We had a bit of a lie in and then spent the late morning working on the script for Beyond the Fence. I still can't quite get used to calling it by that name. The show's working title was Green Gate and my head hasn't entirely managed to move on!
We were working on the end sequence, trying to cut sequences and tidy bits up. The last but one song in the piece is the most troubling song in the show. We are struggling like mad to make it work. It seems computers don't much want to help us with that song. Sometimes they're like that. We once met a computer system which drew portraits of people based on the mood it was in after reading a randomly selected news story. Sometimes it decided it was too depressed to draw at all. Readers won't be at all surprised to learn that it was too depressed to draw when it was my turn to sit for it!
Brother Edward and Sascha came over this evening to watch the results shows and catch up on gossip. They're off to Marrakesh, lucky bastards, and then South Africa. It was so lovely to see them up on our patch. Usually we're down their way on a Sunday night. I'm secretly hoping that they'll think about moving to these parts one day.
It's been a horribly rainy night in London, though nothing compared to what they've been experiencing in Cumbria. My mate Becky, who lives in Keswick, keeps posting apocalyptic photographs on Facebook of flood barriers being breached and bridges being swept into angry looking rivers. It's mayhem up there.
Well anyway, I hope everyone reading this blog is safe tonight and that, if Desmond the storm is anywhere close to you, it doesn't cause you too many problems.
Monday, 7 December 2015
Sunday, 6 December 2015
Random composer
At about midnight last night I found out that I'd been chosen as the recipient of the John Cage Memorial Random Composer Award. I like to think of it as a very prestigious award, despite my name having been selected as the winner by a process involving random noise! The recipient is selected in this manner so that no composer experiences prejudice as a result of their gender or the style of music they write. In the words of its organiser, Benjamin Hjertmann, "it's a fun, lighthearted and special honor in its own right. It's a way for us all to recognize the subjectivity of our field, to celebrate serendipity and its intimate relationship with music, and to serve as a kind of equalizer rewarding the act of composing itself, not our opinions of the results."
I'm therefore rather proud to have won!
Of course the award organisers were thrilled to hear about the computer musical.
You can read about the awards here: http://randomcomposeraward.weebly.com
We were at Craft and Cake this afternoon. It took us forever to get down to Catford. Every section of road which could have been traffic-logged was chockablock with angry drivers, cutting other drivers up, and using sneaky short cuts which simply delayed everyone else even further. I was driving and ended up with clutch foot. During the first hour of our journey, we covered exactly eight miles. We went down Highgate Hill at the same speed as a jogger, got stuck in the middle of a crowd heading to an Arsenal match on the Holloway Road, and then got trapped in Hackney like a pair of wasps in a bottle of lemonade. Even our sat nav was forced to acknowledge it would have been quicker to cycle!
Anyway, we were rewarded by a lovely pot of tea and some amazing food at Julie and Sam's. Profiteroles were the order of the day: raspberry and salted caramel flavour, but there was also a delicious fruit cake, scones, potato salad and panettone.
Kate announced that she was pregnant, which gave us all something to smile about. Hilary continued to knit her endless blanket, Julie made odd socks, Sam was knitting a lengthways scarf and Tina, for the first time ever, was knitting something which wasn't red. Something must be wrong with the world. Poor lass looked very uncomfortable! I bet she rips it out!
Abbie gave me an early Christmas present in the shape of a lovely reproduction Rice Krispies tin. I've been searching for ages for a tin to carry CDs about in to prevent the cases from cracking in my bag and Abbie told me she'd spent almost as long trying to find one to give me as a present. It's the perfect size and I was incredibly touched.
This evening, Nathan and I lent our dulcet(ish) tones to the Fleet Singers who were doing a little Christmas concert at the Methodist church in Gospel Oak. It was a really lovely evening. The audience was incredibly appreciate, everyone sang really beautifully, and as always, the choir rose to the challenge. The readings were particularly good. Everyone really threw themselves into them and some really unexpected poems were found.
