Summa: diary (October 1-4, 2024)

October 1 (Tuesday). On Sunday: a succinct summation.

Municipal Cemetery, Aberystwyth (September 30, 2024).

On Monday: traditional methods of steel working ceased on South Wales, with the loss of 2,00o jobs.

Port Talbot steelworks (October 17, 2016).

7.45 am: I recalled: In February 1972, the Practical Electronics magazine published designs for a monophonic synthesiser and keyboard. In those days, the financial outlay for professionally made instruments in this type was beyond prohibitive. For example, the Minimoog Model D (used by most Progressive Rock keyboard players) cost the equivalent of £46K in today’s money. In comparison, the parts for the magazine’s comparatively rudimentary device could be bought for a song. One of my school’s 6th form students committed to, and completed, the task. He went on to study physics at the University of Cambridge.

I recalled: In the same year, my parents bought their first colour TV. On weekdays, BBC 2 (which was one of the three channels available via Rediffusion) broadcast programmes that served as a colour-test for technicians setting-up domestic TVs in situ. They were broadcast regularly and, as such, were among the very few that could be seen repeatedly (in the era before video tape recorders). The one that I watched most often was called Évolution. It was a pictorial documentary about Expo 67, which had been held in Montreal. Contemporary and emerging science, technology, and the arts blazed from the screen in high-saturation. The scenes of modern architecture, mono-rails, and rudimentary forms intoxicated me. In retrospect, Évolution (I can still hear that title sung in French in my mind’s ear) contributed significantly to my receptiveness to modernism later in the 1970s.

Pavilion and mini-monorail, Expo 67, Quebec, Canada, 1967 (courtesy of Wikimedia Commons).

9.00 am: Studiology. A rethink of strand 2 and the external loop of the mixer. A straightforward alteration, but with two significant implications: First, the two strands can now operate independently of one another (as well as in collaboration, as before); secondly, the ‘small-rig’ could be halved, if needs be.

9.30 am: Studyology. The book … and an overview of Judaic and Graeco-Roman conceptions of sound. This is an enormous topic. 1.45 pm: A rationalization of my Google bookmarks for ‘Research’ (once again). 2.30 pm: When drafting notes, I tend to work in a notebook and write in pencil. I first adopted the approach when undertaking my doctoral studies. It’s more immediate than typing, more easily amended, and less precious and authoritative than the on-screen text — which so often seems to aspire to be the finished version. A notebook can be written-in while I’m seated in an armchair, lying in bed, or sat on public transport, and without the encumbrance of plugs, leads, mice, screen glare, and battery monitoring.

October 2 (Tuesday). 8.15 am: A communion. 9.00 am: Studyology. Notebooking. I read again the Genesis and Exodus material from my Bible and sound database. Until the account of Moses receiving from God the Ten Commandments at Mount Sinai (when all hell breaks loose, as it were), the text is relatively ‘quiet’: speech acts, for the most part. English translations of the Hebrew are fraught with challenges. For example, the word qôl (קוֹל) — in Genesis Chapter 3, verse 8, for example — can be used to denote either a ‘voice’, or a ‘sound’, or a ‘noise’, depending on the context.

1.30 pm: Studiology. I tested strand 2 in operation with the analogue-digital interface that connects the outer world of the ‘small-rig’ to the inner world of the Digital Audio Workstation (DAW) on my studio computer. In preparation for the arrival of a new sub-mixer, the soldering table was laid.

2.30 pm: I joined a long queue for the COVID/flu combo-jab at my local GP surgery. By the time it was my turn, the nurses had run out of COVID vials. ‘We’ve had a bit of a run on it, today!’ an administrator explained, apologetically. One down one to go, then. Back a week Friday, then. 3.30 pm: Back at the studio desk, I set about balancing the left and right inputs from strand 2 on the mixer to the DAW.

October 3 (Thursday). 7.30 am: Studiology. I resumed work on Genesis, chapters to three, and Chapter 3, and verse 8 in particular:

They heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden at the time of the evening breeze, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden.

If you enter ‘Genesis 3.8’ into an image search, pages showing the Hyundai Genesis 3.8 Coupe motorcar are called up. The theme of God walking in the garden and Adam and Eve hiding is a minor genre in the iconography of the Creation narrative. Protestants and Jews would have been reluctant to portray a theophany (or visible pre-incarnation of God), in observance of the restrictions laid down by the Second Commandment.

Julius Schnorr von Carolsfeld, ‘Adam and Eve Hiding from God’ (1860) engraving, Die Bibel in Bildern

2.00 pm: Extending the range of the bibliographic search terms. 5.00 pm: Thomas posted my parcel through a darkly mysterious portal several hundreds yards from where I live. But it arrived through my letterbox.

October 4 (Friday). Last night I had … like a fever dream: a state of mind somewhere between sleep and wakefulness. (The side effects of the flu jab, perhaps.) The fantasy appeared to go on for many hours. Some sections were repeated, when I felt a scene could have been ‘performed’ better or more concise. The whole experience was at one and the same time, sensual, emotional, and invigorating. In the morning, left the bedroom exhausted but satisfied.

Studyiology. 7.30 am: Reading: beyond Genesis 3 to the end of the book. The biblical world doesn’t take place in a vacuum. Every utterance and action described in the text produces a sound. This is such a commonplace, that it hardly bears mentioning. However, these ‘silent’ sounds serve as a useful foil against which to contrast those which are explicit, and either the focus or subject of the text.

11.30 am: A review of the book’s archive material and the project proposal. The latter needs revisiting. I now know more than I did then — and with greater clarity. 2.00 pm: Back to strand 2 of the small rig, exploring variations of set-up that would not take too much time and effort to implement. Strand 2 could be divided into two parts, with the second serving as a replacement for the current strand 1. As such, both strands would be synth orientated. Which is where I came in at the start of of the large ‘table-rig’ project.

See also: Intersections (archive);  Diary (September 15, 2018 – June 30, 2021)Diary (July 16, 2014 – September 4, 2018); John Harvey (main site); John Harvey: SoundFacebook: The Noises of ArtXInstagramArchive of Visual Practice

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