WFH: DAY 14. 8.15 am: A communion. The university is seeking to survey the current circumstances of all students during the present crisis. As a Personal Tutor, I’m tasked to find out the students’ location, health and well-being, and resources. The exercise will, no doubt, reveal a layer of neediness that is both bewildering and appalling. I’m gripped by a sense of impotence. Beyond sending supporting words and directions to resources for art and sources of care, there’s little that we, as staff, can do for our students, remotely.

10.00 am: My only PhD fine art tutorial today:

11.00 am: Back to Personal Tutor duties. Don’t presume that all students can afford a laptop and internet access. Some have been entirely dependent on university resources. Don’t presume that all students are comfortable living with their parents again. Don’t presume that all students are cared for. Some are solo-carers for either aging parents or young children. Don’t presume that otherwise intelligent and motivated students find it easy to work without an imposed schedule. Don’t presume that all students are either willing or able to share their needs. This is the first major social crisis that most of them have had to face. In essence:

We need to remain focused and to take control over that which we can control, presently. To commit to work is, thus, an essential in both these respects.

These are testing times. It’ll take you awhile to adapt to new contexts and conditions of work. Don’t berate yourself. Self-kindness is essential.

An accidental paradox. (Oh! The wonderful ambiguities of language.):

After lunch, I returned to an idea that presented itself on a weekend break in Bristol last year (February 15–17, 2019). I’d ruminated upon it again a few months later (May 10, 2019). ‘Silent Grooves’, from the Give Yourself a Stereo- Check-Out vinyl of (1967):

I’ve spoken previously about the Cageian resonances summoned by this otherwise purposeful method of testing for the presence of extraneous noises produced by a turntable and amplifier. The track is less than a minute long. I wanted to interrogate the sound and method, and the concepts orbiting both. This would be an exercise, pure and simple: a mental and practical workout in response to the opportunities suggested by the sonic and procedural material.

4.00 am: A break. (In the foreground: Miles Davis’ In a Silent Way (1969):

4.30 pm: State-sanctioned exercise: a 25-minute run into town, in-between rain showers. Life feels like that week between Christmas and New Year’s Day, but perpetually. In contrast, this is not the silence of satedness and sedateness but, rather, of disease and dis-ease.

7.30 pm: Back to the ‘silence’. How does one derive a groove from a groove. (I’ve been here before.) In music, a ‘groove’ is the feeling derived from listening to a repetitive, propulsive rhythm. 8.00 pm: A clap for key workers fighting the coroner virus. Not a ‘groove’: