Summa: diary (March 28-31, 2026)
I disapprove of myself.
March 28 (Saturday). 7.15 am: An ambulation through the town and along the Promenade. ‘Hood up, zip up, and buck up, Harvey! “Sweet”, you are not’.
A cold wind blew across the Irish Sea, shoreward, at 24 mph, whipping the waves into a frenzy. At the harbour, the masts and rigging of the yachts sung like many wind-chimes in concert.
9.15 am: From seawaves to sound waves. Studiology. I returned to the album mix-down, while the relative silence outside my studio windows still prevailed. One of the university’s Welsh translators (whom I’d contacted about the album’s title and introductory text) emailed to ask: ‘What are “sound postcards”‘?, referring to its sub-title. ‘Think of “picture postcards”; they’re an acoustic equivalent’, I replied (unhelpfully). Perhaps the best I can hope for is formal equivalence on this occasion. The phrase has too much ‘slippage’ (as the structuralists used to say) — is too abstract — for dynamic translation.
For geeks, only … . Usually, when mixing-down, I aim to maintain the peak-level volume at around -3 dB. Although, at 32 bit resolution, there’s sufficient headroom above 0 dB to avoid distortion. Some of the compositions incorporate over-driven sounds, evoking the noises of industry and the tip’s avalanche, principally. They require considerable loudness to make their presence felt.
I am grateful for the airplay of ‘Men as Trees Walking’, from my The Biblical Record (2019) album, on the ‘Modernist Composers’ edition of The Sound Projector Radio Show, this evening.
March 29 (Sunday). Palm Sunday.
A short explanation of a long-standing problem: ‘A’ was responsible for ‘B’ was responsible for ‘A’, and so on. (A loop of causality.)
7.00/8.00 am: I’d forgotten that the clocks went forward by an hour last night. Off to a bad start; the remainder of the day felt out of sync with my internal clock (which had to be reset manually). A sullen rainy day for ruminations about the past, as well as some productive reading. Where and when do I draw the line between then and now?
8.15 pm: The long evenings, which will extend into September, had begun.
March 30 (Monday). 8.00 am: There was a clumping of boots on the wooden deck that had been erected parallel to my study windows, as the builder and painter surveyed what needed to be done in the weeks ahead. The builder heralds from Shropshire. He moved to Wales as a child, learned Cymreig, and is now as welsh as anyone in this fair county of Ceredigion. In the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, tradesmen in Shropshire and the Welsh Marches often spoke some Welsh in order to conduct business with their monoglot counterparts in Wales. National boundaries are linguistically permeable.
I decamped to a bedroom below my study, where I’d set-up a work-desk by the window over six months ago. Here, I’d prepare the 16 ‘illustrations’ that’ll accompany the tracks on the online version of the album.
11.00 am: I honoured my coffee commitment with Mr Knutson, whom I’d bumped into last week, at a local cafe. Our topical agenda today included: teaching during the pandemic; the challenges facing the Generation Alpha; the virtues and perils of living in Bristol; and the static housing market. Reuben, I discovered, lives just two streets away from my house. Further coffee conferences, then.
12.15 pm: Back at the my remote studio, I developed greater momentum. If I keep my nose to the grindstone, I maybe able to complete most of the suite before Good Friday.
March 31 (Tuesday). 8.00 am: The builders began dismantling the roof above my studio and study. The old slates are original. This side of the attic has not seen the light of day in over 140 years. History was being dismantled and remade — and very loudly, at that. 8.30 am: Studyology. Writing. ‘Shake, rattle, and roll’ along the rooftop (And it wasn’t Bill Haley and His Comets.)
9.15 am: Remote-studiology. I continued working in relative quiet. When image making, I prefer relative silence (or ambient sounds in the locale) rather than music and voice-based podcasts. The 16 ‘illustrations’ are derived from screenshot captures of film-footage taken at the site of the disaster in October 1966. First, 4:3-ratio versions of the same (alluding to the screen-ratio of TVs in the mid-1960s) are printed; secondly, the prints are cut into 0.5 cm horizontal strips (alluding to the lines on TVs in the mid-1960s); thirdly, they are shuffled; fourthly, the strips are re-arranged (and glued down) manually, deploying a chance procedure analogous to the algorithmic technique that I use to shatter and randomly re-organise sound files); fifthly, the collages are scanned and converted into digital images; and, finally, they are tinted blue-grey (alluding to the colour-cast on black and white TVs in the mid 1960s).
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