ANIMATING GRAVITY

I've been pretty busy during the last few months, what with moving and all, but I still found time to finish writing a new song about certain aspects of getting older. The song is called Cruel Gravity, and its sentiment lines up well with two other songs I've written, Lament and What's Around the Bend. (Give them a listen to see what I mean!) I'm thinking of grouping them into a trilogy, and calling them Ageist Anthems: Songs of Acceptance. Last weekend, Libby McLaren and I did a suitably distanced recording session, and I'm super happy with her piano accompaniment for the song. Of course that's no surprise, because Libby rocks!

Cruel Gravity is playfully, painfully honest, but for folks who don't know my peculiar brand of humor, I'm going to create a video – using oh-so simple animation – so it's clear that it's meant to be funny. Embracing the inevitable with humor is essential to moving along with some kind of grace - right? The pink GIF above is an example of one building block I can use – a super simple animation where I move the mouth – one frame at a time – to go from smile to frown. It took about half an hour to create that one-second animation in Procreate, so I'm guessing I could either be at this for a few years, or I'll have to resort to a smorgasbord of media that I can use to produce a video more quickly. (BTW, GIF stands for Graphic Interface Format, so that should help you know to say it with a hard "G" as in "give", not something approximating a certain brand of peanut butter. Oh, and by the way, BTW stands for By The Way.)

I'll update you on my progress with this endeavor, but in the meantime, the song is available on YouTube so you can listen to it, now. I added the lyrics in closed captions, so you can watch them go by if you click on the CC symbol at the bottom of the video progress bar. Let me know what you think!

SUSIE & JIM MALCOLM – GOOD NEWS!

If you're guessing that our house concert featuring Jim and Susie is out of the question, you're partly right. The difficulties of travel & visas are myriad on a normal day, and COVID-19 has compounded the challenges. But never fear! Our dear and valiant Malcolms have concocted a dreamy scheme. On February 4, 2021, we can all hear them live at a Zoom concert. They'll perform in Scotland-time wee-hours so we can enjoy them at a reasonable time here. Because they'll perform during the time they'd normally be asleep (and dreaming), they're calling it the Dream Tour! Put February 4th on your calendar and send Susie an email to sign up for details on how to access it on Zoom and make a donation for the concert. I'll be there!