WFH: DAY 86. 6.45 am:
7.45 am: A communion. 8.15 am: One thing I do know: people are far more complex in their psychology, motivations, conflicts, ambitions, and morality than they may at first appear. Judge not by either external appearances or first impressions. Indeed, judge not. For we are each of us flawed, woefully inconsistent, self-righteous, delusional, and prejudicial. ‘Hypocrite! First remove the plank from your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye’ (Matthew 7.5). We should have the deepest sympathy, compassion, and generosity for one another as we blunder haplessly through this world together. ‘To err is to be human, to forgive divine (Alexander Pope, ‘An Essay on Criticism’ (1711)). And self-forgiveness (which is the hardest absolution of all) cannot be achieved without aid from the divine.
9.00 am: I returned to the studio to work on the second and final section of the second composition. As in life, the sum of small incremental adjustments can effect just as significant an improvement to the whole as one major alteration. Thus we must change what we can, when we can, and while we can, in the hope that major betterment will ensue.
10.30 am: The hedge-taring section now needed to be developed (again). The lost files were all found. Originally, the samples were only sketched onto the compositional session. That was as far as I’d got before ‘disaster’ struck. Today, they needed to be edited and melded together.
1.30 pm: I’d, by now, re-established the two lost compositions and improved upon the originals. The third composition, based upon the narrative of loud and disorientating fragmentation of reality, existed as a single sample only. Having refamiliarized myself with it, I reread Jones’ account of the same:
Four sounds: the first, two violent knocks to a bed (when the householder was praying beside it), loud like gunshot and shaking the house; the second, so great in volume that he thought like the house was being torn to pieces, and, finally, a terrifying thud against a door, on the occasion of a religious meeting being held in the house. Towards a gunshot:
4.30 pm: Regardless of the downpour, I headed out for a walk from the house to the cemetery and back again. I took cover under the shelter on the path leading from Llanbadarn Road to the cemetery proper. I suppose that mourners who’ve not been at the church service wait here for the funeral entourage to arrive, in inclement weather:
7.30 pm: I read again my presentation text for the first composition. At some point, I’ll need to place the reading over the paper’s Powerpoint adjunct. The more I compose, the more I understand what I have done, am doing, and must do. The project cannot be known at the outset, beyond certain generalities of intent and the vaguest sense of something.