I am having to force some downtime down my neck at the moment.
I should be collating a bunch of songs for a bonus cd to be sold with the album when bought directly through my label, and i could do that easily from Warpsichord offcuts, but nothing is ever EVER good enough so i'm busy reproducing things, re singing re writing.
Its excellent to visit some things i hadn't heard in a while and it gives me little thrills to hear things i did that i had forgotten, but here's where the problem is. THERE'S TOO BLOODY MUCH OF IT. My hard drive is clogged with nearly 60GB of recorded bits and bobs, which would be amazing if they were all tremendously well executed pieces of musical literature. But a lot of it is recordings of "the time my voice cracked at the top note and i laughed and it sounded cool so i kept it to use later" and the like. I'm gonna have to pack some of it away before i can do new things. Onto a harddrive. Or two.
To be honest its been a long time coming. I have gradually become so freakishly patient that if a pitch bend takes five minutes to load i shall wait. But thats not really good enough. I don't have a great short term memory and things fall out of my head almost instantaneously so i have to be able to work quickly.
I wonder if my short term memory is actually an inability to pay attention. Some sort of attention defecit. I once told someone i had Attention Defecit Disorder, and then completely forgot to tell them it was a joke. But they were convinced for a few years that this was indeed true.
Its not that i can't pay attention really, but just that i try to pay attention to lots of things at once. I have the TV on when i read. I listen to music while i watch a movie. I draw while i make music. and i beatbox when trying to sleep.
Thats the worst one really the drumming at sleepytime. I'm terrible for drumming my fingers and hands. I walk in drum rhythms and have to keep them constant. I can't keep my fingers still and this all comes most violently at bedtime. I suddenly realise i have an amazing beat clattering around my head and i tap it out on my head/on the bed head. And its not just any old beat, but TRULY THE MOST INCREDIBLE FUSION OF DISRYHTMIA EVER BEFORE WITNESSED. This can keep me up for a long time. I'm kind of used to it, so i can still drift close to the edge of slumber paddle in the wake even and keep doing my beats without much hassle. But then a kind of anxiety starts to form and i wish i had a dictaphone to transcribe this magical clunking. But NO! Not a dictaphone. That, by morning would sound like a spittled fart from my tired lips pressed rudely into an insufficient mic or a mindless contextless clatter of nonsense beat on a dirty bed.
I need you to be able to hear all the villagers pounding these beats on the floors of my medicine mans hut, to hear the subtle cracklings of electricity flying between the poles of my fingers. And whats this?! over these thumps and splutters comes a growing sine wave. louder and louder, changing key fighting against a angry flute! staccato notes spiralling against the steady advance of the synthline! A harpsichord is sexually plucked with soiled plectrums making a tinny sharp oscillating etch against the lush and airy flutes.
And i can see the notes I'm going to sing, the voice I'm going to use, the look on my face as i spit the words. I can hear the colours flying around me at night. If i could see my own head at that point i bet there would be little glimmers floating around it.
But by morning its gone. I'll remember a word or a note, but mostly, my great concerto, my tribal aria is gone. No room in my head to keep it all in.
So i wonder if anyone can lend me a hard drive for my computer and one for my brain?
