8.30 am. What Bank Holiday? I made additions and adjustments to this week’s tutorial schedule, addressed student queries and reviewed draft submissions, looked over the final Chapels in Wales lecture in readiness for tomorrow’s final (ever) class, dispatched instructions for the MA Vocational Practice presentations and Portfolio assessments, and wrote to the British Library’s Sound Archive, before filling the days of my diary for the next few weeks with assessment times.

In the background, I’m listening to the music of the African-American saxophonist John Coltrane (1926-67) (sainted by the African Orthodox Church) — one of the first musician/composers to ally jazz and religious sentiment:

The final part of his masterpiece A Love Supreme, ‘Psalm’, is a setting of his devotional poem, of which each syllable is given a corresponding musical note.

1.30 pm. After lunch, I reviewed further the PhD Art History thesis that I’d begun last week. A change of working environment was in order: from study to studio:

By 4.30 pm, I’d completed my reading and developed a set of interrogative questions for the candidate’s viva voce. Now, to review the accompanying documentation.

An erotic book:

6.20 pm. Practise session 1: pick-up explorations. 7.30 pm. I scrutinised and tested the accompanying documentation related to the PhD, and ended the evening looking over my book proposal. Back to the Belmont Loose Leaf File.

9.15 am. A trip to the Farmers’ Market in cold rain, the megaphonic bleat of a mobile party candidate drifting on the wind. What!?:

At the market, the ‘egg lady’ hadn’t arrived, and the ‘pasty man’ wanted to sell up and go home soon (such was the weather). A forlorn turnout.

10.15 am. My morning was focussed on rationalising Handboard 1. Simplicity, economy, and functionality are the guiding principles. The introduction of a delay effector on Handboards 1 & 2, and a reverberation effector on Handboard 2, helps to restore the stereo ‘image’ of the sound source at the end of the processing chain. Now, too, both boards are symmetrical in terms of their final stage modulation:

It remains for me to decide whether Handboard 3 (which is routed through the mixer’s effects loop) is superfluous.

The are several pitfalls to using effectors to colour a source. For example, one can be beguiled by the effect. Rigour is called for. The sound produced must articulate some aspect of either the source content or its processing. (In this case: the meaning and construction of the second commandment’s text, and its conversion into an engraving.) In this regard, the effectors are subordinate to, and interpretive of, the source — rather than an end in themselves.

1.30 pm. Following lunch, I made trial of the effects-loop and direct-to-computer recording facility. Both are operational. 2.30 pm. On with the book proposal and a little CD propagation research. The problem with composing a proposal is knowing what not to deal with, and what has not been dealt in other authors’ publications already. In short, one needs to find the hole in the subject field and plug it. I’m getting somewhere. (I think.)

5.15 pm. The dank air and grey clouds have persisted throughout day. The garbled, gritty sound of a public-address system, now very far off, is still audible:

5.20 pm. No more! 6.20 pm. Practise session 2: dynamic expression.  7.30 pm. An evening with the family.

8.15 am. I needed to follow up the R R B V E Ǝ T N Ƨ O A  CD publicity strategy, which was initiated last week. After composing a letter to Mr Fripp with regard to such, I returned to the ‘Image & Inscription’ project. I want to redo all that I’ve done so far (with respect to the multitrack mix) — just to see (hear) whether it could be done better. [John 1: ‘I don’t have time for this!’; John 2: ‘Improvement makes its own time.’] 10.30 am. Ah! Tea:

11.00 am. The exceedingly slow process of stretching sound files — from around 5 minutes to exactly 20 minutes in length — begins. In the interim, emails are condemned while MA assessment admin, reckoned with.

