Wednesday, April 13, 2011

Fliping

Did McDad invent the word 'flipe' for turning something inside out?

I went to visit a student in Stratford at their work placement; all was well, and I spent £12 in a shop called Tiger in the mall on all sorts of tacky stuff- a pink and green washing up brush, wooden spatula things for writing plant names on to stick in plant pots (so I can tell what my pot-grown vegetables are), a book with a map of Sweden on it, and so on.

Tomorrow was going to be picture research day but today turned itself inside out, and I spent part of this afternoon doing just that insetad. Everything is flying about in the air above my head and from time to time I catch a fragment and make some progress. I think I have today, but I'm not sure. A picture that I thought was by a photographer called Joe Stevens wasn't by him even though it was credited to him, and I did find another at an agency from the same session but it will be too expensive.
Do I want this or do I want that?
There are so many I can't use 'cos I don't know who took them....
I am doing more interviews next week, but not for the book: I will be doing a talk at a conference at the University of the East in May which I will write about when I am absolutely certain I have decided what I will be talking about.

The Chefs CD is going round in circles at the moment (quite liderally), and will I have to convert my persona from a rabbit to a bull to make any progress, I think.
The main problem is not the music, sleeve-notes or anything else: it's the nuts and bolts of it all. So far I have written to three people this week who have answered a question at an oblique angle to the one I asked. I am used to being direct, but I am having to re-word things in a mega-mega-focused way. I can't bear the term steep learning curve, because once you have curved your way up somewhere the next level is way down there and requires a new start at the bottom of another learning curve.
Endless, endless, endless.
But wouldn't it be great if I could get the book and the CD out at the same time?

Another of tomorrow's tasks has appeared today, and I have copied out the lyrics to Heart of Glass to sing on Monday. I seemed to be the only artists at the Beefheart night to sing from the paper and I think I might have to do this on Monday as well (shame) because tomorrow I will be writing the verse of the cleaners' song and learning it so I can teach it to them on Friday morning at the crack of dawn.
Not today.
Not today.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

Helen, re the Chef's CD - ever thought of releasing both your current and back catalogue using Bandcamp?

Helen McCookerybook said...

Well, I have thought of it, but all these digital sites involve committing your material to them as though they were a record label, which is quite sinister, because they don't really exist... do they?
What worries me most is what has happened to Myspace, which used to be brilliant but which is now such an awful mess I wish I wasn't on there any more.
Will that happen to Bandcamp, Reverbnation (which I havesome free stuff on) and so on?