8.00 am: A communion. 8.30 am: I entered the studio ferociously, completely clear in my mind about what needed to be done today, in the next few months, and over the year to come. At such times, it feels as though the soul enlarges and presses outwards, threatening to rent its bodily constraint asunder; just as the body, too, will one day burst forth from the grave on Resurrection day. But, now, there is only now. No guarantee of a tomorrow. (‘So, live like your time was already up, John.’)

Two tasks presented themselves. To: 1. develop the rig for the January performance of ‘Beth & Bill’; and 2. ease the composition entitled ‘One Day’ further towards a recognition of its own identity.

1
I roamed the studio like a caged wild cat, picking up cables, digging out power supplies, plugging in modulators, puzzling over stereo to mono to stereo progressions, and, finally, undoing it all and beginning again, and again. This is how it always goes … has to go. There’s a simple, efficient, and economic solution. But, it hides; I seek. ‘Prepare like a DJ; perform like a musician; think like a scholar’. By mid day, I’d achieved an initial optimisation of the system. It remained for me to test the ergonomics of the layout. The rig had to be comfortable to manipulate in a performance context.

At noon, I went to the School to attend a lunchtime welcome for the Education Minister of the Chinese Embassy, London, and his colleagues. I can be gregarious, if I put my mind to it. But if this was a party, and I had to be ‘just me’, I’d be out at the back of the building with the smokers, but not smoking.

2
Having created a broad-field stereo dispersion of the drone tracks for ‘One Day’, based on the Scourby/King collage, I mapped it onto the first beat track. I was in new territory, and constructing a composition that was quite unlike the vague conception of its potential character that I’d in my head. I’m always prepared to abandon intent, when actuality proves to be far more engaging.

1
Late afternoon, I returned to the rig to test other types of amplification systems against the desktop monitors.

2
In the evening, I revisited the day’s composition, listening for volume levels throughout the drone track. By the close of the session, I sensed that the centre of the composition had been reached – and far more quickly than I’d anticipated.