There’re times when we must wage war upon our own hearts, in order to subdue its rebellion and waywardness.
Saturday, October 17. 7.30 am: Proof of presence.
8.30 am: A communion. 9.00 am: Studiology, to begin. I began ‘crying’ again. I found myself imagining (‘audioising’) a cry as heard from a mountain opposite to where I’d be standing. (I’m the percipient and fixed point in this drama.) The mountains’ inclines are too regular and shallow to give rise to an echo. The voice would appear remote, somewhat reverberant, and travel on the wind towards me. In the account, the cry’s terrifying (‘diabolical’) aspect was not in its intrinsic sonorities but, rather, its ability to migrate from one part of the landscape to another in an instant. The creative re-imagining of the cry has, however, to suggest that diabolism. The compositions are, after all, ‘poetic’ responses to the text. naturalism and literalism must be assiduously avoided.
1.45 pm: After lunch, my younger son assisted his old man to finalise the triple-screen array and the audio-transmission test for Zoom. It now works tolerably well.
Monday, October 19. 8.00 am: A communion. 8.45 am: A review of the week ahead and the outstanding file-commutation problems. 9.00 am: Postgraduate admin was at the head of today’s agenda. I downed several tumblers of water in advance of my 10.00 am annual blood-test M.O.T. 9.40 am: Off to the GP’s surgery.
10.20 am: Back at the desk, a review of emails, a little research admin, and my diabolical sounds. The objective during the morning was to develop a transition between the percipient’s (John ab John) experience of curiosity and his developing sense of foreboding, leading to abject alarm. The sonic-landscapes compositions made for the Noisome Spirits suite are more ‘figurative’ than those of ‘Image and Inscription’, on The Bible in Translation album. This is a distinction of type rather than of quality.
7.30 pm: In between bouts of admin, I’d had a good day on composition. ‘John ab John’ had now developed its own distinctive identity among its siblings. After re-listening to my efforts, I opened ‘The Singing in the Air’ (version 2), and explored different approaches to equalisation.