We came home and watched X Factor and Strictly. I'm suffering from tinnitus again, so I'm a little worried about going to bed, because it's only when there's silence around me when the infernal whistling starts. I hear a very high-pitched sound like a crazy distant car alarm which oscillates between an E flat and a D. They're not even useful notes! I haven't noticed it for a while, so I'm sort of hoping it's something which won't be a constant part of my life. Nathan thinks it's returned recently because I'm stressed. Who knows? I think I simply have to try and embrace it. If I can get to a place were it starts to feel comforting, perhaps I'll stop obsessing about it.
I'm therefore rather proud to have won!
Of course the award organisers were thrilled to hear about the computer musical.
You can read about the awards here: http://randomcomposeraward.weebly.com
We were at Craft and Cake this afternoon. It took us forever to get down to Catford. Every section of road which could have been traffic-logged was chockablock with angry drivers, cutting other drivers up, and using sneaky short cuts which simply delayed everyone else even further. I was driving and ended up with clutch foot. During the first hour of our journey, we covered exactly eight miles. We went down Highgate Hill at the same speed as a jogger, got stuck in the middle of a crowd heading to an Arsenal match on the Holloway Road, and then got trapped in Hackney like a pair of wasps in a bottle of lemonade. Even our sat nav was forced to acknowledge it would have been quicker to cycle!
Anyway, we were rewarded by a lovely pot of tea and some amazing food at Julie and Sam's. Profiteroles were the order of the day: raspberry and salted caramel flavour, but there was also a delicious fruit cake, scones, potato salad and panettone.
Kate announced that she was pregnant, which gave us all something to smile about. Hilary continued to knit her endless blanket, Julie made odd socks, Sam was knitting a lengthways scarf and Tina, for the first time ever, was knitting something which wasn't red. Something must be wrong with the world. Poor lass looked very uncomfortable! I bet she rips it out!
Abbie gave me an early Christmas present in the shape of a lovely reproduction Rice Krispies tin. I've been searching for ages for a tin to carry CDs about in to prevent the cases from cracking in my bag and Abbie told me she'd spent almost as long trying to find one to give me as a present. It's the perfect size and I was incredibly touched.
This evening, Nathan and I lent our dulcet(ish) tones to the Fleet Singers who were doing a little Christmas concert at the Methodist church in Gospel Oak. It was a really lovely evening. The audience was incredibly appreciate, everyone sang really beautifully, and as always, the choir rose to the challenge. The readings were particularly good. Everyone really threw themselves into them and some really unexpected poems were found.
We came home and watched X Factor and Strictly. I'm suffering from tinnitus again, so I'm a little worried about going to bed, because it's only when there's silence around me when the infernal whistling starts. I hear a very high-pitched sound like a crazy distant car alarm which oscillates between an E flat and a D. They're not even useful notes! I haven't noticed it for a while, so I'm sort of hoping it's something which won't be a constant part of my life. Nathan thinks it's returned recently because I'm stressed. Who knows? I think I simply have to try and embrace it. If I can get to a place were it starts to feel comforting, perhaps I'll stop obsessing about it.
Friday, 4 December 2015
Yawn
It's been a bit of a frustrating day, if I'm honest. We were meant to be finishing off a draft of the script, but Nathan had a morning gig which over-ran catastrophically. When he got home there were admin emails to send, which took far too long to write, and so we only managed a couple of hours at the end of the day, and, as a result, missed a deadline for the first time on this project.
