Summa: diary (July 6-12, 2024)
Goodbye to you, Charlotte Pringle’s due / I’ve had enough for one day (Pink Floyd, ‘Summer ’68’ (1970)).
West is where all days will someday end … / We’re refugees, walking away from the life / That we’ve known and loved (Van der Graaf Generator, ‘Refugees’ (1970)).
July 6 (Saturday). 7.00 am: Arise. 8.00 am: A communion. It was too rainy to ambulate. 8.30 am: A morning for majoring in minors (admining, filing, corresponding, helping, commentating, and pdf-ing). 12.00 pm: Schematising, intermittently, throughout the day. Strand 1: the no-input path, with effectors.
Prime minister Keir Starmer’s first press briefing over lunchtime was both presidential in style and reminiscent of the COVID-19 televised gatherings. I’d forgotten what a proper PM ought to sound like: sober; commanding; clear-headed; thought-through; and refusing to reduce everything to sound bites and unrealisable promises.
1.30 pm: The deferred ambulation, when the sun emerged. It was heartening to see so many tourists in town. I wish there were more shops of substance open for them.
July 7 (Sunday). 9.30 am: No sooner than I stepped onto the porch, it poured, But I’m not only a ‘fair-weather’ walker. The theme of reclusiveness interrupted my thoughts during the afternoon.
July 7 (Monday). 7.00 am: ‘Upsey!’ An orientation to the week that’s gone and is to come, writing, and a communion. 8.30 am: Studiology. A review of Strand 2 of the table-rig and two new devices procured to play cassette-based material into the sound system. One is a modified player that enables the user to slow down the speed of a cassette.
The table-rig, while complete, will be modified in the process of deployment. Everything is provisional. 10.30 am: I returned to a more theoretical consideration of Electronic Voice Phenomenon (EVP), its cultural reflections, and relationship to no-input sound production. Today, the focus of my thinking was the Lativian writer and parapsychologist Konstantin Raudive’s recording Breakthrough, which accompanied the English translation of his book of the same title, as aural illustrations, published in 1971. The original German title was the more resonant: Unhörbares wird hörbar (1968) [What is inaudible becomes audible]. The EVP samples are repeated, so that the listener can become accustomed to the often indecipherable speech. The effect is, fortuitously, both unsettling and aesthetic.
1.30 pm: I made notes on my response to EVPs in a book, rather than on a computer. Thereafter I gave myself a refresher tutorial on analogue/digital interfaces. 7.30 pm: An evening on the visual practice archive.
July 9 (Tuesday). 9.30 am: A train ride to Gobowen, via Shrewsbury, to attend a follow-up medical consultation for a family member. The railway station (which is under renovation) is in the Italianate style, and was designed by Thomas Mainwaring Penson. (‘I said “hello” to Shrewsbury station for you, old friend’.) En route, I began a blog about my blogs (an incestuous preoccupation, perhaps) that’ll commemorate the 10th anniversary of the online diaries and essays, next week.)
6.00 pm: I caught the TV coverage of new MPs being sworn in at Westminster. A surprising number choose to swear on the Bible, and the Authorised (King James) Version at that. These were ordinary people (many, comparatively young) who were made special by dint of their elected duty. They lined up to be registered as I’d done for my Student Union card when I began Higher Education. 8.00 am: An evening of diarism.
July 10 (Wednesday). 7.45 am: A communion. 9.00 am: Studyology. I required a cable (on order) before I could proceed with the table-rig tests. I scanned through the first diary to discern patterns of thought, varieties of activity, modes of thinking, and vicissitudes of feeling. It’s not possible to summarise ten years of a life that has been delineated in great detail (although not in all its dimensions, mercifully). (In the background: Van der Graaf Generator.)
July 11 (Thursday). 6.45 am: Arise. Proof of presence.
7.30 am: A communion. 8.00 am: Writing. 11.00 am: Back to the archive of visual practice. The task is, as Solomon wrote, ‘wearisome to the flesh’, but must be undertaken if only to honour the dictates of my ‘The Life to Come’ manifesto of things to accomplish. (I compiled the list prior to taking early retirement). Motivation enables us to initiate an endeavour; but determination is necessary to complete it. I’m confronting the most slow and taxing entries first. ‘Things can only get better’, as they say.
12.45 pm: An earlier lunch. Heinz Beanz Curry. (New to me.) It has the taste of something between a sweet Japanese curry and the greenish sauce sold at the ‘chippy’ [Fish and chip shop, in UK]. Perfectly acceptable, to my palette. 1.15 pm: Off to the GP surgery for a shingles jab. NHS Wales have rolled out a programme for those who’re either immunologically compromised or 65 years of age, or both. You don’t want this disease.
2.30 pm: I returned to the archive and captioning. 7.30 pm: Diarism.
July 12 (Friday). 6.45 am: Arise. Feeling wasted and with a sore arm following yesterday’s inoculation against shingles. I dozed in the study armchair until 8.30 am before catching up on correspondence. 9.00 am: Studyology. I returned to the archive, once more. ‘Music, maestro, please’ (to summon Edyth Wright’s and Tommy Dorsey’s song title). In the background: Michael Tippett’s ‘Songs for Dov’ (1970).
For every hour expended on past work, I sense that two should be devoted to current and prospective projects. Periodically, I rest and come increasingly aware of the side effects permeating my limbs and mental acuity. This is like the COVID-19 booster jab, all over again. I plodded-on slowly — aching and shivering, making myriad mistakes — as though through treacle. Flu-like symptoms? Indisputably. I pushed myself ever more slowly until 3.00 pm. Then … ‘I quit!’
See also: Intersections (archive); Diary (September 15, 2018 – June 30, 2021); Diary (July 16, 2014 – September 4, 2018); John Harvey (main site); John Harvey: Sound; Facebook: The Noises of Art; X; Instagram.