WFH: DAY 112. 7.15 am:

8.00 am: A communion. 8.30 am: There were only a few letters that required my attention. 9.00 am: In the studio, I listened again to yesterday’s composition-in-progress. It had won me over; the sound rose sufficiently above the mundane to evoke a sense of the heavenly. 10.15 am: Given that I’d planned some downtime next week, it seemed appropriate to review this last month’s work once more. Time away from the work would enable me to better hear it on my return.

Having removed the clutter of dead files from the project folders, I attended to a discussion that was gathering momentum on FaceBook among a number of academics. The topic: On the difficulties and anxieties of writing. I pitched in:

Isn’t it odd how ill-suited we are to our professions, in so many ways. It took me three attempts to pass my O-Level in English Language, when I was in secondary school. At art school, I had the good fortune of being taught by the National Poet for Wales, Gillian Clarke. She liberated me — redirecting my attention to content, and away from grammar, syntax, and spelling. Once I began writing about the things that I loved, my confidence in, and knowledge of, the technicalities grew.

11.30 pm: I returned to ‘Such a Noise as If All About Was Going to Pieces’ in order to begin a final mix of the composition over monitors and headphones (for the first time):

The stereo-field was ideal. Mixing is a slow and an arduous process. I deploy two sets of studio monitors and two types of headphone, initially. 12.30 pm: A little studio tidying, while I mulled over the morning’s decisions and considered the sound work of some of my contemporaries in the field.

1.30 pm: Tidying (part 2). Incentivisation: the Grail. I shall never ever sleep again. You can taste the additional 10%. The melt-in-mouth factor was almost ‘0’. It was like sucking Bakelite. Not for children, beginners, or pallets of a nervous disposition:

2.00 pm: I finalised the master for the track. It’s up to those who’ll remaster the digital file for cassette-tape (very possibly) to complete the task. This album is a compilation of various sound-artists work, overseen by my colleague Dr Roberts. A mix is rarely fixed. The version that’ll be included on my new album may have a subtly different complexion, informed by all the other mixes in the suite. 3.00 pm: Once I’ve completed a proofread of the text for the cassette-tape album’s booklet, the project will be finished (as far as my responsibilities go).

3.30 pm: I looked around the room, as though expecting something to catch my eye and beckon. Some ambitions and determinations needed objectifying, otherwise they’d, forever and a day, swim around inside skull like goldfish

7.15 pm: ‘Walking the dead’. Now that the grass had been put to the ‘scythe’, the extent of the desecration was far more evident. It’s difficult to conceive what mindset gives rise to such actions:

7.45 pm: I read again my late-afternoon notes. Somewhere between the lines there were possibilities. I doubt whether there’s any longer an audio technology that hasn’t been put to the service of sound art. Innovation lies elsewhere, these days: at the intersections of ideas, intent, processes, and materiality. As in the case of every other form, originality is harder and harder to realise the more time passes.