John's Quavering Pencil

Snow

This year the Xmas season has not been good for blogging. In England we have had snow and it has been lying around for far too long. We are not geared up for it. We don’t have winter tyres on our cars, the gritting of streets is only marginally successful, and unless one is a snowball-throwing youngster it is generally a pain up the butt.

I tried to drive my car to the supermarket but it got stuck less than 10 metres from my house. After much shovelling and cursing I managed to return it to its parking place. This was problematic since we had some guests coming for afternoon coffee and cake. What was I to do? No cake, and I could not get out to buy one. Fortunately we did have some self-raising flour, butter and sugar. I poked around in the spice rack and came across some cinnamon that still smelled vaguely of… cinnamon! What is more, I discovered a banana that had slipped down behind the food processor. I sliced it into the cake dough and bunged the goo into a tin. An hour in a moderate oven yielded a mighty fine cake, if I do say so myself. A little icing sugar drifted on through a tea strainer created the back drop for a yuletide snow scene. More poking around in kitchen draws yielded a couple of fir trees, a house, and two robins. I could have sworn I had a Postman Pat, but he must have been out delivering a parcel to Mrs. Goggins, for he was nowhere to be found. The robins were clearly mutants, since each was more or less the same the size as the house. Be that as it may, I present a pic of this delicious cake. I finished off the last slice only an hour ago.

One just about survives Christmas, only to realise that New Year is lurking around the corner. One needs stamina at this time of year.

My daughter’s excercise bike makes an appalling screetchy, scratchy sound when you pedal it. I have removed the black plastic casing to reveal the pedalling mechanism (see pic). The way this bike works is that a set of very powerful magnets are brought into contact with the pulley wheel, drum, or whatever might be its technical name. As you increase the number on the strength adjustment dial, so another magnet bites down.

Bike casing removed

I have spent some time trying to adjust the alignment of the magnet bar to the drum but there are not many options to play with in this regard. I am thinking about rubbing the magnets with candle wax. This works for sticky wood. I imagine that the friction of the drum would melt the wax, as the human operator brakes into a sweat on the machine. Although this might reduce the screetching, it would also reduce the friction and that does seem a tad counter-productive.

Bike magnets

Any ideas/suggestions?

I am here reproducing the text of a notecard letter that I am sending to the fans in my Second Life group Fyrmusica. In it I have summarised the developments over the past couple of years in my musical activities on Second Life where I play shows as Fyrm Fouroux. So, here it is…

Hi.
I am writing to you because you are a member of my inworld group Fyrmusica or because you belong to my Subscribeomatic group. I want to let you know that on Friday 11th December 2009 I shall be playing my 400th gig in SL at my little Terra Fyrmusica venue. I am not expecting a big crowd since normally only about 5 or 6 people come to these shows (sometimes fewer). Indeed, I came more or less bottom of a league table of SL performers based upon observed audience figures (I ranked about 276th out of 279). As Evamoon Ember has said to me, I am never going to pack an audience into my shows: I am too original and too quirky. In this card I celebrate my interest in music and performance; I blow no trumpets for popularity.

My first show was at Rocky Shores on 3rd January, 2008. Doing the math, 400 shows in roughly two years comes to 200 p.a. or about 4 a week, and that sounds exactly right. I seldom play more than one show on any given day, and I like to have breaks in the week between the days on which I do play shows. The reason for this might sound a bit naff ,or even old-fashioned, but I feel emotionally drained after a show. I think I have only once played two hour-long shows back-to-back and I cannot understand how other musicians manage to do that, unless they are popping in a lot of pre-recorded tracks or using backing tracks. I do listen to quite a lot of shows in SL and, IMHO, I think there is an awful lot of that going on at so-called live performances. Two of my favourite artists have to use computer generated backing tracks because they compose using DAWs (Digital Audio Workstations) and I am referring here to Nad Gough and Torben Asp. But I have to say the slightest hint of a backing track has me clicking a TP out of the show; generally I dislike intensely those kinds of show (it is a matter of personal taste, others very obviously love that sort of thing).

