Summa: diary (January 11-17, 2025)

Something to abjure; something to endure; something to anticipate; something to do well (Waking sentence (January 15, 2025)).
If you can’t find joy, then, beautiful melancholy is a good second best.

January 11 (Saturday). As a result of the current LA wildfires, many have suffered the loss of family members, home, furnishings, photo albums, and pets. In TV interviews, many of those most effected by the destruction have expressed profound numbness and grief at the realization that a substantial part of their life’s history has been irretrievably consigned to oblivion. (We cannot back-up our loved ones and things to the cloud … just yet.) A few, however, have found some consolation in being unburdened of their material belongings and the responsibilities of ownership. It has been a wake-up call to what’s really important in life, and to those abiding treasures ‘where moth and rust’ (and fire and flood, for that matter) ‘doth [not] corrupt’.

9.00 am: A review of last week’s work and a scour of the Internet for anything that had been recently added related to my fields of study and practice.

January 12 (Sunday). Feast of the baptism of Christ. 9.30 am: An ambulation outward via the Municipal Cemetery, returning via the Vicarage Field. With the low-raking sun behind me, I followed my shadow home.

In the evening, I watched (for the umpteenth time) Michelangelo Antonioni’s Blow-Up (1966). I first saw it on TV, when I was about 10 years old. (Given the film’s scenes of nudity, that was far too young.) Blow-Up had a direct influence on Francis Ford Coppola’s The Conversation (1974) and Brian de Palma’s Blow out (1981). There’s an extended scene (perhaps the longest in cinema dedicated to the chemical processing of photographs) where the Thomas (played by David Hemmings) enlarges successively smaller and smaller sections of a print, made from a photograph he’d taken, to discover a gun protruding from a bush in the far distance. The process was clearly the progenitor for the scene in Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner (1982) wherein Deckard (played by Harrison Ford) does the same, only digitally. Both protagonists discover a significant detail that would otherwise be subsumed in the photograph’s complexity. Blow-up changed my approach to looking at photographs — not least to examining an image’s depth, rather than merely scanning its surface.

‘David Hemmings jumping a fence during the central scene of the film’, Blow-Up (1966) (courtesy of Wikimedia Commons).

January 13 (Monday). 7.00 pm: Writing. Yesterday evening, I received news that a friend and former student of mine, Trevor Sewell, who lived locally, had gone missing. Today, I woke with a profound sense that he was no longer in this world. This was confirmed an hour later. When had I last seen him? What were our parting words? He and I were of ‘like faith’. So, I ‘do not grieve like those who have no hope’. One day, our conversations will resume.

Trever Sewell (with acknowledgement to Julie Coles)

9.00 am: A review of the book proposal and adjustments to the indicative chapter contents. 10.00 am: I received my shingles jab (part II). Many, like me, had suffered reasonably profound side effects following their first inoculation. Possibly, my body is now primed, and won’t complain so vociferously on this occasion. (We’ll see.) 10.15 am: On with amendments to the chapter content. 2.00 pm: Finally (for now), a listing of indicative images and themes to serve as a series of case studies.

January 14 (Tuesday). 8.00 am: The nurse was wrong. I woke, feeling awful, from a dream that appeared to have been in a repetitive loop for hours. The last time I experienced anything so strange was after I’d contracted COVID-19 (see: Summa: diary (July 22-26, 2024). I determined to ride out the storm in a chair with a book for as long as possible. I slept around the clock.

January 15 (Wednesday). 8.00: Gently to rise, aching and as tired as though I’d not slept at all. I’d been asked to write a tribute to Trevor. In between bouts of dozing and recuperation, I remembered him and began drafting my thoughts. Poorliness has always been a productive time for self-analysis and taking stock. 3.00 am: A brief review of work underway for various sound projects — lest either I or they drift. 3.00 am: I listened to albums by sound/noise musicians known to be on Bandcamp. I was in bed by 9.00 pm.

January 16 (Thursday). 6.00 am: Awake. I’d slept enough. I felt a little better.

8.00 am: Writing. 9.00 am: Studiology. I used ‘Eye-earpiece’ [working title] as a limbering-up exercise before re-engaging with the ‘Aberfan’ [working title] project. The workout was interleaved by eulogy composition and illustration throughout the day.

8.00 pm: The death of the artist David Lynch was announced. It had been anticipated for some time. He’d been suffering acute emphysema brought about by a lifetime of heavy smoking. He was 78 years of age. The consistency and originality of his vision was unequalled. Arguably, Lynch was the most influential filmmaker of the 2oth century. However, fundamentally and foremost he was a fine artist. That mindset enabled him to take an idea into many types of media: painting, printing, animation, film, writing, acting, songwriting, and sound. As a director, Lynch changed cinema and the way in which we look at the world, ourselves, our dreams, and intuitions. Personally, I cannot imagine how impoverished my life (creative and otherwise) would be had he not been in the world. I’m so glad our times here coincided.

‘David Lynch at the Russian Tea Room in New York in 2009’ (courtesy of Wikimedia Commons).

January 17 (Friday). 7.00 am: This morning, one of the topics on the Google search options for ‘David Lynch’ was the following theme: ‘How do I contact David Lynch’. In the context of the metaphysical values he’d espoused in life, the question didn’t appear at all bizarre. 8.00 am: Writing.

11.30 am: Studiology. Back to ‘Eye-earpiece’ [working title] and a rudimentary relationship between two tracks, one superseding the other. 2.00 pm: I sought to finalize Trevor’s eulogy and send it off to a family member for review. 4.00 pm: Draft complete, I head out for a welcome ambulation — my first in several days.

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 ArtXBlueskyInstagramArchive of Visual Practice

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