
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This one was recorded at about 4:30am, after waking up to a lot of very noisy thoughts.
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Cloudy, outside and in.
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From spill to overflow.
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I can't quite believe it, but I have made it to the end of six months. I should write a proper update about how I'm feeling, but for now here's a song. My starting theme was slow, and branches of a mind map led me to the lyrics. The melody is mostly improvised save for a little hook, and a few questionable notes snuck their way in and will need to be plucked out when I finally get time to revisit all these songs and do something exciting with them. What that something might be, I have no idea yet.
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Hands was my starting point for this piece, and I found it quite meditative to both compose and perform. This is only the second piece I have performed on electric mandolin. The other attempt was interrupted by flooding, which was about the time this project really started to challenge me. I haven't even thought about what to do when it all ends, but I suppose I should watch everything back through from start to finish. Although each piece of music is not exactly a journal entry, they will certainly reflect my mind and life in that particular moment. If I can bear to sit through twelve months worth of videos I am curious to see how the music I have made has been shaped by the life I have lived alongside it.
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I did my best to perform to the rhythm of my knitting. It's a lace pattern, and slightly fiddly, which makes this piece nicely wonky.
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A song! As much as I have been enjoying playing around with light it also feels nice to spend time on some composition. I was woken very early the other morning, and sitting waiting for the sun to rise I began daydreaming about being on a plane to somewhere else in the world. I took light as my theme from the previous piece and spun that together with my travel imaginings. I was originally playing this on piano, but something about it sounded too much like musical theatre so I rearranged it for vocal loops and bass. I was back to late night recording, so everything is played very quietly.
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A little spoken word piece based, using bones as a starting prompt. I've just realised now that "Funny Bones" might have been a catchier title, but that's OK, I can always change it later on.
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This is the first in a series of three experiments with a mind map for the theme glove. The mind map became a kind of graphic score, with a random starting point chosen and then the lyrics improvised in performance using parts of the mind map as prompts. This is similar to the way my brain works when I sit down to do a timed writing exercise, but I find it much easier to translate my thoughts to pen and paper rather than speech. This exercise was an interesting way to bypass the pen and go straight to my voice. I found it quite challenging, but resisted the urge to record second takes of any of the improvisations.
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In my chat with Lucy Roleff for Mind Over Myth we talked about being addicted to newness. When I was young my favourite Barbie doll was always the newest one I'd acquired. I adored that newest doll, dressed it in all the best outfits, devoted hours to creating stories and scenes for it to play in, and then discarded it on the next birthday or Christmas when a new one arrived to take its place.
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