In the early days, I was playing regularl shows not only at Rocky Shores but also at Taff’s Bar and Shore Babes. I played occasional gigs at a fairly wide range of venues, such as Stage Bar, Crystal Sands, Heron Park, Bara Bar, Media Culture, Merry Pranksters, Hummingbird Cafe and Woodstock, too. By February 2008, I had weekly shows at The Vibe and Sailors Cove, in addition to the one at Rocky Shores. Later in 2008 I took a regular slot at C&K Mall and switched from Rocky Shores to Cascadia Harmonics. Around that time, Von Johin very generously offered me the use of the French Quarter stage whenever I wanted to use it during his (U.S.) night-time hours and I played there several times in the middle of the SL night.

In the summer of 2008, Hexx invited me to start the monthly readings of my e-novel The Reluctant Psychologist, at her Rastafairy Beach venue. I read the novel in about 6 or 7 instalments, and I played songs within the readings to illustrate what was happening to the central character, Harold Hake. I read the novel in the role of Fyrm Fouroux and improvised his comments on what Harold had been getting up to. I think this was probably one of the most creative things I have ever done, not just in SL but life generally.

In the summer of 2008 I sent notecards to the managers of all the venues I had played at in the first six months, asking for further gigs and I did this at what for that time was a very reasonable fee. The response to that was, to put it bluntly, dire. I decided that it was going to be a waste of my time to keep chasing after gigs since I was clearly not what folks wanted. I could have gone with a manager or agent, but somehow I have always wanted to be a strictly independent musician. I therefore decided to acquire a little island next to the old Vibe and to build a very small venue so that I could play there  whenever I wanted to. This I did and I have been playing at Terra Fyrmusica about once a week (sometimes twice) since the summer of 2008. I have very much enjoyed this performance space; it is where I can do absolutely whatever I like and it is where I have carried out my more interesting musical improvisations, I feel.

It was in November 2008 that I started to play piano in my shows. At first, I included a short section in the middle of the show, perhaps just three numbers. I had to put something canned on stream when I moved from guitar onto piano in first life and I made some short experimental tracks to play while I did that. I found this to be somewhat awkward and as I increased the number of songs on piano, I abandonned this practice and split the show into roughly two halves. From June 2009, I was playing 30 minutes on guitar, followed by 30 minutes on keyboard (and this is roughly what I do now). My current home studio set up is way more sophisticated now than it was in the early days. In May 2008 I started to play a keyboard synthesiser on a couple of tracks within my digital piano set, but I have done less of that lately.

Generally speaking, I sing my original compositions in the first half of my shows, accompanying myself on guitar. I do like to sing a range of covers and tend to do that mainly in the piano part of my show. Recently, I have started to do some experimental improvisations using my piano with a Loop Station and improvising poetry to song with my voice. For example, at Cascadia Harmonics recently I generated a looped phrase from my digital piano live onstream, and then once it had become a full and complex sound I sang a totally improvised version of Tenyson’s poem The Charge of the Light Brigade. I had only glanced over the poem just before logging into SL for the gig. It really was something that I created on the spot for my audience (of about 6 people). I will never be able to do it exactly that way again, since I have erased the loop from my Loop Station and I could not remember how I sang it, anyway. I am very much tempted to explore this sort of thing more fully in the future. I have done one of these loop experiments using voice, as opposed to the piano, to set up the loop and on that occasion I improvised a sung version of Byron’s poem She walks in beauty.

Looking forward to 2010, it is my ambition to start composing on my digital piano (hitherto, the guitar has always been the instrument of choice in this regard). I also need to push myself more fully into the experimental pieces that I do. The SL survey has made it crystal clear that I am not going to get large audiences, ever. However,  I feel very lucky to have a small number of regular fans and attendees who come to most of my shows. I have come to know them well, and regard them as my SL friends.  I would rather have it this way, than play a possibly safer (and for me a duller) repertoire to larger audiences.

