Week #2 Fire Eaters, a Calligrapher, and a Neat Freak

Welcome back for week 2 of my hiatus blogging series. This week was a bit of a weird one with progress and productivity happening in fits and starts.

Today’s entry will be a lot less involved than last week’s, partly because I didn’t do much work that I can tell you about in detail, and partly because Mama is TIRED.

I’ll start off by talking about a couple of things I missed from last week’s post. I didn’t see a point in editing that one just so I can cram in yet more stuff, so you can have it here instead.

Stuff I missed

1. I got my stems for Now Vows back on Wednesday, 29th November.

I had sent some (what I thought were) clean vocal stems to my engineer at King Sound Studio so he could apply the same vocal processing to NACHA’s vocals as to mine. He emailed me back to say unfortunately the audio wasn’t totally raw and still had some noise gate and compression on, but I’m confident they’ll sound far better with a closer match of processing than what we had at the start.

This is definitely the most time and attention I’ve ever spent on one individual song, and I’m counting on it to also be the best sounding track I’ve put out so far. I really think it will be.

2. Donny Stunts is a genius.

Last week I talked about Donny Davies’ flip of my sample from Alter Ego, but what I failed to mention (unforgiveable, really) is how much it slaps. I was absolutely delighted with what he came up with. I hope I get to hear a fuller version of it one day. I even emailed him to tell him how much I enjoyed it because I realised too late how little I’d praised his work in my actual post.

Now, on to the week’s events.

Saturday, 2nd December

I had another wonderful date with my gentleman caller. This time we ate together with cups of tea, then ventured out into the winter night to something called a Fire Walk/Fire Garden. This happened in the Avenham and Miller Parks in Preston.

It was really quite a surreal experience to be surrounded by so many naked flames, but it all felt very well organised and controlled, thanks to the event planners who have a good reputation from what I’ve heard.

We got to see some fire dancers/eaters which was very cool. There was also a funky roaming brass band playing Christmas songs and a few other fun tunes like I Wanna Be Like You from the Jungle Book. Shout out to the sousaphone player purely because I think they deserve love, especially when playing outdoors in the middle of winter.

Once we’d seen a few things, we queued for about 15 minutes in the cold to get some mulled wine, which with the tickets my very reliable man had secured, gave us a nice little 10% discount. At this point we’d seen all the sculptures and performers, and had walked around enough, so we made our way back out of the park and to the donut van. I was tempted to get a coffee or other hot drink, but the sign said they preferred cash, and I had just enough on me for 4 donuts, so that’s we got. One of the pound coins I used was one I found on the ground a couple of days prior, so it sort of felt like some stranger somewhere had helped treat me and the boyfriend to a nice stodgy snack after we’d been outside in the cold.

I managed to get home on the train despite a lot of cancelled and delayed services, and we munched on our now almost cold donuts while waiting on the platform. Somehow we ended up with another mangled half donut, so I let him have it and I finished the stray sugar in the bag. A good night.

Sunday, 3rd December

Today I had another planning session with J*M*A and it was just the two of us again.

I wasn’t exactly sure what I wanted to do this week, so I tried to add some of those annoying, bitty tasks like sending emails and writing website copy. It probably won’t be like the epic week I had last week, but the little jobs are important too.

Monday, 4th December

I was back in the gym today and worked on mostly back exercises, something I’d neglected last week.

I tried doing some silly weights on the seated row machine and managed a new PR of 57.5kg for 1 rep. It wasn’t a very deep rep, but the machine counted it, so I guess it counts. I tried an even sillier 60kg that I’d only consider half a rep, but again, the machine counted. This was my highest ever attempted weight on any of the upper body machines, so it was more for the novelty than any serious training. I certainly hope I can crank out weights like that for reps in the next year or so.

In more a more sensible vein, I got another PR doing the overhead press. I put 5kg on the bar and got up to three reps. That’s like lifting my daughter over my head three times, so as much as it doesn’t sound like a lot, it’s a lot for me!

I got my new business cards from Moo today. I was a little disappointed with the smaller text at the bottom since the dot in my web address isn’t very clear. The lack of visible dot sort of obfuscates what that part is supposed to be which is pretty annoying, but I’ll know for future batches! I’m also not fond of the way the yellow orange logo turned out. I probably should have gone for this specific lilac shade that I use a lot, or at least stick with the coral pink I had before. Again, you live, you learn!

Still, the photos on the back came out really well.

