Summa: diary (March 21-27, 2026)
An itch is not a scratch.
March 21 (Saturday). 8.15 am: Breakfast at The Hut. Laying down the memories. I’ll miss the local accent; its comfortable (snug) and has a winsome lilt. South Walian accents (and there are many) have more extended vowels and a wider tonal palette (to my ears). My own has morphed over the years since I’ve lived in south-east Wales. Hairdressers in particular (for some reason) are prone to interpret it as, variously, English, Scottish, American, or Italian. Never Welsh (whatever that may sound like). Me? I hear many sonorities in my voice, on playback. (‘We are Legion; for we are many’.)
9.15 am: Reflection and writing. 12.00 pm: While corresponding with one of my daughters-in-law, who has taken-up drawing, I began to fill-in the names and illustrations for the 144 Variations album on my sound site. Presently, I’m prone to fill-in the background to tasks that require only a modicum of concentration with videos and reels from You Tube and Instagram. I’m drawn to the pseudo-sciences, dubious psychology, testimonies to UAP (Unidentified Aerial/Anomalous Phenomena), aliens, terrifying prophecies, and ‘end-time’ predictions. With very few exceptions, they’re object lessons in credulity, delusionalism, wishful thinking in dark and uncertain times, exploitative deception, confirmation bias, and dismal scholarship. Many of the assertions are neither provable nor falsifiable. I despair of the AI presentations. Once I’ve clocked that the person I’m looking at or listening to isn’t, then, the shutters come down. It’s the robotic movement of the eyelids that break the illusion.
March 22 (Sunday). Passiontide. 10.00 am: On the avenue, the first nests were now visible. Inkblots on the branches’ lattice. They’d been made by the crows, whose rasping caws drowned the call of all other birds.
2.30 pm: An afternoon at Cors Caron, Tregaron. It’s about 19 miles outside Aberystwyth. I recalled my visits to the Cors y Llyn nature reserve, on September 19 last year (see: Summa: diary (September 13-20, 2025)), and Wicken Fen on July 15 (see: Notes on East Anglia I (July 14-18, 2025)). The boardwalk was like a graphite-pencil line drawn across the land and water. Bogs and marshlands are the surface manifestation of processes begun within deep time. In my mind’s-eye, I was some place else — long past. On returning home, I played my friend and colleague Dafydd Robert’s composition Cors Caron is an Eye (2022).
March 23 (Monday). 8.15 am: The scaffolding company turned up, early. ‘Please mind the bush below the ground-floor window, it may contain a sparrow’s nest’, I advised. The company appeared to be wildlife-conscious already. As it turned out, there was no nest. Likely, the birds use the bush as a canopy — like a bus shelter — in bad weather, and as a stopping-off point before flying elsewhere. It has become a very popular venue in the neighbourhood, of late.
8.45 am: I made arrangements for a proposed trip to South Wales in April, where I hope to meet old friends, visit familiar haunts, respect the dead, and revisit the Gwen John: Strange Beauties exhibition (which I’d first seen in on March 1 (see: Summa: diary (March 1-6, 2026)).
10.30 am: I picked-up where I’d left-off on Saturday, adding audioless tracks to the 144 Variations online-album site. Its a tiresome and repetitive task. In the outer world, I heard the familiar clank of long aluminium tubes, the clatter and thud of heavy wooden planks, the clunk of metal connectors, and the rasping whir of electric bolt-drivers. (These are some of the sound types I’ve been manufacturing for tracks on the Darkness Covered the Whole Land album.)
1.45 pm: A brief ambulation and a chance encounter with the artist Reuben Knutson. (His surname has Scandinavian origins. Like King Cnut.) He’s a mild-mannered, serious, and empathetic man who swims in deep waters. I’d wish him on anyone. ‘We must meet for coffee soon’, I insisted. 2.15 pm: I maintained my steer for the afternoon.
March 24 (Tuesday). 8.15 am: The scaffolders returned. Overheard: ‘I’ve only got two of those’; Is this the right way to do it?’ ‘You what?’; ‘Over here, Dai!’; ‘John! John!’; ‘Come on!’; ‘F*cking mad!’.
11.30 am: The online album was completed, textually. 12.00 pm: I held a video-conversation with a former PhD Fine Art tutee and, now, friend with whom I’d not communicated for far too long. We exchanged stories about our intervening histories, medical conditions and treatment, families and relationships, and creative enthusiasms. 5.00 pm: The 144 Variations site was completed.
