Summa: diary (June 28-30, 2025)
June 28 (Saturday). 7.30 am: An ambulation. There’s a streetlight on Plascrug Avenue that burns bright in the half-light of early winter mornings or on overcast days (like today), long after all the others have been extinguished. An exemplification.
On the 65th anniversary of the Six Bells Colliery disaster, I released Minors for Miners.
My younger son, his wife, and her parents and sister were visiting for the weekend. After lunch at home, we took a ride up Constitution Hill on the Cliff Railway for a view of the town and the bay. When I came to Aberystwyth in September 1982, to commence an MA Visual Art degree, this prospect was the first thing I painted. But it was a phenomenon taking place out at sea that captured not only my attention but also my soul. Breaks in the cloud-cover enabled shafts of intense sunlight to project onto its surface. (We saw it this afternoon.) Heaven and earth kiss. I realised that in order to render anything close to the contrast between the sunlight and the sea, the tonality of everything in the picture, other than that light, would need to be lowered almost to the point of obscurity. My solution was a compromise: I painted the prospect in semi-darkness, while looking at the patch of light, which was placed outside the compositional frame.
June 29 (Sunday). 11.28 am: A final familial farewell. I walked to the Promenade to the see the women cyclists noiselessly zip passed on the penultimate lap of their race. This year, the town was host to the Welsh Circuit Championships. I’ve no interest in cycling (I can’t even ride a bike) or any other sport for that matter, but the riders’ gruelling efforts impressed me.
It seems to be the season for reference requests by, or on behalf of, former students. Some I’ve neither seen nor heard from in decades. ‘Please send me your CV and a photograph of yourself (preferably from the time when you were studying with me)’. I forget names as soon as I’m told them (these days), but faces remain indelibly stamped on my memory. When I confirm that so and so ‘was a very good student’, I don’t necessarily imply that they graduated with an impressive degree. Just a few who passed through the School of Art and left with a first-class honours were, while conspicuously and naturally gifted, desperately and unrepentantly immature, resentful of staff, dissatisfied with the School’s resources, in it for themselves, unwilling to work alongside their peers, haughty and, as such, unlikely to hack it in wicked world of work.
There were others whose abilities and final achievement were far more modest. Nevertheless, they worked like Trojans, rarely missed a tutorial, lecture, or seminar (and never without due cause), delivered the goods on time, and were, withal, personable, attentive, grateful, determined, and ambitious to invest what little capital they had, and return it with disproportionate interest. A few also faced formidable mental health or physical challenges. But they never made those conditions an excuse for throwing in the towel. Limiting factors were grist for the mill, in their opinion. These were among the students whom I have enjoyed teaching most, and been proudest to know. They were very good students too.
And there were yet others who, while entirely capable of reaching the heights of studentship, didn’t possess a clear enough vision of themselves and their ambitions. Mercifully, most found ‘the way’ before it was too late, and went on to obtain a creditable degree, pursue meaningful, fulfilling, and admirable careers, and enrich the lives of others. Which is all a teacher could ask of any student.
June 30 (Monday).
On this day, 38 years ago, my Mam passed away. She was 60 years of age, which — at my time of life — now seems achingly young. I’ve a blue filebox filled with her memorabilia. (A small museum, of sorts.) It includes appointment diaries, certificates, letters, newspaper cuttings, dance and party invitations, cards and paper-gifts I’d given her, and a collection of powder compacts. The latter retain the faint scent that I associate with her face, which I’d nestle against and kiss as a toddler. It’s smells of unconditional love, comfort, and safety, still. The entries in her diary for June 1987 end on the 17th of the month. Appointments with nurses and consultants, and for treatments and procedures, during the following months are all crossed out. By then, she had lost all hope of recovery, and (I suspect) sensed that her mortal life wouldn’t extend beyond the close of June.
7.00 am: A communion. 7.30 am: Writing. 9.00 am: Studiology. I finalised and launched an improvisatory piece based upon feedback — which emerged from my sessions with the guitar rig, at the close of last week — on the Studium website. The title —‘Prelude to a Broken Arm’ — is one that Marcel Duchamp gave to a ready-made he’d nominated in 1915. It presented itself to me, intuitively and forcibly, the first time I heard the material. The relationship between title and sound is, thus, entirely irrational. I’m sure Duchamp would’ve approved of such non-sense.
11.30 am: Back to the Aberfan [working title] project, and the composition that occupied me at the close of last week, as well as version of a track entitled ‘Let Me Tell You About My Dream Last Night (October 20, 1966)’, which may be better than the one I’d decided upon originally. I began there. 12.15 pm: Back to sample manipulation, until a blood test at my GP surgery at 1.00 pm beckoned.
2.00 pm: After lunch, I pressed on with the transportation and tipping of coal composition while sampling a late-Easter egg, purchased at a rock-bottom price close to its expiry date. (It won’t last long.) The composition needed to be demolished in order for a new structure to be built and new sounds introduced. ‘Don’t fall into literalism, John!’, enjoined the inner-tutor.
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; Studium; Facebook: The Noises of Art; X; Bluesky; Instagram; YouTube; Archive of Visual Practice