Gaper

A pill is taken to hide the broken parts. Its effects will wear off and while unaware of the damage it concealed a short sharp pang of agony reminds us that it is time for another pill. So we live our lives running from what is, in the hope that all may be better in a near future. Our medicines do not heal they help us run. Our drugs do not open our minds, they help us fantasize and build beliefs. We tamper with our chemistry in the name of knowledge and the pursuit of happiness. We modify our beings to conform or to be different without realizing that it is our differences that make us one in the same. We dread the feeling of emptiness and dedicate our lives to filling a void that may just be there for a reason. What lesson can be learned from this? Maybe it is not the void that disturbs but the physical that frames it.

The Giant Family

Our very birth creates a family if there was none beforehand. The life we experience after that birth is what will define kindredship. There is a set definition to the word family and we all know and understand what family is supposed to represent and how we should behave and feel within it. However I place friendship as the materialization of this definition. Someone who betrays you is not your friend yet can be a member of your family, even though a family member should never betray you. A friend will always stand by you and help you in your times of need. They will go through the good and the bad and sit next to you when all is done to share a drink and a laugh. They understand you because you became friends through communication and they are very often the person who knows you best.
A family without friendship does not fit the set definition of family. It becomes a system we are born in to with set rules we are forced to respect. Rules reinforced by an aging hierarchy.

ReverbNation

With all the buzz on the new upbeat version of myspace I am not very impressed. I was hoping they would do the logical thing and get the music player sounding a lot better than they have. As I don't directly run the Dark Ofay Din myspace anyway I have simply left it in capable hands and have started using a ReverbNation account instead. This is a 100 percent music orientated network and its player provides a better quality of audio on its player. There are other perks, such as widgets, banners and fan participation which make this site a lot more interesting for an independent artist such as myself.

Democracy

The progress of technology has opened the opportunity for democracy in the true sense of the term. Modern society no longer needs politicians or political parties but a means to voice it's needs and see their will set in motion in the best possible fashion. This can be done via the medium of computers and secure networks. A social security number to register and a device linked to a network such as the Internet is all that is needed for one and all to be able to say what they wish to see put in place. In true democratic fashion the majority issues voiced by the people are dealt with by the civil servants who presently do the bidding for elected members of state. The money saved from no longer employing politicians would help cover the costs of the network and ensure that every household has a device with which they can say their piece. This system would effectively be the people ruled by the people, or in other words: a democracy.

Technical Issues

The Net is having a period of transition right now that is making life somewhat problematic. The choice of browsers is one that I'm running in to right now as I try to get animations to function correctly across all the main used ones. Sextant Mk 2 animation functions in the Firefox 3 browser however comes up static with IE 7. You may notice gaps in some of the animated buttons on this page if you are using Firefox however there are none on IE 7. I'm going to sit it out for a bit and let the dust settle before endeavoring in to any other web arrangement just now. APNG is the way forward for Net animation but as it is mainly Firefox that has put forward a tool to create the animations it's proving difficult to get everything the way I would like it. Everything will be in place as soon as possible, meanwhile I need to go swat up on code.

Sextant Mk 2

Back On Tracks

That's Dark Ofay Din recording once more. All the demos were written and recorded some time back and now that they have had a good sit I am going back over them one by one to produce the finished articles. Some of the tracks will change quite radically from the demos, others will be more down to a change in sound balance and a few variations added. The lyrics will get their final edit once the music is complete as I have a tendency to change words to fit in better with the sound of a piece.
This should all sound pretty different from anything you have heard before. You can expect machine noise beats, plucked acoustic strings and a whole variation in vocals. Prose has been written for spoken word sections, there are a couple of instrumentals and a fair mix of musical genres. There are some jazz licks, some trad folk themes and a industrial metal fusion all put together with my trusty little machine. In many ways this will be an exercise in style as the combination of genres has not always been easy to blend together and many of the concepts involved surpass the realms of music. However I am seeing the light at the end of the tunnel and will keep you updated if there are any changes to schedule.

Sextant Link

Not being a big fan of banners I've been trying to think up something that serves the same purpose but is more versatile. The above pic is a still of what I have in mind. This version is well over twice the size of the animated version I'm in the process of making. It's based on a sextant which is a navigational tool and that is what inspired me. I'm hoping to get the animation fully functional soon but have had to change file format as the images contain too many variations in colour to come out as a clean cut GIF. So the frames are being made in a PNG format which may involve a few technical issues for me when it comes to getting the finished image up. online and flashing friendly.
Its purpose is to be added to peoples' sites as a link to this site. So I wanted it small as to not be invasive, letting the animation be the eye catching element. This should all be up and rolling during the week and ready to be added in the form of HTML code.