Add to this the somewhat unnecessary and aggressive ramblings of a woman who took offence to my Facebook post about women last night. It was actually fair enough. I'd chosen the wrong words to describe what I was looking for, but instead of politely telling me, she went in throwing muck about, telling my friends who were posting anecdotes that they ought to feel ashamed of themselves for saying how embarrassing wardrobe malfunctions could be. Worrying about showing your breasts in public is apparently reenforcing male attitudes. It probably is, but she was so aggressive and bullying that several of my friends who wanted to add something to the thread emailed me instead to say they were too frightened to post anything for fear of what she'd say! I think, when the conversation turned to the fact that women have it far worse in life than gay people, and that gay people only suffer abuse because they're perceived to be more feminine than men, I started to lose patience. When she started moaning that white men were the only "acceptable" face of the LGBT movement, I lost my rag. How dare she undermine the work of people like Peter Tatchell who was regularly beaten up for making a stand? Emmline Pankhurst's work was not undermined by the colour of her skin!
It has never been illegal for gay women to be gay and therefore gay women have historically been far more likely to attach themselves to the feminist agenda. Fact. I don't have a problem with this, I just feel it's important to note that gay men were right at the forefront of that particular fight and it wasn't until relatively recently that larger numbers of women started to fight as well.
The trouble with some "feminists" is that they don't seem to think that we all have to live on this planet together. Jumping down the throats of men like me who have never believed in anything but true equality is so far off the mark it's laughable. I only have about three male friends. All my friends are female. They always have been. She called me weird. She even inferred that, as a man, I shouldn't try to write about women. It was like she didn't realise she was saying all of this to a captive audience of my friends and seemed genuinely surprised when they started to defend me. I guess, in her world, women are supposed to gang up on men out of solidarity. It was a shame, because behind the bluster and the insults, she was actually saying some very sensible things. But she managed to alienate everyone.
I took myself to Brent Cross this morning to buy some shirts. Sometimes I look in a mirror and realise I've turned into a tramp, and the older I get, the less acceptable the boho chic look becomes! I've often found clothes shopping a bit of an unjustifiable waste of money, so when I'm finally forced to bite the bullet, I go a little crazy.
...And so I bought five shirts. The woman in the shop told me is was almost cheaper to buy the five in her special offer than it was to buy the three I wanted, so I panic-grabbed two more! I think she did me a favour. The five shirts only cost £100 and hopefully I can avoid buying more for another five years!
Anyway, all of this footle prevented me from doing more writing, which is bad because rehearsals for our show start in a month and we still have six songs to write. Then I have to orchestrate everything we've done. I'd also like to spend some time actually thinking about the numbers rather than throwing notes onto a page and hoping they'll stick.
In all of this, the search for useable melodies from the computer systems is the most painful process. I think those who have asked us to do this experiment sometimes forget that finding a tune which works as music is only the first stage in the journey. Next it has to have the right feel for the song we're writing. Then it has to fit the words. One of the major issues with musical theatre is that it thrives on pastiche. You don't just get up tempo numbers and ballads, sometimes you need a sleazy jazzy number, or a Disneyesque whistle chorus or a gospel number or a tango. And only certain melodies are versatile enough to have these different feels. So, if one out of every fifty computer melodies has promise musically, imagine how the odds shrink when all the other processes come in? I reckon we're actually only able to use one melody in every 100, which is insane.
Still, we continue with the insanity! It's a brilliant project. And there's genuine jeopardy in spades for the TV documentary!
Add to this the somewhat unnecessary and aggressive ramblings of a woman who took offence to my Facebook post about women last night. It was actually fair enough. I'd chosen the wrong words to describe what I was looking for, but instead of politely telling me, she went in throwing muck about, telling my friends who were posting anecdotes that they ought to feel ashamed of themselves for saying how embarrassing wardrobe malfunctions could be. Worrying about showing your breasts in public is apparently reenforcing male attitudes. It probably is, but she was so aggressive and bullying that several of my friends who wanted to add something to the thread emailed me instead to say they were too frightened to post anything for fear of what she'd say! I think, when the conversation turned to the fact that women have it far worse in life than gay people, and that gay people only suffer abuse because they're perceived to be more feminine than men, I started to lose patience. When she started moaning that white men were the only "acceptable" face of the LGBT movement, I lost my rag. How dare she undermine the work of people like Peter Tatchell who was regularly beaten up for making a stand? Emmline Pankhurst's work was not undermined by the colour of her skin!