Were I to be asked to summarise how I feel about my music in two or three words, I think they would be: optimistic, excited, impatient.

Thank you so much for supporting my musical endeavour.
Fyrm Fouroux
07.12.2009

It has been a couple of weeks since my last blog. The mood has been a tad sombre. Following medical advice I have been making a serious effort to become a marginally healthier lump of flesh and bones. Apart from that, and there has been a bereavement in the family.  The death of a 90+ year old grandparent still has to be coped with as best one can even if it is not an unexpected event. I don’t want to dwell upon the emotional aspect of bereavement; it would be strange if one didn’t feel sad on these occasions, and I guess we all have our own ways of grieving. Quite apart from all that, it occurs to me that such a death causes seismic tremors within the social structure of the family. Death forces change, whether you want it or not, especially when it is the death of a grandparent. Grandchildren find themselves nudged a step further into or towards adulthood; parents become the older generation overnight. Nobody stays the same.

Lately I have been experiencing dark moods and I think this is not unrelated to the things I have just been talking about. I have not been in a bad mood, as in grumpy; it has simply been a case of the blues. Yesterday I met with my good friend Tom for what used to be our date with the full English breakfast. I ordered a couple of poached eggs on dry toast and drank my coffee black. One of the eggs was poorly cooked but I didn’t want to make a fuss and have to wait for another one to be done. This time, the plate of eggs on toast amounted to no more than food – victuals that I merely ate – whereas previously the full English had always been a feast that I looked forward to devouring with considerable relish. That is the stark difference.

Be that as it may, I enjoyed talking with my friend over breakfast. I was telling him about what had been going on in my world and he said that his sister had a good way of looking at these kinds of situation. He said that she would say that a corner would soon be turned. I find that way of looking at things to be very attractive. Change is accepted, even if forced upon you, and eventually embraced enthusiastically.

No way forward

It is perhaps coincidence, but this principle was illustrated to me this morning in a very concrete and almost literal fashion. I had decided to go for a walk along the beach at Seaham. I checked the tides before I left my house. High tide had occured a couple of hours previously and so the tide was going out. I parked on the cliff top, walked down some steep steps to the beach, and headed North. It is not safe to walk north on an incoming tide since you can get cut off by the cliffs. I felt confident that things would work out just fine. However, after several minutes of trudging I noticed that the waves were rolling in right up to one of the headlands. I walked as far as I could without getting my feet wet. Although I could probably have run around it by carefully timing the dash to dodge the rollers, I decided against doing this because I could not see whether there was any exposed beach on the other side of the cliff that was effectively barring my way. I felt rather fed up about this. I had only been walking for about 10 minutes and had been looking forward to going much further along the coast. It was too cold to stand around waiting for the tide to go out another 20 or 20 metres, so with heavy heart I retraced my steps.

Clambering about the rocks

I was about to climb the steps back to the cliff top when I noticed a concrete path running in the opposite direction from which I had come, along the sea defences at the foot of the cliffs (I would hesitate to call it a promenade but the presence of dog-walkers and fishermen indicated that this was its function). I found my way onto it and walked for 10 or 15 minutes until I came to another headland around which I assumed lay  Seaham harbour. I left the path and clambered up over the rocks. I have to say that I found this positively exhilarating. Had the way ahead not been blocked by the sea earlier, I would not have explored this part of the beach. The sun was glinting, the breeze was light, and my body glowed from the exertion of leaping from rock to rock. I was happy. I did not climb out to the tip of the headland. The reason for this was that I did not have my mobile. I was wearing good boots that gripped the rocks just fine and I did not think that I would fall, but if I had done so, it would have been difficult to summon help. I shall return again one fine morning with a fully charged mobile phone in my pocket.

