I put in a bid to play Domifare at AMRO, knowing it was in no state to perform, but also knowing that nothing motivates like a deadline. I thought it was likely to be accepted, so I planned to start working on it during the break between spring and summer terms.
But then I got covid and felt terrible for weeks, but also got brain fog which, to be honest, has not completely dissipated. I mean, it’s hard to tell. How could I possibly have a bassline on my mental state? I do know that my sense of taste is still messed up and if I exercise a lot I feel ill the next day, so let’s say I’m not at 100% mentally. It could be all in my head, but what difference would that make?
I wanted to finish my marking before dedicating all my time to this. I have not finished my marking, but now both are an emergency. Indeed, the list of things I have not done is kilometres long. My tuba needs a service. I haven’t played it for months and lips are completely unfit.
This is an overly-honest research update. The subject line is the Solresol word for “fear.”
This is the state of the language:
The “language” has always been conceived of as a way of defining loops. So I have some syntax for recording loops as an audio recording or as a series of onsets, the ability to “shake” an onset loop, the ability to schedule shakes, and the ability to start and stop loops. These are all a series of short musical licks I should ideally memorise but at least be able to play without hesitation or split notes.
Meanwhile, the language currently has the ability to read and receive notes, which is necessarily flaky and a scaffold to hand the rest of the operations …. and a GUI to adjust thresholds because that’s necessary while playing… and that’s kind of it.
This coming weekend is a four day one which is actually a disaster because it means I can’t work during it.
Writing out what I actually have to do makes it sound fully achievable, but it will take longer than I think it will. The GUI took all of yesterday. If I spend part of every day programming and part of every day practising, I should get there. Hopefully.
I haven’t bought my train tickets yet, but I really don’t want to drop out.
I’ve got 2 weeks.
Since I was traveling on 1st June, I only saw this in my RSS feeds today. You know what the theme of AMRO is this year, right? I would include Covid among the bugs that are messing with all of our minds. How do we live with unpredictability? With the repeated experience of feeling unreliable, because nobody’s sense of time is working, so deadlines in any form are unrealistic?
Just come and be with all the other unprepared people (if it helps I can tell you about the dire state of the panel discussion I’m responsible for). We’ll figure it out together.