Summa: diary (October 1-10, 2025)

October 1 (Wednesday). Yom Kippur [יוֹם כִּפּוּר]. 7.30 am: Proof of presence.

8.00 am: Writing. The previous ‘Summa’ was for a 3-day period only, so that this blog can begin on the first of the month (following the established pattern). 10.30 am: Off to the Arts Centre to meet with an old friend from university, whom I’d not seen in over 30 years. He has recently retired from an academic career in microbiology, and is in Aberystwyth helping his daughter: the artist Crisiant Williams. (Dad’s have their uses. He is her bespoke technician for the day.) She has recently completed a PhD Fine Art degree at Cardiff School of Art and Design, and is setting-up an installation of representative work in the Piazza Window Display, not 200 yards from the National Library of Wales where the thesis element of her doctorate is now deposited.

I was heartened to talk with Crisiant about her commitment to Postminimalism. She was rediscovering what I’d lived through during my own art education in the late 1970s. Back then, Minimalism and Conceptualism were considered to be the death-knell of Modernism. Who could’ve foreseen how these subset and umbrella movements would reinvent themselves in the decade to come. During the 1990s, I explored this development (or evolution) historically in my Contemporary Art 2: Postmodernism art history module. While, at the same time, I lived and worked through and with it. My The Pictorial Bible (2000-15) series was described as ‘sacred minimalism’. Which is a mode of Post-minimalism.

2.00 pm: Studiology. ‘Daphne Fudge’ and ‘Christine George’. I’ll make 55 name-compositions before taking a short break. Abandoning a routine is as difficult as establishing one, in my experience.

October 2 (Thursday). Yom Kippur [יוֹם כִּפּוּר]. 8.40 am: A blood test at my GP surgery (having drunk five large beakers of water — so that my veins will show). The two practice nurses are under pressure, what with having to dispense the seasonal flu-jab to thousands of patients over the next few months, on top of all their usual commitments.

9.00 am: Studiology. ‘Gillian Gough’ and ‘Brian Gough’ — a sister (8 years of age) and a brother (9 years of age). 12.15 pm: Visitors from Yorkshire for lunch. One had been friends with David Hockney’s three nieces in Bradford. He was a devoted uncle, and drew their portraits as a gift. They were hung on the family staircase, much to his brother Paul’s displeasure.

David Hockney (2017) (courtesy of Wikimedia Commons); Alistair Crawford (2000) (detail from a photograph courtesy of Pete Davis).

Late afternoon, I received the sad announcement that Professor Alistair Crawford had died this morning. He was 80 years of age, and the first Chair of Art in Wales. (I took over from him as Head of the School of Art in 1995.) Sadly, his website is in a poor state of repair — like the classical ruins rendered in his drawings, prints, and photographs especially. Links to reproductions of his work are broken. Nevertheless, the site retains a text and, thus, his distinctive voice — at times poetic, always honest, earnest, unhindered by jargon and flamboyance, eager to communicate with a broad-based public, and thoroughly informed by the art of the past. Mercifully, his pictures can be found elsewhere. Alistair was an accomplished draughtsman, printer, painter, photographer, photo-historian and, pre-eminently, an artist of place. He deserves to be better known and appreciated. He was also a displaced Scot, who devoted the greater part of his life and career to Wales. This country is in his debt. Clan Crawford and many others will mourn him tonight.

October 3 (Friday). 8.00 am: An ambulation to the Arts Centre to take a look at Crisiant Williams’ completed installation … which proved very difficult to photograph in the daylight. She has adapted the ‘shop window’ format of the gallery space well.

9.15 am: Studiology. Last night in a dream I conceived of the ‘Jimi Kissed the Ground’ composition in terms of a large, mid-grey, thin, highly-polished, and contoured vacuum-formed sheet of plastic. I take such images seriously. They’re not nonsense. Even though I haven’t the gift of interpretation, nevertheless the the ‘vision’ suggests a way of thinking about the work as visible and tangible form.

Yesterday’s murder of Jewish worshippers at a synagogue in Manchester, England, was as appalling as it was unsurprising. In this instance, the likely motive for the attack was the Israeli government’s continued and unconscionable war on the Palestinians of Gaza. However, there have been occasions when the reason for an assault on a Jewish community is far from clear. One of the very few incidents of putative antisemitism in Wales took place on August 19, 1911. The assailants were all coal miners and their wives. A pub owned by a Jewish family was attacked because, it was assumed, they were overcharging. Historians are divided over the extent of specifically Jewish hostility involved.

October 4 (Saturday).

And then I began to breath again.

6.30 am: Debris and apples are strewn across the lawn following last night’s strong wind, which persists. 9.00 am: An ambulation to bid a farewell at the railway station. Storm Amy (which had landed from Ireland, yesterday) shows no sign of abating. The wind breathes beneath the back door and blows hollow around casement windows. 4.00 pm: As its energy gradually diminishes, a bright light reflects-off the white walls of houses in the neighbourhood, made stark against the mid-grey sky.

October 5 (Sunday).

Cast the thing in waters where the tide will not return it.

8.30 am: Ambulation no. 1: I experienced a Marcel Marceau moment (walking against the wind), as I approached the Promenade via Terrace Road. Like a petulant toddler, Amy maintains her, albeit moderated, tantrum today. I feel ionised.

The facades on South Marine Terrace ‘hum’ against the neutral cloudscape. I sense an excitement in the pit of my stomach. The response is to neither the houses nor the sky chiefly (if at all) but, rather, to the form and colour they embody.

