8.15 am: A communion. To begin: A cold, hard stare at the inbox, the ‘list’, and the day’s appointments. Remorseless demands. Mounting ambition. Grim determination. You don’t remain where you are by slacking. And remaining takes far more effort than getting there. What would it possible to do today?

Having put writing behind me for a while, I opened the studio and reviewed the ‘225’ and the ‘All Scripture’ compositions. When I lose the connection with the studio for over a week, I feel uncomfortable on my return. Operations, attitudes, and procedures are no longer as familiar. I become a stranger to my own work. Maintaining continuity of engagement is always a priority – whatever else presses down upon me. The album’s title, about which I’ve been uncertain since the beginning of the project, has now been determined. It came to me while writing the on-line article. An appropriate title feels so obvious when it presents itself – as though it’d always been there, just waiting to surface.

I ordered additional RAM for my slow MacBook Pro. I need some for my head too. (If only.):

I began with the ‘bang’, once again, and proceeded forward of that point, second by second. Radical action was called for. I moved the furniture around the room with alarming recklessness. My rubrics for the day: 1. If something doesn’t work really well, then, it doesn’t work at all; 2. Compress; contract; intensify; vary; accentuate; edit; and 3. Take no hostages! Hold nothing back! Squander your ideas! The composition could be only 3-minutes long. Within that timeframe, the full potential of possibilities had to be realised.

After lunch, I took respite at a local watering-hole in order to catch up on admin: emails, appointment inquiries, and postgraduate matters:

My advice to myself regarding the morning’s work seemed peculiarly adapted to the needs of time management for the weeks ahead.

3.00 pm: I undertook an MA tutorial at Old College, before returning to the mothership for several residual, 3rd-year painting exchanges. In between tutorials, I looked at some of the prints in the current exhibition: Print REbels:

5.20 pm: Homeward.

7.30 pm: Studiology. Throughout the afternoon, I’d been longing to hear again my morning’s endeavours. The composition is close to being finished. I could hear the unity. The evening was set aside to tweaking individual tracks, and determining whether any were superfluous to the total effect of the work.