Summa: diary (May 10-16, 2025)

‘Nature’s night’ (Charles Wesley, ‘And Can it Be’ (1739)).
In essence, I seek to insert myself into the past.

May 10 (Saturday). 4.00 am: In a dream. In an English town. I crossed the road to an old bakery. It’s raked interior preserved the original lath and plaster walls, woodwork, and some of the furnishings. Possibly, it had been a small and an austere protestant nonconformist chapel in a previous life. One constructed by craftsmen who’d also worked as shipbuilders.

6.00 am: Awoke. 6.30 am: Correspondence. 7.45 am: An ambulation …

… followed by a wait at the pharmacy, and swift shoppery, before home. 10.00 am: Social media catch-up. I endeavour to corral my activities in this department of life to a few periods in the day. Likewise, my mobile phone is kept out of hand’s reach, whenever possible, and parked on its charger from 5.00 pm until the following morning, each day. These devices are addictive, distracting, and, for the most part, an utter waste of time. ‘What are you looking for when you scroll, John?’ Whatever it is, I’ve yet to find it.

12.00 pm: I reviewed several sections from of the Six Bells [working title] project. The three compositions will be worked on further next week.

‘Hell itself breathes out contagion to this world’ (Hamlet).
There is a place elsewhere (Coriolanus)

May 11 (Monday). 6.30 am: Awake. 7.30 am: Studyology. And I recalled: In the second year of my fine art undergraduate degree, I made a suite of studies comprising plein-air drawings of National Grid sub-stations. One of my tutors suggested that I look at the work of John Cozens. In those days, the taught chronology of art history began at Pop Art, in the 1950s. This was like ‘Year Zero’ of Ankar and the Khmer rouge — a line in the sand that maked the beginning of contemporary art began. So, the idea of researching artists from a more remote past was strange to me at first. I’d been asked to look at the artist’s use of the ‘blot’ method, by which he evoked features of topographic landscape as ‘seen’ through the imagination. But the more important and radical lesson I learned was how important the breadth of art history was to he cultivation of both the art practitioner and art historian. This principle informed my outlook as a teacher, later in life.

10.00 am: On, then, with an academic reference. I write very few these days. Often, as in this case, they’re in support of students whom I’d taught many years ago. I’ll not undertake to write one unless I can offer unstinting praise — as in this case. At this time in life, my default is to refuse requests — from any quarter, regarding anything — that either aren’t necessary or can be fulfilled by others. Up until my early retired, I was obliged to respond to any solicitation that passed over my desk. These days, I’m limited in my time, energy, and resources. I must use them with discretion.

3.45 pm: A distant rumbling, like a roll upon an orchestral drum — moving closer and becoming more insistent. First, to my left, in the distant mountains; next, to my right, far out at sea; then, overhead — loud and threatening. Thundering — behind the foreground veil of rain that pattered fiercely on the pane.

My 4.00 pm ambulation was called off.

May 13 (Tuesday). 9.00 am: A review of the Six Bells [working title] project. I’m now making micro-adjustments to the compositions. ‘The devil is in the detail’. 11.00 am: A catch-up coffee at the National Library of Wales with my friend and former student — the author Julie Bromilinks. I was keen to hear about Julie’s and her husband’s recent walk along the Camimo de Santiago. She brought me back a scallop shell. It symbolises not only their pilgrimage, but also that of those who’ve yet to travel along the way.

12.00 pm: An ambulation. 1.30 pm: I pursued two of the three Six Bells [working title] compositions.

And I recalled: Electric bar fires. When I was a toddler in the 1960s, bar fires were the domestic substitute for coalfires, which were lit in the hearth of almost all working class houses prior to the introduction of central heating. During the warmer season, bar fires were used intermittently when a room — without either a lighted fire or no fireplace — felt chilled. These devices could be lethal. I vividly remember when a bar fire, having been placed too close to the side of the dining-room armchair by the TV, set fire to the fabric. The heater was also prone to topple over and ignite the carpet, when a careless toddler [coughs!] fell over it. And let’s not forget the chimney, chip-pan, and wall-socket fires.

May 14 (Wednesday). I honestly thought Wednesday was yesterday. 8.00 am: Writing. 9.00 am: Studiology. I took up with the second composition of the Six Bells [working title] suite, altering the relative volume and positioning of elements, and thereby tightening the whole. 12.00 pm: For some time, I’d not read out the names of the coalminers who’d been killed in the tragedy. In the end, the suite is about individuals, and the families that they represent, rather than an event. Their names shall be spoken, recorded, disarticulated, and buried in the sound.

4.00 pm: An ambulation. The sunshine and warmth ( ±20°C ) had brought out the ‘beach baby’ sorority (as the British band The First Class sang, and was never of heard again). There’s a naturist beach several miles further up the coast, at Morfa Dyffryn. Well, in certain respects, it wasn’t so far from Aberystwyth’s North Beach today. Dear me! (Avert your eyes, John!)

Last. Lest. List. Lost. Lust.

May 15 (Thursday). 7.00 am: Writing. I engaged the second half of the second composition. This comes after the sound evoking the underground explosion, which is close to the pivot point of the piece. At nearly 22-minutes running time, this represents (for me) a long-form work. 10.00 am: I began typing out the names of the victims. Once individuated, the extent of the tragedy becomes more comprehensible. This principle struck me forcibly when I visited Vietnam Veterans Memorial and Arlington National Cemetery, Washington DC, in 2000. The names of the 58,200 US service members that died in the Vietnam War (1955-75) were inscribed on black polished granite walls, like the three-dimensional pages of a telephone directory.

At the Arlington National Cemetery, the dead are abstracted into row-upon-row of identical white slabs, stretching into the distance; differentiated only be the names they bore. ‘So, so very many!’, the heart cries, in disbelief.

May 16 (Friday). 7.30 am: Writing. 8.30 am: Studiology. I opened my Velux window, to cool the studio. Then, I heard: the traffic pass on Llanbadarn Road, in the middle distance; crow call and chatter; either an angle grider or a tree surgeon’s saw, in the far distance; a child yelling, somewhere; bottles being deposited in a metal container; the coo of a wood pigeon, close by; a conversation, in the road; something heavy being dropped, repeatedly; a light-aircraft passing over, above, while neighbourhood dogs barked.

11.00 am: A coffee and catch-up with my former PhD Fine Art tutee, and friend — the artist Dr Anastasia Wildig, who has been dog-sitting for the past few weeks. Said dog kept me on ball duty for one and a half hours. He was worse than an unruly and demanding toddler, but so endearing. On the slate today: conferences, deviant art, terminal illness, a sense of purpose, and the necessity of love.

1.30 pm: I processed my recording of the spoken names of the Six Bells Colliery disaster victims. The file was cut-up into between 50 and10 ms bits, and rearranged randomly with delay applied. The voice of my words now sounds like the gradual falling of coal fragments. 3.45 pm: I tweeked the third composition from the Six Bells [working title] suite and, thereafter, sections of the Aberfan [working title] suite. Problems are being resolved, 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