John's Quavering Pencil

It is a warm morning and I am in the garden, weeding a circular rose bed in the middle of the lawn. The sun is slanting in low; I contemplate putting on my straw panama but the bushes seem to be shading me once I get down into the dirt. Weeding can be a chore, unless you become at one with it in the here and now. I think about the cult book Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance which I read when I was a postgrad student in the 1970s, and also about a lovely little book called Zen Guitar which, regrettably, I seem to have lost. Today all is good; I have Zen weeding.

My new nextdoor neighbour’s father arrives in his builders truck and starts carrying in bags of cement and what-have-you. They are in the middle of a major renovation of the property and are not yet moved in. We pass the time of day and I fork out another weed. I am sitting on an upturned plastic storage box. I get up from time to time to take a swig of tea from the mug I have placed on the living room windowsill. I notice how stiff my leg joints feel as I move into the upright position. Gardening is a pleasant way to give the body a gentle workout.

My other neighbour, Bob, emerges from his house to go for the newspaper. He stops and we have one of our easy-going chats. He is an exceptionally good realistic artist, currently working mainly with acrylics. He takes my back into his studio and shows me some paintings of Venice that he has recently completed. They are awe-inspiring. He has already hung some of his work in galleries. He very generously explains some of his techniques to me, and I am totally fascinated. A couple of years ago, what he says would probably have been wasted on me. My studies on the MA course last year have changed all that. I could relate what he was saying to things both my life drawing tutor and the illustration tutor had said to me. I explained to him that I would like to incorporate more of my sketches into this blog, so it becomes more of an illustrated journal. I gave him my website address and I hope he has a look at it sometime. By the time we finished chatting I needed to go indoors and brew some coffee. I shall probably finish off the weeding of the rose bed this afternoon.

I have so much to do today. I am determined to look again at my piano boogie DVD and my piano lesson has been moved to tomorrow, Wednesday, this week. I want to try to think about what to take in to my teacher so I can get the most from the lesson. I have three exercises to practice for her, anyway. Then I need to make a decision as to whether to go to the preview opening of the MA students’ design show. A week ago, I could not have contemplated doing this; I think I was in the equivalent of mourning. Today I feel a lot stronger. I have started to put sketches into this blog and the chat with my neighbour has put me in a good frame of mind as far as my art is concerned. I shall mull this over. Maybe I will go. It would mean that I was on top of it all. And I would love to see some of the tutors again. It might be a case of taking a deep breath and standing tall. I’ll speak to you later.

Apart from hamburgers, one of the most enthusiastically welcomed imports to English culture from the States has to be the baseball cap; even I own one (see my pencil sketch). I am currently deciding whether or not to stowe my cap into the closet, along with my summer shorts. I have steadfastly resisted the temptation to wear the cap back to front, a practice so fondly embraced by the yoof of today. My cap, far from being a fashion statement, is functional: it keeps the summer sun off my eyes. As such I have begrudgingly allowed it to usurp my panama hat which is made of straw and has a delightful black band around the circumference. I don’t have time to sketch that right now, maybe tomorrow.

A DVD that I ordered last week arrived in the post today. It is all about how to play boogie and blues on the piano. I find this to be quite a difficult thing to do and I’m not very good at getting my right hand to do something different from what my left hand is doing. The DVD has been put together by Louis Vause and Seamus Beaghen and I think I am going to enjoy working through their exercises very much indeed. For example, today Louis was talking about this problem of the two hands and he suggested thinking about it as a multi-tasking problem. So, setting up a bass boogie pattern in the left hand, he challenged me to pick up a pencil from the top of the piano, move it a little way across, and put it down again. At first I just could not do it and keep the bass going at the same time. He gave a few other examples of things to try out before putting the right hand fingers anywhere near the keyboard. I can see this is going to be an entertaining challenge.

