Category Archives: Musings

We are in the strange hinterland between Christmas and New year. Its a grey and very cold day. Nothings happening but the local flooding has drained away fortunately. 

This seems particularly apposite.

When we are born we cry that we are come / To this great stage of fools

— KING LEAR, ACT 4 SCENE 6, LINES 178-79; KING LEAR TO GLOUCESTER

Christmas 2020

Musings

Well so far its mostly shit really and likely to get worse I suspect. The perfect end to a bad year.  Or perhaps simply a slightly drawn out end of everything. It feels a bit that way now. I am making attempts to keep a vaguely buoyant image. Make no mistake though, the ship is taking on water as its holed  below the line and sinking fast.

Last week I attended a friends funeral and was relieved to have got through it with out cracking completely to be honest. Its was good to see friendly faces though, and not via a screen for a change. The circumstances were pretty weird though to say the least. The service was the best possible in  the situation though I think.

This week we have bad news from every quater pretty much including the possibility of food shortages. 

I have pretty much zero motivation to do anything now. I have been making a few small changes to the studio room and more tidying up to make it a bit easier to work in. I need more of  a distraction though as I am not really coping now.  I am getting fairly irritable  and anxious too now. I have no idea what to do about it.

At this point I would blithely post a link to a recent tune but not on this occasion.  

Diana Stones Glass Cage Press kit link and info

Diana Stones Songs, glass cage, music, Musings

http://www.reverbnation.com/rpk/dianastone

About Diana Stone

Diana is a performing composer and musician playing Piano Violin & Guitar, synths and other stuff. She was a founder member of Rock/Roots band Elephant Shelf and also the Delta Ladies. She composes in a variety of styles from pop to rock to Jazz and and classical music .Diana is also expert in multi-media recording and music production.

Glass Cage is the name that Diana’s solo projects use.

have been playing various instruments since I was about 15. I started on Harmonica, because it looked easy and it was cheap. I didn’t get on that well with it though. I had always enjoyed the Piano but where I was living it was not possible for the familly to have one frustratingly. We tried to get my Grandmas old piano, but sadly we lived in an upstairs flat and could not get it in. I made do with something called a reed organ, which was a bit like a harmonium with an electric blower. I did learn some basic things on it though. I also had a guitar which I made serious efforts with too. One instrument I had always really liked was the Violin and I started playing that too. It was very difficult to start with and I gave up for a year or so, but for some reason I thought I would have another go at it and started again.

Fast forward a few years and I had been messing about with second hand tape machines and making recordings by bouncing sound from one tape recorder to another. I had a fairly stable job and at that point the Mk1 Teac Portastudio first appeared. Well I had to have one. By this time I had started to build up an interesting collection of Instruments keyboards guitars and so forth. I had rarely played live though. I was a bit of a techie and when I discovered you could create something called an mp3 file and put it on your website, there was no holding me back. I have a lot of music on the web. Everything from completed tracks to demos. The material spans roughly from about 1995 till the present.It covers a lot of musical genres as I have always been diverse in my musical tastes. I am still exploring musically and trying to learn something new along the way. Time passed and having assumed that I would not be doing anything much live ever, in 2004 I was invited to join a band. I have carried on with my personal musical out pourings till now, but have also played around 2200 odd gigs as well. That’s something I never thought would happen. Its funny how life takes you in different directions than you expect.

https://soundcloud.com/dianastone