Summa: dairy (December 6-12, 2025)

December 6 (Saturday).

‘An old blues’; a new muse.

7.15 am: An ambulation, from St David’s Road, down Llanbadarn Road, to Northgate Street to Great Darkgate Street, down Pier Street, to the Promenade and, afterwards, to warmth and respite. The predicted 95% chance of precipitation coincided with my walk (of course). Rain fell as though gravity had been ramped-up to max. The wind prodded me down Pier Street towards the Promenade, like an impatient parent, a sluggish child. The sea was in a frenzy; the starlings and gulls were swept off their trajectory, ensemble.

9.00 am: A day for fixing and putting together things. Days like this have no deadlines. I alight upon something in need, assign it to my worktop for repair and, then, move on to next thing and, then, the next … . Like ‘the making of books [,] there is no end’ (Ecclesiastes 12.12). ‘John’s List’ on Spotify lubricated the tedium. Contemporary music in the 1970s was astonishing. It’s where I go, when I’m lost. My bulwark. My sanctuary. My ecstasy.

‘Finally … think on these things’:

And then, as though from nowhere (other than our past) they faced me, smiling warmly. Many years lay in-between. ‘I’d not forgotten you.’ They looked the same (or so it seemed) as when we’d said goodbye, on indifferent terms. But in the intervening years, their outlook had transformed, entirely. (Mine too.) Now, I was not only impressed but also inspired (and much else beside) by the resolve, warmth, restless commitment, and thoughtfulness that characterised their life and conversation.

December 7 (Sunday). The second Sunday in Advent.

Following you, I climb the mountain (The Who, ‘We’re Not Going to Take it, Tommy (1970)).

9.15 an: An ambulation, from St David’s Road, down Llanbadarn Road, to and through the gates of the Municipal Cemetery, to Plascrug Avenue, to the Railway Station, Park Avenue, South Road, from the Harbour, and to the Promenade. The sea rose tall and charged the shoreline, oozing opaque spume over the shale, and pounding (like a desperate lover) the seawall, relentlessly — while casting-up pale plumes.

December 8 (Monday)

‘I never want to speak to you again’ / ‘You need to get your life together’, Paul Thomas Anderson, Licorice Pizza (2021).

6.00 am: ‘Licorice pizza’ is what Californian’s call vinyl. Visually poetic. I continued writing short-form proposals and fund seeking. It’s tedious, and the success yield is, in proportion to the effort and time expended, discouragingly small. ‘But if you don’t ask’, as they say. ‘Cast your bread upon the the waters’, Koholeth preached (Ecclesiastes 11.1). 2.00 pm: One grant application complete, and a letter to an institutional CEO to compose. Not all my bread will return. But enough, I hope, to develop a momentum of commitment and excitement. The American composer Philip Glass spent each weekday morning drumming-up sponsorship and commissions for his work. Music composition took place in the afternoons only.

4.00 pm: An ambulation.

Plascrug Avenue has the romance of a Parisian boulevard at this time of day at this time of the year. (Or am I going soft in my dotage?) I saw only the path before me: a yellow brick road, illuminated by street lamps that measured its length all the way to the gates at the other end, beyond which was the town. ‘I could be some place else’ I mused, like some confused Lynchian character. The return journey took-in the muddy, black back-alley at the rear of what was the Tax Office. Disconcertingly, runners and walkers — heard coming toward me at a pace — only became visible when just feet away. In the darkness, the Vicarage Field was without dimension. Its boundaries had vanished, while distant lights appeared much nearer than they actually were.

December 9 (Tuesday).

‘Make a way to escape’ [that’s appropriate].

5.30 am: Awake. 6.30 am: Studyology. I began the text for the CD in readiness for translation into Welsh. (I’ve learned to give overworked translators at Aberystwyth University a long run-in time.). 9.15 am: Studiology. I made small adjustments to track 8 before moving onto track 10: ‘Bethania: Where Lazarus was Resurrected (October 21, 1966)’.

11.30 am: A visit to my ‘pad’ for coffee and conversation from my friend, the artist Susan Forster , who was home after her antipodean trip. 2.00 pm: Storm Bram has hit the UK, albeit relatively mildly on the West Wales seaboard. In parallel, a traffic jam in town (caused by a road closure) created a long and slow-moving tailback of vehicles (including the local council’s recycling lorry) in all directions. The uncollected bin bags and wet cardboard boxes were strewn across lawns and roads by the strong winds.

Against that wind, I pushed up hill to the University campus and Arts Centre (which were desperately trying to look festive) for a long-overdue meeting of minds with my colleague and fellow sound traveller, Dr Dafydd Roberts. We talked about funding opportunities, new record labels in Wales, equipment, and performance protocols. Daf has secured many gigs around England for this coming year. He’s a whizz! 3.00 pm: Back home, we continued our conversation by text and email. He is the university’s Research Development Officer, with a finger on the pulse for where the cash cows graze. (A dreadful mixed metaphor.) His practical knowledge about sound composition, equipment, recording, and promotion has been invaluable to me over the years, in this and other respects.

December 10 (Wednesday).

‘And death shall have no dominion’, Dylan Thomas (1933).