1.30 pm. Following lunch and a delivery and pickup mission at the School, I began creating a playback/record system to process the sound of the engravings made for ‘Image & Inscription’:

Software downloads, upgrades, restarts, settings, and reconfigurations — the irksome but necessary preparations before creative engagement. Handboard 2 will need to be overhauled in order to reverse the direction of the effectors — from input to output — in line with that of Handboard 1. And, Handboard 3 will need to be routed through the mixer’s effects-loop. Ah well! … Back to the drawing book:

6.20 pm. Practise session 1: 3-finger exercises (sans index). 7.30 pm. The overhaul begins. To understand something (even something one has made), it must be taken apart and reassembled. Thereafter, every part must be tested independently, then in connection with its neighbours, and, finally, in relation to the community of parts:

The loss of the source recording’s stereophony (due to the signal being fed through mono effectors) in unsatisfactory. A monophonic representation of a stereo source imposes limits upon all the sound’s dimensions (these being, the left, centre, and right field spread, and its position within the front-to-back perspective of the acoustic space). At present, the sound feels like a large object squeezed into a too small space.

8.15 pm. To the School to pick up my laptop; 8.30 am. To the Old College for a morning of third-year tutorials. The sky and air are decidedly autumnal. My cohort appear to be either ahead of the game or destined to complete their work comfortably in time for the show. The weather is improving:

Some principles and observations:

• Listen to your heart. Hearing the counsel of tutors and peers is both necessary and wise. But knowing when to reject that advice requires greater wisdom by far.
• Take photographs of your work space and colleagues before you leave university. As you get older, you’ll realise that memories alone are an insufficient means of recollection.
• Reckon on it: as you approach the exhibition, it’s likely that you’ll experience profound shifts in your estimation of the work which you’ve produced. One day, you’ll be close to ecstasy; the next, despair. Regard neither. These are responses that arise from mere feelings that, themselves, arise from tiredness and stress. A sober judgement is required — one that must be informed by the mind and a criteria and opinions external to yourself.
• ‘Integration’ is one of my watchwords: the bringing together or fusing of the myriad aspects of who one is in a single artwork.
• ‘Art is greatest which conveys to the mind of the spectator, by any means whatsoever, the greatest number of the greatest ideas’ (John Ruskin). I don’t agree with, what is otherwise, a well expressed sentiment, but his emphasis on an appeal to the mind (rather than the eye), through ideas (rather than perceptual phenomena), and ‘by any means’ (rather than traditional fine art forms only) has always struck me as prophetic of late-twentieth century art.

I feel both anticipation and melancholy at this time of the year. The approaching degree show represents the consummation of three years’ endeavour. But with it comes the loss of a fine bunch of earnest, hardworking, interesting, and fun-to-be-with students. I’m about to endure my annual, mini bereavement:

2.00 pm. After lunch, I undertook a ‘micro-tutorial’ with one of our MA painters before heading back to the School:

If one’s activities are being compromised by systems set up to monitor those activities, then something is dreadfully amiss with the latter. (My day dictates my diary, and not vice versa.) This problem is endemic to UK bureaucracy. Monitoring has become synonymous with control. We must now behave in ways that are measurable and accountable. This is not so much an issue of academic freedom as one of individual liberty. But I digress …

3.40 pm. PhD and MA admin catch up and one second year painting tutorial. 5.20 pm. Homeward.

7.30 pm. ‘Death to all incoming emails!’ On with MA assessment manoeuvres. Finding available rooms for such in mid May is hard. Back to assessing the PhD art history thesis, begun on Saturday.

9.20 pm. Landscape with apparitional rocking chair:

Not long after this photograph was taken, three illuminations appeared on the horizon. Two were as far apart from one another as the wing lights (left and right) on a passenger plane; the other was situated in the further distance. The lights were either static or in slow motion. Less than fifteen seconds later, they disappeared. Commercial aircraft don’t fly so close low in the sky and certainly not at 90-degrees to the shoreline. In my Chapels in Wales lecture on Tuesday, I discussed a similar phenomenon, which was observed over three hundred at fifty years ago and, possibly, again around 1904 — the year of the Welsh religious revival: The Welsh antiquarian Thomas Pennant described what, in Welsh, were called Tan Dyeithr (angelic strange fires), which moved in the sky over Cardigan Bay.