I have to have something to eat before I get ready for my internet show at The Vibe tonight. Oh, btw, thanks for your comment Coin (I approved it on the blog earlier this afternoon). I must get going now. Speak to you later

This afternoon I mowed the grass. It looks neat and slightly stripey now. In tidy mode, I brushed the clippings off the mower before I stowed it away. In England, the last average cut date tends to be sometime from the end of October through to mid-November; it won’t be the last time I mow this year.

Although motorised lawn mowing provides relatively light exercise compared to pushing the manual Ransome Sims & Jefferies mowers of yesteryear, it nevertheless succeeded in bringing me to a modest sweat. I therefore sat quietly in a chair on the green swathe to cool down. A red robin came to share my space, perching jauntily upon a nearby branch. The way it kept looking at me was tantamount to anthropomorphic flirting.

When I got up to go, my feathered friend flew off, presumably in search of wriggly worms and other delights for its dinner, and I set about collapsing the garden chair I had been sitting in. As I did, my somewhat unkempt holly bush grabbed my attention. I had been reminiscing, whilst mowing the lawn, about Christmas times way back when we first moved to our present house. I used to make and ice my own Xmas cake and also my own Xmas puddings; I used traditional English recipes. I always made a roast turkey Xmas dinner with all the trimmings (usually with home-made chestnut and mushroom soup to start with). I used to serve my Xmas pud at the end of the meal and even poured a ladle of warmed brandy over it, flaming with a match. On the top of the pud I always put a sprig of holly from the bush in the garden. Year after year I looked eagerly to see if there were any red berries on the bush, and repetitively I was disappointed. Eventually I researched the matter and discovered that there have to be male and female trees in close proximity, although not necessarily in the same garden, in order for berries to appear. I can only assume that somebody nearby has planted a complementarily gendered bush, since I beheld a profusion of berries on my tree. Some are already red, others still yellow but turning that way. I am so excited about this I might even be moved to make some Xmas puddings again this year (I stopped doing that because nobody else in my house likes either the puddings or the cake).

After such excitement, the only thing to do is lay down and take a nap. I’ll speak to you later.

Yesterday I played a show at Terra Fyrmusica in Second Life. In the second half I did a timed 10 minute atonal improvisation on piano, as planned. I listened to a recording of it today. I find it almost impossible to pass comment on it in terms of quality. It is difficult to think of what to compare it with. One thing I did learn was that the sound levels need to be adjusted at the start for the maximum volume likely in the piece, since I have no hands free to mess with knobs and faders on the mixer which, in any case, is across the room from where I am playing.

The venue is small and only one person came to listen to me. I can’t worry about that, I need to get on with what I want to do with my music. If other folk don’t want to listen, that is up to them. I’m not playing tonight, so my next gig will be at Foxy Hollow on Saturday morning. This afternoon I did a quick pencil sketch of the blindfold I used for the improvisation (see above).

The big news today is that the repair man came, at last, and fixed our dryer. However, we have not tested it yet; I live in hope. Speak to you later.

I am waiting for the repair man to fix our dryer. He is late; I had hoped to snatch a nap before my show in SL tonight. I have prepared my songlist and I am planning on a 10 minute atonal improvisation on piano, blindfold. I would rather be fresh for that; if I am tired and blindfolded, I could drop off to sleep I suppose.

I have spent another day tidying up in my studio and also doing some housekeeping on computer. The new MA cohort will have been settling in this week and so I have tried to keep busy in order to keep my mind from dwelling on it. I have had moderate success with that strategy. This afternoon would have been a good time to do some autumnal clearing up in the garden. The sun is bright and it smells nice outside. I don’t always make the right decisions. Still, I have sorted out a lot of music leads and that is a job I have been meaning to do for a long time.

I also got my synthesizer up and put my nose into the manual for about an hour. I use it for a couple of songs in my internet shows but so far I been restricted to pre-set voicings, owning to a lack of deep understanding. The instrument is fairly complex. I need to study it further. I shall post this now and think about what to do about this repair man. It is nearly time to have something to eat. All I had for lunch was a few plums. Speak to you later.

