WFH: DAY 27. 8.00 am: A wrapping:

8.30 am: I made preparation for tomorrow’s Art/Sound lectures, and reviewed the day’s itinerary: comprising third-year painting tutorials entirely. 8.45 am: A system’s test prior to the first online tutorial: camera [Check!]; brightness, contrast, and colouration [Check!]; microphone [Check!]; hot drink [Check!]; hair placement [Check-ish!]. Ready for take-off:

9.00 am: I cleared the runway. My tutees are proceeding with maturity, commitment, and intelligence. Some are now applying for either graduate jobs or internships. Prospective employees are still asking for job experience. I mean … How? Now? Getting your foot on the first rung of the employment ladder (which is infinitely preferable to standing a far-off and just staring at it) is hard enough under normal circumstances. ‘The Black Notebook’, which I’d otherwise be carrying with me on my tutorial tour around the studio today, is always at my elbow:

The ability to download images of student paintings (which they share with me each week on Teams), make adjustments to them in Photoshop (their composition, colour, and contrast, etc.), and send the results back to them, immediately, is something only possible when teaching online. Lockdown has forced us to broaden our approach to delivery. I do hope we hang on to some of these techniques and opportunities, once normality and sanity have been restored.

I always alert my students before initiating a video-conferencing. It seems rude to intrude unannounced:

2.00 pm: Back to it. Some principles and observations derived from today’s engagements:

• It’s curious how our love for the music that we heard in our mid to late teens persists into later life. Those songs and sounds are an anchor in our past, and provide an extraordinary consolation when we, inevitably, pass through dark waters.
• T: ‘The eye is the pearl.’
• T: ‘Take only want you need from reality; leave the rest be. Don’t feel constrained by the source; it’s only a starting point.’
• In this age of private and secure communication, the picture-postcard is an anomalous mode. From sending to reception, the contents are publicly accessible to the postman who picks it up from the post box, the Sorting Office, and the postman who put in through the recipient’s door. No wonder our observations and confessions are so anodyne.
• T: ‘Vary your diet. Doing the same thing while confined to the same space, day after day, for weeks on end will unhinge even the most resilient of us.’
• T: ‘What begins accidently may turn out to be a possibility.’

5.00 pm: Completed. And, a rare evening off to celebrate a special occasion.