Website Continued...

Images have recently been added to the art gallery, there will be another five posted over the next fortnight. The full size pictures will be available for print at my deviant art account in the near future, I'll fill you in on this closer to the time.
The lyrics section will remain empty for the time being as words are being removed, changed and verses are being switched. The full lyric sheet will be posted with the final edit.
For those of you wondering where the Heartbeat Enigma has gone it is still up, I just haven't made a link for it yet, it to will be coming soon.
Please check out the external links page for an inspiring view of surreal art and join the dark scene forum for a whole inside view of what makes dark art so compulsive and enduring.

Enjoy the trip.

Website

I've been wanting to build a multi page website for some time and as you can see it is happening. I am hoping to keep it user friendly so if there is anything that gets you overly confused let me know. You have a navigation panel up in each right corner that allows you to surf from one page to the other, if you want to do a tour just keep on the very top button and you can click through each section.

Today I'm working on the external links page where there will be a list of sites that will take you a bit further down the rabbit hole, this will expand with time as will the rest of the site.

Sorry if the cupboards look a bit bare at the moment, it's not easy being a one man army but I have been adding to each page everyday and will continue to do so until completion. Hope you enjoy what is up so far, TBC...

F-Rancid

The year is 1989, two centuries after the revolution and the Nation of France still proudly presents itself under three words: Liberty, Equality and Fraternity.
I am a thirteen year old immigrant with no knowledge of the language or culture. My parents send me to a private Catholic school that had been recommended to them by some local farmers. Overlooking the fact that I was brought up in the Protestant faith. This proved to be a problem with some of the other pupils at the school. Thus making my first memory of France being surrounded by boys twice my size shouting at me in a tongue I didn't understand. Or teachers leaving me on my own in a room with a couple of books and telling me to learn the language. My parents were too busy living some sort of second honeymoon to be bothered with my problems so I spent every day with a dictionary and copied out everyday words. I did this for a few months until I could muster up enough of the language to communicate and thus began my true discovery of French mentality.
For this first year we were living in a small agricultural village from which I got the bus everyday to school. Every morning I would face a selection of derogatory comments while boarding the bus and have a variation on the theme when returning home. At the end of the school day all pupils had to wait at the gate until their transport arrived, a procedure that was upheld by a wicked looking woman employed as playground surveyor. I remember this once however, coming out of the classroom that lead directly on to the exterior fire escape stairs and seeing everyone the other side of the gate looking at the wall connected to it. I fleeted down the three flights to find out what they were all staring at. Spray painted in red letters was the sentence: 'Let's not play with Le Pen'. While I was reading this a boy was using a green leaf to stain the letters: i s, on to the end of it. I asked another boy next to me what Le Pen meant and he made a Nazi salute while holding his index finger under his nose then said that Le Pen is a bad man. He added quietly while peeking at the school that they liked him but he didn't.

***

Jean Marie Le Pen is the leader of a political party known as the National Front. This party took its roots from a terrorist organization known as La Cagoule which contained members such as Charles De Gaulle. It's main idea is that France belongs to the french, that the frontiers of France should be reinforced and immigration should be stamped out. In televised interviews Le Pen has made remarks along the lines of: there is lack of evidence that Jews were gassed to death during the Nazi Holocaust. The lack of evidence being that no one actually saw this happen as there were no windows on the gas chambers. The worrying factor however is not so much what this man has said over the decades but that he got over 15 percent of the presidential votes during the 1995 and 2002 elections. In fact in 2002 he was approaching a fifth of the overall votes. Now many french people will tell you that this figure is so high because of the low turn out of voters and that those that are for the National Front will make sure they vote. However they forget to mention that people such as myself, who are French citizens are not allowed to vote. Yet if you are a french national and live in another country you are allowed to vote without even setting foot in the country. Welcome to the land of Equality.

***

For the next few years we lived in a bigger town slightly further south. Here is where I had to put up with remarks such as: 'What are you doing in this school! Why don't you go back to your own country?', 'are you not wearing your skirt today?' and of course the obligatory mocking of my Scottish accent. Many of these remarks resulted in a boxing demonstration which was most definitely in my favour as I had been trained as a boxer from the age of 6 and was taught: When pushed hit hard. I didn't get in to many fights before people left me alone but that was just me. Over the period of a week a small Arabian boy started going to the canteen for lunch. He sat at the table where I was seated with 8 others. He was obviously shy and a intimidated by the large amount of people in the canteen and the fact that he was younger and smaller than the rest of us didn't help. On his first day nobody left him any food which I noticed by his clean plate when lunch was finished. On the second I told him to sit next to me as we walked in which he did and he got his share of lunch. For the rest of the week the young lad followed me to whatever table I sat at but still was getting abuse of one form or another from the other children at the table. Most of it was name calling that I didn't understand at the time. He lasted a week then he didn't have school dinners anymore. The thing is the children that were picking on that little boy were afraid of the other big boys who happened to be of Arabian decent. These big boys did tend to behave like pack animals which I learned first hand when ten of them were waiting for me outside the school gates. They were there for revenge as I had taken on two of them the day before and beaten one of them up. The result was ten waited for me to come out from school, hovered around me for a few minutes, none of them daring to touch me and that was the end of it. It is this sort of behaviour that many so called French natives try to use as a reason for voting for the National Front. The irony is these Arabian boys were French and had been since the day they were born, so even if the National Front did get in to power and applied it's magic French saving formula it wouldn't change a thing for these lads. On the other hand all the people just getting on with their lives would be told to pack up and get out because they weren't born on French soil.