I had the wind on my back as I returned to my starting point; I strode out at an easy pace and let my mind wander. I looked at some of the dogs that were being walked on the beach. Many of them looked nice, but some appeared to be related to vicious breeds, at least to my untutored eye. I have occasionally had dogs bark angrily at me at the beach. Usually, the owners have sorted them out and called them away. I started to think about what you could do to protect yourself from a vicious dog when you go for a walk on the beach. The obvious solution would be to wear a full suit of medieval armour. Of course, this might make walking a tad cumbersome but if the purpose was to get some exercise this could be a point in its favour. In terms of energy expelled, a walk of 1 kilometre in full armour might be equivalent to one of 5 or 10 kilometres wearing jeans and a sweater, for example. I guess that armour entrepreneurs would not be slow to push into this growing market. A system of bite marks could be devised with three bite marks embossed on the shins of the suit indicating that the steel is guaranteed to protect against Rottweilers and Alsatians. Some folks might prefer an altogether lighter suit with the two bite-mark protection against the labrador/retriever class. The single bite mark would be reserved for cheap plastic suits that were effective only against poodles. Life guards patrolling the beaches would have to be trained in armour plate recovery techniques to deal with the poor sods who slip on a bit of seaweed and can’t get up again. The authorities would design beach buggy cranes so the guards could cruise the sand and shingle, winching up the fallen for $100 a pop.

I have to go eat some lunch. I’ll speak to you later, my dear blogophiles.

Robin for company

It is a bright November morning and I am going to do some tidying up in the garden. I shrug into an old sweater and a pair of jeans. I briefly pause to shovel in a bowl of meusli and then put on my gardening trainers; I keep them handily by the conservatory door. I walk around to my shed and workshop. I inspect a border running the length of a pathway which is frequently trodden by the postman. It is not too bad, since I attacked the worst weeds back in August. I get out my seccateurs, lopers, tine-rake and brushes. I embark on an exercise in cutting back. Sometimes I snip delicately; sometimes I hack savagely when an intrusive fir branch darkens my mood. I am not engaged in measured or skilful pruning; I come to conquer. The debris starts to pile up on the pathway. I collect it into an old dustbin and then make several trips to empty the dustbin into my recycling wheely-bin. I look with satisfaction upon the fruits of my labour and take my tools and implements back to the shed.

I return to the kitchen and make myself a salad for lunch: lettuce, bean shoots, cucumber, red pepper and celery all piled high over a lean slice of ham. I place the plate, together with a bottle of spring water, onto a metal tray and take it back out to the garden. I put up a sunlounger and sit munching contentedly. With my gillet and wooly hat I am warm enough to relax. A curious robin watches me eat, perched upon the twigs of a bush only a couple of metres away. I take its picture with my compact digital camera. Although a telephoto lens on a bigger camera would have been better for the job, it would have had the unfortunate effect of shifting the meaning of the episode too far in the direction of ornithological photography; I was eating lunch and I didn’t want that. Talk to you later, my dear blogophiles.

I explained in a previous blog that I am easing off with my typing at present, owing to tingly fingers. I don’t want to let things grind to a halt, so I am writing a short one now. Following a routine check up at my health centre, I am attempting to tweak my lifestyle in a small but positive fashion. Today I go to Seaham to walk along the sea shore.

Cliff top view

…Vroom vroom… Leaving the city behind, I bring my car to a halt on the cliff top car park. Grunt… grunt… I’m out of the seat and hear the door close with a satisfying clunk. A couple of key presses and it is locked. I stride over the grass to the edge of the cliff and pause to take a pic, looking north. This is where I intend to walk.

I take my time getting down the steep cement steps leading to the beach. It feels good at the bottom, as if I have entered another world. Civilisation is up there, behind the cliff face somewhere. Here, there is just me and the sea. Of course, there are the inevitable dogwalkers too. The tide is out and I walk onto some rocks near the water’s edge. They are like stepping stones, fringed with a green lace seaweed. Getting out on these rocks and hopping across dry patches of sand takes me closer and closer to the foaming surf and removes me from the beach and even from the frollicking dogs. The boundaries of my personal space bubble dissolve and blend into the cloudy sky and the frothing foam of the breakers. I am supposed to be walking for exercise, yet I am drawn to squatting upon a rock in silent contemplation. I sniff the salt air and head back to the sandy beach.