It was good to meet up with my friends Richjack and Costello inworld the other day. Costello now looks pretty good and no longer has the stamp of newbie across her avatar.

I was also very touched when Toby got in touch with me inworld. I know he reads this blog, so I just want to say thank you for your encouragement regarding my music. What Toby said to me was that he liked the way I explored new things in my music and how, even when I do covers, I somehow do them in a novel way. Casting false modesty aside, I think that is true; I really do put a lot of thought into working out reasonably original arrangements for my covers. This sometimes means that I keep playing them over and over at all my shows and I thank my regular fans for putting up with that. An example right now would be my version of Sir Bob Geldorf’s Mondays song. I heard another singer play that song inworld last night, using a simple guitar strumming accompaniment. The singer was ok, but the song sounded like a pale imitation of the orignal Boomtown Rats number. I feel that deciding NOT to play this on guitar has been a good move for me. There is piano on the orginal track, of course, but I have not followed that. My approach has been to develop an arrangement that breathes as I sink into the meaning of the lyric (which is highly disturbing, btw). Incidentally, it was my friend Costello who suggested I learn Mondays.

I have been thinking about what Toby said to me, especially in context of my piano playing. I often go to listen to Kourosh at Natida Ridge on Saturdays. His concerts are timed early morning in Second Life but I experience them as mid-afternoon, listening in England. Most of his playing is semi-structured improvisation. He sometimes plays a synth together with piano (one in each hand, I guess). His music washes over you in waves of harmony, yet from time to time he will startle you discordantly. I very much admire his style and in fact he has a large following of regular fans who I see there each week. The atmosphere is chillax [you chill and relax]. The music is slightly spacey. I no longer smoke cigarettes of any shape or form, but I imagine that a little joint and a cup of tea would be very compatible with this style of music.

I can’t play like Kourosh. Of course this is partly a question of keyboard skill. After all, the guitar is my first instrument. However, I do not think that this is the whole story. A couple of years ago a professional violinist who is also a professor of music at our local university suggested that I spend some time each day (perhaps 10 minutes or whatever) playing piano blindfolded – not trying to remember set pieces, but improvising freely in whatever way I choose. I have a full size 88 key piano. He pointed out to me that the keyboard is really quite wide; he held both arms out to physically demonstrate the fact. Then he said to me (I can’t remember the exact words) “You bought all of that – the whole length, and not just a little bit in the middle. Make sure you use it.”

I have been tidying up my studio over the past couple of days. Now that I have withdrawn from the MA in Animation and Design, I need to reorganise my space and throw out a certain amount of stuff that I shall no longer be using. I have found a very good place for my paint brushes:) Anyway, the clear up has extended to my music books, papers and so forth. I was rummaging through my bureau yesterday and found the blindfold! This isn’t one of those flimsy freebies that you get on Virgin flights; I bought it at a travel shop and it is definitely a deluxe model. It is comfortable and really does shut out the light. It is impossible to peek downwards to see the piano keys once it is pulled over my eyes.

I set my kitchen timer for 10 minutes, blindfolded myself, and let my fingers wander over the keys. At first, nothing much happened. I mirrored what was going on in my left hand with what my right hand was doing but this was more of a technical effect than anything else. Gradually, however, I became lost in the music that I was creating. It became more emotional in nature. It most definitely was not like Kourosh’s improvisation. I think the sound I create is less comfortable, more edgy. I don’t think the fans at the Ridge on Saturdays would like the music that I produce when I do this. There would definitely not be the typical comments you get such as “Oh, this is so relaxing – beautiful” etc.

The question arises as to whether I should risk subjecting my audience to a 10 minute timer improv. I have done 3 minute improvs before, even at Cascadia Harmonics, but I’m pretty sure I did that in a string quartet voicing (it sounded a bit like the sound track of a horror movie). It was done more as a novelty or musical joke, back then. If I do this again I shall do it in a piano voicing. It will have to be at my cosy little  venue, Terra Fyrmusica. The problem is that I have tiny audiences at my concerts when I play there. I have a show scheduled on my list for 11 am SLT (7 pm English Time) on Thursday 17th, tomorrow.

