Moments to myself

I nearly forgot that I was trying to live more slowly and mindfully in the 1990s. In the 2000s and 2010s I have been busy rushing around as a working mum. In the 2020s I hope to make more time to just slow down a bit and smell the roses and the coffee, before they disappear. These two songs, I wrote in the 1990s, were unearthed when I was looking for more of my own material to perform with my daughter in public. I had forgotten how mindful they actually are.

Lorna's Songs on YouTube

Twelve of my songs feature on the Lorna's Songs playlist on YouTube.



Stargazing
A song written with passion about an obsessive love which leads to a tortured, sleepless night.

Island of Happiness
This song is about the few wonderful times in life and love that are highlights in an otherwise bleak existence.

For What I Am
This song is about being yourself, warts and all, and finding love as a flawed being.

Alive at Last
Romantic hope is renewed after recovering from a broken heart.

Jazz
Jazz is a carefree, attractive girl, a popular, social butterfly, the singer of the song can only look on with envy.

That far away look
This song was written on a moonlit evening near the sea, when the cool air was full of promise and excitement.

The feeling's always there
The remnants of an intense love affair, the lover may have gone, but heartbreak takes much longer to move on from.

I can see you
A song written when I was seventeen, when I was contemplating future love and relationships and was rather apprehensive as to what awaited me.

Scorpio Eyes
This song concerns superstition and astrology. What does the second water sign of the zodiac have to say about love?

New Ways
My songs are mostly about love. This one concerns exploring new opportunities, possibly as a result of a recent break up.

Richard's Things
Richard's Things is a novel by Frederic Raphael. This song is inspired by the title rather than the novel itself. It is about a woman constrained by a possessive man and her attempts to break free.

Waiting for me
I wrote this song on a European tour in the late 1980s. It is about longing for adventure.

Stargazing by LJ Finnigan

 
Stargazing is, perhaps, my favourite of the songs I have written. It is now accompanied on YouTube by, perhaps, my favourite of my daughter's paintings, also called Stargazing. The earlier music video to my song includes a montage of Amy's space pictures and also a space poem written by Amy and me called 'Planet Renga'.

 

A Feminine Embrace with Irish Eileen

Irish Eileen was a beautiful girl I met at college, long before I acquired an Irish name myself. When coming up with ideas on how to create a video to go with my song two complementary ideas came to my mind. The first was my poem 'A feminine embrace' and the second was a set of pictures Amy  had been working on featuring various very glamourous looking young ladies. Some of this work on the project can be seen below.

On the road again

   

I started playing classical piano music in public in 2010 and was hoping to keep performing in public for about ten years or so. During the period 2012 to 2017 I played regularly at St Mary's Church. Church opportunities have gone downhill recently so I have sought refuge in New-Age-Pagan music evenings in the local Trinity bar. This year, being what it is, it has been an achievement to keep going with new music ventures from January to June, let alone contemplating trying to keep everything going until at least 2020.

      

Richard's Things Notecards

One day, when I was waiting for the gas engineer to arrive, I took the opportunity to produce twenty drawings to illustrate my song 'Richard's things'. With the aid of Movie Maker I was able to put the drawings into a montage to accompany my demo recording. Recently I put my 'Richard's Things' drawings onto note-cards. I have sold a few of these cards on my 'ALF Creations @ the Star Heart Cafe' craft stall.

Emotional LIfe Songbook

The 'Emotional Life' songbook features fifteen of my songs, including Island of Happiness, Stargazing, Scorpio Eyes, For What I Am and Alive at last. It is a kind of sister publication to 'Something More' which features twenty-three of my poems along with nine of Amy's illustrations. These booklets have both sold quite well on my craft stall. My songs can also be found on my YouTube Channel here and my 8tracks channel here, I have also included some of them on my Vimeo Channel here.

The Fall of Ursula Usher

 
The Fall of Ursula Usher is the story of a lonely pop star. Her efforts to keep the haunting ghosts of her life at bay are continually thwarted by a nosy journalist determined to discover what makes her tick.

Each chapter is named after a character who left a lasting impression on her, they are ...

Steve, Sara, Joe, Miss Prince, Gordon, Louise, Mr Willison, Simone, Mike, Rosemary, Nick, Uma, Aunt Frances, Jason, Colleen, Charles, Tony, Ursula ...

Ursula's public persona is somewhat based on the work of Tori Amos and Kate Bush.

The Planets

Like 'On the Ice', 'The Planets' video is now available on both YouTube and Vimeo. Amy has drawn many pictures of the planets, we wrote Planet Renga together and I wrote the song Stargazing about a sleepless night spent staring at the stars.

Elegant Living with Richard's Things

I drew a series of sketches illustrating my song 'Richard's Things,' several years ago now, while having a day off from work waiting for the gas man to arrive. I have used some of my sketches for other purposes including the teapot for the Star Heart Cafe, the girl drinking tea for my WattPad Channel and the girl reading for my bookmarks and the 'My life in books' project. Six of the sketches are also a series of notecards from ALF Creations and the whole montage of sketches that make up the video for 'Richard's Things' can still be viewed on my YouTube channel.

On the ice

When I was at a book supplier's day a few years ago, as part of my library work, I was introduced to the concept of 'thinking like a dandelion', regarding approaches to the internet and social media. With this in mind I have tried to 'spread myself' about a bit both in the virtual and the real world. Part of this approach has meant some of my videos are on YouTube and Vimeo. I wanted to share my 'On the Ice' video from Vimeo, but YouTube won out again. You can find my Vimeo videos here.