It has never been illegal for gay women to be gay and therefore gay women have historically been far more likely to attach themselves to the feminist agenda. Fact. I don't have a problem with this, I just feel it's important to note that gay men were right at the forefront of that particular fight and it wasn't until relatively recently that larger numbers of women started to fight as well.
The trouble with some "feminists" is that they don't seem to think that we all have to live on this planet together. Jumping down the throats of men like me who have never believed in anything but true equality is so far off the mark it's laughable. I only have about three male friends. All my friends are female. They always have been. She called me weird. She even inferred that, as a man, I shouldn't try to write about women. It was like she didn't realise she was saying all of this to a captive audience of my friends and seemed genuinely surprised when they started to defend me. I guess, in her world, women are supposed to gang up on men out of solidarity. It was a shame, because behind the bluster and the insults, she was actually saying some very sensible things. But she managed to alienate everyone.
I took myself to Brent Cross this morning to buy some shirts. Sometimes I look in a mirror and realise I've turned into a tramp, and the older I get, the less acceptable the boho chic look becomes! I've often found clothes shopping a bit of an unjustifiable waste of money, so when I'm finally forced to bite the bullet, I go a little crazy.
...And so I bought five shirts. The woman in the shop told me is was almost cheaper to buy the five in her special offer than it was to buy the three I wanted, so I panic-grabbed two more! I think she did me a favour. The five shirts only cost £100 and hopefully I can avoid buying more for another five years!
Anyway, all of this footle prevented me from doing more writing, which is bad because rehearsals for our show start in a month and we still have six songs to write. Then I have to orchestrate everything we've done. I'd also like to spend some time actually thinking about the numbers rather than throwing notes onto a page and hoping they'll stick.
In all of this, the search for useable melodies from the computer systems is the most painful process. I think those who have asked us to do this experiment sometimes forget that finding a tune which works as music is only the first stage in the journey. Next it has to have the right feel for the song we're writing. Then it has to fit the words. One of the major issues with musical theatre is that it thrives on pastiche. You don't just get up tempo numbers and ballads, sometimes you need a sleazy jazzy number, or a Disneyesque whistle chorus or a gospel number or a tango. And only certain melodies are versatile enough to have these different feels. So, if one out of every fifty computer melodies has promise musically, imagine how the odds shrink when all the other processes come in? I reckon we're actually only able to use one melody in every 100, which is insane.
Still, we continue with the insanity! It's a brilliant project. And there's genuine jeopardy in spades for the TV documentary!
Endless book
We've been working on the script of Beyond the Fence today. Dialogue is one of the parts of this process where there's been considerably less computer activity. Readers of this blog (particularly those who write for a living) will probably be relieved to hear that computers can't yet write dialogue. To my knowledge, there are no teams of academics focussing on that particular aspect of computational creativity.
An edict has come from above telling us that the show needs to be two hours long, so we're having to trim it a little bit. We've already cut a scene and an entire song, but I'm still wondering if the show's running a bit too long. It's difficult to gauge. If the cast crack on with their lines and don't get all indulgent with the text, then we'll probably be okay!
We went to the gym this evening. I've started a health and fitness regime. The ludicrousness of the last few months has turned me into a giant beach ball, so, to avoid a heart attack or being too fat to get out of my front door, I thought it might be time to take the bull by the horns. It's salad and soup for most meals and five kilometres a day on the treadmill.
