Summa: diary (July 11-17, 2026)
July 11 (Saturday). 7.45 am: An ambulation. I looked across the sea to the Republic of Ireland, which I could not see but knew was there. And I remembered those places where I’d been, just over a week ago: Sligo, Ballina, Westport, and Galway. The people there would be busy shopping soon. The cafes, full and spilling-out on to the streets; and the cars, choc-o-bloc at box junctions and traffic lights that remain on red for ages.
I saw a porpoise today. The warmer currents encourage them to swim closer to the shore. But, I didn’t encounter the man with the two white poodles, always coming towards me. Perhaps they’re on holiday. On days like this I offer-up a benediction for this town, which has been my home for so many years.
10.30 am: Domestics. The installation of a new washing-line. Rawlplugs are, to me, the nameable ‘nameless dread’. It’s too easy to drill a hole just a little too big or small — with disastrous consequences. For what it’s worth, my strategy is to first make a hole 1 mm smaller than the recommended bore. Then, I redrill the hole 1 mm larger. Perfect, every time. My late-father is always at my elbow on these occasions: ‘Get all your tools together before you start, son’; ‘Put them in easy reach of where you’re working’; and ‘Clean your drills before putting them away’.
July 12 (Sunday).
‘Me and my shadow / Strollin’ down the avenue’, Irvin Berlin (1927).
9.30 am: An ambulation, before the temperature rose. (By 4.30 pm, it had reached 28-29°C.) The heat, coupled with a very poor night’s sleep, made me dozy and distant. (I may have faded-out at some point during Morning Eucharist.) I’d not visited Plascrug Avenue in over a month. The foliage was fulsome, and its colour, saturated. I recalled the anecdote about Wassily Kandinsky’s walk through a Russian forest, on such a day as this. He looked up at the sunlight falling through the leaves, and wanted to paint only their colour in all its intensity, abstracted from the form.
July 13 (Monday). 6.00 am: The sunlight drew me out of bed. A review of the week ahead. I’ve, as yet, had no success securing funds for the CD production. There’s too little money in the system. Organisations now focus their giving on very specific aspects of projects. My requirements don’t come under their umbrellas. Crowd funding isn’t an option. In the 18th-century model of book publication, subscribers gave money with the expectation that they would, in return, receive a copy of the book on publication. My intent, rather, is to sell the CDs and donate the proceeds to the Aberfan memorial maintenance fund. I persevere.
During the past month, I’ve been been in discussions with a new Welsh initiative that seels to develop a Spotify-like platform exclusively for music in Wales. The organisers intend to not only showcase ‘local talent’ but also overcome Spotify’s deplorable policy of artist compensation and restrictive practices. I may float a few of my own tracks on the site, and monitor the upshot. As my undergraduate tutor Dr Nicholas Pearson used to drill his students: you can’t afford to turn up your nose at modest and untried ‘venues’. You never know what may ensue.
7.45 am: An ambulation and shoppery before the start of the working day. I arrived at the local bakery shortly after 8.00 am. The sour dough loaves had only just been taken out of the oven, and were still hot.
9.15 am: Studiology. I returned to the sound equalisation project. 10.15 am: The builder returned to saw-off a redundant TV ariel from the front of the house, and fix my sticky study window. 11.00 am: Dr Reuben Knutson came around for coffee, and a conversation on topics ranging from where best to live in the UK, how to tell students that they aren’t ‘amazing’, grant applications, to adapting to retirement. 1.00 pm: Friends arrived, for a long lunch over salad, cheese, and bread.
2.30 pm: A few further leads in respect to funding to follow up this evening. The temperature rose to 26°C, and levelled at 24°C as the sun descended towards the horizon. As it did, too, on another West seaboard, of Ireland.
July 14 (Tuesday). 7.30 am: Studyology. In heatwaves, electrical equipment may overheat, and cut-out automatically in order to cool down. I’m a little like that too. Throughout the day, I moved from studio to study and back again, from desks to armchair, from writing to reading to sound mixing, downing icy water, eating cold fruit and salad, and turning my face to the fan.
July 15 (Wednesday).
‘Still, I can’t escape the ghost of you’ (Duran Duran, ‘Ordinary World’ (1992)).
7.30 am: An ambulation. A cool breeze blew landward from the Irish Sea; the rigging of boats in the harbour chimed and clattered desynchronously, like some avant-garde Japanese percussive orchestra; the shadows of promenaders were cast onto the beach; and the face of someone whom I’d not seen since before the pandemic came to mind. Why them? And, why now?
9.15 am: Following a little shoppery at the supermarket, I settled into work back at home. Studiology. Having had a month’s abstinence from listening to the tracks on the Darkness Covered the Whole Land album, I returned to the mixes with fresh ears. Minor adjustments were necessary. This is one of the drawbacks of having finished a project long before its release: too much time to tinker. In parallel, I considered developing another sound project, but on a more modest scale.
3.30 pm: Susan Forster visited. The agenda this afternoon included: her latest work, my latest work, and learning a difficult language. 7.30 am: I returned to the developing new sound project, interrogating the subject matter, and devising approaches for processing ideas as sound strategies.
July 16 (Thursday).
O! cadw ni rhag dyfod dydd / Na yr ein calon gan yn rhydd
[Oh! save us lest the magic goes / That every place in this world knows]
T Rowland Hughes, ‘Tydi a Roddaist’ [You Gave].
5.30 am: A review of yesterday’s work, and admin in support of the new sound project. 7.30 am: A communion. 8.00 am: Studiology. I looked around the studio for what could now be dismantled in advance of the next endeavour and, moreover, what needed to be built.
10.00 am: I returned to the track entitled ‘Hymn: You Could Hear the Hymn Singing (October 27, 1966)’, and replaced the sound of wind with that of birds singing. After the avalanche had hit the school, witnesses testified to a profound silence, such that not even birds were audible. In the track, as it’s presently re-imagined, the distant sound of singing at the funeral is accompanied by birdsong in the foreground. Thus on the day that many of the victims were laid to rest, the birds can be heard again. It never fails to astonish me how conceptual melioration so often leads to aesthetic refinement.
3.00 pm: I moved on to the fourth track: ‘Water Music (1910-66)’. I constructed three phrases, built from 3 x 10 overlays of tracks taken from the 144 Variations album. The phrases are segmented and reordered to form an entirely new melodic line, which weaves in and out of the existing composition. The track required music other than the music of the water that rained down upon Tip 7 and coursed beneath it prior to the collapse.
July 17 (Friday). 6.15 am: A wood pigeon coos outside my study window, gulls call overhead, cars approach slowly on the road below, front doors close close-by. The world awakes, hesitantly and by degree. 8.30 am: Studiology. Throughout the day and into the evening, I pressed on making minor adjustments to several compositions. Over the weekend, I’ll re-listen to the amendments in the context of the album in toto.
4.00 pm: An ambulation and orientation.
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