Summa: diary (April 14-17, 2025)
To sadness and despondency, add fear and calamity.
Self-inflicted wounds take longer to heal.
April 14 (Holy Monday).
Yesterday, at the close of Palm Sunday, just before bed, I looked up. The belt of Orion shone above my head. Standing in the cool air, I sensed around about me, a subtle vibration — a murmuring in the fabric of things; the anticipation of change.
7.15 am: Writing. 8.30 am: Studiology. I reviewed the Six Bells [working title] mix that I’d made at the close of last week, and began drafting a description of the composition. There’s always a tension between the desire for simplicity and the requirement of adequacy, when giving an account of a project. While the outcome of the concept, methodology, and processes is straightforward, its explanation is (of necessity) quite involved.
Recently, I’ve alighted upon photographs of several friends whom I’ve not seen in over forty years. For some, ‘time has not been kind’, as they say. Others look twenty years younger than their age. But all, myself included, will one day turn to dust and ashes, either inelegantly or with panache. The years pass through our fingers like fine-grain sand. Only in our memories and photographs, and the good influence they’ve had upon us, are those whom we’ve loved immutable.
April 15 (Holy Tuesday). It was raining; it was colder. 8.00 am: Writing. I went over the description once again — whittling, compressing, and making its sense more immediate. In the background, I played Six Bells [working title]. My aim is to attend to the composition, as though it had been made by someone else. ‘Listen beyond the bell, John!’, the inner-tutor coaxed.
2.00 pm: I could no longer add anything the text at this juncture. The description can be completed only with the sound is resolved. Fragments from a conversation overheard:
‘I was hesitant.’ ‘Once you start, everything changes,’ ‘Many suitors.’ ‘Easy to get addicted.’ ‘… while she was with him?’ ‘Is that her?’ ‘Any close calls?’ ‘We’d go into the woods, nearby.’ ‘I try to work it out beforehand.’ ‘That would’ve been something.’ ‘Happens!’ ‘No!’ ‘Good man!’ ‘Dynamic to watch.’ ‘I like command.’ ‘Who am I talking to?’ ‘Give me yours.’ ‘No. I’m going home.’
On one of my computer-drives, there’s a folder entitled ‘Friends’. It contains the first names and (where possible) photographs of all those I’m honoured to call ‘friend’. They go back many years, and represent the breadth and diversity of my life: school, college, university, academia, church, art, writing, and music. Their names are removed from the folder only when they die. I consult this archive most days, and remember just a few at a time. All of them exist somewhere right now, just as I do. Their circumstances aren’t always known to me. With a few I’m no longer in touch. (Not everyone subscribes to a social media platform.) But the bond is still strong, and their ‘presence’ remains palpable.
April 16 (Holy Wednesday). The wind blows the blossom in all directions, and especially into the nextdoor neighbour’s garden. They’re always very appreciative of the deposit. The surface of their children’s trampoline looks like an irregular polka-dot fabric. Petals cover my lawn like confetti. 8.30 Writing and review.
11.00m am: A walk against the wind towards the village of Llanbadarn Fawr, for tea and conversation with my friend and former PhD tutee, the artist Dr Anastasia Wildig. We’d not sat down together in months. Catch-up, big time.
2.00 pm: Writing, while listening again the Six Bells [working title] recording. I’m hearing resonances that have always been there, and yet were overlooked (‘overheard’). The decaying notes are filled with a pained sadness that needs to be brought to the fore, but without upstaging the nominal or dominant note formed when the bell is struck.
April 17 ( Holy Thursday). Sunshine. 8.00 am: Studiology. I’ve deliberately kept a distance from the Aberfan [working title] project. Instead of listening to the compositions over studio monitors, I endeavour to re-imagine them in my mind’s-ear. By this means, I recall only their essence — an abstraction. Thus, when I re-engage the compositions, acoustically, I’m often alarmed by the presence of so much excess baggage, and make every effort to cast it overboard. This method of rumination derives from my visual art practice. When I was an MA student, working in a figurative-abstract mode, I would look at one of my paintings for 15 mins, then, turn it to the wall and draw what I could remember. The exercise also helped to develop visual memory.
1.45 pm: I bathed the Six Bells [working title] mix in different colours of reverberation, in a bid to tame the brittle artifacts that had accrued in the process of overlaying, stretching, and slowing the original recordings.
April 18 (Good Friday).
Where have you been, these last days?
A niggling question regarding the Six Bells [working title] project tugged at my sleeve. ‘Would the composition be improved by recreating it from scratch?’, enquired the inner-tutor (persistently). Clearly, he didn’t know. But, then again, neither did I. The only way to test a hypothesis is to make trial of it. I need only to recreate one sequence to make an assessment; the part represents the whole, in this work. A second attempt would be expedited far more quickly; after all, I was building upon prior experience and knew where the work was heading.
On this occasion: 1. each recording of the six bells would be prepared (equalised, limited, topped and tailed, and faded in and out) independently, prior to consolidation; 2. none of the recordings would be stretched. 3. the large (low-note) bells and smaller (high-note) bells would be balanced differently in the consolidation; 4. I’d explore deeper pitch-shifts of the consolidated bells; and 5. I’d explore different resolutions of pitch-shifting.
In respect to 5, I was surprised by how efficacious a low-precision pitch shift was in removing the tonal-wobble that’s sometimes introduced when lowering the tone of a source. For example, in this present context, a shift of -1 semitones introduces a measure of tonal instability at high-precision that’s wholly absent at low-precision. Moreover, curiously, the wobble is wholly absent at -2 and -3 semitone reductions of the source, using a high-precision resolution. I enjoy these anomalies. The quality of the recreated sequence exceeded that of my first attempt. A worthwhile undertaking, therefore. Sometimes what you thought was your best shot, wasn’t.
1.45 pm: For the remainder of the afternoon, I completed the change-permutations for the six bells.
DIARY SABBATICAL UNTIL MAY 1
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