A morning of fine art and art history tutorials interspersed with an appointment with the doctor. Lessons to myself: 1. Confrontation is not always avoidable; sometimes it’s the necessary and best remedy. Whenever possible, it must to be engaged with grace and in good faith on both sides, and end with positive reconciliation and an agreed course of action for the future. 2. What to the tutor is a perfectly reasonable and productive idea may not appear so within the student’s sphere of thought. There’s always a degree of miscomprehension on both sides. My doctor’s surgery feels like the departure lounge of a small, under-used American airport. Today, take-off was delayed by over half an hour:

After lunch, I returned to the Art/Sound lecture while processing sound files for Matt. 20.10 in the background. There are several ancillary questions arising from my study that cannot be explored in the context of a fifty-minute lecture. Nevertheless, they’re worth addressing and may form the basis of essay questions for the module:

The death of the actor/comedian Robin Williams today recalls the truism: just because your funny, doesn’t mean your happy. Meanwhile thousands of anonymous civilians fleeing genocide are trapped in Northern Iraq without life-saving assistance. This is the greater tragedy. I continued with the lecture in the evening. Having written about magnetic tape recorders, I’m now pining for one … a Revox A77 Mk III: the king of the reels and a design classic, technically, sonically, and visually. Oh! The organic warmth of analogue:

It’s rather unnerving to be discussing the paintings of Claude Lorrain in one sentence and vintage condenser microphones in the next. But it makes sense:

I completed processing Matt. 10.20 sound files in readiness for the mix down tomorrow morning.