Month: May 2020

May 30, 2020

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Silence is not the absence of sound, rather it is an aspect of sound WFH: DAY 55. 8.00 am: A communion. House (detail) #35: 8.30 am: A review of the inbox and my plans for the working day. 9.00 am: A little mopping up of MA Vocational Practice presentation assessments. 9.45 am: Refreshments were served. My habit of eating a…
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May 29, 2020

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WFH: DAY 54. 6.30 am: Rise. House (detail) #34: I shaved to Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto No. 2 this morning. It’s wonderful forward momentum had me tripping spritely around the bathroom. 7.30 am: A communion. 8.00 am: Adminy stuff was approached with vim and vigour, fired by a desire to apportion the larger part of the day to research catch-up. 9.00…
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May 28, 2020

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‘Every nation gets the government it deserves‘ (Joseph de Maistre (1753–1821)). Certainly, it got the government that the majority of people in the UK believed in implicitly and voted for. But they didn’t deserve the current state of affairs, any more than those who cast their lots in a different direction. I’ve lived under the governance of thirteen Prime Ministers…
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May 27, 2020

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‘What is truth?’ (John 18.28) WFH: DAY 52. 8.00 am: A communion. 8.45 am: A quick Twitter review and the inbox before settling into the morning’s round of PhD tutorials. All my discussions seem to be of the present these days. The future appears like an under-exposed negative, presently: vague forms suggesting the presence of something more defined; spaces where…
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May 26, 2020

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WFH: DAY 51. Yesterday was a time for putting things away, self-examination, planning future dispositions of the mind and heart, reaffirming determinations, and standing motionless on one spot. I don’t often write to my constituency MP, but yesterday’s on-going debacle of governmental integrity and indecisiveness required a response: 8.00 am: A Communion. 8.45 am: Inbox plunder. 9.00 am: Today, there’d…
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May 23, 2020

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‘Be sure your sin will find you out’ (Numbers 32.23) House (detail) #30: WFH: DAY 50. Late yesterday evening, I read a conversation with Carly Berwick, an American sound artist, digital artist, and journalist who, like me, came to sound through fine art rather than through music. And, like me, found it difficult to locate her interests in sound and…
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May 22, 2020

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WFH: DAY 49. 8.15 am: A communion. 9.00 am: Fruit tea in hand, I caught-up on residual admin, notifications of classes and tutorials for next week, and student references. (In the background: BBC Radio 3’s Jazz Record Requests. The show featured the work of the saxophonist Lee Konitz, who died at the age of 92 last month. I heard him…
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May 21, 2020

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First, the flood; secondly, the fire; thirdly, the plague; and fourthly … . There will be a fourth. WFH: DAY 48. 8.00 am: A communion. 8.40 am: This would be the final day of third-year painting tutorials until the new academic year. (Never has that sounded less certain than now.) There were draft Powerpoints of exhibition submissions to review before…
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May 20, 2020

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WFH: DAY 47. 8.15 am: Doctory matters. Good to keep in touch … to keep on top of things. The surgery’s telephone answering message advised that if I was ‘either unable to breath or coughing-up blood’ then I should phone ‘999’, or else press ‘2’ (which seemed decidedly less alarming). 8.45 am: Assessments were resumed. Today I worked in the…
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May 19, 2020

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WFH: DAY 46. 8.15 am A communion. 8.45 am: I wired-up my ‘play’-station and tested the system, so that I could twiddle and click in between tutorials and admin tasks. I need to build into my regime reasons for standing up and walking around periodically. Sitting for long periods is problematic for me. Thus working from home requires intelligent, practical…
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