Summa: diary (January 18-24, 2025)
One day, ‘their place shall know them no more‘ (Job 7.10).
January 18 (Saturday). 7.45 am: An ambulation.
9.15 am: Domestics. 11.00 am: A call has gone out for contributions to an album dedicated to the memory of David Lynch. The ‘Eye-earpiece’ [working title] may be best placed to evolve towards that end, given the impending deadline for submission. I re-listened to what I’d already constructed, now from a different perspective. Nevertheless, like every intent of this nature, it was held in an open hand until something better presented itself. 11.30 am: And — less than half-an-hour later — something did: a line spoken by the Man from Another Place in Lynch’s TV series Twin Peaks, series 1 (1990), pressed in upon me forcibly:
Where we’re from, the birds sing a pretty song and there’s always music in the air.
I’ve learned from prior experience to take such spontaneous interventions seriously. My mind was now moving is a very different direction in response to the call.
In the evening, I watched Lynch’s Mulholland Drive (2001). My initial encounter with the film was in London, when it was first released. For some reason, an intended appointment had had to be abandoned, and I was searching for something else to fill my evening. I swear I came out of the cinema markedly different to when I went in.
January 19 (Sunday). 9.30 am: An ambulation through the Municipal Cemetery. The bells of St Padarn’s Church, a mile away, drifted on the still air. And ‘the birds sang a pretty song’.
January 20 (Monday). 6.30 am: Writing. There’s a danger in living within a too-narrow bandwidth: a small and decreasing circle of friends; limited opportunities or reasons for travel and meeting new people; an over-specialised reading and listening culture; and unchallenged routines of working, thinking, planning, eating, exercise, and relaxation. We shrink to the size of our expectations about life.
10.00 am: Studiology. I returned to the Lynch memorial composition. Work began assembling disarticulated fragments sampled from 78 rpm recordings of big-band dance music from the 1920s and 30s. A selection was afterwards layered and interleaved. I was in the polytonal world of the American modernist composer Charles Ives. The second section of the piece presently comprises tape hiss, dark low-toned drones, birdsong (played backwards), and an indecipherable conversation in that background. The latter is adapted from a rare and undated recording of the Scottish medium Helen Duncan conducting a seance. I took my key from Frederich Jürgenson’s earliest Electronic Voice Phenomenon recordings.
Today, I assiduously avoided the news coverage of Donald trump’s Inauguration.
January 21 (Tuesday). 6.30 am: Writing. 8.00 am: Studiology. On with ‘Where we’re from …’. The work presently divides into three interrelated parts. My approach is to, at one and the same time, an evocation of sororities associated with Lynch’s soundscapes, as well as elements and compositional techniques characteristic of my own. (The middle section includes a quotation taken from one of my other works.) The new composition is finding its feet. 7.30 pm: A close and repeated review of the composition so far.
January 22 (Wednesday). 7.30 am: Writing. 8.30 am: Studiology. 10.00 am: A hair edit in town. Silent sea.
10.45 am: The middle section of the composition was the center of my attention, to begin. In my mind’s ear, I could hear the screech of metal-on-metal, escaping steam, and pounding machinery. By the close of the afternoon, the composition was 80% in the can. Over the next few days, I’ll undertake a provisional mix.
January 23 (Thursday). 6.30 am: Writing and correspondence. 8.00: Domestics. 8.30 Studiology. 10.45 am: Into the inundation — skipping over the fast-flowing stream that coursed down the road, and the little pond that had gathered outside my front-garden gate — to catch a bus for Aberaeron. I’d been invited to attend an NHS Wales clinic to receive a scan of my aorta. Men (of any age) are six times more likely than women to suffer an aortic aneurism. If it bursts, there’s little doctors can do to preserve you. So, its worth taking precautions.
En route, the rain continue to pour for another half-an-hour.
Aberaeon’s harbour had been drained, and the walkways above its walls cordoned off. Heavy-duty maintenance was in progress. A chill wind blew landward from the sea. Was this Storm Éowyn’s calling card? I was chased into an upstairs cafe for warmth and sustenance.
‘I don’t wish to know the sex of the baby!’, I told the nurse, as she applied cold gel and the ultrasound’s sensor to my abdomen. In that moment, sounds with frequencies greater than 20 kHz passed into my body and were converted into an image of its interior world. My aorta passed with flying colours.
7.30 pm: An evening of catch-up and mixing.
January 24 (Friday). 6.00 am: A wind had risen. It’s sound put Alexa — which/who is situated on a table close to the casement window in the bedroom — into a perpetual state of preparedness to serve. Its/her base-light pulsed with every gust and rattle.
6.15 am: Writing. 8.34 am: Studiology. Today’s goal was to effect a substantial resolution of the mix. Inevitably, the process required ruthless editing. Elements that were foundational to the composition,when it first began, are no longer there. Prominent elements were subdued, and what lay in the background, formerly, moved into the foreground. Once the clutter was removed, the ‘air’ could circulate around the remainder. And where there was air, there was space — left, centre, and right, and in-depth.
2.00 am: Having achieved first-pass mix, I returned to the beginning and honed each element, one by one.
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