I could put in a 10 minute timed improvisation slot part way through the keyboard half of my show. It is just one of those things I have to do. If some listeners don’t like it, that is fair enough: they will just teleport out of the venue. And, of course, I shall not make a cover charge for the show. There has been a lot of debate and controversy about all that in SLMC lately but I’m not going to get into that here.

I must commit myself. I shall put the Terra Fyrmusica event in Search and make a statement about the planned keyboard improvisation in the blurb. I see it as atonal experimental piano, I would not call it jazz. Ok, I shall sort that out. Speak to you later.

I awake at 8 a.m. to the beeping sound of the alarm on my digital watch. At first I have some difficulty working out why I set the alarm. As the mists of sleep recede into the distance, I recall that it is rubbish and garden waste recycling day; the bins might be collected within the hour and I need to get them onto the street.

Choosing a shirt is a slow business today but I will refrain from exploring that particular morcel of indecision, since the wardrobe is worthy of a blog  all to itself, at some point in the future. The shirt I choose is the one that  featured in my blog of 9th September (Sleepless in Sunderland). It was the crumpled up garment lying on my piano . Since then, it has been on my body and in the washing machine. It also had a long spell tumbling around the dryer. The dryer has not been working properly but, hopefully, it will be repaired on Thursday by the nice man from Dobsons Domestics. 

I tug my clothes into place and lumber down the stairs, bathroomwards. A basic short-term plan evolves while I pee, and by the time the teeth are cleaned  freedom is no longer a word I would associate with my  life in the upcoming thirty minutes.

I open the front door and step into a somewhat chilly, damp autumnal morning. The lawn, looking neat from its recent mowing, glistens with dew. I saunter into my garage workshop, without being entirely sure why I have done so. This is a danger node in the plan; I could easily get side-tracked here. I pull on a pair of leather gardening gloves. As I grip the handles of my green wheely bin I become a rally driver, powering my beast down a hairpin bend to the recycling pit. I wave to the crowd, holding my trophy as I walk back to pick up the brown bin. This smells of partially decayed grass cuttings and other sundry organic detritus. In my hands it becomes a bi-plane, soaring above the fields; the noisy engine sputters as I bring it down to land beside its rally car twin.

Reluctantly I remove my magic leather gloves, lock up the workshop, and go back into the house, picking up a couple of pints that the milkman has delivered on the way. I walk into the kitchen, wipe the grit off the bottles’ bottoms, and stowe them in the fridge. I turn on the radio. An Afghanistan man is explaining how his brother was killed the other day. Aparently someone fired a rocket into the family bedroom. The survivor was thirty years old and he said that there had always been war and fighting where he grew up, in Kabul. Awful. Then they played an interview that had been previously recorded with the actor, Patrick Swayze, who died last night. He was talking about the difficulty of living with prostate cancer.

John Humphrys who is the excellent the presenter of the BBC Radio 4 news programme, Today, then went on to do several phone interviews in connection with a proposal to give a small proportion of heroin addicts free heroin while they are in treatment.

Death in war, prostate cancer, and heroin addiction: what a cheery start to the day. It certainly placed the tedium of doing the dishes into a wider  context. When I had finished tidying the kitchen, I made myself a cup of tea and came upstairs to my studio where I am presently typing to you. I became so  engrossed that I forgot to drink my tea. I take a sip; it is tepid. The warmth that would have scoded my tongue when freshly poured from the kettle has dissipated. I shall post this and go make myself a cup of coffee. Who knows what will happen in the space of time that it takes to cool: another rocket attack in Afghanistan, another death from prostate cancer, another vein shot up with heroin. But what shall I do? I think I shall play the piano. I’ll speak to you later.

We were all free, without commitments, and at home today. At last we managed to go out for lunch together. We went to the Rosedene pub and sat at a table just by the stained glass window.

