Summa: diary (August 1-7, 2026)

I will show you an ocean.

August 1 (Saturday). Lamas. 7.15 am: Proof of presence.

7.30 am: An ambulation. A house with its door-light still on. I recalled the house that had haunted me throughout my stay in Osaka. (See the closing paragraph of Notes on Japan II (March 29-April 9, 2024).)

9.30 am: A dismantling. My rigs are project specific. Once a project is complete, every component is stripped down, dusted, and placed back in storage. In my scheme of things, ideas determine methods determine equipment.

July 2 (Sunday). 8.00 am: Ambulation 1. I first began paying attention to the occupants of Aberystwyth’s Municipal Cemetery during the pandemic’s period of state-sponsored exercise. Then, as now, the grass grew tall. Among these gravestones, I’ve found consolation and a space in which to consider. I searched in vain for the statue of an angel that I looked to once, but have never been able to locate again. She/He had lost the lower part of the right arm. Maimed. Incomplete. Imperfect. Just like me.

Looking out at the Irish Sea from the bay today, I could see (hazily), to my left, all the way to St Dogmaels (or thereabout) and, on my right, the full extent of the Llŷn Peninsula.

2.30 pm: Ambulation 2. Coed Gogeddan [Gogeddan Woods]. When my sons were young, they played Poosticks from the bridge over the stream. (This afternoon’s visit is an echo of one that I made seven years ago.) Little water flowed today. We need rain.

It’s a dense and dark wood. The sound of traffic on the main road, which runs parallel, is barely a distant hum. Amid these long-established trees, it’s possible to experience a quality of silence that’s ‘loud’ (like a pressure on the ears). The sensation was broken only by the crack of branches, the scrunch of parched soil beneath my feet, and, this afternoon, the play of raindrops on the canopy of leaves far above me. I could’ve been ten thousand years away.

July 3 (Tuesday). 7.30 am: An ambulation over Trefechan Bridge and the Afon Rheidol [River Rheidol] and, then, over a nameless bridge spanning the Afon Ystwyth [River Ystwyth], to the harbour wall and Tan y Bwlch Beach. I rarely visit Trefechan village. It’s not on a route that I travel, either leaving or returning to Aberystwyth. As such, the place remains fresh and a curiosity. I should venture there more often.

8.45 am: Studyology. This will be a week for writing and reflecting, rather than sounding. Today is one of two buffer-days, wherein I separate what has been from what is to come (mentally and physically). On the slate: further funding applications need to be completed; the presentation accompanying the Aberfan project albums advanced; the book project, reviewed; and the admin of previous projects filed away. I looked again in my ‘draw’ of project seeds that have never been planted, including and related to: Friedrich Jürgenson and Konstantīns Raudive’s Electronic Voice Phenomenon recordings; a putative tape-recording of the Virgin Mary talking, captured in 1961 at Garabandal, Spain; and the efforts of South Korean Christians to float passages of the Gospels over the border with North Korea using helium balloons. I’ve enough on my plate at present; but I’m content that they’re there, lying in wait (perhaps).

2.00 pm: Studiology. I continued clearing the decks of equipment, interspersed with periods of reading and writing.

July 4 (Tuesday).

Introspection/retrospection.

8.00 am: A further buffer-day. Yesterday evening and, again, before I fell asleep, I remembered (through feelings) not what I’d forgotten but, rather, could recall with greater intensity. One of the advantages of ageing is that the past feels more present. And those who’ve passed, closer. I hold onto what has gone before, the best and the worst of it. (I miss both.) A commonplace, perhaps — but the past has made me what I am. It also provides, if not solutions, then, some explanation for the person I became. Life is not over. ‘Everything to play for’, my inner-tutor shouts from the sidelines. My aim in the future (which begins now) is to walk where I’ve never trod, recover what has been lost, and prepare for the inevitable and unforeseen plot twists to come.

10.30 am: I looked back (and backwards) through my Diary (September 15, 2018 – June 30, 2021), and remembered friends — some of whom are, while still in this world, are no longer in mine.

1.45 pm: ‘Focus!’ I reviewed a funding call for a public engagement project that would begin next year. As it stands, I’ve no ideas that fit the remit of the call. That can change. 3.00 pm: I reviewed the last half of my first set of blogs: Diary (July 16, 2014-September 4, 2018). The exercise is undertaken every year around this time, to ensure that its format and images have remained intact following a year’s worth of WordPress updates. With, now, twelve years of blogs behind me, this takes time. Nevertheless, for someone who, like me, suffers from chronic nostalgia, the task isn’t burdensome.

