Hello, Good People of the Internet!

I want to make this newsletter more diary-like than a long blog post with some extra bits thrown in. I don't always have something big to say or have had some big revelation to share, and I don't want to feel like I need something big to talk about to do a newsletter. I just want to talk about what I've been up to.

Besides, shorter, snappier sections should be more digestible than the big long section. But we'll see.

Maybe having rules on what this newsletter should look like is the problem - maybe I should make the newsletter reflect how I feel when I am writing it, not overthink it, and go with the flow of it...man.

Anyway, so what have I been up to then? 

For the last couple of weeks, I haven't been interested in magic or spiritual matters in any shape or form - they don't seem important at all to me right now. I'm a bit disillusioned with it all, I think.

I don't think it's all bullshit or anything like that. I feel a lot of it is genuinely for real, but I think an awful lot of what is presented as spirituality is utter nonsense. My disillusionment comes from having bought into so much of this occult foolishness over the years rather than the occult foolishness itself.

And I know this is probably just a cycle as I have been here many times. Maybe the end of a cycle, we shall see.

So, with that in mind, I will concentrate on what I have been doing rather than giving out about what I don't want to be doing.

And I've been doing quite a bit...

MUSIC, MUSIC, MUSIC

I've been quite a busy boy recently with regard to music the last while. I remastered some of my older music which you can find out more about in the paragraphs below, but I have also been working on two other big music projects.

Over the last couple of months, I have been working as an engineer on a metal album by a band called Deithesis. The project started doing lockdown but ran into the usual technical difficulties. Once life returned to normal after the lockdowns, those difficulties got entwined with conflicting schedules.

Cut to a few months back, and the main guy in the band asked me if I would be interested in helping out. I said sure, as it gave me a chance to work with someone else's music for a while.

I also decided that I would use Cubase exclusively for the project - mostly so it would speed up my learning of the program. It's easier to learn something when you have a real reason to do so.

And that was a great idea. Cubase is infinitely more suited to me than Ableton Live was. Ableton, for me, seems like it's a brilliant sequencer with recording software built on top of it. Cubase feels like a proper recording studio.

Last week we finished all the multitracking and most of the editing. We still have a few vocal edits to do, but we did manage to get the first proper mix of a song done on Tuesday last. And while it's not quite there yet, it's not far off.

I'll post the album, or a few tracks, whenever the band release them. It's good stuff.

Eidolon

I mentioned in a previous Newsletter that I had begun work on a new solo rock album, and that has also been going well.

12 tracks have all the drums, bass, and acoustics guitars completely tracked. More than half of them have all the electric guitars, and 4 have keyboards and full orchestration completed.

The tracks range from very intimate and quiet to very loud and sonorous. My aim with the album is to make it sound like a band playing in a big live room — to have it sound like people playing music rather than something recorded on a computer. And so far, I feel I am on track for that.

It's still relatively a bit away from its final release but it's picking up some momentum. It's currently titled Eidolon, and although titles change often, this one has stuck for some time now. I'm very happy with how it is going and excited for everyone to hear it.

But, in the meantime, I do have some old music for you to listen to...

FLAT 3, 10 CHURCH STREET

25 Years ago, I recorded my first album worth of songs. I recorded in the kitchen of my flat located above a graveyard in 1998 when I was a young and hopeful 20-year-old, using a Yamaha 8 Track Tape Recorder, an Alesis 3630 compressor, a Zoom Studio 1204 FX unit, some dodgy drum machines, a strat, and an SM58. 

I wrote and recorded the music at a very hard time in my life. I had moved out of my home house about a year previously as my parents were in the middle of separating, and the mood at home was far from ideal. I also just left the rock band I was in, broke up with the girl I was living with, and generally had my life fall apart in every section.

Let be honest, it's hardly a classic album by any means, but it marks an important era of my life and there are some elements in this that return in a wider and more expansive form in later recordings.

Besides art is as much about the journey as the art itself. If you only ever aim to show the art that you feel is perfect then I reckon you're missing out. Art, for me, is about self-expression, and sometimes that expression is naive and nervous - but that's beautiful too.

It's Spotify and the usual places or you can check it out here on my Bandcamp page or grab it on Patreon if you are a patron - if you want to hear what a very young, nervous, and very naive Tommie sounded like 🙂

FORTY SERVANTS NEOPHYTE EDITION

As I mentioned in the previous Newsletter, The Forty Servants Neophyte Edition is now available for everyone to buy, but I being that i am meant to be running some sort of business here I should probably mention it again.