8.15 am. I dealt with small admin before setting out for the chemists. The process of successfully arranging repeat prescriptions is beyond my ken. This is my third attempt:

9.30 am. The National Screen & Sound Archive of Wales, as part of our joint Strategic Insight Programme, has sent me a listing of its entire holding of 78-rpm recordings:

It’s a fascinating collection that includes ‘heavy’ and light operas, symphonies, concertos, waltzes, organ music, hymns, religious songs, war marching songs, popular songs, versions of Handel’s Messiah in abundance, the Manx national anthem, lectures on music, ‘Old time excuse me dances’ (whatever they are), and speeches from the ‘General Election 1929’. But it’s the ‘[Title unidentified]’ material which is most intriguing. What, I wonder, if anything, do these recordings have in common? How does a recording get anonymised? 11.00 am.  Having reviewed the listing, I got back to the book profile. One way of imposing a shape on a body of research material is to cast it in the form of a module proposal. (Would there be a significant take-up for a module on sound and spirit?) Throughout the morning, I joined in a volley of emails related to the cover for the coming show’s catalogue. Determining the encapsulating image is not easy.

1.30 pm. To the School:

2.00 pm. The annual exhibition meeting, convened by Mr Garratt. In another life, he’d be a military strategist. The sense of forward momentum is now tangible. An end is in sight. 3.30 pm. Homebase: book work. I begin to draft the description, rationale, and aims of the project. This is the first major hump of any large writing project. The difficulty is that one has to conceive and articulate the whole before one has even begun to write the first sentence.

6.20 pm. Practise session 1.  7.30 pm. I continue drafting. However, discrete ideas insist on being heard instead. One takes what’s on offer. I look to the sky:

When stuck … read. There is no better lubricant for thought than engaging the mind of another.

8.10 am. Another Spring/Autumn fusion day. To the School:

9.00 am. Chapels in Wales was on the topic of the revivalist Evan Roberts‘s religious visions. I keep coming back to him. It’s the attraction of opposites, I suspect. 10.00 am. A PhD Fine Art inquirer’s meeting. I’m encouraged to see so many master’s students aiming for the so-called ‘terminal degree’.

10.40 pm. A GP appointment. Even when the clinic is full of patients, it still manages to feel desolate. I endured an unexpected wait. Unexpected, because the ‘check-in’ device stated unambiguously that my doctor was ‘on time’. The must be the railway definition of ‘on time’; that is to say, the appointment is either not cancelled or else rescheduled for later rather than sooner:

11.30 pm. I was now fifteen minutes late for my next tutorial (an introduction to sound multi-tracking), and remained overdue until lunchtime.

2.00 pm. An applicant arrived for an informal interview related to the BA Art History degree. Good to see older people making a very courageous decision to change the course of, and enrich, their lives through education.

Phil (‘the Porter’) on his periodic buffing round:

From 3.00 pm onwards I was engaged with MA Fine Art students who are completing the first of two exhibitions towards their degree. In between tutorial periods, I proofread the catalogue for the undergraduate and postgraduate show, and culled my inbox (a bit).

7.30 pm. References to write and dispatch, research admin and initiatives to attend to, and a son to advise. One’s capacity to undertake the mundane, routine, dutiful, and irksome task is the true measure of self-discipline. Doing what’s either fun, easy, immediately fulfilling, or of obvious benefit to us personally requires little by way of resolution.

9.50 pm. Practise session 2.

8.30 am. I’m endeavouring to pack as many tutorials into as small a space as possible. While, in reality, the delivery is exhausting, I appreciate the experience of continuum and momentum, and the opportunity it affords for establish zones in my diary that can be dedicated to either administration or research alone. 9.00 am. On the cards for this morning: book development. As I write, I see:

I also hear: the occasional ‘clumph’ of car doors closing; the drawl of courier vans passing; the wood pigeons’ ‘coo-coo-coo’, close by; the gentle ecstasy of twittering sparrows in the neighbourhood trees; the seagulls, high up, screeching. To record (either audiographically or textually) is to listen. After several hours of note making — developing an inventory of sources, artefacts, and concepts, and a rationale for the research — I’m ready to draft a conspectus. Then I’ll be able to discern whether or not there’s a cogent theme governing the book — one that can both be developed and (as importantly) persuade a publisher to bite.