7.30 pm: Having walked against the on-coming wind, I arrived at the Bank Vault in town. I was there to hear Cymru: Full Circle, performed by the travel writer Julie Brominicks and the singer-songwriter Rowan Bartram. This raconteur and troubadour duo presented an engaging and warm delivery of parallel perspectives on Cymru [Wales] — its geography, history, people, language, folklore, and music. Julie read passages from her highly-recommended book The Edge of Cymru: A Journey, annotated with personal reflections and anecdotes. Hearing a text (which I’ve now read twice) spoken aloud by its author changed my reception fundamentally. Whereas, previously, I’d apprehended her words clothed in my voice — inside my head — this evening, Julie’s writing entered my ears through her own voice. Rowan’s songwriting is in the tradition of the Victorian music-hall balladry, and the confessional songs of George Formby and late-70s post-punk. Her spoon playing was a sight to behold. And anyone who can rhyme ‘Powys’ with ‘Paris’, must have something going for them.
March 25 (Wednesday). Last night, strong gusts blew in-and-out and spattered the rain hard against the scaffolding surrounding the house, turning this temporary external skeleton into some strange and complex percussive-cum-wind instrument. 8.30 am: Studyology. Writing and website building — because the clatter, shouts, and expletives of the ‘Meccano-men’ outside my studio windows made the final sound mixing phase impracticable.
1.30 pm: Heads passed-by my windows, three stories up. By 3.00 pm: The scaffolders were finished. The job, done. Quiet returned. I maintained my direction of travel throughout the afternoon and evening.
March 26 (Thursday). 7.30 am: An ambulation along the Promenade, with a doxology in my head all the way. I took coffee at The Hut. It’s situated at the edge of the southern section of the Promenade. There’s nothing between it and the Irish Sea. The business opened late and closed early due the very strong incoming winds, yesterday. Mild shoppery at a supermarket, on the return stretch home. I’ve a penchant for the store’s equivalent (far cheaper and just as tasty) version of Kellogg’s Rice Crispies (including the chocolatised version).
9.15 am: Studyology. Writing. I’ve been watching too many YouTube videos about negotiating retirement. I’ve a very different take on this period in life, it would seem. Living in third gear, with no deadlines or pressures, isn’t for me. On the contrary, I approach retirement with a measure of desperation and imperative. My time and energies are limited. They’ve always been, but now I believe it. At my age (so I’ve heard), a person’s intelligence, wisdom, self-awareness, and focus are at their apogee. Quite possibly. If so, then, my responsibility is to make the most of these advantages. Which requires discipline, determination, consistency, and hard work. Nevertheless, I’m more flexible with my time, and hopeful that significant change and betterment are possible, than at any other period in my life thus far.
11.00 am: Studiology. The studio needed tidying. Now that the compositional aspect of the Aberfan project has ended, some of the equipment can be put away. Space opened up in both the working environment and my head. In the background, I played a Spotify selection of 60s love songs. I continue to reflect upon Keats’s notion of ‘love-sound’ (Summa: diary (March 14-20, 2026)).
March 26 (Friday). 8.00 am: A communion and reflection. 8.30 am: Yesterday evening, I undertook one of my periodic shake-downs. This is not a process of confronting my many deficits, and beating myself up over them. (That’s neither healthy nor productive.) Rather, I list in a notebook my ambitions for the short- and mid-term, under the following headings: Spirituality & Religion; Health & Well-being; Emotions & Maturity; Attitudes, Family & Friends; and Intellect & Creative Activities. The aim is to: shore-up those things that are at risk of collapse; prune away unfruitful branches; determine what positive outlooks and actions should be initiated; clarify the trajectory; and pause for thanksgiving.
9.00 am: Studiology. It’ll be quiet around and about the studio until the builders arrive on Monday. I seized the advantage. This would be my last opportunity for a month to produce the final mix-down of the album’s tracks, in readiness for mastering. I’m ready for change. However, I’m not someone who believes that artists can reinvent themselves. This idea presupposes that they were invented in the first place. In my opinion artists emerged from themselves. In seeking to be other than they are, they must bring into the light an aspect of their present manifestation that has been occluded hitherto.
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