WHAT IS THE NEOPHYTE EDITION?
The Neophyte Edition a special version of The Forty Servants deck with the card meanings written directly on the cards themselves for easy reference and learning. The Servants artwork has been restyled to look more hand drawn and has an "old style occult" look. A very unique and cool version of the deck that will be helpful for learners and for advanced users who want a fresh feel to their readings.

ALL DETAILS AND PURCHASE OPTIONS ARE HERE!

So, usually, at this point in the newsletter, I do a three-card reading, but for this one, I have a video instead for you all. As a lot of you know, every month, I do one-card readings for the Good People who support me over on Patreon, so I thought I'd post the latest session here (recorded earlier today) in the divination section for a change. Been a while since I did a video, so there's that too.

Click on my face to make the video play.

New Print Version of THEM & The Holy Numbers Coming Soon!

Publishing a book in colour is very expensive, which is why The Grimoire of The Forty Servants costs what it does. It's also the reason why there are no print versions available of my comics The Holy Numbers and THEM. Publishing them using Amazon KDP would involve having to sell them at a price that no one would be willing to pay.

Which is a shame, as I am really proud of both of those comics. The Holy Numbers won actual awards and THEM is probably my favourite piece of art I have done and probably the most successful piece of magic I've done to date. You can read all about the magic element of THEM here.

So, I have decided to make black-and-white versions of both comics and publish them on Amazon at a reasonable price.

The problem is that simply turning all the files into a grayscale version will probably look terrible— and that feels like a missed opportunity.

Instead, I want to make the "noir" versions look like a comic that is meant to be in monochrome rather than a comic that is meant to be in colour, but I can't afford to print it.

So, I did some tests to see the best approach. Here's an image of one of the tests.

As you can see, it mostly works, though the woman's arm goes completely missing, so, there will need to be a number of adjustments needed. I doubt I will be able to set up an Action or Automated Script to auto-correct the pages - I'll need to go through them individually. Which is fine other than I may be tempted to "fix" some of the art too.

Anyway, the proof of concept test was a success, and that's exciting. I'll hopefully get through the pages quickly enough and have THEM out sometime in the summer. The Holy Numbers will need more work as a lot of the early pages were drawn on actual paper rather than digitally, and I assume that will make things a bit harder.

If you want to check out my comics then head on over to Amazon or my Payhip store.

And speaking of comics, this is a short webcomic I did many years ago - I think it's from 2012. For some reason, it has been on my mind for the last week or so - most likely because of what I mentioned above about my current spiritual outlook. It's funny how often I find that when I look back at old blog posts, songs, or art, I find that despite thinking I am always uncovering new ground, I am most definitely working in repeating cycles. Hopefully, though, with each cycle, I gain a deeper understanding.

Anyway, I think the comic stands up well even after a decade.

WATCHING

Knock at the Cabin
M.Night Shyamalan

It seems to me that every second movie M.Night makes is a good one with the in-between movies being some of the worst movies ever made. His previous movie OLD was one of the worst movies ever made so I was expecting something good from this one.

And it is good. It's a well crafted old-style movie that keeps you engaged. My only issue with is that no matter what the ending turned out to be it was going to be anticlimactically given the nature of the story line. Total worth your time if you like M's good movies.

LISTENING

'Upward Over The Mountain' & 'Call It Dreaming'
By Iron & Wine

This is a wonderful performance in a forest of a couple of exceptional songs from Iron & Wine, featuring Andrew Bird. There is nothing I dislike about this. Even the beard is magestic.

RISE

By Extreme

Despite being a band that most people think of as a one hit wonder Extreme have released some amazing stuff over the years. This is their latest song and their sixth album is out in June. I'm a fan, have been since 1991.

Oh and Nuno Bettencourt is the reason I started to play guitar. So, blame him.

And that's it for another AIWW Newsletter, I hope you got something from it. If you'd like to chat about you can hit reply to this email or come find me over on Discord.

If you would like to support me in doing all the things I do, then feel free to join the PATREON, Buy me a BOOK, Buy a PRINT, Buy a FORTY SERVANTS deck, or just send me some money via PAYPAL, it all really, really helps!

So, until next time,
MAY YOUR BEST DAYS BE AHEAD!

T

My name is Tommie Kelly, and I’m an artist, musician, writer & wizard from Ireland. This periodical newsletters are about my adventures in creativity and magic.

Check out Adventures In Woo Woo, where you

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