***

In many, maybe even most French households it is agreed that there is a problem with Arabs in France. This is perceived because of a small group of undesirables who turn to crime and violence and of course are of Arabian decent. What is not spoken about is that France occupied Algeria for years and did not have a particularly good record in human rights while there. During the Algerian war(1954-62) the French systematically tortured and mutilated native Algerians, this brutality was tentatively covered up then tried to be excused by saying they were doing that to. At the end of this conflict Algerians who had fought with the French and not against them had to leave their native land or risk their lives. So they emigrated to France where they were treated with disdain and given very little opportunity to make a good new life often finding themselves working in factories under poor conditions with equally poor pay.

***

I worked in an internationally known industrial bakery during holiday time to get some cash together for my studies. I worked along side Africans and Eastern Europeans packing and stacking frozen bread. Yet every time I went to the main office to get the missing pay I was due all I could see were Caucasian French people. This is quite a theme throughout France, you really do notice the black man with the good job because it's such a novelty. To succeed in France as a foreigner is not impossible but it will not be easy. You will be put down constantly and in many ways and no matter what you do or say they will find a way to slow you down. I sat and passed a Bachelor of Literature in 1997. During two two years preparing for the final exams I had a french teacher who failed every paper I handed in. I got these papers verified by other French teachers and they informed me that I would pass without any problems which I subsequently did. In another school in the same town a teacher pushed a pupil down the stairs. The boy died from the fall and the teacher was punished by being transferred to another school, it was an accident after all. A few years before this a young woman was serial raped by the local rugby team but as the most of the rapists were the sons of Doctors and lawyers no charges were pressed. A couple of these same lads went round pensioners homes putting cigarettes out on the old folks feet until they said where they hid their savings. Again no charges were pressed. A young man of Arabian decent, suspected of car theft was shot dead by a police officer for running away. I got arrested and a gun held to my head as a teenager for walking down a street at three in the morning. The same officer who arrested me shot a woman in the leg while on duty drunk one night and the only reason he is no longer a police officer is because he shot himself in the head. This is the France I know because this is the France I lived in. It has no brotherly spirit, it's equality depends on what family you were born in to and the only real freedom it gives you is the one to leave.

Dreams And Other Visions

I set up a Deviant Art account some time back but it is only recently that I have been spending any time there. Being an image orientated network (Though writing goes on there to) I've uploaded a bit of a mix of visual work done over time. The more recent images from Delusional Reflections are not up yet as I have not finished the series and want to go back over all of them and clean them up here and there.

There is also a journal that comes with the glorious Deviant package, where most folk keep an update of what ever they are up to. Well I do that here as best I can so I thought I'd use the journal on Deviant for something else and so you have a journal of dreams. Any that stick out or that quite simply I remember go in to the journal. I write them as a narrative and do drop a lot of details as I just want want them to be threads, something to interpret, give you all a chance to be Doc Freud for five minutes. The frequency will vary as I don't dream a lot and when I do they are not always that intriguing but I think it will make for an interesting read in a year or so.

Setting The Scenes

The journey begins in France sometime around 2005. How I got there is vague and confused but I did and there I stayed with my parents and little brother for the best part of a year. My mental and physical health had seen better days and having to live with two people whose egocentricity's have no boundaries made life particularly difficult. The other down side to my situation was the country itself. Having lived there for just over a decade beforehand, I had grown to particularly dislike it. I shall go more in depth on this subject with an essay at some other point.

The next stop is Scotland, the land of my birth. It was my intention to spend no more than three months there during which I was going to help my Grandmother sell her old house and move in to more suitable accommodation. Part of this was achieved but the rest really did not go according to plan. It was during this period that plans were made for my next move.

Hong Kong is now where I call home and will stay as thus until the aliens abduct me for more experiments.

