He's back! But where's he been?

Hey there, readers! I bet you thought I'd stopped blogging completely?

Nah. I just branched out in certain other directions for a creative outlet. That, and the day job has REALLY been cutting into my time to write. And I also needed to break with my damned Farmville addiction. It used to be a fun time waster but now it's such a pain in the ass that it's like having a second full time job. There are probably real farmers who spend less time and aggravation on real farms than I've been spending on the 4 farms I operate in Farmville.

Whoa...what's this about another creative outlet?

Yeah, I started another obsessive hobby over the summer. As ya'll may recall, I am a serious music junkie. As such, I like sharing my musical tastes & findings with my friends on Facebook via the posting of videos from YouTube. However, many of the songs I would like to share lack proper videos, because they are album tracks as opposed to singles, or they are obscure versions or bootleg remixes not commercially released. In the back of my mind I have always wanted to be a video director as well as a rock star and much adored best-selling author....so, I started making videos.

I lack serious video editing equipment. I lack the time to seriously pursue the projects the way I would like. Would I prefer to make actual film-type video productions with live people & what not? Hell yes. However, I am content for the time being to do still-photo slide shows that generally follow the storyline of the song or the general mood/theme of the song. My first few were a tad primitive admittedly and then I hit on something that has become a bit of a hallmark now for me: stark black & white imagery. I'll sometimes spend hours combing the web for the right images, and if I find one in color that I want to use, I'll then edit it in Photoscape , changing it to b&w and then darkening it up just right to suit my vision.

Some of the clips I've made have gotten very little traffic on YouTube while a couple others have become somewhat popular in certain circles. Part of the traffic problem has stemmed from having many of my videos blocked in this country and others by YouTube at the behest of pesky record labels who feel threatened by fans making their own videos to promote music they have the copyright to, or THINK thy own the copyright to. I say THINK, because in certain cases where my stuff has been blocked, the Powers That Be (namely Warner Music Group for the most part) think they have domain over unofficial bootleg remixes too. Hell, one track I used was immediately blocked WORLDWIDE in seconds, for a 25 year old song from a group that broke up years ago, but they felt the need to pee on my leg. But I have ways around this...

In addition to my YouTube channel I also have an account on another, lesser-known video website called Vimeo that isn't so uptight about things. They get less search traffic and I'm limited in how much I can upload weekly but I still get to post my stuff on Facebook and share it with my friends. It's been fun reading all the positive feedback and seeing how many channel subscribers I'm getting, much the same as I get a kick out of the positive comments and subscribers & readers I have here.

I have decided to start sharing my videos here in my blog to show ya'll what I've been doing instead of writing, and hopefully it'll get me started writing again too.

The first one up is the very first one I did, back in July of 2010. There were a couple videos available for "October Love Song" by Chris & Cosey, but not for the version I liked and none of the videos were very high quality. Looking back, I would rather have done a better clip but this was my experiment in how to use Windows Live Movie Maker (I taught myself along the way). It's a really simple slide show using some of my favorite artwork from the Pre-Raphaelite movement of the late 1800's. The time between picture flips is a bit long for my tastes now and it seems really primitive now but we all gotta start somewhere, no?

Chris & Cosey’s first single ‘October Love Song’ was released in 1982 by Chris Carter and Cosey Fanni Tutti, both previously members of industrial music pioneers Throbbing Gristle.


you took my hand on the stair
no-one was around
you said we? could be lovers
i just had to say the word
only the afternoons were ours
the nights were full…
just full of silent love..

our hearts and my heart beating together, together forever, forever together...

days of October, our hearts together, beating forever, forever together…

just nights of silent love
we couldn’t touch
we couldn’t kiss
we were promised to another
but now we are together
just kiss me
and kiss me forever

Hold me...and light up my eyes...kiss me...just kiss me

our hearts and my heart beating together, together forever, forever together

days of October, our hearts together, beating forever, forever together…

Just kiss me and light up my eyes

make my eyes smile

Whisper words of love, words of love & life

The life we have together

I love you…I love you…. whisper to me when we touch….