Summa: diary (June 1-5, 2026)

There’s someone else I’d rather be / Living in a world of make-believe (Jackie Trent & Tony Hatch, ‘The Other Man’s Grass is Always Greener’ (1972)).

June 1 (Monday). Proof of presence.

7.00 am: Studyology. I completed updating my websites and CV, before developing a spreadsheet of news and journal outlets relevant to the two albums. 11.00 am Studiology. With the 144 Variations of a Theme by Joseph Parry for the Victims of Aberfan released over the weekend, I returned to the studio and began finalising the loudness equalisation (which can take an age) for Darkness Covered the Whole Land: sixteen sound postcards of Aberfan. This will be released on October 21, 2026. The tracks were uploaded to my Sound site, so that I could hear them for the first time as an audient. I can do no more on the book until I hear back from the proposal’s reviewers and a prospective publisher.

While working, my mind gravitated to an earlier idea, about in-situ compositions of new Welsh hymn tunes:

While waiting on Platform 3 at Shrewsbury station for a train, which had been delayed by nearly two hours due to problems caused by the storm, I alighted upon this plaque. I assumed that ‘here’ implied where I was standing, or thereabouts, on Platform 3. An image came into my head of the composer, see-sawing on his toes and heels with his hands clasped behind his back, either humming or whistling aloud a tune, while honing the melody and constructing the harmonies, as he himself marked time before an equally late train arrived. Then I thought, wouldn’t it be something to extend Hughes’ practice and compose further ‘hymns’, in situ, on the other platforms of the station. (I logged the idea in my mental archive of ‘possible ventures’ for the future.) The only precedent that I’m aware of a railway station being the context for sound performance is Robert Fripp’s November Suite (1996), which was performed at Green Park Station, Bath.

John Harvey, Diary (October 17, 2017).

Subsequently, I discovered that the American blues and gospel singer and guitarist Sister Rosetta Sharpe had played at the, then, disused Chorlton railway station on Wilbraham Road, Manchester, in 1964.

June 2 (Tuesday). 6.30 am: Yesterday evening, I began designing a PowerPoint file to accompany a public presentation about the two albums — should one be asked for in October. I’ve not made a file in several years; then, it was for an online presentation. While I loathed giving papers on Zoom, I consoled myself that the accompanying images were being seen in close to ideal conditions (if viewed on a computer monitor, that is). I’ve spoken at too many conferences where the venue’s curtains have not been either made of blackout material or else fully drawn, or else some of the lights were left on. Thus, the illustrations were seen, as though through a mist. And the audience accepted this condition, tacitly. Appalling!

Standards were higher in the age of 35mm-slide transparency projection, in my opinion. I miss the buzzy-hum of the Kodak Carousel SA-V series, and that complex and simultaneous whirr, slurr, hum, click and clack, as the carousel rotated and slides were dropped and retrieved.

When the School of Art was first converted from the former chemistry laboratories, and opened for business at the Edward Davies Building, my colleagues and I insisted that the lecture theatre ought to be pitch dark when the blinds were drawn. We achieved 95% blackout.

9.30 am: I continued with project promotion — (‘prepare to be dispirited’, the inner-tutor warned) — and scoped radio stations in Wales, of which there are quite a few. You never know which fish will take the bait.

2.30 pm: At the Arts Centre for a long overdue coffee-conflab with Dr Dafydd Roberts — my erstwhile Research Officer, and continuing friend and companion in sound. I wanted to hear about his most recent public project and tour. His commitment to improvisation, performance, concert curation, and artist-‘platforming’ is admirable. He has done what I have not / cannot / would not.

June 3 (Wednesday). 7.00 am: I released the fifth track from the 144 Variations set: ‘Dennis Arscott’. He had lived here:

7.15 am: I pressed on with book and research grant correspondence. ‘Hello! I’m retired, but an Emeritus Professor and still research active, you know. Am I still eligible? I have my own bath chair’. I’ve no argument with young and early career academics getting the lion’s share of what little money there is in the pot. All I’m begging for are ‘the crumbs that fall from the table’. I cast a great deal of bread on the waters. 12.00 pm: Some slices returned on the incoming tide, along with advice that I can respond to, fruitfully.