1.30 pm: Ambulation no. 2: shoppery, hot-chocolatification, and analysis. An auto-interrogation. (‘Who’ may be substituted, as appropriate):

October 6 (Monday). 7.00 am: I have a cold. The first in many years. The novelty wears thin very quickly. 8.15 am: Studiology. ‘Dwynwen Griffith’ and ‘Trevor Gray’. 9.00 am: ‘Fire up!’ The guitar rig was readied for recording fragments of sound that’ll be assembled in the context of the Digital Audio Workstation later in the week. ‘Let rip!’

11.00 am: A long overdue reunion with Kassie and her fiancee from the USA, who are sightseeing and returning to her old stomping grounds the UK. I’d taught her painting when she was a visiting international student at the School of Art in 2014. She’s an inveterate anglophile. Our conversations are always earnest, searching, and uplifting. Today, there was much to catch-up on — and much to learn from one another.

Back in the studio, my objective is to assiduously avoid making music. Harsh and distorted noise, feedback (exploiting the interaction of the guitar’s pick-up and the amplifier-cabinet’s speaker), and percussive string playing were the call of the day. From an emotional point of view, these sounds will contribute to the evocation of Hendrix’s sadness and bewilderment at the loss of the children’s lives, especially. (He would die four years later, in London.)

Whether the account of his trip to Aberfan is true or not is, perhaps, irrelevant. (Although the narrative does appear entirely plausible.) Like, too, the mythology informing ‘And did those feet in ancient time / Walk upon Englands mountains green’, taken from William Blake’s poem ‘Jerusalem’ (c. 1808). Even when the answer to those questions the poet asks is a resounding ‘No!’, the veracity of the story, describing Jesus in the English landscape, is secondary to the power of the concepts and imagery it embodies.

October 7 (Tuesday). A poor night’s sleep. 7.30 am: An ambulation to the Arts Centre and back. I appreciate the building most when few are around besides children, who use it as a rat-run to their school.

8.30 am: A doze. 9.30 am: Studiology. ‘Richard Goldsworthy’. 10.30 am: Guitarology. More, loud noise (in the most positive sense of the word), bottleneck, and whammy bar. It’s quite possible to undertake several hours of focused improvisatory playing and walk away with only 10 minutes of usable material. 1.30 pm: I laid down the melodic line for ‘Loving Shepherd of thy Sheep’ on the electric guitar. This was afterwards lowered in tone, slowed, dismantled, reassembled, and overlaid. (The resultant melody is not unlike a Nels Cline solo.)

4.00 pm: A telephone conversation with my GP regarding my new hypertension tablet. The side effects are unacceptable and the impact on my systolic and diastolic readings, negligible. Indeed, I suspect my blood pressure would be the same had I not been taking it. The condition is due to neither my weight, nor diet, nor exercise regime. All these markers of health and well-being are as they should be. Yet another blood test is on order. (Sigh!) I self-prescribed fish, chips, and mushy-peas for dinner.

October 8 (Wednesday).

All my birds have flown away. None are likely to return.

I’ve more dead friends than at any point in my life. 8.30 am: Writing. 9.00 am: Studiology. I began constructing the ‘Jimi Kissed the Ground’ composition. To begin: a loud ‘KERRANG!’ (in G major, with a great deal of overdrive and fuzz). The feedback in this context sounds plaintive, rather than assertive and reactionary. 10.30 am: I played Hendrix’s cover of ‘Hey Joe’, which he’d recorded in the same month as the Aberfan disaster. To end: a melancholy and un-Hendrix-like guitar trio. ‘And what about the bit in the middle, John?’, the inner-tutor teased. ‘And what about that which lies behind it all?’, I parried.

My aim is to set the electric guitar in the context of the still devastated village and wind-swept landscape, which Hendrix and his companions experienced in March 1967. Sounds associated with distant industry and immediate desolation will serve as a backdrop. Once the composition was underway, I soon realised which sonorities wouldn’t sit comfortably within the developing mood.

October 9 (Thursday). 3.00 am: I awoke from a dream and remained awake for an hour, thinking about those who were no longer in my life, as well as those who’d never existed. 8.30 am: A failed attempt to retrieve a new prescription from the GP surgery. 9.00 am: Studiology. The final form of the composition begins to emerge. Thus, I:

remove; simplify; sharpen; balance; open space; define ideas; clarify transitions; maintain pace; establish contrasts; move from the beginning to the end, and from the end to the middle, and from the middle to the beginning again, constantly; and maintain my heart and mind, logic and instinct, in equilibrium.

12.30 pm: A good first draft — in keeping with all sixteen compositions (48-minutes in toto) — has been achieved. I can now see the end from the beginning, and the whole from the parts. The next step is return to the first piece and bring that to completion. Each composition in turn will be resolved in the light of my experience of the others.

1.45 pm: ‘Ronald Hayes’ (9-years old) of 28 Moy Road, Aberfan.

2.00 pm: A second and successful attempt to walk away with a prescription. Then, on to the pharmacy. 3.00 pm: ‘Jennifer Haines’ (8- years old) of 16 Thomas Street, Aberfan.

3.00 pm: I moved towards the visual expression of the 144 Variations — inspired by the first outside TV broadcast of the disaster — once again.

*Jeannette Brown* (2025) digital-conversion-failure photograph.

October 10 (Friday). 7.30 am: A communion and tidy-up. 8.30 am: Studiology. This morning, my objective is to level-up the number of glitch photographs and name-compositions for each of the 144 Variations made to-date. I gave ‘ear-gate’ a rest, and brought ‘eye-gate’ to the fore (with acknowledgment to John Bunyan). The endeavour will pave the way for a return to analogue picture-making in the next few weeks.

The interrogation of the photographs proceeds using the same strategies, methodologies, and digital techniques as I deploy when manipulating sound samples:

resampling; reformatting; inverting; enlarging; extracting; sharpening; blurring; and enhancing.

1.45 pm: ‘Lynn Harding’ and ‘Anthony Hill’.