Wednesday, June 29, 2022

Furiously Frumpy

Sometimes it's just great to have a day when you know you're not going to come into contact with a single human being, and on that day you have permission to be totally and utterly frumpy. Oh what a joy! The shapeless dress, the shapeless hair and the shapeless face! Feet stuffed into monstrous slippers, unsuitable food, and the most hideous spectacles you can find.

Then you are ready to do the challenging things in life. The automation of the tracks that you have been leaving till last, because it's so terrifying: making the music move about so it doesn't have to jostle for space like an Oxford Street crowd. But has it moved to the right place? Sooner or later, concrete decisions will have to be made.

It's ironic, isn't it: to have written a truthful book about the way women are dominated in music by the controlling activities of some (but not all) male producers, and therefore feeling obliged to do the whole thing at home by yourself. In the kitchen- that domestic space over which I am not a Goddess! I do feel that the songs sound the way I want them to, though. If I was a hip hop producer I would make them sound wonderfully spacious, like a soundscape of tower blocks and kerbsides. But I'm not, I'm a me, and I can only make them as big as I can get them and as beautiful as I can craft them to be.

I have learned some little tricks and I need to be sparing in their use: if you use up too much space with trickery, there's not enough room for everything else, and that's a hard lesson to learn.

Meanwhile, Wimbledon dominates the between time rest periods. Occasionally the thock, thock of the ball is relaxing, and other times it's not. Silence is the best rest, sometimes.

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