Aesthetic Confessions

With a history and continuing engagement in the political process and with formal work and study firmly based on the sciences, my aesthetic side has usually been one of an amateur critic. True, there is something like forty years in this role with my considerations of music, film, theatre, comedy, literature, painting, and (especially) games making their way across a variety of publications; "Metior", "Phantasmagoria", "Mimesis", "Festivale", "RPG.NET", "RPG Review", "Ticonderoga", "The Dwarf", "Rocknerd", even "The Polish Journal of Aesthetics", and probably several more if I put my mind to it. I've even made an effort to compile the reviews, but with the numbers in the hundreds, I still have quite a long way to go. Despite all this, my own contributions to the aesthetic world have been quite modest. I think there's a couple of awful youthful-goth poems somewhere in Metior, but more substantially a publication from Iron Crown Enterprises, "Rolemaster Companion VI" (it sold 10,000 copies and has become something of a collectable), "Papers and Paychecks" and "Cow-Orkers in the Scary Devil Monastery" (with a resistentialist setting), and a rather dry and factual chapter of "Fox Magic" (Japanese kitsune). This is perhaps unsurprising given my interests, but it also comes with more than a hint of theoretical grounding; Murdoch University was flexible enough that, as an undergraduate, I was able to engage in my own accredited research project ("Independent Study Contract") as a course, on roleplaying and simulation games.

In the past season, however, I have started to engage with more standard aesthetic theory, including the Augsburg University course on Udemy and now the University of Edinburgh's courses on music theory. Simultaneous to this, there have also been studies in "Modern & Contemporary American Poetry" from the University of Pennsylvania. The practical grounding of such theory has, I will now admit, led to recent practice. I have submitted poetry and prose to a few US and UK journals, dealing with delightful subjects like violence against children, cancer and suicide, parochial loyalties with genocide and such topics. Further, I have started writing a collection of Gothic Nursery Rhymes, including "Three Tough Rats" (piano) and the beginnings of Edward Gorey's "The Gashlycrumb Tinies" (piano and cello). Because I'm close to mad and love working with text, I've been working heavily through MusicXML files directly. It's the way of the future. All of this is, of course, a precursor to the larger and more serious scientific-music project I have in mind with Mel S. But that's for the second half of the year.

Putting a more practical hat on, I've had a recent discussion and decision with my old friend Liza D., (goodness, it's been around 25 years!) and agreed to act as the producer for an upcoming comedy show she wishes to perform. Liza has a long history in this artform, decades even, whereas I've decided that the similarities between production and project management are simply too great to ignore. Liza has also been kind enough to give me her old set of Casio CTK 2100 keyboards, which really is just for fun. I have minimal skill in such a thing (scales using passacaglia form is my beginner's work), but I've never intended to be a performer. Or, for that matter, to even consider making a living from such activity. Information technologies and market structures are not friends of the artistic community, and dare I suggest anyone who thinks otherwise is almost certainly destined for a lifetime of a meagre income at best