WFH: DAY 113. 8.15 am: A communion. Prayer can be improvisatory. I grew up in a Nonconformist tradition wherein prayers (other than the Lord’s Prayer) were always delivered extemporaneously. Chapel members just stood up in a meeting and spoke to God for up to ten minutes, non-stop. It was like jazz: you could hear themes, recurring motifs, the equivalent of ‘riffs’ and licks’, a great deal of heart-felt emotion, and moments of extraordinary elegance and ecstasy. These were working-class people, for the most part, who’d had no opportunity for either further or higher education. Some of them could preach in the same manner — off the top of their heads, without notes, and ‘as they were lead’. When I was a teenager, my Pentecostal friends claimed to be able to pray in ‘tongues’ (glossolalia). These were unlearned and, in most cases, unknown languages. While I was and remain unconvinced by the phenomenon, their oral expressions of praise and adoration were startling and memorable. It was as though they were worshipping from the heart, while bypassing the brain: pure religious emotion. I shall weave these ideas into my continuing, background ruminations on the nature of improvisation through sound.

10.30 am: I’d had cassette-tape recordings on my mind all last night. Unless I exorcised this ‘demon’, practically and immediately, the fixation would distract my entire weekend. An occasion for ‘play-station’, therefore. I rummaged through my archive of recordings of lectures and interviews from the early 1980s related to my research into art and Welsh Nonconformity. In particular, I was looking for a tape of a public talk given by the Welsh artists Nicholas Evans at Aberystwyth Arts Centre in July 1983:

Evans was also a former coal miner and railway fireman, and a Pentecostal lay-preacher who claimed to paint (as he preached) under the direct-inspiration of God. The choice of source material, thus, neatly compounded some of my recent preoccupations related to: making work involving recorded interviews with miners; cassette-tape technology; and improvisation within a religious context. (I’ve always felt as though I’m living part of my life in rewind.)

The limitation of cassette-tape recorders in play mode is access and control. Unlike a vinyl record, which permits easy access to an entire side of recorded information, one can only get to the information on tape by either fast-forwarding or rewinding the medium. Sound is much more of a moment-by-moment encounter, as a consequence. I’ve never ceased to be disappointed by it, in this respect.

The introduction into the signal chain of a phrase sampler — set to stack and progressively erase loops — opened up a few potentially productive avenues of inquiry, both for studio and live operations:

But the source material was not appropriate to the treatment. Form, content, and process must be allied, otherwise a rather glitzy and superficial meaninglessness will prevail.

4.30 pm: And end of things for now, and a diary sabbatical until August 17.