Summa: diary (May 1- 8, 2026)

‘They’ve all come to look for America’, Simon & Garfunkel, ‘America’ (1968).

May 1 (Friday). May Day. 7.00 am: Proof of presence:

May 2 (Saturday).

‘High up above the crowd / The great Valerio is walking’, Richard and Linda Thompson, ‘The Great Valerio’ (1974).

6.00 am: Awake. But in every department of your life, John?, he wondered. On my YouTube landing-page this morning: ‘Death is Not the End’, ‘Love isn’t Luck’, ‘Spot the Red Flags Early’, ‘Music Sounded Better in the Seventies’, ‘Why She Began to Doubt Calvinism’, ‘Soldier Meets Alien’, ‘I Met an Angel’, ‘I Saw Everything’, ‘Nothing is Real’, ‘Life is a Game’, ‘Problems Don’t Exist’, ‘He’s Not From Earth’, ‘Something Big is Coming’, ‘If they Say This, Leave’, ‘What is Religious Trauma’. ‘Ravi Shankar — Morning Raga’, ‘Jesus Told Me to Paint’, ‘ 8 Facts About Hell’, ‘Kids in a WOKE World’, ‘Quantum Immortality’, ‘Using a Ouji Board Ruined Our Lives’, ‘Are Aliens Demons?’ ( J D Vance thinks so, apparently.) Jonathan Swift — the author of Gulliver’s Travels (1726) — believed that angels were aliens from other planets.

These are the things that the YouTube algorithm has decided (on my behalf) that I want to see. Cosmological syncretism is not a contemporary phenomenon. The world is a veritable supermarket of competing systems of belief. People ‘pick ‘n mix’ elements, without any thought for their intrinsic compatibility. They’re looking not for intellectual cohesion but, rather, emotional consolation.

Were you alone on the end of the rope, above the town. when you jumped from the viaduct? (I thought of a painting, *by Chagall*, *of a husband and wife in an embrace, flying. I thought of 9/11.) Why did the photographer look up, just then? Who were they? (The photograph reminded me of a charcoal and thinly white-washed drawing.)*

May 3 (Sunday).

I’ve friends whom I support and who support me, and I’ve friends whom I support.

The sun shone gloriously, as Bank Holiday-makers snaked achingly slow along the Promenade in search of coffee and ice cream. My Prom watering-hole was doing a brisk business. A long queue stretched for nearly 20 yards. Gulls swung low, hoping to snatch away chips (fries), pizza, or pastries from distracted tourists. And I looked out towards the horizon, and remembered.

My postal votes for the May 7 local elections has been dispatched.

May 4 (Monday). 7.00 am: It’s a Bank Holiday; I couldn’t settle to anything substantial during the morning. The bread crumbs of easy admin had to suffice. 1.45 pm: I returned to the studio and one of the principal sound boards, with a view to revising its structure substantially. This is in preparation for my exploration of real-time improvisation, in July. The new configuration will be based on two parallel samplers. My ideal is to make the network of modulators and processors simpler and more modular.

May 5 (Tuesday). 7.00 am: Studyology. Writing, reconfiguring, and making tentative steps towards funding proposals. Like job applications these days, one is unlikely to get a reply to a request if it proves successful. It’s like posting into a black hole. Before the digital age, a mandatory stamped addressed envelope would be included with the application, so that a signed letter of acceptance or rejection could be returned to the sender. Very courteous.

A variety of domestic matters broke up my day, like an over-punctuated sentence. This has not been the best week, workwise. There’ll be weeks of plenty and weeks of want. It’s a principle of life. However, periods of inertia and fruitlessness may provide the rough aggregate on which the foundations of something lasting and worthwhile are laid. Nothing is ever wasted, if you apply yourself.

May 6 am (Wednesday). 8.00 am: Morning light.

8.30 am: Studylogy. I continued casting my bread upon the waters of funding until 11.00 am, when I climbed the hill to the university campus, where I met with my good friend, the artist Saoirse Morgan, and toured The Many Stories of Ivor Davies exhibition. Ivor began teaching in the year I was born, and as Head the School of Cultural Studies at Gwent College of Higher Education, Newport, Gwent, in the year I began my undergraduate degree there, in 1978.

Cultural Studies was one of the offspring of The Structure of Art and Design Education in the Further Education Sector (1970) report’s recommendations. It advocated (among other changes) upgrading the diploma to degree-level (and, as a consequence, art schools from Further to Higher Education status), as well as introducing an element of so-called ‘liberal studies’. The studies included art history and theory, and subjects and themes derived from other creative arts, as well as culture more broadly. I enjoyed the breadth, although many of my peers didn’t; they just wanted to be artists. Ivor, at that time, was both an art historian and an artist. In this respect, he liberated me to think beyond the binary (the apartheid) of art history and fine art practice. It was possible to undertake both at a professional level, with integrity.

To my mind, the exhibition would’ve had greater clarity and punch — both conceptually and visually — had at least 50% of the works been left out. The outcome of the curation (chiefly by the artist) looked like a claustrophobic version of the RA Summer Exhibition. This state of affairs doesn’t reflect well on Aberystwyth Arts Centre.

9.00 pm: The parting light.

May 7 (Thursday). 6.45 am: The neighbourhood was wood-pigeon-coo-corner for the first part of the morning. 7.00 am: The polling stations opened. There’ll be a media blackout on discussions until 11.00 pm. I anticipate that the political landscape of Wales will change significantly. 8.00 am: Studyology. I returned to my review of funders and posting enquiries. Deadlines to observe; forms to fill. Within hours of posting, explanations about why my bid could not be considered plopped into my Inbox. In all cases, the charities had narrowed their remit of support considerably fewer projects, in the past few years. Mine lay way-outside their boundaries. I pushed on.

8.30 pm: The parting light.

May 8 (Friday). VE Day. Yesterday, I was sent a photograph of a converted Protestant Welsh Nonconformist chapel in a nearby village. The evacuation of the pews, pulpit, and other furnishings had liberated the interior’s austerity — that pre-modern Minimalism aesthetic and aniconicism that distinguished so many of the early-19th century classical-style places of worship. In that represented space, I heard a sound profile (in my mind’s ear) — an airy acoustic, full of sonic reflections off the flat painted walls, ceiling, and wooden floor tiles. I could imagine how that environment might collaborate with the type of sounds I produce, to create a soundbox.

In 2017, I mounted a one-day explorative workshop at Bethel Welsh Baptist Church, Aberystwyth, entitled I. Nothing. Lack: MacMillan’s Sermons on Psalm 23 Remembered. Members of the public were free to enter the building to hear the noise, and talk with me about its manufacture and my intent. The fruit of my labours was released as an EP: I. Nothing. Lack (Psalm 23) (2018). The preponderance of wood absorbs sound projected into and around the auditorium, to create a flat acoustic.