Summa: diary (February 1-7, 2025)

You must wake up from this dream.
‘The love of money is a root of all kinds of evil‘ (1 Timothy 6.10).
Woe to you when all the people speak well of you (Luke 6.26).

Saturday (February 1). 7.00 am: Proof of presence:

8.00 am: An ambulation. The sunlight raked the summit of the hills and rooftops, and eventually the crest of the waves. A subtle euphoria slowly rose-up inside me. More often than I care to remember, these moments of elation are the harbinger of a difficult day ahead. Today proved not to be the exception to the rule.

9.15 am: Studiology. A final consideration of the mix, heard on the far-field monitors and sub-woofer. Around lunchtime, I became aware of a reddening and swelling of my left ankle. By early evening, the condition had grown markedly worse. Mercifully, I live only a few streets away from the local hospital and A&E department. The waiting room was full of athletes with injuries resulting from the afternoon’s sports fixture, elderly folk with bumps and bruises arising from a domestic incidents, and others with otherwise invisible conditions. A series of emergencies on the ward, coupled with a shortage of staff, conspired to create an agonisingly long wait to be seen.

February 2 (Sunday). 1.00 am: A woefully inebriated man staggered into the waiting room and cursed the staff, the world, and himself. The man clearly believed that he was the author of this predicament. I was impressed by his self-awareness and confession. By 2.00 pm, the rather incongruous illuminated ceiling window, depicting soaring sunlit trees in vivid colour, began to look uncannily real and strangely comforting. I remained on this vaguely hyper-real ‘trip’. 3.00 am: I was called by a doctor, diagnosed, and given a box of weapons-grade antibiotics to go home with. I have cellulitis of the foot. This is the same condition I suffered twenty years ago, in 2005. (My annus horribilis.) Roll on 2045. All praise to the NHS. Our hospital’s nurses and doctors are valiant in the face of insuperable challenges and appalling under-resourcing.

10.00 am: I awoke, breakfasted, and joined the community at St James’s Church, Piccadilly, London, for morning Eucharist. I remained with my feet elevated for the rest of day, while catching up with correspondence.

February 3 (Monday). 8.15 am: Awake. The antibiotics make me profoundly tired. 9.00 am: I managed my day, alternating between work and rest. 9.30 am: Studiology. A final mix on a variety of headphones, listening for left-right and centre balance. Such close scrutiny is always revealing.

Achieving a satisfactory mix-down was more problematic than I’d anticipated. However, meeting the challenge improved the composition by degrees. Now, there’s a lesson in life.

February 4 (Tuesday). 7.30 am: Morningtide:

8.00 am: Writing, correspondence, and preparations for Trevor Sewell’s funeral. 9.30 am: A visit from the artist and my friend Susan Forster. Our conversations always range wide and deep.

1.00 pm: I attended Trevor’s funeral at Aberystwyth Crematorium. There were representatives of both his and my past lives: current friends; former students; current and former staff at the School of Art; as well as family and friends to whom he’d clearly meant a great deal. I gave a eulogy from the perspective of his art education and subsequent life as an artist. (The full version can be read at Trevor Sewell (1957-2025).) At the ‘wake’, the edibles included chips (fries). Wonderful! They should be mandatory at all funeral receptions. It was enriching to talk to former students in particular, and discover how they’d moved on with their lives and been touched by Trevor’s good influence.

One of the themes that Trevor and I often discussed was: the absence of presence and the presence of absence — concepts that were, like a möbius strip, two sides of the same surface. Today, we felt his absence acutely and acknowledged the space that he’d once occupied, simultaneously.

February 5 (Wednesday). 8.00 am: Catch-up with social media communications, and arrangements for a brief trip to the motherland, shortly. 9.00 am: Studiology. The release and submission of Where We’re from, the Birds Sing a Pretty Song. And There’s Always Music in the Air (for David Lynch).

Rather than move back into either the Aberfan [working title] project or the book, I’d remain with sound composition for the rest of the week, and tentatively moved around furniture on the Eye-earpiece [working] title project. No project is necessarily destined to find a resolution. Some cease to make their case with me; others mutate into something else (following a radical reappraisal); and yet others are telescoped to become more modest and succinct in their ambitions. 12.00 pm: Taking stock, while following-up progress on tracks submitted to compilation albums in response to previous calls. To my mind, any opportunity (with integrity) to get the work ‘out there’ ought to be seized upon without prejudice. (Nicholas Pearson — a freelance art researcher of significance in the 1970s — taught me that principle when I was an undergraduate student.) And a submission doesn’t take long to complete. And I can release the the same material on any other site I choose, as well.

John Harvey, ‘Prayer of Omission‘, various artists, *Sounds of the Soul*, Ambient Compilation 6, Sounds for the Soul Records (2024); John Harvey, ‘Delta Width Variable‘, various artists, *Spirit Voices*, Musique Concrète, Institute for Alien Research (2025).

2.00 pm: I picked up Eye-earpiece where I’d left off some weeks ago. The sonority of the pieces will be distinct from that of recent compositions I’ve released. 7.30 am: The annual update of my CV (resumé) and websites has begun.

February 6 (Thursday). 6.00 am: Arise. Motto:

Stocktaking is often always a painful process. The limitations of my ideas, abilities, output, achievements, and reach are made manifest. These defecits need to be acknowledged soberly. As do, the ‘crimes and misdemeanours’ of my life in general. The devil accuses; stones are cast; and the heart condemns. But ‘God is greater than our hearts, and he knows everything’.

7.30 am: Writing. There was a heavy frost last night. Morning glory.

9.00 am: Studiology. A review of yesterday’s designs for Eye-earpiece. ‘You need to throw a spanner in the works!’, my inner-tutor barked. I resent his intrusions, only because he’s invariably correct. Having a fixed conception of how a sound work ought proceed often stymies opportunities for more interesting possibilities to present themselves. The best solutions arise out an engagement with the process, in my experience. ‘You began this project as an exploration, but your now treating it like a finished work!’, he remonstrated, again. Again, he had a point. The sound source was generated by an Autorefractor — a computer-controlled machine used during an eye test. My approach ought to be, likewise, of the nature of an examination and interrogation of the material. A series of short tests in other words, rather than a single, protracted, and polished statement. (TestDrones 1-4 (2004) followed this principle.) Letting go of the outcome can be liberating.

12.30 pm: I began a close-listening exercise, before cutting into the sound samples that I’d generated and bringing randomness to order. 4.00 pm: A late-afternoon ambulation as the sun began to pitch below the pier. 7.15 am: Domestics, followed by further work preparing samples in readiness for tomorrow’s endeavours.

February 6 (Friday). 8.30 am: Studiology. Playtime. The compositions (a term which can get in the way of letting go of determinacy) are studies, for want of a better word: engagements with the subject, not in preparation for a final work but, rather, to make trial of new approaches, understand, and learn. Each study presents a somewhat different proposition. (Propositions not compositions. Now there’s something to think about.) I’m intent on exploring their potential, quickly and decisively. ‘No faffing around, John! And don’t spend more time on them than they deserve, either. Think of them as a fast drawings. Think of them as compositional improvisations, if you must. Go on … surprise yourself’, urged the inner-tutor. Each study has a time limit of up to 2 minutes. 3.00 pm: The third study of the day was concluded.