8.00 am: A communion, followed by an assault on my inbox. One of the insidious downsides of social-media platforms is their capacity to distract. We can fritter away our time on matters that don’t require a great deal of brain power to understand, and are easy to implement, ephemeral, and often incidental. As a consequence, our capacity to focus upon…

I flee, but it follows. 8.00 am: A communion. I’d lost a nose pad from my glasses, which required a trip to the opticians. The day blossomed: 9.30 am: Back at homebase, I addressed emails that required immediate attention and prepared the studio to resume work on the phase-one mix. I began the first of the noise-centred group of compositions.…

They will still yield fruit in old age; They shall be full of sap and very green (Psalm 92.14). 6.00 am: Up. 7.00 am: A communion. The psalmist makes an observation about the righteous. ‘They’ endeavoured to live uprightly according to the law and, like Abraham, believed and trusted in God (Genesis 15.6). The righteous were never self-righteous. Far from…

6.00 am: Rise. 7.30 am: A communion. 8.00 am: I responded to emails that’d been delivered yesterday evening, and organised next week’s teaching roster. We live in unusual and unnerving times. There really ought to be portents in the sky: comets, mysterious lights, dreadful sounds of tumult among the clouds, and strange aerial objects – like those dark fiery monoliths…

6.15 am: Awake. 7.30 am: A communion. 8.00 am: An idea. A Bible that can ‘speak’ all the words within it. ‘Interrogate the idea, John!’: 8.30 am: It takes me 7 minutes to walk to my office door at the School. And at the this time of the year, I’ve reason to pause often. There’re moments of wonder and consolation:…

7.30 am: A communion. I’ve a life, a day, and all the opportunities, challenges, and the good that they offer – both to do and to receive. 8.30 am: I walked to the Old College via North Gate Street, North Parade, Terrace Road, along the shoreline, Marine Terrace, Pier Street, and King Street. It was an unusually noisy morning: 9.00…

7.40 am: A communion. There’s little to be gained from reaching for what’s already within one’s grasp. I’m drawn to the impossible (or what seems to be): ambitions that require of me more than I can give, presently; projects which must fail often before they succeed, and appear so unwieldy that I feel weary merely at the thought of them;…

Last evening, I attended a one-man performance by Ian McKellen at the Aberystwyth Arts Centre. He is, without a shadow of doubt, one of our greatest living actors. McKellen seized and held the audience from the moment he opened his mouth. It’s a power that comes from the artiste’s self-possession (their sense of presence unto themselves) – an inner energy…

7.00 am: A morning: 8.00 am: A communion. 9.00 am: Studiology. I returned to ‘All Scripture’ and began listening to the whole, moment by moment, to eek out the potential of the existing options to the full. In my head, I can now conceive the order of the CD compositions, in relation to one another. A beginning and an end…