Waves rolling in at Seaham

I am walking into the wind and the going underfoot is as squaggy as it is squelchy. My boots are definitely up to it, but I make a mental note to purchase a fine pair of wellies; after all, a lifestyle tweak deserves the proper equipment and clothing. I shift up the beach slightly to avoid wet pools of sand and get on to the pebbles. There is no other sound like that of trudging on a loose pebble beach; my thoughts are immediately swept back to my childhood and Felixtowe beach. I reach the rocks that lie at the foot of the next headland and decide to turn back. I have the wind behind me now and this makes the going much easier.

Stones at low tide Seaham

I pause to look at the pattern made by a series of large stones half-buried in the wet sand. I take a pic. I might use it for wallpaper on my laptop. I reach the steep steps and start to climb back up the cliff. By the time I reach the top I am panting hard. If I do this on a fairly regular basis, I shall be able to take these steps in my stride, literally, in future. I take off my old leather bomber jacket and get into the car. I am still breathing hard from the climb. I open both windows and savour the breeze. Then I put the key in the ignition, fire up the engine, and pootle off home. The adventure took an hour. I am glad I did it. When I get home, I put on some potatoes to boil. I prepare a plate of lean meat and quarter a tomato. I listen to the radio while the potatoes finish cooking, then dish them up. Today, there will be no butter melting in droplets down their cut cliff faces. I treat myself to a boiled beetroot; if one can’t have salt, one might as well have a bit of colour. I enjoy my lunch. I feel as though I am off to a good start. Speak to you later, my dear blogophiles.

Cup of coffee regenerates hair growth

I was having a cup of coffee and suddenly I experienced massive hair regeneration. Sadly, the effect appears to be short-lived. I did have a curly perm back in the 1970s when my hair was long. This was done by Pino of Sunderland, if I remember correctly. As for the colour, I seem to remember Henna being very popular among the social science postgrads I hung out with at Sheffield university around that time.

Although not full-blown repetitive strain injury, my fingers have been a bit tingly lately. This has happened to me before and I have to cut down on the amount of time I spend typing, playing keyboard, and playing guitar. So I shall be brief and shall be posting less frequently for a while. Fortunately, it does not affect drawing. Speaking of which, one of my friends asked me to do a sketch of her daughter and here it is:

My friend's daughter

Ok. I’ll keep this short n sweet. Talk to you later.

I have been reflecting upon my sketchbooks. I have several of these but there is one that I tend to use for watercolour and pen & ink sketches. Those that I do for this blog I attempt to get more or less right, first go. This runs counter to the advice that I was given last year at university by the illustration tutor who urged me to generate loads of paintings or drawings quickly and freely, scanning in the best to work up digitally on computer. I was once told by a professional photographer that he would shoot a whole film on the basis that maybe one or two pictures might turn out well, or at least could be salvaged in the dark room (nowadays, digitally in Photoshop or whatever). He suggested that that was a major difference between him and the average amateur photographer who would try to make each shot count; would try to get the perfect picture with one click of the shutter.

There are parallels to all this in music. In the studio it is possible to lay down endless takes of all the tracks one might need for a song, and then to craft the perfect version in the mix-down. Let me extend this to Second Life music. It is possible to produce an excellent backing track ahead of time in the studio working in this fashion (I believe some folks actually buy professionally produced karaoke tracks). The advantage to the singer is a perfectly executed backing, with no fumbled notes and no sloppy rhythms. The disadvantage, of course, is that the singer is then mechanically tied to the tempo and emotional expression cued by the backing track henceforth on every performance of the song; not my cup of tea at all.

