Summa: diary (August 11-15, 2025)
The cogency of an idea can be tested only by its implemention.
August 11 (Monday). Over the weekend, I enjoyed ‘chatch-up’ with Dr Carmen Mills, who’s one of my former PhD Fine Art students. Then, there was reading and realising. (The latter is often the outcome of the former.) I sought to appreciate the root cause of a present effect, and the ‘reasonableness’ of past actions that once seemed indefensible. I took the long walk through the landscapes of my locale and my memories.
8.00 am: Writing. 8.30 am: Studiology. The composition that I’d begun on Friday — based on a piano rendering of ‘Jesus, Lover of My Soul’, for the track entitled ‘144: a biblical number’ — would not, as it was presently conceived, fit within a 3-minute frame. Nevertheless, the idea was sufficiently cogent to justify development on a larger canvas, as a composition independent of the current album.
However, the 144 names would fit if they were typed, and the sound of the typing recorded. There’s a digital software that enables a computer keyboard to sound like a period typewriter. On a typewriter, it was possible for an experienced touch-typist (and I’m not one) to achieve around 110 words per minute. On a computer keyboard, speeds in excess of 120 wpm can be achieved. The deployment of an old-style, clunky-action computer keyboard will bring my typist’s speed in line with that of a typewriter.
During my undergraduate and MA studies in fine art, typewriters were for me what apples had been for Paul Cézanne.
The machine was drawn and painted, in part and as a whole, over several years. It presented a proposition that was complex, multipart, and modular. The typewriter also provided an example of visual repetition (of keys and typebars) (which became a characteristic of my later visual artwork). It also served as a formal analogue for both the rows of terraced houses that contributed to my childhood environment in South Wales, and the mechanical action of an upright piano (which I also drew and painted at this time).
I put the typing project aside, and worked further on the piano rendering of the 144 names, with a view to uploading the samples to a sample launcher. In slowing down, sub-dividing, and adding Adobe Audition’s ‘Medium Concert Hall (Warm)’ reverb effect to the sample recordings, the upright piano (on which the melody was played) now sounds like a concert grand, and the music … rather Beethovenesque. By the close of the afternoon, I’d acknowledged that the source material should’ve been captured at a higher sample rate. There are extraneous digital artefacts in the slowed-down version.
August 12 (Tuesday). 7.30 am: Writing. The climb gets steeper as you reach the top of the mountain. With every project, the work demands ever more of me. I’d have it no other way. Only by this means are boundaries pushed forward. I’m blessed with a low boredom threshold with respect to creative practice, and this department of life alone. It’s a lighthouse that wards me off the rocks of repetition. Better to make something new and bad than repeat a success.
9.00 am: Studiology. Unthwarted, I returned to the defective sound source to explore whether an AI audio-enhancement algorithm could smooth-out the wrinkles in the capture. This would be an exercise in compare and contrast. The result: Rubbish! The earthy wisdom: You can’t polish a turd’, came to mind. However, necessity being the mother of invention, I adapted a pitch and time shifting facility from a software that’s not designed to enhance sound files. The very reverse, in fact. But it not only worked, it worked far better than I’d anticipated. Never assume an outcome; always trust your instincts.
August 13, (Wednesday). Sultry. Another heatwave. 8.30 am: Studiology. Yesterday’s new and improved sound capture was placed on the dissecting table (once again), to extract 24-component samples from the whole. At the same time, instinct encouraged me to believe that it could yet be possible to fit the 144 piano translations of the victims’ names into a 3-minute frame. (I vacillate between opinions.) Sometimes, the impossible is merely a failure of the imagination. Sometimes, I think too linearly.
The process of extracting and honing samples was slow and laborious. In assigning the 24 samples to the alphabet, and re-ordering them according to the letter distribution of each victims’ names, they (the victims) collaborate in the construction of their own dedicated melodies. In the cemetery at Aberfan, where the majority of the victims are buried, their names are seen en mass. Only when read, are they individuated. Thus, the solution to accommodating 144 slowly-played sound-names within a 3-minute frame is to, in some way or another, create a sonic analogy for the ensemble of gravestones.
August 14 (Thursday). The A-level results were published today. In the UK, the outcome of this examination determines whether a school student can take up their university place of choice. When I was a full-time academic, we’d man and woman the university phone lines to console and advise those who’d undershot the runway. My performance at A-level was dismal. However, it did mean that my only option was undertake a foundation course at my local art school. Had I shone in those examinations, then, life may have taken a different path. Our failures, as much as our achievements, can shape our lives for the better.
9.00 am: Studiology. On with preparing and assembling ‘144: a biblical number’. I’m in for the long-haul.
Joseph Parry’s tune ‘Aberystwyth‘ has a number of recurring phrases. In the context of my sound composition, only the first statement of each phrase is used. 1.45 pm: An ambulation and shoppery. 2.15 pm: Splicing, fading, repairing, checking. All things were moving in the right direction … for now. The crux of the endeavour is whether all this conceptualising and processing will result in a composition that engages not only the mind but also the heart.
Recently, I alighted upon Oliver Burkeman’s book, Four Thousand Weeks: time management for mortals. The title refers to the average life span of a human being which, when expressed in these terms, does seem ridiculously short. By my reckoning, I’m down to my last 728 weeks (if all goes well, that is). I used to give a talk to the second year fine art students in the context of their Professional Practice module. A number was projected on the screen of the lecture theatre as they entered. It referred to the hours from then until the Opening of their undergraduate exhibition, the following year. This reality check sharpened the students’ minds, and redoubled their resolve to knuckle down to serious work in the interim.
The days of our years are threescore years and ten; and if by reason of strength they be fourscore years, yet is their strength labour and sorrow; for it is soon cut off, and we fly away.
Psalm 90.10
August 15 (Friday). 80th anniversary of VJ Day. 6.30 am: Awake, on Day 6 of Week 728. (Numbering my days.) 7.00 am: Writing. 8.30 am: Studiology. To the end of finalising the component samples in readiness for alphabetising.
For the remainder of the day, I honed, healed, and mellowed the, now, slowed-down, pitch-shifted, and reverberated upright piano samples. Finally, I spelled-out/composed the name of Carol Anderson, who was 9-years old when she perished under the avalanche. For each of the 144 days leading up to October 21 (the day of the disaster), one victim’s sound-name will be released, beginning on March 30, 2026.
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; Academia; Facebook: The Noises of Art; Bluesky; Instagram; @Threads; YouTube; Archive of Visual Practice