Summa: diary (October 25-31, 2025)

October 25 (Saturday).

I’m alive!

7.30 am: The morning ambulation, against the wind and in semi-darkness: invigorating and comforting. 9.00 am: Back home, Harvey the Younger — who’d arrived late last night — still slumbers. 12.15 pm: Following family chat over coffee, tea, and wafer biscuits, plans for a major decluttering of the house began. My son is the honest broker in this endeavour.

While rummaging in the basement (the realm of the unconscious), we came across an unopened and unboxed packet of jigsaw pieces. Presumably there was, somewhere among the piles and piles of boxes (that remind me of the last scenes of Citizen Kane (1941) and Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981), respectively) one that was empty with a picture on its lid. By scrutinising the individual pieces, I was able to discern the distinctive impasto of Vincent van Gogh’s brushmarks, and the colour palette of his Bedroom in Arles (1888). The whole was contained in the part.

I continued with the questions that I’d posed myself on October 5. ‘What satisfies you?’ I reply:
a wonderful idea, superbly executed; the truth (however hard to bear); witnessing an act of kindness; a simple meal prepared with love; a word received in season; orderliness; economy; rational design; ambiguity and uncertainty; emotional depth and complexity; a mystery that remains so; justice meted out; an honour restored; breaking bread and talking with old friends after a long time apart; making something bespoke for someone special; toast and marmalade eaten late at night; and understanding something for the first time.

October 26 (Sunday). The end of British summer time.

But I no longer live in their lives.

The clocks went back an hour. Henceforth, in the UK, the mornings will be lighter and the evenings darker earlier. It would be useful to have this facility at all times of the year and hours of the day: foul up at 11.00 am, reverse the clock, and relive the errant hour correctly.

10.15 am: A short ambulation in the sunlight, before Sunday Eucharist and the rain returned. 12.30 pm: More materials emerge from the basement, like coal from the face, to be either recycled, or dumped, or disposed to the town’s charity shops. ‘Everything must go!’, is my policy. (The sentiment isn’t shared by all my family all the time.)

What consoles you?’ I reply:
the memory of my mother’s palm upon my ear, as I rested my head on her lap; that inner-narrative to which I habitually resort; the realisation that things could have turned out very differently; the possibility that change for the better may come out-of-the-blue; confidence that it all makes sense, even when I can’t discern it; a long walk alone, while talking with myself; standing still and staring at the sky with my eyes closed; looking through old family-photograph albums; listening to sounds that I recorded decades ago; the silence after snow has fallen; returning to places associated with my childhood; remembering a kindness received.

October 27 (Monday).

They walked so far ahead of me that I felt we were no longer together [Dream, 6.00 am+].

7.00 am (the former 8.00 am): Awake. 7.30 am: Writing. 9.00 am: Studiology. ‘Robert Jones’ and ‘Kevin Jones’. I’ve reached the halfway mark for the 144 Variations on a Theme by Joseph Parry for the Victims of Aberfan album. 10.00 am: A review of the structure for Darkness Covered the Whole Land: sixteen sound postcards of Aberfan, and a finalisation of the track order.

11.00 am: The recycling grows. 11.30 am: I bunked-off to see the Pete Waterman’s World Record Model Railway Exhibition, which is being hosted at the Vale of Rheidol engine shed. I defy any visitor to exit the display without smiling. There were 80-year old 5-year olds, 40-year old 5-year olds, and 5 year-old 5 year-olds, among the attendees. I’d encountered the same phenomenon at the National Railway Museum, York. (See: April 26, 2025). This is the largest portable model railway in the world, so the organisers claim.

2.00 pm: An afternoon of further bagging and boxing, sorting and donating. A collection of my own and my late father’s tools will go to the School of Art. I can’t envisage a time when I’ll ever chisel, rivet, buff, grind, or have need of a buck or bow saw again. Inevitably, progress is slowed when someone alights upon an object that hasn’t seen the light of day in decades. ‘Oh! I remember this’, is the usual exclamation … followed by its backstory. Apparently, I’d purchased the still pristine cart of colourful wood bricks when I was visiting professor at Green Mountain College, Vermont in 2001. Me? I’ve no recollection of buying it whatsoever.

What is worthwhile? I reply:
falling in love; heartbreak; grief and loss; waiting for the one; maintaining one’s integrity; redeeming a reputation, falsely defamed; climbing to the summit and looking down; every moment I’ve spent with my children; witnessing the testimony of the dying; hearing an illuminating eulogy, spoken with warmth; helping another to recover; the time that I had with them, however short; passion exchanged; living intensely; and spontaneous gestures of good will.

