Sometimes, a good thing comes masked as evil; and sometimes an evil thing comes masked as good.
8.00 am: A communion. 8.30 am: Adminy things. So much of life comprises small and incidental responses, adjustments, and motions of mind. Such need to be corralled, so that the bigger issues and more ambitious enterprises have space in which to grow. 9.00 am: Studiology. There’s always an optimum: the most efficient, economic, imaginative, and qualitative fit-together of a composition’s parts to form a whole that’s coherent, consistent, and complete. This is now the task at hand in relation to ‘All Scripture’. ‘The storm may roar without me’ (to quote Anna Letitia Waring’s hymn). And, today, it has become an objective correlative for these perilous times.
I modelled the tracks – punching in and out various passes, and stretching towards something that sounded more ambitious, while at the same time redolent of features associated with the other tracks. ‘All Scripture’ ought, I’d begun to feel, to be consummatory. Thus conceived, the whole composition was flipped head over heels. For the first time, I’d an auditory ‘vision’ of the total work. What had been the foreground was now placed in the middle distance. In the foreground was, instead, a composition built from the clicks and scratches on the records, which had been ear-marked for the ‘Blind’ suite. It may not be the answer. If it wasn’t, then the inclusion and removal of this addition would help me more fully define what had been the question.
It was only then that I noticed the wind had died down. ‘Bright skies will soon be o’re me, where darkest clouds had been’ (to continue the hymn). It had been a very fruitful morning’s work.
12.30 pm: An early lunch and removal to the School to organise the Postgraduate Fayre. The event is held for external inquirers, principally. Our third-year undergraduates will get a good talking to about the MA schemes next week.
3.15 pm: Tea:
The MA schemes serve as a fourth year for our undergraduate students. Although the expectations placed upon them are significantly greater than anything they’ve experienced hitherto. Why shouldn’t it be hard? Who’d want to sign-up for something that didn’t stretch you to the limit? Students who have been away from education for some time have the additional challenge of reacquainting themselves with the culture of being taught. During the afternoon, I participated in some helpful discussions. Folk were searching for themselves, principally, through art. For some, the encounter (the opportunity just to talk about their vision) was nothing short of ‘surreal’ (as one inquirer described it) – a moment of realisation or turning that felt as though it had been foreordained.
4.30 pm: Homeward via town, where I undertook some domestic duties:
7.30 pm: Back to the morning’s work. And it worked. I’d achieved the elusive aesthetic surprise, a sense of wholeness, and a relation to and distinction from the other compositions on the album. This realisation occurred only when I’d removed the click and scratch accompaniment that was incorporated this morning. It reflected a curious psychology. When I believed that the voice section was secondary to the beat track, my confidence about being able to resolve it increased. I didn’t care as much and, as such, just ploughed on with it.