‘We have followed too much the devices, and desires of our own hearts’ (The Book of Common Prayer (1662)).

WFH: DAY 69. 7.00 am: A communion. 7.45 am: A reflection on a first encounter:

8.30 am: I returned to writing PhD research monitoring reports before the first of the day’s conference calls began. My mind had been filled with plans: speculative, idealistic, and untestable prior to their implementation. The future has never seemed so uncertain and yet so resplendent with possibilities as it does now. (In the background: BBC Radio 3’s Choral Evensong.)

10.00 am: A Skype call with a colleague at Goldsmiths College, University of London. Due to the pandemic, the conference at which I was going to speak had been postponed. Could it, now, be delivered online? What technical support would we need? Could at least some of the conference be held in a safe physical space? Until their university determines how to Covid19–ready their premises, no-one can say for sure. We were making-up solutions as we went along. By the close of our conversation, I was so grateful for the expertise that our own university’s E-learning and Information Services render to academics.

11.00 am: An MA tutorial, based on the topic of:

On paper, my job would seem utterly bizarre. 11.45 am: There were emails to fell, issues to address, and scenarios to envisage, before I could return my report writing.

Over the weekend, my multiband analogue radio was delivered. I’ve yet to find time to give it a test drive. I’m assuming that it has a monaural output. The accompanying manual is silent on that matter:

By mid afternoon, my draft first-supervisor reports were complete. These would be the basis of a one-to-one discussion with the students in the near future. 4.30 pm: The thunder, over, the rain, ceased, I took to the great outdoors.

Today, I made what I call a no-edit recording of my walk around Aberystwyth, using the microphone on my iPhone. The principles of the endeavour were as follows:

• I must be alert to sounds that typify my acoustic experience along the route.
• I must anticipate the approach of those sounds and record the events at the moment of their optimum volume and clarity, for as short a period as is deemed necessary.
• Where possible, the principle of successive contrasts of sound should be observed.
• The ‘composition’ should begin and end in the same way.
• The recording cannot be edited after the recording is concluded, other than to enhance the sonic range.

It was an attempt to use the sound recording device like a camera. The title — ‘It’s gonna rain for ten days: rain, rain, rain, rain, rain, rain, rain’ — derived from a statement that was overheard as I approached the Promenade from Pier Street. ‘It’s gonna rain’ fortuitously summoned the title of Steve Reich’s composition of the same name.

7.30 pm: I reviewed and launched the afternoon’s sound capture before taking-up my reading of Dan Lander and Micah Lexier (eds), Sound by Artists (1990).