I think the reason for my distaste of karaoke stems from many years in the contemporary folk music tradition of singing live in English pubs. Although I am now extremely critical of most pub gigs (singing to a bar full of people talking, shouting, laughing and generally ignoring one’s performance is no longer my idea of fun), I have put in a lot of hours doing it in the past. The excitement of live performance seems to be coming across in the blossoming of Second Life music jams in first life (there has just been one in Texas, and there was a very successful one a few months ago in Montreal).

Car sponge mic sock

Be that as it may, the thing that is occupying my attention right now is the quality of my vocal sound as I stream it up for my Second Life shows. After much thought, I have decided to complete change the position of the vocal mic I use when singing with piano. This has required hammer, hooks, clips and the re-routing of cables around my mini-studio at home. I need to check the sound levels out this afternoon before I play my show this evening at Club Falling Waters. I don’t wish to give away all my secrets but the wind sock I made for the mic out of a car wash sponge seems to be working extremely well!

Before I can do this, I have a feeling that I am going to be called upon to be taxi-man for a trip to the city and after that there looms a mid-week trip to the supermarket. Somewhere in amongst that I am hoping for some time to ponder on the advice my piano teacher gave me this morning. I had better get on with things. Speak to you later.

Shirt as objet d'art

I wake up and creak down the stairs to the kitchen. Kettle on; I brew tea. Plod back up the stairs and swing left into my little studio. Point bottom into Ikea easy chair and dunk the first biscuit. Assume some brain activity going on but to call it thinking might be taking it a bit far. Dunk second biscuit and focus eyes on the clean shirt which last night I hung on the back of my swivel office chair. Extend right leg, hooking foot under seat and pull it towards me. Chair becomes footstool. Look at shirt, vacantly. I have to sketch this shirt today. Don’t know why, just have to.

Still in PJs. Get out sketchbook and a 2B pencil (Staedtler, my favourite). I am having difficulty with the left shoulder; this is not going to be done in 10 minutes.
 

Interruption #1: I put on a pair of jeans and some shoes, slipping a leather bomber jacket over my PJ top, and take the recycling bins out ready for early morning collection.

Back up in the studio I ponder the fact that I cannot both sketch my shirt and wear it at the same time, at least not the way I have posed it now. This reminds me of my friend Tom’s decision not to photograph our full English breakfast as a project last week because it would have interfered with eating breakfast.
 

Interruption #2 I find another shirt to wear for today.
I am having problems with the pocket. I realise that there is something structurally adrift when I look at the negative space formed by the line of the shoulder, the arm the top of the pocket and the row of shirt buttons going up to the neck. I work on this for a while.

Interruption #3 I have to drive someone somewhere. This is not a surprise, since I had said I would do it last night. I would have liked to have sorted that pocket out.
I decide to play some piano, now that I am back home. This doesn’t go too well. I return to the sketch and start to put in some detail and a little shading.

Interruption #4 I agree, reluctantly, to drive somebody into the city.

I am now home and instead of continuing immediately with the sketch, I make some lunch. Back in the studio I finish the pencil sketch and start to mix the colour for the watercolour washes I want to use on the shirt and chair upholstery.  This is going well; I am enjoying myself. I put the wash on the shirt first, then dry it off with an old hairdryer I keep for the purpose. Then I put on the second wash and finish things off. I scan the pic and then upload it for the blog here. It is now 4 pm and I  am feeling sleepy, so I am going for a nap……

…. That’s better. I popped some spuds on to boil for my dinner and slung some supermarket quorn and mushroom pies in the oven. My watch timer is on; I have about 20 minutes to finish this blog, unless I continue during or after my meal. While I was getting the potatoes ready, it occurred to me that this post has been primarily about my sketch. In an illustrated journal the illustration should provide comment on the primary diurnal activity. I seem to have gotten things round the wrong way at present. Yesterday was the day of the boot, today that of the shirt. I shall get this posted now, so I can eat in peace. Speak to you later, my dear blogophiles.