There's little else to say other than that keen-eyed Facebook users will notice I've put a post up asking my female friends what the most horrifying and undignified things are that regularly happen to them. I'm wondering if I can use some kind of computer process to fling the thoughts together as part of one of the musical's lyrics! What I would say is that, after reading the comments people are leaving, I'm rather pleased not to be a woman. It strikes me they have an awful time: beyond misogyny and inequality, there's all sorts of oft-un-discussed physical nonsense from childbirth to seepage which most men would probably struggle to comprehend! And here was me thinking hairy backs and dodgy prostates were as bad as it gets!
An edict has come from above telling us that the show needs to be two hours long, so we're having to trim it a little bit. We've already cut a scene and an entire song, but I'm still wondering if the show's running a bit too long. It's difficult to gauge. If the cast crack on with their lines and don't get all indulgent with the text, then we'll probably be okay!
We went to the gym this evening. I've started a health and fitness regime. The ludicrousness of the last few months has turned me into a giant beach ball, so, to avoid a heart attack or being too fat to get out of my front door, I thought it might be time to take the bull by the horns. It's salad and soup for most meals and five kilometres a day on the treadmill.
There's little else to say other than that keen-eyed Facebook users will notice I've put a post up asking my female friends what the most horrifying and undignified things are that regularly happen to them. I'm wondering if I can use some kind of computer process to fling the thoughts together as part of one of the musical's lyrics! What I would say is that, after reading the comments people are leaving, I'm rather pleased not to be a woman. It strikes me they have an awful time: beyond misogyny and inequality, there's all sorts of oft-un-discussed physical nonsense from childbirth to seepage which most men would probably struggle to comprehend! And here was me thinking hairy backs and dodgy prostates were as bad as it gets!
Wednesday, 2 December 2015
Kentish Town
I had an astonishing dream last night. I'd submitted a score for a musical which the director told me he didn't like very much. He said the score didn't have enough ebb and flow and told me the only way I was going to become a better writer was by doing character building physical exercise. He made me run with the cast of the musical in a circle around a table. We were going so fast that centrifugal force sent me spinning off to the edge of the room. The cast then decided to wade in and give me some ill-conceived hints about song writing. At that point I lost my temper, "how on earth is running around a table going to help me as a writer? And why am I taking hints about composing from non-musicians?" To which the response came, "if you're resistant to ideas you'll never know..." I was then accused of being difficult. The sense of injustice woke me up!
The tubes were in a right old mess today. Someone had "gone under a train" on the High Barnet branch of the Northern Line, and so, as I returned from my osteopath appointment this morning, there was a huge queue of people, who'd been thrown off the tube network, waiting for busses at Camden. The roads were gridlocked, so I sat for twenty minutes in a jam near the tasteless Jews for Jesus shop in lower Kentish Town before getting off the bus and walking. Everyone was flustered, tutting and miserable. Of course we always assume that the person who's gone under the train has committed suicide, so everyone thinks "how selfish" and continues to feel annoyed. But what if that person was pushed? Or stumbled? How awful to be one minute looking forward to getting home to put your feet up, or see a friend for a coffee, and the next being hit by a train. How long will your friend sit waiting for you in the cafe you've agreed to meet in? It's too miserable for words.
I've left the previous paragraph in. I wrote it as I was wandering up Kentish Town High Street before discovering that the gridlocked traffic had been caused by thirty or so emergency vehicles parked up outside Kentish Town tube.
Twitter was buzzing with the news that a man had been pushed under a train at the station, which made me feel a bit odd after writing the previous paragraph. I wasn't sure why quite so many emergency vehicles were there. Perhaps the multiple ambulances had been called for distraught passengers who might have seen something awful. But ten fire engines? I tweeted a picture of the emergency vehicles and was immediately contacted by two news teams asking if they could use it. The BBC ran my picture all day. I started to wonder whether something had happened that we weren't being told about...