5.30 am: Morningtide.

6.00 am: Project admin, and writing notes towards a public lecture on the Aberfan project. ‘Fetch hither the Powerpoint file!’ Recently, I’d watched a Netflix documentary on a journalist and photographer who documented the bedrooms of children who’d died as a result of school shootings in the USA.

Since the Columbine shooting in 1999, there have been over 390 school shootings, killing at least 203 and injuring 441 students, educators, and other individuals’.

School Shootings, Brady.

Mercifully, in the UK, we have only the Dunblane massacre to remember, when 15 pupils and 1 teacher were gunned down. How do parents hold onto the vestiges of their young loved ones? And what new, imaginative, and creative ways remain to us to commemorate their lives and deaths? The death of any child is a tragedy. But particularly so when they die as a result of abuse, self-termination, and avoidable accident (as was the case at Aberfan).

Studiology. 9.30 am: I continued with track 10. In contrast two the two previous tracks, this one is a doddle. My hope is that the following half dozen will follow suit. Phase 2 is slated for completion by the Christmas vacation (along with initial funding enquiries). 1.30 pm: I continued in the same vein.

December 11 (Thursday).

‘If thine eye offend thee, pluck it out’.

7.15 am: I made a deposit at a local charity shop, and took my ambulation along the Promenade. At this time of the morning, shops begin to stir. Staff swept the boards and prepared their windows. Cafe owners cut and laid out sandwiches and baguettes, and opened their doors to early breakfasters. Walkers breathed in the cold, slow moving air and found their depth again, before beginning the day’s work in the town and at the university.

‘Is it dawn or is it dusk?’ (A Lynchian conundrum.) The moon, now in its third quarter, looked pale turquoise against the salmon-pink sky. (Simultaneous contrast.) I walked and paused, and walked and paused, smiled at the sky, and offered-up a benediction for the good that was still in the world and in this place, especially, right now. ‘Can’t you feel it, John?’, probed the inner-tutor. 8.45 am: A hot chocolate at the Hut. (For comfort.) I have many coffee-shop loyalty cards. So, in what sense am I loyal to any one of them? (Beverage polyamory.)

8.30 am: Writing (with Petula Clark in the background). 9.30 am: Studiology. ‘Sandra Leyshon’ and ‘Sharon Lewis’. 10.45 am: I returned to phase 2 of track 10. 11.15 am: On to track 11: ‘144: A Biblical Number (October 21, 1966)’. A return to musiclessness for this (and the following) track: a multitude of typewriters clicking and clacking the names of the dead, against the pitter-patter of rain and the clamour of voices. Can this track remain as it is? Do I hear a lack? If I’m unsure about the latter question, then I probably don’t. Track 11: ‘The Silence was So … So, So Perfect (October 28, 1966)’. It refers to the relative ‘silence’ of the mass-interment seven days after the disaster. The title derives from a reflection made by a witness who, while not present at the cemetery, heard the proceedings from a distance. The composition re-presents (fabricates) sounds captured by the news camera crew situated at the edge of the proceedings. This track was already in the bag.

12.00 pm: Track 13: ‘You Could Hear the Hymn Singing (October 28, 1966)’. Likewise, the title is another reflection by the same witness from the same position. In essence, the composition is about choral singing carried on the wind. The sound comprises a radically-transformed fusion of the two hymns sung at the funeral, along with the noise of a storm that had been recorded from inside my studio. The track’s relative dynamics required attention. 5.30 pm: Back to some semblance of musicality, with track 14: ‘Jimi Kissed the Ground (March, 1967)’.

December 12 (Friday).

‘However hard it is now, I remain grateful. Because I know things will only get worse in the future’.

5.30 am: Awake and breakfast. 6.00 am: A communion. 8.45 am: Studiology. Track 15: ‘Who Sinned? (August 3, 1967)’. This was nowhere near resolved, even as a first draft. Why did I let-off before time? What matter had intervened?

It’s always good to get some airplay on the Sound Projector Radio Show. ‘Prayer 6: the next step’, from my Seven Prayers for Stephen Chilton: Requiem, can be heard at 49:28 on the ‘Spiral Lightening’ compilation, broadcast on November 17, 2025. When a reviewer/presented describes a work of mine as ‘very beautiful’, at one and the same time I’m heartened and alarmed. I never set out to make anything ‘beautiful’. The condition is a byproduct of a different intent. For me, the word is problematic. When I was a fine art undergraduate at art college in the late 1970s, the ‘B-word’ was banned, virtually, by the tutors. Descriptors such as ‘engaging’, ‘fascinating’, ‘intriguing’, ‘efficient’, and ‘exacting’ were preferred. In some respects, they sounded more measurable and accessible for critical discussion.

2.00 pm: A section that I worked on over several hours this morning proved unable to gel with the fifteenth track. It was given a title — ‘Closing Prayer 12 12 2025’ — and consigned to the Studium vaults. From rain to sunshine. The pattern of the day. An ambulation to town and a local gallery, to lend advocacy on behalf on one of my former students (who has become an inspiring teacher) and their work. They deserve to be appreciated more widely. 2.45 pm: I returned to the penultimate track. There is movement towards resolution.

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