October 12, 2018

As storm Callum moved into West Wales, bringing with it high winds, rain, and disruption, the Visual Theology Symposia  posted the following tweet (instigated by a PreRaphaelite scholar, no doubt). The quotation is a verse from the poem with which I ended the thousandth post of the Diary. Ophelia was the name given to the worst storm to affect Ireland in fifty years. It arose on October 9 last year and remained active for the next nine days. In the weeks that followed, sections of Aberystwyth’s South Beach were overspread with a matting of dead leaves that had been torn, violently and prematurely, from the trees on the western seaboard of Wales and, very likely, the east coast of Ireland too. Then, one night, they vanished: retrieved by the sea that’d brought them. I recalled Richard Longs’s A Sculpture Left By the Tide (1970):

Today was set aside to remix Write The Vision and Make it Plain Upon Tables‘ component parts. Presently, they sound too brash and brittle on the sound system that I’ll be using. Equalising and compressing will do the trick. I’ve no idea what the acoustic properties of the venue will be like. I can attend only to that which is under my control. The spoken text must be rehearsed also; I need to be confident that both it and the ‘performance’ is presentable within fifty minutes. At the moment, they’re spot on. (That’s to say, comfortably within the allotted time  – with minutes to spare.)

I pared-back, compressed, opened-up acoustic spaces, underscored prominences, and interrogated each sample by asking it to justify its continued inclusion within the composition. I was merciless. (“‘Do more with less”, you wrote, yesterday’, the ‘muse’ interjected.) Well, something like that. But, yes. By the end of the process, the notional composition was thirty seconds shorter.

Once I was satisfied by that each of the component had been optimised, they were installed on a sampler device in readiness for ‘performance’ next Friday. I hesitate to use the word ‘performance’; it has too many connotations with entertainment. ‘Presentation’ is too strongly associated with business culture and the explanation of a project outcome. Whereas, the composition will be, at the point of delivery, an artefact in the making and not very entertaining, possibly. In effect, the composition will be reassembled in situ from the component elements.

While the magna-large files slowly saved (‘the paint drying’), I addressed the equipment required for the ‘performance’: how it’ll be transported; its electrical supplies, battery provision, illumination, cables; and the speed at which it could be set up. And, if it all should go belly up, I prepared a plan B too. Afterwards, I assembled the equipment array in order to test its integrity:

At the close of the afternoon, I braved the rain and driving wind to attend an Opening at the School.

Several days ago, the conference convenors asked me to send a ‘mugshot’ for the programme. I’m not a celeb (woe betide the time when academics ever consider themselves thus); I don’t have have a stock of ‘professional’ portrait photographs for distribution to fans and hangers-on. Therefore, I made one bespoke. What does the photograph signify?: high-seriousness (black and white are the colours of sobriety); mystery and uncertainty (darkness and light suggest a man with a shady side); and a cold, calculating, and an unflinching stare (the heartless, ruthless intellectual type). Hogwash! It’s all so vain. I had, in the back of my mind, the cover of King Crimson’s album Red (1974), which, in turn, referenced the Beatles’ With the Beatles (1963) artwork.

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