Summa: diary (December 1-5, 2025)
Might you have already had the happiest days of your life, without knowing it?
December 1 (Monday). 6.30 am: Proof of presence/morningtide.
7.00 am: A communion. 8.15 am: Writing and self-reflection. 9.45 am: Studiology. ‘Paul Jones’ and ‘Evelyn Jones’. 9.30 am: I returned to track 8. This has proven to be a challenge, both acoustically and conceptually. Struggles with problems, such as this one, do more to enhance my overall ability in sound production than the sum of all those tracks that fell into place effortlessly. An obstacle is a gift masked as a goad. Track 8 will be swapped with track 9, and both worked-up as a sequential pair. This is the beginning of the solution. In work, as in life, our trials and sufferings rarely evaporate in an instant. Instead, they must be: first, acknowledged and respected, honestly; secondly, understood (with the mind rather than the heart), as far as possible; thirdly, divided into manageable components and; finally, worked-through separately and, then, as a complex, towards a solution.
12.30 am: A reconfigured track 8: ‘Suffer Little Children (October 21, 1966)’. Presently, I’m conceiving of it as a very simple and linear composition. The, now, ninth track requires the addition of a midi-instrument, to mimic the assembled samples’ melodic line and timbre. This is a first for me, methodologically. The aim is to clarify the melody, which is barely audible under the static, dust, and the noises of a worn-out 78-rpm record that has been played in reverse at very slow speed. The process is a mode of sonic archaeology — re-establishing the contours of an ancient writing that has been buried beneath the sand and soil, and corroded by the weather. 4.00 pm: An ambulation in less rain than poured this morning.
December 2 (Tuesday). 6.00 am: Awake. Self-imposed deadlines, in the absence of external ones, are often the more demanding. I’ve only myself to blame, if they’re not met. And I’m not particularly forgiving. ‘It takes as long as it takes’, isn’t a softener I endorse. ‘It takes as long as you give it’, is closer to my mark. More realistically: ‘it takes long as the it requires, and you can afford’. In the absence of a deadline, the work loses its urgency, impetus, and rigidity, and, as a consequence, may never reach consummation. I’m astonished by how many of the great rock albums made in the 1970s were both written and laid down in the studio within days. Studio time was very expensive. Economic exigencies imposed a strict deadline and discipline. Prevarication was unaffordable. The advent of home-recording studios (wherein the artist is also the recording engineer, sound technician, and producer, and time is cheap) challenges these imperatives. However, there’s no necessary relationship between the time spent on, and the quality of, a composition (be that long or short, or audible or visual or textual).
8.30 am: Studiology. ‘Jean Jones’ and ‘John Jones’. Afterwards, I reviewed yesterday’s work on tracks 8 and 9. The former is in the bag (as far as the phase 2 pass is concerned). But the latter will take sometime and a great deal of listening — for what is there and not there — before it’s finished. 11.00 am: An ambulation from my GP surgery (half-way up the hill at the south-end of town) to the art framers (at the top of the incline, at the north-end of town), while the sun still shone. The big-dipper experience. 12.00 am: I continued ‘shadowing’ the samples’ melody. 1.30 pm: Writing and correspondence.
2.00 pm: Rain.
‘Shine on you crazy … !’, they might’ve added. When Jove speaks about ‘the shiny beast of thought’ … ‘if you’ve got ears, you gotta listen’, sang Beefheart. Words of advocacy, agency, and kindness ‘at just the right time’, spoke the prophets and apostle. ‘I’m giddy. Is this a dream?’, wrote Jenny Han, somewhere on the Internet.
4.30 pm: The first ‘shadow’ was complete.
December 3 (Wednesday). 6.15 am: Writing and imaging. 7.15 am: Morningtide.
