Summa: diary (January 1-3, 2025)
A New Year does not usher in any special dispensations.
December 23-31 (Monday-Tuesday). This year, I celebrated Christmas Day on December 27, when my sons and their wives returned home. Ever since, I’ve had no idea what day of the week it is.
January 1 (Wednesday). 00.02: Wishing you all a Happy New Year!
9.30 am: An ambulation under a sullen sky that imparted an inertia to the surroundings. At the cemetery, I was peculiarly drawn to inscriptions honouring children who’d died in their early years, and expressing the sentiments of the grieving parents. My family have now departed following a wonderful time of sharing and togetherness; the house is, now, relatively quiet and empty. Slowly, my mind surveyed the terrain of projects in progress, which had been placed on stand-by before the vacation. I returned to my tax returns, to finalize entries. (‘Deal with the most irksome and wearisome tasks first, John!’, commended my inner-tutor.) Death and taxes.
1.00 pm: What news there was of the atrocity in New Orleans looped on TV. By the close of the day, 15 people had been murdered by the terrorist. They’d travelled no further than just over 3 hours into the New Year. We ‘do not know what a day may bring forth’. 2.00 pm: An afternoon of catch-up with correspondence with friends afar off. I never make any new-year resolution other than to maintain a level path for as long as grace, strength, time, and direction are given me.
January 2 (Thursday). 6.30 am: Writing. 7.00 am: Breakfast. 7.30 pm: A review of written work and of commitments to the end of February. 8.30 am: I re-opened proposal no. 2 of the book, and worked in second gear for the morning and afternoon. It takes me several days following an interregnum between periods of activity to get up to speed again. An evening with my head in a book about Japanese experimental music and the manual for a recently acquired amplifier switchbox.
December 3 (Friday). 7.00 am: Writing. 8.00 am: Morningtide. The weather has become decidedly colder. Snow is predicted. 8.15 am: Taxes. (Is there anything more mundane?) 9.30 am: Proposing, again. The ‘market and target audience’ section is perhaps the most difficult of all to write. In the context of academic publishing, the likely readership is a known commodity, although the sales uptake may be unknown. Due to the interdisciplinary nature of the subject, the potential audience is broad: academic scholars and students of bible, theology, and the Judaeo-Christian religion, visual art history and practice, sound art history and practice, literature, and media, chiefly, as well as clerics, believers, and interested members of the public.
I write books (and other textual artefacts) for a specific audience: family, friends, students, colleagues, and scholars in the relevant fields. But I also write the type of book I would wish to read.
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; Bluesky; Instagram; Archive of Visual Practice