August 5 (Wednesday). 7.00 am: I took up the same diary, in June 2016, and continued my reverse review. Year by year, people whom I’ve known and loved get younger (and thinner, in some cases, or less grey, in my case). My diaries are a litany of texts and images about: endless marking and external examining; student feedback and surveys; open days and graduation ceremonies; School of Art exhibition openings; tutorials, lectures, and seminars in progress; ‘principles and observations’; student presentations; my home studio and study; equipment and rigs under construction; visual art exhibitions; album compositions; guitar practise sessions; my open-studio projects; articles published; research trips; squares of dark chocolate eaten; tea drank; medical appointments; photographs from times before the diary; exhibitions, concerts, and plays attended; books read; holidays taken; commutes to and from work; funerals attended and cemeteries visited; music listened to (repeatedly); heartache and heart searching; tragedy and sudden loss; love and grief; and the times before and after they arrived and departed.

10.00 am: A haircut. 11.00 am: For the next hour and half, I completed my review of the first dairy. 12.30 pm: Thereafter, I conducted spot checks on this Intersections site (which now comprises 280 posts, beginning in 2013). 2.00 pm: A ‘to do’ list of solutions (or, rather, alternative strategies) to problems that I’ve failed to solve was compiled. To begin, I’ll knock again on doors that wouldn’t open for me six months ago; ‘Yet because of his importunity’ (Luke 11.8). 7.30 pm: Reading. It’s always good to hear a voice other than my own in my head.

July 6 (Thursday).

May 29, 2018: ‘If we can do it for a week, then, we can do it for a month; if for a month, then, for a year; if for a year, then, for a decade; and if for a decade, then, for the remainder of our lives. This is the discipline and mutual obligation’.

6.30 am: A communion. 7.30 am: An ambulation. Like ‘Ol’ man river’, the sea ‘just keeps rollin”, as it has done ever since I first came to Aberystwyth in March 1982. As it will continue to, long after I’ve left this town and world.

9.00 am: Studyology. Project correspondence (door knocking), financial transactions, and writing would occupy the morning and afternoon. While rummaging through YouTube videos, I came across the announcement that someone whom I’d known — belonging to a church with which she and I had been associated — died very recently of a comparatively rare illness. She was my age, a retired GP, and an arts and crafts enthusiast. On those occasions when we’d pass in town, our conversation would invariably gravitate to art — the discovery of which had revolutionised her life, she believed. In my time as a teacher, I was privileged to nurture many who, having come to the end of their professional careers, found what they’d always been looking for in life at the end of either a pencil or a brush.

1.30 pm: For the remainder of the afternoon: back to the presentation on the Aberfan project that no one has asked for.

August 7 (Friday). 6.15 am: The morning release of a track from the 144 Variations album: Eryl Jones. 8.00 am: Studyology. Writing. In the UK media, presently, are a pair of not entirely unconnected stories that have, as they say, ‘captured the public imagination’. They’re centred on the claims of two individuals. The one, Count Binface, is a comedian, satirist, and alien from the planet Sigma 9 (so he says). The Count is one of the candidates running against the Reform party MP and leader Nigel Farage in the forthcoming local bi-election at Clacton-on-Sea. This scenario could only happen in the UK. The precedent for fielding so-called ‘novelty candidates’ derives, I suspect, from the Monty Python Election Night Special sketch of 1970. (Let’s hope the real-world result is the same.) We all know that Binface is not a serious politician. (But, then again, neither is Farage). The former’s assertion to be a ‘space warrior’ is implausible. It’s a persona. A knowing pretence. He’s not a fake.

The other individual is Jason Arday, who was, until recently, a professor at the University of Cambridge. It’s not for me to pass judgement prior to the official investigation. However, as it stands, things aren’t looking good for either him or the academic institutions that have played a part in his education and elevation. It’s a mess. I’ve undertaken a PhD in Art History, taught doctoral students, and, subsequently examined doctoral theses as an internal and external examiner (and failed a number). I’ve also scrutinised academic job applications, appointed staff, and written copious references in support of candidates seeking anything from tutorships to Chairs. At Aberystwyth University, the process of review and investigation is rigorous and transparent. Up to ten members of the collegiate (including academics from several academic departments and representatives from Human Resources) may be involved in the decision-making process. In short, the Arday debacle need not have happened had the institutions involved placed integrity above every other consideration.

9.00 am: Off to the British Red Cross Shop to off-load clothes before settling to work. Much to do before my weekend away. Further writing and engagement with potential funders, medical appointment follow-up, and travel preparations.

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