June 13, 2019

Now also when I am old and grayheaded, O God, forsake me not (Psalm 71.18);
But even the very hairs on your head are numbered (Luke 12.7).

New Era. 6.30 am: Awoke. 7.30 am: A communion. 8.15 am: Yesterday, in between reflections and various administrations, I began setting up several research projects for the summer period. For sometime, my intent has been to read through the Bible with view to highlighting the occurrences of sound descriptors. I’ll be filing my findings using a very old-school system of information management: index cards:

My hope is to re-invigorate ways of interrelating information that aren’t necessarily possible using a digital database. I also set my mind to the consider the sound of angels. This was in advance of developing a fourth CD project dedicated the putative supernatural phenomenon of angel singing. Historically, this, it’s claimed, has accompanied times of religious revival in the UK and USA, at least since the eighteenth century.

8.30 am: Off into rain, on to Tesco Express to pick up a sandwich, and into the School via the back passage (which does sound terribly rude and painful). 9.00 am: Myriad admin bits, mostly related to postgraduate matters. These needed to be dispatched before the Finalists Exam Board Meeting at 11.00 am.

The habit of a lifetime (or a fair part of it). I’ve not got used to leaving the School by the rear exit, and have made the mistake of using the front door on number of occasions. In so doing, I’m confronted by a chipboard wall. This is the stuff of nightmares: ‘I can’t get out! Help me!’ (Other staff have made the same mistake. I’m in distinguished company.) The final component for my new computer arrived shortly after 10.00 am. My younger son would begin the build on Saturday.

10.30 am: I stretched my legs. It was lovely to see again the late Richard Allen’s Iconocross I (1979) in the new exhibition curated by Dr Roderick. In essence, it’s a painting that’s informed by the structures of Christian iconography, but without articulating a commitment to that faith or its creeds. (Richard was an agnostic):

11.00 am: The final Finalists Exam Board Meeting with our departing External Examiner for Art History. She has a keen sense of fairness and due process. We all learn a great deal about ourselves, as School of Art staff, at these meetings. It was a very constructive and encouraging discussion, but perishingly cold in the room. I’ve not known a mid-June like it. I’d bought cold things for my lunch. (How was I to know?)

2.00 pm: Research Committee. It’s useful to have a sense of the School’s (and, therefore, of my own) trajectory and priorities for the year ahead, and over the summer period in particular. Throughout today, we’ve been struck by the appalling mismatch between resources and expectations in Higher Education. Our problems mirror those of the NHS. Staff are being driven either into the ground or to drink or into early retirement by student numbers, and the complexities that those students present. Casualties have become an acceptable outcome of the impact. This is ‘war’.

4.30 pm: A student consultation. 5.20 pm: Homeward.

7.45 pm: My inbox had begun to fill again with replies to missives that I’d launched throughout the day. (Don’t send letters if you don’t want replies.) Some could wait. There’d been much said, proposed, feared, and hoped for today, to keep my mind preoccupied for many weeks. It’s not how I ever imagined this auspicious day would play out.

Though you have made me see troubles, many and bitter, you will restore my life again; from the depths of the earth you will again bring me up. You will increase my honour and comfort me once more (Psalm 71.20–21).

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June 12, 2019
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