Summa: diary (June 7-13, 2025)

Think young.

June 7 (Saturday). At 10.30 pm, yesterday: ‘Surprise!’ Harvey the Younger was on the doorstep. An unforeseen (by me, at least) visit to celebrate a forthcoming anniversary. Wonderful! My children are the best gifts I’ve ever received.

7.30 am: A solo ambulation.

1.30 pm: A familial ambulation:

June 8 (Sunday). The Feast of Pentecost.

And suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting (Acts 2.2).

Not ‘a rushing mighty wind’ (as the King James Version translates the phrase), but something that sounded like one. Without warning. All at once. Entering from above. A loud and immersive blast of brown and white noise combined. Accompanied by a transformation of hearing.

And when this sound occurred, the crowd came together, and were bewildered because each one of them was hearing them speak in his own language (Acts 2.6).

Sound on sound. Language over noise. Babel undone (Genesis 11.7). The Church begun.

June 9 (Monday). 7.30 am: Writing and a communion. 9.00 am: Studiology. I’d set aside this week to build one section of the new-‘small-rig’. One at a time, each component and section would be introduced and trialed. When I was a child, I built pretend control panels out of shoeboxes. They were resplendent with drawn dials, meters, and buttons, and coloured cardboard knobs and levers which turned and slid. They regulated only the actions and events in my fantasy play; they were the hardware interface between the real and my inner worlds. All toys share this property. To my mind, the sound rigs are a more sophisticated incarnation of the shoeboxes.

12.00 pm: ‘Don’t anticipate an outcome, John’ ‘Try it. You may be surprised’. My collection of effect units range from the best that money can buy to the cheap ‘n cheerful. In some rig formations, the latter prove more serviceable. It doesn’t pay to be snooty. That said, I never compromise on a quality of a reverb unit. It should sound like miles and miles of fine silk and soft velvet, in every direction.

By the close of the afternoon — having received a mild electric shock while touching a component, which shorted the system — I determined to re-examine the studio’s power supply hub, tomorrow. All my equipment is fuelled by a conditioner that stabilises both the voltage and current, and protects whatever draws from it (and me) by switching off, within milliseconds, if there’s either a surge in the mains supply or a compromised earth (ground) connection. Safer than houses, quite literally.

June 10 (Tuesday). 7.30 am: A communion. There are times when ‘I know that nothing good lives in me’ (to quote the Apostle Paul), forcibly. The desire to do what’s right and the ability to put it into practice are fundamentally at odds.

8.15 am: Writing. 9.30 am: Studiology. While waiting for an order of electrical components to be delivered, I interrogated my power supply, and trussed-up the cables that dangled beneath the table-top array like the Hanging Gardens of Babylon. This feature has been has been one of the visual hallmarks of my sound set-up. The cabling may look higgledy-piggedly, but it’s rationale, safe, and serviceable. Power outages suffered by either the whole rig or individual components can be easily traced to the root of the problem and quickly fixed. (A must in the context of public presentations.) As regular readers of this blog will know, I place great store on the sound artist’s visual presentation. Professionalism begins here, even before a sound is uttered.

‘You should get a dog or cat’, some of my family and friends tell me. I don’t dislike animals, although I’m not particularly interested in them. I won’t watch TV programs about them, and I wouldn’t own a pet. I didn’t really connect with those I had as a child: numerous identical goldfish (acquired at fairgrounds), a psychotic monochrome rabbit, several identical tortoises, and a dog. My parents cared for them, for the most part. The dog (a pedigree miniature poodle) was foisted on me by my maternal grandfather, who insisted that all his grandchildren should have one. The day after my parents first brought me home from the hospital where I’d been born, their budgie died. This betokened the unspoken antipathy between me and pets to come. But I do enjoy other people’s enjoyment of animals.

12.00 pm: Power supplies checked and bettered, I returned to that section of the new-‘small rig’ currently under construction. 2.30 pm: New electrical components having been inserted, it was ‘Testing. Testing. 1. 2. 3’. Check! Now the rig must be mapped. 4.00 pm: An ambulation.

June 11 (Wednesday).

‘Wouldn’t it be nice if we were older’ (Brian Wilson).

7.30 am: A communion. 8.30 am: Studiology. A review of the last few day’s work. ‘Let it lie, for now’, the inner-tutor urged. A rig — or any section thereof — cannot be concluded until the whole is established. Only then does the logic of interconnectivity fully reveal itself. The current section is adaptable (individual modulating components can be easily swapped in and out), self-sufficient, and compatible. (This is how I would wish to be, too.) 9.00 am: Studyology. I faced-down some irksome admin tasks, and began to consider the annual summer maintenance jobs on my websites. A year of software upgrades and updates can take a toll on aspects of the sites’s functionality.

