Got to Rome for the Caravaggio/Bacon show at the Galleria Borghese, and what a blast! The Bacons were mostly from private collections, and you have to wonder who hangs them at home? They were all (I recall uncertainly) large canvases, housed of course in large frames.

The surrealism of his eccentric take on life and society contrasted in a cymbal clash and a thunderous roll with Caravaggio’s own wildly dark, deep work. I have started writing a piece, a sort of musical Idyll, to Bacon and his life. He spent a fair bit of time around these parts, north Essex/Suffolk border. He mixed with acquaintances of ours, people we have dealt with and socialised with on and off during the past 20 years. I shall approach one or two of them, those I can share a bottle or three with, while picking their brains. Needed a peaceful choo-choo ride around the gardens (it’s a park, really) to consider it all after two tense and tearful hours inside. The train is a kiddies’ sort of ride, really, but no kids without parents, so the traveller in solus will never feel too grown up or big. Or silly. I was ready for any humiliation, anyway; whatever it took to consider what I’d seen. All that, and the permanent Bernini sculptures, the Canova and the Classic statues, too. I hate colloquialisms, and apostrophes, but what a blast!

“Stranger Comes To Town” is ready for Mastering. That’s the final stage of production, as far as the music is concerned. The tracks go off to a Mastering Engineer to be tweaked and cajoled into hi-fi brilliance, so they sound equally warm, or bright, or harsh, depending on the producer’s taste, on your machine as well as your mate’s. My tracks (files) will probably be sent by email to Denis Blackham on the Isle Of Skye. We trust email, with a new album. Sent via cyberspace. I can’t pretend for a moment that I understand all that science, but I know I like it. As with art, we don’t always know what it means, but we know what we like. I like Bacon.