These are the three scenes for Mirrors And Black Magic. The first five tracks are for France, the next five for Scotland and the final three for Hong Kong. I have been gathering more material and ideas for another project meanwhile that will be fully focused on my new abode. Ground work sets the roots to stability.

Pawns And Principles

With life experience we build our defences. We base our principles on knowledge gathered over time. Then there is a point in time for many where the gathering of knowledge stops and life is followed by the set principles in mind. When all new knowledge ceases to be accepted. This is when we have tested the shield and now want to wave a sword. How fiercely we wave that sword depends on the confidence we have in our convictions.

We all hide insecurities and fears behind a form of apparent strength. Whether it be the school bully wielding a stick or the aggressive priest wielding a bible. What they beset on others is fundamentally what they are feeling deep down inside themselves. They both need a recognisable symbol to stem strong emotions in onlookers. Make others feel what they are feeling through the means of a story or a threat. In short: our principles are derived from base instinct. The will to survive, the will to be top of the food chain. The thing is though, you can dress a dog in gowns of silk and lay a golden crown upon its head it is still a dog.

Lyrics and Poetry

I use different blogs for different things. One of the first set up was on Myspace and this is where I still post song lyrics and poems. It's an online notepad of sorts as I like to write a piece in the one session, let it sit for a while then go back and have a read to see what needs changed.

This blog is listed under XIII and although my postings there are a lot less frequent than they once were, I still put my drafts up on it and use it as a lyric sheet while recording vocals.

The Heartbeat Enigma

I have finished and published The Heartbeat Enigma today. It will be incorporated in to the album eventually and stands as a chapter for a piece I have been working on for a couple of years. It's another piece of the puzzle and I hope it will get your minds going somewhat or at the very least entertain you. I put up an adult content warning just to be safe even though the texts contain very little offensive material, well to my mind anyway.

Primal Steps

At some point in our lives we all play the pawn. Making the first move and ready to be sacrificed. The motives vary, sometimes we are willing, sometimes pushed but we always keep in mind that if we can make it to the other side then we can become what we want to be.

If we look on life as a game of Chess then there are three options: we play the whites, we play the blacks or we are a piece on the board. We can be motivator or tool, an attacker or a defender and no matter what we may preconceive the outcome is never a certainty. One fleeting thought can change the game and its outcome entirely. We are limited to a selection of positions and our value depends on the position we are in. There are rules by which we must abide and those who know these rules well will always have an edge on those who don't. Finally, Chess is a game that most people will recognize yet only a percentage of them will know how to play and only a small selection of those who know how to play will be true contenders for the challenge that is life.

Grid

I got another couple of graphs completed this week and advanced on some story sections to finish off The Heartbeat Enigma. Special thanks to coffee for keeping my eyes open in the early hours of the morning allowing me to get all the outlines done for the series of twelve pics that will make up Delusional Reflections. Yip Delusional reflections is the name of the image work for Mirrors and Black Magic. These pictures will be ready for print sometime next month and will be incorporated into the album art along with some redesigned playing cards and the complete version of The Heartbeat Enigma. Just in case you are confused by all these names, here is a simple breakdown:

The entire project is titled: Mirrors and Black Magic
The musical section goes under: Dark Ofay Din
The written Section is called: The Heartbeat Enigma
And the picture part is: Delusional Reflections

I tend to use patterns and this project is no exception. Numbers 1 to 13, each number corresponding to a playing card (Ace to King), Chess pieces (8 pawns, 1 Rook, 1 knight, 1 bishop, 1 queen) again 13 each corresponding to a playing card and a number.
I've included a Zero factor which will be the center piece for the image work (0,Joker,King)
This is the frame work. I need a frame to have a method, so I know where to start and where to finish.
The story side is orientated around emotions and the choices we make in certain situations. I dabbled with the surreal for this and a touch of supernatural.
The music I hope will give this all the brooding mood it is intended to have.

Some look on life as a game

Cornered

This is the first in a series. It will be getting polished once I have the set all together. I'm delving in to moods and the colour red at the moment. The red is mainly because there is a Buddist alter where I live that is lit by a red light 24/7, it's included in the graph just over the right shoulder.

I read somewhere that colour has an effect on the mind and I find it sets a mood. Blue being calming, green being haunting and red being menacing. This is a theme I am using with this series of visuals with a bit of experimentation in there also.

Visions

Okay I'm a bit late in doing updates here but I have been having no end of trouble getting data from my pc to the net. Anyway, I'm currently working on a whole new selection of visual art. This process has been started with good old pencils and paper as a whole back to basics feeling has overcome me.

So it's new logos, titles and album covers on the agenda. All of this is being done as I progress through music demos that are either being created or polished up. It's all a bit of a juggling act to try and have everything ready at the same time.