11.00 am: Coffee and catch-up with the artist Saoirse Morgan and, on this occasion, the artist and School of Art lecturer Dr Julian Ruddock. Topics of discussion included: flower painting; soundscapes of the natural world; academic sabbaticals; the importance of having a studio space away from where you live; and the politics of giving critical feedback to students. ‘In my day’ (sigh), criticism was often harsh and sometimes brutal. It was disposed by tutors who had no consideration, or sense of responsibility, for the impact it would have on the recipient. 1970s art education was like National Service had been, in that respect. Those students who developed skin like a steel-clad rhinoceros survived the assault. Some even thrived on it. (At the back of my mind, I’ve scenes of the Drill Sergeant [warning: very strong language] in Stanley Kubrick’s Full Metal Jacket (1987) playing.) The more sensitive were utterly crushed, like frail flowers. It was the survival of the fittest.

12.00 pm: A review of the morning. 1.30 pm: On, then, with the second section of the new-‘small rig’. Whereas the first section is, in effect, a synthesizer, the second will be an electroacoustic modifier. Its inputs are analogue and digital pre-recordings, played on a modified cassette tape machine and two samplers. Each device will have a discrete effects chain. One logic characteristic of this evolving set-up is that of distinct lines of signal transmission, running in parallel, through multiple effectors, and converging at the mixer. 7.30 pm: An evening of further irksome admin.

June 12 (Thursday). ‘I don’t associate with those who go down on all fours and pretend to be tables and chairs’, I exclaimed impatiently at the close of a dream. (‘John!?’) I awoke abruptly, thinking about the British pop artist Allen Jones and some of his more problematic work.

7.30 am: Studyology. More irksome admin. I assign tasks such as these to either early mornings or the ‘fag-end’ of the day. My best energies are reserved for the best part of the day. In the background, I played a compilation of Beach Boys songs in honour of Brian Wilson, who died yesterday. He was a consummate master of songwriting, arranging, sound recording, and production. I listened to ‘God Only Knows’, from the Pet Sounds (1966) album, in mono. Stereo in comparison to mono is like colour in comparison to black and white. The latter in each case is certainly not inferior to the former. It’s more essential, focused, and constrained, perhaps. Wilson could organise many different instruments playing together and complex vocals within the narrow spatial field without creating a muddy fuddle, sonically speaking. His only equal in this respect was Phil Spector. I’ve never pulled off an entirely mono recording successfully. But it remains an ambition.

9.00 am: Studiology. I returned to constructing the second section of the rig. As with the first section, the table on which the effectors sit delimits their number, size, and arrangement. I compose them in relation to one another, the bounding edge of the rectangle, and myself, in (what I hope proves to be) a rationale, economical, qualitative, and ergonomic manner. 11.00 am: On the learning curve with an sample launcher that I’ve never before been able to integrate with a rig. The manual is counter-intuitive. ‘Are we missing several pages, here?’ Even a poor online tutorial made my a rather inarticulate but well-meaning enthusiast offered greater hope. I always write down what I learn, step-by-step. 2.15 pm: At last, I was getting somewhere. Back to the rig, with a view to a little coupling (as it were).

In a small area conjoining the front passage, kitchen, and one of the backdoors to the house, there’s a calamansi — a hybrid citrus fruit plant, somewhere between a kumquat and a mandarin orange. It had been ailing for over half a year, having suffered from insufficient sunlight, cold, and my neglect. I thought, by now, that it had passed on to that great greenhouse in the sky. Today, however, I noticed fresh green shoots. The spiritual and moral lessons proliferated. Never give up on anything — or anyone, for that matter — too soon. Apparent lost-causes may just be waiting for their moment.

June 13 (Friday).

Clickety click. ‘Bingo!’

Where it began.

Where it persists.

7.30 am: An ambulation under grey skies along the Promenade, ending at a local watering-hole for a rare treat. 8.45 am: Studiology. In second gear today. A tidy-up of the studio before the new-‘small rig’ is finalised.

I have a box of memorabilia comprising material from the first two decades of my life. There are cards celebrating my birth, subsequent birthdays, and Christmas and Easter — up until the age of five — from parents, grandparents, and people whose names I don’t recognise; a Certificate of Baptism from Tabernacle Congregation Church, Abertillery; records of vaccinations; a certificate of my membership of the Corgi Model Club and the Kennel Club, on behalf of my one and only dog (above); part of a ticket issued on Western Valley Railway, on April 28, 1962, for the last train on that line before the Beeching cuts closed it; stamps and an issue of the Herald of Wales from July 12, 1969 commemorating the Investiture of Charles (the present King) as Prince of Wales (including headlines such as: ‘He’s Fab, Say the Girls’; and ‘The Day Everyone Went Gay’); ration books for orange juice and milk; a cancelled Post Office Savings Bank book; inchoate drawings (the so-called ‘early works’); first attempts at cursive writing (which my paternal grandfather, ‘Pop’, taught me); and a receipt for £2.04 issued by Newport College of Art on October 7, 1977, the week after I began foundation studies. My material culture.

On one card, Pop referred to himself as ‘Oli-Pop’ (one of his forenames was Oliver), and to me as ‘Johnny Whippy’ (presumably because I was excessively fond of ice cream). Now there’s a stage name, should ever I need 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