8.00 am: A communion. 8.30 am: Studiology. I pressed on with extracting recordings for the ‘Beth and Bill’ composition. There was no fast way to proceed; due care and diligence were required. However, that measured and mechanical process gave me a mental space within which to reflect upon the process, as well as the content that surrounded my quarry: the…

8.00 am: A communion. 9.45 am: Studiology. I (re)listened to ‘One Day’. A few very minor tweaks, and it would be ‘in the can’. I took a deep breath, and plunged into the icy waters of ‘Beth & Bill’. Beginning anything from scratch is a precarious and somewhat fearful enterprise: ‘Will this amount to anything?’ Will it be as good…

For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? (Mark 8.36) 7.45 am. A communion. What is it to lose your own soul? I thought of Esau selling his birthright for a bowl of stew. I thought of David selling his integrity, wholesale, for another man’s wife. It’s like betting…

9.00 am: Studiology. ‘One Day’ alloys a sense of despair and militancy. These are also characteristics of the race riots and civil rights protests in the USA, during July 1964. Having reached the centre of the composition, a new motif needed to be introduced. I began to insert the Scourby/King collages, of which the drone track is the stretched composit.…

8.00 am: A Communion. 8.30 am: I entered the studio ferociously, completely clear in my mind about what needed to be done today, in the next few months, and over the year to come. At such times, it feels as though the soul enlarges and presses outwards, threatening to rent its bodily constraint asunder; just as the body, too, will…

These days, I dream more than I’ve done in a very long time. Last night, I overheard a discussion between several member of an Antarctic science team who were involved in something shady and duplicitous. I thought to myself: ‘If I could remember the scenario, I’d have the makings of a radio play.’ Of course, on waking, all recollections, save…