1.30 pm. After lunch, I walked to Information Services to collect my rebuilt MacBook Pro, and what appears to be an ailing Apogee Duet analogue/digital interface:

Back at home, I begin the task of reinstalling profiles, accounts, and software on the device. The computer now has the equivalent of an entirely new soul and mind. Its past in relation to me has been totally erased. Therefore, we must rebuild our friendship from scratch. (Sigh!) 2.45 pm. Back to the SoundBook (with the MacBook computerizing at my elbow, simultaneously). ‘Too many notes!’ I proceed to sift and order them on screen.

15.40 pm. My most consulted research output in last week’s Academia.edu stats was the Photography & Spirit book:

There’s no knowing why other academics are drawn to one’s work. But the interest does suggest that the material has some abiding relevance for someone. At least the theme of ‘ … and spirit ‘ is still popular. My book on sound and spirit may yet have an audience.

6.20 pm. Practise session 1. 7.00 pm. A little work was required on tomorrow’s Chapels in Wales lecture. It’s a bit of a patch job. But this is the first and last time that the lecture will be given in this context. 7.50 pm. The evening light. Samuel Palmer and Paul Nash would have nodded their appreciation:

More book work: segregating and categorising ideas that had been set down in the Belmont Loose Leaf File. Now ideas are beginning to generate other ideas. ‘Numinous sound!’ Where on earth did that one come from? I cannot even envisage this phenomenon. In part, that’s the idea’s strength. Connections are forming; a pattern, emerging.

9.45 pm. Practise session 2.

8.00 pm. Feet on the bedroom carpet. 9.00 am. I set out my teaching schedule and issued notifications for classes in the coming week. 10.30 am. On with the ‘mark fest’. Having completed the BA art history dissertations, I’m moving up the School with an MA art history project, followed by a PhD art history thesis:

The soundtrack for ‘Image & Inscription’ churns over in the background. Thereafter, Purcell’s (England’s greatest composer) Funeral Music for Queen Mary  gave gravitas to my academic judgement. If this was the last thing I ever heard, I’d die a contented man. The music is majestic, stately, and austere — purifying the soul. It bears the weight of death’s solemnity. The spatial distance and reverberation of the military drums and the colouration of the brass in this recording are spot on. Then, a little website updating towards lunchtime.

1.30 pm. On with marking, with Captain Beefheart’s Doc at the Radar Station lubricating the brain on this occasion. Beefheart (Don Van Vliet) was also a figurative-cum-abstract expressionist painter, and an extraordinary lyricist too: ‘Vagabond/Bad vuggum’ (‘Sue Egypt’). Wonderful! 2.30 pm. The MA Research Project is done! Thereafter, BA Dissertation feedback forms were completed. 3.00 pm. A further audition of ‘Image & Inscription’. (Hearing and listening — like seeing and looking — are qualitatively different activities.) On, then, with the PhD thesis, and an initial read-through. I’ve been looking forward to this. But … before I do … my postal vote needs to be completed. This has been a most difficult decision. How does one reconcile the person (the candidate’s integrity and track record) and the politics (their party’s failure in both these respects)? Which man or woman will best serve this constituency? It comes down to that:

I couldn’t resist making an iTunes purchase of King Crimson’s Live at the Orpheum: an object lesson in how to return to your past without indulging in a cloying nostalgia. I look forward to seeing the band live in September. So many Saturday afternoon’s in my mid to late teens were spent, with friends, listening  to them on my Dansette Bermuda record player — at the absolute centre of the stereo field —  as we poured over the artwork and every word printed on the cover and gatefold of the albums. In those days, domestic music was afforded the same degree of focussed attention as a live concert. Merely hearing was not enough:

5.15 pm. Suffice! 6.30 pm. Practise session 1. 7.30 pm. An evening with the family.

