Summa: diary (November 1-7, 2025)

November 1 (Saturday). All Saints’ Day. According to Pauline theology, I’m a ‘saint’ (although a poor one, in my view). When writing to the church at Corinth, he referred to the community of believers there as ‘those who are sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints’ (1 Corinthians 1.2). They were a rum bunch, to say the least: desperately immature, ignorant of foundational principles, divisive, and immoral. If living a consistently holy lifestyle was a prerequisite for saintliness, then, most of them (I imagine) fell far short of the requirement. They were ‘sanctified’ (set apart and upon a road to betterment) by virtue of not their innate goodness but, rather, God’s lovingkindness in Christ. They were called, not because of the promise they showed but, rather, God’s promise to begin and complete a good work in them (Philippians 1.6). So, there’s hope for us all (including me), as well as Saint Paul — who considered himself to be ‘the chief of sinners’ (1 Timothy 1.15).

9.00 am: Proof of presence/icon

November 2 (Sunday). All Souls’ Day. These are people I have known, and they are dead. Some were family. Some were friends. Some were acquaintances. Some were tutors. Some were tutees. Some died at a great age. Some in mid life. Some far too soon. Some were loved beyond measure. Some inspired great loyalty, respect, and affection. Some gave me confidence, understanding, and vision. None are forgotten. All are missed. There are more beside.

November 3 (Monday). 7.45 am: A communion. 8.30 am: Studiology. ‘Michael Jones’ and ‘Mercia James’. I look at the faces of the dead and determine to live and work more fiercely in the time that remains to me. 9.30 am: I returned to the final composition from the Darkness Covered the Whole Land album, and continued to insert voice samples and develop a narrative.

Meanwhile, in Instagram-land:

12.30 pm: The second draft completed, I looked at the first draft of the second composition on the album: ‘The First Six Children (1885-90)’. The first drafts of the second to fifteenth tracks are more developed than the first and last. Which is not to imply that significant changes and improvements can’t be made. I returned with open hands.

2.15 pm: The composition was coherent enough, but lacked a foreground that specifically referenced the six boys who’d lost their lives while working at Merthyr Vale Colliery in the latter part of the 19th century. 4.00 pm: Rain and darkness descend. And with them came that sobering realisation that this outlook, along with the cold to come, will typify life until the end of February.

I began reading the so-called ‘long-text’ of Julian of Norwich’s Revelations of Divine Love (1373).

October 4 (Tuesday). 7.45 am: A communion. 8.45 am: Studiology. I turned again to the names of the boys killed at the colliery in the century prior to the Aberfan Disaster:

George Thomas (aged 14) Assistant Wasteman, roof fall (Nov. 6, 1890);
William Haskell (aged 14) Collier Boy, roof fall (May 21, 1892);
David Davies (aged 14) Collier, in shaft incident (Jan. 7, 1885);
David Rees (aged 12) Door Boy, crushed by trams (Jan. 7, 1885);
Charles Massey (aged 16) Collier, roof fall (Mar. 17, 1885);
John Jones (aged 12) Door Boy, crushed by trams (Dec. 31, 1885).

It would be morning and afternoon of trials, failures, insertions, extractions, repentance, and perseverance. Success is never guaranteed. But without effort, creative intelligence, and due diligence, failure often is. The composition required a major shake-up, in order to accommodate the introduction of a new idea. The boys are already embedded in the composition. The sound of the names being handwritten is the basis for some of the noises heard. To these I added those alphabetised sound samples taken from 144 Variations, representing the 16-unique letters that make up their names, collectively. These are arranged in the order that they occur on the list of names, above, to form a single melodic line, which is then dropped in pitch by one octave.

November 5 (Wednesday). 9.00 am: Studiology. My desktop computer problems have resurfaced. Following the update to Windows 11, the prelude to a system failure and reboot is now a black, rather than a blue, screen. This appears altogether more alarming. Then madness befell me: Is there a symbiotic relationship between the desktop’s and my own ailments? I set-up the computer and monitored when, and under what conditions, it failed. There’s a logic to failure. But it lies beneath the surface of operations. In the realm of computers, to discern the cause is to establish the remedy. Every problem is fixable and every broken part replaceable, at a price. Oh, that it were so in the domain of human biology too.

2.30 pm: Studiology. Having let the computer lie fallow for the morning, I returned to the current composition and waited for the crash to occur. Then, at least, I’d have something to contribute to my computer-tecky’s interventions.

7.30 pm: For November 5, the sonic profile of the night sky had been surprisingly quiet. I’m sure the animal kingdom appreciated it. Then, in the distance, out-of-sight, the town display kicked-off like the battles of Ypres. The bang, whoosh, and sizzle of the fireworks defined a sonic space that was both deep and wide. Sounds travelled across the landscape, backward and forward, carried on the wind. 8.00 pm: Then it was: ‘All quite on the western front’, as it were.

November 6 (Thursday). In a dream, I saw two earth-core samples. One was taken from my life, the other from my cultural milieu. This has been a recurrent dream over the years. The cores’ compacted content is different each time. I’ve no idea what my subconscious is trying to tell me.

7.30 am: Writing and correspondence. 9.00 am: Studiology. I reviewed and furthered the current composition, while keeping one eye on the computer’s stability. It had lasted over 17 hours before the dreaded black screen fell. The computer-tecky will visit tomorrow afternoon to scratch his head.

To return to 1 Corinthians once again. Paul wrote: If I ‘do not have love, I am nothing … I gain nothing’ (chapter 13, verses 2-3). The Apostle contends that in its absence, whatever other gifts, graces, and virtues we possess are like an empty, loud, and annoying sound: ‘a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal’ (verse 1). Here, love is defined not as a feeling principally but, rather, as a set of attitudes that define our relationship with others: patience, kindness, modesty, civility, psychological, emotional, and moral discipline, hopefulness, and endurance (verse 4).

Likewise, ‘without love’ received, we can feel as though we’re nothing in another sense. The experience of being unloved, lonely, and worthless is one of the most prominent confessions on my social media feeds presently. I suspect (as do many of the sufferers) that this is a hangover from the pandemic. Some have not fully emerged from lockdown. The prolonged isolation (if they’d lived alone), and the absence of physical intimacy — or just the real, rather than virtual, presence of another human being — was damaging, even though it may have been necessary. We need to accept love as much as give it. Without love, our heart, soul, energies, motivations, self-confidence, sense of purpose, and intrinsic value fade. To be loved is to be human.

November 7 (Friday). 9.00 am: My six-monthly dental checkup. For the first time in several years, nothing requires his attention. He looked crest-fallen. 9.45 am: Studiology: Onto the 3rd track: ‘A Model of Catastrophe (1958, 1963)’. (The title is derived from a paper by Jacques Derrida, which was delivered on the day of the Aberfan disaster.) Is the composition, thus far, either a background or a foreground? If I can’t decide, then, it’s best to leave the piece as is and return to it at a later date — when I’ve received more light. 2.00 pm: In my mind’s-ear, I hear the sound of a long and taut metal chain moving slowly, pulling something in its wake.

Facebook tells me that it’s Phoebe’s birthday today. (But Facebook is sometimes woefully wrong about such things. So I checked.) We should remember the dates of a person’s entry into, and departure from, this world equally. In between those parentheses, they lived out a life, followed their heart, experienced joy and struggle (as do we all), and had a profound influence on those who knew them. I think of her often. And when I do, she’s always smiling or laughing, and saying clever and outlandish things about how she made art. Her essence persists, but not in the here and now (in my opinion). Rather, it resides in another ‘place’ — outside of time — where birthdays and deathdays have no bearing.

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