April 7, 2016

Screen Shot 2016-04-07 at 12.43.32

A final morning on essay marking, at least until my British Landscape consignment comes in on 12 April. I know that an essay has hit the mark when I engage it as ‘a good read’. It’s not the only or the most important criterion. But, in that moment, the writer has converted me from an examiner into an audience, No mean feat. Missing commas and dates, syntactical breakdowns, unresolved and overlong sentences, odd capitalisations, and awkward phrases are among the most conspicuous flaws in this and every batch.

DSC00615

In the background, I played the sections of ‘Image & Inscription’, listening to them as I would a work made by someone else.  (If this composition was a film, it would be given an ’18’ certificate, I’m sure. Terrifying!) Hearing the same piece in a new environment is like looking at a picture in a room other than its habitual context. You experience it afresh … either for better or for worse. Always confront, and exorcise from a work, those elements that make you wince. The pain of excluding them now cannot be compared to the pain of enduring them once the work is published.

Therefore … an afternoon and evening of tweaking and further, hair-splitting post production. On the last-run (and this is how I knew it was the last-run), old ideas were reinstated, mediocre passages axed (mercilessly), timid samples ennobled, and everything assumed a more defiant attitude. But such changes could not have been executed any earlier. One must honour the the often slow process of maturation … in the work, and in oneself.

DSC00666

Previous Post
April 6, 2016
Next Post
April 8, 2016