Summa: diary (September 27-30, 2025)
September 27 (Saturday). 8.00 am: A Saturday ambulation along the Promenade. The 6.00 am low tide had begun to rise, and transform into a flood tide. In the middle distance, surfers lay prone on the undulating waves, waiting for the big one. Today, most walkers smiled and said ”morning!’, involuntarily. The morning’s light was unearthly. I remembered the dream recollected by David Lynch’s perturbed customer Dan, at Winkie’s diner: ‘it’s not day or night. It’s kinda half-light, you know’ (Mulholland Drive (2001)). Apart from the lull and rush of the waves, there was no sound: a silence — like the grace of God — unheard, but present in the background and below the surface of all things.
It’s the way — at my height — the horizon line and top of the harbour wall align. A phenomenon that still excites me, and which I’d never have noticed before learning how to see and draw. Returning home, I crossed the path of a woman with a very smart Bedlington Terrier. My Uncle Alf (who wasn’t my uncle), had one called Noddy (which I’d named when a toddler, apparently). This breed was popular among coalminers in Northumbria and South Wales, and celebrated by the Ashington Group painter William Scott in 1936.
September 28 (Sunday). 2.00 pm: Breakfast, Morning Eucharist, and lunch behind me, I launched into an ambulation along the Promenade, in contrary motion. For now, there’s warmth, sunshine, bonhomie, and peace. But dark skies and rain are forecast for tomorrow. Bad times follow good, discomfort follows ease, illness follows health, war follows peace, death follows life, heartache follows love, and so on. Such as it is, has been, and will ever be. For now, I’m grateful, and I’m grateful for now.
September 29 (Monday). 7.00 am: Writing. 9.00 am: Studiology. ‘Catherine Evans’, ‘John Evans’, and ‘Anthony England’. 44 names down; 100 to go. And then the rain came. And my mind pulled back from considering some pertinent ideas, while gravitating towards others that weren’t immediately relevant. This is indiscipline. This is a lull in the best that I can do. I’m familiar with it; it happens periodically. And it will pass, and focus will return. And, after a while, there’ll be a lull again. But this day will not have been wasted. Few ever are.
A revisionism:
September 30 (Tuesday). 7.30 am: Writing. 8.45 am: Studiology. The name-compositions are a helpful means of limbering-up at the beginning of the day. A sonic gymnasium, if you will. ‘Shiela Fitzpatrick’ and ‘John Fitzpatrick’. Periodically, I listen to extracts of Hendrix’s guitar playing. Not that I wish to imitate his sound. I do have a Fender Stratocaster 1962 (Vintage Original Specification), fuzz and wha-wha pedals, and a Marshall amp and cabinet emulation software. The type of equipment he used. But these means serve as a baseline or touchstone only. 10.00 am: I switched on the guitar rig and re-established a connection for recording, but not the one for monitoring on the studio speakers. Diagnostics revealed that the output was routed to a different pair than I’d anticipated. 11.00 am: I was back in business.
There are several tasks that need to undertaken on the rig related to some of the other compositions. These were straightforward drones. I began with: an F#; another, a 5th lower; another, an octave lower; and another, with a wah-wah inflection.
Today is the 60th anniversary of the first broadcast of Thunderbirds. The impressiveness of Gerry and Sylvia Anderson’s ‘Supermarionation’ has not diminished in the intervening decades. This was ‘high-craft’. Astonishing model-making. CGI leaves me cold by comparison.
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