8.00 am. A brief admin round up before assembling two processed sound files of the Welsh and English text engravings derived from the Second Commandment, in a multitrack session:

I’m exploring the possibility of incorporating a recording of the Second Commandment read in Welsh and English. This recording, too, would have to be engraved, in keeping with the project’s governing concept, by transferring a digital capture to a vinyl record (which involves an intaglio process). The re-recording would, then, serve as the source.

12.30 pm. A business lunch at Tree House with my colleague Dr Roberts:

For two hours we bandied ideas and plans, and dreams and aspirations, pertaining to a proposed sound symposium — the first in the series of ‘Noise PROJECTion’s. Reasons for discouragement, a persuasive rationale for throwing in the towel, and paralysing uncertainties threaten. Thus, we make our compact: ‘Just do it!’

2.30 pm. Homebase. On with ‘Image & Inscription’. If voices were used. Whose would they be? Diagrammatizing makes me think clearly. I need to see ideas in order to better understand their relationships:

One source; two text; two languages; two recordings; two modes (writing and reading); and two voices (like the languages, these should be distinct (male and female)). The doubling is appropriate, since the Ten Commandments were given to Moses on two stone tablets (Exod. 20.1-17).

4.30 pm. At the School, Miranda and I held a early and final assessment tutorial with one of our second year students, who’ll be leaving us this year to be fruitful in another way. We wish her well. She’ll be missed. 5.00 pm (the graveyard shift). I delivered the Professional Practice lecture on ‘Social Media & ProfessionalPromotion’. A good turnout. On this occasion, the audience knew more than I did.

7.30 pm. I caught up with emails, added bits and pieces to the School’s Facebook page, and returned to ‘Image & Superscription’ rumination. In the background, I played the two time-stretched sound files together repeatedly. It’s important to develop a familiarity with the material — to hear the sonic ‘imagery’ within it. The virtues of the piece yield themselves slowly. (That’s a good sign. I’m always suspicious of immediacy.) As it stands, the Welsh engraving sounds, at times, like someone plucking at the strings of an out-of-tune upright piano. The piece gets quite ‘heavy’ towards its end, suggesting a sense of climax.

10.00 pm. Practise session 2.

8.15 am. Get to the School, find that I cannot print-out my 9.00 am lecture paper; run back home; I print it out there; run back to School; then, discover I have left my packed lunch on the kitchen table. Maybe the day will improve. 9.00 am. I delivered my Edmund Jones lecture, sans PowerPoint, for the Chapels in Wales module. The absence of a visual presentation was not only entirely appropriate but also encouraged the audience’s to engage an imaginative reconstruction of Jones’ accounts. I’m keen to return to the study of auditory apparitions.

10.00 am. My weekly walk across the promenade to the Old College; this week, in order to attend to the second year painters. (Dolphins were spotted breaking water, out on the bay today.):

Some principles and observations:

• There is ‘A time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing’ (Eccles. 3.5). It’s entirely appropriate to abandon either a medium, a subject, a course of action, or an expectation, when the logic of so doing is inexorable.
• Bless your limitations. They direct the path you take as surely as your conspicuous talents.
• Weigh the judgement of others before submitting to it. Sometimes, it’s you who knows best.
• To make advances, one must take chances.
• Easy solutions are rarely fulfilling.
• If another student’s work impresses you, tell them. We each of us need informed encouragement.
• If a solution doesn’t present itself immediately … wait, patiently. You cannot force the bud to bloom.

12.40pm. A lasagne and salad on Pier Street. A treat. 2.00 pm. The West Classroom (flying ants apart) is at its best at this time of the year. The windows are thrown open; the sound and the smell of the sea permeate the studio; and the sunshine encourages an upbeat mood and a spirit of bonhomie. An anonymous auto-abstraction:

A view from the rear studio. On such a day as this, one would not wish to work anywhere else:

7.30 pm. Teaching admin/upload chores — clearing the decks before my return to research tomorrow. (Sound-file processing in the background.) I set up a new forum for Fresher’s et al:

Quote: ‘The forum has been established for intending applicants, applicants who have been offered a place on one of the School’s schemes, those who have accepted the offer, and also freshers.’