It’s cold here today. The Ravens are set to play the Bills tomorrow in NY, and it’s going to be VERY cold there. Baltimore is supposed to get snow. It’s very nice – we’ve had so little these past few years.
I am throwing my card into the 2025 RPM challenge. I’m feeling inspired and good about this year – I am fairly certain I have an album in me (35 minutes or 10 songs). I am once again stating my intention here.
We visited the city of Frederick today. I took Beverly to Wonder Book and Video. I haven’t been in that place for over 21 years.
We walked around Market Street, visited some shops, and had dinner.
A couple of themes emerged for me, including (more) ESP, miniature portraits, and James Ensor.
As part of this year’s Sweaty Eyeballs animation festival, there was an in person physical-space showand a variety show held at the Area 405 gallery on Friday, October 11.
My initial impulse was to perform my piece 7:77. I had envisioned playing drums, bass and guitar while one of my animations projected behind me. My intuition decided this was not the venue for this.
I switched gears and decided to shorten it to maybe 5:55. I worked up a bunch of new animated material, but I still wasn’t sure. I talked with my daughter about it, and she said “Would you like me to do this with you?”
YES!
Since the physical work I have in the gallery relates to The Kybalion, I thought I might make a film connected to Magus Incognito and the physical work. It’s called ESP and other games, and without any intentional effort from me, it ended being 4:44!
Lily and I spent an hour playing on a couple of Sunday afternoons. I assembled a rough cut of the film to see how this could work.
We did two run throughs on Wednesday night at the space.
The night of the show, we arrived at 6:45 and set up for a 7:10 performance.
I had so much fun, and I am so thankful that Lily did this with me. It was a dream come true. The audience seemed to like the film and our audio. I am pleased with what we pulled off, and Lily has agreed to do this again sometime.
I began this whole thing in the pandemic – playing to film – and it feels so good to have done it in public now.
Here I am with Mr. Sweaty Eyeballs himself, my buddy Phil Davis!
And my long time musical collaborator, dear friend and Bazooka Joe bandmate Guppy was in town.
It was a very satisfying night, after several weeks of hard thinking and work. I’m looking forward to doing more of this.
Photos below (and the featured one at the top) by Lena McBean.
