Summa: diary (October 12-18, 2024)

I dream only in the dark.

October 12 (Saturday). 7.00 am: Ode.

7.45 am — 5.00 pm.

October 13 (Sunday). 7.00 am: Ode.

8.00 am — 10.30 pm.

October 14 (Monday). 7.30 am: A review of the day and the week ahead. The priority this week is completing the ‘small-rig’ performance set-up and continuing to develop dexterities in relation to the rig’s components. This has been a long journey from complexity to simplicity. 9.00 am: Studyology. An examination of ‘voices’, ‘tongues’, and ‘sounds’ in 1 Corinthians, Chapter 14. There was a distracting silence outdoors.

12.00 pm: Studiology. Testing strand 1. 12.15 pm: Setting-up and testing strand 2.

As the search for alien life on Europa begins, I recalled the HAL 9000’s repeated warning:

All these worlds are yours — Except Europa. Attempt no landing there.

Arthur C Clarke, 2010: Odyssey Two (1982).

The sublimity of this statement derives, in part, from its evocation of God’s commandment to Adam and Eve in Eden:

Of every tree of the garden you may freely eat; But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.

Genesis 2. 16-17.

4.00 pm: Both strands were made operational and, then, attached to the amplification and recording equipment.

October 15 (Tuesday). 6.45 am: Correspondence and a review the recent X [formerly Twitter] posts and the news headlines. The the microcosm and the macrocosm. Wars, trepidation, uncertainty, dread, failure, calamity, loss, hurt, grief, and frustration. The list goes on and on. These conditions define the life and mind of the suffering individual as much as they do the world at large, right now.

9.00 am: Studiology. Limitation. The portable Numark PT01 turntable I’m using in the ‘small-rig’ has the advantage of being able to play 12-inch records. (Many other makes of this type of device don’t.) However, the deck doesn’t permit the turntable motor to be switched off while the unit is powered. A modification to disengage the drive is conceivable, but I don’t know whether its feasible (safely).

I was eager to play intelligently with the rig. To begin, I made a cassette-tape recording of the ‘Old 124th Psalm’ shellac. The outcome of my engagement with this material is unknowable at this juncture (mercifully). My watchwords are ‘change’, ‘adventure’, ‘recklessness’, and ‘free-fall’.

Peter Maxwell Davies composed one of ‘Three Voluntaries’ for organ based on the psalm’s setting, to be played at the Kirk in Stromness, Orkney. The music slowly loosens, desynchronizes, and meanders around itself, yet without losing cohesion. I’ve returned to the piece in preparation for my own embarkation upon, and dissolution of, the psalm. 11.00 am: There was one element missing from the ‘small-rig’ that is present in the large: a voice, speaking the text. Using the King James Version of Psalm 124, I drew up a list of its unique words, following the order in the text. In this respect, I redeployed a methodology underlying the Affirmation (2024) album. I’m assiduously avoiding recording digitally for now.

12.50 pm: Joseph Kosuth would approve:

October 16 (Wednesday). 6.30 am: Writing. ‘And by your words you will be condemned’ (Matthew 12.37).

8.30 am: Warmer, but wetter and humid. Self-employment related financial admin: purchases. (A life lived through invoices and receipts.) 10.30 am: Studiology. I cassette-recorded the spoken words of Psalm 124, one by one. 3.00 pm: An multi-effects unit was added to the FilterBank 2 unit. This may yet prove to be a redundancy. But I’ve learned to honour my intuitions, and allow their voice to be heard.

October 17 (Thursday). 8.15 am: Reflection and reflex: indiscipline:

9.00 am: Studiology. I completed adding cables to the ‘small rig’ and joined the loopers in parallel. 9.30 am: I began processing the voice recordings, digitally. These were uploaded to an iPod, which will serve as the sound-file launcher on the ‘small-rig’.

11.00 am: A visit (oiled with coffee and biscuits) from my friend, the artist Susan Forster. Some mutually agreed realizations:

• Some of our ways of thinking and doing are so long established and deeply entrenched that they can’t be uprooted. Therefore, plant new trees.
• Concepts and definitions of ‘art’ rarely contribute anything of practical value to making such.
• It’s never ‘my art’, as some artists say. The art I make can’t be owned or possessed, least of all by me. It has a life of its own. At best, I’m a midwife and temporary custodian.
• Art is a capital investment that we receive freely, hold on to temporarily, and return with interest.
• Turn your back on the tyranny of the best thing that you’ve ever made, and resolve to make the worst. It probably won’t be. Indeed, it may even turn out to be the best thing that you’ve ever made.

October 18 (Friday). 5.30 am: Shadow of the ‘supermoon‘. Darkness and light; mountebank and saint; dishonour and virtue; fiction and truth, sloth and discipline; shadow side and reality.

8.00 am: Studiology. A review of the book’s development: research, filing, writing, and reading through Exodus … with my ear. 11.30 pm: An examination of the account of Christ’s Transfiguration, and the appearance of Old Testament characters (Moses and Elijah) in a New Testament setting. The possibility of a conflation of past and present, heaven and earth, underlies testimonies regarding present-day sounds of, for example, aerial angelic choirs and celestial trumpets, and — at services of religious revival — a ‘rushing mighty wind’ (one of the phenomena associated with Pentecost (Acts 2.2)). (Some of these themes are addressed on my Spirit Communication (2023) album.)

2.00 pm: Leviticus. A ‘quiet’ book.

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; Archive of Visual Practice