‘God is on top of it. That’s all’, David Bowie, ‘Pallas Athena’, Black Tie White Noise (1993).)
WFH: DAY 128. 8.15 am: A communion. 9.00 am. In art, we can get by with a modicum of knowledge, a passable technique, and an adequate command of our means. But without imagination also, we can do nothing of significance. Our efforts will never soar above the waterline of competence. Imagination cannot be taught; it’s innate. We can encourage, liberate, and strengthen imagination; but we can neither supply nor improve the capacity where there is none. If we stumble and fall, creatively, it’s not because we can’t conceive of answers, so much as fail to comprehend the questions that the artwork addresses to us. Imagination is, in part, the ability to intuitively grasp a situation and formulate a reply, almost without thinking. Thus, to my mind, imagination may be at the root of inspiration so called.
Cup of tea #2 in hand, and medical and dental appointments confirmed, I reviewed the narratives of the outstanding compositions. By the close of the morning, I will have defined an agenda for what still needed to be done, compositionally. This would help steer my research practice, once the new academic year was underway. (In the background: a selection of Vivaldi’s choral works.)
12.00 pm: A tentative, albeit finite, track list was completed. There was still a long way to the end of the tunnel, but I could at least see a pinhole of light now. 12.15 pm: A little reading:
12.30 pm: A little re-listening to the last week’s efforts before lunch.
1.30 pm: Wind on wind … as I tried to construct a sound like that of a gathering storm that’d been recorded outdoors. 2.00 pm: A moment of indecision: ‘Whatever next?’ I read again the texts to the last group of accounts that would sonify in the months ahead. The voice in my head said: ‘Release your grip; turn hard on your heels; look the other way; and surrender. Let go! Trust your instinct! If a thing was meant to be, it’ll be again. If not, it will like a flower fade forever.’ In art as in life, the recognition of an immovable truth has consequences. I’ve held on to a programmatic approach to the material at the expense of a more diffusive and evocative interpretation, I sensed. But it wasn’t not too late to redress the balance.
3.00 pm: A departmental resit exam board meeting. ‘All’s well that ends well’:
3.30 pm: Remarkably, I unseated my usual routine and headed out on the customary Friday stroll one hour earlier than scheduled. What did I hear (a transcription)?:
The pressure of the wind against my ears and the dry leaves on the trees (they hiss and rattle); the squeals, yelps, and protestations of primary school children, gathered beneath a tree to my side; the passing of traffic in the far distance, on my left; the occasional screech of a gull, far up; a child claps percussively as he jumps; a grandmother applauds approvingly; the sound of air-conditioning, as I approach the rear of a store; the crisp crunch of ochre leaves under my feet; and, always, the pressure of the wind against my ears.’
4.30 pm: Home. I resumed. 7.30 pm: As the sound of the train leaving the railway station for Birmingham International seeped through my studio Velux, I settled to read for the remainder of the evening. I needed to think at a tangent to my habitual train of thought.