Now comes the tough part: devising a table of contents and writing a sample chapter for the proposed book. This requires the author to know the end from the beginning and the essence of everything in between. A tall order. I did the same when writing my PhD Art History proposal . The proposal proved to be extensive. However, the argument, content, structure, and conclusion of the final thesis was, three years later, almost exactly as I’d conceived it at the outset. Such, is a gift bestowed rarely.

Pseudomorphs:

A

‘A supplemental page of full stops, commas, and exclamation points’. Dexter explained:

Nowing ones complane of my book the fust edition had no stops … I put A nuf here and thay may peper and solt as they please.

The Public Domain Review.

B

I made this diptych ‘drawing’ (for want of a better word) in the second year of my undergraduate fine art studies. It represents a fusion of ordinarily unassociated forms: hieroglyphs; electronic circuit boards; and musical notation.

June 4 (Thursday). 8.00 am: A communion. 9.00 am: I made a very minor adjustment to all 144 variations, by adding 1-second of silence at the beginning of each track. This is to compensate for either the variable broadband speeds at which files are downloaded — not everyone enjoys fibre-optic delivery — or a tardy Bluetooth connection between the listener’s player and earbuds or headphones. The additional interval prevents the sound from starting fractionally late on firing. I’ve no reason to believe that anyone has experienced this problem, yet. Nevertheless, my intervention will ensure that they won’t. 11.00 am: Done! Back, then, to loudness equalisation for the Darkness Covered the Whole Land album.

And then it struck me: Shrewsbury railway station doesn’t have platforms 1 and 2. There are only platforms 3 to 7. 1 and 2 have been disused since the 1980s, and the former number 2 no longer has a track. I’ve been embarking on, and alighting from, trains at this station for over 40 years. Why have I only realised their absence now?

1.30 pm: An ambulation and banking outing under fast shifting grey clouds and in the spitting rain. 2.00 pm: I completed further correspondence with public institutions regarding the two albums, as well as the possibilities of an exhibition of artefacts and public presentations at participating venues. These days, everything has to be ‘cost neutral’ for the organisations involved. Ambition on the cheap.

3.00 pm: I returned to the PowerPoint file. Once the template design and one indicative slide are completed … its all down hill. More of the same, from hereonin. Not that I’ve written one word of the presentation yet. However, my public presentations and academic lectures have, on occasion, begun and ended with a slide. Visuality (or, in this present case, sonority) rules. 7.30 pm: On with correspondence.

June 5 (Friday). 5.00 am: Awake, but too early. I ‘potched’ around the house, quietly. In South Wales, we use the term to describe a rather noncommittal and aimless (‘half-arsed’) approach to doing things that are easily done (but don’t really need doing, right now), and in no particular order.

7.45 am: An ambulation along the Promenade, taking in a ‘medium hot-white-chocolate to takeaway, please’, before the rains returned. 9.00 am: Studyology. I returned to the book’s table of contents and correspondence.

11.00 am: Studiology: I returned to loudness equalisation. Often my works include very loud and very soft passages in the same composition. Thus, automated processes for measuring overall loudness are flummoxed. Resolution can be achieved only by ear, and manually. It’s a craft — hard won, in my case.

2.00 pm: Having dealt with the shrapnel of a paper towel that had exploded in the washing machine, covering bespattering every item of clothes, and tea clothes, with white flecks, I returned to the study (shell shocked). A number of responses to my correspondence of the last few days had plopped into my Inbox. There were now many ‘plans within plans’ (to quote the Guild Navigator); too many to address in one day. Busyness is happiness, in my life.

For the remainder of the afternoon, I drew back from all of the projects to survey the whole. Did I see evidence of consolidation and focus, the possibility of betterment, and the likelihood of change?

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