Summa: diary (June 14-20, 2015)

Think in an orderly way.

June 14 (Saturday). And, again: At 10.30 pm, yesterday: ‘Surprise!’ Harvey the Elder (this time) walked into the house. ‘An unforeseen (by me, at least) visit to celebrate an anniversary’. 

7.30 am: A solo ambulation along the Promenade, and a little shoppery to buy provisions. At the supermarket: ‘Where are your cucumbers, please?’, I asked one of the floor assistants. ‘By the flowers’, they replied. How could I’ve been so dim?

10.00 am: Family brunch at a local cafe, followed by a father and son walk ‘n talk back to the supermarket (where, earlier, I’d found — but omitted to buy — the cucumber). En route, we discussed the relative virtues of different sound media. 12.00 pm: He and I sat in the living room and listened to Wayne Shorter’s magnificent Speak No Evil (1964). My sons had brought me the vinyl as a birthday present. As a teenager, several friends and I would squeeze onto the settee in my parents’ front room and review one of our newly purchased albums, deemed tolerably listenable by the others, while scanning its cover artwork and reading every word, even down to the copyright declaration.

1.30 pm: A familial ambulation along the Promenade to the Old College, where my elder son caught up with the renovations. The site, now, has the air of a medieval cathedral under construction. The stonemasons in particular were doing a fine job.

June 15 (Sunday). Fathers Day. A gift and a goodbye, as my elder son returned home on the 10.29 am train.

2.00 pm: And I remembered my father, who was born at Abertillery in 1928, and died at Abertillery in 1991, aged 62. I’ve lived in his absence for more than half my life. Dad never went abroad, and the furthest he ever travelled within the UK was to Blackpool. The photograph, below, was taken on ‘the tip’ at Blaina, Wales, in 1949, probably on the occasion of his 21st birthday. He was a gentleman with a tender heart, who had many female admirers but an eye only for my mother. Dad never swore (at least not in my presence); never raised his voice to, or smacked, me; loved his only child dearly; kept his word; was a faithful husband and friend; drank only at Christmas (with extreme moderation); and rolled his own — but stopped smoking abruptly when he suffered a ruptured ulcer in his mid forties, which nearly cost him his life. He, along with my sons, are better men than I. And I recalled those few years after Mam died, 38 years ago, when it was just him and me, limping together awkwardly.

June 16 (Monday). 7.45 am: A communion. 8.30 am: Studiology. A final session on the second section of the new-‘small-rig’ set-up (while trying to solve a software problem on the studio computer). 11.00 am: All connections established. Now the section had to be mapped and tested, one strand at a time. My intention was not to work with the new rig immediately. The Aberfan [working title] project has lay fallow for several weeks. I must review the compositions underway, finalise the structure and number of tracks, and determine what remains to be done in the year ahead. And there’s the improvisatory project based on Electronic Voice Phenomenon — Einspielungen — to consider too, as well as the layout of the guitar rig.

2.00 pm: A video chat with my friend, former PhD Fine Art tutee, and artist Wayne Summers. It’s always good to range wide with him. Once again, the conversation landed on the topic of sound and landscape. (See: June 11, Summa: diary (June 7-13, 2025).) Trans-historical sound. Sounds that in prehistory would’ve been heard in much the same way as they are now. The sounds of, for example, wind, rain, thunder, and sea; the reverberation of natural enclosures, such as caves and hollow barrows; running water; tumbling stones; breaking branches, birds, and other animals. Sounds that describe a landscape as palpably as pictorial representations.

4.00 pm: The plumbers arrived. Only two on this occasion; they usually prowl in packs. There was much inability to solve problems in evidence. ‘You may have to put up with it’, isn’t a solution I’m willing to pay for. Me, however … I remedied the software problem on the studio computer, and — after swapping cables and much head scratching — determined the cause of the cassette tape-recorder’s failure to output at the mixer-end of the signal chain. (I’d forgotten to turn the mixer on. ‘JOHN!!!!!’, barked the inner-tutor.)

June 17 (Tuesday). 9.00 am: Studiology. Further tests on the three signal chains. The simplest of them comprises a modified cassette-tape recorder (which enables me to slowdown a recording almost to a standstill), and delay and reverb effectors. The source material is derived from a lo-fi recording in the Aural Diary archive — made on February 8, 1986 using a Sony Walkman Cassette-corder — of a local chapel organ being played. Subsequently, the recording has been slowed, reversed, segmented, and reordered, digitally. It will contribute to the Einspielungen project.

All signal chains were proved fully functional. 10.30 am: While awaiting the delivery of a ‘as cheap as chips’ (as the British say) effector I’d purchased, I continued to review and tweak the Aberfan [working title] compositions — focussing on left/right channel equalisation and pace. The more I listen — I mean really listen, intently and honestly — the more the compositions’ limitations are revealed. Never heed that voice which suggests: ‘You’ve spent long enough on this already. Move on’. This is the counsel of indolence and compromise. The work will push you on, but only when it’s ready. The work is the boss. There are times when the work yields a fleeting glimpse of that deeper, tenderer, and most admirable aspect of yourself — that aspect you gladly own and would wish more prevalent in your life at large. This is one of the privileges of making.