The day ended with the news that we're now at war. I have a terrible feeling that we're going to end up bitterly regretting this decision. Civilians will be killed. More Muslims will be radicalised and I think we can expect a terrorist attack on our soil almost immediately. As a Londoner, that scares me enormously. Just seeing how a single person being pushed onto a train line can bring a city to a standstill, I can't image what would happen following a larger scale event. It makes me shudder. My further worry is that David Cameron will merely use the vote as a point-scoring exercise over Jeremy Corbyn and that the UK dropping a couple of bombs on Syria will actually prove to be insignificant in the quest to rid the world of these nonsensical fanatics. It is, as we've proven, easy to get into a war, but almost impossible to get out of one.
The tubes were in a right old mess today. Someone had "gone under a train" on the High Barnet branch of the Northern Line, and so, as I returned from my osteopath appointment this morning, there was a huge queue of people, who'd been thrown off the tube network, waiting for busses at Camden. The roads were gridlocked, so I sat for twenty minutes in a jam near the tasteless Jews for Jesus shop in lower Kentish Town before getting off the bus and walking. Everyone was flustered, tutting and miserable. Of course we always assume that the person who's gone under the train has committed suicide, so everyone thinks "how selfish" and continues to feel annoyed. But what if that person was pushed? Or stumbled? How awful to be one minute looking forward to getting home to put your feet up, or see a friend for a coffee, and the next being hit by a train. How long will your friend sit waiting for you in the cafe you've agreed to meet in? It's too miserable for words.
I've left the previous paragraph in. I wrote it as I was wandering up Kentish Town High Street before discovering that the gridlocked traffic had been caused by thirty or so emergency vehicles parked up outside Kentish Town tube.
Twitter was buzzing with the news that a man had been pushed under a train at the station, which made me feel a bit odd after writing the previous paragraph. I wasn't sure why quite so many emergency vehicles were there. Perhaps the multiple ambulances had been called for distraught passengers who might have seen something awful. But ten fire engines? I tweeted a picture of the emergency vehicles and was immediately contacted by two news teams asking if they could use it. The BBC ran my picture all day. I started to wonder whether something had happened that we weren't being told about...
The day ended with the news that we're now at war. I have a terrible feeling that we're going to end up bitterly regretting this decision. Civilians will be killed. More Muslims will be radicalised and I think we can expect a terrorist attack on our soil almost immediately. As a Londoner, that scares me enormously. Just seeing how a single person being pushed onto a train line can bring a city to a standstill, I can't image what would happen following a larger scale event. It makes me shudder. My further worry is that David Cameron will merely use the vote as a point-scoring exercise over Jeremy Corbyn and that the UK dropping a couple of bombs on Syria will actually prove to be insignificant in the quest to rid the world of these nonsensical fanatics. It is, as we've proven, easy to get into a war, but almost impossible to get out of one.
Is it possible to use computers to write a musical?
So, word is out: Nathan and I have been working, in secret, on a very special project for Sky Arts which asks a very interesting question: "Can computers write a stage musical?" Actually, more specifically, the question we're asking in the documentary is "how can computers aid and influence the creation of a stage musical?" The subtle difference is necessitated by the fact that there are still some things, like the writing of dialogue, which computers can't even pretend to do.
Nathan and I are over-seeing the entire project. We're writing what the computers can't write and curating and adapting the stuff that they can. The different processes we're utilising have been and are being developed by teams of top academics across the world. That's why we spent time in Madrid, Durham and Cambridge over the summer. Some of the processes are astonishing. Some are laced with bugs and issues. Our task is to stumble from one to another interrogating systems and finding out how they can be used to help our musical.
So far, we've had most success with computer systems which deal with ideation; the generation of creative ideas which aid people like me and Nathan. A computer is able to offer any number of curve-balls which can make a writer or composer think in an entirely different way. Years ago, for example, David Bowie invented computer programmes which generated pairs of random words which he used to inspire lyrics.
It's been quite a journey. I have learned much. I've been inspired. I've been blissfully happy. I've been frustrated. I've been incredibly stressed.
