Summa: diary (May 27-30, 2025)
May 27 (Tuesday).
It was twenty years ago today.
Over the Bank Holiday weekend: I worked to no regime; rested; played guitar; set up an area for painting; uprooted a poison vine; found solace in friendships; restored a confidence that I thought was lost, and gained one that I never had; walked while the sun shone and the wind blew chill and lightly; treated myself and acted spontaneously; saw myself from the perspective of another; lived outside of my head (temporarily); watched documentaries that no one else would find engaging; and considered, after all this time, that if this was the worst people thought of me, then, I was laughing.
I reacquainted myself with Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds (1963). The film made a big impression on me as a child. On this occasion, my attention was focused upon its sound, principally. Like the Forbidden Planet (1956), the film’s soundtrack comprises sound alone. There’s no musical score. The only music included is diegetic. Otherwise, what the audience hears are sound effects (including much Foley work), and the discrete deployment of silence (which is a particular condition of sound). The bird noises were created on a Trauntonium — developed by Oskar Salla, based on an electro-acoustic device called a Mixtur-Trauntonium, invented by Fredrich Trauntwein in the 1920s.
The British guitarist, bandleader, and composer Robert Fripp suffered a minor heart attack, and received treatment, recently. We had a brief and supportive exchange of correspondence, while reflecting on the Apostle Paul’s encouragement in the face of mortality:
Even though our outer nature is wasting away, our inner nature is being renewed day by day (2 Corinthians 4.16).
With his usual optimism, pragmatism, and resilience, Robert replied: ‘Bless you. I am in great shape and excellent spirits. Life is beginning, serviced & repaired’.
7.45 am: A communion. 8.30 am: Correspondence. 9.00 am: Studiology. On to the final mix of the Six Bells [working title] suite. (This could take an age.) The mix is: 1. the last phase of composition (much can change, still); 2. the final shape of the idea; 3. a commitment to the outcome; and 3. a letting go. ‘This is how I want it to sound’. How the audience will hear it is another matter entirely, over which I’ve no control. All the time, I heed Miles Davis’s advice on composition: ‘Listen for what you can leave out’. (This principle has application to the visual arts too.) It requires qualities of good judgement, restraint, and ruthlessness, such as I wish were more conspicuous in my life at large.
2.00 pm: The first composition dispatched (for today), I moved to the second of the three. ‘What’s the difference between simplicity and banality, John?’, the inner-tutor goaded. I bit my tongue.
May 28 (Wednesday).
‘We must each build a life that is comfortable to live within’ (Dafydd Roberts (May 28, 2025)).
7.00 am: A communion. 8.00 am: Studiology. I remained with the second composition, secured a measure of clarity, and grasped its rationale more firmly. Making can be a humiliating experience. Matisse confessed to finding painting so difficult that he thought there was something wrong with him. This has been my experience with regard to more or less everything in life. Today, I drew spline curves like Picasso.
9.30 am: An ambulation to the Arts Centre for coffee at 10.00 am with Dr Dafydd Roberts. We discussed our respective projects, the vagaries of electronic equipment, the vexations of collaboration, and anxieties and pitfalls of public performance. Performers are a particular type of animal. They require a live audience to complete the process of spontaneous composition. They recognise an obligation to ‘entertain’ (for want of a better word) the audience. They enjoy the delivery, and get a buzz from the interaction and feedback.
11.30 am: Back at the studio, I reviewed the morning’s work on the second composition. While in conversation with Dafydd, the thought crossed my mind that the sound of drawing could be incorporated. After all, the composition is about John ‘Chopper’ Davies drawing the underground workings of Six Bells Colliery, on the 25th anniversary of the day and time of the fatal explosion, and the strange anomaly he experienced. (See: Summa: diary (March 15-21, 2025.) I set-up a rig to facilitate drawing-over a black-and-white copy of his original artwork, and recording the sound of the process. The idea was worth a punt. And it worked.
One of my first engagements with the sonic potential of drawing was in collaboration with Dr Adam Blackburn (my former PhD Fine Art tutee), at Aberystwyth University in 2015. (See: School of Art Presents Sound Drawing.)
May 29 (Thursday).
Tell it to the day.
6.30 am: A communion. 8.00 am: Studiology. The sound-drawing samples manufactured yesterday were kneaded into the composition’s dough. The ending of a piece ‘is a very delicate time’ (to adapt David Lynch’s magnificent introduction to Dune (1984). Several pitfalls present themselves. The temptation to: 1. rush towards the finishing line too swiftly and confidently; 2. stop innovating and, instead, repeat ideas (unnecessarily) used at the beginning; and 3. neglect the small things. In the end, it’s always about the whole; only about the whole. 11.30 am: Enough, for now. I shall listen to the first and second compositions again, tomorrow. The third composition is in the bag, for all intents and purposes. It’s the simplest of the three propositions: six descending tones of six overlaid bells undergoing a sequence of changes or permutations, very slowly. Here, the beginning and end, and everything in between, are the same.
12.00 pm: I turned to the Aberfan [working title] project. Some time soon, an electric guitar must enter the compositional process … otherwise, it will not integrate (like trying to introduce a figure into landscape painting too late in the day). But I do know the access point. Which will suffice for the time being. I returned to making and preparing sound captures.
May 30 (Friday).
But my heart is elsewhere.
8.30 am: Studiology. I completed processing yesterday’s sound capture, and proceeded to examine the Six Bells [working title] compositions’ stereo-field. This is where sound recording is at its most pictorial: left field, centre field, and right field; upper register, mid register, and lower register; and foreground, middle distance, and background. In my experience, a balanced and an accurate disposition of sound across these fields can only be a achieved using headphones. Decisions made over the ‘cans’ (several different pairs) are, subsequently, checked against my impression of the outcome, heard through studio monitors (several different pairs). Micro/macro listening.
At the micro-level, small inconsistencies abound. The vast majority, in and of themselves, aren’t noticeable. But when they’re all resolved, a perceptible improvement to the whole is evident. ‘Pounds and pennies, John!’, the inner tutor mused.
1.30 pm: An ambulation to the School of Art to view the Sioe Radd ac Arddangosfa’r Uwchraddedigion / Degree Show and Postgraduate Exhibition (which was being dismantled) and Y Grefft o Ddweud Stori: Mythau a chwedlau yng Nghasgliad yr Ysgol Gelf / The Art of Storytelling: Myths and tales in the School of Art Collection (an exhibition curated by final year undergraduate Art History students). The latter reminded me once again of how rich, varied, and significant the Collection is.
Undergraduate and MA fine art exhibitions are held every year (twice, in the case of the postgraduate show) at the School of Art, and at thousands of other Higher Education institutions in the UK, around this time. That doesn’t diminish their importance, not least for the individual contributing students. This is one of their first opportunities to go public with their work in the company of peers. It’s a simultaneously exhilarating and unnerving experience.
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