We were able to chillax nicely here. I had a chat with John, the landlord, about music and stuff. Who knows… maybe some possibilities around the corner.

It is Sunday morning and I have driven my daughter to work. Back home my stomach suggests that it is time for a simple breakfast: coffee and a fried egg on toast. I assemble the basic ingredients, functioning with the automaticity that comes from an over-practiced skill. When I wrote my book on the psychology of food and eating, I thought about such actions in terms of plans and the structure of behaviour. Now, having studied animation this past year, I can also think of what happens as a series of key frames and I include pics of four of these. To make an animation of my breakfast episode I would need more key frames than I have included here, for purposes of illustration, but I am sure you get the gist. #1 The ingredients #2 The fried egg on the toast #3 The breakfast being eaten #4 All washed up.

At first my plan was to draw these frames in my sketch book. I am really slow when it comes to sketching and by the time I had started on the toaster with the piece of bread sticking out of the opening at the top, my stomach had begun to rebel in earnest. I started to hurry the sketch along. It was fatal. All I produced was a sad-looking, genetically mutated specimen of a toaster. It was at this point that I resorted to my compact digital camera.

Giving up my MA was primarily based upon financial considerations relating to the magnitude of the university fees compared to the funds available from my pension, once ordinary household and living expenses were taken out. So my decision to quit the MA has not impacted on my desire to improve my sketching and painting skills. First thing this morning I did some pen/pencil control exercises, as usual. I then did some basic piano practice, too. I feel there are many similarities between music and visual art basic skills training.

My young friends who have completed their full-time MA will be having an exhibition on the 22nd September. At present, I don’t think I could cope with going. I think it would make me feel too sad. However, I am getting on very well in terms of re-organising my life world. Who knows, maybe I will feel able to go by the time it comes around. I think that perhaps it would be good for me to do that; one has to face up to these things.

Coming back to sketching, I have been reading a book, for the second time this year, about how to approach keeping a drawn journal. I think the time it takes me to sketch is a major barrier to doing this. That and the fact that I feel very self-conscious to draw in public. The crazy thing is that I feel perfectly confident getting up to a microphone and singing in public, solo. If anything, one might think that the singing would be the more difficult thing to do. I have to get on top of this.

Artistic self-confidence seems to go up and down like a yo-yo. Last Friday at my piano lesson I felt that I was playing dreadfully. When I think about how basic my piano skills are and how badly I play sometimes, I wonder how on earth I have the gall to play keyboard across the internet. Yet I do, and mostly I thoroughly enjoy it. I shall soon have completed 350 shows since January 2008.

Now that I have a bit more time, I might go back and try to improve some of my guitar arpeggios. I do use the major scale shapes a lot in my internet performance, and I also use major and dominant 7th arpeggios. However, I think it might be time to extend that a little.

While I am reviewing my artistic progress, part of me hankers after my fictional hero, Harold Hake. I enjoyed writing my e-novel about Harold. Of course, I never seem to do anything much with any of this. Hmmm…. This is obviously a time for taking stock of things. I’ll get this up on the blog before I have to drive out to the supermarket. Talk to you later.

I went north of the Tyne last night to see my friends Tony and Costello. We went to a lovely little Italian restaurant on the fish quay at North Shields (see pic).

Fish quay at North Shields

Lots of red wine was drunk by all. Tony and I played a little music at the end of the evening but unfortunately I had left my piano sheets at home. I slept overnight at their place because I was way over the limit for driving my car. I set off back home early this morning and drove through some beautiful sunshine. Getting into and out of the Tyne tunnel is a bit messy at present; they are building a second tunnel next to the existing one, to cope with the heavy traffic demands. Yesterday’s blue feeling is dissipating nicely, thanks to the visit with my friends. I shall put this short blog up, then make myself a cup of coffee. I have to get ready to play a gig at Foxy Hollow in Second Life in about an hour’s time.

Before I go, I will just show you a pic of me posing in front of my Master Whip van.

Master Whip poses in front of his van

What do they get up to in North Shields!