8.20 am: An ambulation and visit to the pharmacy. 8.45 am: First in the queue … yet again. 9.15 am: Studiology. A review of tracks 8 and 9. Adjustments to the ‘shadow’ samples. This track, like the first and last on the album is, I’ve realised, a hymn. This determination is governed by the character of the composition’s musicality and mood: melodic, slow, and plaintive. The melodic line is just over 2.20 minutes long. Thus, I’ve a further 40 seconds beside to consider. Is the melody a foreground or a background element? Progress was slow. Too slow. The pace of the piece is intrinsically uneven, uncertain, and cautious. Insomuch as it accompanies the careful and urgent excavation of those buried, dead, and dying beneath the coal slurry, these attributes are appropriate. 4.00 pm: It remained for me to add a few harmonising tones.
When I was in my 20s and 30s, friendship wasn’t discussed very much, other than in terms of loyalty. ‘A friend for life’, was the received ideal. I’ve a handful of friends who’ve remained with me, and I with them, since our school days. While rummaging through my filing cabinet a few years back, I came across stapled wads of long and detailed letters received from, and photocopies of letters sent to, some of my most loyal friends — those that were too far away to visit often. These missives were like chapters from our lives. Today, our written communications are more like telegrams: typed; often short, grammatically clumsy, poorly spelled, economically punctuated, either to the point or chatty, sometimes emojied (for feeling), and rarely worth archiving. The art of long-form letter writing, like cursive script, is dying.
‘Anyone will tell you / Just how hard it is to make and keep a friend’, sang Joni Mitchell. Ain’t that a truth. They come and go more quickly these days, in my experience. It’s not that we ‘defriend’ or ‘ghost’ one another, deliberately. Our circumstances, convictions, desires, and interests change. We remain friends, but no longer those kind of friends. We’re now ‘fire extinguisher’ friends: always there for one another, but active only in emergencies. Sadly, I’ve a few friendships that have faded into silence, awkwardly, because of differences over either politics or religion or an approach to a matter. Either one or both of us didn’t have the grace and emotional maturity to, as they say, ‘disagree agreeably’.
December 4 (Thursday). 7.45 am: Writing. 9.00 am: Studiology. A review of tracks 8 and 9. 11.45 am: The latter’s ‘shadow’ melody was finished. [PAUSE]. 12.15 pm: I added an alternative version of ‘The First Six Children’ composition to the Studium site. It had failed at the bar of quality, ambition, innovation (in respect to my own work), and appropriateness (in respect to the album), but required a home in the archive.
2.00 pm: Back to track 8. Can this remain simple, in both form and conception, and still hold its own? Having spent so long on the project, my judgement requires a sober estimation. (A case of weighing the scales that weigh the gold.) Presently, I’m apt to dismiss ideas too readily and be discouraged too easily. However, an end is in sight/hearing. The emotional tenor of track 9 has hit the mark. It remains for me to orchestrate the sound events surrounding and concluding the melodic line.
6.00 pm: Eventide.
December 5 (Friday).
‘Now, it’s dark’, Frank Booth in David Lynch’s Blue Velvet (1986).
5.45 am: Awake. 6.00 am: Writing and project admin. I never cease to be astonished by how some otherwise reputable public institutions can not reply to emails requesting information. While others fall over themselves to be helpful. 11.00 am: Studiology. I bent down for my ‘wah-wah’ pedal. Without the input of an electric guitar, and at a high volume, the device produces swooshing white-brown noise, and a passable imitation of a low wind (like the one I can hear pushing through the gaps in my Velux window, at the moment) — especially when the treadle is moved slowly from the high- to the low-tone positions. The foot-pedal has been a staple of my sonic armoury since I was 14 years of age. The sound of the wind is one of desolation. At the close of the composition can be heard a square-wave output passed through a modulating Moog low-frequency filter — which is what a ‘wah-wah’ pedal is too, essentially.
12.30 pm: An early lunch. 1.00 pm: I made small adjustments to the relative volume of the sub-sections comprising track 9. 4.00 pm: An ambulation in the parting light of day, the cold wind, damp air, and drizzle — made tolerable by the twinkling lights that bridged one side of each street to the other, and bedecked Christmas trees in the public squares and shop windows. At this time on a Friday, I always buy myself a [Mutiny on the] Bounty bar. This end of the week treat has been a habit of many years’ standing. An acquaintance of mine once denounced both my practice and the bar. ‘It’s not even real coconut, John!’ Well, I never … .
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