i’m putting off updating my website as i always hate doing that, so i’ll write a bit of blog instead. the joys of procrastination….Having visited the grotto and the yew tree, i spent the last few days writing a melody for the grotto song, which seems quite good..it’s very 18th century and i tried to do it in the style of Thomas Arne (composer of Rule Britannia as far as I recall) and Where the bee sucks) . That’s about the same period as the construction of the grotto and the poems written by the man who had it built. I just have to memorise it now.
The yew tree song…well there’s a voiceover in the first part of the video which i’ll record somewhere else, the bathroom cupboard i think, it needs to be in a quiet and muffled place, so i’ll put loads of towels on the floor. then there’s a song to be sung inside the yew tree itself on site and recorded there with all the ambient sound . It’s not exactly cheery…poisoned berries, possible suicide, rejected love etc but the main thing is for the person and the tree to become entwined, physically and mentally. I’ve been writing down the music in a very basic way using my nice yamaha E333 keyboard (a great ebay find) which displays the notes you are playing on the keyboard as you play them so’s you can write them down on a sheet of music.
I had a couple of discussions with my colaborators as well, Lucy and Lynn. It’s so useful to get another perspective on your work, especially from someone from slightly outside the area you are working in. Something i think very ordinary, seems to others to be good, and sometimes vice versa.
I’m feeling rather restless tho, wanting to get on with another level of making the work, but have to wait for access to the places and my memorisation of the material to be completed.
It’s also time i went to see some exhibitions. It’s easy to become so focussed on your own work that you end up lacking a distanced perspective that you can bring to other people’s work when you see it in a show, or a performance etc, but you’ve forgotten how to bring that critical and appraising eye to your own efforts.
I’m going to think more about the project as a whole as well, rather than working on each individual project one after the other. I need to experiment more as well i think, as that’s the main point of the bursary really.
I’m also wondering how you can put still images into this blog!
i think i’ve done it….