But will the musical be any good? Well, you'll have to see for yourself! It's on at the Arts Theatre from 22nd February... So go buy a ticket at:
Www.artstheatrewestend.co.uk
I am proud to report that the show is set in an anti-nuclear peace camp at Greenham Common in the 1980s. Believe it or not, this setting was selected by computer and I'm so pleased that the virtual Gods landed on that particular spot. I have long since been obsessed by what happened in those camps 35 years ago. Those women are my genuine heroes. They re-invented feminism and ultimately returned Greenham Common to the good folk of Newbury. And having spent a great deal of time in a CND commune in my early childhood, they're also women that I feel I know very well.
Readers will not be surprised to read that the day was spent writing. I've been working on a song called How Dare You, which has been inspired by a computer composition with the catchy name "Show Tune 1.74." The music comes in batches of up to 100 melodies, which we have to patiently sift through with our pianist Katharine. Some are awful beyond words. We howl with laughter. We wince. We get punch drunk and wish that we were deaf. And then once in a while a strange thing happens, our collective ears perk up and we get a little excited. A nip here, a little tuck there, a change of chord, and a driving accompaniment... and suddenly there's a number we can be proud of.
So there you have it. That's my secret and that's what I'll be doing till February! Do book yourself a ticket before the show sells out.
Nathan and I are over-seeing the entire project. We're writing what the computers can't write and curating and adapting the stuff that they can. The different processes we're utilising have been and are being developed by teams of top academics across the world. That's why we spent time in Madrid, Durham and Cambridge over the summer. Some of the processes are astonishing. Some are laced with bugs and issues. Our task is to stumble from one to another interrogating systems and finding out how they can be used to help our musical.
So far, we've had most success with computer systems which deal with ideation; the generation of creative ideas which aid people like me and Nathan. A computer is able to offer any number of curve-balls which can make a writer or composer think in an entirely different way. Years ago, for example, David Bowie invented computer programmes which generated pairs of random words which he used to inspire lyrics.
It's been quite a journey. I have learned much. I've been inspired. I've been blissfully happy. I've been frustrated. I've been incredibly stressed.
But will the musical be any good? Well, you'll have to see for yourself! It's on at the Arts Theatre from 22nd February... So go buy a ticket at:
Www.artstheatrewestend.co.uk
I am proud to report that the show is set in an anti-nuclear peace camp at Greenham Common in the 1980s. Believe it or not, this setting was selected by computer and I'm so pleased that the virtual Gods landed on that particular spot. I have long since been obsessed by what happened in those camps 35 years ago. Those women are my genuine heroes. They re-invented feminism and ultimately returned Greenham Common to the good folk of Newbury. And having spent a great deal of time in a CND commune in my early childhood, they're also women that I feel I know very well.
Readers will not be surprised to read that the day was spent writing. I've been working on a song called How Dare You, which has been inspired by a computer composition with the catchy name "Show Tune 1.74." The music comes in batches of up to 100 melodies, which we have to patiently sift through with our pianist Katharine. Some are awful beyond words. We howl with laughter. We wince. We get punch drunk and wish that we were deaf. And then once in a while a strange thing happens, our collective ears perk up and we get a little excited. A nip here, a little tuck there, a change of chord, and a driving accompaniment... and suddenly there's a number we can be proud of.
So there you have it. That's my secret and that's what I'll be doing till February! Do book yourself a ticket before the show sells out.
Tuesday, 1 December 2015
When we were young
I've been listening to Adele's new album quite a lot this week, in particular a song called When We Were Young, which, for some reason, touches me in a way that few other pop songs have touched me recently. The lyric is incredibly moving and the whole package is imbued with a gentle theatricality which feels reminiscent of the 1970s. Maybe I'm romanticising because the '70s is when I was young, but there's definitely a timeless quality to the track which I find hugely alluring.
"Let me photograph you in this light in case it is the last time that we might be exactly like we were before we realised we were sad of getting old. It made us restless. It was just like a movie. It was just like a song"
Beautiful, wistful lyrics...
