The idea of this thread is that it will contain an art prompt, and we will all create and share art in whatever format we like that was inspired by the prompt. I, for example, will be participating using either recorded music, or interpretive dance. Last month’s thread had some amazing stuff, from creative writing to photography to sketches to an entire song made from recordings of the sounds of making a cup of tea.
December can be a stressful month in which it’s hard to make time for yourself, far less your creative hobbies (no autocorrect, not “jobbies”), so rather than randomly generate the prompt this month I’ve thought of one that might be better for December in particular.
This month’s prompt is:
Something old, something new…
My thinking is that if we’re all going to be short on time this month, we can perhaps use this prompt as a nudge to finish off something we’ve half done already, or put down but weren’t happy with. But I’m not the boss of you! Maybe you’re thinking about places where old and new objects co-exist. Or maybe you’re looking at that ellipsis and thinking “… something borrowed, something blue” and you’re finally going to make that mashup of All Rise and something from Lee Ryan’s (far superior, imo) solo album. All valid choices.
I got really stuck at that 26 second mark and tried to reason my way out of it, which obviously didn’t work, so instead I went down a very dark YouTube hole looking for inspiration and emerged with a bit that’s full Geddy Lee - I think it’s 15/8 over 3 bars of 5/8.
I’ve realised I’ve got a big writing deadline coming up (my annual ‘look back’ piece for CBTR) so I’m having to focus on that now, which will involve going over old stuff too so I might end up submitting piece here too, though I’d rather do something original. Maybe the out takes that don’t make it into the main article.
I’ve got some ideas going on but I’m also trying to finish my raffle prizes - will probably come up with something by the end of the month though!
Also, because it’s your overarching project, do you mind if I compile my submissions into an album on Bandcamp, mainly just so I have somewhere for them to live?
So those where my something old. My something new was a bunch of guitar shite, I don’t know. Behold:
Totally blew the brief on this because it took FUCKING AGES because I got stuck after the first 26 seconds and then went through multiple iterations of shite before saying fuck it and deciding to make a bit of a racket instead. See if you can guess the point at which I gave up on the guitar “solo” too.
Also my original idea was to combine the two old things, then I downgraded that to sampling the noisy bit from the second one, then downgraded to… well, you’ll hear.
Probably sounded more like Battles when the verse was in 15/8 with a polyrhythm thing going on under it, but that was a lesson in not binging on Mars Volta live sets while trying to make things. Coming back to it with fresh ears after finally glueing it all together and being like “…oh no.” and staring at the screen for a bit then deleting it all with no backups. Had to be done.
