Teeny tiny movements on the piece yesterday and today. Yesterday I was spending some time with the sketches and came to the conclusion that I feel restricted by the rhythms I’ve notated. I want those notes to be more even with pauses than what I had, and on thinking it through in my mind, I also think I’ve got a situation similar to Fortune Favours the Brave‘s development, where what I thought was a tiny piece of introductory material probably just needs to be stretched like pull-taffy with individual areas made much more of, to allow for more fine detail, and that what I have is not so much a sketch of the start as an outline of the entire piece.

Today was even lower-key than that. Today I’ve officially changed the name of the piece again and I think this one’s here to stay. I started out thinking of it as Black Book, the same as the sketchbook project, but was uncomfortable with a) the idea of direct correlation with any single image from the book and b) after a useful chat with Claudia Molitor during which a comment of mine to the effect that this felt like it could be the start of a series of related pieces turned into a comment from her about it possibly being something akin to the Berio Sequenzas, the idea of titling the single piece after the whole book just felt awkward. So I started thinking about alternatives and ended up with Plate 1 for a bit, thinking of illustrated plates within books, but then it seemed that without the context that was in my brain, there could be a whole dinnerplate thing going on there, which just didn’t mesh. So now I’ve settled on Figure 1 which has the same sort of origins as Plate 1 without the peculiar culinary connotations. I think if it’s misconstrued it feels more like it might be referencing portraiture or life drawing, which I’m much more comfortable with, so I think Figure 1 is here to stay.

It feels a bit mad to be putting so much thought into the title, especially when the piece itself is still in… well… pieces! but names have always been important to me and often the title is part and parcel of the initial idea. So it feels good to have this question settled, like I can move on and work out what it really wants to be now.