Today started with a music session in our loft. It's probably a bit cold up there at this time of year to be receiving visitors but we had the little fan heater going whenever we weren't filming. Tomorrow our secret project goes to press, so I ought to be able to write more about what we've been up to all this time. You may be able to read all about it in the meantime in The Guardian. The session this morning was good, although Nathan, with he blepharitis looks increasingly like a boxer with a black eye and felt incredibly self-conscious in front of the cameras.
Our director made a cake - a glorious Nigella recipe. I think she's learned that I'm much less spiky when I've got a bit of food in me. I work with a camera man in Newcastle who's realised the same thing, and puts little chocolate treats in my monitor bag for when I'm getting hangry!
This evening we went to rehearse with the gorgeous Fleet Singers, who are missing a few basses for their Christmas concert on Saturday, so Nathan and I are stepping into the breach. If anyone is free on Saturday night and wants to come and hear (and sing) some jolly carols, the concert starts at 7pm and is at Gospel Oak Methodist Church on Agincourt Road, NW3.
We came home to watch the results of Strictly, and I was horrified to see the female professionals pouting, gyrating and doing slut drops to the song "Woman." It's a song I loathe passionately. The lyric, which goes back to the era where women got patronisingly applauded for saying they were housewives on quiz shows, is about how brilliant women are at multi-tasking; how they can wash socks and rear children whilst looking fabulous. It's a woefully old-fashioned song that is often performed by very boring singers who use it as an excuse for a vocal w**k off which is never quite as impressive as they think it is! When women get dressed up like dolly birds and go all coquettish and slutty whilst performing it, I feel excruciatingly embarrassed and sense the feminist cause being shunted back millions of years.
As Nathan puts it, "being a woman doesn't make you amazing. Being amazing (and a woman) makes you an amazing woman!"
"Let me photograph you in this light in case it is the last time that we might be exactly like we were before we realised we were sad of getting old. It made us restless. It was just like a movie. It was just like a song"
Beautiful, wistful lyrics...
Today started with a music session in our loft. It's probably a bit cold up there at this time of year to be receiving visitors but we had the little fan heater going whenever we weren't filming. Tomorrow our secret project goes to press, so I ought to be able to write more about what we've been up to all this time. You may be able to read all about it in the meantime in The Guardian. The session this morning was good, although Nathan, with he blepharitis looks increasingly like a boxer with a black eye and felt incredibly self-conscious in front of the cameras.
Our director made a cake - a glorious Nigella recipe. I think she's learned that I'm much less spiky when I've got a bit of food in me. I work with a camera man in Newcastle who's realised the same thing, and puts little chocolate treats in my monitor bag for when I'm getting hangry!
This evening we went to rehearse with the gorgeous Fleet Singers, who are missing a few basses for their Christmas concert on Saturday, so Nathan and I are stepping into the breach. If anyone is free on Saturday night and wants to come and hear (and sing) some jolly carols, the concert starts at 7pm and is at Gospel Oak Methodist Church on Agincourt Road, NW3.
We came home to watch the results of Strictly, and I was horrified to see the female professionals pouting, gyrating and doing slut drops to the song "Woman." It's a song I loathe passionately. The lyric, which goes back to the era where women got patronisingly applauded for saying they were housewives on quiz shows, is about how brilliant women are at multi-tasking; how they can wash socks and rear children whilst looking fabulous. It's a woefully old-fashioned song that is often performed by very boring singers who use it as an excuse for a vocal w**k off which is never quite as impressive as they think it is! When women get dressed up like dolly birds and go all coquettish and slutty whilst performing it, I feel excruciatingly embarrassed and sense the feminist cause being shunted back millions of years.
As Nathan puts it, "being a woman doesn't make you amazing. Being amazing (and a woman) makes you an amazing woman!"
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