Summa: diary (November 1-7, 2024)
Suffer, but remain fruitful.
I have seen the wicked in great power, and spreading himself like a green tree in its native soil. Then he passed away, and behold, he was no more; I searched for him, but he could not be found (Psalm 37.35).
November 1 (All Saints’ Day). 9.00 am: Studiology. While waiting for a component to arrive in the post, I sifted through yesterday’s capture derived from my image-to-sound conversion of Daphne Oram’s waveform drawings.
12.00 pm: The cassette-based response to the project completed, I laid it aside. My inner-tutor advised me that ‘while the sound was engaging enough, the concept and process weren’t a sufficiently robust articulation of the intent’. (That’s to say, as I comprehend the intent, presently. There’s always this caveat.) Progress (or sorts) was made. By the close of the afternoon, I’d secured the spine of one minute’s worth of composition.
November 2 (All Souls’ Day). 7.30 am:
8.15 am: An ambulation. 9.00 am: I bumped into an acquaintance/friend who, in that moment, winningly shared their pleasure in the chiming town clock, situated at the top of town. This is the second version of the clock, erected in 2000. The original, which was built on the same site in 1856, was demolished in 1955. Its time mechanism is now in Ceredigion Museum, near by, and fully functional. (My mind buzzed with the concept of dislocated and associated objects, time, and places.) The new clock’s mechanism and chimes are electronic.
When I was a first-year undergraduate student in Newport, Monmouthshire, I lived directly opposite an Anglican parish church. It didn’t possess a belfry. Nevertheless, every Sunday morning at 10.30 am, a static- and scratch-laden vinyl recording of a bell peal would be played loudly through a tinny megaphone fastened to the church’s roof. There was no pretense of authenticity. I was listening to a bell that’d been recorded elsewhere and in the past, in the here and now.
From 9.30 am, and for the remainder of the day, I pressed on with the composition dedicated to Oram. By the close, it was 75% resolved.
November 3 (Sunday). 12.30 pm: In the garden. The soil that yielded fruit, now sleeps until the Spring.
November is a solemn and melancholy month. There are grey days that begin like a 40 watt bulb, and rarely rise above 60 watts for the remainder. The cold now touches my bones for the first time since winter past. I clasp the coffee mug firmly with both hands, leeching its warmth. This is a time to remember those who were in our lives for only a season.
November 4 (Monday). (The 185th anniversary of the Newport Rising.)
7.45 am: A communion. 8.15 am: Writing. 9.15 am: Studiology. My objective was to complete the Oram dedication by the close of the day. The logic of the piece and the range of element types are now fixed. Full resolution would be achieved by acting upon that logic, using only those resources. 2.30 pm: The mixdown was finalised. I did not wish to labour the composition longer than necessary. However, it did need to pass one non-negotiable criterion before release, namely: Would I be content for this work to represent the last thing I ever made?
I wondered whether Sarah Cunningham was content with the last painting she was able to make. I hope so. She’d been missing since Saturday. Her body was discovered on railway tracks earlier today. The epigraph below her painting Starshine and Clay is poignant and prophetic in the shadow of recent events. Why did death finally succeed (as it will with us all) today?
4.00 am: An ambulation via the School of Art. Rarely can I pass through the building without conversing with former colleagues — whom I miss dearly. ‘Have you slowed down since taking early-retirement, John?’, someone asked. On the contrary, my work proceeds at the same pace, as I reckon upon this final season of my life, with so much still to do and everything to play for.
November 5 (Tuesday). 8.30 am: Studiology. I’d resigned myself to being hopelessly distracted by news coverage of, and commentary on, the US elections. The first order of the day was to listen again to yesterday’s mixdown on a different pair of monitors, and make an alternative mix for comparison. Second time around, I was focussed upon the logic of the stereo image. 2.30 pm: I uploaded the file of the amended and much improved composition to my Sound website, as an unpublished track. It will remain in this state until I’m persuaded that no further improvements can be made. Hearing a composition in a public digital environment enables me to experience it as might an external audient.
3.00 pm: For the remainder of the day, I settled to write-up an account of the composition’s intent and processes. There are sound musicians and improvisers (some whose music I greatly admire) who eschew providing any account their work. They don’t seek to explain and evaluate but, rather, simply play, record, and release. My path has been along a different route. Since my undergraduate studies in fine art, I’ve learned the necessity of justifying, rationalising, evaluating, and articulating what I do. My intent in writing about the work is not to demystify. Rather, it’s to clarify what can be expressed in words — which is the smallest part.
November 6 (Wednesday). 8.00 am: Thinking the unthinkable is one thing; living it is quite another. I thought of the wars in Ukraine and the middle east, climate change, American women, the effects of proposed US tariffs on the UK and other world economies, and myriad other lacks, losses, threats, and divisions that might follow in the wake of Trump’s ‘triumph’. It just goes to show that someone can win, and still be a loser. But this is not how the story ends.
8.30 am: Studiology. Several minor tweaks were made to the composition before I finalised the descriptive text.
3.00 pm: Studio maintenance. 4.00 pm: An ambulation to witness the gathering murmuration above the pier.
A recommendation for surviving perverse and dispiriting days:
Whatever is true, whatever is honourable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.
Philippians 4.8
November 7 (Thursday). 8.00 am: Writing. 9.00 am: Studylogy. I returned to the Aberfan [working title] project. In the background, I listened to the two previous compilation albums dedicated to Daphne Oram: Drawn Sound (2022) and Oramics (2023). Some of the composers are on the boundaries of my territory. It’s helpful to have an cognate external point of reference against which to take the measure of your own work.
2.00 pm: A coffee and conversation at a watering-hole in town with the aforementioned town clock enthusiast/acquaintance/friend. An enriching exchange of experiences, ideas, and points of reference in the realms, of psychogeography, music, sound, improvisation, personal and professional discipline, monomaniacs, art, religion, and spiritual encounter. Rarely do I have conversations with someone who can hold their own intelligently and passionately across such a range of fields.
In the course of our discussion I recalled one of my — what I refer to as — ‘fundamental sounds’: sounds I encountered, often in childhood, that have influenced my acoustic sensibility subsequently. I’d mentioned it in the Preface to my book The Appearance of Evil (2003): ‘an unfathomable dull thud underfoot’.
Coal-miners interpreted the phenomenon as the noise of heavy doors closing in the tunnels under the Arail Mountain, which overlooks my home town of Abertillery. To me, it sounded like the very Gate of Hell being slammed shut.
A crumb of encouragement sent to the Peruvian abstract turntablist Maria Chavez, who lives in the US and whose work I hold in the highest esteem:
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