I wrapped my first Christmas present of the season. I am pretty behind with everything else so far!

I listened through Unnamed Collab Partner’s track some more and added a little more detail to the songwriting, but I need to sit down with it properly.

Tuesday, 5th December

I adjusted my commissioned ambigram logo with some small changes and emailed the artist with my ideas.

If you’re wondering what an ambigram is, and who I have commissioned to make such a thing for me, check out this reel I made in my last few weeks on Instagram. To my surprise and excitement, the calligrapher I’d tagged in it, Write Words Make Magic, noticed it and made his own attempt to create a Lucid Letters ambigram.

At that point I checked to see if I would be able to commission him to make a logo for me for use on the cover of my debut album, but I saw his commissions were currently closed. However, after having a brief chat, he told me he could sneak me in!

I contacted L!FE to get project stems for our collab track via Discord. I’ll see if he replies.

Wednesday, 6th December

I got a response from Write Words Make Magic and I scanned the email quickly, but I had a busy morning so I didn’t look into it too deeply.

Went to the gym again for a lower body workout. This was my first time doing three leg exercises in a while. I didn’t do any heavier than last week, but I PR’d for reps on deadlifts. I’ve been trying to build up reps and work on form so I can do proper sets with each weight instead of just lifting heavy but briefly.

Before I left I did a little tidying up because I can’t help myself! My gym recently rearranged the weight room (and it’s very nice), but they also butted the squat rack all the way up to the wall so there’s no way to hang the larger plates there now. There was the same deal with the smaller weight rack, but that was easily moveable so I took everything off it, scooched it a bit further away from the wall, and put everything back. Will it make everyone rerack their weights? No. But, for the people who usually rerack their weights, they’ll be more likely to keep doing it if there are more easy ways to do it. I’m strongly considering asking the staff to move the squat rack back out again…

Had my mixing lesson with Izzy and it was really good! She gave me some good lines of thinking to go down and recommended some good plugins. I felt very validated when she said I already knew quite a lot and she was having to call on some of her deeper experience to teach me. I’m having another lesson with her at the same time next week. I’m really looking forward to it and would highly recommend her!

Unfortunately I didn’t get a response yet from L!FE, but I don’t think he’s been as active on Discord lately, so I emailed him to request our project stems. If that doesn’t work I’ll try using Meta Business Suite to access my Instagram messages and chat to him there.

My spider plant, given to me by the boyfriend on our first date, is all grown up and having babies. We named them after an Irish legend about three triplets called Bres, Nár and Lothar. The main plan is called Harald the Hardspider. I refuse to elaborate.

Thursday, 7th December.

I finally started work on a new artist bio.

I adapted this version from an application form I was filling in for a mothers in music writing room. I realised after a bit of research that I wouldn’t be able to stay in London on the days it was being held, so I didn’t submit the form, but I did keep a copy of what I’d written since it was a much clearer example of copywriting on my part. Sometimes I struggle to hit on the right tone for these things.

I have decided to move or merge my archived carylarcher.com site into my main website so I can show more of the progression that took me through all my musician personas leading up to today. Speaking of things about me that people don’t know, it would be fun to create the Lucid Letters iceberg. Categorising might be tricky since I think even my most enthusiastic listeners don’t know much ‘below water level.’ That’s something I need to fix.

Tried to write more on that collab song but not much is coming to me yet.

Friday, 8th December

It was yet another gym morning.

This time I managed a solid bench press PR. I hit 35kg for 3 reps which I’m actually pretty proud of, especially considering my 2 rep PR was only last week. I wonder what it will be like if I’m ever able to bench my bodyweight. I’m more than half way there, so I guess I’ll keep going.

I’m looking at my to-do list for this week and I definitely haven’t been doing the specific tasks I planned for a day on those days. It’s been a much more scattered approach for sure, but I did get things like emails and writing done. There hasn’t been a lot of actual music this week. I’ve been unconsciously avoiding it, I think, because I know my DAW has been struggling to load my more involved projects lately and that’s largely to do with needing some upgrades. I’ve asked my brother if he’ll install some more memory for me, so hopefully that will improve matters for my future work.

I don’t have a grand conclusion this week, I’m afraid. It was just a week, where I got some things done, and let some other things slip a while longer. Sometimes I shut down a bit and only want to lay down, watch YouTube video essays, and eat snacks. So long as I’m still mostly staying on top of things, I suppose I just have to let that be the case.

See you next week,

Caryl