1.30 pm: ‘What must be sacrificed for the sake of the whole?’, the inner-tutor challenged. ‘”Kill your darlings”, Johnny Whippy’. Or else amalgamate them, I retaliated (smugly). 3.00 pm: Economy effector delivered and integrated into the rig, I turned off the juice until tomorrow and returned to composition. 4.00 pm: An ambulation under a grey inert sky. At the top of the high street, a coach load of eastern-European tourists poured onto the pavement. I met them again on the Promenade, huddled around a guide, eager to explore, and photographing everything within 360°.

7.30 pm: This week’s evenings are dedicated to re-reading over 11 years of online diaries and blogs, with a view to detecting and remedying formatting glitches that have resulted from updates this year. To begin, the Diary (July 16, 2014–September 4, 2018).

June 18 (Wednesday). 7.45 am: A communion. 8.30 am: Studiology. The subject of the current composition in the Aberfan [working title] suite concerns the tipping of waste coal by Merthyr Vale Colliery on the hillside above Pantglas Junior School, Aberfan. From my paternal grandparents’ front-room window, in a different valley, I watched the elevated metal buckets slowly traverse the landscape parallel to the Arael Mountain and deposit their content on one of the conical black pyramids that were growing further north. (See: Penallta Colliery 1: Genesis.)

From a distance, the buckets moved gracefully and silently. Up close, you’d have heard them creak, as they swung in the wind; the bind of their pulleys on the rusting cable; the clank and grind of the mechanism at the end of the journey (shown in the above photograph), as it automatically opened the jaws of each bucket to release the contents; and the ‘shoosh’, rumble, and tinkle of waste, as it fell onto the tip’s top. This is the soundscape I must evoke. That is to say, suggest … but without recourse to literalism.

11.00 am: Coffee and biscuits at the home of my friend — the artist, Susan Forster. On the ‘table of talk’ today: schools of psychoanalysis; our early lives, and their impact on who we are now; health and well-being; friends we have in common; art; counting our blessings for what we possess; and the peregrinations of cats.

1.45 pm: Back to the composition, and on with the construction of the guitar rig. This will be used to generate a breadth of industrial sounds that the current samples and transformative processes cannot. 7.30 pm: An evening reliving my past in reverse chronology, as I reviewed my first online diary.

June 19 (Thursday). 8.00 am: A communion. 8.30 am: Writing. 9.00 am: Studiology. I looked around the studio at the complexity of it all, still, and my heart sank. ‘Needs must, John!’ The work determines what it requires to enter this world. The work is the boss. Yesterday’s efforts were scrutinised and amended. ‘More tea, please!’ 9.45 am: I set up a device to record the inscriptions of the names belonging to the first six children killed at Merthyr Vale Colliery, between 1885 and 1890. Thereafter, I completed the guitar rig in readiness for recording.

11.00 am: However, my studio computer’s sound software needed an hour and a half’s coaxing before it would recognise the input from the guitar rig. I didn’t understand the problem and, therefore, the solution. Perplexing and unsatisfactory. But I resolved the matter. The ambient temperature in Aberystwyth today is around 24-25°C. The promised heatwave has arrived. 1.30 pm: An ambulation and shoppery. 2.15 pm: Let’s make some noise.

June 20 (Friday). I dreamt of a coffin that lay in a house where I was staying. The identity of the deceased and the residence remained a mystery. Like many people, I imagine, I’m discomforted by coffins. Watching, at too young an age, Roger Corman’s 1962 film adaptation of Edgar Allan Poe’s short story The Premature Burial didn’t help. It starred the Welsh actor Ray Milland. He played an aristocrat who suffered from catalepsy, and lived in fear of being interred alive by mistake. When I was a Church Warden, I’d sometimes have to wheel the coffin of a departed member from the Lady Chapel to the nave aisle of the church, in readiness for their funeral the following day. The dim light of the church’s interior made the task all the more unnerving. In the Anglican tradition, congregants can choose to spend their final night before committal at the place where they’d worshipped. ‘We’ve Mr or Mrs so and so staying with us tonight’, the Vicar would inform me, with the casualness of a B&B proprietor.

7.30 am: A communion. 8.15 am: Writing. 9.00 am: Studiology. Here’s the rub: I couldn’t twiddle the knobs on the pedalboard while playing the guitar at the same time. The only solution was to elevate the board to table-top height, and play notes through an infinite sustain pedal (placed, along with other treadle-action effectors, under my feet). Dismantle/’remantle’. This took time.

10.15 am: A telephone consultation with my GP about defective plumbing, of a personal nature on this occasion. My digestive system has been glitching ever since I suffered a protracted bout of Myalgic Encephalomyelitis (ME) in the late 1980s. (See: ME and Me.) My immunity has been compromised and my gut become a happy-hunting ground for bacterial infection. The condition is sometimes debilitating, but trivial in comparison to the chronic life-changing, worsening, and threatening ailments that others face daily. If only I could mend my body with the same ease as I fix my kit. 12.30 pm: Composition, again. This would allow equipment that was struggling with the heat to cool.

Rereading the original online diary this week, I’ve been reacquainted with names, faces, and conversations that I’ve never forgotten. Some of my contemporaries passed away during the period of writing, and others subsequently. A few remain incommunicado, and for good reason. Which has never diminished my commitment to them. ‘I know I’ll often stop and think about them’, as the Beatles sang.

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