Madeleine

I fell in love with Edgar Allan Poe after listening to the BBC radio drama production of 'The Fall of the House of Usher' in the 1980s. Although Poe's stories were written nearly two hundred years ago I still find them fresh and meaningful, written in a first person narrative that is very relatable, even when we are in the mind of a murderer. I was working on Madeleine, my musical based on the Fall of the House of Usher, while visiting my boyfriend in Ramsgate and the house I was thinking of was Charles Dickens' 'Bleak House' in Broadstairs. I have attempted to get it performed in the past; at the moment it exists as an eight minute musical on YouTube.

This is my small collection of Poe memorabilia that I really enjoy reading, watching and listening to, including an edition of Tales of Mystery and Imagination that was published over one hundred years ago.

At an Exhibition

This is an edited montage created from the 'Pictures at an exhibition' connecting scenes. 'Pictures at an exhibition' is a short film that lasts for forty minutes. It includes me playing the piano (Gnossienne 1 by Satie), Amy's drawings and a little girl who visits three mysterious rooms, one blue, one green and one red. Also featured in the film are our songs and stories, Stargazing, The Legend of the Dream Box, Gone Fishing, Phoenix and For What I Am. You can find the whole film here on Vimeo.

Landscapes for Lorna's Songs

I have been updating Lorna's songs on YouTube by collecting new pictures to accompany my songs. These two are used with permission of my daughter and my mother, the first one is by my daughter for Stargazing and the second one is by my mother for Jazz.

I also painted some more pictures myself, these two are for Island of Happiness and Scorpio Eyes.

My mum is hoping to produce a calendar of all her paintings for her 80th year, it is my 50th year next year, so I hope to get enough pictures from all three of us to use in a calendar for that.

Fate

Before I discovered or rediscovered Christianity I was more interested in superstition and the occult. This picture and song are more what I was inclined to believe before I began to become a more regular church goer.

Flight of the Phoenix Fairy

While I was demoing my song 'Phoenix' I was imagining the sort of journey video that could accompany it. I had always been fascinated by animation and with the advent of home computers, inspired by a visit to the Museum of Childhood and becoming more skilled with the use of Paint Shop Pro, Gif Animator and Movie Maker, I was very pleased to put together my own small animated films. 'Flight of the Phoenix Fairy' is one of my most elaborate animations and is featured in the larger ALF Creations film 'Pictures at an Exhibition'.

Back on 8Tracks

Two of my playlists weren't working on 8tracks so I had to go back and find more tracks for 'Music from the dawn of time' and 'Music collection'. I found a lovely version of 'My Funny Valentine' by George Kahn from 'Secrets from The Jazz Ghetto'. I'm really pleased a lot of people are listening to my songs and some people are liking them. You can find my 8tracks channel here.

Making friends with YouTube

I've been wondering what to do about my old YouTube account for a while, I've been adding videos to it, on and off, since 2008. It's been a bit hit and miss over the years, but I thought, on the whole, it's worth keeping. My teenage daughter's very keen on YouTube, too keen probably, but I felt there is more I could be getting out of the service so I decided to adopt a new strategy.

I had a few videos I wanted to upload, a couple of old animations, a more recent montage of old ALF pictures and an idea for a new video. I uploaded my old videos and thought I would have a go at the new idea.

The new idea is The Antique Junk Shop, which is a montage of new pictures I have drawn, inspired by one of my poems and accompanied by one of my songs. The new video has been created using the new Movie Maker, I preferred the old one, but have a new computer, so now have the new Movie Maker as well, I'm still quite pleased with the result. After uploading my videos, I thought more deeply about what to do.

My old YouTube account has always been for uploading my 'ALF Pictures' videos, it's its raison d'etre, but I wanted somewhere I could go to search what other people are doing and keep track of that rather than somewhere I go to upload my own efforts. So I came up with the idea of having two accounts.

My old account, LornaJHart, is still for uploading my videos, when I feel the need, I think of it as my 'experimental' account. My new accout, Amilo Finn, is where I am mostly going to collect playlists of other people's videos that I find inspiring, I think of it as my 'inspirational' account. To keep them linked AmiloFinn has subscribed to LornaJHart and vice versa.

While I was at it I also added The Antique Junk Shop to my Vimeo channel. The LornaJHart channel and my Vimeo channel are listed on the side links of my blog and the new AmiloFinn YouTube channel is here. I have 'fave ' playlists on both my YouTube accounts which I hope people will enjoy.

Of Dragons and Fairies

My daughter is now a sophisticated teenager and her child-like drawings are a thing of her past. I was going through her old pictures a little while ago and came across a project that we had left uncompleted. We have now completed it, it is called 'Of Dragon and Fairies' and I think of it as the last of the ALF childhood creations that I have been working on with Amy since she came up with 'The Legend of the Dream Box' in 2005.

The accompanying song by me is called 'The Feeling's Always There' and was recorded by associates of the Armada Singing Group based in Feltham.

Kaleidoscope Girl

Like my 'Versatility' greetings cards, the Kaleidoscope Girl movie also uses designs originally from my WebFlower web graphics project. The kaleidoscope girl now also has her own set of greetings cards.