October 28 (Tuesday).

You came back. But this time, it was you who challenged me.

7.15 am: Morning begins. 8.15 am: Writing. I’ve a basement full of relics. Where’s my ‘Rosebud’? (See: Addendum: ‘Rosebud’.) My ‘Standing Regulations for Retention and Disposal’ are:

• Keep only that which is either presently in use or likely to be useful in the future;
• Get rid of all duplication;
• Be sentimental about little;
• Do good with what’s no longer required;
• Remember: one day I’ll have to relinquish everything (even my own body);
• Don’t leave the task of wholesale clearance to the children. (They’ll be busy people when I die.)

My parents died when I was 27 and 30 years of age. As their only child, it fell to me to empty the family home of everything, and put the vast majority of their life’s belongings into black bin bags for shipment to charity shops. Along with them went all my childhood toys, including a train set. (At the time, I’d nowhere to store anything.) All that I retained were a few personal items and documents. (I’ve one ‘Memorabilia’ box for each of Mam and Dad.) The experience taught me how impoverished possessions are in the absence of their possessors.

What must you hold fast?’ I reply:
my past; ‘that which is good’; a secret entrusted to my care; loyalty; a promise or a vow; an undisclosed admiration; a faithful friend; those who care for others without any expectation of reciprocation; memories of family and friends at their best; a few things that connect me to places that are foundational to my upbringing; a few things that typify those whom I’ve loved most; connections and engagement with those who mean a great deal to me; and photographs of those who can no longer be photographed.

October 29 (Wednesday). 7.30 am: Writing. I’m in the territory of Swedish Death Cleaning. The Swedes are impressively pragmatic. Like making a will, the practice doesn’t bring your inevitable demise any closer than it already is, but your surviving family and friends will bless you for it. One ought to leave this world in an orderly manner, in my opinion. 9.30 am: My younger son returns to his wife and home, having rendered sterling service over the past four days. 9.45 am: A second trip to the charity warehouse on the local industrial estate to off-load some of both my sons’ toys, family jigsaw puzzles, and old duvets.

10.45 am: Studiology. ‘Janet Jones’ and ‘Gillian Jones’. 11.30 am: On with the final composition from Darkness Covered the Whole Land: ‘Hymn: The Sadness Remained for a Long Time (1966-2026)’. The first draft of the piece was disassembled, and each sample reviewed and modified. Until I’d done so, I remained outside the composition. In the background, photographs for an adjacent and related blog were prepared.

3.15 pm: An ambulation along Plascrug Avenue, which is at its best in the Autumn as the sun goes down. 7.15 pm: Writing.

October 30 (Thursday). 6.00 am still feels like 7.00 am. 7.30 am: Writing. 8.30 am: Studiology. ‘Susan Jones’ and ‘Ann Jennings’. 9.00 am: I began a study for the Studium website, based on the sound of my mother’s musical jewellery box, which I’d rediscovered in the basement while decluttering. The source theme, which I’d recorded yesterday, was randomly segmented and re-arranged, slowed down by 50%, reduced in pitch, doubled, and delayed: ‘Song for My Mother 30 11 25’. The last and only other time I’ve engaged a musical box was in the context of the found-sound composition ‘3 Musical Boxes, Kyoto (March 27, 2024)’, on the Studium I: 2007-24 album.

11.30 am: I returned to the final composition on the album. ‘Hymn: That Sadness Remained for a Long Time (1966-2026)’ covers a 60 year history from the day of the disaster; from the past to the present to a year hence. In honour of the now, I added the sounds of rain and distant motor vehicles that I recorded on my visit to Mynwent Aberfan a Bryntaf [Aberfan and Bryntaf Cemetery] on September 3. (See: Summa: diary (September 1-5, 2025)). Finally, I introduced the voice of the witness, whom I’d interviewed in 1989 about her experience of the disaster. At the close of the composition and the album, she concludes with a reflection on the tragedy, and grief that ensued, thus: ‘You couldn’t express it in words’. This sentiment inspired my initial determination to express it in sound instead.

4.00 pm: An ambulation. The murmuration of starlings had begun to gather over and under the pier. An audience looked on from the Promenade railings.

October 31 (Friday). All Hallows’ Eve. Ghost photograph:

7.30 am: I awoke following a good night’s sleep in a woozy, headachey, bleary-eyed, sore-eyed, weak-limbed, aching-limbed, tummy rumbling, and profoundly tired condition. A ‘shadow’ of myself. What! Another bug? There are many circulating. (The COVID 2025 viral scan proved negative.) This would be a day for third-gear activities, punctuated by rest, medication, and hot drinks.

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