Summa: diary (January 4-10, 2025)

‘These days, he was more comfortable among the lost and dispossessed’.

January 4 (Saturday). 6.00 am: Arise. ‘Teething’ problems. A crowned tooth appears to be failing. It’s very painful when pressure is applied. The dentist had warned me. Root-canal treatment has been on the slate for some time. I fear only the cost of the repair. 8.15 am: An ambulation and a chasing after repeat prescriptions that don’t, at the pharmacy. The Christmas cosiness has slipped away, and the town seems so much greyer. 9.15 am: Domestic admin. 10.30 am: Back to the proposal for the remainder of the day.

January 5 (Sunday) (Twelfth Night). In a what seemed to be an unusually protracted dream, I explained to someone how I’d made the first album in The Aural Bible series, R R B V E Ǝ T N Ƨ O A . Being a dream, I was unusually coherent but couldn’t remember much of what I’d said on waking. (Sigh!) No doubt the scenario was prompted by a brief exchange I’d had with one of my X [formerly Twitter] followers, two days earlier, about my article related to the second release, The Bible in Translation.

2.30 pm: The final exorcism of the Christmas spirit from the home and ritual defenestration of the tree, as decorations were downed. The ‘old normal’ was re-established.

January 6 (Monday). 6.00 am: In the dream, I gave an empty-headed and unfocused pep-talk to a group of students at an institution set up by a Head of Department from my undergraduate art school. 7.30 am: Strong wind herded grey-blue clouds across the sky. 8.00 am: A review of the week ahead. 8.30 am: Studiology: Having installed the new amplifier switchbox, I returned to sound composition and improvisation. In April 2024, I’d recorded the sound made an eye-pressure monitor at my opticians. Over the vacation, an urge to engage with the recording pressed upon me. It will live in the background of the other projects — as an exercise yard for reckless interventions. 10.30 am: Hail crackled on the window panes; the house darkened. 12.30 pm: ‘Eye-earpiece’ [working title] was readied for engagement in the future. A problem has emerged with one set of monitors. Has this anything to do with the switchbox (which is the only substantial change to the system that I’ve made today)?

2.00 pm: I returned to review the work undertaken last week on the second draft of the book’s proposal. I can no longer see the wood for the trees. I should print out the text, and read it in another context — in a different room, under a different light. 4.00 pm: An ambulation. The evenings are perceivably lighter (or less dark) at 4.30 pm these days.

January 7 (Tuesday). 7.30 am: Writing. 8.15 am: A slurry of snow began to stitch a lattice on the Velux window’s pane; the first of the season. Another fling with the proposal. It’s beginning to get in the way of the other projects. Snow turns to hail turns to rain. As I hear these sounds, I’m writing about the same in the context of a section of the proposal dealing with ‘Natural Sounds’ described in the Bible. Although, they would not have been heard striking against glass. 1.45 pm: I pressed on towards the finishing line — which is still some distance away.

January 8 (Wednesday). 7.30 am: Writing. 9.00 am: An emergency dental appointment — although my errant tooth no longer ached. (I feel a fraud.) A loosening crown was the culprit. Further investigation will be required. 9.30 am: Studyology. ‘Author’s biography’. 11.00 am: A visit to my friend, Susan Forster. She’s a local artist, because she’s in my locale. I was reminded about how influential the movements and styles of art to which we are introduced in our early art education are on the formation of a lifelong aesthetic. I was nurtured in the period of late-Modernism on abstraction, Minimalism, and conceptual art. I often return to, and gain succor from, works associated with these movements. They represent a quality control against which (rightly or wrongly) I’ve measured all subsequent fine art practice.

1.30 pm: On with the book’s structure and (notional) chapter divisions. This is one of the acid tests to determine whether I’m clear about what the publication is about.

January 9 (Thursday). 7.30 am: The first snow fall of significance. And it may be the last, for this season. 8.00 am: Back to the book’s structure and contents. Given that the book isn’t yet written, it’s neither possible (nor, therefore, advisable) to be too specific. (Hostages to fortune, and all that.) The content, in my experience, arises out of the writing. Only towards the last third of the writing period does a sense of coherence and order begin to emerge. There are rare occasions when the whole is tapped, like a stick of rock, and falls effortlessly into its requisite pieces. 11.30 am: The sunshine melted the morning’s manna.

12.00 pm: I discovered the cause of the errant monitor speaker above my work desk. The balance for the output had shifted from centre to extreme left (somehow). In matters such at this, the digital mixer has always been the culprit. Patting myself on the back for my astute diagnosis, I picked up the ‘Eye-earpiece’ [working title] project again, and completed the re-equalisation of the samples. 2.00 pm: Back to the proposal for the remainder of the day.

January 10 (Friday). 8.00 am: Writing and further work on proposal. After today, I’ll let it lie fallow for a week. The book (as it’s presently conceived) feature a number of pictorial case studies, which provide an anchor and illustration for what might otherwise be abstract theorization.

4.00 pm: An ambulation. The mountains of the Llŷn Peninsula were visible on the horizon.